Beijing bets on facial recognition in a big drive for total surveillance | Hacker News Reader

Beijing bets on facial recognition in a big drive for total surveillance

washingtonpost.com

172 pointsapta125 comments

In China, the government watches your every move. In the rest of the world, it's your phone.

Edit: No, but wait because this is published in the Washington Post, the same Washington Post who was declaring "No Pardon for Edward Snowden" just last September [1]. If its editors are so appalled by surveillance, as we should all certainly be, why are they not as appalled about the mass surveillance used by their own government on their own fellow citizens?

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[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/edward-snowden-doesn...

The complication is that Mr. Snowden did more than that. He also pilfered, and leaked, information about a separate overseas NSA Internet-monitoring program, PRISM, that was both clearly legal and not clearly threatening to privacy. (It was also not permanent; the law authorizing it expires next year.) Worse — far worse — he also leaked details of basically defensible international intelligence operations: cooperation with Scandinavian services against Russia; spying on the wife of an Osama bin Laden associate; and certain offensive cyber operations in China.

I'm not defending surveillance in the US, but given the very different institutions and political systems involved, maybe different conclusions can be consistent?

Snowden is a hero by the way.

Note, though, that most Chinese people will use the exact same argument to justify the actions of their government.

From what I know about posts circulated in WeChat timeline, I would bet that most Chinese have already been brainwashed that national security should be defended at all cost and that Edward Snowden is a traitor whose action indirectly benefited motherland China, and therefore he should be applauded but not be learned from. Think the Nineteen Eighty-Four.

A fair amount of people think the same about our national security, but they're obviously not brainwashed, just good old patriots.

That's true, and their argument is valid, assuming they really are okay with trading off some potential increase in short term security with a rather certain long term oppression.

The question is how different the two political systems are, if they're both constantly spying on their population, and nobody can really do anything about it in either case.

One difference is that in China dissidents are thrown in prison in large numbers.

I suspect the WaPo's apparent hypocrisy is driven by actual hypocrisy - not biting the hand that feeds it. The CIA is a very big client of Amazon's.

Yikes, I hadn't read that yet, but I have to say (I'm sure it's been debated a lot already) that their arguments are specious.

What Snowden did was just shine a light into a world that had been growing ever more powerful and yet darker and less transparent while still operating under the letter of the law.

I think that there is a need for a fundamental distrust of government in these cases, and as a Republican, it makes me insanely sad that my party has been on the wrong side of this issue for so long.

So yeah, WaPo should own up to the inconsistency (even if that's just too attribute it to being contributed to by a dynamic and different set of voices).

I disagree.

Snowden didn't go to senators or congresspersons with top secret classified documents to try to responsibly get the public to understand that the head of the NSA lied under oath. He fucking handed them over to journalists to pour through and decide for themselves. They aren't capable of understanding what should be released and in many cases released information they shouldn't have, like the joint collaboration with Canadian embassies for radio monitoring. That stuff shouldn't have gone public.

Yes our democracies have a right to know in a broad sense what our governments should be doing, but we shouldn't allow one random person to do so without first trying to go through government channels to try to fix it with people our people have entrusted to safeguard our national security.

The outcome of what Snowden did was good in some ways, but the manner in which he did it was not and shouldn't be advocated for or encouraged.

why not?

(it's purely a question to know why not, not a provocation)

Because the power of one individual keeps going up. Just relying only on your own judgement without at least deferring first to a higher authority and attempting to get the issue addressed with their help is reckless and could get a lot of people killed.

Yes people should take a personal stand sometimes, but they shouldn't start there. I understand that previous NSA whistleblowers were gutted, and that was stupid of the NSA because that secret was getting out at some point, but in either case talking to a senator is way, way, way better than talking to a random journalist. There are plenty of reasons not to talk to journalists, not the least of which is that they're often spies. Bringing all the material to Hong Kong was also reckless, though it is possible he took countermeasures to stop himself from giving up the password if he got tortured at the border.

Your point is valid only assuming the government wasn't aware of the thing and would have acted differently in perfect good faith, but real world ain't fairies and unicorns: politicians are blood and flesh mortals who can be corrupt exactly as every normal citizen. We'll never know the answer to a what-if different situation, but if I had a time machine to check, I'd bet everything that, had Snowden informed the government in advance, he would probably be dead of "natural causes" by now.

I always get downvoted when I talk about Snowden because people want to see it in all or nothing terms like you do but our governments don't just go around killing people that are trying to do the right thing.

Plus, if he wanted, he could have always set up a complex insurance scheme so that if he died the documents came out.

Honest, I wouldn't have taken the risk either in his place. Going to your local senator sounds overly naive.

