Does China’s digital police state have echoes in the West?

The other article[0] linked in this one is well worth a read. I had never heard about Uyghurs or China&#x27;s treatment of them before I read the reddit thread yesterday about phone spyware. It&#x27;s pretty appalling and what more how the western tech community idolizes China and their tech scene while looking right past atrocities like this.<p>0: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;briefing&#x2F;2018&#x2F;05&#x2F;31&#x2F;china-has-turned-xinjiang-into-a-police-state-like-no-other" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;briefing&#x2F;2018&#x2F;05&#x2F;31&#x2F;china-has-turn...</a>

They all learn from each other. In addition we have companies that are building the necessary infrastructure which then probably can be used by a surveillance state. Unless surveillance gets checked by law it will soon be world wide.

&gt; In Western democracies, police and intelligence agencies are using the same surveillance tools to solve and deter crimes and prevent terrorism (see Technology Quarterly). The results are effective, yet deeply worrying.<p>These claims seem completely unfounded. It always surprises me when well-known outlets like The Economist just make assertions like this, without having any data to back it up. Of course the governments implementing the surveillance regimes will claim that it&#x27;s effective, but it&#x27;s the media&#x27;s job to actually verify the veracity of these claims. Instead they are just parroting this tired old narrative.

Be worried. If NSA&#x27;s work was to any extend genuinely relates to <i>foreign</i> intelligence gathering, they would not be prowling through web diaries American teenage girls. How you think they were supposed to look for Ben Ladens on <i>American</i> facebook.com and myspace.<p>Moreover, Snowden&#x27;s powerpoints confirmed eager cooperation from all major US dotcoms, with facebook&#x27;s early ex-CTO nearing to publicly admitting that NSLs they received were about &quot;get raw DB access&quot; which I assume they still have, and use up to this day.

For an in-depth look on surveillance in the States, I recommend @War[0]. It delves into the rise of the NSA and the role of digital surveillance in modern warfare, along with the NSA&#x27;s relationship with large corporations to achieve these goals.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;War-Rise-Military-Internet-Complex&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0544570286" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;War-Rise-Military-Internet-Complex&#x2F;dp...</a>

The problem isn&#x27;t the surveillance. Surveillance is just modern technology being applies as a means to an end. History shows that you can&#x27;t stand in the way of technological progress for very long unless you&#x27;re willing to be an authoritarian police state to do it).<p>The problem I see it is one of a divided society. The people who create and operate the laws and the surveillance dragnets do not worry about being subject to them in their fullest.<p>Politicians will argue for gun control, enact laws that erode our freedoms, half-ass healthcare and approve funding for surveillance dragnets that will be used to make an end run around civil liberties. In the back of their minds they know that they have armed security, that no enforcement agency will risk using those laws to abuse politicians, they don&#x27;t have to worry about healthcare and they can afford a good lawyer to convince the court that their civil liberties have been violated.<p>The people and organizations that actually implement these bad things don&#x27;t rock the boat because when you&#x27;re on the inside whatever bad thing it is doesn&#x27;t apply to you. Cops are exempt from gun laws. The three letter agencies don&#x27;t use secret courts to handle issues with their own personnel and don&#x27;t send information requests and gag orders to each other. People in the healthcare industry know how all the tricks to play and strings to pull to get themselves good enough coverage at a fair price. The agencies operating the stingrays, using ALPRs to catch people with weed on their way out of states where it&#x27;s legal, kicking down doors and shooting people&#x27;s dogs don&#x27;t have to worry about being subject to it themselves because of the thin blue line. And all these people&#x27;s salary depend on them not rocking the boat over the fact that they enjoy some perk that is not available to the peasantry at large.<p>If all the bad authoritarian crap society does was done to everyone with at least a token attempt at being impartial we&#x27;d do a hell of a lot less of it.

The West invented this stuff, though our implementation is less centralized and relies much more heavily on the private sector. The Chinese are just copying it.

Wait until they use this to enforce transgressions against thought crime in the US...

Amesys, a western society, has sold a surveillance system to Gaddafi, and is still selling to dubious actors.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.telerama.fr&#x2F;monde&#x2F;amesys-egyptian-trials-and-tribulations-of-a-french-digital-arms-dealer,160452.php" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.telerama.fr&#x2F;monde&#x2F;amesys-egyptian-trials-and-trib...</a>

This article is a week old.<p>The timing of it on HN smacks of the discussion from last month based on the NYT article that the Chinese government employs people to patrol internet discussion forums and write &quot;America is just as bad!&quot; posts to distract people every time an article comes out that paints China in a negative light.

echoes? the only element we&#x27;re missing is making widespread arrests using the data that&#x27;s harvested.<p>to be clear, we&#x27;re still making many arrests and incarcerating far more of our people than anywhere else in the world -- just using criminally exploitative drug policy as our &quot;gotcha&quot; more than technology, for the moment.<p>the economist sees &quot;echoes&quot; of the police state in the west. i see the same song played in a different key and a less manic tempo.

