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Censorship Government The Internet United States

Is US Surveillance Technology Propping Up Authoritarian Regimes? (washingtonpost.com) 83

Posted by EditorDavid from the big-brotherhood dept.
A senior policy analyst from a non-partisan national security think tank -- and one of their cybersecurity policy fellows -- sound a dire warning in an op-ed shared by Slashdot reader schwit1: From facial recognition software to GPS trackers to computer hacking tools to systems that monitor and redirect flows of Internet traffic, contemporary surveillance technologies enable "high levels of social control at a reasonable cost," as Nicholas Wright puts it in Foreign Affairs. But these technologies don't just aid and enable what Wright and other policy analysts have called "digital authoritarianism." They also promote a sovereign and controlled model of the Internet, one characterized by frequent censorship, pervasive surveillance and tight control by the state. The United States could be a world leader in preventing the spread of this Internet model, but to do so, we must reevaluate the role U.S. companies play in contributing to it....

On one hand, the United States cares deeply about protecting a global and open Internet... On the other hand, American companies are selling surveillance technology that undermines this mission -- contributing to the broader spread of digital authoritarianism that the United States claims to fight. (This also implicates allies such as Britain, whose companies have also sold surveillance technology to oppressive regimes.) We won't be able to allay this situation until the United States updates its approach to exporting surveillance technology. Of course, this must be done carefully. But digital authoritarianism is spreading, and U.S. companies need to stop helping it.-
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Is US Surveillance Technology Propping Up Authoritarian Regimes? More

Is US Surveillance Technology Propping Up Authoritarian Regimes?

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  • US foreign policy is what's happening in Yemen. So, uh, obviously?

    The trick for many of these societies will be to depose their authoritarian oppressors before they get strong AI assistance. It will be a survival-level trait for those that evolve it. Bombmakers have poor sales during peacetime, so this trick is to not focus on the bombmakers but those who can declare war, on outsiders or their own citizens.

    http://hawaii.edu/powerkills [hawaii.edu]

  • Yes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday January 19, 2019 @05:52PM (#57988328)
    and our Military. And our CIA. And our ruling class. This has been going on that I know of since the early 1900s [wikipedia.org] with a big push in the 80s under Reagan. Even Obama looked the other way while we did it terrible thing around the globe to secure cheap oil and general corporate interests. Meanwhile we all look the other way.

    What pisses me off the most is we go down south, destabilize the region, a bunch of actual refugees fleeing violence come up here not "seeking a better life" but seeking to escape the violence we caused and then they're used as a political prop by the same folks who caused the violence in the first place.

    This shouldn't work. It shouldn't be this easy to cow an entire population. We should be pissed at what our ruling class is doing and we should be at the polls stopping them. But in all my life we haven't done jack shit.

    • Maybe most of us really are just dumb cows. Funny how in this case the mooooo troll becomes relevant.

    • https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]

      Yep, here's something to start with. The DEA thugs that murdered innocent people in Honduras should have been put on trial over there and ended up in front of a firing squad.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GlennC ( 96879 )

      This shouldn't work. It shouldn't be this easy to cow an entire population.

      It is once you realize that it hasn't happened all at once. As you mentioned, you've been aware of it going on for generations. It's been going on for quite a while, and they've been working on consolidating and perfecting their methods. In my opinion, the polls aren't where we are able to stop them now, as you can infer from my sig.

      • that's where the real power is. What the politicians and when they get scared. There's only one thing that frightens them: being primaried. AOC shows us it can work, but you've got to be there.

        Also, and I keep saying this when voting comes up (or I'm just pissed at politics): vote for candidates who refuse corporate PAC money. Right now that means Democrats, because these guys [justicedemocrats.com] are the only ones I know of who make it a point to refuse corporate PAC money. I don't know any equivalent on the GOP side.

        F
    • Behold the logic of Empire. It has always been this way; it takes different forms through time but the logic is always the same. And one day, when the sun has set on this Empire, the next set of assholes will be so very worse.

