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China Tries Its Hand at Pre-Crime

126 points by tokenadult 11y ago

mtgx 11y ago
> “We don’t call it a big data platform but a united information environment.” —Wu Manqing, China Electronics Technology Sounds familiar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness
- trhway 11y ago
  i wonder whether the "united information environment" can be a result of to_English(to_Chinese("intelligence fusion")) https://www.dhs.gov/state-and-major-urban-area-fusion-centers https://www.dhs.gov/state-and-major-urban-area-fusion-center...
1stop 11y ago
Why is it framed as totalitarian and unfair when China do what the US has been doing since 2001?
- LesZedCB 11y ago
  Ah, it's because we have Freedom™ instead of ideology[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk8ibrfXvpQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk8ibrfXvpQ
- vgoh1 11y ago
  What the US has been doing since 2001 has been totalitarian and unfair, of course. Let's not play "but that guy is doing it too, so it's not that bad". It's all bad, and all needs to be stopped.
  - Cheezmeister 11y ago
    > It's all bad, and all needs to be stopped. Look, I'm not a fan of Big Brother either (I don't think any of us are). But unqualified black-white statements like this (combined with Good Intentions™) are largely what got us into this mess in the first place.
- daveguy 11y ago
  Yup. From the article -- "The bottom line: A top Chinese military contractor is building a data analytics platform to help authorities identify terrorists before they strike." So.... excactly what NSA does (alone and with private commercial ventures). I thought there was going to be an aspect of identifying potential for crimes and rounding people up who haven't done anything yet (which would be a step beyond what NSA and company have done. But nope, It's exactly what we've done for over a decade. A few other things from the article: "The government revealed last year that it was also building a nationwide database that would score citizens on their trustworthiness." ... I doubt we do this. It seems like NSA data collection is broad and encompassing, but not detailed analysis on every single US citizen. Sounds inefficient if the goal is to stop terrorism. Also FTA -- "New antiterror laws that went into effect on Jan. 1 allow authorities to gain access to bank accounts, telecommunications, and a national network of surveillance cameras called Skynet." Skynet?! Really?! Come on China. It was a movie not a playbook!
  - sergers 11y ago
    NSA already has a program labeled Skynet. details were leaked May 2015
  - imglorp 11y ago
    No one would confuse NSA data collection as effective at stopping potential criminal attacks. If the government was truly worried about US deaths, it would be looking at drunk driving, lung cancer, and heart disease in earnest, some half million deaths a year. No, both the NSA and Chinese efforts are aimed at identifying and suppressing dissent. We're not that different.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      How does the NSA program suppress dissent? Seems to me that it's about stopping deaths. The reason they don't go after drunk driving and heart disease is because different kinds of deaths are valued differently. And while that's obviously crazy from a rational perspective, it's how the public views things.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Is there a way to answer this question without the respondent being put on the hook for every unfair or unjust thing the US does in response to terrorism? Because there's a straightforward answer to the question you asked.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Because when the US does it, it's also framed as totalitarian and unfair?
- sbuttgereit 11y ago
  Because in China there can be serious consequences to holding and advocating for ideas that are out of favor with government. In the USA, even with all the monitoring you can still hold and advocate for ideas that are very much out of favor of those in government without serious reprisal. Note that "Terrorism" is a very convenient word in politics as it allows just about anyone to be labeled as such. I suspect my definition is very different than the Chinese definition. To be fair about the data collection efforts in the USA, something that I very much oppose as an affront to the individual rights of its citizens, I suspect that those efforts are nonetheless almost always conducted very much for proper purposes of protecting national security and the lives/property of its citizens... rather than to ensure government entrenchment in spite of its citizens. Where the NSA and like agencies go wrong is in assuming ends justify means. They don't. And of course the possibility of misuse of these methods to be used against citizen rights rather than to protect them.
  - Zigurd 11y ago
    If you go to protests in the US, you will become a surveillance target. That by itself has a chilling effect. Protest organizers get visits from the FBI, and the NSA feeds information to the FBI to be laundered through "parallel construction." misuse of information to stifle dissent isn't theoretical, it's practiced all the time.
