Hacker News Reader

Comment by datashow | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure what is your point, authoritarian or democratic does not make a difference? Both kind of nations have same kind of access to citizens' private information? Both use the monitoring for the same purpose? US is throwing people who offended Trump online into jail like China is doing for Xi?

I just can't live with this kind of intentional defense of authoritarian by making nonsensical and shameless equalization.

Plug:

China Sentences Wang Yi, Christian Pastor, to 9 Years in Prison https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/world/asia/china-wang-yi-...

Kaifeng Jewish Community Suffers New Suppression https://bitterwinter.org/kaifeng-jewish-community-suffers-ne...

Inside China’s Push to Turn Muslim Minorities Into an Army of Workers https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/world/asia/china-xinjiang...

View on HN

I'd think the point is that the qualification in the headline might give people in non-authoritarian nations a false sense of security that GP is trying to warn us for.

> authoritarian or democratic does not make a difference?

You think it it does? Democracy without freedom is an empty shell. And surveillance is antithetical to freedom

The logical fallacy[0] here is so obvious that to people who can reason, it's a joke.

Their goal is to divert the discussion and trick people without a clear mind. If we follow through their argument, or even let them trigger any emotion in us, they win. So the best reaction is to give no attention to them, such that this kind of argument sinks to the bottom.

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

> US is throwing people who offended Trump online into jail like China is doing for Xi?

No, but it has been collecting all online data, snooping on citizens and finding out (along with everything else), who has been saying what about President Trump.

The fact that it hasn't yet criminalised that behaviour is some consolation, but the data collection itself is unsettling.

As opposed to what we are doing to Assange? Or carrying out a coup against a democratically elected president in Bolivia ( Yes, I know he legally ran for a 4th time, but then so did angela merkel...). Do you know the largest "worker" population in the US is our prison population?

> I just can't live with this kind of intentional defense of authoritarian by making nonsensical and shameless equalization.

Okay. How about this. A democracy is responsible for a 100 holocausts in the US with our extermination of the native. A democracy dropped nukes on hundreds of thousands of civilians. A democracy pioneered human experimentation. A democracy instituted racial slavery. A democracy has killed tens of millions of people around the world after ww2. A democracy has stolen the most land and resources around the world.

Democracy or authoritarian, both are capable of all kinds of evil. By any objective measure, the most evil nation to have ever exist was a democracy.

Now flip it. An authoritarian regime lifted 800 million people out of poverty. Easily the greatest humanitarian achievement in human history. The greatest human good in human history was achieved by those "evil" authoritarians.

If we are going to worry about the internet being weaponized, I think we should be worried about it whether "authoritarian" or "democratic".

Evo Morales commited fraud.

> In 2014, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden said in a public debate, “We kill people based on metadata.”

> According to multiple reports and leaks, death-by-metadata could be triggered, without even knowing the target’s name, if too many derogatory checks appear on their profile. “Armed military aged males” exhibiting suspicious behavior in the wrong place can become targets, as can someone “seen to be giving out orders.” Such mathematics-based assassinations have come to be known as “signature strikes.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-...

the rolling stone article is a joke. not only does it jump randomly over long periods of time, but it actually makes it look like the main character is in fact a terrorist:

> Over a decade later, after some major life changes – he’d converted to Islam and found himself working as a TV reporter in the Middle East under his new name, Bilal Abdul Kareem

> the Syrian office of the controversial Islamist TV network he founded, On the Ground News

> “They were picking off Al Qaeda and Al Nusra members,” he says. “I didn’t pay it much attention. I thought, ‘It’s not the first time I’ve heard a drone.’”

"exhibiting suspicious behavior in the wrong place". I need more details to make an informed judgement.

So do the people with their fingers on the button.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com