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China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

202 points by vincvinc 11y ago

coldcode 11y ago
The wet dream of all governments everywhere - the perfectly controlled citizen.
- higherpurpose 11y ago
  This is just the initial phase - finding out the traits of the perfectly controlled citizen. Next is actually creating such citizens. I wouldn't be surprised if within 3 decades China regulates how parents design their children at birth (as in they'll all have to design them to be compliant to the government in adulthood). http://www.cbsnews.com/news/designer-babies-on-the-way-in-china-scientists-attempt-to-unravel-human-intelligence/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/designer-babies-on-the-way-in-ch...
  - Ntrails 11y ago
    See, the thing about this comment isn't that I believe it couldn't happen. It's that I for damn sure don't think it will only be done by China. The designing will be regulated in all countries, some attributes will be ruled unsafe to alter, or only allowed to be altered in specific fashions. The appropriate medical council variant will explain rationally that it's unsafe to do otherwise for such and such reasons. The line between medical justification and political meddling is pretty easy to blur with a bit of pressure and some good relationships.
    - tinfoilman 11y ago
      Completely agree but I see it much worse. The general public will have access to change certain genes/or be required to make these changes for the 'good' of the population. These Genes will be to make the working class less disruptive (reducing conflict by reducing genes that generate anger/or narrowing the emotional band of people to a much more narrow scope (think gene changes that have the same result as anti depression medication)) while stating that these genes need to be changed to get rid of medical issues such as ADHD For example Think about removing the ability to have their own children, got to pay extra if you want your child to be able to have their own. The top will be able to change a lot of other things. They will be able to boost intelligent (do you really think the governments of the world want a super smart population? no, they will kept that for themselves) All in all we are getting to the stage where there will be 2 classes of humans. The working class will become completely inferior to the uppers and thanks to the gene changes very few if any will ever raise above their station Seems like we trying 1984 in US n Euro. And Brave new world in China If you try and counter this with "people wont stand for it" they will, none of the China population will stop it, and once its standard there they were be breeding super humans. The rest of the world will either have to do it to keep up, or accept our Chinese overlords So glad I have no plans to bring a child in to this future we all building for them
      - guard-of-terra 11y ago
        "working class" I actually doubt you need much working class in the society capable of large-scale gene editing. Working class is only profitable when produced by pre-industrial society on its own ("village").
        tinfoilman 11y ago
        Valid point lets go with instead Alpha (“the upper class”) Beta (“the second upper class”) Gamma (“the middle class”) Delta (“the second lower class”) Epsilon (“the lower class”) Double-Plus (“the superior subdivision among Alphas”) Plus (“the superior subdivision among Alphas, Betas, Gammas or Deltas, but inferior to Double-Plus”) Minus (“the inferior subdivision among Alphas, Betas, Gammas or Deltas”) savage (“a person outside the integrated portions of society, and therefore separate from all classes”) Your point about a society capable of large scale gene editing would not need a working class is legit. it will be used to thin the populations out to 'manageable' numbers. Then class split based on parentage. A perfect system and within 3-4 generations completely normal
        guard-of-terra 11y ago
        Gamma is not "the middle class", it's "blue collar". You don't really need deltas and epsilons in the long run. Unless they are very cheap to have, robots are going to replace them.
        Ntrails 11y ago
        I'm pretty soon you can just break it down into 2 groups. Morlocks and Eloi... Unrelated, this does make me want to watch Gattaca[1] again :) [1]http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/
        anon4 11y ago
        In the really long run, why would you need anything other than Alphas?
Aoyagi 11y ago
What are the odds that something like this is already in place on global scale by some American spooks? To "fight the war on terrorism" or something. Surely it's not that difficult to do considering internet megacorps already do behaviour analysis and payment processors already keep track of what goes where, including credit scoring.
- guard-of-terra 11y ago
  I doubt it. To make it work, you need leverage. Make citizen's life slightly easier or slightly worse based on his score. Worse access to credit, withholding from top universities, preventing from starting a business - not easy to do anything like that on a grand scale in market society. So you won't exactly be making a new citizen.
  - sideshowb 11y ago
    I presume Aoyagi meant a system like this but for monitoring, not shaping behaviour.
    - guard-of-terra 11y ago
      What's the point of monitoring things you won't be able to affect? Some agencies would love to spend the money on it tho, if allocated.
      - sideshowb 11y ago
        US security forces can affect things for the average person, just not the same things that China can. Not credit scores at the moment (well not legally on a mass scale), but they can for example put you on a no fly list; or if you're a non US citizen and they didn't like your "facebook" score, in this hypothetical system - they could deny you entry to the US. So yeah this is more than just monitoring, I just called it that to distinguish it from the large scale behaviour shaping China seems to be toying with. Even having such a system in place, however, makes people behave differently: google "panopticon".
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guard-of-terra 11y ago
Soviet Union tried to create a new citizen. You won't easily find creature more miserable than their result. Alcohol consumption spiked and life expectancy actually plummeted.
- tedks 11y ago
  The Soviet Union was run by increasingly aging and increasingly paranoid revolutionaries (literally, people who had fought a coup) who were generally unconcerned with science. The PRC is run by technocrats educated in the West. It's very nice to think that it's impossible to "create a new citizen," but the West has been doing that pretty effectively over the last few decades. I don't doubt the Chinese will be successful. There is no inherent good in the universe. There is no particle or fundamental force for morality. There are truly no constraints. It is nice to believe that good will win and evil will fail, but that doesn't always happen. There's no law of the universe preventing the PRC from creating a new citizen, a perpetually controllable citizen, held in check by pervasive surveillance of a very similar form to the one experienced in the West, only with the results visible, and leveraged against the people openly, rather than covertly and without opportunity to improve your score (try getting off the no-fly list). There is no law of the universe that totalitarianism loses and democracy wins. Maybe the PRC will be successful and create a permanently stable capitalist totalitarian state. I wonder who's writing their software?
  - guard-of-terra 11y ago
    "who were generally unconcerned with science" That one is far from truth. Soviet society was hugely concerned with science. They didn't lack in science in their ways; it just turned out that scientifically-sound methods often conflict with social reality and what people like. For example: while it is sound to build your cities as arrays of concrete blocks with wide roads served by public transportations, living in such environment is no picnic. When you relocate someone who used to have their garden, their garage with tools, etc - into a flat in concrete block, they usually begin to drink for the lack of activities they are used to.
    - 11y ago
thebouv 11y ago
What I wonder about when I read things like this: How did they get to this point? What goes on in the mind of the person sitting in the "idea room" when they first thought of this? Are they just the product of an already oppressive government and therefore see this as completely and totally fine? Or do they know that it is oppressive, but since they're already a cog in the machine, they pitch the idea up and get praised for it?
- smilekzs 11y ago
  > the product of an already oppressive government > but since they're already a cog in the machine The vast majority only care if they earn enough to make ends meet. Their silence contributes to where we are now.
- SamReidHughes 11y ago
