US companies enabled brutal mass detention and surveillance in China [video] | Hacker News Reader

US companies enabled brutal mass detention and surveillance in China [video]

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11 pointsCider998618 comments

It's ok, they're also doing it to immigrants in america. So atleast they're consistent.

History keeps on repeating itself…

history does not repeat it rhymes

The US continues to have the most pervasive mass surveillance infrastructure, and the most people detained on earth, approximately 25% of all of the planet's prisoners. But China bad. Sure. Yanks are pure cope.

> the most people detained on earth

The absolute number of "people detained" is meaningless, you have to compare it to the behavior of those people, otherwise you are led to silly conclusions such as that the criminal justice system fanatically hates men, because there are 10x more men in prison than women [1]. Once you normalize prison population by an indicator of violent crime, such as homicide rate, the USA stops being an outlier ('homicide' and 'incarceration' are rates per 100k) [2,3]:

          homicide  incarceration  prisoners per homicide
  USA        5.763            541                    93.9
  China      0.502            119                   237.1
  Norway     0.725             55                    75.9
  Canada     1.98              90                    45.5
  France     1.335            115                    86.1

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/252828/number-of-prisone...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

But the real question is: Why is violent crime so much more common in the US than in Canada, or the UK or any EU country or Australia or Japan etc ?

Only 31.5% of homicides are committed by non-Hispanic whites [1], while they were 57.8% of the population. That brings the white homicide rate to 3.14, which, if you squint, is pretty close to the Canadian 1.98. The common misclassification of non-white offenders as white (but almost never the reverse) [3] probably explains some of the remaining disparity.

So in that respect, whites in the US are not so different from whites elsewhere.

[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-... (I think due to incomplete reporting, and due to including only cases where some information about the offender is known, the absolute numbers do not reflect the number of homicides in the entire US, but it is still useful for relative comparisons)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta... (using 2020 numbers, which are close enough for the 2019 FBI stats, which are the most recent I know of)

[3] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1700341490206310416

3.14 is not "pretty close to the Canadian 1.98".

It's 59% more.

And Sweden's 1.147 is 58% more than Norway's 0.725. And again, that's without the misreporting.

I’m not sure why you’re bringing Sweden and Norway into the discussion, to be honest.

Do you not think they're similar countries?

And… ?

This seems a rather vile line of commentary. Kinda shocked to see it here. Perhaps you’d like to say what you actually want to say? Why do you suppose this white/non-white disparity exists? Do you believe it is genetic? Cultural? Perhaps there are other factors?

Gross.

Absolutely. The one of the biggest differences in the US is fair trials and innocence until proven guilty. We are tracked quite a bit, but not as much of it can be used against us, yet.

That may be true; in theory and in general for some specific sub-populations, at some particular range of dates in the past.

It is however, not specifically the typical experience nor true for all individuals across the history of the nation, especially for significant portions of the population across a great deal of the nation's history, and it is remarkably less true for many in the nation at present.

The tools of oppression are globally available, and are in use to deprive people of those explicitly enumerated freedoms both within and outside of the US borders everyday.

That's just the way it is, and the way it has always been.

For specific cases past and present, see: Native American treatment and conditions at any point in time from the time of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights until this moment in time.

Also see the ongoing cases of extrajudicial incarceration and deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers of uncharged and non-hostile citizens and residents without legal repercussions from either state or federal judiciary.

So, no, one cannot count on fair trial nor the presumption of innocence in the US, even though that is very much the promised state of affairs. Wishing does not make it true.

Fair trial is a thing in China (maybe not in political circles, like almost every country in the world), it's not at all like people think, if you are an average citizen that have a conflict in business or your landlord doesn't want to give back your deposit or you've done something illegal then clearly it's mostly fair justice, even firing staff is complicated in China, labor laws are pretty strong in general.

Uhm, isn’t this article saying USA worse because it enabled China bad? And your point then of the USA being worse is kind of redundant, what am I missing?

Now that can't wait to do it again in the Western world

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