We can agree to disagree, but I think what he did was the smart play there. Here's why I think so. Who in the government should he have gone to? We're talking about a lot of reps and senators, some of whom are either on intelligence committees (and possibly approving these actions, or at least the autonomy of those making those choices), or people who are beholden to those congressional members who are. Or he could have gone to people who have no experience with this or no influence to do anything.

Given what he knew of what happened to people who "work against" the US, do you really think the Bradley/Chelsea Manning option was one he wanted to risk?

I don't think our government is full of corrupt, evil and hateful people trying to kill as many people as they can.

Instead, I think it's full of hard working, well meaning people who succumb to the same pressures and tunnel vision that we all do. And sometimes, those people, under pressure from us, the populace, make them try to find solutions that may inch towards tyranny without us knowing it.

Snowden is an idealist, but he needed to show that same populace what our desire for safety was leading to.

I don't believe the guy should be deified, but I don't think he actually matters other than as a part of history and someone who showed us a mirror.

And I don't think you should dump on the fact that he handed them to journalists.

They literally are one of our government's greatest resources in keeping it honest. Not because it's an inherently noble profession, but specifically because our freedom of the press allowed them to have incentives in routing out corruption, whether that's money or fame, etc.

I can choose to leave my phone, or buy a wifi only device, or take the cell modem out.

I can't choose not to be tracked by computers and cameras I don't own, generally. Therefore, the Chinese system is greatly more nefarious since there is no opt-out.

Although, I agree with you in principle. In reality it is a little different. Just because you don't take your phone out doesn't mean other people aren't. Its the same principle as Facebook being able to figure out who your relatives are even though you may not be on Facebook. Its all about data points. With enough data points, it doesn't matter whether you bring out a phone or not.

You can choose to live in remote areas by the countryside where there are no cameras.

And thus bump yourself way up the list of possible "troublemakers"...

The very same sort whose phones go offline from time to time (unreachable baseband or no discernible motion for long stretches). What are they hiding? It might be better to put them on a list and cross-reference the dark periods with others with similar questionable behavior. Naturally,it's all done by a computer, and it doesn't count until a human analyst looks at the data so no laws are being currently broken.

1. you can choose to stay in your private home not fitted with those cameras. 2. you can choose to wear a mask when walking on streets, there is no law stopping you doing that, going to a bank or metro station is a different story. 3. you can choose to live in remote areas. 4. as a foreigner, you can choose not to visit China. 5. as a Chinese citizen, one can choose to leave China and live in countries without such "problem".

most Chinese people are too poor to leave. Masks I imagine would be outlawed as soon as they became a common method of subverting the state.

that, and sesame credit, and the great firewall blocking whole wide avenues of thought, the abuses will pile up as high as the mountains

Yes you can opt-out of anything technically. Both are fairly large sacrifices in the end.

>> I can choose to leave my phone, or buy a wifi only device, or take the cell modem out.

And you can choose to hide in a hole, or go live on a deserted island. In short, you'd have to seriously inconvenience yourself to avoid being spied on all the time.

The reason such surveillance is a problem is that it gets the majority of the population by placing itself smack in the middle of their everyday activities. If it was easy to avoid it, or if it was targeted at uncommon activities nobody 'd be worried about it.

>> I can choose to leave my phone, or buy a wifi only device, or take the cell modem out.

In some countries perhaps. In China, you need your phone for everything. Paying for stuff, getting a taxi, food, etc. Everything tied to a phone.

Optionally, so no. Cash exists, even in China. The surveillance cameras everywhere are much harder to avoid.

It is not so optional though. Living in China without a phone is very hard to do. Having spent time there just a few months ago many places wouldn't take cash and even did not have enough cash to make change.

The cameras I think are impossible to avoid. I read an article recently where the police found a man within 7 minutes or something using the cctv system.

How about wearing Sombrero?

It's an opinion piece

Is it wrong for a newspaper to hold opposing opinions? I think not.

You're right. However hypocrisy is wrong, very much so.

One is a news story, reporting on China. The other is an editorial. Do you want the editorial board to censor the Post's reporters? There is zero hypocrisy here.

> why are they not as appalled about the mass surveillance used by their own government on their own fellow citizens?

I just read the piece, and I think you're being deliberately uncharitable. The rationale behind not offering a wholesale pardon appears to be based in the notion that not everything he leaked actually deserved to be leaked - which is quite orthogonal to the accusation that they're somehow laissez faire on domestic surveillance.

Don't forget that he never actually leaked anything. He stole data but did not place it in the public domain. Instead, he handed it over to a group of journalists who were given the function of filtering the data before publication. To date, only about 5% of Snowden's material has been published.

