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I was told that this only happens in authoritarian regimes like China. Turns out that while everybody was talking about China exact same things were happening h

I was told that this only happens in authoritarian regimes like China. Turns out that while everybody was talking about China exact same things were happening here in the West. It's as if the whole focus on China was specifically designed to distract people from what's happening in their own countries.

jjd33 6y ago
The US has been on Saudi and North Korea level for a while now
- chance_state 6y ago
  Lol, what?
  - romanoderoma 6y ago
    Ehm... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/03/edward-snowden-nsa-surveillance-guardian-court-rules https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/03/edward-snowd...
    - ben_w 6y ago
      North Korea is rather a lot worse: https://insinuator.net/2015/07/redstar-os-watermarking/ https://insinuator.net/2015/07/redstar-os-watermarking/
      - notreallytrue 6y ago
        Being better than North Korea is a pretty low bar I would expect from the greatest democracy and country in the World to be in the top three, not a little bit better than those at the bottom
        ben_w 6y ago
        My point is NK is a lot worse, not “a little bit”.
        notreallytrue 6y ago
        As any other country did something similar to what US did? Can you name one which isn't already bad? Like, I don't know, Spain? Germany? Argentina? South Africa? The greatest democracy and country in the World shouldn't even be in the same business of North Korea style And yet...
        ben_w 6y ago
        There’s plenty of stuff America does wrong, present tense and past, without needing to make hyperbolic comparisons to NK.
        notreallytrue 6y ago
        It's not hyperbolic How many countries NK invaded? How many coup d'état that established long and painful military dictatorships around the World it supported and/or financed? At least nobody calls NK the greatest democracy and country in the world or the land of the free...
        ben_w 6y ago
        On the other hand, how many styles of haircut are you legally allowed in the USA? Can you leave if you want to? Can you criticise the government without you and your family being shot? Never mind Apples and Oranges, you’re comparing a rabid kitten (NK: you don’t want to be a cell inside it, but the animal is containable) with a healthy chimpanzee in the jungle you’re walking though (USA: violent and acts like it owns the place, so being one of its cells is safer than being a cell in many of the things around it).
        romanoderoma 6y ago
      - GekkePrutser 6y ago
        I would bet a guess that privacy in NK is actually better when you're purely looking at a digital point of view. After all, many people there won't have access to such technology. They'll be off the grid unlike most of us. Of course that doesn't actually give them privacy, I'm sure that there's plenty of 'friendly' neighbours spying on each other for a few bucks, basically stasi style. And also this watermarking isn't all that different from our browser fingerprinting and mega data collection. It's just a cultural difference. The NK government wants their citizens to know they're being spied on. Whereas ours is trying to hide it. Thus more focus on the endpoint device rather than the cloud side.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
textgel 6y ago
What concerns me is that with the increase in arguably totalitarian laws and the constant attempts on once sacrosanct principles like the above we're moving in a direction where we'll run out of room to point at that side and say "yes they've got X but I'd still rather us because they have Y" when more and more we have Y as well.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > […] the constant attempts on once sacrosanct principles like the above we're moving in a direction […] This is sometimes done on purpose: > The Overton Window is an approach to identifying the ideas that define the spectrum of acceptability of governmental policies. Politicians can only act within the acceptable range. Shifting the Overton Window involves proponents of policies outside the window persuading the public to expand the window. Proponents of current policies, or similar ones within the window, seek to convince people that policies outside it should be deemed unacceptable. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
- yogthos 6y ago
  I think we may already be in that situation given how China and the West handled the pandemic respectively. Our governments are quietly implementing all the worst aspects of Chinese authoritarianism and pervasive surveillance without any of the benefits of having a competent government that's able to deal with large scale problems. China dealt with the pandemic swiftly and decisively and life is getting back to normal there now. Meanwhile, the West had months of warning and vast majority of the governments chose to do nothing. Instead of stocking up on supplies and preparing the public the officials and the media called Chinese lockdowns authoritarian and played down the severity of the problem until thousands of people started dying. Our governments chose to protect business interests and to sacrifice the public for the sake of the profits. The pandemic is just a small preview of what we can expect to happen with climate change in the coming decade.
sharken 6y ago
The pandemic has allowed for European governments to introduce much of the same control as seen in China and North Korea. So it’s really not a surprise that the idea of banning encryption is on the table. So encryption as a basic human right sounds like the way to fight this.
- ben_w 6y ago
  A friend of mine here in Berlin is from Hong Kong. Thanks to the Pro-Democracy protests in Hong Kong, the general nature of which my friend confirmed, I know about how to use traffic cones to defend against tear gas. I’ve personally witnessed “we don’t like how Corona is being handled” marches here in Berlin. The difference is massive.
  - sharken 6y ago
