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The Panopticon Is Already Here (archive)
Xi Jinping is using artificial intelligence to enhance his government's totalitarian control—and he's exporting this technology to regimes around the globe.
[...] Xi has said that he wants China, by year's end, to be competitive with the world's AI leaders, a benchmark the country has arguably already reached. And he wants China to achieve AI supremacy by 2030.
Xi's pronouncements on AI have a sinister edge. Artificial intelligence has applications in nearly every human domain, from the instant translation of spoken language to early viral-outbreak detection. But Xi also wants to use AI's awesome analytical powers to push China to the cutting edge of surveillance. He wants to build an all-seeing digital system of social control, patrolled by precog algorithms that identify potential dissenters in real time.
[...] China already has hundreds of millions of surveillance cameras in place. Xi's government hopes to soon achieve full video coverage of key public areas. Much of the footage collected by China's cameras is parsed by algorithms for security threats of one kind or another. In the near future, every person who enters a public space could be identified, instantly, by AI matching them to an ocean of personal data, including their every text communication, and their body's one-of-a-kind protein-construction schema. In time, algorithms will be able to string together data points from a broad range of sources—travel records, friends and associates, reading habits, purchases—to predict political resistance before it happens. China's government could soon achieve an unprecedented political stranglehold on more than 1 billion people.
Early in the coronavirus outbreak, China's citizens were subjected to a form of risk scoring. An algorithm assigned people a color code—green, yellow, or red—that determined their ability to take transit or enter buildings in China's megacities. In a sophisticated digital system of social control, codes like these could be used to score a person's perceived political pliancy as well.
A crude version of such a system is already in operation in China's northwestern territory of Xinjiang, where more than 1 million Muslim Uighurs have been imprisoned, the largest internment of an ethnic-religious minority since the fall of the Third Reich. Once Xi perfects this system in Xinjiang, no technological limitations will prevent him from extending AI surveillance across China. He could also export it beyond the country's borders, entrenching the power of a whole generation of autocrats.
See also: In the Age of AI
Related: Is Ethical A.I. Even Possible?
China Now Has AI-Powered Judges
The US, Like China, Has About One Surveillance Camera for Every Four People, Says Report
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 16 2020, @01:18AM (13 children)
It's easier to trust an AI, even a poorly trained AI, than it is to trust a person.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @01:58AM (1 child)
Daily dose of dumbass brought to you by Runaway.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @02:00AM
Would you trust an AI more?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Sunday August 16 2020, @02:00AM (3 children)
And for good reason! People are stupid, incompetent, overly emotional, prone to believing in fantasies or conspiracies, I could go on and on.
It's just like why so many people trust their pets or other animals more than humans. You don't have to worry much about your cat or dog plotting to murder you after you've known it and lived with it for years, but you can't trust humans that much. A poorly-trained AI is similar.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @02:31PM
What data do you think they train the AI on? Humans - search racist AI for examples. All the AI does is a high dimensional version of fitting a straight line to data points and using the slope to predict future events. All the hoopla is marketing blah blah blah.
(Score: 2) by pvanhoof on Friday September 11 2020, @09:55AM (1 child)
A dog who feels its position in the family hierarchy threatened by a newly born baby human sometimes kills the baby.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2563469/Never-EVER-trust-dog-child-As-baby-mauled-death-vet-ALL-dogs-capable-killing.html [dailymail.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday September 11 2020, @09:12PM
Very interesting. Yet another good reason not to have dogs. I've never heard of a cat doing something like this.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @02:01AM
AI is too arbitrary. Bring back good old-fashioned tried-and-true racism.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 16 2020, @04:47AM (3 children)
Because you trust the programmer and the code easier somehow?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @05:22AM
Is the programmer convicted pedophile and rapist Dick Bathroom Stallman? Remove Emacs from macOS.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 16 2020, @06:06AM (1 child)
Me? Not me. I don't trust programmers any further than I can throw them. But, look at the world today. Everyone stakes everything on their computers working correctly. People trust computers - they don't trust people.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @09:21AM
Imagine you finding something that rots easily and you are surrounded by it. You take that thing and wash it with water as much as you can and dry the residual. This thing can be torn, burned, dissolved and has no structural integrity.