> He stole data but did not place it in the public domain. Instead, he handed it over to a group of journalists who were given the function of filtering the data before publication

I understand that, but strictly speaking it's not relevant. He stole the data, and is therefore responsible for whatever eventually gets disseminated - good and ill alike. As far as ownership goes, it doesn't really matter if it was eventually published via the Guardian, Wikileaks or his nextdoor neighbor.

Am I being unfair?

Let's imagine for a bit what WP would write if a Chinese Snowden escaped China with a drive full of state secrets and sought asylum in the US. Do you think it'd ask for them to be extradited, so that they could be punished for breaking the law in their country? Or do you think it'd hail them as a hero who defied an oppresive regime to bring the free world the truth etc etc? Because I can imagine very well what the Western press, in general, would say in such a case.

The article even points out that Snowden can basically forget about having a fair chance to represent himself, if he gives himself up to the US justice- for security! How likely do you think it is that our hypothetical Chinese hero would get a better chance at a fair trial in China? Miniscule, of course. And wouldn't the WP be the first to point out that this is a major reason not to deliver the hero to the tyrannical Chinese? In the case of Snowden though, it's just brushed aside- eh, so, he can't have a fair trial, it's his own fault, c'est la vie, he should do the time like proper civil disobedience practitioners- well, except for the ones who escape from the oppressive regimes in their countries and seek asylum in the West, that is. That's "the best tradition" too, I guess.

No, I don't think I'm being unfair. I think it's fair to say that the Western press, even the liberal press, is always eager to do the state's job for it, and publish what are essentially propaganda pieces. The article above is exactly that- anti-Chinese propaganda. It draws the attention to the oppressive surveillance of its citizens by the Chinese state, which is fair and proper to do; but at the same time it ignores the 195 kg Gorilla gorilla in the room: that the US state itself is doing exactly the same.

It is very easy to see articles like that as a deliberate attempt to show our Western democracies in a positive light, compared to the oppressive, undemocratic regimes that just so happen to also be our political and economic rivals. I, for one, in the light of the previous article on Snowden, certainly do.

> Do you think it'd ask for them to be extradited, so that they could be punished for breaking the law in their country?

First of all, you're arguing based on a hypothetical. I don't agree with your foregone conclusions, and there's little utility in debating them since your entire scenario is fictional.

Secondly, the article you linked to didn't call for extradition.

> The article above is exactly that- anti-Chinese propaganda. It draws the attention to the oppressive surveillance of its citizens by the Chinese state, which is fair and proper to do; but at the same time it ignores the 195 kg Gorilla gorilla in the room: that the US state itself is doing exactly the same.

Disagree, since it specifically highlights similarities (and differences) between Chinese and US surveillance programs. They are quite clearly not "exactly the same", even in light of the Snowden revelations.

> It is very easy to see articles like that as a deliberate attempt to show our Western democracies in a positive light, compared to the oppressive, undemocratic regimes that just so happen to also be our political and economic rivals.

The US is far from perfect, but the amount of state supervision and intrusion into private life is an order of magnitude greater in China. Whether that's positive or negative is subjective, but the fundamental fact is inarguable.

I am en EU citizen, therefore an outside observer, and I find the amount of state surveillance in both China and the US to be way beyond what is acceptable.

There may be a difference (I wouldn't call it "inarguable" based only on articles in the Western media, really) but it's more like the difference in falling from 1500 and 1200 feet- not the difference between falling and not falling, say.

Btw, I don't think you're as reasonable as you think, in not wanting to discuss the kind of hypothetical scenario I'm proposing. We could look at cases where exactly what I say has happened. It was very common back in the days of the Cold War with people defecting from the USSR to the US, etc.

> I am en EU citizen, therefore an outside observer

I don't recall asking, but while we're throwing bona fides around - so am I

> I find the amount of state surveillance in both China and the US to be way beyond what is acceptable.

The fact that both are bad in no way means both are remotely equivalent - far less equivalent than your altitude analogy would imply

> Btw, I don't think you're as reasonable as you think, in not wanting to discuss the kind of hypothetical scenario I'm proposing. It was very common back in the days of the Cold War with people defecting from the USSR to the US, etc.

I'm apparently reasonable enough to recognize the world has changed since the cold war - not least of which China - sufficiently so that it's hardly a reasonable point of comparison

>> I don't recall asking, but while we're throwing bona fides around - so am I

Did I say something to offend you? I'm sorry if I did. Anyway I see you don't really enjoy the conversation. Apologies for that, too.

Should I judge the Wall Street Journal based on its op-eds, or on its balanced reporting? You posted an op-ed.

