
Made in China, Exported to the World: The Surveillance State - petethomas
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/technology/ecuador-surveillance-cameras-police-government.html
======
throwanon
I grew up in a third-world country, and I've noticed a palpable shift in the
moods of my educated, middle-class friends and family back home.

People in many third-world countries have been fed the line that democracy is
the correct form of government. This isn't accidental: the soft power of
Hollywood and the myth of American exceptionalism have been powerful
incentives to have faith in the ability of democratic institutions to improve
lives: it's an odd form of cargo-cultism, and if you are a believer in freedom
and democracy, a "helpful delusion". The educated elites in third world
democracies have recoiled from the notion of authoritarianism, and from the
idea of having every aspect of their lives surveilled for safety.

Political events in the US, the rise of social media, and the risks of
virality unexpectedly unleashing mob chaos have made them a lot more wary.
Openness and the exchange of ideas exposes the worst of human nature: the
trolls whose ideas are magnified by algorithms seeking to capture attention.
The propagandists and bots with their massive reach are noticed by educated
people, who can see how powerless or unwilling social networks and governments
are to stop them. It doesn't matter whether the propagandists succeed or not-
their mere unfettered existence is enough to disturb people.

With the weakening of democratic norms, other options are suddenly back on the
table. As people have theoretically become freer, they seem to seek more
security. Blanketing a city with CCTV seems to be a pragmatic trade-off for
personal safety. The censorship of China seems to be attractive because of the
endless hateful noise of social media, the orderliness of having criminals
removed from society permanently via the death penalty suddenly seems
attractive. The lesser-educated never really cared for abstract notions of
liberty anyway. In short, the authoritarian surveillance state is an
increasingly attractive proposition to large swathes of humanity.

~~~
Cyph0n
I know many from various Middle Eastern countries who share a similar
viewpoint.

As an Arab myself, I see it as nothing more than a defeatist attitude that is
typically held by those who have enough money and connections (typically upper
class).

Safety and democracy can coexist and are not mutually exclusive as you claim.
The safest countries in the world are democracies last I checked.

Democracy is not only about “abstract notions of liberty”, but also (and more
importantly) about justice and equality for all. When these “lesser-educated”
people are held in prison without trial for watching the wrong Youtube video
or practicing the wrong religion, they also realize this fact.

~~~
njepa
While I agree with your overall point, I am not sure I would attribute
defeatism to the rest of the world so much as the West. It is the West that is
set to remove any form of commonality and turn to a state of legalized
corruption and nepotism. The Chinese, Russians and Arabs are just copying the
West. They are the ones getting the high-rises, roads and subways. And people
are actually seeing progress.

If the West ever returns to the idea of democratic society where everyone
should have access to education, housing and good working conditions. Where we
run our countries, our infrastructure and invest in scientific progress
together. And where we believe that running businesses in line with the values
of society is better. Then they would want democracy as well.

~~~
Zaphods
> The Chinese, Russians and Arabs are just copying the West.

The problem with that line of reasoning is that those countries are
categorically different from democracies.

Those countries do not have the interlocking systems of laws, elections,
values, that constitute democracy, things like 1) rule of law 2) private
property rights 3) protections for minorities 4) independent judiciaries 5)
systematic transitions of power through electoral systems with competing
parties 6) independent constitutions that require 2/3rds or more majorities to
amend, 7) separation of church and state (this includes cult of
personalities), I could go on.

Superficially, it seems fair to compare democratic western countries to China,
Russia, and Arab monarchies/dictatorships. But you easily slide into a
category error. The very fact that they are not democracies means the people
in those countries lack concrete tangible mechanisms and systems to ensure
their freedom, independence, and safety, in a productive society that also
protects minorities. The people are just fundamentally less free than they
would be if they were in a democracy.

Your criticisms of western democracies are well founded. The biggest problem
in modern democracies is simple greed and regulatory capture (and
intensification of capital in a low % of the population but that's connected
to greed and regulatory capture). But that's not an argument to adopt a
Chinese, Russian, or Arab, system if there is one beyond greed and
authoritarian control. That's an argument to fix our democracies (ironically,
the idea of fixing a government and society in this way is _unique_ to
happening within a democracy, otherwise what are you fighting for? more
oppression?).

The grass is always greener when you assume you'll be in the powerful, rich,
or successful, portion of society. But you can't assume that. So we have
democracy.

