China's Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone

China, how did you fall to such depths?

Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jet Lee were your last great exports. Now you're drowning in your own Citizen control and the bastardization of everything technologically inclined.

Imagine a society in which you are rated by the government on your trustworthiness. Your “citizen score” follows you wherever you go. A high score allows you access to faster internet service or a fast-tracked visa to Europe. If you make political posts online without a permit, or question or contradict the government’s official narrative on current events, however, your score decreases. To calculate the score, private companies working with your government constantly trawl through vast amounts of your social media and online shopping data.

When you step outside your door, your actions in the physical world are also swept into the dragnet: The government gathers an enormous collection of information through the video cameras placed on your street and all over your city. If you commit a crime—or simply jaywalk—facial recognition algorithms will match video footage of your face to your photo in a national ID database. It won’t be long before the police show up at your door.

China has taken the 'novel' 1984 and is now using it against it's own Citizens in exchange for pretty much everything. This is really # wrong.

While it isn’t yet clear what data will be considered, commentators are already speculating that the scope of the system will be alarmingly wide. The planned “citizen credit” score will likely weigh far more data than the Western fico score, which helps lenders make fast and reliable decisions on whether to extend financial credit.

Even more worrying is that the government will be technically capable of considering the behavior of a Chinese citizen’s friends and family in determining his or her score. For example, it is possible that your friend’s anti-government political post could lower your own score. Thus, the scoring system would isolate dissidents from their friends and the rest of society, rendering them complete pariahs.

Your score might even determine your access to certain privileges taken for granted in the U.S., such as a visa to travel abroad or or even the right to travel by train or plane within the country. One internet privacy expert warns: “What China is doing here is selectively breeding its population to select against the trait of critical, independent thinking.”.

www.theatlantic.com...

While Westerners and especially civil liberties groups like the ACLU are horrified by such a prospect—one commentator called the possibility “authoritarianism, gamified”—others argue that because lack of trust is a serious problem in China

I saw an article recently regarding Chinese Surveillance of it's own Citizens, and I was shocked to say the least. They had giant digital Billboards up calling out anyone who did anything 'illegal', we're talking jaywalking here. Shaming people for # like that, that's 1984 in your face, and if you cant see it now, you will later.

a reply to: BotheLumberJack

This stuff happening in China doesn't surprise me in the slightest-They are after all an authoritarian communist country,with a proven record of treating their population very harshly.
Its when similar things happen in other so called free countries-that bothers me.

Like dragnet phone/internet spying for example-the kind of thing the stasi or nazis would have a wet dream about is now commonplace in the west,without anyone having voted for it.In our "free democracies."

a reply to: Silcone Synapse

If it carries on, the world won't be worth living for. People of prestige have attempted to warn us, we didn't listen. If we continue to ignore it, it will be the end of freedom for everyone as we know it.

China’s experiments with digital surveillance pose a grave new threat to freedom of expression on the internet and other human rights in China. Increasingly, citizens will refrain from any kind of independent or critical expression for fear that their data will be read or their movements recorded—and penalized—by the government.

And that is exactly the point of the program. Moreover, what emerges in China will not stay in China. Its repressive technologies have a pattern of diffusing to other authoritarian regimes around the world.

For this reason—not to mention concern for the hundreds of millions of people in China whose meager freedom will be further diminished—democracies around the world must monitor and denounce this sinister creep toward an Orwellian world.

a reply to: BotheLumberJack

I like the idea that people will have to think/research before they post tripe online. But that's it. The rest of it is just crazy.

a reply to: FinallyAwake

You know what's bat sh't crazy? When the Government knocks on your door because you're wearing the wrong color, or you gave the bird to some asshole copper, or because you looked at your neighbor the wrong way.

But chances are you'll be over the hill when it gets to that point, so what the # do you care, right? Not your Problem.. That's the mentality of over half the planet. Mao and Ghengis Khan would be proud of todays world.

Because their citizens work abroad in the USA and UK as well as many other countries, the Chinese will want those countries to implement the same features.

They also have this permanent record that every citizen has that lasts them for their whole life. Get on the wrong side of one official and that is you marked down for life. No academic job or government jobs, limited loans and all sorts of other restrictions.

a reply to: stormcell

Who would of thought that the NWO would of begun in Britain and China.

www.theatlantic.com...

To calculate the score, private companies working with your government constantly trawl through vast amounts of your social media and online shopping data.

You mean groups like Snopes and the AP labeling “fake news” and labeling the people that push “fake news” on social media here in the USA? It’s alread underway in the USA. Just ask the persons in the Trump administration that cannot eat a quite meal.