  Let's say you're the Chinese government (or a person in the government) and care deeply about the future of China. What's your main concern? Is it not the prevention of destabilizing civic unrest like that we've seen in Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Ukraine, and for that matter, China? That's the worst possible thing that could happen to the country, and it's quite far from unlikely, and I'd want to do whatever I can to prevent it.
  - guard-of-terra 11y ago
    Then you should probably do same things that successful countries do. Ones that did not have devastating civic unrest. From Australia to Austria. What do they do? What's holding them afloat? Hint: it's the remnaints of democracy and civil society, not special services looking for destabilizing factors day and night. Special services don't hurt, but everyone relying on just them had bitter end. Treating your citizens like criminals didn't help. I assure you that Syria and Libya had extensive systems to counter insurgents, and it led them straight nowhere. As it was for DDR and USSR.
    - SamReidHughes 11y ago
      I'm not sure what your comment has to do with the motivations of the person in the "idea room."
oracle2025 11y ago
That sounds basically like a Credit Rating System, similar systems exists in probably every first world country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating
- toddmorey 11y ago
  This goes much further into social behavior, and takes advantage of consumer and social data in new ways: "If friends have a poor lending reputation, this reflects badly on the person, just as prolonged playing of video games. Buying diapers indicates responsibility and scores therefore well." Also, while it starts with financial responsibility, the ambitions are larger: "The intentions of the new system are not only economical, fighting fraudulent practices, but also moral. 'This is a deliberate effort by the Chinese government to promote among its citizens "socialist core values" such as patriotism, respecting the elderly, working hard and avoiding extravagant consumption', says Creemers."
- gradys 11y ago
  The difference being that credit ratings are used to evaluate how creditworthy you are by looking at tangible data that is (mostly) directly related to your use of credit and actually predictive of your credit worthiness. This system gives the government the power to codify and even gamify what it means to be a good citizen. It's attempting to shape the way people think and behave in an extremely invasive way. This is terrifying.
  - marcosdumay 11y ago
    Gamify is the perfect word, thanks. I'm curious about what kind of game people will play once given that score.
- captainmuon 11y ago
  Right, a mixture of that, and a few others: - Criminal records / record of conduct - Tracking by various advertising companies, market research, etc. - Whatever records NSA, FBI etc. keep on you. This doesn't even have to be a file-per-person, but they have your metadata, and if you stick out, you might come under closer scrutinty. The difference is that these sources are not pulled together. Also as a sibling post noted, there is no feedback to the citizens. I don't know whether I have a bad or a good score with the police. I hope I have a good score :-). But if you want to consciously change citizens behavior, you'd have to tell them their scores. (Well, what we do right now changes citizens behavior by scaring them, but thats a different issue.) One thing I find curious is that there is apparently no sensitivity among the inventors of this scheme towards how dystopian it sounds like. That's why you can have big posters in China saying things like "Friends! Be virtuous and vigilant!" or a Hong Kong official saying something in earnest like "if the brain is sick, it must be washed" with regards to school textbooks. There are PSAs and government posters in the US, too, and people try to push their agendas in school curriculums there, too... but for one they would not go quite as far in the US, and especially such manipulation is attempted much more tastefully.
Red_Tarsius 11y ago
This is madness. I thought I was reading a fake article. > the system is 'very ambitious in both depth and scope, including scrutinizing individual behavior and what books people read. It's Amazon's consumer tracking with an Orwellian political twist.' What a coincidence. Recently I had to decide whether to buy books on politics for kindle. I didn't like the fact that it tracks everything I buy, what sentences I highlight, the notes I keep... I bet my libertarian books would make my score very low in future China. > This score is not only determined by one's lending behavior, but also by hobbies and friends. If friends have a poor lending reputation, this reflects badly on the person, just as prolonged playing of video games. Buying diapers indicates responsibility and scores therefore well. This detail was hidden in the article, yet it's one of the most important. It's not about external control, but also self-control. This is what a true Orwellian society promotes. The score acts as feedback to everything we do. It's funny to imagine social hackers buying tons of diapers to get on top of the rankings.
- HSO 11y ago
  > Recently I had to decide whether to buy books on politics for kindle. I didn't like the fact that it tracks everything I buy, what sentences I highlight, the notes I keep... I bet my libertarian books would make my score very low in future China. This is why I keep "pirating" and hoarding books. I know it's bad for the common good and bad for the authors but I feel paranoid about corporations and national security agencies collecting and later, perhaps, analyzing what I read, including how long I linger over a page, what I underline, when I take screenshot excerpts, etc. I started innocently enough, by scanning all my physical books (and downloading the epubs or pirated pdfs of books I already paid for in physical form whenever available) just to lighten my steps, so to speak. Then I came upon a passage in 1984 where books were altered, entire passages excised and rewritten to suit whatever powers that be. It was completely unrealistic when 1984 was written, of course, but in 2013 (when I read it), this hit a little bit too close to home. With all our devices constantly itching to phone the mothership, this is not a fantasy anymore but a possibility. All that stands between Orwell's dark vision and reality is, in fact, political will and our collective memory of times when this was not possible. Perhaps future generations who do not remember physical books will more easily acquiesce to such intrusions for the sake of "mental hygiene" and, you know, the children and stuff. Anyhow, today I look at a 16K+ Bibdesk database which, of course, includes the files/ebooks on my airgapped machine and feel curiously satisfied. Not in a lifetime will I be able to read all this but I know that I could spend my remaining days reading freely, no matter the external circumstances. Freedom of thought! (Also, a very neat and nifty system for me personally I admit... :)
user_rob 11y ago
The interesting truth is that the majority of Chinese society agrees with and supports such policies. Misunderstanding that and possibly trying to save them is pointless and counter productive. In my experience there is a surprising lack of individual social responsibility (or ethical behaviour) in China unless they are aware that they are under surveillance.
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- ominous 11y ago
  What do you mean? People are a natural resource and the government manages that. (only half kidding, sadly. This is China you are talking about.)
markvdb 11y ago
Let's face it: we are not going to avoid mass data collection and scoring in the west either. The technology is just too cheap to not get people tempted to do it. The least bad defense probably is to subvert this into a kind of peer to peer panopticon as much as possible. Everyone sees and rates all kinds of aspects of everyone else explicitly and publicly.
- MarkPNeyer 11y ago
  I started working on the p2p version already:https://github.com/neyer/respect https://github.com/neyer/respect
walterbell 11y ago
From a Salon article on US data mining, http://www.salon.com/2015/04/26/big_datas_big_libertarian_lie_facebook_google_and_the_silicon_valley_ethical_overhaul_we_need/ http://www.salon.com/2015/04/26/big_datas_big_libertarian_li... "All of this is part of what I call the informational appetite. It’s our total faith in raw data, in the ability to extract empirical certainties about life’s greatest mysteries, if only one can deduce the proper connections. When the informational appetite is layered over social media, we get the messianic digital humanitarianism of Mark Zuckerberg. Connectivity becomes a human right; Facebook, we are told, can help stop terrorism and promote peace. (Check out Facebook.com/peace to see this hopeless naïveté in action.)"
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EGreg 11y ago
