China’s all-seeing surveillance network | Hacker News Reader

China’s all-seeing surveillance network

mobile.abc.net.au

124 pointsplaypause81 comments

Stuff like this will slowly stop further evolution of society and lock down the status quo. Right now we still have ways to change society peacefully but in a surveillance state either nothing changes or change has to come with force.

I think societies with massive surveillance will stagnate until they collapse.

Or more frightening, the Communist experiment is successful long-term and becomes the dominate model for 'stability' globally.

Doubt, there's no pure communist states left, they all fell after killing a bunch of their citizens by "knowing what's best". The economy is a chaotic system and any earnest attempt at top down control will fail, let alone communism which historically was more about transferring power to your friends than any real belief in an ideology.

Just FYI (has been said a gazillion times on the Internet): no state on this planet was ever communist. Communism is a society without money, no such thing existed on a state level anywhere. The states you are referring to were 100% socialist, i.e. no private property in any form or share with very very few exceptions; money tightly controlled by the state; all businesses are state-owned.

The comment above though probably meant the true communism, i.e. society without money.

A society without money is even more absurd.

The Inca Civilization had no money was was pretty darn successful

http://www.discover-peru.org/inca-economy-society/

Tiny fiefdom. Think of the insane size of what we call society even 100 years ago, money is what makes us cooperate.

I wouldn't call the Inca Empire a "tiny fiefdom", at its height they had 10 million citizens and covered 2 million km2

doubt they had the absolute control on law that a modern state has, empire in the loosest/historical sense

>Communism is a society without money, no such thing existed on a state level anywhere.

While it might not be something you can compare to communism, the Inca Civilization had a centrally planned economy with no form of money at all and was HUGELY successful [1]

[1]: http://www.discover-peru.org/inca-economy-society/

Communism in practice is the unending struggle to achieve the imaginary, theoretical communism you refer to.

Couldn't the same be said for what most people call capitalism?

That's pretty much how all ideologies work. Listen to some hardcore libertarians and you will hear them longing for the imaginary, theoretical free market that never has existed and probably never will.

>The comment above though probably meant the true communism, i.e. society without money.

Why would you think that? The term "communist experiment" implies that it's one being conducted right now. There are no states with even hints of plans for this "true communism" you speak of.

This may be true for a while but eventually there will be more and more pressure until the system explodes.

At first I was terrified of this, in the short term this could cause a lot of suffering but I’ve become convinced it will fail in the long term.

Human societies have evolved a very sophisticated mechanism for moving people up and down hierarchies using a distributed reputation tracking system. This system is interesting in that they’re trying to centralise the reputation tracking system and thereby control it.

To the extent that it replicates what people, on average, think about you I think it’ll work. But planned economies loose to unplanned ones because distributed decision making outperforms centralised decision making. Eventually this system will be misused, make bad decisions, or get ridiculously complex. Then people will loose faith in it. When that happens there’s very little China’s government can actually do to control 1.4 billion people. (That’s not to say that there their remaining options aren’t very worrying though, e.g. tanks)

With enough computing power and ruthlessness it may actually be possible to control 1.4 billions. I don't know how things would have worked out if Hitler or Stalin had had current or soon to be technology. Thank God North Korea doesn't have the money to buy or develop the latest surveillance tech either. They may have succeeded for much longer. In the end I think dictatorships will always blow up but tech makes their life much easier.

Bruce Sterling's book Schismatris, when the technologically advanced decedents of humanity returned to earth:

> "Do you see the cable system? The mausoleum has an information line, the only one in the village. Whoever lives there holds all links to the outside world."

> [...] "Stability," he said. "The Terrans wanted stability, that's why they set up the Interdict. They didn't want technology to break them into pieces, as it's done to us. They blamed technology for the disasters. The war plagues, the carbon dioxide that melted the ice caps... They can't forget their dead."

    "Surely the whole world isn't like this," Vera said.
    "It has to be. Anywhere there is variety there is
     the risk of change. Change that can't be tolerated."
    "But they have telephones. Aircraft."
    "Enforcement technology," Lindsay said.

> [...] The parting had come with hatred: with those in space condemned as antihuman thieves, and Earth's emergency government denounced as fascist barbarism. Hatred made things easier: easier for those in space to shrug off all responsibility, easier for Earth to starve its myriad cultures down to a single gray regime of penance and pointless stability.

> But life moved in clades. Lindsay knew it as a fact. A successful species always burst into a joyous wave of daughter species, of hopeful monsters that rendered their ancestors obsolete. Denying change meant denying life.

I think this is a horrible idea.

Just imagine how many times we have been wrong in our judgement of the behaviour of citizens. What would the social credit score of Ghandi or Martin Luther Kind have been, at the time of their prominent actions?

