How U.S. Tech Giants are Helping to Build China's Surveillance State:
AN AMERICAN ORGANIZATION founded by tech giants Google and IBM is working with a company that is helping China's authoritarian government conduct mass surveillance against its citizens, The Intercept can reveal.
The OpenPower Foundation — a nonprofit led by Google and IBM executives with the aim of trying to "drive innovation" — has set up a collaboration between IBM, Chinese company Semptian, and U.S. chip manufacturer Xilinx. Together, they have worked to advance a breed of microprocessors that enable computers to analyze vast amounts of data more efficiently.
Shenzhen-based Semptian is using the devices to enhance the capabilities of internet surveillance and censorship technology it provides to human rights-abusing security agencies in China, according to sources and documents. A company employee said that its technology is being used to covertly monitor the internet activity of 200 million people.
[...] After receiving tips from confidential sources about Semptian's role in mass surveillance, a reporter contacted the company using an assumed name and posing as a potential customer. In response, a Semptian employee sent documents showing that the company — under the guise of iNext — has developed a mass surveillance system named Aegis, which it says can "store and analyze unlimited data."
Aegis can provide "a full view to the virtual world," the company claims in the documents, allowing government spies to see "the connections of everyone," including "location information for everyone in the country."
The system can also "block certain information [on the] internet from being visited," censoring content that the government does not want citizens to see, the documents show.
[The Semptian video demonstration showing how the Aegis system tracks people's movements is embedded in the article]
[Related Cloud Platform by IBM - China]: SuperVessel
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 13 2019, @10:41PM (8 children)
There are those who defend capitalism, religiously. It can do no wrong - if you're making money, then you're doing everything right.
This news isn't really "news". It's been done before, if you know your history. Prior to the Second World War, IBM was in bed with the Nazis, cataloguing the population of Germany. When the Nazis finally decided to go forward with their "final solution", they had all the data they needed, because IBM had already assisted in gathering that data.
Many argue that IBM was duped into all of that work. I call bullshit on that. IBM was quite happy to turn a blind eye to the potential evil of their work, because MONEY!
I've always liked the terms "corporate drones" and "marketdroids" because they help to remind people that corporations have no soul. Corporations only respond to those stimuli that affect profits. If it is profitable to enslave any portion of humanity, or even all of humanity, then corporations will assist with that enslavement.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 13 2019, @10:52PM (5 children)
Bringing up capitalism in a discussion about government and corporations?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 13 2019, @10:59PM (4 children)
???????
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 13 2019, @11:17PM (3 children)
Whatever, keep being confused about how the economy works. Blame the evil "capitalists"... This makes it easier for everyone living in the real world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 13 2019, @11:34PM
You sound like a company man.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday July 14 2019, @04:06AM
What is that "real world" that you mention?
Google world? Faecebook/Twitter world? Amazon world? Uber world? Netflix/Marvel world? Did I forget any representative of a major hundred-billion industry of today?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 14 2019, @10:16AM
No one believes in capitalism. Certainly not the companies that, when they grow large enough, bribe governments to keep out competitors so that they can keep their monopolies, and that receive government bailouts when they crash the economy. It's socialism for the mega-rich, and ruthless capitalism for working people.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday July 14 2019, @03:11AM
Either way, you think that argument would still fly, within memory of their previous associations?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 14 2019, @02:22PM
Big Tech is doing the same thing in the USA by using their ownership [mideast-times.com] of the major social media to catalog and silence undesirables and ship their personal information to their foreign investors. Remember when Gawker gloating that they had a map of all of the gun owners in New York? That was military intellience for a future war.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday July 13 2019, @10:43PM (2 children)
Won't IBM have to tread *exceedingly* carefully here, considering their German WWII history? So much so that they should, like, not even get engaged with this?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday July 13 2019, @10:49PM (1 child)
The only evil is to not make money.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday July 14 2019, @01:55AM
Jews are all for making money, except when they do their historical thing of pissing off too many people to make money without being shoo'd out or executed.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday July 13 2019, @10:52PM (4 children)
Because little else matters, I have to ask the same old, but all important question:
*Who's gonna stop them?*
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 13 2019, @11:28PM (3 children)
"We, the people" (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday July 13 2019, @11:47PM
That's been tried countless times before. At best success is fleeting.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 13 2019, @11:47PM (1 child)
It has to get bad enough to get the populace to act en masse.
Like the French had to.
The rich 1% use pens.
The other 99% have to build guillotines.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday July 14 2019, @04:01AM
FTFY. Not as effective as the guillotine, granted.
Also, last time guillotines were effective was against a well-defined government structure with well-known actors, with the on-call wealth quantified by amounts of heavy metals and in a world when the fastest escape speed for a person was the speed of horses.