    That’s a great point, thankfully Europe is more humane than China in dealing with riots. The concern for how Corona is handled in Europe, is that the temporary measures for dealing with Corona become permanent. In Denmark these temporary measures are supposed to expire in March 2021, but it’s anyone’s guess if that arrangement is honored by the government.
    - corona-research 6y ago
      Not to forget that top epidemiologists demand to stop the devastating measures immediately because our data shows that they cause much more harm than good.
    - BlueTemplar 6y ago
      Oh yeah, the yellow vests that lost their fingers and eyes find the police very humane indeed! /s
    - yogthos 6y ago
      > thankfully Europe is more humane than China in dealing with riots Watching police brutality in countries like France does not give me that impression in the slightest.
chimen 6y ago
The west has terrorists - "we're different"
- ptx 6y ago
  Terrorism is ostensibly the reason for what China is doing in Xinjiang.
  - chimen 6y ago
    /sarcasm
  - GekkePrutser 6y ago
    If you have millions of 'terrorists' to lock up, maybe you're really doing something wrong though ;)
    - yogthos 6y ago
      The Western approach is to just kill millions of people in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen instead.
romanoderoma 6y ago
You were told a lie. USA has been doing it as long as the second war started and never stopped. And they consider strong encryption a weapon. Are you familiar with the Zimmermann case?
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  It's also big in the Netherlands.. In the 90s they had the biggest number of phone taps in the world, and this is not per capita, but the absolute number! With a population a mere fraction of the US's. However the Netherlands is a fairly honest country when it comes to statistics, so I wouldn't be surprised that the US still came out on top, but they just didn't report most of their taps for 'national security' reasons. But something has really changed in the past 20-30 years. Before this there was no way to literally monitor everyone. It was too labour/storage intensive. You really had to be a 'person of interest' for some kind of (usually legitimate) reason. Whereas now in this digital age (and with everyone carrying a portable listening device in their pocket) this is totally feasible and thanks to Snowden we know it's actually being done too.
  - romanoderoma 6y ago
    > Before this there was no way to literally monitor everyone The DDR did it Another important factor is that until 20-30 years ago people communicated a lot less They mostly talked face to face The challenge today is not easier: to literally monitor everyone is not possible, the signal to noise ratio is too high They could listen to everyone, it's doubtful it is possible to extract any meaningful information on random communications between random people that are not being monitored because they are already of interest As someone else said metadata is more important because it allows to create connections between actors from thin air. When you have narrowed the scope, listening becomes a lot more effective.
- hughw 6y ago
  The Zimmerman telegram was from WWI and was intercepted by the British, not the Americans.
pjc50 6y ago
This has been going on in the West for as long as encryption has been a technology. I remember an encryption ban being discussed in RIPA 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Powers_Act_2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Po... Security services always demand total access to communications. It requires constant democratic pushback.
jariel 6y ago
"China exact same things were happening here in the West" No, there's really no comparison. A justice system, with reasonable information to infer a crime, seeking a warrant, using rules and regulations that have integrity, oversight, sanctioned by a Judge, following specific rules of access with certain, proportional criteria - is nothing like 'China'. In fact, we are already subject to that, everywhere in Europe, just not your messaging apps. It is not totalitarian whatsoever - there is just the risk of totalitarianism creeping in. A risk, which quite frankly is overstated. There is almost zero material harm that comes to innocent individuals as a result of these policies in states with lawful civic infrastructure. There can be, but it's rare and again, the 'problem' is more expansive and that an authoritarian takes power and uses the system for unlawful purposes. China does not have an independent legal system, or much concern for human rights. The CCP uses these things to censor every day speech on a variety of topics - even for the most innocuous things like comparing Xi to 'Winnie the Pooh' let alone for discussing things like Tibet, Hong Kong, or Taiwan privately. The CPP uses these controls as an 'total and complete information and thought control system' that interjects into every aspect of life. If you talk bad about Xi on your 'chat'- that will literally go on your file. It could affect your credit, promotional opportunities, how the justice system treats you etc.. They have successfully suppressed and controlled dialogue on a variety of issues - this system is frankly the CCP's most powerful means of control, far more so than anything physical like the 'police' or the 'army'. Western governments want to use it to go after people making bombs, sex traffickers, and tax evaders. There is no chance that the German government is going to send police to your house because you said 'Angela Merkel is a clown and needs to go!' to your buddy on WeChat. There is a chance some future government could to it, for the wrong reasons, and that's cause for come concern, but it's not pragmaticaly the issue.
- yogthos 6y ago
  >A justice system, with reasonable information to infer a crime, seeking a warrant, using rules and regulations that have integrity, oversight, sanctioned by a Judge, following specific rules of access with certain, proportional criteria - is nothing like 'China'. LMFAO imagine saying that with a straight face in 2020 when US nabs people off the street in unmarked vans, and the judicial branch is staffed by political partisans actively working withe the republican party to steal the election. You sweet summer child.