We have proven time and time again that there is no sure way to judge how "social and acceptable" something is, and the value of a behaviour to our society.

What is seen as "unsocial" today may be applauded by historians in the future.

Yes but saying "screw the government" on social media today, doesn't really matter if it's going to be applauded in the future, it's still going to be aimed at the government, which is the whole point of the system.

Could you elaborate?

I'm pretty sure that's half of the point, stop any radicals from forming large followings.

Where radical means those that those the people in power in any way.

The irony is unreal in this comment.

why

"Ghandi" -> Gandhi

It's an interesting article but it is also worth remembering that western society is not all that far away from this vision. Credit scores are widely used, there are apps for them, they can prevent you from getting housing or loans. A criminal record likewise affects your employment prospects, and many other areas of your life. CCTV may be widespread in China but the USA and UK are still way out in front[0]. Lastly, for the suppression of the guy who uncovered party corruption, just look at the treatment of Snowden or many other whistle blowers.

0 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/484956/number-of-surveil...

stop this "what about the western world". I see this pattern every time there's a critical article about China. When there's an article about the west's censorship, we would be happy to talk about it, but for now, let's focus on the ridiculous and crazy to be put it mildly things going on in China.

Why? We are not chinese. We don't live in china. I'm more worried about censorship in the US and especially europe since europeans seem so intent on bringing their censorship to the US and the entire world. At least the chinese censorship affects their country mostly.

> I see this pattern every time there's a critical article about China.

Because we get the same story about china multiple times in a day.

Just from "abc.net.au" within the past 19 hours. The same story has been pushed onto the frontpage.

"China’s all-seeing surveillance network"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18030655

"China is building a digital dictatorship to exert control over its 1.4B citizens"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18026060

I'd called this propaganda rather than news.

> let's focus on the ridiculous and crazy to be put it mildly things going on in China.

Why? If china wanted to export their dictatorship to the US, I can see why we should be concerned. But they aren't. It's primarily europe and segments of puritanical leftists and rightist in the US along with parts of the tech leadership.

It's fine to have a story about china once in a while, but multiple times daily just reeks of propaganda.

China is already exporting its dictatorship (influence = power), look at their One Belt One Road project, and the predatory loans to African states.

And don't forget the clashes and island building on the South China Sea.

It remains to be seen whether the OBOR loans are predatory or not. Most of the projects are still underway at this point.

>Why? We are not chinese. We don't live in china. I'm more worried about censorship in the US and especially europe since europeans seem so intent on bringing their censorship to the US and the entire world. At least the chinese censorship affects their country mostly.

I strongly disagree. As a human being, you should be concerned with the well-being of humans everywhere in the world, not just your own country.

I don't like the sound of this change in China, I agree with you on that. I think this article does veer into xenophobia a bit though and it's good to offer a counter point to that.

>CCTV may be widespread in China but the USA and UK are still way out in front[0]

That's extremely misleading to the point of being propaganda, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. The vast majority of the CCTV's in the US aren't hooked up to any kind of network that delivers data back to the federal (or even state/local) government. They are just security cameras purchased by companies for their own security. That difference is critical because they're not allowing tracking. (NOTE: I speak for the US, the UK could be significantly different)

>Lastly, for the suppression of the guy who uncovered party corruption, just look at the treatment of Snowden or many other whistle blowers.

Whataboutism and Snowden wasn't uncovering corruption. He was revealing the gross freedom the NSA is permitted to act with under the current US laws.

I sometimes feel like currency is a primitive preliminary to this social points system.

People who show unusual or controversial behaviour (be it political or social) will soon loose sources of income and thereby social status.

People who stick to the accepted norms and ethics and do not act up will on average have the chance to move up the ladder and earn more money and prestige.

The analogy is not perfect, of course, but money has similar effects on our society.

It’s similar, but in capitalist systems all get a weighted vote on how many points you get. (Either by buying your time/products or if I’m your boss I can promote/fire you). By the look of it, the Chinese system gives complete control to the government. So it’s analogous to a fully planned economy.

I agree with your point.

I am sometimes baffled when people seem to think that the amount of money that is payed for a certain job is proportional to how beneficial that job or service is to the society. I mean, there are Bankers who make good money screwing everybody over. Yet somehow people seem to look up to them.

I'd like to think that there might be improvements in how we value/pay services. But letting the government decide that is also quite foolish.

Except in this system you will get penalized (lose income) for not supporting the government in power. That's not exactly how it works in a standard capitalist and democratic system.

A religious analogy is that in Christianity, it is not enough to be good. You also have to accept Christ as your savior. Without both of those things, you risk your eternal soul.

