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> "According to the reports, political prisoners, mainly Falun Gong practitioners, are being executed "on demand" in order to provide organs to recipients." Wi

• reaperducer 8y ago
  Imagine how much more efficiently the Chinese government could identify involuntary donors if it had better access to people's personal information. Perhaps through a search engine of some kind. One with a harmless-sounding name. Maybe "Dragonfly" would be a good name.
  • trhway 8y ago
    especially if it has significant connection (like through common investors/execs) to a huge database of DNA. > identify involuntary donors err... dissidents. Highest political crime - being a 100%-match for a Central Committee member who needs liver transplant.
  • cabalamat 8y ago
    Google's mission statement is "to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful". I'm sure we can all be happy if, with the help of Google, China becomes a more harmonious society, without any pesky troublemakers, and that hard-working Chinese Communist Party officials get the transplants they so deserve.
    • reaperducer 8y ago
      You must be using a definition of "universal" that I'm unfamiliar with, since Dragonfly removes key information on things like human rights.
  • vatueil 8y ago
    I guess it wouldn't be HN if we didn't tie every story back to our own issues. In this case, if Google ever does return to China I doubt the authorities would find it more useful for such purposes than existing sources such as iCloud, Bing, and Baidu already are.
    • throwaway2048 8y ago
      Hey, at least everyone else is doing it too!
      • vatueil 8y ago
        The point is more that the parent comment raises a different issue that doesn't really address the topic at hand. Even if another search engine did appear, it wouldn't allow the authorities to target dissidents more effectively than existing services already do. If we want to actually make a difference, we might consider calling for those existing services to change their ways. Harder to pressure the domestic Chinese companies, of course, but it's surprising how little attention is paid to Western companies who are actually in China and benefitting from it.
  • 1001101 8y ago
    Good incentive to get your social credit score up.
    • ryanmarsh 8y ago
      High social credit could be an indicator of a clean life and thus, clean organs. Better off looking like an alcoholic on paper.
  • pandaman 8y ago
    My imagination fails here - the government administers mandatory physicals to the citizens and holds any other medical data, how a search engine will help it to be more efficient at finding matching donors? Am I missing something obvious here?
• zanny 8y ago
  China, like Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia - any nation that is a totalitarian state - will commit endless atrocities so long as those in power believe they can get away with it. Be it their own people or other nations. And they do get away with it. All so I can buy a phone for 20% less that it would cost to manufacture in my own country. A few million dead, disfigured, tortured, scarred, raped. Billions living under thought control. Chump change to keep my clothes dirt cheap so the Walton family can buy a few more islands in the Caribbean while Jeff Bezos accumulates enough money to buy the moon.
  • trhway 8y ago
    >And they do get away with it. All so I can buy a phone for 20% less that it would cost to manufacture in my own country. A few million dead, disfigured, tortured, scarred, raped. Billions living under thought control. Chump change to keep my clothes dirt cheap so the Walton family can buy a few more islands in the Caribbean while Jeff Bezos accumulates enough money to buy the moon. Are you really saying that if US President had balls to push China on human rights then China would retaliate by refusing to produce cheap phones and clothes for US? Or say Russia would stop selling the oil?
• BonesJustice 8y ago
  Unbelievable. It would be an atrocity merely to rob someone of “non-vital” organs that they can live without, like a spare kidney. To murder someone and profit from the sale of vital organs is simply beyond my comprehension. I cannot fathom a more monstrous act.
  • tropo 8y ago
    There is another way to look at this. These are people who are already subject to execution. They get to stay alive a bit longer in order to preserve the organs. So rather than causing death, the possibility of organ transplants is what keeps these people alive.
    • PavlovsCat 8y ago
      There's always a more depraved way to look at something. Unless you actually hold that view, why dig for it?
    • BonesJustice 8y ago
      Supposedly the prisoners were alive and conscious while they were cut open and their organs removed (no anesthesic). If I’m going to die, I think I’d rather face the firing squad and get it over with. And then there’s the extraordinarily perverse profit motive to arrest more dissidents for organ harvesting.
      • chillacy 8y ago
        Why would they do that? That has to be unpleasant for the doctors and damaging to the organs themselves... or is this “fake news”
        • BonesJustice 8y ago
          That was my first reaction too: it risks damaging the valuable organs that they’re going to extraordinary lengths to ‘acquire’. The testimony came from an officer who stood guard while it happened.
• wetpaws 8y ago
  Every time you try to imagine some nightmarish dystopia, chances are China already implemented it with a great success.
• deleted 8y ago
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