- ap22213 11y ago
  China and the US may be somewhat alike in this regard, but at least in the US people are allowed to talk about it and rally against it.
  - Barrin92 11y ago
    well as long as it doesn't change anything, that is. Which makes the whole thing even worse
- matt_wulfeck 11y ago
  My guess is that the likelihood of you getting a fair and speedy trial is significantly better in the US than it is in China.
  - mineshaftgap 11y ago
    Your logic is not welcome here.
- trynumber9 11y ago
  It was framed as totalitarian when the US did it too.
shmerl 11y ago
Watchbird[1] incoming? [1]. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29579 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29579
curt15 11y ago
"In China, once a suspect is targeted, police can freeze bank accounts and compel companies to hand over records of his communications." Can we expect them to strongarm companies like Apple that offer secure communications channels, such as imessage? It will be interesting to watch how Apple navigates those waters.
- lostlogin 11y ago
  One can watch this playing out in the US for a precursor. The weird NY Times comment and its retraction that Snowden commented on is relevant here. https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/700073024373047297 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/700073024373047297 Edit: Thinking more, where in the world is does police targeting not cause problems. Here in New Zealand there have been several recent cases of massive overreach that resulted in no charges or just a huge clustersf*&k. Dotcom, the Nicky Sagar searches etc. There are recent cases in the US and UK that come to mind fast too, often with reporters being targeted.
  - jacobolus 11y ago
    They expanded it into a full article a couple days later: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/technology/apple-sees-value-in-privacy-vow.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/technology/apple-sees-valu...
dragonbonheur 11y ago
Another day, another China-bashing propaganda piece from Bloomberg... Seriously, it's become too obvious.
- wallacoloo 11y ago
  While we're bashing that site, the webpage spontaneously reloaded itself three times while I was reading that article, each time sending me back to the top of the page. A bit annoying, to say the least.
badmadrad 11y ago
Alot of people here are somehow turning this into a USA/NSA bashing but thats a straw man. The fact of the matter is you can't be imprisoned in the US for a crime you haven't committed or at least that judge and jury haven't deliberated on. Can you say the Chinese have the same safeguards ...probably not? Yes, governments have and always will have the vested interest to retain their power but that's why we must have our rights and legal system. I feel like the Chinese don't share this luxury as much as we do.
- danharaj 11y ago
  That's a misuse of the word strawman. Also "our shadow government with totalitarian tendencies is better than theirs" is kind of flimsy#. The FBI frequently radicalizes and encourages vulnerable, alienated people to execute terrorist plots. Sure, they don't arrest people for 'pre-crimes', but they do manufacture terrorists so that they can 'catch' them. The CIA, FBI, NSA, and a few other alphabet soup agencies have a regular history of mass violation of rights and egregious human rights abuses. Who has forgotten the Senate report about CIA torture already? The CIA was forcibly anally raping unjustly detained individuals as part of its interrogation program. People who paper over the atrocities regularly committed in the name of liberal democracy undermine democracy by refusing to distinguish it from a far inferior and quite obviously broken system. It seems like there's a short memory and long list of excuses for the abuses perpetrated by nations like the US. # This is a strawman of your position.
  - mineshaftgap 11y ago
    Also the company Alphabet gives all the agencies all the data they have freely.
  - seivan 11y ago
    These wars and "plots" happened before the US even existed. Did the Americans time travel in order to create them or what am I missing here? How do you think religion spread in the past, peaceful missionaries?
- nxzero 11y ago
nefitty 11y ago
I was expecting preemptive street policing, like the software this company provides (and is used by several police forces around the US): http://www.predpol.com/about/ http://www.predpol.com/about/
NovaS1X 11y ago
One step closer to our Psycho-Pass future.
awqrre 11y ago
US drones already do lots of pre-crime targeting [1] 1. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/civilian-deaths-drone-strikes_us_561fafe2e4b028dd7ea6c4ff http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/civilian-deaths-drone-st...
bhewes 11y ago
What amazes me is that dang’an system is even functional. As for pre-crime crime forecasting has been part of policing for at least as long as I have been alive. The Rand report from 2013 title Predictive Policing being the latest report I know of - http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR200/RR233/RAND_RR233.pdf http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/R...