WP's editorial section is independent from other parts of the paper. Their editorial tends to be much more conservative, hawkish, what have you than the rest of the paper. I don't think you can really accuse the paper of hypocrisy, the people calling for punitive measures against Snowden aren't the same people criticizing China for its mass surveillance.

>a toilet roll dispenser at a public facility outside the Temple of Heaven in Beijing reportedly scans faces to keep people from stealing too much paper,

I have several questions:

1. Wait, am I stealing paper when I use a public restroom? Are those dispensers like the 'take a penny, leave a penny' tills?

2. Is there an acceptable amount of stealing which the facial recognition limits, or does it alert the management any time that paper is dispensed and leave the judgement to human beings?

3. There are literally cameras in the stalls?

4. How long is its memory? If it shuts me down, can I simply wait for someone else to go in before resuming my theft?

It's explained in the linked BBC[1] article: "The machines dispense strips of toilet paper measuring 60 to 70cm (24 to 27.5 inches) to each person. They will not dispense more paper to the same person until after nine minutes have passed. Visitors to the Temple of Heaven park's toilets were taking excessive amounts of toilet paper, some of whom were seen stuffing their bags." The photo in the article shows that the automated paper dispensers are located outside the stalls. Without even talking about an Orwellian surveillance society, this seems like an over-engineered, inconvenient, and expensive solution to a minor problem.

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-39324431

Before you had to bring your own toilet paper (when I visited the Temple of Heaven for the first time in 1999), or you could buy some from the attendant for a few mao (cents). Now that attendants are too expensive, they have to come up with something else, while tourists from the lesser tier cities still see bathroom provided toilet paper as a luxury.

It seems like this problem could more easily be solved with a vending machine than a complicated facial recognition apparatus.

Vending machines still means you’d have to pay for it. Beijing tried to market itself as international-level tourism, but can’t provide free TP? That would be too much loss of face (pun intended).

Might be remembering wrong, but I thought when I went to the Eiffel Tower about 30 years ago, I had to pay to use the bathroom (there was a coin thing on the door to the stalls). That doesn't seem very different to me, though obviously someone can pay to use a toilet and take all the toilet paper if it's on a roll inside.

Bathrooms in London train stations used to be free - but a few years back, a lot of them started charging money. Usually around 20p, sometimes as much as 50p [1].

You can usually avoid paying (many stations have pubs and restaurants with free toilets, for example) but you don't have to go to 30 years ago to find OECD countries charging for public toilets :)

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/07/train-statio...

I’m not sure what the point is. I encountered for-pay toilets long before I learned to pack my own TP around in Beijing. It’s just not very comparable. A good day was when you could find one that was sitting and not squatting.

I think they wanted to make it free but still deal with the fact that anything that isn't nailed down will get stolen in China. Even toilet paper - you should see the "rations" many hotels there give to guests for a night's stay.

> anything that isn't nailed down will get stolen

In Brazil as well.

So.... Can you at least say, "Ok, but I'll pay for more" in the event you find you need more (due to digestive issues)?

I mean, unless that 70cm is soft double plied tissue, you are not gonna get many wipes out of it.

It would be a surprise to find any toilet paper in a public toilet, so someone who needs it will already have their own. Remember, the alternative to this is not unlimited toilet paper but no toilet paper, so it's an improvement for everyone.

>> Remember, the alternative to this is not unlimited toilet paper but no toilet paper ...

... but no toilet paper and no surveillance in the crapper ...

Minister to developer: "people are stealing toilet paper from stalls We have to stop this!"

developer to Minister: "ideal use case for Machine Learning--i'm on it"

In many places in China, you either take your own toilet paper or the dispenser is outside the stalls. That is to say, you take a wad of paper before entering the stalls. It stems from when toilet paper was a luxury item.

All red herrings.

I heard of the toilet paper issue yesterday in a radio programme. It was in context of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. They combine facial recognition, voice recognition and old fashioned human policemen to instantly stop dissidents. They boast when someone starts shouting "Long live Dalai Llama ! Freedom to Tibet(...)" they shut him down within 60-70 seconds.

There are guard posts all over the place. Temples bigger than a phone booth have a police station inside.

When they arrested 4 wealthiest inhabitants, it took people months to realize that. The information net is so tight.

Surveillance is the goal, not the means. Savings on toilet paper is just a bonus and a convenient excuse. Granted, Lhasa is a hotspot and gets special treatment, but China is all too happy to export these measures to various dictators to promote The China Way.

Native chinese blog poster gets a sentence for criticizing the government for sending army patrols to (some other) unruly region. He was saying it alienates the population and is overkill.

Your questions would earn you a fine at the very least.

Good point, I guess it's pretty facile to make a joke about that sort of thing.

Still, though. Poop.

