Ask HN: Are we normalizing surveillance in the name of safety?
In recent years, I feel like the whole world is slowly moving toward this direction:
“Because we need to protect people, we need to monitor them.”
As a Taiwanese person, I’m very familiar with this kind of logic from the CCP next door.
But for some reason, I feel like more and more of the world is also moving in this direction.
For example:
* Asking an important open-source infrastructure project like Linux to add age verification. * Credit card companies asking Japan to follow all kinds of unreasonable rules. * Using courts to force companies, in the name of human rights or safety, to monitor cloud data. * Requiring VPNs to be controlled or regulated.
These are just some simple examples. I don’t have detailed statistics, but I really feel like there have been more and more cases like this recently.
It is often wrapped in something morally justified, and then surveillance and control are introduced underneath it.
The CCP next door has always used this kind of logic.
Officially, everything is for protection and safety. Encryption is heavily restricted. Whenever these policies are introduced, there are also many people defending them.
Many people do not really feel that their own rights are being violated.
Until one day, the restrictions keep expanding and become something like a censorship system where almost anything can be punished.
On mainland Chinese platforms, if you try to have a deeper discussion about certain topics, or even just ask for opinions, it is very easy to get banned.
Right now, fortunately, there are still many people around the world who keep pushing back against different kinds of surveillance that are packaged as “morally necessary.”
But what I’m afraid of is this:
What if people slowly become used to it?
What if everyone becomes more and more insensitive to these things, like many people in mainland China, and only realizes what happened when almost nothing can be said anymore?
At that point, it may already be too late.
As a side note, the security and identity system in mainland China is basically built more from the perspective of the state.
So you can see many things like:
* A phone number is required almost everywhere. * Email is not used very much. * Communication is mainly through QQ or WeChat. * Passkeys are not common. Most identity verification is based on phone numbers. * Many services look anonymous, but are actually tied to your real identity.
A lot of the “security” mechanisms are related to the state, including speech and political control, rather than the personal security or privacy of the user.
Apps also like to put advertisements everywhere.
One app tries to do everything.
Many apps constantly encourage people to borrow money.
Even on phones and other hardware, anything that allows you to type text may potentially contain blocked words.
Some topics basically cannot be discussed.
Xi Jinping is one obvious example. Even related words or associations, such as “Xi” or Winnie the Pooh, can become sensitive.
China is also very strong in AI, partly because there is so much data and not much privacy.
Sometimes you can see Chinese AI systems that speak in a way that feels very similar to how real people think and talk.
My guess is that this is partly because a lot of real human-to-human conversations have been used for training, including private conversations.
There is probably much more I could add.
But the main point is not really China.
What I am worried about is that one day, even installing Linux on my own computer may require real-name verification.
That kind of thing sounds terrifying to me.
Maybe I’m overthinking it, but I really feel like the direction is becoming more obvious.
I’m curious what people here think.
Do you feel the same way?
Do you think this is actually becoming a broader trend?