~~~
njepa
I don't disagree with democracy. It is just that the system isn't its idea,
but what it delivers. Most people never looked up to the US because it was the
most democratic, because it wasn't. But because it delivered relative to other
systems. The US system gave some of its people prosperity as in a decent sized
house, the independence of a car to use the extensive highway network, an
education and a career. Essentially a future.

Today it doesn't deliver. People go to the US because the status and the
money, despite the visa process, the education system, the housing market and
the infrastructure. Soon enough they will catch up to the status and the
money, and the West will have little to offer.

It is easy the point the finger to everyone else, but it is the West that
aren't fighting for it. We want the global markets, the large companies and
the Chinese investments. You can't have both. You can't on the one hand have
an idea of how things should be, and on the other sell it to highest bidder.

There are probably hundreds of articles about China "stealing" industries from
the West. But overall they are just buying them to the delight of the owners,
either with money or effort. And then the West somehow thinks that the Chinese
should be the ones considering them successful.

~~~
Zaphods
I personally wouldn't jump at the chance to live in the US, but I still would.
I absolutely would not ever live in a country that is not a democracy. That is
the distinction I think you are kind of eliding. A puttering democracy is
_still better_ than a thriving authoritarian country.

In general, I agree with you. I would not use the current US as a stirling
example, historically, though the US system has been largely successful. We
probably disagree on the level of success though.

I can't speak from the US perspective, but in Canada many people come and they
like it here. Not just because of status or money. Because people don't just
need or want status or money. They like it here because here we actually work
to balance security and opportunity. Not everyone is happy. But they're not
unhappy and without rights, they're just unhappy. Liberal democracies have
been trying to create [Rawlsian
justice]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice#The_Two_Pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice#The_Two_Principles_of_Justice))
and some have been more successful than others.

I think the idea that economic success and liberal democratic values coincide
has been too quickly conflated. I share your view of West - China trade. The
West thought that liberalizing economic markets would naturally _cause_
liberalized societies and democracies. Allowing China to enter the WTO without
serious stipulations and controls to ensure democratic transition was a
mistake. And now they flaunt their economic "success" as the sign of a
successful counter to democracy. Western industries and governments that cozy
up to China risk serious moral hazard and we are already seeing the effects of
that.

We missed our chance to seriously allow a liberal China to take shape when it
would have been best to.

But China _still_ relies on the west for trade. And that is our leverage.
Going alone against China is suicide. As a block of democracies, however, we
could stand up to them quite easily. We just can't be greedy. That's a hard
sell in 2019 apparently.

~~~
njepa
> In general, I agree with you. I would not use the current US as a stirling
> example, historically, though the US system has been largely successful. We
> probably disagree on the level of success though.

That is sort of the point. People see the US as an example of democracy
because of its prosperity, not because of its democracy. If you want democracy
you probably go to Finland instead.

Everything _is_ worse in these authoritarian countries not just the freedom.
That is another thing people generally don't understand. There is nothing to
catch up to. We just have to make sure to not get worse ourselves. And to
actually use the advantages we had. That is why I am saying that it is the
West that is defeatist. It is we that are changing our ways, to a large extent
from our post war ideals.

If you want the feature of democracy you have actually be democratic. Which
many areas of our societies increasingly aren't. It is nice to be able to say
whatever you want, but if no one is listening there is no effect. The point is
that something should happen, otherwise we are just cargo culting ourselves
and being jesters for those in power.

~~~
jakeogh
The democracy thing is how the power centers like to represent it. Democracies
without inalienable rights (specifically to property ownership, speech and
self defense) are inherently unstable.

The United States is a constitutional republic.

------
winchling
What's the ideal size of a polis? Too small: there's no privacy. Too large:
also no privacy.

In the first case, for example a roving band of stone-agers, say N = 30 with
all males related and everybody knowing the leader. Which is good because
whatever the political system, leadership entails consent of the led. But bad
because the leader knows everyone so it's harder to act or think differently.
Errors in understanding the world are firmly entrenched.

The second case might be for example a modern state of N = 100M, with IT.
There are notional leaders but they are partly controlled by unseen oligarchs,
possibly residents of _other_ states. The bureaucracy and businesses collect
and sell information about everybody. Voting, if it exists at all, generates
little consent, since only a negligible fraction of people know the official
leaders, let alone the oligarchs, let alone what sort of decisions will be
consequently be made.

The ideal is therefore presumably where N is some fairly low multiple of
_Dunbar 's Number_. But even if we wanted to we don't have the technology or
knowledge to implement this yet.

