China's Tech Giants Have a Second Job: Helping Beijing Spy on Its People (wsj.com) 81
Tencent and Alibaba are among the firms that assist authorities in hunting down criminal suspects, silencing dissent and creating surveillance cities. From a report: Alibaba Group's sprawling campus has collegial workspaces, laid-back coffee bars and, on the landscaped grounds, a police outpost. Employees use the office to report suspected crimes to the police, according to people familiar with the operation. Police also use it to request data from Alibaba for their own investigations, these people said, tapping into the trove of information the tech giant collects through its e-commerce and financial-payment networks. In one case, the police wanted to find out who had posted content related to terrorism, said a former Alibaba employee. "They came to me and asked me for the user ID and information," he recalled. He turned it over.
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, Tencent Holdings and Baidu, 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.
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, Tencent Holdings and Baidu, 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.
Uh? Palantir? (Score:2, Insightful)
We have plenty of tech spying here.
Re: Uh? Palantir? (Score:1)
And in the U.S. ... (Score:2, Insightful)
... how is this different ?
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Not sure what you are talking about. You are being surveilled, both online and offline. It is perfectly legal. What is illegal about it?
Re:And in the U.S. ... (Score:4, Interesting)
You seem to be incredibly ignorant of the last two decades. People were "disappeared", all kinds of "shady stuff" continues (hilariously Obama doubled down on what Bush/Cheney started), and the USA incarceration rate is second to none on planet Earth.
Pry your head out of your ass, the U.S. government is utterly evil and in the last 50 years responsible for more deaths and maimings in the world than any other government.
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You mean go to places on the receiving end of the war mongering/destabilitzation efforts/coercion, or that willfully lock arms with the government here?
Not many other places left...
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And in the U.S. ... how is this different ?
There may be some shady stuff that goes on in the deep dark recesses of the NSA in the name of national security
Wait a minute you just contradicted your own argument that the U.S. is somehow different than China.
Re: And in the U.S. ... (Score:2, Informative)
No need for warrants in China. Less oversight. No checks and balances in how the information is used. For starters.
Re:And in the U.S. ... (Score:5, Informative)
... how is this different ?
In the US, spying on people is tech giants' first job.
Re:And in the U.S. ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... how is this different ?
In the US, spying on people is tech giants' first job.
Corporate abetment with police surveillance occurs in the US, but the big differences are (1) Americans can and do raise a big public stink about this with public, direct, and sustained attacks on government officials, (2) the complainers receive wide press coverage, and (3) the complainers are not punished by the government. These are huge differences that will not happen in China.
As an obvious example of this, consider the passionate discussions/arguments about Dragonfly on slashdot and then think whether such threads would ever occur in China. Google had to publicly respond to Dragonfly criticism, but Alibaba and Tencent will never have to respond to similar criticism in China.
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And yet big business helps Three letter agencies a lot more (at least for now) in the US than anywhere else. And yet NSA collects more data in big business backrooms than anyone else. And yet.....etc.
Yes, you can complain in the US, but it makes no difference *at all* as history will tell you if you look. In the US you are allowed to complain but you only have rights of law if you are rich. If China is so bad, why does the US do the same thing a lot more and is somehow better? Someone is clearly biased. The
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And yet big business helps Three letter agencies a lot more (at least for now) in the US than anywhere else. And yet NSA collects more data in big business backrooms than anyone else. And yet.....etc.
I don't doubt at all that American corporations pass information to the government. However, I don't know the level of Chinese corporation abetment, so I can't make a definitive statement on the relative amount of abetment. Do you happen to know these relative levels of corporate cooperation?
Yes, you can complain in the US, but it makes no difference *at all* as history will tell you if you look. In the US you are allowed to complain but you only have rights of law if you are rich. If China is so bad, why does the US do the same thing a lot more and is somehow better? Someone is clearly biased. The two worst things on earth is pizza with pineapple and the US of A.
Two things: Dragonfly was largely killed by protests, which is history in the US and impossible in China. And durian pizza.
Re: And in the U.S. ... (Score:1)
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the second amendment guarantees the the right for the police to kill anyone they want as long as they can claim i thought he had a gun
Anyone remember Room 641A? (Score:3, Insightful)
So please point out all the groups . . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
https://www.hongkongfp.com/201... [hongkongfp.com]
Second Job? (Score:2)
...Spying on people is its first job. In the process, exportable technology is sold.
What's the story here again?
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ok, but TFA doesn't have any examples that Google and AT&T don't do for the US government.
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...Spying on people is its first job. In the process, exportable technology is sold.
What's the story here again?
Indeed and in more than one way. The whole process is quite incestuous.
Yesterday's hullabaloo about FaceApp is related to this story. Despite all the investment, despite (or maybe because of) the lovely 996 way they use slave labour, their technology actually sub par.