It sounds ridiculous when taken out of context, but the point the radio guest (polish TOK FM statio) was making was: when surveillance is ubiquitous, they can get away with anything. People become used to surveillance and afraid. An isolated rebel can't achieve much, it would take multiple people all over the region to make a difference.

> Wait, am I stealing paper when I use a public restroom?

In China most public restrooms don't have any toilet paper and you have to bring your own. If this one is stocked with free paper, they may be trying to prevent people from taking extra to use in other restrooms.

Isn't the toilet paper there meant to dry/clean your hand after you used the latter to clean your downstairs area using the water that is also near the toilet?

I am worried this is just the beginning.

Once control of the masses is centralized in one place, it will be too tempting to tighten the screws - or just screw around - with some or all people.

Want to make everyone dance to a new law? Easy peasy. Limit bathroom breaks? No sweat.

Even enforcement can be made more "painless" via machine learning:

Gradually, a model of people’s behavior takes shape. “Once you identify a criminal or a suspect, then you look at their connections with other people,” he said. “If another person has multiple connections, they also become suspicious.”

Simply cut off that person's credit cards and WeChat accounts etc. Anyone seen helping this person get food to eat is similarly penalized. Pretty soon the person will learn to obey the system or starve. In fact it will be a nice Pavlovian proportional response. Each infraction is punished by some limitation of your ability to transact. And voila -- a population of docile adults, perfectly conditioned by an ever more efficient system to do whatever the new laws say they should.

Just like drones make war less costly, this will make law enforcement less costly, leading to a proliferation of "easy"-to-enforce laws.

I guess we will have to escape into virtual realities(illegaly hosted ofcourse).

This is automation of what's already being done, but at larger scale.

My father used to do a lot of business in China. He has a lot of interesting stories, but one of my favorites is one about how he was under constant surveillance by government employees and party members.

They would monitor his movements and keep logs. He knew this because some didn't even bother keeping it discrete. He'd see the same guys over and over, and they would whip out a note pad and write things down.

Labor cost was cheap back then to do this type of low-tech surveillance.

These are two different things IMO. In what I understand this is an isolated usage of face recognition to replace a manned booth with automation. The underlying need for manned booth may be questionable, but it's cultural so let's leave it aside and look at the possibilities of automation, especially when AI is so hot and threatening to eat into our jobs.

In this case there were human employees behind the dispenser to notice that toilet paper was issued more that once to same person within a minute or so and he is pocketing it(you may think it's toilet paper, but it's more that a billion population and theft is a theft). Now with facial recognition they can eliminate that job done by a human and make it compeletly automatic.

Of course they do use face recognition or other forms of AI to track civilians (as seen from some videos openly put in YouTube) for surveillance but which govt isn't?

> Of course they do use face recognition or other forms of AI to track civilians (as seen from some videos openly put in YouTube) for surveillance but which govt isn't?

How is reasonable? Does genocide become okay if multiple countries are committing it simultaneously?

Not at all, but the overall sentiment in the comments were biased towards Chinese govt's mass surveillance program, which is a different beast than the article was about.

What I was mentioning is this particular instance is a good practical non-surveillance use of face recognition..

I read 1984 the book over the weekend and this is truly a disturbing news. At this point in time, I am happy that we don't have such blatant dictatorship in India and that our infra is shit, our software in government is a joke so that they won't be able to build a system like this where Big Brother is looking over everyone via the telescreen. It is scary to not have freedom of thought, expression.

How much time have you spent reading what Chinese people have to say?

The American version of freedom of thought and expression doesn't seem to have any problem producing never ending wars, a surveillance state of their own, a dysfunctional culture that produces mindless consumption and celeb worship, a Wall Street and Silicon Valley that openly tells govt - yes what we do has negative uncorrectable effects at population scales, but we are too big to fail so fuck off. This form of freedom isn't scary to you?

I'd love to be able to read what ghe Chinese people have to say

Amen. That is the whole point. Please let the Chinese people express themselves unhindered.

I often think we need a new global organization that eventually replaces the UN. It would allow direct voting by everyone on the planet. And if a country's dear leaders don't allow that, that country would not get any vote in that body.

Which is much better than pretending to have a democracy with dictators. Especially one where a select set of countries, including 2 dictatorships, can overrule anything.

Acc to statistics there are three factions of any group.

+2.5% extreme to right -2.5% extreme to left 95% middle

the +2.5% are extensively happy -2.5% are extensively unhappy 95% are neutral.

ordinary Chinese people who struggle to eat two times daily aren't going to care about democracy vs dictatorship. They don't know what they don't know, they don't know that they are living in a bad system because that's what they have seen.

contrast that with those who can go to the US (rich), they know that Chinese govt is bad because there is no freedom of expression.

