Chinese Telecoms Giant ZTE is Helping Venezuela Build a System That Monitors Citizen Behavior Through a New Identification Card (reuters.com) 109
The "fatherland card," already used by the government to track voting, worries many in Venezuela and beyond. From a report: In April 2008, former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez dispatched Justice Ministry officials to visit counterparts in the Chinese technology hub of Shenzhen. Their mission, according to a member of the Venezuela delegation, was to learn the workings of China's national identity card program. Chavez, a decade into his self-styled socialist revolution, wanted help to provide ID credentials to the millions of Venezuelans who still lacked basic documentation needed for tasks like voting or opening a bank account. Once in Shenzhen, though, the Venezuelans realized a card could do far more than just identify the recipient.
There, at the headquarters of Chinese telecom giant ZTE Corp, they learned how China, using smart cards, was developing a system that would help Beijing track social, political and economic behavior. Using vast databases to store information gathered with the card's use, a government could monitor everything from a citizen's personal finances to medical history and voting activity. "What we saw in China changed everything," said the member of the Venezuelan delegation, technical advisor Anthony Daquin. His initial amazement, he said, gradually turned to fear that such a system could lead to abuses of privacy by Venezuela's government. "They were looking to have citizen control."
The following year, when he raised concerns with Venezuelan officials, Daquin told Reuters, he was detained, beaten and extorted by intelligence agents. They knocked several teeth out with a handgun and accused him of treasonous behavior, Daquin said, prompting him to flee the country. Government spokespeople had no comment on Daquin's account. The project languished. But 10 years after the Shenzhen trip, Venezuela is rolling out a new, smart-card ID known as the "carnet de la patria," or "fatherland card." The ID transmits data about cardholders to computer servers. The card is increasingly linked by the government to subsidized food, health and other social programs most Venezuelans rely on to survive.
There, at the headquarters of Chinese telecom giant ZTE Corp, they learned how China, using smart cards, was developing a system that would help Beijing track social, political and economic behavior. Using vast databases to store information gathered with the card's use, a government could monitor everything from a citizen's personal finances to medical history and voting activity. "What we saw in China changed everything," said the member of the Venezuelan delegation, technical advisor Anthony Daquin. His initial amazement, he said, gradually turned to fear that such a system could lead to abuses of privacy by Venezuela's government. "They were looking to have citizen control."
The following year, when he raised concerns with Venezuelan officials, Daquin told Reuters, he was detained, beaten and extorted by intelligence agents. They knocked several teeth out with a handgun and accused him of treasonous behavior, Daquin said, prompting him to flee the country. Government spokespeople had no comment on Daquin's account. The project languished. But 10 years after the Shenzhen trip, Venezuela is rolling out a new, smart-card ID known as the "carnet de la patria," or "fatherland card." The ID transmits data about cardholders to computer servers. The card is increasingly linked by the government to subsidized food, health and other social programs most Venezuelans rely on to survive.
Where are they now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where are Sean Penn and Danny Glover now? Sigh ...
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After all, if anyone should own the means of production, it would be the crew of a film set.
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How about Oliver Stone? There's a man whose art is taken seriously by the intelligentsia. Heck, look at what our own politicians think:
"These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, VENEZUELA and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger. Who's the banana republic now?"
-- Bernie Sanders
This is democratic socialism, as much as Slashdot refuses to accept it. The Venezuelan government was democra
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You mean the same Republican party that freed the black slaves and lead charge for the Civil Rights Act? Go home and come back when you learn your history.
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You mean the same Republican party that freed the black slaves and lead charge for the Civil Rights Act? Go home and come back when you learn your history.
It certainly was not the same party that freed the slaves. No-one involved in freeing the slaves is still alive.
As for the Civil Rights Act, support for that was very strong among both major parties except for in the South. It's pretty misleading to give Republicans the primary credit, although if you're willing to pick your facts carefully I guess you can justify it. But even so, that was more than fifty years ago, and again the party has changed a lot since then.
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Only because the Democrat's Jim Crow laws failed to do so.
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But democrats want to use ID to prevent black people from buying a gun, opening a bank account, boarding an airplane, getting a library card, or getting a fishing license.
All of those are uses of ID that are not considered racist. But requiring it to vote? Yup, racist. Explain the difference.
US tech is used to bomb kids (Score:1)
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And who who do you think develops the weapons that are killing so many people in Venezuela?
Re:US tech is used to bomb kids..Neda! (Score:2)
Re: US tech is used to bomb kids..Neda! (Score:2)
My facts? The weapon being used in Venezuela to kill so many is Socialism. Guns are a tool to the Socialist, for their exclusive use, because everything else is illegitimate to the Socialist.
self-styled? (Score:3, Insightful)
Chavez, a decade into his self-styled socialist revolution,
What, was it not certified by the socialist revolution certification board or something?
It's so funny watching you all try to disassociate yourselves from Venezuela ...
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And I think, upon minimal research, your number is low.
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Nazi germany 2.0 trump needs to cut them off (Score:2)
Nazi germany 2.0 trump needs to cut them off
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This is what happens when you go too far left.
