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Comment by danschumann | Hacker News Reader

I think we romanticize "being on the lamb". For the 99.999% of the time, if someone is a "wanted man", it's much better for society if he is apprehended. I don't see this as a threat.

If, however, every innocent person were tracked, and crimes were generated based on observations ( like souped up red-light cameras for every imaginable crime ), and charges were created automatically ( and algorithmically ), that would suck. Or, it would make us realize most laws suck and we'd remove them.

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I can't help but disagree with your 99.999% assessment.

I feel like at best it might be 50%. At which point, it's horrible for society to be rolling the dice on every person in prison, if they should be there or not.

I would refer you to the Innocence Project [0] for a useful exposition of wrongful convictions, and error rates therein.

[0] https://www.innocenceproject.org/cases/

I don't know, I feel like neighborhoods where no one has outstanding warrants would be more desirable than neighborhoods with many.

What if turns out those neighborhoods paid to have no convictions?

Have you heard of the precision/recall tradeoff?

You're making a false comparision between none and many when it seems like a few would be a much nicer place to live after accounting for civil offenses and the points made by parent.

This technology puts a human face to technological surveillance, there has to be some minimum psychological cost for everyone there which may outweigh the claimed benefits.

Do we even know what an "outstanding warrant" consists of in China? Granted, I may be naieve about what it represents in the US, but I hope it's something that comes from a reasonably transparent and fair process. In a totalitarian state, it could mean something else.

The question becomes: Who is being rounded up, and why? This seems more important than the specific technology used.

I happen to live in a neighborhood where the very presence of a police officer would attract notice.

From the article: "The app brings up the (scanned person's) vital information, including name, ethnicity, gender and address (..), the address of the hotel where they are staying and information related to their internet usage."

So, yes, every person is tracked.

Most people in the US are wanted for stupid stuff, like not being able to pay their parking fines.

It gets worse: many are essentially wanted for being the wrong skin color. A lot of laws disproportionately impact people of color. AKA systemic racism.

Downvoting it doesn't make it not true. See this article for example:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/03/identity-the...

Parking fines are generally on the car, not a person

Citation? Because that doesn't fit my understanding.

So the car will pay the fine?

The owner will, if they would like the car to be legal to drive with updated license plates. It is a minor but important distinction. I can't speak directly that no states in the US operate differently. but as far as I know, you don't become a wanted person for parking tickets.

You realize this is China, the same government that literally ground their citizens to a paste with tanks?

Idk why everyone is talking about this in such impartial terms, this is a totalitarian state that has no concept of civil liberties. The idea that this is going to be used just for mere criminals is a pipe dream.

Unless you classify criminals as those who disagree with the CPC. This is going to be used to repress the population, without a doubt.

"The same government that..." -- Hmm, I think government is comprised of people, and the people that did that have likely aged out.

This government is like the son or daughter of that government. And this government has realized many free market principles (and certainly many other lessons). It's not the same, nor totally different.

Either way, I have to talk about it impartially, as if I were contemplating its use in the states.

China is a totalitarian state with lip service to the free market. No one believes China has any of the freedoms it espouses. It's about as "free market" as a ponzi scheme with zero transparency into its markets, debt, companies, etc. Generation means nothing because they select for true believers.

The same people crushing people with tanks got promotions and are now running the government.

Like...you're so far off from reality idk what to say :(

I've hardly said anything about China. You've however said it is completely equivalent to running people over with tanks. I think you are slightly off the deep end, and you view my moderateness as the opposite of your view, when I merely am a less extreme version. Haha. You.

I said nothing of the sort, I was merely saying the same country that engaged in those actions is also the same implementing this technology, and it would be naive to think about it as just technology.

Tech has users and it's important to consider who is using it. And those same people in positions of power now are the ones who actively murdered their own citizens in 1989. Idk why everyone is ignoring the elephant in the room, this is more than glasses and you cannot and should not separate the two.

Would you please not use HN for nationalistic/political battle? You've posted a bunch of such comments to this thread, it's not what this site is for, and it destroys the intellectual curiosity that it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>And this government has realized many free market principles

If there is one thing to be learned from the former communist states + whatever China currently is, it's how little "free market principles" have to do with things like human rights, civil liberties or democracy.

Ceteris paribus, going from no free market to free market is a step in the right direction.

There are quite a few ways this government is similar....cases in point =>

China 'holding at least 120,000 Uighurs in re-education camps' https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/25/at-least-12000...

Authoritarian regimes shroud their darkest features in euphemism. So it is with China’s “residential surveillance at a designated location.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/opinion/in-china-the-brut...

Huang Shike was arrested in 2016 in Xinjiang province, three months after he formed a discussion group about Muslim worship on the messaging app WeChat, according to the official website China Judgments Online https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-jails-muslim-huang-shike-...

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