I&#x27;m not sure it matters, so much as do people in the West have the option to vote it down. Seems that&#x27;s been slow to happen.

History doesnt repeat itself but it rhymes.

Interesting that this shows up on HN today because I was just reading a thread[1] on reddit where a user was forced to install spyware on their android phone when crossing into this region of China<p>Also I had no idea what was happening in that region. This[2] is from one of the commenters in that thread:<p>&gt; As someone from Xinjiang and migrated with my family to somewhere else, This is only a small part of the whole oppression and violation of human rights going on in North Western China. Now a days, Uyghurs students are not allowed to speak their mother tongue in schools, fasting during Ramadan is considered &quot;politically incorrect&quot;(let alone praying etc), and you will end up in &quot;re-educational camp&quot;(aka prisons). Uyghur females are forced to marry Chinese mans, as part of CCP&#x27;s assimilation process, almost one million Uyghurs has been locked up in prisons, EVERY SINGLE successful Uyghur businessmans has been locked up, influencial figures like artists, scholar,, singers has gone into &quot;political re-educational camps&quot; too, many getting their organs harvested, and CCP sell them in the black market. Many healthy teenagers dies after being released from those camps, due to being some essential part of their body organs being harvested. The international community knows very little about everything happening in Xinjiang because Uyghurs don&#x27;t have an vocal enough exiled leader like Dali Lama, and also because NO media is allowed inside Xinjiang, especially foreign media, if you have friends and family that have interests in Chinese culture or China as a country, I hope you guys can spread the message and things happening in Xinjiang, China, towards Uyghur people. Its comparable to the Holocaust, just done very low profile, I really mean it. It has past the point of making me angry, I just feel extremely depressed when I read things happening back home, and talking about them. Im just glad myself and all my family members are in a safe and free country now. If you wanna learn more, you can visit Radio Free Asia&#x27;s website, and they have section reporting on Uyghurs.<p>&gt; Edit: I&#x27;m sorry if this is getting political, I by no means saying that this has anything to do with average Chinese citizens and Chinese people, most of Chinese people I&#x27;ve seen and work with are all very humble really nice people, I&#x27;m only speaking out towards Chinese Communist Party, and please don&#x27;t get too political under the comments,and I just want to give some background information of why CCP installating malware on people&#x27;s phone is a common phenomenon in China (especially places like Xinjiang). Please be nice to each other, regardless of ethnicity or any differences.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;security&#x2F;comments&#x2F;8ofiiw&#x2F;chinese_border_police_installed_software_on_my&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;security&#x2F;comments&#x2F;8ofiiw&#x2F;chinese_bo...</a><p>2. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;security&#x2F;comments&#x2F;8ofiiw&#x2F;chinese_border_police_installed_software_on_my&#x2F;e05qaib&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;security&#x2F;comments&#x2F;8ofiiw&#x2F;chinese_bo...</a>

&gt;&gt; Citizens of liberal democracies do not expect to be frisked without good cause, or have their homes searched without a warrant.<p>Lol. What world does this author live in? I expect to be frisked every time I go to an airport or football game. I expect to have to turn my pockets out every time I cross the US-canada boarder. I&#x27;m not a minority, but I assume some who are will want to add to this train of thought re being frisked by cops.<p>And a warrant to search my home? Warrants are pieces of paper. Cops drive tanks and carry machine guns. Whether they bothered to phone a magistrate for permission before hand is the least of my concerns as they break down my door. Warrants only matter if they are going to charge me with something and want evidence admitted in court. Even then, there are so many exceptions. The evidence gets in. My concern isn&#x27;t about paperwork, it&#x27;s that I&#x27;ll be swatted one night and they will shoot my dog.<p>Also, the &quot;warrant requirement&quot; is an American construct. It isn&#x27;t a thing in places like Canada, which most would consider a very liberal democracy. Canadian cops can use evidence even if seized illegally. Nor do they have to stop questioning you if you demand a lawyer. Nor do you get a jury trial. Don&#x27;t assume that all western democracies use the American legal system.