Nobody is saying the U.S. is flawless, but people in the U.S. are far more free, prosperous, and safe than those in China. As one simple example, Americans choose who governs them and can openly criticize them. As another, Americans can do all these things you dislike, whether you or the government like it or not.

All of the most prosperous, most free countries in the world are democracies. The most prosperous, most free parts of China are democracies (Taiwan and Hong Kong). As Churchill said (reputedly): Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.

I wish my brethren in China great freedom, prosperity and peace.

>people in the U.S. are far more free, prosperous, and safe than those in China.

This sort of statement is entirely subjective. As a counterpoint, many people in China would say the US is less free and less safe, because the US has by far the most amount of people locked in cages and a higher per capita homicide rate.

Whether or not one country is "better" than the other is nationalist subjectivity.

>> people in the U.S. are far more free, prosperous, and safe than those in China.

> This sort of statement is entirely subjective

It's not at all subjective. There are many objective measurements of prosperity, such as income and wealth per capita, and freedom, such as human rights. Freedom House is a good source for an an objective, annual review of human rights (last I knew; I haven't looked at it in a little while).

“Freedom” and “peace”, for some bastardized version of those words, presumably something along the lines of “we can go there and do as we wish” [0] and “they will never attempt to contest our dominance”, respectively - that I can believe.

“Prosperity”, nope. That has never been what Westerners wished for China.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritoriality

The American version of freedom allows its people to hear multitudes of opinions and voice dissatisfaction from the system. So while the American and western model of government is flawed it has the potential to improve while minimizing violence needed to be employed in the process. This is why although I have much grievences with the current manifestation of the "American way" I still would rather have the American ideals prosper.

(I am Not an American, and I very much dislike its culture)

Yes but their system is tragically flawed in that it only lets the two most dominant poles compete over the ever shrinking space between them.

Without some form of proportional representation, new ideas can be voiced but they can't get independent traction.

> Without some form of proportional representation, new ideas can be voiced but they can't get independent traction.

That merely requires a change in the democratic voting system which eliminates some perverse incentives: http://instantrunoff.com/instant-runoff-home/

>That merely requires a change in the democratic voting system which eliminates some perverse incentives

"Merely" seems like an understatement

In this case, it is :(

I'm hoping states will start with it and maybe one day, federal will follow suit

I am not American, I am an Indian. Freedom for me is in George Orwell's words (ironically) is "the ability to say 2+2=4 the rest follows."

Also, even in US I don't think they have a machine that spies this extensively on their citizens and if there is such a system then they are screwed.

my point was, I know that Indian govt doesn't have such a system because the govt funded software contracts go to crony businessmen :P

Also, I have spent exactly 0 time in understanding what Chinese people have said because those who don't know tech and are living in their own world are flooded with propaganda by their government.

They might say that "we have a faster train in China than what you Indians have"

but they forget that in India, I can sit outside my PM's house for a protest, the previous govt fell in the last elections precisely because they were corrupt.

At least our govt doesn't raze protesting people with a tank. That is freedom. I'd rather live in a shitty but free country rather than China.

Also, Taiwan, Hong Kong say hi.

If you are advocating for more control over the recklessness of freedom... You're going to lose.

For those who want to see the system in action, take a look at this video by a BBC correspondent - http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-china-42297153/surveil.... In a small experiment, as soon as an alert is issued, the reporter is identified via facial recognition and apprehended within minutes as he walks through the city.

Video in link doesn't work for me. This seems to be the same report.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNf4-d6fDoY

There was a video posted by WSJ on how this surveillance is affecting people's life:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/twelve-days-in-xinjiang-how-chi...

Is Chinese public sentiment in favor of this ever increasing surveillance? As an American, this is horrifying. But given the reports of the high levels of crime and corruption, maybe citizens feel like it’s a net benefit.

I wonder if a mass movement to wear masks, of some kind, would be enough to at least put a damper on such pervasive surveillance.

> Is Chinese public sentiment in favor of this ever increasing surveillance?

How would you know? They have an internet that's openly censors and filled with pro-government propaganda. Many of those articles are basically cheer-leading for the technological infra structure for further control, such as paying for everything on your phone with WeChat and the planned social credit system. These articles play up the convenience to the people while leaving unsaid the surveillance and control implications. I'd also guess they're unlikely to allow Western-run surveys to be taken and even if you tried to conduct one, the people would tell you what they think the government wants you to hear.

I asked coworkers (techies in the US) what they thought about this and surveillance over wechat etc, and they shrugged and said "I didnt know, but sounds like itll stop crime, thats good. Doesnt the US do stuff like this too?"