So you start writing on it and people trust that more than people. The whole world runs on permeability of this stuff called paper. Along comes paper - as long as there is electricity and some smart people - it is better than paper. And smart people are so easy to control and you will always have them. And if you don't have electricity, you always will have paper.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday August 17 2020, @04:08PM (1 child)
No, because No. Case in point, Tesla's "Auto Pilot". If your "Auto Pilot" system thinks ramming into a concrete barrier, parked car, etc. is a good idea, there is something fundamentally wrong with said program.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 17 2020, @04:53PM
You, Sir, are definitely smarter than a box full of rocks. And, so am I smarter than a box full of rocks. I think most members of SN are also smarter than boxes of rocks. But, we have examples of people who were dumber than a box of rocks, and proved how dumb they were, when they allowed their cars to drive into police cars, fire trucks, guard rails, and more. Those people trusted the AI to look out for them.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Subsentient on Sunday August 16 2020, @01:18AM (51 children)
Something really needs to be done about China. Something drastic, if this goes on for much longer.
That kind of evil cannot be allowed to fester and metastasize.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Sunday August 16 2020, @01:34AM (1 child)
Doing nothing is easier. Just let it happen.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Touché) by fustakrakich on Sunday August 16 2020, @02:45AM
Besides, it suits this president just fine..
Take good care, Mr. Buttle
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @01:34AM (1 child)
Something really needs to be done about China.
That's up the the folks that live there.
Their trade of anything goes for stability is a deal that won't end well.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @02:09AM
The Chinese proletariat should seize political power.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @01:47AM
The USA announced that thermonuclear bomb tests would be started up again soon...
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @01:58AM (10 children)
> Something really needs to be done about China.
Socialism presents as an ideology, in reality it's a criminal conspiracy.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @04:41AM (9 children)
Get your head out of your ass. China is not a socialist country. It isn't Communist/communist either. China has an authoritarian government, and state capitalism.
You know how they sell all that shit to us for a profit, but at low costs due to exploiting their labor force, and the means of production is held by a small elite (just like us), except that a lot of industries are controlled by the military (this is the 'state' part of the state capitalism).
China doesn't even have socialized medicine. There was a Wuhan doctor talking about a pregnant woman who's family spent everything they had-- 10s of thousands of dollars on her medical care, but when the money ran out, they removed her from the ventilator-- especially tragic since China's government decided to cover costs of covid-19 care a couple days later (similar, but more generous, to the US non-socialized medical system paying for covid testing).
In socialism, the workers own the means of production. In socialism, pregnant women are not murdered by medical staff because they cannot personally afford treatment-- if you spread the costs of her treatment out over every person in the country, her care amounted to a fraction of a penny per person.
Which of these two is evil?
(Score: 2, Disagree) by khallow on Sunday August 16 2020, @05:07AM (4 children)
Which let us note is a nasty variant of socialism not capitalism which would by the same naming convention be private capitalism because of the all important distinction - private ownership of capital.
I guess not all socialized medical systems work very well, eh?
Except, of course, when that's all not true. And it's interesting how much worse this is that the US system.
So what? They chose not to spread out that particular cost. It doesn't make their health care system non-socialist.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @05:58AM (1 child)
God don't you douchebags get tired of cheerleading your favorite words? If bad capitalism is socialism, and good socialism is capitalism, then you might as well say I WIN and give up the pretense of having a debate about it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 16 2020, @09:43PM
Words have meaning. If you refuse to use the meaning of the words, or alternately, set forth your own definitions clearly for others, then you just handed an I WIN button to your critics. And sure, you might as well give up the pretense of having a debate about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 17 2020, @11:31AM (1 child)
Can someone please translate or summarize these responses into something that makes sense?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 17 2020, @10:49PM
Things have improved FWIW. I think a good portion of that can be attributed to the introduction of a degree of Capitalism and democracy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @11:33AM (3 children)
The "it's not real communism" argument again. Why that fat, psychopathic pedophile Mao was just a regular capitalist wasn't he?