At least China is public about their system unlike other countries;

Before Snowden anyone who claimed NSA was gathering phone calls and emails was considered a conspiracy loon. Man they hate him for exposing their devious plans...

As far as I can see this is not going away...there will just be different systems in place for the government's safety errr the population..

In even poor countries of Asia there are cameras on just about every street corner and some of them actually work.. Many a thief has been caught by the ones that work.. So not all bad but as usual it take a communist dictatorship to show the rest of the world how to get more bang for your buck errr control of the population !!
youtu.be...

a reply to: neutronflux

Maybe you should try going to China, If you're black you're in for an extra surprise. And what does Snopes have to do with it they're gov funded. I'm talking about real people here, people I know who have been there, actual Asians, It's happening whether or not you personally want it to.

a reply to: 727Sky

As far as I can see this is not going away...there will just be different systems in place for the government's safety errr the population..

This is happening in other places i'm sure. Whether we're being told about it or not. It's one big # ongoing planetary project to see if people will comply.

India has gone Cashless, it's coming.

To no one in general.

So while North America is screwing around with #ing Political Correctness Crap, Countries like China and India are screwing their own people out of their God Given 'Human Rights'. People need to wake the # up.

Ok i'm done.

originally posted by: BotheLumberJack
To no one in general.

So while North America is screwing around with #ing Political Correctness Crap, Countries like China and India are screwing their own people out of their God Given 'Human Rights'. People need to wake the # up.

Ok i'm done.

In places like China it is already to late unless you want to become an organ donor.. or disappear as you are walking down a street into an official government van.

As long as we in the states have a constitution at least we have some form of legal recourse against the government's wrong doing.. But as I am sure you already know our constitutional rights are being eroded by the Chinese thousand cut method.

As long as we have constitutional interpreters in the supreme court and not the rule by decree crowd we should survive as a nation for a bit longer, IMO.

a reply to: 727Sky

In places like China it is already to late unless you want to become an organ donor.. or disappear as you are walking down a street into an official government van. As long as we in the states have a constitution at least we have some form of legal recourse against the government's wrong doing..

But as I am sure you already know our constitutional rights are being eroded by the Chinese thousand cut method. As long as we have constitutional interpreters in the supreme court and not the rule by decree crowd we should survive as a nation for a bit longer, IMO.

You're right, it's only going to get worse. There's a thread between them and us. Them being the hidden jerks we're not allowed to know about, and Us the Majority. They want us to believe we're weak and incapable. That's the big lie. If people don't stand against this # now, in a decade, we won't recognize our Country.

Fear will get us nowhere.

It’s just going to lead to another revolution / civil war. Half the population will die, they will slowly begin to rebuild and the whole cycle starts again.

Humans really are boaring, misdirected creatures.

When they roll that ish out here, then you pick up your pitchforks. Otherwise, this is one of those things I give the "side-eye" to but don't lose any sleep. That's in China. This is something they are going to have to figure out.

Chinese folks keep it poppin it's why Xi is busying locking down his power. Er um.. rule, No. I mean elected status. That doesn't work either, what does the dictionary say about this?

Authoritarianism, principle of blind submission to authority, as opposed to individual freedom of thought and action. In government, authoritarianism denotes any political system that concentrates power in the hands of a leader or a small elite that is not constitutionally responsible to the body of the people. Authoritarian leaders often exercise power arbitrarily and without regard to existing bodies of law, and they usually cannot be replaced by citizens choosing freely among various competitors in elections. The freedom to create opposition political parties or other alternative political groupings with which to compete for power with the ruling group is either limited or nonexistent in authoritarian regimes.

Authoritarianism. There we go! That doesn't look commie to me

China is where the "freedom loving" west is heading too, what it is dreaming of, wet dreams, very wet ones.

That´s why western based but multinational acting corpration helped and help China to build that Brave New, 1984ish World! To prepare everything for the future and to use China as a testfield for that inhumane tools!

a reply to: GreenGunther

Humans really are boaring, misdirected creatures.

Humans are also highly naive and arrogant creatures, the very reason Thugs with power and money have taken us time and time again in the past 10,000 years throughout Human History.

It's never ended well for us.not without losing something.

a reply to: BotheLumberJack

If you think this only happens in China you're wrong.

I have very little doubt whatsoever that some triple lettered agency in the West has a VERY detailed psychological evaluation for each and every one of us. Most likely aided by Google AI.