
China Uses High-Tech Surveillance to Subdue Minorities - mcone
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/china-surveillance-xinjiang.html
======
bitL
Most Deep Learning papers related to tracking human pose, identifying abnormal
behavior, detecting crime from video feeds etc. have Chinese authors.
Literally bleeding-edge stuff used to subdue people. Can't wait to see some
western politicians to hop on the same train once this tech is cheap after
China beta-tests it and irons out all the quirks.

~~~
dheera
There are also plenty of less dystopian uses for pose tracking, including
games, cashless convenience stores, VR/AR applications, and driverless cars
predicting pedestrian behavior.

~~~
mschuster91
The key is that said "less dystopian" uses commoditize the technology that the
governments can use to spy on its citizens without even spending any major
amount of r&d investment. Hell, Alexa in a TV and you have a 1984 system -
_willingly_ installed by consumers, no less. A 1984 system that for all
intents and purposes can be converted into a surveillance system per secret
court order.

The recent crackdowns on TOR darknet services are also frightening. While I'm
not shedding tears for child porn distributors, the inevitable message that
comes across with the monthly takedown press releases is "we can even get
those with the best experience in using cryptography and hiding tools, how do
you expect to organize resistance in case government goes the China way?"

Maybe parts of the US could provide resistance given that many people have
enough private firearms to make sure any kind of government intrusion will
result in unbelievable bloodshed, but disarmed populations like many European
countries? They will have no way to voice any opposing thought anymore. We
already see this in Hungary where Orban's friends have all but eliminated free
independent press or in Turkey where tens of thousands get arrested for
"terrorism" charges.

~~~
JCharante
I've always heard that the US stands out from other Western countries due to
the number of guns in its civilian populations. Is the ability to stand up to
mass surveillance states something that people who want to take away guns take
into account? In my time in the US I've only heard the argument of the US
becoming a bad actor towards its civilian populations be dismissed. I also
wonder if civilian populations have access to weapons in areas like Caracas.
It'd certainly be terrifying to fight the military there, but the military is
already mowing down protesters that are wielding sticks and stones.

~~~
wasdfff
That line of logic towards gun ownership made sense when the constitution was
written, and the musket you owned was not far off from the musket a soldier
was issued. What is your ar15 going to do to an unmanned drone six miles in
the air? Or a missile launched from a battleship hundreds of miles off the
coast? We’ve long passed the point of the second amendment. The only reason
guns arent’t totally banned now is because how entrenched the arms industry is
in american politics.

~~~
hkai
I was wondering that too, so I researched and the counterargument appears to
be:

\- Vietnam won a war with primitive weapons against highly equipped American
military

\- while the government can mass murder people with tanks and rockets, it is
unlikely to do so. If in 2019 there was an armed uprising against let's say
Trump, it could succeed.

------
contingencies
Subdue? Not sure of that. But this is ironic on a number of levels. First,
China's crackdown on Xinjiang followed a prolonged (multi-decade) period of
low intensity guerilla resistance to their occupation that essentially
garnered no international reporting. Second, everywhere else in China has
suffered deep and substantial cultural losses in the rush through socialism to
modernity as well, with religion, festivals and local languages and dialects
front and center. Third, China only really stepped up its efforts in Xinjiang
right after the US made "terrorism/national security" the catch-all political
excuse de riguer in the noughties, post 911. Fourth, the Islamic presence in
Xinjiang literally corresponds to a complete cultural genocide against a range
of multicultural (but predominantly Buddhist) kingdoms so effective that we
are still piecing together how to read their (significant) literature today.
Fifth, a $290M CCTV contract is nothing versus daily US military-industrial
spending. Sixth, modern China's main push against peoples in this region began
as early as the 1940s based on a joint China-Russia opposition to nomadic
tribes in the region, documented in the book _Kazak Exodus_.
[http://pratyeka.org/books/kazak-exodus/](http://pratyeka.org/books/kazak-
exodus/)

------
haunter
Why is this topic so popular on HN? I'm just curious because there are so many
social problems and actual politics news in the world but somehow this is
always up here.

~~~
sergiomattei
Well, we're a crowd of mostly technology enthusiasts, developers, and
scientists.

