China, the NSA, Google, and the War on Freedom

[steven36]

The Chinese are making doubly sure public displays of displeasure with their totalitarian regime such as occurred in Tiananmen Square in 1989 will never be repeated.  They are instituting a technological surveillance program so pervasive that when completed -- quite soon, it seems -- it will enforce conformity throughout their giant country on a scale that would stupefy Orwell and Huxley.

 

China’s plan to judge each of its 1.3 billion people based on their social behavior is moving a step closer to reality, with Beijing set to adopt a lifelong points program by 2021 that assigns personalized ratings for each resident.

The capital city will pool data from several departments to reward and punish some 22 million citizens based on their actions and reputations by the end of 2020, according to a plan posted on the Beijing municipal government’s website on Monday. Those with better so-called social credit will get “green channel” benefits while those who violate laws will find life more difficult.

The Beijing project will improve blacklist systems so that those deemed untrustworthy will be “unable to move even a single step,” according to the government’s plan.

Bloomberg has more to say about this incipient "brave new world."

The final version of China’s national social credit system remains uncertain. But as rules forcing social networks and internet providers to remove anonymity get increasingly enforced and facial recognition systems become more popular with policing bodies, authorities are likely to find everyone from internet dissenters to train-fare skippers easier to catch -- and punish -- than ever before.

Bad news for Winston Smith.  Or is it Winston Chang?  Thank God, it's China!

Or is it?  Perhaps the Chinese are only being public, and therefore somewhat more honest and transparent, about their plans and the world in which we all already live.  After all, when it comes to technological surveillance, they are merely playing catch-up to our NSA, which has been monitoring us all for decades with only sporadic protest.

Does the NSA have their own form of a rating system? We don't know, but they surely have some way -- various algorithms, one assumes -- for deciding who deserves more attention.

Meanwhile, Google -- lord on high of the internet -- works with the NSA through the PRISM program and with the Chinese on a new China-only search engine that will be subject to Communist Party regulation, an equal opportunity silicon behemoth.   Google's experience with NSA makes this outreach to the Chinese almost seamless. When you think about it, the similarity of approach and method is blood-curdling.  It wouldn't be surprising if important components of the new surveillance technology for this latest Chinese initiative to control the behavior of their entire population were "borrowed" in part from Google.

What does this all mean to us -- the common man and woman of the USA (and elsewhere really)?  Whether we choose to think about it or not, almost all of us realize we have no private life any more, no secrets the government couldn't easily ascertain should it be the slightest bit interested.  Even a presidential candidate was not exempt from such surveillance. What possibility do we have?

This has already been factored into our personalities and behaviors, at the very least unconsciously, in ways we can only begin to guess as it is now such a mundane occurrence.  I would imagine many phenomena such as political correctness and its attendant virtue signaling are amplified by the knowledge that we are constantly observed.   It also contributes to the extraordinary uniformity and group think pervading our educational system and media.

The employees of Google themselves behave much like a cult, eager to drum out the mildest of apostates. The self-styled social justice warriors on our campuses act similarly, ever searching for the most "victimized" person as the eye in the sky watches and, hopefully, approves. All the to-ing and fro-ing on our supposedly contentious social media are just fodder for the homogenization to come.

It's all very Chinese, if you think not very far back to the Cultural Revolution.  But Mao and Jiang Qing didn't have the technological weapons available today and were beaten back, temporarily anyway.  Now the battle for freedom is global.

Source

[nir]

We will never get back what we give up willingly.

 

Example:  A Clean Earth We Inherited

 

[steven36]

8 minutes ago, nir said:

We will never get back what we give up willingly.

 

Example:  A Clean Earth We Inherited

 

 

If you want to clean the earth up,  go  clean up cans are something  instead wasting your day on here posting about it,  it's very easy  to do your part . this is the privacy and security section of of the board it has nothing to do with the environment.

 

lost users at nsaneforums.com 

[nir]

@steven36Great advice. Difficult to follow because of age, cold, laziness, and other factors.

[ghost]

There is no doubt China is a surveillance state, they openly talk about it. While the other country denies it. I am pretty sure the NSA does not bake cookies for girl-scouts to sell or the CIA is campaigning for donations to end world hunger. 

 

Look, you cant call someone out if your doing the same thing you are doing. That make you a hypocrite....

 

Spoiler

oh BTW the UK has a similar system. 

 

[ghost]

5 hours ago, nir said:

We will never get back what we give up willingly.

 

Example:  A Clean Earth We Inherited

 

Yes we need to clean up the planet.  

