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My friend from China explained to me that the surveillance of people is as much top down as much as its bottom up. - At every village level they have "informan

My friend from China explained to me that the surveillance of people is as much top down as much as its bottom up. - At every village level they have "informants" for the communist party who inform their higher ups regularly about village level activity. They are financially supported with healthcare and education subsidies and so it makes sense for everyone to join in and inform, especially the poor. - At the city level they have more ways to collect information about people like companies feeding data bases, people interacting with the internet and retail. He explained that the idea is even if 10% of the population is brain washed they can keep tabs on the 90% and when shit hits the fan they want to be in the know. After Tiananmen they have followed a formula: Keep enough people happy and conforming with economic prosperity and get ahead of the curb for restive remainder.

im3w1l 8y ago
The thing with informants is they can lie. They can pretend the loyalists are dissenters and the dissenters are loyalists. They can tell stories just because they personally don't like someone. They can demand protection money. It's vastly more fragile and unreliable than a system based on technology. Sure the engineers can make the system lie. And they probably will to some extent. But it's a much smaller number of people you need to keep pleased and policed.
bcOpus 8y ago
The formula of appealing to a small base which keeps you in power through cronyism is the formula for power. It’s true in every place you find political and financial power, from Beijing to small-town USA, to corporate boardrooms around the world, and tinpot dictators around the world. You might enjoy reading The Dictator’s Handbook.
goodwork 8y ago
How is that different from people working for FB Or Google? It's same there, a few of them are financially rewarded for pushing privacy evanding tactics and others silently follow otherwise risk being reported.
- dimitrov 8y ago
  Except Facebook and Google aren't operating mass incarceration camps that target people solely based on ethnic/religious affiliation. The moral dubiousness of working for Google isn't the same as working as an informant for the Chinese secret police.
  - monocasa 8y ago
    Facebook does play a pretty direct role in the ongoing Rohingya genocide.
    - dimitrov 8y ago
      Facebook has paramilitary factions genociding the Rohingya? I'm not denying that Facebook played a role in the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories in Myanmar but to place the blame directly on them is absurd. Facebook is just an ill-moderated medium.
      - monocasa 8y ago
        There's more than that. Messenger/Facebook is used in a lot of the third world in place of stuff like SMS and phone calls. Facebook completely kneecapped the ability of the Rohingya to organize and tell their story by pulling stuff like this at the request of the Burmese government. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/20/facebook-rohingya-muslims-myanmar https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/20/facebook-... EDIT: This whole idea that Facebook's only sin was not moderating enough, and that they didn't give direct support to the government to help the genocide is just their PR and legal departments going into overdrive because they know they screwed up hard.
      - goodwork 8y ago
        Dimitrov, you just keep posting unsubstantiated comments. Show us proof that FB was not directly behind this Massacre. Monocasa proves links and sources, and you don't cite anything at all
nabla9 8y ago
China also tolerates civil unrest and civil disobedience as long as it's not directly challenging the authority of central government. Official name for it is "mass incidents" or "mass frustration". There are almost 200,000 of these incidents every year. Several of them grow into large demonstrations with barricades, sit-ins, and rioting. They are usually reactions against come companies, local government, land seizures, or some corrupt individuals. As long as people don't demand changing of the system, government often gives in at least a little. People can be changed, more investigations, some government actions can be cancelled. It's clever way to bend without breaking. Allow people to show their frustration against things that are wrong but control tightly what kind of targets are allowed.
- bigmonads 8y ago
  China could probably go much further. In America, you're shut down and surveilled for demanding systemic changes to the system (just try to build a movement in the United States for a change of government; see where that gets you). Much of that surveillance is automatic, and fed into police threat scores and FBI databases based off of online conversations (like this one) and other information (including financials, purchase history, social circle, etc). Now, in the United States, if you want to disrupt some other kind of corruption (say, farming industry practices around the treatment of animals) - this will get you on terrorist watchlists, and the FBI will infiltrate and seek the arrests of that behavior as well, enforcing the strict relationship that wealthy families have in the enforcement of American societal structure.
  - nabla9 8y ago
    This is a false equivalence. Your second paragraph is just conspiracy theory. "It's all same" is cynical and unintelligent attitude.
    - bigmonads 8y ago
      False equivalence AND conspiracy theory? Lol. In order... "False equivalence": Nope, not saying they are equivalent. "Conspiracy theory": Nope, read the reporting on the Snowden documents, fusion centers, legal cases involving use of surveillance, statements by the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's all the same": I think what America is doing is both worse and of a different kind.