jjd33 6y ago

The US has been on Saudi and North Korea level for a while now

chance_state 6y ago
Lol, what?
- romanoderoma 6y ago
  Ehm... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/03/edward-snowden-nsa-surveillance-guardian-court-rules https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/03/edward-snowd...
  - ben_w 6y ago
    North Korea is rather a lot worse: https://insinuator.net/2015/07/redstar-os-watermarking/ https://insinuator.net/2015/07/redstar-os-watermarking/
    - notreallytrue 6y ago
      Being better than North Korea is a pretty low bar I would expect from the greatest democracy and country in the World to be in the top three, not a little bit better than those at the bottom
      - ben_w 6y ago
        My point is NK is a lot worse, not “a little bit”.
        notreallytrue 6y ago
        As any other country did something similar to what US did? Can you name one which isn't already bad? Like, I don't know, Spain? Germany? Argentina? South Africa? The greatest democracy and country in the World shouldn't even be in the same business of North Korea style And yet...
        ben_w 6y ago
        There’s plenty of stuff America does wrong, present tense and past, without needing to make hyperbolic comparisons to NK.
        notreallytrue 6y ago
        It's not hyperbolic How many countries NK invaded? How many coup d'état that established long and painful military dictatorships around the World it supported and/or financed? At least nobody calls NK the greatest democracy and country in the world or the land of the free...
        ben_w 6y ago
        On the other hand, how many styles of haircut are you legally allowed in the USA? Can you leave if you want to? Can you criticise the government without you and your family being shot? Never mind Apples and Oranges, you’re comparing a rabid kitten (NK: you don’t want to be a cell inside it, but the animal is containable) with a healthy chimpanzee in the jungle you’re walking though (USA: violent and acts like it owns the place, so being one of its cells is safer than being a cell in many of the things around it).
        romanoderoma 6y ago
    - GekkePrutser 6y ago
      I would bet a guess that privacy in NK is actually better when you're purely looking at a digital point of view. After all, many people there won't have access to such technology. They'll be off the grid unlike most of us. Of course that doesn't actually give them privacy, I'm sure that there's plenty of 'friendly' neighbours spying on each other for a few bucks, basically stasi style. And also this watermarking isn't all that different from our browser fingerprinting and mega data collection. It's just a cultural difference. The NK government wants their citizens to know they're being spied on. Whereas ours is trying to hide it. Thus more focus on the endpoint device rather than the cloud side.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

textgel 6y ago

What concerns me is that with the increase in arguably totalitarian laws and the constant attempts on once sacrosanct principles like the above we're moving in a direction where we'll run out of room to point at that side and say "yes they've got X but I'd still rather us because they have Y" when more and more we have Y as well.

throw0101a 6y ago
> […] the constant attempts on once sacrosanct principles like the above we're moving in a direction […] This is sometimes done on purpose: > The Overton Window is an approach to identifying the ideas that define the spectrum of acceptability of governmental policies. Politicians can only act within the acceptable range. Shifting the Overton Window involves proponents of policies outside the window persuading the public to expand the window. Proponents of current policies, or similar ones within the window, seek to convince people that policies outside it should be deemed unacceptable. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
yogthos 6y ago
I think we may already be in that situation given how China and the West handled the pandemic respectively. Our governments are quietly implementing all the worst aspects of Chinese authoritarianism and pervasive surveillance without any of the benefits of having a competent government that's able to deal with large scale problems. China dealt with the pandemic swiftly and decisively and life is getting back to normal there now. Meanwhile, the West had months of warning and vast majority of the governments chose to do nothing. Instead of stocking up on supplies and preparing the public the officials and the media called Chinese lockdowns authoritarian and played down the severity of the problem until thousands of people started dying. Our governments chose to protect business interests and to sacrifice the public for the sake of the profits. The pandemic is just a small preview of what we can expect to happen with climate change in the coming decade.

sharken 6y ago

The pandemic has allowed for European governments to introduce much of the same control as seen in China and North Korea. So it’s really not a surprise that the idea of banning encryption is on the table. So encryption as a basic human right sounds like the way to fight this.