This is very related to the topic of HN - we're witnessing the (worry-
inducing) birth of an oppressive technology-fueled dystopian society.

~~~
slg
But it is strange that there is a lot of discussion about the slippery slope
of what happens when this tech falls into the wrong hands. Meanwhile there is
relatively little discussion about things that get us closer to the government
actually being the "wrong hands".

~~~
stcredzero
_But it is strange that there is a lot of discussion about the slippery slope
of what happens when this tech falls into the wrong hands._

Not strange at all. One can already see a lot of abuses of such technological
power in the US through the exploitation of political affiliations or
connections. We've already slipped down the slope, and we've already seen the
fingerprints of those hands.

 _Meanwhile there is relatively little discussion about things that get us
closer to the government actually being the "wrong hands"._

The government has checks and balances. Though those are imperfect, they can
be used as tools to check the overstepping of power. There are also laws
against the government censoring speech. The popular refrain among
technologists is that it only pertains to Free Speech if the government is
doing it, and it's just private businesses doing their justified activities
when tech giants do it.

What's wrong in principle is still wrong, even if laws and societal wisdom are
lagging technology. Large swathes of the populace feel their voice is being
stifled against their wishes, and many can't even spend their money to support
who they wish to without overcoming barriers put in place by powerful
corporate actors. That's not people losing/winning in a free marketplace of
ideas. That's willful manipulation of the free marketplace of ideas.

------
baybal2
> “The digitalization of police work has achieved leap-like growth in
> Xinjiang,” Zhang Ping, a counterterrorism officer from Jiujiang, a city in
> southeastern China

Sounds ironic. Xinjiang is now the only province in China to register a
recession after eighties

~~~
yimoburu
"Xinjiang is now the only province in China to register a recession after
eighties" Where is the source?

~~~
yorwba
I'd be interested in that, too. I was under the impression that even the
central government can't get reliable economic data on its provinces, because
the numbers are fudged at every level, so they have to estimate them
indirectly e.g. using electricity consumption.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Keqiang_index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Keqiang_index)

------
idlewords
This apparatus of surveillance is functionally identical to what has been
commercially deployed in the U.S., except that we are considerably ahead of
China in areas like in-car monitoring and always-on home microphones.

------
drak0n1c
It's not just for home use. China is also exporting their surveillance and
social credit technology to Venezuela, Cuba, NK, and even Australia. Those
white crowd control vehicles used by Maduro forces to run over dozens of
protestors a few weeks ago? Another tailor-made export.

[https://nypost.com/2019/05/18/chinas-new-social-credit-
syste...](https://nypost.com/2019/05/18/chinas-new-social-credit-system-turns-
orwells-1984-into-reality/)

~~~
orhmeh09
Could you provide a source for your final two statements? The page that you
have linked doesn’t make the same claim.

~~~
drak0n1c
1) Crowd control exports:

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-
politics/venezu...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-
politics/venezuelan-official-says-chinese-riot-control-gear-averts-casualties-
idUSKBN1990YR)

[https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA07/20170913/106398/HHRG...](https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA07/20170913/106398/HHRG-115-FA07-Wstate-
EllisR-20170913.pdf)

2) Running over of protestors (NSFW):

[https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-
world/world/americas...](https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-
world/world/americas/venezuela/article229853509.html)

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-
base-v...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-base-
vehicle/venezuela-national-guard-vehicle-runs-over-protesters-in-caracas-
reuters-tv-idUSKCN1S61ZB)

~~~
chrischen
China also makes NYPD uniforms.

------
mzs
journalist's thread:

>Three years ago China’s leading maker of military electronics, CETC, came to
Xinjiang with a vision: bring the tech of battlefield management to control
and surveil all aspects of the lives of Uighurs. This is our attempt to walk
through how it works.

…

>That shows how important the power of the Chinese state is in creating such a
totalizing surveillance system. But it also shows how powerful readily
available commercial technology has become and how easily it can be made into
the basic ingredients of a police state.

[https://twitter.com/paulmozur/status/1131360852429266945](https://twitter.com/paulmozur/status/1131360852429266945)

------
femiagbabiaka
There is nothing in this article that the U.S. hasn't been doing via
technology exported out of the Acela corridor _forever_. Both are bad, but it
will likely take China another 50 years to match what our MIC has done. Just
this morning I was reading about how the notorious Azov Battalion of Ukraine
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion))
got much of its military training and weapons from the U.S. amongst others.