~~~
lr4444lr
It's almost as if decentralized federalism of the United States, with a
limited federal government, states which are essentially 50 laboratories to
experiment with which ideas work, which don't, and which need to be different,
with lots of county and town level control as befits the granularities of each
level of affiliation, starts to make sense.

~~~
Razengan
Now imagine this applied to an entire planet.

All countries doing their own experiments, no wars, and people being free to
travel across borders at any time, to live in and support the ideals they
prefer.

~~~
Kaiyou
Doesn't work that well if people move to other countries to change them to
become like their original country. Would only work if travel across borders
with the intention of staying was forbidden. Would also incentivize people to
change their own country for the better when they can see other successful
countries they just have to copy.

~~~
vkou
> Doesn't work that well if people move to other countries to change them to
> become like their original country.

You can make the exact same argument against 'states as laboratories'.

------
yogthos
This focus on surveillance in China is incredibly disingenuous because things
aren't actually all that different in the West. We all carry phones that
collect a ton of information on us, and we now know that this information is
shared with the government. The only difference is that in China you know that
the state watches you while here we pretend that it's not the case. The
reality is that Chinese government is just more open about it. We also have a
social credit system here it's your credit rating score. Your value in the
West is determined solely by the size of your bank account.

So, perhaps if we don't like what we see in China, it's time to start looking
inward instead of pointing fingers.

~~~
Gustomaximus
> things aren't actually all that different in the West

Really. I feel there's a massive difference between agencies background
lurking looking for signs of extremism to focus limited physical surveillance
resources and a 'social credit score' where you ability to work a job, attend
a school or catch a plane etc is based on a computer generated score on how
the govt feels you should act from their surveillance.

~~~
joe_the_user
Well, this particular article is about surveillance tech sold by China. The
complain is that Chinese companies don't have the sense of responsibility that
Western companies have.

While I'd agree that domestically, the West doesn't have China's direct
illegalizing of dissent, for the sales of tech to other nations (Saudi Arabia
or China itself), claims of Western superiority seem awfully stretched.

------
_lessthan0
Also similar maybe not as in depth situations are made in the UK, US and
others. Not just China.

~~~
lostlogin
The Dutch have it pretty bad, possible worse than some of the above.
[https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/cities/20...](https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/01/smart-
cities-data-privacy-eindhoven-utrecht)

[https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-dutch-surveillance-
kings-o...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-dutch-surveillance-kings-of-
europe-are-about-to-get-even-nosier)

~~~
edejong
As a dutch citizen from a city near Utrecht, I am baffled by the number of
surveillance systems in place operated by surveillance capitalists. This has
to stop. Uncontrolled invasion of our public space without properly informing
the subjects and giving a choice is totally unacceptable.

~~~
mercer
Sadly I find that the Dutch, in general, are extremely indifferent and even
antagonistic towards political activism.

I'm not entirely sure why this is. Perhaps it's general wealth/comfort, or
perhaps a history of, at best, amoral profit-seeking.

Or maybe I'm just seeing things. But in general my experience has been that
the kinds of people that I would expect to be activists are much less so over
here than in, say, Germany or France or Spain.

~~~
huffmsa
> _Or maybe I 'm just seeing things_

No, I've always been befuddled by how both the Dutch and Belgian have
basically had their colonial reigns of terror handwaved away.

It's likely that neither nation really acknowledges it or has anyone agitating
internally for the nation to own up to it. So like you said, they're rich and
a bit amoral.

~~~
mercer
My impression is that we don't even bother to hand-wavy and justify or defend
any of it. We just don't care. It happened. It's in the past. And we didn't
personally do it.

------
chriselles
I wonder if Ecuador is the best example to use for the export of technology
enabled authoritarianism?

I strongly suspect the generation of equipment installed in Ecuador misses the
more recent and far more ominous AI/ML force multiplier effect of surveillance
technology.

Mass customised surveillance price/performance is making an Orwellian/Stasi
state a reality.

In terms of authoritarianism versus democracy my thoughts are:

Votes can’t be eaten Votes can’t shelter you Votes can’t employ you Votes
can’t educate your children Votes can’t ensure a better quality of life for
you children

Votes don’t equate to trust

I strongly prefer living under democracy than authoritarianism.

But if there was a hypothetical binary choice between:

Corrupt democratic government

And

Net Promoter Score responsive authoritarian government

I believe the needle will be shifting away from the former and towards the
latter.