126 points by tokenadult 11y ago

mtgx 11y ago

> “We don’t call it a big data platform but a united information environment.” —Wu Manqing, China Electronics Technology Sounds familiar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness

trhway 11y ago
i wonder whether the "united information environment" can be a result of to_English(to_Chinese("intelligence fusion")) https://www.dhs.gov/state-and-major-urban-area-fusion-centers https://www.dhs.gov/state-and-major-urban-area-fusion-center...

1stop 11y ago

Why is it framed as totalitarian and unfair when China do what the US has been doing since 2001?

LesZedCB 11y ago
Ah, it's because we have Freedom™ instead of ideology[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk8ibrfXvpQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk8ibrfXvpQ
vgoh1 11y ago
What the US has been doing since 2001 has been totalitarian and unfair, of course. Let's not play "but that guy is doing it too, so it's not that bad". It's all bad, and all needs to be stopped.
- Cheezmeister 11y ago
  > It's all bad, and all needs to be stopped. Look, I'm not a fan of Big Brother either (I don't think any of us are). But unqualified black-white statements like this (combined with Good Intentions™) are largely what got us into this mess in the first place.
daveguy 11y ago
Yup. From the article -- "The bottom line: A top Chinese military contractor is building a data analytics platform to help authorities identify terrorists before they strike." So.... excactly what NSA does (alone and with private commercial ventures). I thought there was going to be an aspect of identifying potential for crimes and rounding people up who haven't done anything yet (which would be a step beyond what NSA and company have done. But nope, It's exactly what we've done for over a decade. A few other things from the article: "The government revealed last year that it was also building a nationwide database that would score citizens on their trustworthiness." ... I doubt we do this. It seems like NSA data collection is broad and encompassing, but not detailed analysis on every single US citizen. Sounds inefficient if the goal is to stop terrorism. Also FTA -- "New antiterror laws that went into effect on Jan. 1 allow authorities to gain access to bank accounts, telecommunications, and a national network of surveillance cameras called Skynet." Skynet?! Really?! Come on China. It was a movie not a playbook!
- sergers 11y ago
  NSA already has a program labeled Skynet. details were leaked May 2015
- imglorp 11y ago
  No one would confuse NSA data collection as effective at stopping potential criminal attacks. If the government was truly worried about US deaths, it would be looking at drunk driving, lung cancer, and heart disease in earnest, some half million deaths a year. No, both the NSA and Chinese efforts are aimed at identifying and suppressing dissent. We're not that different.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    How does the NSA program suppress dissent? Seems to me that it's about stopping deaths. The reason they don't go after drunk driving and heart disease is because different kinds of deaths are valued differently. And while that's obviously crazy from a rational perspective, it's how the public views things.
tptacek 11y ago
Is there a way to answer this question without the respondent being put on the hook for every unfair or unjust thing the US does in response to terrorism? Because there's a straightforward answer to the question you asked.
mikeash 11y ago
Because when the US does it, it's also framed as totalitarian and unfair?
sbuttgereit 11y ago
Because in China there can be serious consequences to holding and advocating for ideas that are out of favor with government. In the USA, even with all the monitoring you can still hold and advocate for ideas that are very much out of favor of those in government without serious reprisal. Note that "Terrorism" is a very convenient word in politics as it allows just about anyone to be labeled as such. I suspect my definition is very different than the Chinese definition. To be fair about the data collection efforts in the USA, something that I very much oppose as an affront to the individual rights of its citizens, I suspect that those efforts are nonetheless almost always conducted very much for proper purposes of protecting national security and the lives/property of its citizens... rather than to ensure government entrenchment in spite of its citizens. Where the NSA and like agencies go wrong is in assuming ends justify means. They don't. And of course the possibility of misuse of these methods to be used against citizen rights rather than to protect them.
- Zigurd 11y ago
  If you go to protests in the US, you will become a surveillance target. That by itself has a chilling effect. Protest organizers get visits from the FBI, and the NSA feeds information to the FBI to be laundered through "parallel construction." misuse of information to stifle dissent isn't theoretical, it's practiced all the time.
ap22213 11y ago
China and the US may be somewhat alike in this regard, but at least in the US people are allowed to talk about it and rally against it.
- Barrin92 11y ago
  well as long as it doesn't change anything, that is. Which makes the whole thing even worse
matt_wulfeck 11y ago
My guess is that the likelihood of you getting a fair and speedy trial is significantly better in the US than it is in China.
- mineshaftgap 11y ago
  Your logic is not welcome here.
trynumber9 11y ago
It was framed as totalitarian when the US did it too.

