Helping Other Big Brothers Go High Tech 97
Dino writes "BusinessWeek has an interesting article about the export of high-tech equipment to China's security forces, and the dilemma that it creates. On the one hand, there is the desire to increase exports to a country with which there is a trade imbalance. On the other hand, we face a situation in which the technology can be used to track dissidents and unauthorized religions. Restrictions have been enacted since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre to prevent exports intended to the Chinese security forces. However, the restrictions have been applied narrowly, and effectively prevent only low-tech exports such as handcuffs, helmets, fingerprint powder, and tear gas, while DB software, two-way radios, DNA analysis gear, and video probes, are allowed."
THEY NEED THAT DNA ANALYSIS EQUIPMENT (Score:5, Funny)
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For what those people are payng, they want the best match possible.
Very Interesting Rewording (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder this was just an innocent mistake or if the submitter intentionally reworded this to imply there are other big brothers we are helping. If so, let's see the evidence, otherwise this slight modification of text comes out of the pages of Animal Farm.
Hmm..
Re:Very Interesting Rewording (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe? (Score:1)
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But instead of Emmanuel Goldstein you have Osama Bin Laden. Now stand for your two minutes of hate.
It was the Editors (Score:1, Informative)
I just noticed that since you mentioned it.
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The hats are welded to our skulls with a lead-based agent.
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Perception & reality (Score:5, Insightful)
However, they do care about how they are are perceived to be acting because negative press can get in the way of other sales, so they might not sell to Chine etc if they think that might hurt selling to a more lucrative market. Don't for a minute confuse that with genuine ethical feelings though.
Re:Perception & reality (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, but even then they only care after there is an uproar about what they are selling and to whom. They don't seem so keen on detecting where they will get negative press, or else it's worth the risk hoping that no one will notice.
--
you give me beer, i give you condo. [vancouvercondo.info]
Re:Perception & reality (Score:3, Interesting)
- Cash. We invest more in China than the rest of the world combined.
- Jobs. Our loss is their gain.
- Internet filtering, courtesy Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft.
- Chip manufacturing technology (indirectly through Taiwan)
SMIC, China's largest semiconductor manufacturer (built on US technology) is listed on the Nasdaq. For some stupid reason, politicians in Washington don't think the Chinese are capable of building advanced computers, r
Re:Perception & reality (Score:2)
Hence Chinese grad students and scientists working abroad achieve wonders of creativity and invention, while those inside China, not so much...
Consumers? Hello? (Score:4, Insightful)
And I'm not talking about Wal-Mart, I'm talking about every little thing that regular people buy every day. Hell, I've seen people beat the shit out of each other like animals so that they could save $100 on a laptop computer.
Remember, the only reason these companies are here is because people keep buying stuff from them.
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I don't see a problem (Score:2)
Re-evaluate. Pretty please. (Score:3, Insightful)
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I think the US Government has been fostering this conception we have that they're stupid so we don't see blatant attempts to aid and abet their Big Bretheren as such, but as vast miscalculations. All Donald Rumsfeld will need to do in the future to dispel any thoughts that there may have been malice aforethought will be to spit out some more confusing nonsensical tirade about hot air balloons and
Doubt it (Score:2)
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Heh, what? (Score:1)
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Re:Unauthorized Religions (Score:4, Insightful)
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I thought what really matters is whether you deliberately aim at civilians or not. </offtopic>
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I thought what really matters is whether you deliberately aim at civilians or not.
Well, Hezebolah was doing both, so I guess that works (now whether or not they were hitting the civilians they were aiming at or not, is highly quesitonable- one would assume that their intent in attacking civilians in Israel was NOT to hit civilians in Palestine).
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One can only hope that the wonderful American tolerence shines through to China.
I doubt it (Score:2)
Actually, I somehow doubt that China or any other country is 100% composed of 100% sane and wise people, who'd _never_ be fooled by a cooky New Age cult. It's the kind of "in the Orient they're wise and do _everything_ better" idea that got us saddled with cooky pseudo-oriental cults in the west in the first place.
People are people everywhere. Some people a
Re:Unauthorized Religions (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the difference. In China, being a member of a certain religion, regardless of not having committed any other crime, is illegal.
Now I'm not one to appologize for the U.S., and I think "better than China" is damning with faint praise, but this really is a fundamental difference between the two nations.