I'm afraid they'll fail today against a multinational corporate structure, with diffuse responsibility and actors that change at minute times, with wealth transferred between continents in microseconds and corporate jets are "at hand".
What it will take to equal the field today? I don't know; the biggest chance to start something was, in my opinion, the "occupy..." "movement"**. Perhaps looking in why did that one fail may bring in some idea (e.g. why today the American middle-class is warring against itself instead of trying to get some control over the structures of power - be them economical or political structures).
Maybe "the anubi solution" may also work on long term - but I doubt that a significant part of the population will ever forget about "the American dream" and refuse to have anything to do with McMansions, Marvel super-hero movies or any "empty cultural calories".
---
*** it wasn't an actual movement - too many agendas and possible directions to take.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 13 2019, @10:52PM (9 children)
I have worked with IBM's products on and off for 40 years already and can attest that IBM does all this and even more. Just one example (no, I can't find the link any more). In early 2000's I was looking for a solution and found an IBM paper produced by IBM's lab in China where they explained how they were able to monitor prison population on a scale larger than anybody else ever. It was just that - a very technical paper.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 13 2019, @11:31PM (7 children)
I.e. dispassionate engineering in action: describe the problem, get the best solution within technical/budget/time constrains. Can you blame the engineers?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Saturday July 13 2019, @11:39PM (6 children)
To muddy the waters more:
See also Topf & Sons [wikipedia.org]
Where engineering ends and where does "business" begin?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday July 14 2019, @01:10AM (5 children)
Unfortunately, even engineers will whore themselves out.
This is why money is so desired. It can make a whore of damned near anyone.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Sunday July 14 2019, @01:33AM (1 child)
Do you take money to do a job, under direction from someone, whoch may, or may not, be in the best interests of your customer/society/the planet?
We are all already whores, all we're discussing here is thresholds and boundaries.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday July 14 2019, @03:09AM
Interviewee: "So this CEO of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes, what kind of corporate culture does she promote?
Interviewer: "Uh, well ..."
Interviewee: "Oh, I'm sorry, it's just "Thanos", and he's the CEO himself?"
Interviewer: "So ... we match 401k up to the full employer-sponsored maximum. Big yearly bonuses, too. No life insurance, though."
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday July 14 2019, @04:09AM (2 children)
Do you, lately?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday July 14 2019, @04:25AM (1 child)
Yes, I did.
Did not like myself much, but I had bills to pay.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday July 14 2019, @04:46AM
Glad to hear you could. Nobody likes it, but few realize is mean, not an end, and is better to look at it this way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by DavePolaschek on Sunday July 14 2019, @11:23AM
My experience was with the Big Red A (I worked on the "creative" products, not the marketing) where the CEO bragged at an all-hands about how very well people were being tracked. "[female name] will walk into her hotel in New York, and we'll send her key to her phone so she doesn’t even have to stop at the desk, and when she gets into her room, we’ll send her an offer for Knicks tickets that evening, getting paid by the team for the ad, plus a percentage if she buys."
That was almost three years ago, and I got creeped out enough that I had a long talk with my manager. I retired from there last week. Took me a while, but I got the hell out. I’m not the only one grumbling and looking into leaving, but clearly there are plenty of people willing to weaponize tracking in order to make a buck.
(Score: 2) by Lester on Sunday July 14 2019, @10:54AM
How U.S. Tech Giants are testing in China how to Build a Surveillance State.
When China uses it, it's because they are bad, when we use it, it's OK. In a few years all that technology will be here, but it will be justified to help government to fight against drug dealers, pederast and terrorism.
We thought that Internet meant freedom for citizens, but it is the wet dream of any government (dictator, totalitarian or
votecraticdemocratic).(Score: 1) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Sunday July 14 2019, @11:50AM
Growth for the sake of growth is the morality of the cancer cell and xenomorph hive.
Money with no questions asked is the idelogy of the Anton Chigur in No Country for Old Men.
If anything has a price, that is the morality of prostitutes and clowns.
You are responsible for the predictible effects of your own actions.
You are guity for the foreseeable crimes against humanity committed with them.
You only get one reputation, and those of us who like freedom do not soon foreget who helps build concentration camps and the machines of torture.
Then there is the argument that is not like all of the others, what we build today to fight the enemy will be used against us tomorrow.
This last one is hitting especially hard of late...there is some hard fast law of technology that gives everything a certain boomerang-y-ness spewing out semi-random poetic justice.
And remember, we also have to teach these AI's to be good, and we don't want them to think we are total clowns.
"It's ok when we do it" is only going to go over for so long, I bet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @01:53PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) [wikipedia.org]