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Comment by wombatmobile | Hacker News Reader

“The basic premise of a free society is that you shouldn’t be subject to tracking by the government without suspicion of wrongdoing. You are presumed innocent until proven guilty,” Shankar Narayan, technology and liberty project director at the American Civil Liberties Union, said. “The widespread use of face surveillance flips the premise of freedom on its head and you start becoming a society where everyone is tracked no matter what they do all the time.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/why-did-microsoft-fund-isra...

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China is becoming a horrifying totalitarian state that uses tech to crush opposition. I am afraid that the advances in weaponry and surveillance have rendered a revolution by the oppressed impossible. It was difficult for freedom to be established against tyranny in bygone centuries; even the US required the intervention of France and Spain to win its freedom. Now, it will be only maybe doable with outside help... But with the rising populist and nationalist tides, this is unlikely.

The US was and probably still is doing the same thing as China with its domestic surveillance programs. They just have a better marketing / PR department about it. But don’t be mistaken, if you speak against this in the US, you’ll commit suicide, or spend the rest of your life in prison or in exile as a traitor.

> They just have a better marketing / PR department about it.

The fact that opposing views could be brought into public discourse, not silenced or censored in QQ or Weibo, makes a huge difference.

It is not just marketing or PR. It is allowing the civil society to take part in public discourse, much like the recent debate on censoring Donald Trump.

> if you speak against this in the US, you’ll commit suicide

Not to the same extent in China, far from it.

Donal Trump was not censored. He violated policy.

Sure, the Uighurs are just violating China's policy too.

That is completely unrelated.

No you won't, I've been a loud mouth libertarian (little L) my entire life, I'm still here many years later, I even check my FBI profile every 5 years or so, it's rather dull. US is little league surveillance vs China in terms of consequences. Even Jack Ma couldn't escape their hammer.

Give one example please.

It has been one for a long time. I'm afraid all countries are headed in that direction and will only stop it if they wake up and realize that surveillance is bad without due cause (a warrant for example to stop a terrorist action). Government is much like a corporation, it's end goal is to maximize control (corporations maximize earnings) however. Only checks put in place can limit that along with resets (elections) which allow a constant purge of individuals seeking to gain too much power and citizens educated in the value of that. That's one reason I've always supported term limits of 12 years across the board, except -maybe- the supreme court.

The idea somehow we can limit governments' use of such technologies is an illusion, governments are such organization where they would seek to monitor and contain 'hostile' actions by its own nature. The only thing we can do is develop better decwntralized, secure technologies. Politics alone can stop securiry cameras being installed, but what about other more obscure methods? only technology can defeat technology.

The issue is that technology, by nature, tracks what we do, unless it's specifically designed to hide/obfuscate your activity.

...and the progressive integration of tech with government means that government will have increasingly more access to data on individuals.

In my opinion, we need more decentralized tech.

I can't agree. We choose what goes in cameras, phones, etc. Technology is just technology, humans choose where to place it (surveillance, recording activities).

>The issue is that technology, by nature, tracks what we do, unless it's specifically designed to hide/obfuscate your activity.

My Hammer never try'd to obfuscate anything nor did my milling machine or my C64. You are too much into today's Orwell-ism to even imagine that technology was once for you without exploitation from a third party.

Seems like that principle would be easy to circumvent by simply letting private companies do the tracking and punishing in return for favorable treatment by the government.

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