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No. Don't be ridiculous. Did you even read what GP said? (Seriously, am I just feeding a troll here?) It wasn't thinking he was God that got Koresh's cult into trouble. They could have thought he was God all they wanted. And Koresh could have thought he was God all he wanted, too. But if you break an incest law, you get in trouble, regardl
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OK, sorry for this blatant troll post, I need some sleep.
definition of cult (Score:1)
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Free market (Score:3, Interesting)
Profit will always trump most other ideals in business today.
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If you can make money out of it (Score:1, Troll)
Video Probe?! (Score:3, Funny)
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if you won't sell them .. (Score:1)
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If you think about it . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides, if American firms don't sell them what they want, they'll either buy it elsewhere or rip off a foreign design and make it themselves.
US Big Brother (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's like the Colbert Report Incarnate..
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Keep the majority thinking that they're happy, and you could slaughter innocent civilians and get away with.
For reference, see Iraq War 2.
~X~
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I'm curious as to why people think this thing is worse than arms sales - selling mustard gas to Iraq in 1990 and anth
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And we all saw how that worked out for them...
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Communists? In China? Where?
Fascists, on the other hand...
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This is a ridiculous statement. Capitalism isn't something created by government or religion, it is the absence of both. It has been around way before Protestant Christian "tradition"... any civilization that relied on bartering... there's your capitalism.
Who is Scarier? (Score:2, Interesting)
is pretty scary right now.
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I did not say that I disliked China or the Chinese. I did not say anything bad about the culture, people, or even tendency to throw anything that crawls, swims, or flies into the night's dinner.
However, if you think that you are safer living under the authority of the Chinese government than you are under the American government, then you are not informed. Either that, or you are so consumed with all things Chi
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Real useful law (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure that really makes a big difference. You know, since China is such a small country with few resources, there's just no way they could manufacture stuff like that domestically. Yeah, I know, it's the principle of it all (or, in other words, a bill a politician could sponsor to make them appear moral).
Unfortunately far too many laws are created so politicians can simply be seen doing something. Sort of like in our town, where a lady was killed in a car accident a few years ago (because her cat was loose in her car and she was messing around with it and pulled out in front of a truck), so the town quickly changed the intersection to a 4-way stop. Now hundreds of drivers are inconvenienced daily just because the local government wanted to do something the newspaper could write about.
Dan East
Dual use technology (Score:4, Insightful)
And these items could also be very useful for disaster response and relief - in other words, humanitarian aid.
The poster seems to be struggling to make a political point where there is simply not enoungh evidence which clearly defines what these things will be used for.
Two comments in one! (Score:1)
Hey, why don't we sell them the FBI's security software? We can invade them while they're trying to click through all the error messages.
The serious comment:
This article is bait for all the foil hat wearers and doomsayers to come out of the woodworks whining about our governments and the governments of the world. Let's face it people. You get up in the morning, you brush your teeth, you go earn your paycheck, and presumably you have enough free time to post on this website! What "civil
Sadly there is only one world religion... (Score:2)
What I really fear is the torture that Tibetans are going to endure before the Olympic games. They're gonna be looking for a platform and China is probably just gonna round 'em up.
Yet, the more you get China hooked on the milk from the capitalist tit the closer you are going to come to something resembling revolution and the ousting of Communism. It's moving pretty fast now.
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Re:Sadly there is only one world religion... (Score:4, Insightful)
You underestimate the Chinese. They're going to run a huge campaign where happy Tibetans in traditional-but-clean garments smile into cameras before magnificent Himalaya skylines and say how much better their country is after the Chinese helped them electrify it, and how the Dalai Lama and his guys are really just a bunch of old theocrats who want their dictatorship back. There'll be local representatives ready for interviewing, guided tours through Tibet (with really helpful translators so journalists can converse with the locals freely) and all sorts of helpful press maps/video clips/etc. After all, this is the perfect opportunity: the Chinese will, temporarily, have all the media in the World to press down the Party's version of the story in everyone's minds.
Unruly Tibetans aren't going to be rounded up before the games (because the World could find out), but will be temporarily arrested "to prevent violence" during the games, to be seriously rounded up a bit later when the World has grown tired of China for a while, and looks somewhere else.
tracking dissidents? (Score:1)
We'd best be careful, here. Until recently ( 6 or so years?), we were falling behind in tracking our own dissidents and non-christians.
But we're beginning to catch up, and this congress will soon put in place means so that we can get around those pesky laws/regulations which prevented us from doing this in the past.....
Unauthorised religions (Score:2)
Religio
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)