It's amazing how different the mentality is in Liberal Democracies versus, say, Communist or Islamic regimes. Personally, I think the evidence is clear that concentration of power, especially a "rating" like this, is a prelude to about the worst tools of oppression one can imagine. But even back here at home, little by little, we are on the way to being enslaved by the machines. If something can be more efficient (for consumers, say) it will be made more efficient and put pressure on all the humans (workers). Already our attention span is not what it used to be because as humans we have to deal with a huge volume of things being thrown at us. Already demand for human labor is decreasing. But what's next is much more efficient ways to punish people for certain behavior, and make them conform. The hive mind dominates the individual, with better and better tools. China rates its citizens, not the other way around. All the "soviet russia" joke formulas come true. The assumption is: one is permanent, the other is not. I wrote a piece on this. The genie is out of the bottle: welcome to the Big Data revolution: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169
- vegabook 11y ago
  Consumer credit rating agencies already essentially do this, and a number of subprime lenders only make credit decisions if they can connect to social media accounts. There are specialists in "connecting the dots" of all your various life activities right here in the West. Already certain sectors require a clean credit score to get a job. It's really not very different from this Chinese scheme, since this dot-joining will inevitably profile your political and social leanings, your secrets, your very personality and its inevitable flaws. China will do centrally what we do in a distributed fashion, but the end result is the same.
stox 11y ago
Can you say Acxiom? I knew you could.
osazuwa 11y ago
This is bad. But before judging China, people need to ask themselves if the hold their own government to the same standard of criticism. As an American, I feel if the US government had similar plans and someone had leaked them on Wikileaks, there would be more conversation about the leaker's girlfriend than outrage about the plans themselves.
- adventured 11y ago
  I don't know a single person that doesn't have a very low, highly critical opinion of the US Government already. That includes essentially universal skepticism of Congress. So yes, I think Americans criticize their government almost as a professional sport. Non-stop 24/7, everywhere. Even for things the government isn't responsible for. I'd argue the only thing Americans are guilty of is too much complaining and criticizing of their government, and not enough doing to change it as a follow-through.
  - sqeaky 11y ago
    This comment is horrible and wrong. Thanks Obama!
    - sqeaky 11y ago
      :( It saddens me that such an obvious joke gets downvoted. It would be nice if people could reply when they downvote. Was the joke not received as such, what is not funny or does the community hate jokes?
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    Most Americans do criticize the government, but only on a few party-aligned talking points. Few agree on what is worthy of criticism, and many miss the important issues because they are preoccupied by relatively inconsequential hot button issues.
  - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    Now you know (of) a single person. Our public servants are largely fine people. We get stuff that's weird because of people being dancing monkeys for campaign finance. This is actually, in my opinion, overt, specific and designed entertainment product. It's very rarely an attachment to principle or thought out - one reason Reagan did so well is that he pretty much believed a lot of what he said ( not all - you have to be tactical too ) . He said, not what people around him, said. Clinton wasn't as much of rigid principles, but you got the feeling he was, outside of being very charismatic, genuine. Even Dubya, I more or less trusted. Use your anthropic principle - there would not be people saying things like what, say Ted Cruz says unless there was positive feedback for it. I don't think nationalizing campaigns works, either. Huge public choice problem and a slightly different set of incentives. I've worked a bit with actual government employees, and they were uniformly great except for one clot of them. Total observer bias, though. All in all, I think the shear between what we actually want and what we say we want is the cause, and is an excellent example of revealed preferences. Why else would there have ever been some policies we've seen, like racial laws in the post-Reconstruction South? How does that ever make any sense at all, yet so much energy and time went into it? To misquote Walt Kelly ( of the Pogo cartoons ) - "we has met the enemy, and it is us." I have many fairly right-wing friends, and most of them, when pressed a bit, will clarify what they are afraid of. It's not nothing. They have their bias, I have mine. I'm able to talk to them about these things without much ugliness.
Zarkonnen 11y ago
The Solution (Bertolt Brecht) After the uprising of the 17th of June The Secretary of the Writers' Union Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee Stating that the people Had forfeited the confidence of the government And could win it back only By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier In that case for the government To dissolve the people And elect another?
tpeo 11y ago
I know this isn't a particularly constructive comment, or even a constructive comment at all, but reality really blows my mind sometimes.
Cerium 11y ago
This is simply product recommendation software for the government instead of a corporation like Amazon. Same software; recommends people instead of products! I also see an isolationist aspect: A citizen who spends significant time abroad would likely have a lower score and more trouble staying a part of Chinese society. Fun read that this article reminded me of: Harmony – July 20, 2010 by Project Itoh (Author), Alexander O. Smith (Translator) "In a world where human life is a precious global resource that must be protected at all costs, everything about a person -- choices, emotions, biochemistry, cell metabolism -- is monitored and assessed by computer systems, 24/7. A variety of complex feedback loops are in place to ensure optimum conservation of that resource, including everything from good old-fashioned peer pressure to mandatory inpatient psychiatric treatment." ( M. Garrison, Amazon Review)
Cerium 11y ago
This is simply product recommendation software for the government instead of a corporation like Amazon. Same software; recommends people instead of products! I also see an isolationist aspect: A citizen who spends significant time abroad would likely have a lower score and more trouble staying a part of Chinese society. Fun read that this article reminded me of: Harmony – July 20, 2010 by Project Itoh (Author), Alexander O. Smith (Translator) "In a world where human life is a precious global resource that must be protected at all costs, everything about a person -- choices, emotions, biochemistry, cell metabolism -- is monitored and assessed by computer systems, 24/7. A variety of complex feedback loops are in place to ensure optimum conservation of that resource, including everything from good old-fashioned peer pressure to mandatory inpatient psychiatric treatment." ( M. Garrison, Amazon Review)
sebringj 11y ago
I'm glad China does this so we can see real world examples of why we don't fuck with freedom. This will implode eventually just like our money driven political system bullshit in America.
- xnull6guest 11y ago
  It's funny that when very analogous things happen in America I am accosted by people defending the principle that the West is still a stalwart of 'freedom' because we can still choose and have the freedom to take actions that would hurt us (lower our scores). If one were to apply the same sort of simplistic argument in the China case, they have as much freedom as anyone else has. IMO we would also be fools if we don't think there is a scoring system to help sort the millions of Americans with profiles in the American intelligence apparatus. This is our brave new world.
fown9 11y ago
China has an authoritarian government that produces pollution that threatens the entire world, uses the great firewall to attack tech companies in other countries, ignores human rights and free speech, and supports dictators in Russia and Africa. If China gets anymore powerful, the world is doomed. We need to curb commerce with China.
- daymanstep 11y ago
  Is this a joke?
  - xnull6guest 11y ago