>Adrian Zenz, a German academic who has researched ethnic policy and the security state in China’s western province of Xinjiang, said the government craves omnipotence over a vast, complex and restive population.

This is short-sighted. The more rigidly a population is controlled, the less flexibility and creativity it can provide when things unexpectedly go wrong. And when all dissenting opinion is suppressed, the government after a while gets the illusion that everyone supports it when actually their is anger underneath waiting to burst out.

That is the great advantage of democracy. It is messy, but in the long term far more adaptive.

China defenders say total social control is the traditional Chinese way, but what we have today is not at all traditional. Under Confucianism, there was an elaborate set of rules that everyone knew and that everyone, including the top leadership, was obliged to follow. And everyone enforced it on everyone else, and that included that if the masses judged that the leadership was no longer following the rules, they had a right to overthrow it.

What you have nowadays with Xi Jinping is a highly secretive government that is making up the rules as it goes along, and is invulnerable to public inspection, much less judgement.

honest, good faith question: at what point do we say "no more surveillance" and start smashing cameras?

the thoughts "we are free" and "total surveillance when in public" are incompatible...

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/shortcuts/2013/jan/2...

You might also want to know that in Christiania, the truely free community until recent "normalization", cameras are mostly prohibited. You can still get your camera smashed for filming strangers.

People routinely tear down CCTVs here and in other truely free aka anarchist communities. Another widely known community, Exarcheia, prohibits cameras too.

Does freedom == privacy? I'd argue privacy is merely a facet of freedom, but public privacy is something I don't think our society is designed to support. The only places I expect privacy are in my home and on the Internet (such as it can be). In public, people who anonymize themselves (e.g., with masks or unmarked vehicles) most often seek privacy for criminal reasons (e.g., thieves or violent protesters). Hence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-mask_laws

But then a lot of Middle Eastern women seem to usually get away with it in places.

If we decide that giving up public privacy is palatable (which you may not), only then can we move on to cameras. If we decide they're too powerful of a surveillance tool, law enforcement bodies are going to have to do a lot more hiring to deter crime! And China's bathrooms will need paper dispenser attendants.

Oh, and adopt a no-cellphone Stallman policy or... legislate absolutely Zero Tracking(TM) carrier tower service or something.

Why do you expect anonymity on the Internet, but not in real world?

Good question. I guess it's because it's more feasible and because I can't really hurt others here. The worst I can do is manipulate combinations of 1s and 0s to hack their accounts if their services' security isn't up to snuff or something.

If someone hacked my bank, I'd blame the bank more than the hackers; if someone broke into my home and robbed or hurt me, I'd be harsher on them than on my door manufacturer! (Perhaps not even because it's easier to secure my door than it is an electronic banking system but because I'd be more hurt...)

Still someone breaking into your home will use a mask, and you will not be allowed to when buying things in a store.

I'd rather they didn't in either case, although it is unfortunately difficult to acquire goods legitimately yet anonymously, so I lament that too. At the end of the day, Amazon knows a lot about me.

Another distinction I just thought of is that while I have the option of having online accounts to be hacked (or silly-named personas to talk with), I have no option of having a physical place in meatspace to inhabit of my own where I keep my stuff. I need one, and, if I can't get one, I have bigger problems than privacy. :c

Maybe OP spends most of his time on the computer, and thus expects privacy on the Internet, as it might be his main interface to the world. Now, if OP spent most of his time outside and that was his primary interface to society, he would expect the same privacy there.

> The only places I expect privacy are in my home and on the Internet (such as it can be).

That is nonsense.

If a group of people started following you everywhere in public, taking notes of everything you do, measuring anything they can about you that they can without touching you (which increasingly would include health information that is not readily apparent to everyone else) ... you are telling me that that would be perfectly in line with your expectation?

It is unhelpful to conceptualize privacy as binary. Of course, you expect to be seen by other people on the street when you go outside. That does not mean that you expect to be stalked, nor that stalking was somehow an implicitly accepted behavioural norm all along.

Technical capabilities change, and with it, we need to change how we enforce what was previously a natural outcome: You weren't invisible in public, but most people who saw you didn't recognize you and forgot about you within seconds to minutes of seeing you.

> Does freedom == privacy?

The ability to think, speak, write, and associate freely requires privacy. It's not a question of the two being equivalent.

What about private cameras, dashcams, cellphones? I can imagine a possibility for a popular app to link them all together and generate a huge private database of images of everyone. What would you smash then?

I don't visit Home Depot like I used to. It's basically the cameras--that are everywhere. Along with the underpaid, miserable employees, and ever increasing monopoly prices.

I really despise surveillance, but I am guilty as charged. I have two dash cams in my vechicle.

