
China Tries Its Hand at Pre-Crime - tokenadult
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-03/china-tries-its-hand-at-pre-crime
======
badmadrad
Alot of people here are somehow turning this into a USA/NSA bashing but thats
a straw man. The fact of the matter is you can't be imprisoned in the US for a
crime you haven't committed or at least that judge and jury haven't
deliberated on. Can you say the Chinese have the same safeguards ...probably
not? Yes, governments have and always will have the vested interest to retain
their power but that's why we must have our rights and legal system. I feel
like the Chinese don't share this luxury as much as we do.

~~~
jotux
>The fact of the matter is you can't be imprisoned in the US for a crime you
haven't committed or at least that judge and jury haven't deliberated on.

Kevin Mitnick spent 4.5 years in jail waiting for trial.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick#Arrest.2C_convic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick#Arrest.2C_conviction.2C_and_incarceration)

~~~
contingencies
Look at Julian Assange's situation. He has prominent academics, human rights
lawyers and the UNHCHR on his side, and Sweden/UK/US have still basically
imprisoned him with no trial in exchange for never breaking a law. China is
definitely no worse. I feel safer here in China than in the US with its
overbearing corrupt police gangs and litigious gun culture, by far.

~~~
stickfigure
Whatever you think of Julian Assange, "imprisonment without trial" has been
his choice. If he were to leave the embassy, he fairly certainly would receive
a trial.

~~~
contingencies
How can you believe that when they literally forced down diplomatic planes
over Europe for just _some_ of the leaks the US are out to get him for? When
the whole Swedish bar association is up in arms at the abuse of process and
Swedish image related to the farcical charges? When the documents about his
police statements there were all leaked and clearly show his innocence from
the allegations? To me, your thought process just seems naive.

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1stop
Why is it framed as totalitarian and unfair when China do what the US has been
doing since 2001?

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daveguy
Yup. From the article -- "The bottom line: A top Chinese military contractor
is building a data analytics platform to help authorities identify terrorists
before they strike." So.... excactly what NSA does (alone and with private
commercial ventures). I thought there was going to be an aspect of identifying
potential for crimes and rounding people up who haven't done anything yet
(which would be a step beyond what NSA and company have done. But nope, It's
exactly what we've done for over a decade.

A few other things from the article: "The government revealed last year that
it was also building a nationwide database that would score citizens on their
trustworthiness." ... I doubt we do this. It seems like NSA data collection is
broad and encompassing, but not detailed analysis on every single US citizen.
Sounds inefficient if the goal is to stop terrorism.

Also FTA -- "New antiterror laws that went into effect on Jan. 1 allow
authorities to gain access to bank accounts, telecommunications, and a
national network of surveillance cameras called Skynet."

Skynet?! Really?! Come on China. It was a movie not a playbook!

~~~
imglorp
No one would confuse NSA data collection as effective at stopping potential
criminal attacks. If the government was truly worried about US deaths, it
would be looking at drunk driving, lung cancer, and heart disease in earnest,
some half million deaths a year.

No, both the NSA and Chinese efforts are aimed at identifying and suppressing
dissent. We're not that different.

~~~
refurb
_If the government was truly worried about US deaths, it would be looking at
drunk driving, lung cancer, and heart disease in earnest, some half million
deaths a year._

This is a silly statement. Fighting terror is more than just preventing
deaths. It's preventing the destabilization of a society, of markets, etc.

Not all deaths have an equal impact.

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imglorp
The only impact terrorism has had on our society has been to open the door for
a security versus rights discussion. The power grabbing government is
destabilizing society, not the terrorists.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
The families of the 3000 dead on 9/11 might disagree with you.

Look, I agree with you in general. We over-reacted, and it has hurt us. But to
say that terrorism has had no impact is overstating your case.

~~~
tedks
I grew up right outside DC (a few blocks from NIH) and while I didn't lose
anyone on 9/11, I came pretty close and know plenty of people who did.

The freedom we lost on 9/11 make the lives we lost pale in comparison. People
grieve but get over the loss of their loved ones. Death is a normal part of
life, however horrific, and people can cope with it.

The things I've seen since 9/11, some of them I find harder to cope with.
Police carrying submachine guns on street corners; every government building
sprouting snipers and anti-tank barricades and razor wire; oblique-angled
antennae-sprouting APCs and god knows what else carrying legions of power-
armored riot police at every protest. America looks scarier now. It's hard to
feel safe in an environment like this, where you feel besieged by an invisible
enemy.

Of course, this is exactly the intention of the people carrying out these
policies, and ironically, also the intention of the terrorists. Politics make
strange bedfellows indeed -- it's not hard to see how the Pentagon has seized
on terrorism as a way to increase its own power, and conversely, as the
Pentagon acts against "global terror," "global terror" is able to ratchet up
the propaganda and recruit even more jihadists to the cause.

Terrorism has had an impact because people in the United States wanted it to.

