4 ms·

None of those had the surveillance of its citizens that the US does though. Maybe including some “tech inflation” Stasi of DDR might be up there but neither USS

by Dah00n 4y ago

None of those had the surveillance of its citizens that the US does though. Maybe including some “tech inflation” Stasi of DDR might be up there but neither USSR nor PRC has/had anything as massive as the US.

_cenw 4y ago
The PRC has a lot more CCTV, slightly less per capacita, but that's irrelevant if you account for density. They also have a lot more means to aggregate information at the municipal level and turn it into actionables, and they do so pretty openly. Meanwhile US cities and police departments are still in love with a glorified spreadsheet provider. Not that I'm advocating for any of this, but saying the PRC has less, or even substantially less surveilance than the US is a pretty laughable proposition.
qwytw 4y ago
> PRC anything as massive as the US Really? I assume domestically China engages in surveillance on a much higher scale than the US.
- throw10920 4y ago
  It absolutely does. Ten seconds of reading the Wikipedia page on the Great Firewall will show you that GP has absolutely no idea what they're talking about.
  - Dah00n 4y ago
    US not only have systems in place at home it also gathers data in other countries (UK, DK, DE, etc.) on US citizens. PRC has nothing like this that has been discovered so far.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
Stalin wanted it so much, he even had entire research institute dedicated to automatic voice recognition problem, staffed with jailed engineers, and utilizing vacuum tubes electronics (Solzhenitsyn, In the First Circle).
baremetal 4y ago
The Stasi kept files on about 5.6 million people. The Stasi had 90,000 full-time employees who were assisted by 170,000 full-time unofficial collaborators (Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter); together these made up 1 in 63 (nearly 2%) of the entire East German population.[1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_East_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_East_Germ...
- lenkite 4y ago
  Looks like Stasi were small peanuts compared to U.S. security agencies - which also have supercomputing at their fingers.
throw10920 4y ago
This is completely false. China requires that all service providers automatically decrypt all of their data for all users for the PRC, and the Great Firewall surveils and controls the vast majority of network traffic in China. The US has nothing remotely comparable to either of these things. You either don't know much about China, or don't know much about the US.
- cryptonym 4y ago
  Snowden sounded like US got access to your data regardless of TLS. Most of the information required to compare is not public, maybe China got a better equipment and funding than USA... but even if that's the case, it's not like China is the baseline and everything is great as long as we think we are better treated.
  - throw10920 4y ago
    > Snowden sounded like US got access to your data regardless of TLS. Still not relevant. Covert exploitation of cryptographic weaknesses that can be easily patched leading to a limited set of data whose use is constrained by well-defined legal processes (involving warrants and courts) is categorically different than "the state forces you to decrypt and hand them all of your data". They're not remotely comparable. > it's not like China is the baseline and everything is great as long as we think we are better treated Nobody is saying that.
    - sudosysgen 4y ago
      PRISM is literally the state forcing you to decrypt and hand over data. I'm sure the CCP has their own potemkin legal system - the FISA courts are smoke and dressing just the same.
      - throw10920 4y ago
        Please read my comment again. > limited set of data whose use is constrained by well-defined legal processes (involving warrants and courts) is categorically different than "the state forces you to decrypt and hand them all of your data". This still describes the difference between PRISM and the CCP's system. It doesn't matter if "the CCP has their own potemkin legal system" - the fact is that the NSA only (allegedly) takes a very small set of records and providers get to see every one of them, where's the CCP's system takes literally everything. Plus, we can look at the massive differences between the CCP and the US in every other way - the Great Firewall's real-time monitoring and censorship of all communication in the country, for instance, as well as the total lack of constitutional rights to privacy that the Chinese people have - and pretty reasonably conclude that the FISA courts are going to be more rigorous than whatever China has.

by Dah00n 4y ago

_cenw 4y ago

The PRC has a lot more CCTV, slightly less per capacita, but that's irrelevant if you account for density. They also have a lot more means to aggregate information at the municipal level and turn it into actionables, and they do so pretty openly. Meanwhile US cities and police departments are still in love with a glorified spreadsheet provider. Not that I'm advocating for any of this, but saying the PRC has less, or even substantially less surveilance than the US is a pretty laughable proposition.

qwytw 4y ago

> PRC anything as massive as the US Really? I assume domestically China engages in surveillance on a much higher scale than the US.

throw10920 4y ago
It absolutely does. Ten seconds of reading the Wikipedia page on the Great Firewall will show you that GP has absolutely no idea what they're talking about.
- Dah00n 4y ago
  US not only have systems in place at home it also gathers data in other countries (UK, DK, DE, etc.) on US citizens. PRC has nothing like this that has been discovered so far.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago

Stalin wanted it so much, he even had entire research institute dedicated to automatic voice recognition problem, staffed with jailed engineers, and utilizing vacuum tubes electronics (Solzhenitsyn, In the First Circle).

baremetal 4y ago

The Stasi kept files on about 5.6 million people. The Stasi had 90,000 full-time employees who were assisted by 170,000 full-time unofficial collaborators (Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter); together these made up 1 in 63 (nearly 2%) of the entire East German population.[1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_East_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_East_Germ...

lenkite 4y ago
Looks like Stasi were small peanuts compared to U.S. security agencies - which also have supercomputing at their fingers.

throw10920 4y ago

This is completely false. China requires that all service providers automatically decrypt all of their data for all users for the PRC, and the Great Firewall surveils and controls the vast majority of network traffic in China. The US has nothing remotely comparable to either of these things. You either don't know much about China, or don't know much about the US.

cryptonym 4y ago
Snowden sounded like US got access to your data regardless of TLS. Most of the information required to compare is not public, maybe China got a better equipment and funding than USA... but even if that's the case, it's not like China is the baseline and everything is great as long as we think we are better treated.
- throw10920 4y ago
  > Snowden sounded like US got access to your data regardless of TLS. Still not relevant. Covert exploitation of cryptographic weaknesses that can be easily patched leading to a limited set of data whose use is constrained by well-defined legal processes (involving warrants and courts) is categorically different than "the state forces you to decrypt and hand them all of your data". They're not remotely comparable. > it's not like China is the baseline and everything is great as long as we think we are better treated Nobody is saying that.
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    PRISM is literally the state forcing you to decrypt and hand over data. I'm sure the CCP has their own potemkin legal system - the FISA courts are smoke and dressing just the same.
    - throw10920 4y ago
      Please read my comment again. > limited set of data whose use is constrained by well-defined legal processes (involving warrants and courts) is categorically different than "the state forces you to decrypt and hand them all of your data". This still describes the difference between PRISM and the CCP's system. It doesn't matter if "the CCP has their own potemkin legal system" - the fact is that the NSA only (allegedly) takes a very small set of records and providers get to see every one of them, where's the CCP's system takes literally everything. Plus, we can look at the massive differences between the CCP and the US in every other way - the Great Firewall's real-time monitoring and censorship of all communication in the country, for instance, as well as the total lack of constitutional rights to privacy that the Chinese people have - and pretty reasonably conclude that the FISA courts are going to be more rigorous than whatever China has.