    Probably not. The US superpower status has been hollowing out and China has begun to be able to project power in very impressive ways. The US sees China as its major threat right now. What the US government would like to do is 'contain' China by keeping it a regional force - so that it can't complete as a global power. In anticipation of future conflict there has already been a large amount of anti-China sentiment creeping in America - suddenly all of the news about China has a negative spin. If they land on the moon its portrayed as scary rather than impressive. If they build islands in the middle of the Ocean (legally) it's a 'great mound of sand' rather than an incredibly impressive engineering feat. China's selling of air defense systems that thwart the US and the collisions of and mutual reconnaissance of our naval vessels aren't covered much - basically few real facts but lots of spin. The US doesn't know whether it will be able to beat back China without having to resort to violence. If you watch the presidential speeches between candidates and Washington thinktanks they all have a stance on how they will deal with 'the China problem' (China is ambitious and there ain't room enough for the both of us). Jeb Bush basically said military might - Clinton wants to follow in line with (her) TPP. There will be more anti-China slant. The interests of China and the US are at odds and becoming ever more so. This poster is either part of a spin machine or has fallen for the naive and simplistic narrative of good-versus-evil. All in all though, by all accounts, China and the US are set to butt heads and already have been.
    - happyscrappy 11y ago
MarkPNeyer 11y ago
I was working on a voluntary, p2p version of this: https://github.com/neyer/respect https://github.com/neyer/respect
pg_is_a_butt 11y ago
yeah, america is so much better letting 3 private corporations do it instead. you're all idiots.
shilpam 11y ago
Wow... how many more sick and oppressive policies does the Chinese government have to churn out (and so brazenly too) before the people of China say something? Where's the social unrest.. where's their sense of responsibility towards their future generations to nip a thing like this in the bud before it becomes the norm... what, nothing??
- doctorshady 11y ago
  You might ask the same thing about the spying programs in our own back yard.
jacquesm 11y ago
I don't think China is the only country that does this. I love the 'respecting the elderly' bit, as in: respect the party bosses.
- bdamm 11y ago
  Indeed, private companies in the United States already do this. The question is what will the data be used for?
  - ginko 11y ago
    This might show my European perspective, but I'd rather have my government collect such data than some unaccountable private entity. Even better if no one does it of course.
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      I think it shows your perspective, not necessarily a European one.
    - kristofferR 11y ago
      What makes you think the government would be accountable?
    - adam419 11y ago
      This perspective is in my opinion entirely misguided. The incentive of a private organization is to find ways to profit off you. That desire leads to fairly predictable behavior. On the other hand, a government owns you and has true power over you. While the odds of a company abusing this information is much more likely, it's damage to you (abusing you with unwanted ads, etc) is far less bad than how a government would use such info to abuse you. Another dimension to this is that if a private company establishes a monopoly on your information, it's position is all but permanent. It's possible for a whole slough of similar companies to acquire the same information, therefore nullifying each others monopoly and power over you. With a government this is not the case.
    - 11y ago
vinalia 11y ago
There was a good talk back in 2012 from ex NSA that laid out some of the details for how the US surveillance keeps track of online behavior too[1]. I think (as awful as it is) we can expect most governments major governments to do this if it's within their technical capacity. To get out from under this, I think we'll need 100% encryption of everything, open source devices, and ways for companies to make money without ads or data brokering. Basically, this will stop when hell freezes over. [1] http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2012/29c3-5338-en-enemies_of_the_state_h264.html#video&t=4584 http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2012/29c3-5338-en-enemie... speed up to 1:14 for the good stuff
- xnull6guest 11y ago
  Have you been following the news with regard to the Defense Department and Silicon Valley? There is a concerted effort now, through government compulsion and money, to funnel venture capitol towards start-ups with cyber security (offensive and defensive) and away from those offering encryption and privacy services and communications solutions.
  - colordrops 11y ago
    Could you elaborate or provide links?
    - xnull6guest 11y ago
      The sum total of the following links: DoD will be investing, through parterships with executives of companies that acquire technology from startups, like Facebook, and with partnerships with Silicon Valley Venture Capital Firms to invest in companies that increase the national cybersecurity posture of the US (attack and defense) and to limit funding to technology that it thought to harm the national security of the US (E2E encryption solutions are specifically mentioned). The past few months have seen many defense officials making their way through silicon valley to meet with executives and VC firms, including the Admirial and soon-to-be-representative of the State Department. http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/24/department-of-defense-creates-new-cyberunit-in-silicon-valley/ http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/24/department-of-defense-cre... http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/us/white-house-takes-cybersecurity-pitch-to-silicon-valley.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/us/white-house-takes-cyber... http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_27974832/defense-secretary-calls-rebuilding-ties-silicon-valley http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_27974832/defense-secr... http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/science/pentagon-looking-for-edge-in-the-future-checks-in-with-silicon-valley.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/science/pentagon-looking-f... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/23/technology/the-pentagon-as-start-up-incubator.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/23/technology/the-pentagon-as... http://www.hngn.com/articles/87223/20150424/secretary-defense-lays-out-new-cyberwar-strategy-silicon-valley-help.htm http://www.hngn.com/articles/87223/20150424/secretary-defens... https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/23/defense-department-silicon-valley/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/23/defense-department-sili... http://cryptome.org/2015/04/dod-cyber-strategy-2015.pdf http://cryptome.org/2015/04/dod-cyber-strategy-2015.pdf
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olefoo 11y ago
My gut reaction ( being an anglo, American, redneck, privileged, don't tread on me kind of person ) is that this is horrible. But thinking deeper on it I wonder if this is what Chinese Democracy looks like. The goal being maximal harmony, rather than maximal personal freedom. The method being a constant polling of all participants by all participants rather than occasional polling of those who can be bothered to vote. It looks alien to us because it is alien to us.
- UweSchmidt 11y ago
  It looks alien to you because you haven't come to terms with the fundamental shift in technology (all the data that is created, collected and analyzed) and politics in western society (using said data in the name of security). The current trend is to gather all data and to use it in any way possible, regardless if you're in China or if you have a Confederate flag on your truck.
  - olefoo 11y ago
    Just an FYI a confederate flag is as offensive to most thinking Americans as a Swastika flag would be to most thinking Germans. For various reasons we don't currently ban their display. But it is and should be a quick route to political irrelevance to claim it as your own.
- fineman 11y ago
  > [...] I wonder if this is what Chinese Democracy looks like. No, tautologically because it's not a democracy. Balance of power issues pretty much mean that a democracy can't stalk its citizens and still claim that they have an independent right to vote. And that's ignoring all the other stuff we know China does to maintain order like kidnap and murder dissident bloggers. Also, this concept that maybe asian people are actually happier (presumably than other 'races') when tightly controlled is offensively racist. China has traditionally been a brutal authoritarian state but that doesn't mean the people are happier when dictated to any more than anyone's fingers naturally pluck cotton better despite centuries worth of evidence...
chippyleet 11y ago
119 comments but not a single one drawing the parallels between this and the NSA's X-KeyScore program.
allan_s 11y ago
does somebody has a link to some Chinese press news about that ?