I think I have a good reason though; being pulled over for driving a old car by our Revenue Collectors, having the nerve to drive past 11:00 pm, and just being pulled over because they can. Oh yea, I'm working on a app that will turn on my smart phone whenever it hears, "Officer".

I think the only remedy to over surveillance will be legislative. I hear it's illegial to video record store employees in France. I don't know if it's true, but we need some of these privacy laws. They will always counter with terrisiom, and theft/vandalism, and the general public will buy it.

Hand up!

"I have a good reason to surveil others, but others better stop surveiling me."

What point? Sir, it's too late. At no point. In any country.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TlO2gcs1YvM

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DjUdVxJH6yI

Smash a camera and get immediately arrested.

As a citizen of a country that is somewhat oppressed by our government, I think there is a lot that can be done by our tech community to democratize such technologies and put surveillance powers in the hands of people.

In the country I live in, federal and local governments are peopled by employees most of whom tend to be some combination of such "fine" words as venal, corrupt, rent-seeking, dishonest, scammy, sadistic, rude and the like.

There's probably more crimes and unethical activities being done by government employees than any other group. I think adverse effects on our society from them is much higher than people we normally term as criminals. In that sense, I think of our governments as actively adversarial and hostile to our society.

I don't have any direct experience living in other countries, but from what I read about other countries in media, blogs and discussion forums, governments that behave in adversarial hostile manner towards their own societies seem to be the norm in underdeveloped and developing countries around the world.

As an article I read recently pointed out, such governments have rules and laws to make their societies obey them and their needs, but rarely legislate laws that can balance the asymmetry of power, such as whistleblower laws, citizen information acts or independence in criminal investigations.

That's why I think there is a lot that can be done by our tech community to democratize such technologies and put surveillance powers in the hands of people. If the residents of a locality decide to track their local government employees to collect proof of unethical activities using a peer-to-peer mesh of their private cameras (for example, uncovering unethical financial activities such as misuse of taxes on unnecessary contract works), I think we should provide such software systems that are easily available for - and usable by - everybody.

The fear of adversarial surveillance can work in both directions. The same fear that governments use to curb dissidents or critics can also help curb or deter government's unethical activities when people are empowered to create that fear.

Even the most rudimentary information about technologies and procedures that can empower oppressed people is severely lacking.

For example, citizens writing and exposing government abuse is probably one of the most basic forms of democratic empowerment. Governments curtail such basic freedoms using laws that address defamation or sedition, using powers to punish such criticism through extradition and interpol agreements, and using powers to shut down such content with cooperation from providers such as ISPs, Google, FB, Twitter, or AWS.

It would be empowering to a large volume of humanity if there's a queryable up-to-date database that can answer the seemingly simple question "where and how can I safely express my opinions about my government without being shut down or being punished?" A database of web hosts and other infra around the world with all relevant information about extradition and other legal aspects between the querying user's country and the hosting country, so that every citizen in any country can express themselves without fear of being censored or punished. I searched hard for such information in the past, but couldn't find anything much.

I think such democratization can happen only if principled techs voluntarily donate time to work on them, and focus on peer-to-peer architectural principles. Tor is a good example of such democratization, but many more are needed, and some of them - like the database above, basic identity recognition, ANPR - seem to me to be low-hanging fruits that can be solved through crowdsourcing and peer-to-peer storage and processing.

Perhaps that toilet paper dispenser with facial (faecal?) recognition might be hinting at the future of retail. I can imagine people walking into supermarkets, picking their items, and then simply leaving through the doors. Stealing will occur when a face isn't attached to enough credits. Ditto for public transportation. Sounds terrible to me.

This is very similar to the Amazon Go store currently being trialed by Amazon employees in Seattle. You check in to the store upon entering using the Amazon Go app, pick your items, then simply walk out. The store tracks what items you have on you then charges your account on exiting.

The only 'feature' missing from real life compared to your imagined scenario is using facial recognition to automatically determine who is in the store.

Looks like a big money grab by the companies that touts they can accurately track people

See https://www.sensetime.com/cases#0

There are already companies that are doing that.

It's almost like they banned the book 1984 over there and never lived in East Germany :P

As the social pressure gets greater I hope to see more talk of freedom and democracy.

Reading the comments here, I wonder how many are aware of the use of social harmony which justifies this type of tech and why that core thesis is not identified and argued upon when compared to "more freedom is good". If this thought is too naive please point me to better reading resources

This has been on the menu for a long time. At least 3 years. Who is surprised at this?

I get all the worries about monitoring human lives, but you have to admit that from an anthropological point of view, it is absolutely priceless. If that data is ever given to scientists, we'll get to learn a lot. That really makes me think it might just be worth it.

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