This is an article that I found to be very interesting, about the dystopian surveillance state we are rapidly headed towards, and especially about a man named Ai Weiwei, imprisoned by the Chinese government. From TFA:
Ai Weiwei has been living in our future. His movements are restricted and he is structurally being watched by the government. He lives in a world without privacy. A world without privacy is a world without freedom.
https://medium.com/@hansdezwart/ai-weiwei-is-living-in-our-future-474e5dd15e4f
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Ai Weiwei and the Coming Surveillance State
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 16 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @05:01PM
I think you missed present.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @05:39PM
If he was against the US establishment, he would be in Gitmo or targeted by drone strike.
And you would never hear from him except being labled as terrorist.
What a world we live in, at least in the old western movies we could see who the bad guys were by the colour of their hats.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 04 2015, @12:34AM
Now you know who most of the chief bad guys are, by the jobs they've held.
Doesn't help us much with detecting their minions, though.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by khallow on Saturday January 03 2015, @05:46PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 05 2015, @07:38AM
For example, a modern analogue of this story would be the ability to replay every blackmailable foible committed by you or any close associates and relatives.
It's called facebook and youtube ;).
More so once the google glass sort of stuff become more common.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday January 03 2015, @06:02PM
Only most of us aren't aware of it. Yet.
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Sunday January 04 2015, @12:53PM
Bingo! R.P.C. ftw! The question is, even if more of us were aware, would enough care to foment change?
(Score: 1) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday January 04 2015, @05:35PM
No.
In my views, the future is already written, and it's bleak. Me, I'm enjoying the last few years (decades, perhaps?) of semi-freedom we still have before the entire world turns 1984. I have no children, and I'm old enough that I don't care about anything else but enjoying a sweet, peaceful life while I still can.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @06:59PM
Regarding the coveillance BS mentioned in the article, what use is knowing of government abuses when there is absolutely nothing you can do about it? Everybody knows that Clapper lied to the Congress while under oath, and nothing at all happened. Everybody knows how the Too-Big-to-Fail banks were handed billions and nobody went to jail. How LIBOR was rigged, how US went to Iraq supposedly because of WMDs. Surveillance will never be symmetric as you can never sneak your camera into Obama's tent. And even if you could there is nothing you could do with the information. Google Glass is nothing but another tool in Big Brother's arsenal. Oh, looks like the author seems to agree.
"Hans de Zwart is the Director of Bits of Freedom, a Digital Civil Rights Organisation in the Netherlands. He would love to write a book about topics like these."
And I'd love to buy his book!
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday January 03 2015, @10:07PM
"you can never sneak your camera into Obama's tent. And even if you could there is nothing you could do with the information."
Just ask Clinton ;-) "I did not have sexual relations with that woman"
(Score: 1) by scyther on Saturday January 03 2015, @08:17PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 03 2015, @08:28PM
(Score: 4, Interesting) by gallondr00nk on Saturday January 03 2015, @08:51PM
That's the nub of it, right there. Go RTFA, and skip to that bit if you want.
We place the automatons in charge, and then we create insane, sadistic ways to make people into little automatons. Well, at least until we can fire them and replace them with machines.
It won't work forever. No system ever does, not least one that demands so much of people that they are incapable of sustainably providing.
There's a cafe at my local supermarket that I have coffee in once a week. All around the cafe, there are half a dozen RFID things stuck on the wall, and every half an hour or so, one of the staff goes around and swipes all the scanners in turn, occasionally hanging around one for a minute before doing it, or doing a bit of tidying up.
I once asked one of the staff what the deal was with the scanners.
"Oh, you have to scan them all twice an hour to show you've cleared that bit up, and it reports you if you don't. But if you do it too quickly from one to another, it flags it up."
Technological utopia, eh?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 04 2015, @12:31AM
There's a BBC documentary called "The Trap," which actually explains where that thinking comes from.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 04 2015, @04:28AM
For ages, these guys carried a clock with them.
At each station on his tour he would use a key on a chain to wind the clock (which had a very short run time without being wound again).
Watchclock [wikipedia.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 04 2015, @11:18PM
Ai Weiwei is a person? I thought it was the sound a guy makes when he gets his penis caught in a zipper.