3 ms·

They're just copying what the CIA/NSA has been doing for decades.

vturner 8y ago
"... police are generally able to get users to hand over their passwords, experts say." The NSA and CIA may have the tools but that little statement speaks the gap between what our agencies can do and what theirs can do legally.
hkai 8y ago
No.
api 8y ago
To some extent yes, but it's a false equivalence to compare the USA and China. They're pushing surveillance further than our own intelligence agencies, and more importantly they have no bill of rights. I dare someone to try a Sasha Cohen act in China mocking the present leadership. You'd end up in a prison camp within a week. In America you can openly call the President and the ruling party hideous names, troll them, mock them in public, and criticize them all day and the very worst that will happen is getting kicked off private media platforms and forums.
- 131012 8y ago
  The main difference is legal/constitutional. Yet they use almost the same tools.
  - api 8y ago
    Legal/constitutional is the only difference that really matters. The tech is globally available to anyone. The law determines how it may be used. Overall I think mass surveillance and other cyber-intrusions into civil liberties can only be realistically solved by legislation. It's far too easy to spy on a people who insist on carrying around little location-aware transponders and posting all their activities to the Internet. It's legislation that limits this, and much more importantly limits what it's legal for the government or private actors to do with this information.
  - adventured 8y ago
    The main difference is cultural in fact. The legal / constitutional aspect entirely derives from cultural underpinnings. If you remove the cultural, you remove all support for the existing constitutional protections and the politicians in DC will promptly begin revoking rights at will. The reason China can't support a rights based Constitution as in eg the US or parts of Europe, is due to the lack of a culture that overwhelmingly believes in the premise. There are pockets of resistance in China, that push back against the tyranny, the problem is that they're modest and fairly easy to contain. If Trump passed an executive order to revoke freedom of speech tomorrow, he'd be impeached by his own party, and there'd be tens of millions of people protesting in the streets across the country. Trump would be lucky if his own military didn't coup him at that point, their first oath is to the Constitution, not the Presidency or a party. That's an intense cultural underpinning, which China is lacking. To overly simplify it: if you have cultural protections, then the people revolt and get very pissed off, when politicians try to take away rights. The culture is the real shield for a constitution, without which it's just worthless paper that can be shredded. The people have a viseral reaction, it's instantaneous, because the culture is in their blood so to speak. Politicians in the US constantly test that live wire to see what they can get away with. They typically have to be extremely sneaky about what they do, or use emotional events as cover, if they want to take some ground on rights (eg the Patriot Act et al.).
christophilus 8y ago
There's not an equivalency, though. In the US, at least in theory, we have a system that is founded on the idea that a human being has inalienable rights that come from their creator, and therefore are not arbitrary concessions of the state. China has no such concept. China views a human being as merely material, and human rights as essentially arbitrary. This is not just a theoretical difference. It's as practical as it gets. If the US does keep going down the road towards tyranny, it is in spite of it's foundation, not because of it, and its actions will be inconsistent with its own guiding principle. This foundational guiding principle of the US gives me some hope that we are not on in the middle of an inevitable collapse into tyranny.
- kosma 8y ago
  > the US, at least in theory, we have a system that is founded on the idea that a human being has inalienable rights As long as you're a US citizen.
  - graeme 8y ago
    You might be thinking of the border. Within the US, the constitution applies generally to foreigners, IIRC
    - christophilus 8y ago
      Yep. This is right, and many of our actions at the border are in direct violation of human rights as recognized by the "unalienable rights" clause.

"... police are generally able to get users to hand over their passwords, experts say." The NSA and CIA may have the tools but that little statement speaks the gap between what our agencies can do and what theirs can do legally.

hkai 8y ago

No.

api 8y ago

To some extent yes, but it's a false equivalence to compare the USA and China. They're pushing surveillance further than our own intelligence agencies, and more importantly they have no bill of rights. I dare someone to try a Sasha Cohen act in China mocking the present leadership. You'd end up in a prison camp within a week. In America you can openly call the President and the ruling party hideous names, troll them, mock them in public, and criticize them all day and the very worst that will happen is getting kicked off private media platforms and forums.

131012 8y ago
The main difference is legal/constitutional. Yet they use almost the same tools.
- api 8y ago
  Legal/constitutional is the only difference that really matters. The tech is globally available to anyone. The law determines how it may be used. Overall I think mass surveillance and other cyber-intrusions into civil liberties can only be realistically solved by legislation. It's far too easy to spy on a people who insist on carrying around little location-aware transponders and posting all their activities to the Internet. It's legislation that limits this, and much more importantly limits what it's legal for the government or private actors to do with this information.
- adventured 8y ago
  The main difference is cultural in fact. The legal / constitutional aspect entirely derives from cultural underpinnings. If you remove the cultural, you remove all support for the existing constitutional protections and the politicians in DC will promptly begin revoking rights at will. The reason China can't support a rights based Constitution as in eg the US or parts of Europe, is due to the lack of a culture that overwhelmingly believes in the premise. There are pockets of resistance in China, that push back against the tyranny, the problem is that they're modest and fairly easy to contain. If Trump passed an executive order to revoke freedom of speech tomorrow, he'd be impeached by his own party, and there'd be tens of millions of people protesting in the streets across the country. Trump would be lucky if his own military didn't coup him at that point, their first oath is to the Constitution, not the Presidency or a party. That's an intense cultural underpinning, which China is lacking. To overly simplify it: if you have cultural protections, then the people revolt and get very pissed off, when politicians try to take away rights. The culture is the real shield for a constitution, without which it's just worthless paper that can be shredded. The people have a viseral reaction, it's instantaneous, because the culture is in their blood so to speak. Politicians in the US constantly test that live wire to see what they can get away with. They typically have to be extremely sneaky about what they do, or use emotional events as cover, if they want to take some ground on rights (eg the Patriot Act et al.).

christophilus 8y ago

There's not an equivalency, though. In the US, at least in theory, we have a system that is founded on the idea that a human being has inalienable rights that come from their creator, and therefore are not arbitrary concessions of the state. China has no such concept. China views a human being as merely material, and human rights as essentially arbitrary. This is not just a theoretical difference. It's as practical as it gets. If the US does keep going down the road towards tyranny, it is in spite of it's foundation, not because of it, and its actions will be inconsistent with its own guiding principle. This foundational guiding principle of the US gives me some hope that we are not on in the middle of an inevitable collapse into tyranny.

kosma 8y ago
> the US, at least in theory, we have a system that is founded on the idea that a human being has inalienable rights As long as you're a US citizen.
- graeme 8y ago
  You might be thinking of the border. Within the US, the constitution applies generally to foreigners, IIRC
  - christophilus 8y ago
    Yep. This is right, and many of our actions at the border are in direct violation of human rights as recognized by the "unalienable rights" clause.