~~~
logfromblammo
Invisible enemy?

I probably wouldn't be able to spot a genuine terrorist if it leaped out from
behind a bush and shouted "boo!" But I have noticed how cops and bureaucrats
and securibots have become more paranoid and fearful over the last 15 years.

It has even created some kind of bizarre psychological feedback loop, wherein
some cops use widespread belief in a mythical "war on cops" to cover up
anything from honest mistakes to outright corruption, and the stories they
make up reinforce the myth. Then formerly normal and expected behavior, such
as protesters hurling verbal abuse or criminal suspects committing violence to
evade capture, is recruited into the myth, becoming part of a coordinated
conspiracy instead of just normal behavior. At some point, when the cops have
thoroughly convinced themselves that someone is out to get them, and armed and
trained themselves for war, another hand rises up to meet the one that was
clapping, and the mythical war begins recruiting soldiers into the de facto
opposing army. Treat people like your enemy for long enough, and they may
oblige you by becoming one in fact.

This is exactly the same phenomenon I have seen in foil-hatted crackpots. Once
you get it in your head that lizard people are ruling the Earth, confirmation
bias takes over, and you start seeing evidence of lizard people everywhere. If
you stand up in the local city council meeting and accuse one of the members
of being a lizard in disguise, you get thrown out of the meeting for being a
disruptive lunatic, but in your mind it is because they don't want you blowing
their cover. If you get a speeding ticket, it's because the lizard people have
targeted you for retributive harassment. If your milk spoils before the sell-
by date, it's because they're sneaking into your house and tampering with your
food when you're away.

You just cannot combat that kind of contagious insanity with facts and logic.

The tiresome, paranoiac behavior of government officials just makes us all
less tolerant of their ordinary, everyday bullshit. And that makes the
marginal individuals, like the Ammon Bundy "Y'allQaeda" sit-in group at
Malheur NWR, act out. And that winds the government officials up tighter. And
that encourages the next group to blow their lids. And that winds the
government officials up tighter....

Someone will eventually have to realize that government is manufacturing its
own dissent, by acting like a bunch of dangerous lunatics. If it would just
take a deep breath and do a little bit of introspection, it will become
obvious just who needs to be fired in order to halt the spreading madness, and
who needs to be promoted in their stead to reverse it.

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mtgx
> “We don’t call it a big data platform but a united information environment.”
> —Wu Manqing, China Electronics Technology

Sounds familiar:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness)

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trhway
i wonder whether the "united information environment" can be a result of
to_English(to_Chinese("intelligence fusion"))

[https://www.dhs.gov/state-and-major-urban-area-fusion-
center...](https://www.dhs.gov/state-and-major-urban-area-fusion-centers)

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nefitty
I was expecting preemptive street policing, like the software this company
provides (and is used by several police forces around the US):
[http://www.predpol.com/about/](http://www.predpol.com/about/)

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bhewes
What amazes me is that dang’an system is even functional.

As for pre-crime crime forecasting has been part of policing for at least as
long as I have been alive. The Rand report from 2013 title _Predictive
Policing_ being the latest report I know of -
[http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/R...](http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR200/RR233/RAND_RR233.pdf)

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shmerl
Watchbird[1] incoming?

[1].
[https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29579](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29579)

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curt15
"In China, once a suspect is targeted, police can freeze bank accounts and
compel companies to hand over records of his communications."

Can we expect them to strongarm companies like Apple that offer secure
communications channels, such as imessage? It will be interesting to watch how
Apple navigates those waters.

~~~
lostlogin
One can watch this playing out in the US for a precursor. The weird NY Times
comment and its retraction that Snowden commented on is relevant here.
[https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/700073024373047297](https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/700073024373047297)

Edit: Thinking more, where in the world is does police targeting not cause
problems. Here in New Zealand there have been several recent cases of massive
overreach that resulted in no charges or just a huge clustersf*&k. Dotcom, the
Nicky Sagar searches etc. There are recent cases in the US and UK that come to
mind fast too, often with reporters being targeted.

~~~
jacobolus
They expanded it into a full article a couple days later:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/technology/apple-sees-
valu...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/technology/apple-sees-value-in-
privacy-vow.html)

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dragonbonheur
Another day, another China-bashing propaganda piece from Bloomberg...
Seriously, it's become too obvious.

~~~
wallacoloo
While we're bashing that site, the webpage spontaneously reloaded itself
_three times_ while I was reading that article, each time sending me back to
the top of the page. A bit annoying, to say the least.

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awqrre
US drones already do lots of pre-crime targeting [1]

1\. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/civilian-deaths-drone-
st...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/civilian-deaths-drone-
strikes_us_561fafe2e4b028dd7ea6c4ff)

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NovaS1X
One step closer to our Psycho-Pass future.

