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The US continues to have the most pervasive mass surveillance infrastructure, and the most people detained on earth, approximately 25% of all of the planet's pr

The US continues to have the most pervasive mass surveillance infrastructure, and the most people detained on earth, approximately 25% of all of the planet's prisoners. But China bad. Sure. Yanks are pure cope.

Cider9986 5mo ago
Absolutely. The one of the biggest differences in the US is fair trials and innocence until proven guilty. We are tracked quite a bit, but not as much of it can be used against us, yet.
- pixel_popping 5mo ago
  Fair trial is a thing in China (maybe not in political circles, like almost every country in the world), it's not at all like people think, if you are an average citizen that have a conflict in business or your landlord doesn't want to give back your deposit or you've done something illegal then clearly it's mostly fair justice, even firing staff is complicated in China, labor laws are pretty strong in general.
- naishoya 5mo ago
  That may be true; in theory and in general for some specific sub-populations, at some particular range of dates in the past. It is however, not specifically the typical experience nor true for all individuals across the history of the nation, especially for significant portions of the population across a great deal of the nation's history, and it is remarkably less true for many in the nation at present. The tools of oppression are globally available, and are in use to deprive people of those explicitly enumerated freedoms both within and outside of the US borders everyday. That's just the way it is, and the way it has always been. For specific cases past and present, see: Native American treatment and conditions at any point in time from the time of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights until this moment in time. Also see the ongoing cases of extrajudicial incarceration and deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers of uncharged and non-hostile citizens and residents without legal repercussions from either state or federal judiciary. So, no, one cannot count on fair trial nor the presumption of innocence in the US, even though that is very much the promised state of affairs. Wishing does not make it true.
like_any_other 5mo ago
> the most people detained on earth The absolute number of "people detained" is meaningless, you have to compare it to the behavior of those people, otherwise you are led to silly conclusions such as that the criminal justice system fanatically hates men, because there are 10x more men in prison than women [1]. Once you normalize prison population by an indicator of violent crime, such as homicide rate, the USA stops being an outlier ('homicide' and 'incarceration' are rates per 100k) [2,3]: homicide incarceration prisoners per homicide USA 5.763 541 93.9 China 0.502 119 237.1 Norway 0.725 55 75.9 Canada 1.98 90 45.5 France 1.335 115 86.1 [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/252828/number-of-prisoners-in-the-us-by-gender/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/252828/number-of-prisone... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
- dotcoma 5mo ago
  But the real question is: Why is violent crime so much more common in the US than in Canada, or the UK or any EU country or Australia or Japan etc ?
  - like_any_other 5mo ago
    Only 31.5% of homicides are committed by non-Hispanic whites [1], while they were 57.8% of the population. That brings the white homicide rate to 3.14, which, if you squint, is pretty close to the Canadian 1.98. The common misclassification of non-white offenders as white (but almost never the reverse) [3] probably explains some of the remaining disparity. So in that respect, whites in the US are not so different from whites elsewhere. [1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-... (I think due to incomplete reporting, and due to including only cases where some information about the offender is known, the absolute numbers do not reflect the number of homicides in the entire US, but it is still useful for relative comparisons) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta... (using 2020 numbers, which are close enough for the 2019 FBI stats, which are the most recent I know of) [3] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1700341490206310416 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1700341490206310416
seanmcdirmid 5mo ago
Uhm, isn’t this article saying USA worse because it enabled China bad? And your point then of the USA being worse is kind of redundant, what am I missing?

Cider9986 5mo ago

Absolutely. The one of the biggest differences in the US is fair trials and innocence until proven guilty. We are tracked quite a bit, but not as much of it can be used against us, yet.

pixel_popping 5mo ago
Fair trial is a thing in China (maybe not in political circles, like almost every country in the world), it's not at all like people think, if you are an average citizen that have a conflict in business or your landlord doesn't want to give back your deposit or you've done something illegal then clearly it's mostly fair justice, even firing staff is complicated in China, labor laws are pretty strong in general.
naishoya 5mo ago
That may be true; in theory and in general for some specific sub-populations, at some particular range of dates in the past. It is however, not specifically the typical experience nor true for all individuals across the history of the nation, especially for significant portions of the population across a great deal of the nation's history, and it is remarkably less true for many in the nation at present. The tools of oppression are globally available, and are in use to deprive people of those explicitly enumerated freedoms both within and outside of the US borders everyday. That's just the way it is, and the way it has always been. For specific cases past and present, see: Native American treatment and conditions at any point in time from the time of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights until this moment in time. Also see the ongoing cases of extrajudicial incarceration and deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers of uncharged and non-hostile citizens and residents without legal repercussions from either state or federal judiciary. So, no, one cannot count on fair trial nor the presumption of innocence in the US, even though that is very much the promised state of affairs. Wishing does not make it true.

like_any_other 5mo ago

> the most people detained on earth The absolute number of "people detained" is meaningless, you have to compare it to the behavior of those people, otherwise you are led to silly conclusions such as that the criminal justice system fanatically hates men, because there are 10x more men in prison than women [1]. Once you normalize prison population by an indicator of violent crime, such as homicide rate, the USA stops being an outlier ('homicide' and 'incarceration' are rates per 100k) [2,3]: homicide incarceration prisoners per homicide USA 5.763 541 93.9 China 0.502 119 237.1 Norway 0.725 55 75.9 Canada 1.98 90 45.5 France 1.335 115 86.1 [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/252828/number-of-prisoners-in-the-us-by-gender/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/252828/number-of-prisone... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

dotcoma 5mo ago
But the real question is: Why is violent crime so much more common in the US than in Canada, or the UK or any EU country or Australia or Japan etc ?
- like_any_other 5mo ago
  Only 31.5% of homicides are committed by non-Hispanic whites [1], while they were 57.8% of the population. That brings the white homicide rate to 3.14, which, if you squint, is pretty close to the Canadian 1.98. The common misclassification of non-white offenders as white (but almost never the reverse) [3] probably explains some of the remaining disparity. So in that respect, whites in the US are not so different from whites elsewhere. [1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-... (I think due to incomplete reporting, and due to including only cases where some information about the offender is known, the absolute numbers do not reflect the number of homicides in the entire US, but it is still useful for relative comparisons) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta... (using 2020 numbers, which are close enough for the 2019 FBI stats, which are the most recent I know of) [3] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1700341490206310416 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1700341490206310416

seanmcdirmid 5mo ago

Uhm, isn’t this article saying USA worse because it enabled China bad? And your point then of the USA being worse is kind of redundant, what am I missing?