When? Was that what lead to the need for Lenin's market reforms? Do you ever think the reason you clowns keep trotting out the "not real communism" argument is simply because socialism hasn't ever worked? Mussolini created the template for centrally planned states that do need to produce wealth but Marxists deny that too because it reveals their ideology to be so inherently flawed it should rightfully be considered evil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @02:34PM (1 child)
I think you'll find we're having the "it's not real capitalism" argument.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @03:09PM
I think you'll find you misunderstand the Chinese economy. [city-journal.org]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday August 17 2020, @08:27AM
If you think the modern Chinese economic system even remotely resembles the system Mao once installed, you must have been living under a rock for quite some time.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Sunday August 16 2020, @02:03AM (18 children)
Something really needs to be done about China. Something drastic, if this goes on for much longer.
That kind of evil cannot be allowed to fester and metastasize.
Why not? How does it affect you? Do you live in China? If not, it's really none of your concern. Sucks to be them, but it's their own problem to deal with. The last time we tried invading a country to "liberate" it, it didn't go so well and we created not just a bunch of terrorists, but a bunch of terrorists bent on creating their own country that made China's actions here look quite benevolent by comparison. (Sorry, but I'll happily take an AI spying on me to make sure I'm not a dissident over living with a bunch of religious freaks who would saw my head off if I disobeyed their religious orders.)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Sunday August 16 2020, @02:16AM (2 children)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @09:48AM (1 child)
And once again, that is on the people who live [wherever it is] to fix. The EU seems to be fighting back against surveillance, why don't you?
If capitalism is so great buy your own politicians and pass the laws you want.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 16 2020, @01:17PM
FTFY.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 16 2020, @02:18AM (5 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @02:35PM
Compromising? Some of us like Rambo thank you very much.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Sunday August 16 2020, @03:48PM (3 children)
Also a number of films are compromising their quality in order to sell in China.
And this is a good thing, according to capitalism: the film studios can make a lot more money by pandering to China and compromising their movies' artistry. Would you prefer that we have state socialism like China, where the government has a lot of control over what kind of movies the studios are allowed to make? Americans generally hate that idea, so this is what we get. If Americans don't like it, they're free to start their own movie studios and make movies that don't worry about offending China.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 16 2020, @10:07PM (2 children)
Of course, I wouldn't prefer that, but that's what we're getting. Hence, my complaint. It's one thing to compromise quality of a movie to appeal to the sensibilities of a Chinese audience. Go for it.
It's another to compromise as I noted above with the sensibilities of Chinese censors.
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday August 17 2020, @03:50AM (1 child)
Well, it does kinda balance out the historic American censorship, which worked the same way, government threatened censorship if the film industry didn't self-censor and since the courts at the time had ruled that movies were not art but rather a business, government censorship was fine.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 17 2020, @12:10PM
Which has been rolled back quite a bit over the years. No point to claiming today's misdeeds can compensate for past ones which aren't around any more.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday August 16 2020, @02:44AM (5 children)
The US is not going to invade China.
For a start that's not a fight they can win, and secondly too many western corporations make too much money from China to allow it.
No matter who wins your election in November, all this anti-China stuff will end pretty quickly. Trump won't need the distraction any more and Biden is not interested.
Is the Chinese government a horrible, totalitarian bully? Yes. Is China a nice place? No.
Will the west try to change that? No.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @04:54AM (4 children)
Is the US government a horrible, totalitarian bully? Yes. Is the US a nice place? Not anymore.