You wont be able to convince people that going this far left turns you into nazi's.. because the left has been telling everyone that the nazi's were right wing for over 60 years now. It doesnt matter how obviously wrong the left is on the matter of the nazis... even if yet another leftist nation is calling itself the fatherland.
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"It doesnt matter how obviously wrong the left is on the matter of the nazis... "
This is not a matter of the Left being 'wrong'. This is another deliberate misuse of words, and plain lying, to avoid responsibility for past crimes, cast the unfavorable light of their own actions on their opposition, and redefine the Left as good. All lies, all false, all the time.
It is a common political tactic to preemptively accuse your opposition of that bad act which you, yourself, have done, is doing, and will do in the
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Longer, FDR compared Calvin Coolidge to a Fascist, and exactly 80 years ago Thomas Dewey (!) was compared to Hilter in the presidential election where he was trying to defeat Truman, and infamously did in those newspapers that went to press too early in the morning.
You would think by now people would have woken up to this blatan
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'THIS time it's true!' is part of the derp.
"fatherland card." (Score:3)
"fatherland card... fatherland card...." where have we seen that before? oh yes!
apartheid in south africa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
hitler's nazi germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
yeah i'll stop there.
Digital Communism (Score:2)
Wait till they learn they can just infect a tracking chip directly in to the body.
Viva la socialismo, VIVA che guevaraaaaaa.... (Score:1)
Soft Socialism replaced by hard Communism (Score:1)
After it fails, if you are lucky, your country's soft Socialism is rejected [redalertpolitics.com] — as happened in Scandinavia, even if Sanders' fans [forbes.com] don't know it [mises.org].
If you aren't lucky, it is replaced by the hard Communism...
We have the same thing here in the United States (Score:1)
Chinese morals.. (Score:2)
.. and other oxymoronic word pairings. Seriously, China has morals completely in line with those of Venezuela, at least under Maduro.
Not much confidence. (Score:2)
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Re:Governments SHOULD monitor citizens (Score:5, Insightful)
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But it's cool if the government monitored my political enemies yes?
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In Venezuela, the third box of liberty was misused. Now all that is left is the fifth box.
That's how fast it happens. One minute you're complaining about something, anything, everything. Before you know it, complaining is a crime.
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In Venezuela, the third box of liberty was misused. Now all that is left is the fifth box.
That's how fast it happens. One minute you're complaining about something, anything, everything. Before you know it, complaining is a crime.
Welcome to late-stage socialism, when they've run out of other people's money.
What had to start with at least the threat of violence (you can't take the "means of production" from the original owners without it) is bound to end with even worse violence.
Someone tell all those sheltered, starry-eyed, brain-dead, entitled, snow-flake suburban U.S. twits enamored with socialism.
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Re: Governments SHOULD monitor citizens (Score:2)
That's about as backwards as it can get. Private property is the foundation of individual liberty, for if there is no such thing as private property, you can't even stand up in safety and be left alone.
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The concept of private property was created and maintained by countless acts of violence and bloodshed, and maintain Ed by threat of violence and Targeted terroristic acts by the government against those who would dare to disassociate with the concept. Private property is not to be confused with the concept of personal property. Private property breaks the world. Because it is a privatizing of the means to production the creates the horrific amount of influence and control over other human beings by those who hold private property.
Are you really deluded enough to think that private property's effects don't include advances in science and medicine that among many other things include eradication of entire deadly diseases like smallpox? Improvements in agriculture that allow Earth to support 7+ billion people?
Because guess where just about every major breakthrough that made those advances possible came from?
Yeah, Western Europe or it's cultural descendants.
CAPITALIST Western Europe.
CHRISTIAN, CAPITALIST Western Europe.
The ONLY civiliz
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Re: Governments SHOULD monitor citizens (Score:2, Interesting)
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And, lest we overlook this, the words 'monitoring', 'efficient', 'good', 'positive', 'negative', 'natural', 'undesirable', and 'beneficial' mean different things to different people.
Re:Governments SHOULD monitor citizens (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah. Conservatives are the ones who crave fascism. The police state is their comfort zone. They advocate never questioning authority, support the state crushing any form of protest, violently if necessary.
Citation needed. In general, it is absolutely clear that conservatives favor less powerful central government and support the rights of individuals to protect themselves from overbearing government.
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It's like saying you are a Liberal but voting Democrat. Being liberal does not make you a democrat. Being conservative does not make you a Republican.
Sure, many liberals will vote Democrat and many conservatives will vote Republican, but those terms aren't interchangeable.
Many old school blue dog Democrats are nothing like their socialist/communist nuts. Just like the nazi element is nothing like the fiscal conservative, small government type libertarian.
If we didn't have a first past the post voting system
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'3 eyes' started under FDR, formalized under Truman.
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Conservatives are also supposed to believe in not spending more than you take in, but that went the way of the dodo bi
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By all standard definitions I should call myself a conservative, but cannot because there is no political party/person that reflects even a shade of true conservatism. In the past
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