[nir]

1 minute ago, ghost said:

we need to clean up the planet.  

We are the problem, @ghost.

First we dirty it then say we need to clean it (not you @ghost)

Mother nature can take care of itself, if only we stop beating her.

If only we stop polluting, Earth knows how to clean itself.

 

[BioHazard]

Yes definitely clean up the planet instead of waging wars to destroy the planet.

[ghost]

21 minutes ago, nir said:

We are the problem, @ghost.

First we dirty it then say we need to clean it (not you @ghost)

Mother nature can take care of itself, if only we stop beating her.

If only we stop polluting, Earth knows how to clean itself.

 

I know what you meant. no worries... its not inaccurate to say i'm complicit too. But my my defense i'm trying to clean up my act (pun.)

[nir]

Put it another way. We may call it the blunt way.  But this is the Truth-Way.

 

We are an infinitesimal part of Mother Nature.

We are irrelevant except in our own minds.

Mother Nature needs no cleaning.

We need to clean up our acts for our own survival.

 

@ghost Thank You.

 

 

 

 

[steven36]

1 hour ago, ghost said:

Look, you cant call someone out if your doing the same thing you are doing. That make you a hypocrite....

I been calling out Google and  NSA for for being surveillance state for much longer than most of these people join  this site. I was telling people Google was shit long before Google Chrome  ever came out and it never done any good.  Most people didn't even care about there privacy  tell this year after they fell under scrutiny  from there own country and the EU . Back before  Snowden  they use to call us conspiracy theorist .

 

Do you see the USA say if they care  or not that there being hypocritical?  That's typical   Government for you no different from what the EU does always crying  about what Big Tech USA  does but censors there own peoples internet and  places like  the UK  have had wall to wall  CCTV  for years . Data retention going on in the EU as well,

 

LOL the UK is a prefect example of what happens when you take peoples guns away,  they all  kill each other with sticks and knives , They have more crimes in London than cites in  the USA  that have street gangs with hi powered weapons.  So there hi tech  surveillance state  and taking peoples freedoms away don't control crime even.

[ghost]

40 minutes ago, steven36 said:

I been calling out Google and  NSA for for being surveillance state for much longer than most of these people join  this site. I was telling people Google was shit long before Google Chrome  ever came out and it never done any good.  Most people didn't even care about there privacy  tell this year after they fell under scrutiny  from there own country and the EU . Back before  Snowden  they use to call us conspiracy theorist .

 

Do you see the USA say if they care  or not that there being hypocritical?  That's typical   Government for you no different from what tbe more he EU does always crying  about what Big Tech USA  does but censors there own peoples internet and  places like  the UK  have had wall to wall  CCTV  for years . Data retention going on in the EU as well,

Sorry bro. When i say "you" i wasn't referring to you specifically. I just really hate hypocrites of all types.

 

Snowden is more recent and highly publicized, but there are many others before him.... Hopefully there will more people like them to tell the real truth.

 

PS: keep up the great work you do. I normally don't comment much but i do read what people post on here. Thanks...

[steven36]

23 minutes ago, ghost said:

Sorry bro. When i say "you" i wasn't referring to you specifically. I just really hate hypocrites of all types.

 

Snowden is more recent and highly publicized, but there are many others before him.... Hopefully there will more people like them to tell the real truth.

Oh i'm not hypocrite i'm one few people you will meet that practice what I preach . Before Snowden  most of the world was in denial  they all thought the U.S. Government only done that sort of thing during times of war .But what they fail to realize there was a war , 2 of them to be exact, after they signed into law the parrot act that gave NSA great powers over the internet . The NSA been around like a 100 years under different names. But some  of there powers have been reduced under the Freedom Act .Before the  Freedom Act the  Big Tech  Outfits had to act like espionage didn't even exist   .But  the new laws gave them rights to report it after the info is no longer of any value  to NSA or the FBI. But still there spying programs are very much in tact still .

[ghost]

16 minutes ago, steven36 said:

Oh i'm not hypocrite i'm one few people you will meet that practice what I preach . Before Snowden  most of the world was in denial  they all thought the U.S. Government only done that sort of thing during times of war .But what they fail to realize there was a war , 2 of them to be exact, after they signed into law the parrot act that gave NSA great powers over the internet . The NSA been around like a 100 years under different names. But some  of there powers have been reduced under the Freedom Act .Before the  Freedom Act the  Big Tech  Outfits had to act like espionage didn't even exist   .But  the new laws gave them rights to report it after the info is no longer of any value  to NSA or the FBI. But still there spying programs are very much in tact still .

Agreed.😉