Will the east try to change that? No.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @06:01AM (3 children)
> Will the east try to change that? Yes
FTFY. Russia and probably China and North Korea are interested in screwing with us, much like we screw with them.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday August 16 2020, @04:10PM (2 children)
Russia and China and NK are certainly interested in screwing with us, but that doesn't equate to them trying to make the US a nicer place. They're trying to reduce our power so that they can become more powerful.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday August 17 2020, @08:36AM (1 child)
Oh, they will definitely try making the US a nicer place. It's just that they will apply their definition of nice. Which means under their control.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 17 2020, @11:41AM
And when that happens, (China, Russia, or NK) become super powers as our power fades, those in this country who currently protest 'isms will long for the time before George Floyd. Those three countries have horrific track records concerning all kinds of 'isms.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @12:39PM
>> The last time we tried invading a country to "liberate" it, it didn't go so well and we created not just a bunch of terrorists, but a bunch of terrorists bent on creating their own country.
Canada?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday August 16 2020, @06:03PM
We don't live in a world where that's true anymore. It's hard to put one date on it, but sometime in the mid-90's we became a real global economy where what happens in one place has repercussions everyplace, financially speaking. And, of course, because politics so frequently follow on economic factors, what one place does politically frequently has political repercussions far away.
So it matters that China is working on AI for surveillance and censorship. It affects all of us on Earth.
Note, this is also true of the horrific violations the NSA and its counterparts in the West have been committing.
All of it taken together is an existential threat to our freedom.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 17 2020, @01:29AM
(Score: 4, Touché) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday August 16 2020, @02:38AM (2 children)
Something really needs to be done about
China.Saudi Arabia. Something drastic, if this goes on for much longer.That kind of evil cannot be allowed to fester and metastasize.
That fits too, doesn't it?
You could also use Indonesia if you like, they're not much better. I'm sure there are others.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @02:53AM (1 child)
Something needs to be done about the United States of America. Something drastic. The evil has festered and metastized for centuries, and it cannot be allowed to continue. Yesterday Libya, today Syria and Yemen, tomorrow Belarus.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @03:11AM
Trumpyland will open next year. The E ticket rides are reserved for Republicans. Democrats are stuck with the A ticket ride... the teacups.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @03:02AM (6 children)
Something really needs to be done about
ChinaTrump! Something drastic, if this goes on for much longer.That kind of evil cannot be allowed to fester and metastasize.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday August 16 2020, @06:09PM (5 children)
If Trump were the monster you think he is, and unceasingly complain about, you wouldn't be here to write such a thing. Q.E.D.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday August 16 2020, @06:53PM (3 children)
If der Fuhrer ver ze monster joo seem to sink he iz, joo vould not be hier to wrrrrite such sings. Q.E.D. Der Fuhrer iz not zo bad, und he iz only talking about rrrremovink zose people whoze debilities cost der Volk millions of unnecessary Deustchemarks a year in medical expenses. Ve vill all be better off vunce he iz done, nein?
(In case you don't get the hint, we are pre-Reichstag Fire not post-Kristallnacht.)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Monday August 17 2020, @01:42AM (2 children)
Which turned out to be true.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday August 17 2020, @02:47AM (1 child)
You know, there are some scientists who still believe the universe has a closed metric, i.e., it is finite but unbounded in 3D space. This means that if you start anywhere and go on a straight-line geodesic relative to the metric, you will eventually return to where you started.
I mention this because if the point went any further over your head, it could technically be said to be going under your feet.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 17 2020, @03:25AM
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday August 16 2020, @10:03PM
:-) The day is young, my friend...
You should know, the slow boil is best
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Sunday August 16 2020, @04:31AM (2 children)
RACIST!!!!
"No, my issue isn't that they're 'Chinese' the issue is the totalitaria-"
RACIST!!! RACIST RACIST!!!!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @06:04AM (1 child)
Found the racist - it's subtle but definitely there.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Phoenix666 on Sunday August 16 2020, @06:09PM
So...you're the racist?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday August 16 2020, @05:30AM
I think we can put China on the back burner for a couple of months
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @06:52AM
"There's a China caravan coming to our border and will arrive on election day. Vote for a wall!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 17 2020, @12:41PM
It's called World War 3
(Score: 2, Interesting) by looorg on Sunday August 16 2020, @01:48AM (4 children)
Already here? It has been here since 1791, all that improved was technology and that our world, or part of it, is slowly turning into a golden cage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @06:04AM (3 children)
The solution is to colonize Mars! Let's go!!
(Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 16 2020, @06:12AM (2 children)
Yeah, but we're going to ship all the politically incorrect convicts first. And, we're going to name the first city "Melbourne", and the first state will be "New Australia".
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday August 16 2020, @09:52AM (1 child)
Norstrilia.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @02:37PM
Still too long for the lazy bastards. Nosty.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Booga1 on Sunday August 16 2020, @02:03AM (1 child)
Ah yes. Totalitarians are so predictable. Tools aren't used to help humanity. They are only used to crush, kill, and destroy. We sure could have used that advance warning of viral outbreaks a few months ago. Instead, we get dismissals of warnings from scientists. Sounds like the opening sequence of half the disaster movies ever made. The "shark" is eating us alive while the mayor tells everyone the beaches are open for tourists and perfectly safe.
I, for one, do not welcome our new AI overlords.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @06:11AM
Talented Chinese leave China in droves every day. The only thing that AI will do for the Chinese (if anything) is squeeze their poor people even harder. If you think treating people like shit improves productivity or morale, you'd be dead wrong. I know, deep insight into human psyche.
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @04:34AM
Sue the CCP scums down to pennies. They can bankrupt the evil dictatorial regime and save the world.
Brave Hong Kong freedom lovers will repay you with life-time best-of-the-best dim sum meals forever for anyone from the estate.
But tell them you are allergic to bats.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @07:37AM (7 children)
WTF does this even mean??
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-china-detention-camp-xinjiang-2020-6?r=DE&IR=T [businessinsider.com]
Nothing happens in a vacuum and out of the blue. These things are permitted by external entities to happen. The Nazi extermination camps were known about for years but were deemed a "distraction to the war effort" so none of the military operations targeted operations of the extermination camps. This is known history. And with Chinese "re-education camps", the same thing. Trump even said it was a "good idea" so the moral outrage now is not only China, but the policy of the United States under Trump
And so what? You will just not be able to hide as easily in a crowd anymore. The keyword is "as easily". Remember last 2 decades since DNA evidence kind of made rapists and killers easier to identify? Yeah like that. Instead of having 10000 people looking for a face in the crowd, you just have AI do that for you. You still need to become person of interest in one way or another. You still need to be on the radar somehow. It's not random wet dream of someone to put Runaway on a person-non-grata list.
All I see here is "but but but the RED CHINESE!". Same shit happens all over the world. No one seems to say "but but ut the SINGAPOREANS!" or "but but but the Americans!"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @09:26AM
And you will become that thanks to AI.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @12:13PM (1 child)
"You still need to become person of interest in one way or another"
Not necessarily. When the AI automatically awards negative points on you based on stupid shit like wether you buy beer or not, no one has the ability to check that all those negative points are correctly given to the correct people, not to mention harder things like jaywalking detection etc.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday August 16 2020, @04:01PM
When the AI automatically awards negative points on you based on stupid shit like wether you buy beer or not
Why would people get "social credit demerits" for not buying beer? Is the beer industry in control of the US government now? I know the movie industry has some sway in Congress, but I've never heard of the beer industry having anything like this.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday August 16 2020, @01:31PM
Absurd bullshit. Why would you think that Chinese "re-education camps" wouldn't have happened, if the US withheld its approval via some alleged comment by Trump? And "in a vacuum and out of the blue" doesn't apply. China clearly has planned these things.
So what if the nonrandom sort of oppression isn't random? You seem to focus way too much on the randomness of stuff that doesn't have to be random. Further, if you had read about totalitarian governments you would have read about the use of random processes [redstate.com] to increase the fear among the populace. So to summarize, Runaway would still have to be concerned even if they merely put people on the list for non-random reasons. And we actually have a track record of totalitarian governments doing random oppression because they have to make quota, or someone is a sociopath and wants some fun.
Whataboutism happens all the time. There's always someone going "but but but the Americans" in this sort of thread, such as you claiming that the China wouldn't have built concentration camps without the approval of the US government.