ben_w 6y ago
A friend of mine here in Berlin is from Hong Kong. Thanks to the Pro-Democracy protests in Hong Kong, the general nature of which my friend confirmed, I know about how to use traffic cones to defend against tear gas. I’ve personally witnessed “we don’t like how Corona is being handled” marches here in Berlin. The difference is massive.
- sharken 6y ago
  That’s a great point, thankfully Europe is more humane than China in dealing with riots. The concern for how Corona is handled in Europe, is that the temporary measures for dealing with Corona become permanent. In Denmark these temporary measures are supposed to expire in March 2021, but it’s anyone’s guess if that arrangement is honored by the government.
  - corona-research 6y ago
    Not to forget that top epidemiologists demand to stop the devastating measures immediately because our data shows that they cause much more harm than good.
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    Oh yeah, the yellow vests that lost their fingers and eyes find the police very humane indeed! /s
  - yogthos 6y ago
    > thankfully Europe is more humane than China in dealing with riots Watching police brutality in countries like France does not give me that impression in the slightest.

chimen 6y ago

The west has terrorists - "we're different"

ptx 6y ago
Terrorism is ostensibly the reason for what China is doing in Xinjiang.
- chimen 6y ago
  /sarcasm
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  If you have millions of 'terrorists' to lock up, maybe you're really doing something wrong though ;)
  - yogthos 6y ago
    The Western approach is to just kill millions of people in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen instead.

romanoderoma 6y ago

You were told a lie. USA has been doing it as long as the second war started and never stopped. And they consider strong encryption a weapon. Are you familiar with the Zimmermann case?

GekkePrutser 6y ago
It's also big in the Netherlands.. In the 90s they had the biggest number of phone taps in the world, and this is not per capita, but the absolute number! With a population a mere fraction of the US's. However the Netherlands is a fairly honest country when it comes to statistics, so I wouldn't be surprised that the US still came out on top, but they just didn't report most of their taps for 'national security' reasons. But something has really changed in the past 20-30 years. Before this there was no way to literally monitor everyone. It was too labour/storage intensive. You really had to be a 'person of interest' for some kind of (usually legitimate) reason. Whereas now in this digital age (and with everyone carrying a portable listening device in their pocket) this is totally feasible and thanks to Snowden we know it's actually being done too.
- romanoderoma 6y ago
  > Before this there was no way to literally monitor everyone The DDR did it Another important factor is that until 20-30 years ago people communicated a lot less They mostly talked face to face The challenge today is not easier: to literally monitor everyone is not possible, the signal to noise ratio is too high They could listen to everyone, it's doubtful it is possible to extract any meaningful information on random communications between random people that are not being monitored because they are already of interest As someone else said metadata is more important because it allows to create connections between actors from thin air. When you have narrowed the scope, listening becomes a lot more effective.
hughw 6y ago
The Zimmerman telegram was from WWI and was intercepted by the British, not the Americans.

pjc50 6y ago

This has been going on in the West for as long as encryption has been a technology. I remember an encryption ban being discussed in RIPA 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Powers_Act_2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Po... Security services always demand total access to communications. It requires constant democratic pushback.

jariel 6y ago

"China exact same things were happening here in the West" No, there's really no comparison. A justice system, with reasonable information to infer a crime, seeking a warrant, using rules and regulations that have integrity, oversight, sanctioned by a Judge, following specific rules of access with certain, proportional criteria - is nothing like 'China'. In fact, we are already subject to that, everywhere in Europe, just not your messaging apps. It is not totalitarian whatsoever - there is just the risk of totalitarianism creeping in. A risk, which quite frankly is overstated. There is almost zero material harm that comes to innocent individuals as a result of these policies in states with lawful civic infrastructure. There can be, but it's rare and again, the 'problem' is more expansive and that an authoritarian takes power and uses the system for unlawful purposes. China does not have an independent legal system, or much concern for human rights. The CCP uses these things to censor every day speech on a variety of topics - even for the most innocuous things like comparing Xi to 'Winnie the Pooh' let alone for discussing things like Tibet, Hong Kong, or Taiwan privately. The CPP uses these controls as an 'total and complete information and thought control system' that interjects into every aspect of life. If you talk bad about Xi on your 'chat'- that will literally go on your file. It could affect your credit, promotional opportunities, how the justice system treats you etc.. They have successfully suppressed and controlled dialogue on a variety of issues - this system is frankly the CCP's most powerful means of control, far more so than anything physical like the 'police' or the 'army'. Western governments want to use it to go after people making bombs, sex traffickers, and tax evaders. There is no chance that the German government is going to send police to your house because you said 'Angela Merkel is a clown and needs to go!' to your buddy on WeChat. There is a chance some future government could to it, for the wrong reasons, and that's cause for come concern, but it's not pragmaticaly the issue.

yogthos 6y ago
>A justice system, with reasonable information to infer a crime, seeking a warrant, using rules and regulations that have integrity, oversight, sanctioned by a Judge, following specific rules of access with certain, proportional criteria - is nothing like 'China'. LMFAO imagine saying that with a straight face in 2020 when US nabs people off the street in unmarked vans, and the judicial branch is staffed by political partisans actively working withe the republican party to steal the election. You sweet summer child.