Here, the state is asking you to work within the laws they put in place and be a good productive worker by generating value, but you should also show absolute faith in the government and to prove it by achieving a high social score.

The article confuses the Sesame score (credit score computed by Alibaba to be used within their app) and the social score (government project which isn't really deployed yet but intended to rely on multiple private sources like Alibaba's sesame score)

In the 2018 state of things, the social credit score is not (yet) as invasive as the article suggests. AFAIK it does not change according to your purchases, daily habits or online comments unless you get arrested. For now it mostly is influenced by credit repayments, debt and previous condamnations. I lived there 3 years and my "sesame score" as displayed on Alipay is still the default one.

Better title - Social credit: China's digital dictatorship

Pretty horrifying story, sounds like Black Mirror.

Yeah, the title is awful - I was happier with the article then I thought I'd be, as it did go in to some of the negative points. To point to any atomic automatic judgment of ones citizens based on their beliefs as a good thing is a bit of a weird view, however. The examples they give are all terrifying.

It's also not great that the lady they report as pro social credit is only revealed later on in the piece as being married to a high ranking party member. She's introduced as "a marketing professional" when I'd argue the most relevant facts towards her support/non-support of such a system would be that she is married to "a civil servant in the justice department, a loyal cadre to the party."

The article makes several strange emotional appeals regarding her, actually. For instance, I'm glad she "married for love", but I don't see why it would be relevant to the issue at hand unless it was an attempt to further humanize her and, by extension, this new Permanent Spotlight system.

Just for reference the original title was 'Leave no dark corner'

I get that as a page title, but a different 'title' in the URL. Maybe they are AB testing the title?

> I'm glad she "married for love", but I don't see why it would be relevant

They're just making the point that she didn't marry him for his social credit score, even though he happens to have a high score under the system.

To quote the article immediately prior to that section:

"Who your friends and family are will affect your score. If your best friend or your dad says something negative about the government, you’ll lose points too. Who you date and ultimately partner with will also affect social credit."

It seems like your social credit score is positioned as your key to happiness. Better not get a bad one or associate with anyone who did. Better not wreck your child's future by saying something bad about the government.

>They're just making the point that she didn't marry him for his social credit score, even though he happens to have a high score under the system.

Yes, that makes sense. I still hold that the deliberate omission of her party relationship until later in the article is to initially position her as a third party positive voice who happens to support the system.

And yes, the network affects are particularly awful.

So which is worse, the Black Mirror scenario (everyone rates each other), or the Chinese real-life version (the Communist Party rates you)?

Is it better to fear the State or your fellow citizens?

The Black Mirror episode, btw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror)

"So which is worse, the Black Mirror scenario (everyone rates each other), or the Chinese real-life version (the Communist Party rates you)?"

The one that you'll get, which is that due to the opacity of the system, it presents itself as one in which everyone rates each other, but in fact the government or other control mechanism nominally different from but ultimately indistinguishable from the government has a heavy hand in both the ability to manipulate the judgment and the ability to manipulate the seeds of who is successful and thus has high ratings. It presents itself as fair and all egalitarian and makes it seem like anything that goes wrong is your friend's fault or something, but is in fact strictly controlled.

Here you go from a few hours ago.

"China is building a digital dictatorship to exert control over its 1.4B citizens"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18026060

They aren't even waiting 24 hours.

And this one

"China's Dystopian Social Credit System"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18036768

less than 24 hours later.

Thoughtcrime at its best.

The system wants to prevent the masses from thinking a different way, as the official way is.

This is 1984 and even better. By giving "credits" (gamification) the people are like the frog in the boiling water. When they recognize it, it is to late.

Is this the natural development of social media: Who does not conform to the masses, will be spit out by society?

Many dictators try to get their nations "in line" by using such tactics. "We are all one people -- we act as one people".

Is social media and gamification the solution for the wildest dreams of dictators?

Individualism must and will be killed in such a system. Only one Individuum can exist in the long run: The queen/king of the bee colony.

Ironically Dandan is probably flagged now for agreeing to be part of this article ...

I'd imagine given her husband is a Chinese civil servant, this is either with approval or she has been asked to do it.

There's no way a marketing consultant and a civil servant don't understand the potential ramifications of being part of the article!

Future job role: Sesame Credit Optimisation (SCO)

There's going to be so many ways to game this system when it gains wider adoption, it's going to be insane.

> Every step she takes, every one of her actions big or small — even what she thinks — can be tracked and judged. [emphasis added]

Can anybody shed upon how these Social Credit systems would be able to track what a person thinks?

Facial expression recognition. I was talking with one big data analysis vendor who claimed they installed expression recognition software outside toilet stalls in the Dubai airport. If you exited the khazi with a disgusted expression, the system would recognize it and dispatch a cleanup crew.