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Sunday August 16 2020, @01:34PM
Too excited to write "DNA"?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @03:21PM (1 child)
Alarmist canaries.
Sounds awfully like: “nothing to hide, then nothing to fear”.
The trouble with ubiquitous surveillance, comprehensive laws coupled with statistical models and hardened intentions, is there will be false positive arrests. But who cares right? As long as we only do it to them!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 16 2020, @09:55PM
In totalitarian states even being a false positive is a crime. Having a certain level of false positives is desirable to the authorities because it increases the level of fear and disrupts rational thought. Bob got arrested because he was an enemy of the state. It doesn't matter if Bob did anything or not. You better agree, heart and soul, with us, or you will join him. This capricious exercise of power is how you understand that we rule you.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday August 16 2020, @09:40AM (3 children)
Like I said. Humanity's utter failure will be nearing completion when this is fully in place in the west as well. I give it about 30 years, tops, for that to happen. They'll just call it something different because it'll honestly, definitely, only be used against those nasty "criminals". You'd probably have to move to Africa to get away from this kind of thing.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Unixnut on Sunday August 16 2020, @10:33AM (2 children)
Why 30 years? The UK already uses AI in its CCTV system to better track "persons of interest" as they move along through the camera system. They can use AI to track based on anything from face biometrics, to your heartbeat, to the way you walk.
The "risk scoring" that China is already doing is being discussed in the UK as well, as a way to better discover who is an "undesirable" before they do anything that would cause trouble to the powers that be. Drones swarm around protests filming and logging people, who can later on have a knock at their door by the authorities.
Not to mention the full on surveillance by five eyes, of pretty much anything that goes on some electronic device, and of course the filtering/blocking of stuff on the internet by the government.
Thought crime is already a thing, where you can be arrested for saying things that others disapprove of, and there are all other kinds of "soft" options to make you comply, usually involving losing your job or income. In a world where most people have no choice but to go into debt (and work off that debt with ever decreasing value of currency), the average person has to work full time just to stay where they are in life, forget about actually progressing in wealth and security. That means a loss of income, even temporary, can completely ruin someones life, and it is a very powerful method of control. So many people at work have privately held political opinions, but don't dare voice them in public for fear of their income/careers. The point of "self censorship" has been already passed for many years in the west.
I really don't see much difference between China and the west already, except the Chinese are more blunt and in your face about it, whereas over on "this side", our elites prefer to give us the impression that we are free and have some say in how things are run. We have a "say" as long as it aligns with their goals, otherwise we should keep quiet and submit. I chalk it down to refinement.
The western powers have refined their methods of control to the point where the populace as a whole doesn't seem to be aware they are being controlled. The Chinese (and Soviets before them) were blunt and unrefined, and it was easy to see the authoritarianism.
I am very weary of these "China are eeeevil" articles, the implication that we are somehow pure as gold. It is just plain propaganda, and usually has an ulterior motive for getting people all riled up about it.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday August 16 2020, @12:38PM
I agree with everything you said. I really wrote 30 years as an upper limit--how fast this stuff develops depends partly on what pace of change they think they can get away with, given as you said they still currently find it useful to make people think they're still free. We'll have reached the end when everyone knows quite a number of people, friends, neighbors and family, that have disappeared.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday August 16 2020, @06:15PM
Great post. I'd mod you up, but you're already maxed out. It doesn't mean China isn't evil, because it is, but that they are ham-fisted when the governments and corporations in the West are subtle.
So, all of us who love and long for freedom have a lot of work to do.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @01:33PM (2 children)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm [washingtonpost.com]
- Ted
Human freedom mostly will have vanished, because individuals and small groups will be impotent vis-a-vis large organizations armed with supertechnology and an arsenal of advanced psychological and biological tools for manipulating human beings, besides instruments of surveillance and physical coercion. Only a small number of people will have any real power,...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @01:50PM
Infowars' Millie Weaver and her husband were both arrested on interesting charges [heavy.com] the other day just prior to releasing this documentary. [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2020, @02:50PM
No need to invoke the Unibomber. Every scifi movie since... forever... predicts a dystopian world.