shmerl 11y ago

Watchbird[1] incoming? [1]. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29579 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29579

curt15 11y ago

"In China, once a suspect is targeted, police can freeze bank accounts and compel companies to hand over records of his communications." Can we expect them to strongarm companies like Apple that offer secure communications channels, such as imessage? It will be interesting to watch how Apple navigates those waters.

lostlogin 11y ago
One can watch this playing out in the US for a precursor. The weird NY Times comment and its retraction that Snowden commented on is relevant here. https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/700073024373047297 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/700073024373047297 Edit: Thinking more, where in the world is does police targeting not cause problems. Here in New Zealand there have been several recent cases of massive overreach that resulted in no charges or just a huge clustersf*&k. Dotcom, the Nicky Sagar searches etc. There are recent cases in the US and UK that come to mind fast too, often with reporters being targeted.
- jacobolus 11y ago
  They expanded it into a full article a couple days later: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/technology/apple-sees-value-in-privacy-vow.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/technology/apple-sees-valu...

dragonbonheur 11y ago

Another day, another China-bashing propaganda piece from Bloomberg... Seriously, it's become too obvious.

wallacoloo 11y ago
While we're bashing that site, the webpage spontaneously reloaded itself three times while I was reading that article, each time sending me back to the top of the page. A bit annoying, to say the least.

badmadrad 11y ago

Alot of people here are somehow turning this into a USA/NSA bashing but thats a straw man. The fact of the matter is you can't be imprisoned in the US for a crime you haven't committed or at least that judge and jury haven't deliberated on. Can you say the Chinese have the same safeguards ...probably not? Yes, governments have and always will have the vested interest to retain their power but that's why we must have our rights and legal system. I feel like the Chinese don't share this luxury as much as we do.

danharaj 11y ago
That's a misuse of the word strawman. Also "our shadow government with totalitarian tendencies is better than theirs" is kind of flimsy#. The FBI frequently radicalizes and encourages vulnerable, alienated people to execute terrorist plots. Sure, they don't arrest people for 'pre-crimes', but they do manufacture terrorists so that they can 'catch' them. The CIA, FBI, NSA, and a few other alphabet soup agencies have a regular history of mass violation of rights and egregious human rights abuses. Who has forgotten the Senate report about CIA torture already? The CIA was forcibly anally raping unjustly detained individuals as part of its interrogation program. People who paper over the atrocities regularly committed in the name of liberal democracy undermine democracy by refusing to distinguish it from a far inferior and quite obviously broken system. It seems like there's a short memory and long list of excuses for the abuses perpetrated by nations like the US. # This is a strawman of your position.
- mineshaftgap 11y ago
  Also the company Alphabet gives all the agencies all the data they have freely.
- seivan 11y ago
  These wars and "plots" happened before the US even existed. Did the Americans time travel in order to create them or what am I missing here? How do you think religion spread in the past, peaceful missionaries?
nxzero 11y ago

nefitty 11y ago

I was expecting preemptive street policing, like the software this company provides (and is used by several police forces around the US): http://www.predpol.com/about/ http://www.predpol.com/about/

NovaS1X 11y ago

One step closer to our Psycho-Pass future.

awqrre 11y ago

US drones already do lots of pre-crime targeting [1] 1. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/civilian-deaths-drone-strikes_us_561fafe2e4b028dd7ea6c4ff http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/civilian-deaths-drone-st...

bhewes 11y ago

What amazes me is that dang’an system is even functional. As for pre-crime crime forecasting has been part of policing for at least as long as I have been alive. The Rand report from 2013 title Predictive Policing being the latest report I know of - http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR200/RR233/RAND_RR233.pdf http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/R...