im3w1l 8y ago

The thing with informants is they can lie. They can pretend the loyalists are dissenters and the dissenters are loyalists. They can tell stories just because they personally don't like someone. They can demand protection money. It's vastly more fragile and unreliable than a system based on technology. Sure the engineers can make the system lie. And they probably will to some extent. But it's a much smaller number of people you need to keep pleased and policed.

bcOpus 8y ago

The formula of appealing to a small base which keeps you in power through cronyism is the formula for power. It’s true in every place you find political and financial power, from Beijing to small-town USA, to corporate boardrooms around the world, and tinpot dictators around the world. You might enjoy reading The Dictator’s Handbook.

goodwork 8y ago

How is that different from people working for FB Or Google? It's same there, a few of them are financially rewarded for pushing privacy evanding tactics and others silently follow otherwise risk being reported.

dimitrov 8y ago
Except Facebook and Google aren't operating mass incarceration camps that target people solely based on ethnic/religious affiliation. The moral dubiousness of working for Google isn't the same as working as an informant for the Chinese secret police.
- monocasa 8y ago
  Facebook does play a pretty direct role in the ongoing Rohingya genocide.
  - dimitrov 8y ago
    Facebook has paramilitary factions genociding the Rohingya? I'm not denying that Facebook played a role in the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories in Myanmar but to place the blame directly on them is absurd. Facebook is just an ill-moderated medium.
    - monocasa 8y ago
      There's more than that. Messenger/Facebook is used in a lot of the third world in place of stuff like SMS and phone calls. Facebook completely kneecapped the ability of the Rohingya to organize and tell their story by pulling stuff like this at the request of the Burmese government. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/20/facebook-rohingya-muslims-myanmar https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/20/facebook-... EDIT: This whole idea that Facebook's only sin was not moderating enough, and that they didn't give direct support to the government to help the genocide is just their PR and legal departments going into overdrive because they know they screwed up hard.
    - goodwork 8y ago
      Dimitrov, you just keep posting unsubstantiated comments. Show us proof that FB was not directly behind this Massacre. Monocasa proves links and sources, and you don't cite anything at all

nabla9 8y ago

China also tolerates civil unrest and civil disobedience as long as it's not directly challenging the authority of central government. Official name for it is "mass incidents" or "mass frustration". There are almost 200,000 of these incidents every year. Several of them grow into large demonstrations with barricades, sit-ins, and rioting. They are usually reactions against come companies, local government, land seizures, or some corrupt individuals. As long as people don't demand changing of the system, government often gives in at least a little. People can be changed, more investigations, some government actions can be cancelled. It's clever way to bend without breaking. Allow people to show their frustration against things that are wrong but control tightly what kind of targets are allowed.

bigmonads 8y ago
China could probably go much further. In America, you're shut down and surveilled for demanding systemic changes to the system (just try to build a movement in the United States for a change of government; see where that gets you). Much of that surveillance is automatic, and fed into police threat scores and FBI databases based off of online conversations (like this one) and other information (including financials, purchase history, social circle, etc). Now, in the United States, if you want to disrupt some other kind of corruption (say, farming industry practices around the treatment of animals) - this will get you on terrorist watchlists, and the FBI will infiltrate and seek the arrests of that behavior as well, enforcing the strict relationship that wealthy families have in the enforcement of American societal structure.
- nabla9 8y ago
  This is a false equivalence. Your second paragraph is just conspiracy theory. "It's all same" is cynical and unintelligent attitude.
  - bigmonads 8y ago
    False equivalence AND conspiracy theory? Lol. In order... "False equivalence": Nope, not saying they are equivalent. "Conspiracy theory": Nope, read the reporting on the Snowden documents, fusion centers, legal cases involving use of surveillance, statements by the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's all the same": I think what America is doing is both worse and of a different kind.