202 points by vincvinc 11y ago

coldcode 11y ago

The wet dream of all governments everywhere - the perfectly controlled citizen.

higherpurpose 11y ago
This is just the initial phase - finding out the traits of the perfectly controlled citizen. Next is actually creating such citizens. I wouldn't be surprised if within 3 decades China regulates how parents design their children at birth (as in they'll all have to design them to be compliant to the government in adulthood). http://www.cbsnews.com/news/designer-babies-on-the-way-in-china-scientists-attempt-to-unravel-human-intelligence/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/designer-babies-on-the-way-in-ch...
- Ntrails 11y ago
  See, the thing about this comment isn't that I believe it couldn't happen. It's that I for damn sure don't think it will only be done by China. The designing will be regulated in all countries, some attributes will be ruled unsafe to alter, or only allowed to be altered in specific fashions. The appropriate medical council variant will explain rationally that it's unsafe to do otherwise for such and such reasons. The line between medical justification and political meddling is pretty easy to blur with a bit of pressure and some good relationships.
  - tinfoilman 11y ago
    Completely agree but I see it much worse. The general public will have access to change certain genes/or be required to make these changes for the 'good' of the population. These Genes will be to make the working class less disruptive (reducing conflict by reducing genes that generate anger/or narrowing the emotional band of people to a much more narrow scope (think gene changes that have the same result as anti depression medication)) while stating that these genes need to be changed to get rid of medical issues such as ADHD For example Think about removing the ability to have their own children, got to pay extra if you want your child to be able to have their own. The top will be able to change a lot of other things. They will be able to boost intelligent (do you really think the governments of the world want a super smart population? no, they will kept that for themselves) All in all we are getting to the stage where there will be 2 classes of humans. The working class will become completely inferior to the uppers and thanks to the gene changes very few if any will ever raise above their station Seems like we trying 1984 in US n Euro. And Brave new world in China If you try and counter this with "people wont stand for it" they will, none of the China population will stop it, and once its standard there they were be breeding super humans. The rest of the world will either have to do it to keep up, or accept our Chinese overlords So glad I have no plans to bring a child in to this future we all building for them
    - guard-of-terra 11y ago
      "working class" I actually doubt you need much working class in the society capable of large-scale gene editing. Working class is only profitable when produced by pre-industrial society on its own ("village").
      - tinfoilman 11y ago
        Valid point lets go with instead Alpha (“the upper class”) Beta (“the second upper class”) Gamma (“the middle class”) Delta (“the second lower class”) Epsilon (“the lower class”) Double-Plus (“the superior subdivision among Alphas”) Plus (“the superior subdivision among Alphas, Betas, Gammas or Deltas, but inferior to Double-Plus”) Minus (“the inferior subdivision among Alphas, Betas, Gammas or Deltas”) savage (“a person outside the integrated portions of society, and therefore separate from all classes”) Your point about a society capable of large scale gene editing would not need a working class is legit. it will be used to thin the populations out to 'manageable' numbers. Then class split based on parentage. A perfect system and within 3-4 generations completely normal
        guard-of-terra 11y ago
        Gamma is not "the middle class", it's "blue collar". You don't really need deltas and epsilons in the long run. Unless they are very cheap to have, robots are going to replace them.
        Ntrails 11y ago
        I'm pretty soon you can just break it down into 2 groups. Morlocks and Eloi... Unrelated, this does make me want to watch Gattaca[1] again :) [1]http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/
        anon4 11y ago
        In the really long run, why would you need anything other than Alphas?

Aoyagi 11y ago

What are the odds that something like this is already in place on global scale by some American spooks? To "fight the war on terrorism" or something. Surely it's not that difficult to do considering internet megacorps already do behaviour analysis and payment processors already keep track of what goes where, including credit scoring.

guard-of-terra 11y ago
I doubt it. To make it work, you need leverage. Make citizen's life slightly easier or slightly worse based on his score. Worse access to credit, withholding from top universities, preventing from starting a business - not easy to do anything like that on a grand scale in market society. So you won't exactly be making a new citizen.
- sideshowb 11y ago
  I presume Aoyagi meant a system like this but for monitoring, not shaping behaviour.
  - guard-of-terra 11y ago
    What's the point of monitoring things you won't be able to affect? Some agencies would love to spend the money on it tho, if allocated.
    - sideshowb 11y ago
      US security forces can affect things for the average person, just not the same things that China can. Not credit scores at the moment (well not legally on a mass scale), but they can for example put you on a no fly list; or if you're a non US citizen and they didn't like your "facebook" score, in this hypothetical system - they could deny you entry to the US. So yeah this is more than just monitoring, I just called it that to distinguish it from the large scale behaviour shaping China seems to be toying with. Even having such a system in place, however, makes people behave differently: google "panopticon".

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guard-of-terra 11y ago

Soviet Union tried to create a new citizen. You won't easily find creature more miserable than their result. Alcohol consumption spiked and life expectancy actually plummeted.

tedks 11y ago
The Soviet Union was run by increasingly aging and increasingly paranoid revolutionaries (literally, people who had fought a coup) who were generally unconcerned with science. The PRC is run by technocrats educated in the West. It's very nice to think that it's impossible to "create a new citizen," but the West has been doing that pretty effectively over the last few decades. I don't doubt the Chinese will be successful. There is no inherent good in the universe. There is no particle or fundamental force for morality. There are truly no constraints. It is nice to believe that good will win and evil will fail, but that doesn't always happen. There's no law of the universe preventing the PRC from creating a new citizen, a perpetually controllable citizen, held in check by pervasive surveillance of a very similar form to the one experienced in the West, only with the results visible, and leveraged against the people openly, rather than covertly and without opportunity to improve your score (try getting off the no-fly list). There is no law of the universe that totalitarianism loses and democracy wins. Maybe the PRC will be successful and create a permanently stable capitalist totalitarian state. I wonder who's writing their software?
- guard-of-terra 11y ago
  "who were generally unconcerned with science" That one is far from truth. Soviet society was hugely concerned with science. They didn't lack in science in their ways; it just turned out that scientifically-sound methods often conflict with social reality and what people like. For example: while it is sound to build your cities as arrays of concrete blocks with wide roads served by public transportations, living in such environment is no picnic. When you relocate someone who used to have their garden, their garage with tools, etc - into a flat in concrete block, they usually begin to drink for the lack of activities they are used to.
  - 11y ago

thebouv 11y ago

What I wonder about when I read things like this: How did they get to this point? What goes on in the mind of the person sitting in the "idea room" when they first thought of this? Are they just the product of an already oppressive government and therefore see this as completely and totally fine? Or do they know that it is oppressive, but since they're already a cog in the machine, they pitch the idea up and get praised for it?

