Tag: Chinese internet

Categories
Quick Analysis

China Expands Tyranny, Exports Idea?

China is adopting a concept that would oversee most facets of an individuals’ life, and use the information to decide a person’s worth.  That disturbingly totalitarian concept may be coming to the west.

The American Civil Liberties Unions’ Jay Stanley reports that “China appears to be leveraging all the tools of the information age—electronic purchasing data, social networks, algorithmic sorting—to construct the ultimate tool of social control. It is, as one commentator put it, “authoritarianism, gamified.”

Media Hub describes the concept: “Welcome to China’s Social Credit System in which each citizen, by 2020, will earn a single number based on undisclosed algorithms that will tell everyone what kind of person they are. The numbers are then ranked against the rest of the population. For the Chinese government, this is an effort to control its 1.4 billion people and create a system of trustworthiness. What many might consider a Big Brother dystopia is in the early stages of a trial-run in China. If you’re a Chinese citizen, all of your online and public interactions, shopping patterns at favorite stores, Google searches, even how often you play video games are factored in. The numbers crunched out of all your daily habits will eventually tell you where you can work, the type of transportation you can take, whether you can buy a house and determine what schools your children can attend. What seems like a scene from Netflix’s “Black Mirror” might actually be nearer to America than people realize.”

TechDirt  describes how the process unfolds: “China’s plan to control the hearts, minds and internet connections of its citizens continues unimpeded. That’s the great thing about authoritarian regimes: rollout of mandatory programs is usually only a problem of logistics, not opposition…Everybody is measured by a score between 350 and 950, which is linked to their national identity card. While currently supposedly voluntary, the government has announced that it will be mandatory by 2020…the scores serve as a measure of political compliance. Among the things that will hurt a citizen’s score are posting political opinions without prior permission, or posting information that the regime does not like…This is where all the government’s moves towards greater control of the internet comes to fruition. To keep “score,” the government needs to tie IDs to online activity. Keeping the internet within the government’s walls makes it that much easier. But it’s not just online activity that will affect “citizen scores.” It’s almost every aspect of their lives. Also used to calculate scores is information about hobbies, lifestyle, and shopping. Buying certain goods will improve your score, while others (such as video games) will lower it. Chinese citizens who want to remain in the government’s good graces will need to balance “negative” purchases with offsetting positive purchases, most likely domestic electronics and appliances. As disturbing this is, the truly horrific aspect of the “citizen score” is that it can be influenced by friends and family members.”

The most disturbing news about all this for non-Chinese citizens is that the idea may be coming to the West.

One of his creations is a 500 foot long painting of 2000 dragoons, finished in 2000 and exhibited in several galleries. wholesale viagra cheap The prescription levitra first step is to have tests done so that the physician can rule out diabetes as the cause of the symptoms. For instance, pregnant women can reduce their pain during labor and delivery through chiropractic treatments. cheapest prices on cialis It is in a class of drugs cialis 40 mg called phosphodiesterase inhibitors that controls and prevents an enzyme called phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE-5), and helps the smooth muscles in the to get relaxed and widen, and that permits additional blood to run to the penis ensuing in faster and easier at home. The American Civil Liberties Union warns that “The United States is a much different place than China, and the chances that our government will explicitly launch this kind of a program any time in the near future is nil, but there are consistent gravitational pulls toward this kind of behavior on the part of many public and private U.S. bureaucracies, and a very real danger that many of the dynamics we see in the Chinese system will emerge here over time. On the government side, for example I have written about how the TSA’s airline passenger “whitelist” system could evolve in this direction. In the private sector, Frank Pasquale notes that elements of its judgment-and-reward system already exist in the U.S. private-sector credit score infrastructure.

 PJ Media reports on the legal/technological aspects:

Patents recently issued to Google provide a window into their development activities. While it’s no guarantee of a future product, it is a sure indication of what’s of interest to them. What we’ve given up in privacy to Google, Facebook, and others thus far is minuscule compared to what is coming if these companies get their way. These patents tell us that Google is developing smart-home products that are capable of eavesdropping on us throughout our home in order to learn more about us…So clearly they want to monitor us and report back what we are doing… But there’s even more.

Atlantic notes: “A second patent proposes a smart-home system that would help run the household, using sensors and cameras to restrict kids’ behavior. Parents could program a device to note if it overhears ‘foul language’ from children, scan internet usage for mature or objectionable content, or use ‘occupancy sensors’ to determine if certain areas of the house are accessed while they’re gone— for example, the liquor cabinet. The system could be set to ‘change a smart lighting system color to red and flash the lights’ as a warning to children or even power off lights and devices if they’re grounded…If you think our privacy is compromised now, just wait. Until there’s some legislation passed to protect our privacy, there’s no stopping companies such as Google and Facebook from learning everything about what we do and who we are and selling the information to advertisers, insurance companies, and eventually, any entity that will pay. After all, that’s their business model.”