  • IBM and the Nazis (Score:4, Informative)

    by known_coward_69 ( 4151743 ) on Saturday January 19, 2019 @05:57PM (#57988346)

    Is this a trick question? USA has been helping dictators for decades

  • Hahaha, is this a joke? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DoktorMidnight ( 3469647 ) on Saturday January 19, 2019 @06:14PM (#57988410)
    No, of course not. Just like the US didn't provide arms and aid to the Shah of Iran or help create SAVAK. Or that time the US didn't provide arms and assistance to a young, up and coming ruler in a neighboring country after all that stuff the US didn't do in Iran went a little pear-shaped. Or like that time the US didn't help a plucky band of freedom fighters in Afghanistan stop their country from pursuing terrible evils (like female education and suffrage). Nope, there definitely never was a time during the latter half of the twentieth century that the United States ever aided and abetted some of the worst, most monstrous assholes and governments across the globe. And I'm definitely sure that since these new technologies are being offered by military defense contractors (or their owned subsidiaries) that there will be no similar patterns of sales and transfers that we definitely did not see in the twentieth century. The United States is nothing but Freedom, Apple Pie, and valiant protection of Human Rights both at home and abroad. The only things we export are Truth, Justice, the American Way, and Coca-Cola.
    • It wasn't "the US" that did this. It was the CIA and the intelligence community. Americans want to be left alone, while the unelected government wants to rule the world and is prepared to commit horrifying crimes to do it. Truman regretted creating the CIA and Kennedy was just about to disband it when he was assassinated. It's currently trying to unseat the current US President. They're enemies of us all.

      • Re:Hahaha, is this a joke? (Score:4, Informative)

        by DoktorMidnight ( 3469647 ) on Sunday January 20, 2019 @09:05AM (#57990958)
        "Americans want to be left alone" has to be the most ahistorical take on the twentieth century that I have ever read (and I have seen a few over the last two years). For a group of people that wanted to be left alone, US citizens were more than happy to fuel a century of military expansion that has left them with a base on every continent (and that's just counting the facilities above a certain plant value, the US has so much property in other countries that it doesn't know exactly what it has), so many arms and armaments that the surplus production has to be sold to the domestic policing forces, an unsustainable deficit created by not a little military spending, and an economy built on elements of the military industrial complex. Just in case we want to continue the fiction that the citizens aren't in on this, let us not forget that the quickest way to sour the electorate was (and still is) to suggest that a politician was/is weak on military spending. So yes, the US citizens just want to be left alone...in the sense that they would like everyone else in the world to either understand that the US is in charge or lay down and die.
        • You are simply mistaken. I'm sure it feels great to punch down and bash the little people, but it is the unelected government in DC that has created this military expansion that puts bases everywhere. But don't let me stop a good Two Minutes Hate though - speak truth to the powerless!

  • Is there some reason this needs to be asked?

  • It's not even a meaningful question, it's more an example of a bad attempt at linguistic programming.

    Take a look at what it implies
    1. Technology has a moral aspect in and of itself
    2. The U.S. has a monopoly on any given technology
    3. That it's actually possible to control the flow of technology (hint we can't even stop drugs or illegals from coming into our own country)
    4. That it should even be our business what end users do with products.

    The arrogance the above is astonishing even for what normally pops up

    • What goes around, comes around. These tools that America uses to control the world (with the help of their corrupt dictator friends) also work against America, and that is what Russia has (recently) shown. Also: 1-Massive American food subsidies are a way the ruling elite takes money from the masses. This leads to surplus food that must be dumped on the third world, destroying their economy. 2-America opposes renewable energy because the oil industry is run by the ruling elite, so switching takes money

      • That's too funny for words. Are you on crack or acid ? Let me know where you got it from, it's obviously primo stuff.

  • its been worse than that for decades (Score:3)

    by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Saturday January 19, 2019 @06:43PM (#57988550)
    the USA is the biggest arms dealers and warmongers in the world, been that way for a long time
    https://i.imgur.com/o4dydAI.pn... [imgur.com]
  • The bases get planned.
    The police and security services get to go to the USA to get extra education.
    US experts arrive to support police and the military with US methods.
    The nation has to buy into US tech.

    The amount of authoritarianism stays the same, the ability to buy into US tech and use US police/mil methods is all that matters.
    All the USA wants is the hearts and minds of that nations mil, security services and police.
  • Of course the USA supports an internet that allows them to spy on other nations easily... DUH

    And if you buy enough weapons from the USA, it will support that regime , money beats morals.

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