smilekzs 11y ago
> the product of an already oppressive government > but since they're already a cog in the machine The vast majority only care if they earn enough to make ends meet. Their silence contributes to where we are now.
SamReidHughes 11y ago
Let's say you're the Chinese government (or a person in the government) and care deeply about the future of China. What's your main concern? Is it not the prevention of destabilizing civic unrest like that we've seen in Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Ukraine, and for that matter, China? That's the worst possible thing that could happen to the country, and it's quite far from unlikely, and I'd want to do whatever I can to prevent it.
- guard-of-terra 11y ago
  Then you should probably do same things that successful countries do. Ones that did not have devastating civic unrest. From Australia to Austria. What do they do? What's holding them afloat? Hint: it's the remnaints of democracy and civil society, not special services looking for destabilizing factors day and night. Special services don't hurt, but everyone relying on just them had bitter end. Treating your citizens like criminals didn't help. I assure you that Syria and Libya had extensive systems to counter insurgents, and it led them straight nowhere. As it was for DDR and USSR.
  - SamReidHughes 11y ago
    I'm not sure what your comment has to do with the motivations of the person in the "idea room."

oracle2025 11y ago

That sounds basically like a Credit Rating System, similar systems exists in probably every first world country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating

toddmorey 11y ago
This goes much further into social behavior, and takes advantage of consumer and social data in new ways: "If friends have a poor lending reputation, this reflects badly on the person, just as prolonged playing of video games. Buying diapers indicates responsibility and scores therefore well." Also, while it starts with financial responsibility, the ambitions are larger: "The intentions of the new system are not only economical, fighting fraudulent practices, but also moral. 'This is a deliberate effort by the Chinese government to promote among its citizens "socialist core values" such as patriotism, respecting the elderly, working hard and avoiding extravagant consumption', says Creemers."
gradys 11y ago
The difference being that credit ratings are used to evaluate how creditworthy you are by looking at tangible data that is (mostly) directly related to your use of credit and actually predictive of your credit worthiness. This system gives the government the power to codify and even gamify what it means to be a good citizen. It's attempting to shape the way people think and behave in an extremely invasive way. This is terrifying.
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  Gamify is the perfect word, thanks. I'm curious about what kind of game people will play once given that score.
captainmuon 11y ago
Right, a mixture of that, and a few others: - Criminal records / record of conduct - Tracking by various advertising companies, market research, etc. - Whatever records NSA, FBI etc. keep on you. This doesn't even have to be a file-per-person, but they have your metadata, and if you stick out, you might come under closer scrutinty. The difference is that these sources are not pulled together. Also as a sibling post noted, there is no feedback to the citizens. I don't know whether I have a bad or a good score with the police. I hope I have a good score :-). But if you want to consciously change citizens behavior, you'd have to tell them their scores. (Well, what we do right now changes citizens behavior by scaring them, but thats a different issue.) One thing I find curious is that there is apparently no sensitivity among the inventors of this scheme towards how dystopian it sounds like. That's why you can have big posters in China saying things like "Friends! Be virtuous and vigilant!" or a Hong Kong official saying something in earnest like "if the brain is sick, it must be washed" with regards to school textbooks. There are PSAs and government posters in the US, too, and people try to push their agendas in school curriculums there, too... but for one they would not go quite as far in the US, and especially such manipulation is attempted much more tastefully.

Red_Tarsius 11y ago

This is madness. I thought I was reading a fake article. > the system is 'very ambitious in both depth and scope, including scrutinizing individual behavior and what books people read. It's Amazon's consumer tracking with an Orwellian political twist.' What a coincidence. Recently I had to decide whether to buy books on politics for kindle. I didn't like the fact that it tracks everything I buy, what sentences I highlight, the notes I keep... I bet my libertarian books would make my score very low in future China. > This score is not only determined by one's lending behavior, but also by hobbies and friends. If friends have a poor lending reputation, this reflects badly on the person, just as prolonged playing of video games. Buying diapers indicates responsibility and scores therefore well. This detail was hidden in the article, yet it's one of the most important. It's not about external control, but also self-control. This is what a true Orwellian society promotes. The score acts as feedback to everything we do. It's funny to imagine social hackers buying tons of diapers to get on top of the rankings.

HSO 11y ago
> Recently I had to decide whether to buy books on politics for kindle. I didn't like the fact that it tracks everything I buy, what sentences I highlight, the notes I keep... I bet my libertarian books would make my score very low in future China. This is why I keep "pirating" and hoarding books. I know it's bad for the common good and bad for the authors but I feel paranoid about corporations and national security agencies collecting and later, perhaps, analyzing what I read, including how long I linger over a page, what I underline, when I take screenshot excerpts, etc. I started innocently enough, by scanning all my physical books (and downloading the epubs or pirated pdfs of books I already paid for in physical form whenever available) just to lighten my steps, so to speak. Then I came upon a passage in 1984 where books were altered, entire passages excised and rewritten to suit whatever powers that be. It was completely unrealistic when 1984 was written, of course, but in 2013 (when I read it), this hit a little bit too close to home. With all our devices constantly itching to phone the mothership, this is not a fantasy anymore but a possibility. All that stands between Orwell's dark vision and reality is, in fact, political will and our collective memory of times when this was not possible. Perhaps future generations who do not remember physical books will more easily acquiesce to such intrusions for the sake of "mental hygiene" and, you know, the children and stuff. Anyhow, today I look at a 16K+ Bibdesk database which, of course, includes the files/ebooks on my airgapped machine and feel curiously satisfied. Not in a lifetime will I be able to read all this but I know that I could spend my remaining days reading freely, no matter the external circumstances. Freedom of thought! (Also, a very neat and nifty system for me personally I admit... :)

user_rob 11y ago

The interesting truth is that the majority of Chinese society agrees with and supports such policies. Misunderstanding that and possibly trying to save them is pointless and counter productive. In my experience there is a surprising lack of individual social responsibility (or ethical behaviour) in China unless they are aware that they are under surveillance.

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ominous 11y ago
What do you mean? People are a natural resource and the government manages that. (only half kidding, sadly. This is China you are talking about.)

markvdb 11y ago

Let's face it: we are not going to avoid mass data collection and scoring in the west either. The technology is just too cheap to not get people tempted to do it. The least bad defense probably is to subvert this into a kind of peer to peer panopticon as much as possible. Everyone sees and rates all kinds of aspects of everyone else explicitly and publicly.

