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China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

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Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#271

Post by walrus01 »

baybal2 wrote: post #187
walrus01 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former satellite telecom engineer here, have built high capacity two way C, Ku, X and Ka band earth stations. Two big problems with China: 1. Smuggle rooftop CPE into country? Manufacture domestically in grey market factories? 2. Very low cost for Chinese law enforcement, in Xinjiang, to buy and use portable spectrum analyzers to locate the Tx frequencies coming from a 30cm-50cm sized rooftop phase array antenna, aim…

It will be as easy as locating an illegal VSAT station, which are countless in big cities there.

With current geostationary-based technology any significant VSAT is easy to spot: If you want to use higher-order modulations and coding, you need gain. Which means you need at least a 1.8 to 2.4m size antenna for a serious earth station. Possibly you're confusing a small VSAT with the Rx-only TVRO type dishes which are everywhere?

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#272

Post by walrus01 »

trevyn wrote: post #182
walrus01 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former satellite telecom engineer here, have built high capacity two way C, Ku, X and Ka band earth stations. Two big problems with China: 1. Smuggle rooftop CPE into country? Manufacture domestically in grey market factories? 2. Very low cost for Chinese law enforcement, in Xinjiang, to buy and use portable spectrum analyzers to locate the Tx frequencies coming from a 30cm-50cm sized rooftop phase array antenna, aim…

Question: Would it be similarly easy to locate such a transmitter if it were on an exceptionally busy ISM band? Also, what if upstream transmission rate was reduced?

1) The problem with using an ISM band for earth to space is precisely because it's exceptionally noisy. You want the best possible SNR for two way satellite, either direction. With a small satellite that orbits relatively close (LEO to low MEO, compared to geostationary), which will likely have a system architecture composed of numerous focused spot beams... If you were to design a series of spot beam on the satellite body with ISM band antennas aimed at major cities all you would achieve is gathering noise.

2) Not going to help much unless the upstream is so little that's basically useless. The same antenna is used for both Rx and Tx so you still need significant gain to overcome the path loss and have sufficient link budget for the space-to-earth traffic.

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#273

Post by Nomentatus »

lambdadmitry wrote: post #184
ordinaryradical wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me there is a large public relations push to normalize their authoritarianism in the view of Westerners. Then you hear about bloggers being imprisoned for pointing out corruption according to the government’s own definitions. China’s authoritarianism looks attractive when it’s about infrastructure and efficiency, but the underside of it, the collective silencing and destruction of debate, the “blank spots” i…

I wonder if that kind of authoritarianism can already be qualified as fascism. Declared total unity of state, people and industry? Check. Militarism? Check. Indifference to violence? Check. Concentration camps, mass political persecutions, expansionism? All there. When does it cross the line from bad to Hitler?

Marx called it "Bonapartism" (after Napoleon), certainly if the authority truly centered upon one leader. He wasn't for it, to say the least.

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#274

Post by Nomentatus »

eponeponepon wrote: post #204
lambdadmitry wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if that kind of authoritarianism can already be qualified as fascism. Declared total unity of state, people and industry? Check. Militarism? Check. Indifference to violence? Check. Concentration camps, mass political persecutions, expansionism? All there. When does it cross the line from bad to Hitler?

There's no line between bad and Hitler - the Nazis were bad because (in naïve, coarse terms) they crossed the line between bad and good.

So the NSA was bad - violated the laws and constitution according to the U.S. Courts, therefore we're already at Hitler? What they did was bad. On the road to Hitler, maybe, but not there yet, surely.

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#275

Post by Nomentatus »

tony101 wrote: post #165
thaumasiotes wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's so wrong with building an artificial island?

It is built on disputed territory in an attempt to claim sovereignty. http://www.newsweek.com/china-south-china-sea-islands-build-... https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/chinas-artificial-is... https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/28/asia/south-china-sea-islands-...

Even the word "disputed" is too kind. The U.N. rejects the claim, which is based on fantasy (and force), only, not history. It doesn't even rise to the standard of revanchism or irredentism, which are disreputable, too.

