Hacker News Reader

Comment by BiteCode_dev | Hacker News Reader

Scanning to pay ? Damn that's horrifying.

Well I was recently at a US airport that had automatic "scan your face to board the plane" gates (non-optional) instead of providing boarding pass + passport, so from there to "scan your face to pay" it's a very small leap. They already know all about you and have your biometric identity, what's tacking a payment method to it?

Airport is a very punctual and security specific situation.

Buying things is a benign thing of your day to day life. Scanning your face to pay is a wet dream for surveillance states.

Sorry, I was responding in the original context of GP talking about Newark airport's terrible system. In it, scan your face to pay doesn't seem too far fetched; outside of it, I agree, pretty scary stuff.

So all I have to do to go on an unlimited spending spree is kidnap and lock up one of those hyper realistic mask makers? Nice

Unfortunately kidnapping them is the problem because they're always so well disguised.

It is most definitely optional

What would happen if identical twins wanted to board different flights from the same airport on the same day?

Maybe. They don't seem to mind...

You mean like they don't mind the great firewall, the good citizen passport and the concentration camp?

That wasn't part of the conversation.

But I'll bite.

Somehow I always end up defending China on HN but really I'm just sharing what I have seen/heard during my time there.

The majority of the Chinese do not worry about those things.

The great firewall is probably the greatest inconvenience you listed. However, the Chinese that come here and see FB and Google say, hey, maybe the firewall is not a bad idea. It's easy to circumvent anyway. It just blocks the majority of the population from western media.

The social credit system I don't know anything about, sorry.

The camps, AFAIK, are for Uyghurs classified as dangerous or high risk. At least, that's what the Han believe. The general understanding is if you do something like text "terrorism" as a Uyghur - you disappear for a while. I think part of this is because they are terrified the US will radicalize the muslim extremists. The truth is we barely have to - they hate the Chinese enough there are recorded events of the Uyghers just running around killing Han Chinese with knives. This was before cameras were super popular, but there is potato footage. This is partly why large cities in Xinjiang have such high security (think officers with MP5s outside every K-6 school) So, the Han do not protest at such camps.

Looks like the great firewall worked well for you. Painting an entire ethnicity as terrorists who slash away randomly at people is exactly the kind of propaganda it serves. Israel does the same for Palestinians. Yes, terrorism exists and should be supressed, but you can’t de-humanize entire populations based on that.

Picture yourself being jailed, taken away from your family, forced to learn another language and change your customs because “people who look like you can be dangerous”.

I'm not saying it's justified, I'm just saying that is how they view it.

I'm actually in the USA. The question was how do the Chinese feel. I conveyed the general feeling.

Internal destabilization by manipulating group fractures is a known specialty of US foreign policy.

China has valid reasons to be concerned about such methods given explicit admissions from the US government at the highest levels, that they are considered an enemy.

I'm in Thailand right now. The US is attempting to destabilize Thailand with the coming elections in order to break its strong ties to China, ties that are quite reasonable and rational given the cultural and economic ties between the countries. The Americans are seeking to get rid of the Thai monarchy, which the average Thai is not particularly interested in doing.

> The camps, AFAIK, are for Uyghurs classified as dangerous or high risk. At least, that's what the Han believe.

I have a quite sobering article for you, which has a very different take on the Chinese propaganda.

https://www.theatlantic.com/the-uyghur-chronicles/

It's certainly interesting. I also find this shocking:

https://youtu.be/mCtOh_7_tDo

Maybe they got used to not having freedom

If you ask them, they will say they feel pretty free, since they can send their kid to school without worrying about it being shot :)

This is an honest to God, real reply to that question :D

Since I live in France, I also can claim that shotless schooling experience, but I also happen to be allowed to write on this very comment:

"Macron is an asshole"

Without thinking it will affect my life in any way.

So at this point, I'll just assume you are a troll and ignore you.

I mean, that's a good point, for sure. However, I'm just the messenger here, you should ask them. I've talked to a lot of them.

I think that, in terms of insulting the leader... most Chinese are pretty happy with Xi? But yeah, totalitarian regime, insulting leader, bad idea.

Why do the Paris police carry military rifles?

Even in the US your kids are not likely to get shot unless they're involved with youth drug gangs, that's where most of the child gun deaths come from. In France they trade the mass shooting incidents in for truck or bomb attacks.

The fact that you think this is something you should be concerned about when sending your kid to school shows that you lack critical thinking and base your idea of the US on agenda pushing media instead of rationality.

I don't know how many times I have to make this clear but as I said, this is what they say.

> since they can send their kid to school without worrying about it being shot :)

Propaganda and brainwashing is probably a worse risk than that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com