Perhaps the perception of democracy as a luxury with a questionable value
proposition to many is one that should be better considered?

Do we want/need Government as a Service/Subscription?

------
bluetomcat
Invented in the West for public safety, exported to the rest of the world for
corporate profit.

------
vms20591
It's always right when the West and big corporations do it, because they are
the good guys, right?. Everyone has an agenda, whether its open or hidden.

Any form of violation of privacy or rights and anyone who does it should be
held accountable. Just don't pick and choose to suit your bias.

------
cooervo
invented in the UK

~~~
huffmsa
The playbook was written there too.

Poor George. He'll get a statue as the "godfather of our peaceful watchful
state" and not for warning us.

~~~
basetop
The oddest thing about 1984 is how the education system ( at least here in the
US ) has turned it into a warning about the soviet union when it was in fact a
warning about the west. Animal farm was about the soviet union. 1984 was about
the west. And yet we are taught over and over again that 1984 was about the
soviet union.

George Orwell worked as a propagandist for the BBC during ww2.

"I was wasting my own time and the public money on doing work that produces no
result. I believe that in the present political situation the broadcasting of
British propaganda to India is an almost hopeless task."

[https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-orwell-
sta...](https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-orwell-
statue-20160809-snap-story.html)

Orwell based the Ministry of Truth and Room 101 on the BBC. And yet the BBC is
building a statue for Orwell for his work as a "journalist" at the BBC. What
an insane world we live in. The BBC is co-opting Orwell to burnish their own
reputation, even though Orwell criticized and warned us about the BBC. You
have to respect the hubris even if you disagree with the misrepresentation.

~~~
huffmsa
It wasn't framed as anti-soviet when I was in school. Just broadly anti-
authoritarian

~~~
huffmsa
But it makes sense the west tried to reframe it. Otherwise Londoners would
have been highly skeptical of the mass installation of CCTV and nationwide
disarmament.

~~~
kmlx
> nationwide disarmament

should and will happen in most countries.

> CCTV

too many people per sq km to proper police.

~~~
huffmsa
Okay, statist.

------
subjoriented
The history of China's rise as a technologically enabled state is in direct
contradiction to the premise of the accusation.

The West invented technologically enabled surveillance. The Stasi in Germany -
for example - developed a records and accounting system and would use home
telephony equipment to spy on dissidents. As of the 70s and 80s the United
States NSA has backdoored much of the modern global communications systems -
and has build these systems to scale intelligence into actionable intelligence
for partner enforcement organizations (CIA/FBI/etc). At a municipal scale, the
United States is networked with threat scoring systems, camera networks with
facial recognition, ISMI interceptors (with continuous passive collections
events over all major cities), data fusion centers between policing and data
networks, requirements to data holding companies to compel data access, and
much more - these systems were build several decades ago but are constantly
being updated.

China was struggling through these decades to reestablish itself, and has only
recently copied modern Western systems of surveillance.

I don't really have teeth in that game though. I realize this is a political
topic ("blame"). The fact that the West employs a sophisticated and pervasive
surveillance state should not restrict us from criticizing Eastern
implementations of the same gross mal-application of technology. And the fact
is that who "invented" it is a bit of a non-starter, as state surveillance
existed thousands of years ago in rudimentary forms that have evolved
independently between states - and the application of modern technology is
just one aspect of historical picture.

Of course the surveillance situation in the United States goes much further,
with state intelligence agencies actively "engaged" with the public so that
public perception can be shaped. The NSA calls this combination of
surveillance and engagement "active listening". I don't know whether China has
learned from this yet (such topics are hard to research) but it wouldn't
surprise me.

------
jammygit
I would have subscribed to the times by now if they practiced what they
preached. Why can't paykng subs be free of the tracking ads?

------
mv4
It's amazing how many of the top-selling IP cameras on Amazon (including
"Amazon's Choice" like Wyze) have buyer reviews where people discovered their
cameras contacting servers in China, Russia, etc.

And that's why we made an autonomous, cloud-less video security assistant. We
should probably do a Show HN at some point!

------
intended
I’ve written it elsewhere on HN, but the China model is going to be the more
popular model of internet management.

It’s time to understand the implications of a govt sanctioned whitelist of
information.

------
jackcosgrove
How many people in this thread advocating for surveillance are doing so
because they, as information workers, would personally have an advantage under
such a system?