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#276

Post by dragonwriter »

lambdadmitry wrote: post #184
ordinaryradical wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me there is a large public relations push to normalize their authoritarianism in the view of Westerners. Then you hear about bloggers being imprisoned for pointing out corruption according to the government’s own definitions. China’s authoritarianism looks attractive when it’s about infrastructure and efficiency, but the underside of it, the collective silencing and destruction of debate, the “blank spots” i…

I wonder if that kind of authoritarianism can already be qualified as fascism. Declared total unity of state, people and industry? Check. Militarism? Check. Indifference to violence? Check. Concentration camps, mass political persecutions, expansionism? All there. When does it cross the line from bad to Hitler?

> When does it cross the line from bad to Hitler?

There's no line; fascism is a subset of bad, not a separate category.

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#277

Post by fdsak »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #253
fdsak wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give me example of one single country that is not waging any war or complicit of it ? The other point is why the world should go by force for democracy? Democracy is freedom, I don't like that democracy I am happy with dictatorship why someone should cry ? ( not pointing at you). Lets say whole population is happy with their dictator and living a decent life,unless someone is arming rebels and inciting political turm…

> Give me example of one single country that is not waging any war or complicit of it ? Almost every democratic country if you hadn't changed the topic again. We were talking about waging a war, not "being complicit" or small-scale interventions like e.g. currently in Afghanistan. For instance, sending fighter jets equipped with cameras instead of bombs is not "waging a war". I also don't think that it is fair to por…

You failed to name a country I could have pointed out their massacres, name it US, UK, France, Germany, Turkey some big democratic nations to name, who have collectively destroyed Iraq, Libya and now Syria .

> I also don't think that it is fair to portray e.g. international alliances against ISIS as evil and unjust wars.

Even ISIS is created, funded by those same countries themselves as pretext for intervention? And do you have knowledge how that ISIS came into existence? No most people have short memory or they have no intellectual purity to look at the truth. It there because those civilized countries uprooted some peaceful nations because some people in those "democratic" nations thought the have right to kill and invade those people capture their resources for the sake of democracy .. oh common .. please stop this ...

You are talking out of books and I am talking about what happened in my country and have seen both sides, dictatorship(supported by west as far as it was feasible for them) and corrupt democracies(which they can manipulate easily). And my conclusion is that China should do what they ought to do for their national integrity and security regardless of how external world looks at them.

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#278

Post by baybal2 »

walrus01 wrote: post #271
baybal2 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be as easy as locating an illegal VSAT station, which are countless in big cities there.

With current geostationary-based technology any significant VSAT is easy to spot: If you want to use higher-order modulations and coding, you need gain. Which means you need at least a 1.8 to 2.4m size antenna for a serious earth station. Possibly you're confusing a small VSAT with the Rx-only TVRO type dishes which are everywhere?

Yes, they are easy to spot, and they are being spotted and their owners being jailed/executed/gutted for organs. This does not mean than an enormous amount of wealthy Chinese see their own private internet channel as a status symbol, and manufacturing of creatively styled antenna enclosures being a mid-sized industry here.

https://m.alibaba.com/product/1805114851/Beautiful-FRP-Anten...

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#279

Post by rconti »

PricelessValue wrote: post #40
rconti wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So "leading surveillance systems in the world" means: 1. Who "started it" 2. How long they've been doing it 3. Percentage of people affected by it (not number!) In other words, you worked backwards to produce vague descriptions of metrics by which your point would be true. If it weren't for the fact that these vague metrics in no way support your assertion.

>1. Who "started it" Not just who started. The quality and sophistication. > 2. How long they've been doing it 3. Percentage of people affected by it (not number!) Yes. What else would it be? What other metric would you use?

"Leading" implies, to me, sophistication, how widespread it is, and how many people it impacts.

Re: China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

#280

Post by Arn_Thor »

ghostcluster wrote: post #268
Arn_Thor wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence their concerted focus on upgrading and automating their industry. They're aiming for more production for domestic consumption (enticing their middle class buy Chinese rather than foreign brands) and higher value-added exports.

I've mentioned this elsewhere — everyone points to automation as the savior, but where is the Chinese Bosch? As far as I can tell, they still rely primarily on companies from the US, Japan, and Germany for their automated heavy industry.

Do they need their own Bosch? Yet? Automation is automation, and it doesn't matter if they use Japanese parts, copy Japanese parts, or make their own. I believe it's almost inevitable that Chinese companies will take places at the forefront of automation technology within a few years, probably driven by AI research where they're at the forefront. But their success does not hinge on that
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