
China’s Tech Giants Have a Second Job: Helping the Government See Everything - non_sequitur
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-tech-giants-have-a-second-job-helping-the-government-see-everything-1512056284
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non_sequitur
Relevant excerpt:

"The Chinese government is building one of the world’s most sophisticated,
high-tech systems to keep watch over its citizens, including surveillance
cameras, facial-recognition technology and vast computers systems that comb
through terabytes of data. Central to its efforts are the country’s biggest
technology companies, which are openly acting as the government’s eyes and
ears in cyberspace.

Companies including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. , Tencent Holdings Ltd. and
Baidu Inc., are required to help China’s government hunt down criminal
suspects and silence political dissent. Their technology is also being used to
create cities wired for surveillance.

This assistance is far more extensive than the help Western companies extend
to their governments, and the requests are almost impossible to challenge, a
Wall Street Journal examination of Chinese practices shows.

Unlike American companies, which often resist U.S. government requests for
information, Chinese ones talk openly about working with authorities. Tencent
Chief Executive Ma Huateng, also known as Pony Ma, and Alibaba founder Jack Ma
both have voiced support for private companies working with the government on
law enforcement and security issues.

“The political and legal system of the future is inseparable from the
internet, inseparable from big data,” Alibaba’s Mr. Ma told a Communist Party
commission overseeing law enforcement last year. He said technology will soon
make it possible to predict security threats. “Bad guys won’t even be able to
walk into the square,” he said.

In practice, China’s internet giants, which have benefited from trade policies
shielding them from foreign competition, have little choice but to cooperate
in a country where the Communist Party controls both the legal system and the
right to function as a business."

