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Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China’s Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life

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41–50 of 139 posts

Re: Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China’s Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life

#41
post #39
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how these things work... I've lived in Singapore for close to 7 years, have permanent residence, and it is when I travel to the US that I feel slightly uncomfortable. It starts with the immigration agent who sometimes feels the need to ask me questions for 20 minutes as if I were a criminal, there's the part where they get to look through all your social media accounts and hold you indefinitely, and then there'…

All you said is true. Forget to mention, aside from that, I love Singapore in general and I have no illusion that the US is getting more hostile by the day. I have been in the US as a foreigner for 10 years. Last time I came back, I was hassled and treated like a piece of shit by a customs official, too (and I love how they ask for social accounts now, I hope they don't ask for HN?). Recently I was extremely upset ha…

Those villes are carcasses of society, they are small because nobody wants to live there

I’m glad you enjoy the choice

Re: Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China’s Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life

#42
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All you said is true. Forget to mention, aside from that, I love Singapore in general and I have no illusion that the US is getting more hostile by the day. I have been in the US as a foreigner for 10 years. Last time I came back, I was hassled and treated like a piece of shit by a customs official, too (and I love how they ask for social accounts now, I hope they don't ask for HN?). Recently I was extremely upset ha…

Those villes are carcasses of society, they are small because nobody wants to live there I’m glad you enjoy the choice

You don't sound glad about anything.

Re: Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China’s Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life

#43

Original WSJ article: "Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China’s Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life" https://www.wsj.com/articles/twelve-days-in-xinjiang-how-chi... If you don't have WSJ subscription, paste the title into FB's search bar, and open the link via search results to bypass the paywall.

Assuming "FB" means Facebook, what if one doesn't have a Facebook account?

Re: Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China’s Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life

#44

Original WSJ article: "Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China’s Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life" https://www.wsj.com/articles/twelve-days-in-xinjiang-how-chi... If you don't have WSJ subscription, paste the title into FB's search bar, and open the link via search results to bypass the paywall.

Assuming "FB" means Facebook, what if one doesn't have a Facebook account?

Or manually use FB's redirect:

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/...

Re: Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China’s Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life

#46
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed about the customs officials - travel to the US is no longer pleasant. Concerning government officials, for a few years I lived in the same town as the prime minister of the UK. I used to see them walking about town or in shops, sometimes alone, sometimes with family, but never with any security escort. The CCTV cameras there are mostly private ones in shops, as far as I can tell.

Funny you should say that. I grew up in the UK (Central London, Cambridge) and found most interactions with the government difficult in their bureaucracy and sometimes sheer unpleasantness (airports being at the top of the list, until the merciful arrival of auto-gates). But it is true that smaller towns are almost a different country. British big government has always been oppressive in nature, and rather unconcerne…

AFAIK the vast, vast majority of CCTV in the UK is privately owned and has nothing to do with police or government.

Re: Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China’s Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life

#47

Original WSJ article: "Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China’s Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life" https://www.wsj.com/articles/twelve-days-in-xinjiang-how-chi... If you don't have WSJ subscription, paste the title into FB's search bar, and open the link via search results to bypass the paywall.

Assuming "FB" means Facebook, what if one doesn't have a Facebook account?

If you're browsing with Firefox, the "Bypass Paywalls" Add-on is really neat. No further workarounds necessary.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypasspaywall...

Re: Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China’s Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life

#48
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone sticks a gun in your face and demands your wallet, you will reconsider this equivocation.

Consider Anne Frank. Her family were identified as Jews by a census by the somewhat benevolent Dutch state in the 1930's. The disclosure of these records cost Anne her life, and cost the lives of tens or possibly hundreds of thousands of others. Consider homosexuality, disclosures of sexual preference in 1950's England or in modern Saudi Arabia were, and are, fatal. Cf. Alan Turing! Privacy breeches can, and do, kill…

Anne Frank was killed by people. No one in the history of mankind has ever been killed by a privacy breach.

Preventing ideologies that lead to killing people is what needs to be worked on, not forcing people to live closeted lives.

Re: Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China’s Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life

#49
post #46
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you should say that. I grew up in the UK (Central London, Cambridge) and found most interactions with the government difficult in their bureaucracy and sometimes sheer unpleasantness (airports being at the top of the list, until the merciful arrival of auto-gates). But it is true that smaller towns are almost a different country. British big government has always been oppressive in nature, and rather unconcerne…

AFAIK the vast, vast majority of CCTV in the UK is privately owned and has nothing to do with police or government.

While it's no doubt true that the "vast majority" of CCTV in the UK is privately owned (pretty much every business premises will operate their own private CCTV), there are large numbers of police, local-government, and transport-agency operated CCTV cameras monitoring public spaces in the UK.

If you look at somewhere like London, then pretty much every busy intersection, every public square, every station, every bus, every train, etc has CCTV.

In 2002 there were estimated to be 500,000 public and private CCTV cameras in Greater London, and 4.2 million in the UK. That number is almost certainly much higher today.

Re: Twelve Days in Xinjiang: How China’s Surveillance State Overwhelms Daily Life

#50
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone sticks a gun in your face and demands your wallet, you will reconsider this equivocation.

Consider Anne Frank. Her family were identified as Jews by a census by the somewhat benevolent Dutch state in the 1930's. The disclosure of these records cost Anne her life, and cost the lives of tens or possibly hundreds of thousands of others. Consider homosexuality, disclosures of sexual preference in 1950's England or in modern Saudi Arabia were, and are, fatal. Cf. Alan Turing! Privacy breeches can, and do, kill…

Are you worried that imagery from CCTV cameras will be used to identify homosexuals?

https://newatlas.com/ai-detects-gay-faces-criticisms-study/5...

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