MarkPNeyer 11y ago
I started working on the p2p version already:https://github.com/neyer/respect https://github.com/neyer/respect

walterbell 11y ago

From a Salon article on US data mining, http://www.salon.com/2015/04/26/big_datas_big_libertarian_lie_facebook_google_and_the_silicon_valley_ethical_overhaul_we_need/ http://www.salon.com/2015/04/26/big_datas_big_libertarian_li... "All of this is part of what I call the informational appetite. It’s our total faith in raw data, in the ability to extract empirical certainties about life’s greatest mysteries, if only one can deduce the proper connections. When the informational appetite is layered over social media, we get the messianic digital humanitarianism of Mark Zuckerberg. Connectivity becomes a human right; Facebook, we are told, can help stop terrorism and promote peace. (Check out Facebook.com/peace to see this hopeless naïveté in action.)"

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EGreg 11y ago

It's amazing how different the mentality is in Liberal Democracies versus, say, Communist or Islamic regimes. Personally, I think the evidence is clear that concentration of power, especially a "rating" like this, is a prelude to about the worst tools of oppression one can imagine. But even back here at home, little by little, we are on the way to being enslaved by the machines. If something can be more efficient (for consumers, say) it will be made more efficient and put pressure on all the humans (workers). Already our attention span is not what it used to be because as humans we have to deal with a huge volume of things being thrown at us. Already demand for human labor is decreasing. But what's next is much more efficient ways to punish people for certain behavior, and make them conform. The hive mind dominates the individual, with better and better tools. China rates its citizens, not the other way around. All the "soviet russia" joke formulas come true. The assumption is: one is permanent, the other is not. I wrote a piece on this. The genie is out of the bottle: welcome to the Big Data revolution: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169

vegabook 11y ago
Consumer credit rating agencies already essentially do this, and a number of subprime lenders only make credit decisions if they can connect to social media accounts. There are specialists in "connecting the dots" of all your various life activities right here in the West. Already certain sectors require a clean credit score to get a job. It's really not very different from this Chinese scheme, since this dot-joining will inevitably profile your political and social leanings, your secrets, your very personality and its inevitable flaws. China will do centrally what we do in a distributed fashion, but the end result is the same.

stox 11y ago

Can you say Acxiom? I knew you could.

osazuwa 11y ago

This is bad. But before judging China, people need to ask themselves if the hold their own government to the same standard of criticism. As an American, I feel if the US government had similar plans and someone had leaked them on Wikileaks, there would be more conversation about the leaker's girlfriend than outrage about the plans themselves.

adventured 11y ago
I don't know a single person that doesn't have a very low, highly critical opinion of the US Government already. That includes essentially universal skepticism of Congress. So yes, I think Americans criticize their government almost as a professional sport. Non-stop 24/7, everywhere. Even for things the government isn't responsible for. I'd argue the only thing Americans are guilty of is too much complaining and criticizing of their government, and not enough doing to change it as a follow-through.
- sqeaky 11y ago
  This comment is horrible and wrong. Thanks Obama!
  - sqeaky 11y ago
    :( It saddens me that such an obvious joke gets downvoted. It would be nice if people could reply when they downvote. Was the joke not received as such, what is not funny or does the community hate jokes?
- nitrogen 11y ago
  Most Americans do criticize the government, but only on a few party-aligned talking points. Few agree on what is worthy of criticism, and many miss the important issues because they are preoccupied by relatively inconsequential hot button issues.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  Now you know (of) a single person. Our public servants are largely fine people. We get stuff that's weird because of people being dancing monkeys for campaign finance. This is actually, in my opinion, overt, specific and designed entertainment product. It's very rarely an attachment to principle or thought out - one reason Reagan did so well is that he pretty much believed a lot of what he said ( not all - you have to be tactical too ) . He said, not what people around him, said. Clinton wasn't as much of rigid principles, but you got the feeling he was, outside of being very charismatic, genuine. Even Dubya, I more or less trusted. Use your anthropic principle - there would not be people saying things like what, say Ted Cruz says unless there was positive feedback for it. I don't think nationalizing campaigns works, either. Huge public choice problem and a slightly different set of incentives. I've worked a bit with actual government employees, and they were uniformly great except for one clot of them. Total observer bias, though. All in all, I think the shear between what we actually want and what we say we want is the cause, and is an excellent example of revealed preferences. Why else would there have ever been some policies we've seen, like racial laws in the post-Reconstruction South? How does that ever make any sense at all, yet so much energy and time went into it? To misquote Walt Kelly ( of the Pogo cartoons ) - "we has met the enemy, and it is us." I have many fairly right-wing friends, and most of them, when pressed a bit, will clarify what they are afraid of. It's not nothing. They have their bias, I have mine. I'm able to talk to them about these things without much ugliness.

Zarkonnen 11y ago

The Solution (Bertolt Brecht) After the uprising of the 17th of June The Secretary of the Writers' Union Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee Stating that the people Had forfeited the confidence of the government And could win it back only By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier In that case for the government To dissolve the people And elect another?

tpeo 11y ago

I know this isn't a particularly constructive comment, or even a constructive comment at all, but reality really blows my mind sometimes.

Cerium 11y ago

This is simply product recommendation software for the government instead of a corporation like Amazon. Same software; recommends people instead of products! I also see an isolationist aspect: A citizen who spends significant time abroad would likely have a lower score and more trouble staying a part of Chinese society. Fun read that this article reminded me of: Harmony – July 20, 2010 by Project Itoh (Author), Alexander O. Smith (Translator) "In a world where human life is a precious global resource that must be protected at all costs, everything about a person -- choices, emotions, biochemistry, cell metabolism -- is monitored and assessed by computer systems, 24/7. A variety of complex feedback loops are in place to ensure optimum conservation of that resource, including everything from good old-fashioned peer pressure to mandatory inpatient psychiatric treatment." ( M. Garrison, Amazon Review)

Cerium 11y ago

sebringj 11y ago

I'm glad China does this so we can see real world examples of why we don't fuck with freedom. This will implode eventually just like our money driven political system bullshit in America.

xnull6guest 11y ago
It's funny that when very analogous things happen in America I am accosted by people defending the principle that the West is still a stalwart of 'freedom' because we can still choose and have the freedom to take actions that would hurt us (lower our scores). If one were to apply the same sort of simplistic argument in the China case, they have as much freedom as anyone else has. IMO we would also be fools if we don't think there is a scoring system to help sort the millions of Americans with profiles in the American intelligence apparatus. This is our brave new world.

fown9 11y ago

China has an authoritarian government that produces pollution that threatens the entire world, uses the great firewall to attack tech companies in other countries, ignores human rights and free speech, and supports dictators in Russia and Africa. If China gets anymore powerful, the world is doomed. We need to curb commerce with China.