They also claimed they could detect if students were bored in class and feed this info back to the teacher. Up next: thoughtcrime.

Amazing anecdotes.

I wouldn’t have lumped expression recognition with what one is thinking.

It’s feasible that a person could leave a toilet with a displeased expression while pondering some peculiar nuance of some specific domain of knowledge.

But maybe in this context you’re right, the article meant to refer to expression recognition.

It's given away by your eye saccades.

/sarcasm (for now)

> even what she thinks

I don't think the cameras can track your mind. I think it is a little bit of exaggeration, and refers to e.g. knowing one's political leanings by analyzing online accounts.

This system is similar to ones already operating in MMORPG. And I'm sure that system in China is being exploited already. Finally only exploiters will get all the benefits leaving regular people far behind.

I'd say your actions as a citizen would only net you -100 to +100 points. If you really wanted the 'heaven on earth' they promise you would need a friend in government to give you the ol communist loyal bonus of +500, or loyal party member bonus of +1000 purchasable from your local party rep for only 5,000,000 RMB.

I expect those that defend the system see its appeal as a more rational alternative to guanxi, the informal networks of trust and reciprocal obligation that pervade Chinese society. Do you want a loan, or need a good hospital for your parent? You don't need to bribe or schmooze with the right person, only to be an orderly, hard-working citizen.

On the other hand, you're trusting your score to "the algorythm", and any SEO consultant can tell you how brutally flawed and unfair "the algorythm" can be, even without overt malicious intent.

with enough guanxi you will be able to change your score accordingly, so this credit system is solidifying the status quo

So much for chinese dominance as a superpower, they are really shooting themselves in the foot with even trying this.

Note that Soviet Union remained superpower for some 70 years after it shot itself to the foot with Ukraine famine. While I agree ultimately this will fail to produce a competitive society, it might take a long time before people will be able to change the things for the better.

Accurate, but that's 70 years of social development they'll miss out on. In the meantime the west will continue its shitshow into some undetermined darwinistic future, as it has always been. Things are speeding up so we both know it won't be 70 years, the social score thing is just an expression/attempt at central control, wich has never worked. Economy and social values as a chaotic system, predicting the future, etc.

Makes no difference at all.

the irony here is that the premise might not even be true -- does social credit really provide the "control" or "stability" it aims to achieve? who is writing the algorithm that says "napkins" credit your social score while alcohol debits it? compare financial scores which are not perfect either but they are based on models that have some science behind them. what model underwrites the social credit system? is it valid? it's scary to think that it could be arbitrary

Don't blame China. It is pretty much the same in many countries.

With a few exceptions in Europe, some sort of extreme surveillance state already exist in every country that can afford it.

Obviously the camera system can track humans walking around, but does it actually identify specific individuals?

What does that number in the box with the chinese text mean?

Are they able to use facial recognition _everywhere_ and thus record where everyone is or, more importantly, was?

I am skeptical that this can pulled off with current technology?

Can it?

You could fuse the facial recognition data to phone radio base station tracking, bluetooth beacons and such to get multiple points of reference for verification. And tracking between workplaces, apartment buildings and transport turnstiles where you scan your personal ID.

The number seems to be the social credit score

The videos are not a real camera feed I believe, it seems to be there to illustrate the article

> does it actually identify specific individuals?

Some do.

> Suspect caught in China at concert after being detected by face recognition tech

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/12/17229530/china-facial-rec...

> Chinese Facial Recognition System Would Fine Jaywalkers By Text

But I don't believe a camera at a supermarket is able to do that. Only if you use digital payment, or online shopping.

It cannot

Source: I worked in a related field for five years, and evaluated a lot of technologies from major players.

So, does anybody know how far off this is? Is this real within 2 years?

The article says there's pilot programs already happening, and it will be full operation by 2020, so yes, it's real.

I think the concept of social credit has a lot of merits. But the risk for overreach is substantial unfortunately.

I'd love to get rid of people who are unable to ride a train like a social human from the trains and lock people out of cinemas who can't behave as one should expect.

And I’d love to give people who have similar views to you (on this matter) a -1 score for life. Who’s right?

Well the rules should be known just as laws are, not a personal opinion by Mr Inifinitypants.

> I'd love to get rid of people who are unable to ride a train

Really? I am for getting rid of people who use trains. No personal transport? You are probably just too poor...

But yeah, generally we should indeed welcome data collection about every detail of our personal lives. Because you know what would be the benefit?

Watching star wars without this stinky nerd that always spoils the next 10 minutes of the movie.

I can see no argument how you could be against this anymore.

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