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Comment by bob_theslob646 | Hacker News Reader

>The leading surveillance systems in the world aren't in china. It's in britain. It's in the US

How do you even measure that? I have no idea what you're are saying means?

With the UK, this is already well known. They have about a camera per 14 people give or take. Post 9-11, in the US it's also spread. Typically it's in really crime-ridden areas where law and order is barely sustainable (yes these exist). The only one I can't comment much on is Russia. Given that they essentially have a dictatorship, I wouldn't be surprised if they had a big program as well.

imo the state of the art surveillance isn't in China. It's either in the Middle East (especially in Dubai) or Singapore.

This happened a few years back: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/an-eye-for-an-eye-...

(I used to work in the video imaging industry.)

The OP of this thread is missing the point of the article though. They can call themselves Liberals, Conservatives, Communist Party Members, Nationalists or whatever, but only the elites want mass surveillance and really no one else

Russia pretty much wrote the hypothetical NSA worst-case into law: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarovaya_law

> Most of the act's amendments came into effect on 20 July 2016. Amendments that require telecom operators to store recordings of phone conversations, text messages and users' internet traffic up to 6 months were announced to come into place on 1 July 2018; however, senator Anton Belyakov has submitted a proposal to move the regulations' start date to 2023, because of the extreme amount of data storage technology needed to make fulfilling the requirements possible.

On the plus side, there is no law against face coverings in the UK. You can legally walk along the street wearing a guy falkes mask, motorcycle helmet or niqab. Nor is there any requirement to carry ID.

Thank god for that. I can wear my spiderman costume. How lovely to live in such a free country!! /s

Aren't most of the cameras in the UK private as well? Obviously that doesn't mean much but it is different to places like china in that way.

> How do you even measure that?

How about on a per capita basis?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/06/tony-porter-su...

Or how about

1. In terms of quality and sophistication tech. US and Britain pioneered most of the surveillance tech.

2. Experience and age? We have decades head start on the chinese when it comes to tech surveillance.

3. We are more "connected" and a more urban society with surveillable data? Nearly 50% of china still lives in rural areas.

I don’t have a dog in this fight other than to note “nearly 50% of China” is a massive number.

So "leading surveillance systems in the world" means:

1. Who "started it" 2. How long they've been doing it 3. Percentage of people affected by it (not number!)

In other words, you worked backwards to produce vague descriptions of metrics by which your point would be true. If it weren't for the fact that these vague metrics in no way support your assertion.

>1. Who "started it"

Not just who started. The quality and sophistication.

> 2. How long they've been doing it 3. Percentage of people affected by it (not number!)

Yes. What else would it be? What other metric would you use?

"Leading" implies, to me, sophistication, how widespread it is, and how many people it impacts.

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