As a result, one of the items which Comrade Xi bargained for with the Russians a couple of months back was buying Russian know-how on face recog and other aspects of mass surveillance. The kind of technology which people like the guy who wr
Re: Nuke China (Score:2)
Shit, shit! Who the fuck is shooting us?
Oh well, fire missiles!
How does one gain "social capital"? (Score:2)
What might ideal metadata be and how would one best produce it?
There's no point in futile struggle (adorable in others but losing is stupid) and every point in social and financial success. As privacy and freedom fade, what are the best ways to adapt and thrive?
Re: How does one gain "social capital"? (Score:1)
Is anyone (Score:2)
really surprised by this?
Re:Stop offending (Score:4, Insightful)
The Chinese people's sensibilities and attacking their sovereignty.
Yeah, it's not like the Chinese people are losing their freedoms and organs, or disappearing for saying something political or anything. Hong Kong and Taiwan I'm sure will willingly love to be a part of that freedom loving country and I'm sure those assimilated people will still remain so sovereign.
Increase your "social" credit (Score:2)
US is worse (Score:1)
Imagine what data the NSA has.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
nah UK is worse (Score:1)
Dear kike, If the NSA has hard evidence you (as a UK citizen) teaching your dog Nazi tricks, GCHQ will happen. [wikipedia.org]
P.S. why are you kikes so thin skinned?
In other news (Score:2)
Water is Wet.
Sun comes up in the east, news at 11!
Re:OH NO!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll feed the troll, why not.
Apparently, we've managed to find ourselves in a society where due process has lost its importance. Yes, punishing the guilty and removing them from society is important, but I'll let John Adams sum it up perfectly:
"it’s of more importance to community, that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be punished; for guilt and crimes are so frequent in the world, that all of them cannot be punished; and many times they happen in such a manner, that it is not of much consequence to the public, whether they are punished or not. But when innocence itself, is brought to the bar and condemned, especially to die, the subject will exclaim, it is immaterial to me, whether I behave well or ill; for virtue itself, is no security. And if such a sentiment as this, should take place in the mind of the subject, there would be an end to all security what so ever."
Due process is the means by which 'innocent until proven guilty' is upheld. It is upheld so that citizens can retain confidence that their innocence will be relevant in the event that charges are brought against them. Should innocence cease to be relevant, there is no reason to remain so.
With that, let's deal with your poor translations...
All criminals are innocent!!!
Until proven guilty, yes. To operate otherwise is to have this be a societal default, rather than a stand-up comic routing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
All political dissenters are innocent good guys!!!
The British weren't exactly fans of the revolutionaries back in 1776. Whether the dissenters are innocent or not, right or wrong, requires discourse. China doesn't give them a seat at a table, like democracies and republics do. To imprison or execute dissenters is no virtue, even if The Party is truly in the right.
All government law enforcement is EVIL!!!
No, but in a system where due process is not given, they are the enemy when they uphold inherently immoral laws with no accountability.
Evil Police must be prevented from finding out terrorists & their supporters!!!
Well, when questioning a policy of 'the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few' is met with the working end of a gun barrel, it's certainly wisdom to avoid making it known.
Let's turn whole internet to DARK WEB to protect all criminals & terrorists from EVIL Government law enforcement!!!"
In a country known for having a "Great Firewall"...the rise of a Dark Web is inevitable.
You posted as Anonymous Coward. Chinese dissidents have no such option.
Here's an example of how China differs... (Score:5, Informative)
China is taking surveillance to a very scary Orwellian level. For a good report on the extent of their surveillance state, look at https://www.npr.org/2019/07/05/738949320/episode-924-stuck-in-chinas-panopticon. They are using facial recognition, voice recognition, and a very wide network of surveillance cameras to repress entire ethnic groups.
How do they keep getting away with it? (Score:4, Interesting)
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What "international community"? There is no such thing. What do you think anyone can do with China? Attack them? They are our factories.
Re: How do they keep getting away with it? (Score:2)
the USA does the same thing (Score:3)
Apple probably does it too, its just that Apple is better at hiding it
TL;DR, immaterial not relevant ... (Score:3)
... because every motherfucking big data on the planet does this. Cambridge Analytica? AT&T selling location data to bounty hunters?
Glass houses.
Real (Score:2)
With all due respect, this is their first job, not second.
Vote for me (Score:2)
Equality! (Score:2)
Free enterprise capitalist oppression is so much better than communist egalitarian oppression! Tencent is doubleplusgood! Just think, if China was still communist, Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu wouldn't exist. Instead they would be government bureaucracies with no job other than spying on citizens.
OMG! Chinese people report crimes to the police! (Score:1)
And police request info about possible crimes from companies. Truly unheard of.
That's not their second job (Score:2)
The Party wants it to be their first job.