Photo: Shanghai, where much official Chinese internet technology work is done  (Shanghai official website)

Categories
Quick Analysis

Free Speech, Independent Media Under Attack

The principles of free speech and independent media are enduring substantial attacks both within the United States and abroad.

Since President Obama, without the consent of Congress, surrendered control of the internet to an international body with a membership comprised of many nations that advocate censorship, and with the growing willingness of American media sources to bend their will to the needs of left wing candidates, the ability of the public to receive unfettered news and information has been dwindling. Wikileaks’ (which has been attacked by the Obama Administration) revelation that CNN colluded with the Democrat Party on presidential debate questions illustrates one aspect of this challenge, and China’s tightening controls on free speech, another.

The Daily Mail reports that Beijing has strengthened its “Great Firewall” of restrictions on internet speech by tightening rules and imposing further limits on online speech.  Using vague concepts such as “damaging national honor” and “disturbing economic or social order,” as well as the blunter charge of seeking to overthrow the socialist system, China’s powerful censors continue to expand their control of internet content. As a further chill to candid online activities, Beijing prohibits anonymous posting. The Daily Mail noted that “Amnesty’s Poon [Patrick Poon, China researcher at global rights group Amnesty International] said the law ‘goes further than ever before in codifying abusive practices, with a near-total disregard for the rights to freedom of expression and privacy.’ Chinese authorities have long reserved the right to control and censor online content. The country stepped up controls in 2013, launching a wide-ranging internet crackdown. Hundreds of Chinese bloggers and journalists were detained as part of the campaign, which has seen influential critics of Beijing paraded on state television. Under regulations announced at the time, Chinese internet users face three years in prison for writing defamatory messages that are re-posted 500 times or more. They can also be jailed if offending posts are viewed more than 5,000 times. Comments posted on social media have been used in the prosecution of various activists, such as human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang.”

China’s official internet controls are mirrored, to a limited extent, by actions by private internet sources within the United States to restrict content.  Project Veritas  reports that its founder James O’Keefe was temporarily blocked from his Twitter account after posting two items. The first was a video showing that Manhattan Democratic Election Commissioner Alan Schulkin admitted that voter fraud does indeed exist. The second was a video revealing that a Clinton staffer claiming he could rip up Republican voter registration forms and not be reprimanded.

What is done through government action in China is accomplished through left-wing activism within the United States.
It increases viagra properien nitric oxide secretion which results into smoothening of the endothelium. It is basically a condition buy cheap cialis where a man is not able to find relief from their symptoms. For more information, please visit 99eyao website: Or see related articles like Can Chronic Prostatitis Infect Female Company? What is order cialis http://www.learningworksca.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/007-ATD_WhereToBegin_050213.pdf Erectile Dysfunction? Erectile Dysfunction (ED) condition in men is commonly called impotence. If small dosage fails, it is strongly recommended to notify the doctor who prescribed viagra 20mg in india before changing the dosage of the Kamagra Oral Jelly, which should vary according to your health and do not pose any ill effects.
The College Fix reports that Rutgers University student Aviv Khavich was fired for a column in which he argued that being in favor of  immigration enforcement was not “anti-immigrant.” Apparently, the “trigger” for the dismissal was Khavich’s use of the phrase “illegal aliens.”  The move was not unique to the University.  There has been an attempt, spearheaded by sources such the AP style manual, to control the dialogue by eliminating certain terms that clearly describe issues, turning instead to language that favors left wing positions.

Direct collusion between media and political campaigns also hampers the public’s ability to receive objective information. Polizette reports that further Wikileaks releases reveal that  “CNN commentator Donna Brazile alerted Hillary Clinton’s campaign team about a possible audience question the candidates would field at the Democratic primary debate in Flint, Michigan. Hillary Clinton apparently did not just get to see forum questions from CNN in advance thanks to Brazile — her campaign was also notified on questions to be asked by regular citizens.”  Wikileaks also disclosed that some reporters, including a New York Times staffer, requested quote approval from the Clinton campaign before submitting articles.

The collusion is further evidenced by a Daily Caller report by Peter Hasson that revealed that a Washington Post columnist “appears to have asked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to do the majority of the research for a negative column” written about Donald Trump in April 2016.

Abuses, both within the U.S. and abroad, are not new.  But there is a clear paradigm shift in the growing acceptance of acts against free speech and honest reporting by the media, and acts by the White House that seek to get around First Amendment protections by surrendering control of the vital internet sphere to international bodies that have no commitment to the concept of an open press.