daymanstep 11y ago
Is this a joke?
- xnull6guest 11y ago
  Probably not. The US superpower status has been hollowing out and China has begun to be able to project power in very impressive ways. The US sees China as its major threat right now. What the US government would like to do is 'contain' China by keeping it a regional force - so that it can't complete as a global power. In anticipation of future conflict there has already been a large amount of anti-China sentiment creeping in America - suddenly all of the news about China has a negative spin. If they land on the moon its portrayed as scary rather than impressive. If they build islands in the middle of the Ocean (legally) it's a 'great mound of sand' rather than an incredibly impressive engineering feat. China's selling of air defense systems that thwart the US and the collisions of and mutual reconnaissance of our naval vessels aren't covered much - basically few real facts but lots of spin. The US doesn't know whether it will be able to beat back China without having to resort to violence. If you watch the presidential speeches between candidates and Washington thinktanks they all have a stance on how they will deal with 'the China problem' (China is ambitious and there ain't room enough for the both of us). Jeb Bush basically said military might - Clinton wants to follow in line with (her) TPP. There will be more anti-China slant. The interests of China and the US are at odds and becoming ever more so. This poster is either part of a spin machine or has fallen for the naive and simplistic narrative of good-versus-evil. All in all though, by all accounts, China and the US are set to butt heads and already have been.
  - happyscrappy 11y ago

MarkPNeyer 11y ago

I was working on a voluntary, p2p version of this: https://github.com/neyer/respect https://github.com/neyer/respect

pg_is_a_butt 11y ago

yeah, america is so much better letting 3 private corporations do it instead. you're all idiots.

shilpam 11y ago

Wow... how many more sick and oppressive policies does the Chinese government have to churn out (and so brazenly too) before the people of China say something? Where's the social unrest.. where's their sense of responsibility towards their future generations to nip a thing like this in the bud before it becomes the norm... what, nothing??

doctorshady 11y ago
You might ask the same thing about the spying programs in our own back yard.

jacquesm 11y ago

I don't think China is the only country that does this. I love the 'respecting the elderly' bit, as in: respect the party bosses.

bdamm 11y ago
Indeed, private companies in the United States already do this. The question is what will the data be used for?
- ginko 11y ago
  This might show my European perspective, but I'd rather have my government collect such data than some unaccountable private entity. Even better if no one does it of course.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    I think it shows your perspective, not necessarily a European one.
  - kristofferR 11y ago
    What makes you think the government would be accountable?
  - adam419 11y ago
    This perspective is in my opinion entirely misguided. The incentive of a private organization is to find ways to profit off you. That desire leads to fairly predictable behavior. On the other hand, a government owns you and has true power over you. While the odds of a company abusing this information is much more likely, it's damage to you (abusing you with unwanted ads, etc) is far less bad than how a government would use such info to abuse you. Another dimension to this is that if a private company establishes a monopoly on your information, it's position is all but permanent. It's possible for a whole slough of similar companies to acquire the same information, therefore nullifying each others monopoly and power over you. With a government this is not the case.
  - 11y ago

vinalia 11y ago

There was a good talk back in 2012 from ex NSA that laid out some of the details for how the US surveillance keeps track of online behavior too[1]. I think (as awful as it is) we can expect most governments major governments to do this if it's within their technical capacity. To get out from under this, I think we'll need 100% encryption of everything, open source devices, and ways for companies to make money without ads or data brokering. Basically, this will stop when hell freezes over. [1] http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2012/29c3-5338-en-enemies_of_the_state_h264.html#video&t=4584 http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2012/29c3-5338-en-enemie... speed up to 1:14 for the good stuff

xnull6guest 11y ago
Have you been following the news with regard to the Defense Department and Silicon Valley? There is a concerted effort now, through government compulsion and money, to funnel venture capitol towards start-ups with cyber security (offensive and defensive) and away from those offering encryption and privacy services and communications solutions.
- colordrops 11y ago
  Could you elaborate or provide links?
  - xnull6guest 11y ago
    The sum total of the following links: DoD will be investing, through parterships with executives of companies that acquire technology from startups, like Facebook, and with partnerships with Silicon Valley Venture Capital Firms to invest in companies that increase the national cybersecurity posture of the US (attack and defense) and to limit funding to technology that it thought to harm the national security of the US (E2E encryption solutions are specifically mentioned). The past few months have seen many defense officials making their way through silicon valley to meet with executives and VC firms, including the Admirial and soon-to-be-representative of the State Department. http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/24/department-of-defense-creates-new-cyberunit-in-silicon-valley/ http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/24/department-of-defense-cre... http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/us/white-house-takes-cybersecurity-pitch-to-silicon-valley.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/us/white-house-takes-cyber... http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_27974832/defense-secretary-calls-rebuilding-ties-silicon-valley http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_27974832/defense-secr... http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/science/pentagon-looking-for-edge-in-the-future-checks-in-with-silicon-valley.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/science/pentagon-looking-f... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/23/technology/the-pentagon-as-start-up-incubator.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/23/technology/the-pentagon-as... http://www.hngn.com/articles/87223/20150424/secretary-defense-lays-out-new-cyberwar-strategy-silicon-valley-help.htm http://www.hngn.com/articles/87223/20150424/secretary-defens... https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/23/defense-department-silicon-valley/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/23/defense-department-sili... http://cryptome.org/2015/04/dod-cyber-strategy-2015.pdf http://cryptome.org/2015/04/dod-cyber-strategy-2015.pdf

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olefoo 11y ago

My gut reaction ( being an anglo, American, redneck, privileged, don't tread on me kind of person ) is that this is horrible. But thinking deeper on it I wonder if this is what Chinese Democracy looks like. The goal being maximal harmony, rather than maximal personal freedom. The method being a constant polling of all participants by all participants rather than occasional polling of those who can be bothered to vote. It looks alien to us because it is alien to us.

UweSchmidt 11y ago
It looks alien to you because you haven't come to terms with the fundamental shift in technology (all the data that is created, collected and analyzed) and politics in western society (using said data in the name of security). The current trend is to gather all data and to use it in any way possible, regardless if you're in China or if you have a Confederate flag on your truck.
- olefoo 11y ago
  Just an FYI a confederate flag is as offensive to most thinking Americans as a Swastika flag would be to most thinking Germans. For various reasons we don't currently ban their display. But it is and should be a quick route to political irrelevance to claim it as your own.
fineman 11y ago
> [...] I wonder if this is what Chinese Democracy looks like. No, tautologically because it's not a democracy. Balance of power issues pretty much mean that a democracy can't stalk its citizens and still claim that they have an independent right to vote. And that's ignoring all the other stuff we know China does to maintain order like kidnap and murder dissident bloggers. Also, this concept that maybe asian people are actually happier (presumably than other 'races') when tightly controlled is offensively racist. China has traditionally been a brutal authoritarian state but that doesn't mean the people are happier when dictated to any more than anyone's fingers naturally pluck cotton better despite centuries worth of evidence...

chippyleet 11y ago

119 comments but not a single one drawing the parallels between this and the NSA's X-KeyScore program.

allan_s 11y ago

does somebody has a link to some Chinese press news about that ?