China's Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone | Hacker News Reader

China's Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone

theatlantic.com

51 pointsxoa25 comments

This is scary to think about. Imagine if private companies provided our government information and the totality of our communications and purchases, or even content of private conversations or prescriptions that you filled determined a “trust level” and that this factored into whether we were accepted by a college or determined if we were eligible for loans etc. This would change the course of each life without question.

You mean the credit system we have here in US, which allows you to borrow money from banks at a low interest rate, buy a car/house with little down payment, or even rent a place without having to prepay 6 month rent?

Yeah, I think every country needs it.

And why is it that people need to borrow money for common purchases?

And then when we have a change in control in our governments administration the rules also change, as does the formula for calculating this rating. We will have a never ending target you cannot hit regardless of how much you try....just when you think you are getting close to your target score or rating the equation changes.

Imagine it? It is already being done, although not to the extent it is being done in .cn.

I think we are closer than you would imagine. Work in the marketing industry then shift over to master data management.

There is little companies do not know about you and the govt is 1 of the largest consumers of the data.

I understand but it is not currently used to determine things like who may have a right to attend college or ..... it is the “trust level” determination based on the aggregate information compiled that really scares me.

You are talking as if people (whatever their status in the food chain maybe) currently without access to information are making fantastic decisions.

What happens in reality is they fill in the blanks of missing info, based on their biases(everyone has them - just take a psyc 101 course), trusting the wrong sources and methods. And all this cascades and chaos of its own.

Are the Chinese going to fuck up and make mistakes? Most definitely yes. Are these fuckups going to be greater than what is currently unfolding in self certified "enlightened" democracies? No idea. But it's not as open and shut as people like to think.

Just as the negatives will surfaces the positives will too. And those positives won't be discovered in countries without these systems in place.

So, I strongly believe that there is always going to be an arms race between the government surveillance and people who will want to circumvent such measures. Like people who use tor, VPN, cryptocurrencies etc.

Advancement in technology was always going to enable better surveillance capability and anarchists had to always come up with new ways to dodge it.

Does this new initiative from Chinese govt change anything at meta level? To me, it doesn't feel like a paradigm shift, but merely the next logical step in status quo.

Silicon valley will always win; they strive for freedom and nobler reasons

Does the citizen score have something to do with the social apps from Tencent? If yes, you have to wonder how does a South African company called Naspers fit into all of this.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-naspers-tencent-holdings-...

The problem is not how bad things goes on in China, but every other government want it.

Funny how HackerNews deletes comments that warn against this... what side are the admins on?

Citation needed, especially given the degree to which the moderators give all but the most flagrant trolls multiple chances.

By "deleted comments", your parent is likely referring to the flagged dead comments in this thread.

Could be but that seems to be normal user voting rather than the moderators doing anything unusual

Yeah, I agree. It seems often members aren't aware of the difference or choose to make the distinction.

I quite honestly doubt that's the case.

I'm frequently critical of both tech and HN. My comments survive. Idlewords has done quite a few stripes better than myself on both counts.

If you've questions about comments, policy, or rating/voting (there can be a hivemind active at times), toss an email to the moderators (hn <at> ycombinator <dot> com). I've found they're responsive and generally pretty fair. Even when I'm disagreeing strongly with them.

As others have pointed out, users flag comments that break the site guidelines.

Given the amount of fraud and scams which abound, this may be the best system for them. It's the "People's Republic" after all. Let them decide what they want.

Haa, downvoted for speaking the truth. Got to love it. I am the polar opposite to the statement above (as in V for Vendetta) in philosophy but until the people demand change, why should we force western values onto their thing? Let them find the error of their ways in a cataclysmic way if that's what it takes. That's the historical record over millenia.

I would rather be monitored than seeing some psycopath killer pledging not guilty because of lack of evidence

Don't worry, you will both be monitored and see the killer confronted with no evidence. After all, are you the killer in this hypothetical?

No but I believe the cameras are prepared for people like you in my hypothetical

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