Digital surveillance is omnipresent in China. Here’s how citizens are coping
Digital surveillance is omnipresent in China. Here’s how citizens are coping
State surveillance of citizens is growing all over the world, but it is a fact of daily life in China. People are developing mental tactics to distance themselves from it.
almost every participant brought up the “lack of moral quality” of their fellow citizens, whom they said behaved like children with little moral sense.
In the context of this shame-inducing narrative, surveillance is framed as a welcome solution to enforce the rules by punishing violators and getting people to behave better. According to the participants, moral shortcomings are responsible for the “century of humiliations” that China has experienced since the Opium Wars and the Japanese invasions; according to this discourse, “civilizing” the population will enable China to gain the international recognition it so ardently desires.
What a fucking victim blaming asshole you have to be to suggest we need dragnet surveillance everywhere because there was an epidemic of opium addiction
Sounds like the patriot act in America. Something bad happened so the govt said “hey we’re just gonna go ahead and spy on you to keep everyone safe”
Remember that you need an id to get a phone number in most countries. And how hot big IT is for your phone number. Aside from UKUSA and NSA programs doing way more.
The coping tactics are almost the same here, if you're not a privacy nut.
Not to say it's as bad as in China, especially here it's for money (though not for me) and against terrorism. But the definition of terrorism can quickly change with someone like trump in power.
I'm so glad I don't need any ID to buy a number in my country. In your face, "free and democratic" countries!
Just remember the FBI were already watching the 9-11 hijackers and knew what they were going to do beforehand but didn't stop it.
Where I live, I consider nothing I do on my phone private at all, and I have to act accordingly. I would be in breach of Chinese law were I to do the same in China.
Trump is probably pro freedom and privacy compared to Biden. In reality political differences and polarization have distracted us.
What does "pro-freedom" even mean? He's clearly not pro choice for example. Most of his freedoms seem to be for corporations, the citizens only have an illusion of freedom at best.
The really interesting part of this article for me is the list of "mental tactics" Chinese people are using to distance themselves/cope with surveillance. I have heard every single one of those used by Westerners, some of them extremely frequently. Westerners often seem to believe that they are somehow immune to the type of mass surveillance you see in authoritarian states like China, but this suggests to me that we are actually extremely susceptible to it ourselves. The mindset already exists and we are already making those mental exceptions for civil liberties infringements in the name of "security" (government surveillance) or convenience (company surveillance). The only difference is our governments have not yet taken surveillance to the same extremes or, if they have, are less transparent about how they're doing it, so there is still a misguided belief that the same thing cannot happen where we live.
Digital surveillance is omnipresent in the west. Apparently nobody cares.
It's better propaganda if it's China, Russia, Iran, etc. And tbh, those nations are in an information war against the western propaganda machine. As long as we have an aggressive Capitalist west, I think a firewall is necessary for a proper information defense in any country. It's hard to defend against propaganda without some control, and it's rather naive to think that any nation won't/shouldn't defend itself from western information attacks. I haven't read the article as I assume it's pure anti-west made up propaganda as usual.
The surveillance is somewhat less pervasive where I live, but the methods for selling people on the idea that it's acceptable, inevitable, and for our own good are much the same the world over.
the thing that makes me go .. 🤦♂️.. Is hearing some CS graduate or "Engineer" saying you don't have privacy online, forget it..
Big tech really tried them to behave as their spokesmen
Remember when Elon wanted to make twitter into a super-app? Back then? In the past?
not like the west isnt doing it too, but that gives me the creeps about china too.
Honestly the censorship and single narrative is way more concerning
They go together though. Like what's scary about the surveillance is how much censorship there is. Because it would be dead easy to arrest someone for thought crime if you are constantly surveiling them.