Comment by KnuthIsGod
3 days ago
When China did this, this was seen as a terrible violation of rights....
Now that we do this hundreds of times a day, it has become routine.
3 days ago
When China did this, this was seen as a terrible violation of rights....
Now that we do this hundreds of times a day, it has become routine.
The US literary attacked a country and captured its leader. They always have a double standard.
Literary? Haha
I can't even ask for forgiveness for this diabolical.
This is still not fully supported by law. It is becoming normalized indeed, especially by the current admin. Let's hope this is not going to become widely used or that it doesn't stay permanently, eg. it gets at least restricted to some type of crime by future administrations.
Not supported by law where? I’m unaware of any legal proscription of this practice in the USA, and the Journal article makes no such claims, either.
(IAAL but this is not my primary field of expertise, and this is not legal advice.)
There are many unresolved gray areas around what exactly the 4th amendment permits in the way of what United States v. Knotts called "dragnet-type law enforcement practices". Knotts suggested they might not be permitted, even if they were made up of permissible individual parts, but didn't elaborate. More recent case law has held, for example, that cell phone companies turning over large quantities of records is a 4th amendment search requiring a warrant, even if they do it voluntarily (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_v._United_States). Most other types of dragnets haven't been litigated enough to have solid caselaw on their boundaries afaik.
I don't know if it's likely a court will do anything about this particular program, but from what I've read I don't think 4th amendment scholars think this area is at all settled.
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Not supported by law where? I’m unaware of any legal proscription of this practice in the USA
Using facial recognition on people without their consent is illegal in a growing number of states.
Facebook lost a class-action lawsuit about this and I (and many other people) got a check for a little under $500.
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Indeed.
And the latest admin is only a string in the ever increasing use of such tech.
It should be illegal, but people are deluded if they think it started here.
Ah, what's good is law when the branch^W [after rereading about it, executive power is given to one] person tasked with executing laws is... lawless?
The notion that future administrations won't be offshots of the current regime (again, why do you think laws regarding democracy, like fair elections, will be upheld?) is also too hopeful.
Happy new year!
It won’t be restricted until the people push against it to a point where it becomes too politically expensive to not restrict.
Law is expensive.
China is already doing abominable things; how people react to additional surveillance is always related to what the state is actually doing with that information.
So a system that supports the abduction of polital rivals (an actual human rights violation) is not the same as a system that supports the lawful arrest of someone breaking a law that's accepted as part of a democracy.
I also think the scale of investment plays a part, the investment in surveillance in China is absurd. Its a significant number of people (per capita) that do nothing but monitor people. These new systems are rather cheap; so much so that they feel a whole lot more inevitable.
> is not the same as a system that supports the lawful arrest
That is not the system that the US has had since 2025, and the executive has made it very clear that it is not the system that it wants the US to have.
Meanwhile, SCOTUS has made it very clear that nothing this executive does will have any consequences for it.
Rule of law is a fairy tale when ICE can snag anyone they want off the street and throw them into some CECOT torture pit.
Rule of law is a fairy tale when the executive disregards direct judicial orders.
Democracy is when you get abducted and sent to CECOT because some shitty AI face app said so
Democracy is when the useful idiots cheer on the abductions/renditions with full-throated support, relishing in the spectacular human suffering of others as if two wrongs make a right. But those pounds of flesh are merely being chummed at them by the same exact corporate-government propagandists that shipped their jobs to China in the first place, now promising naked fascism as a way of somehow putting things right when it's really just the next step of the ongoing destruction of their country. But I'm sure when they start to wake up to the grave error they've made (ten+ years too late), their egos will protect themselves with cognitive dissonance while the machine throws them some new scapegoats to distract themselves with.
ICE does not care about "lawful arrests". Like common, that is not their thing.
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That's a totally wrong way to think about it, akin to "I have nothing to hide so why not let the government look into all my communications"
> abduction of political rivals
Couldn’t have timed it better, we just pulled off the most high profile abduction of a geopolitical rival in history.
> we just pulled off the most high profile abduction of a geopolitical rival in history
We literally did the same thing in 1989 [1]. Russia planned to do it to Zelensky when they first invaded.
None of this makes it okay. But it's hyperbolic to say it's unprecedented, even in U.S. history.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Pana...
In both systems the law is being carefully followed to support inhumane goals
ICE and USBP are quite famously breaking many laws.
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> In both systems the law is being carefully followed to support inhumane goals
I’m not sure it is though, there are plenty of headlines about judicial orders being disregarded. This last few weeks it has been the required release of the Epstein papers, though that has been railroaded by a conveniently timed attack on a neighbour.
There are plenty of other examples.
Why do we need to give free stuff to every person that wades across the southern border?
What is our legal or moral obligation to eviscerate our already-limited social safety net for outsiders who, by and large, do not contribute to them?
You are free to die on the cross and spend your income this way, but how is it "humane" to use violence (taxes) to reappropriate the fruits of my labor for your special interests?
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Let me quote the CEO of ycombinator.
>You're thinking Chinese surveillance
>US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims
https://xcancel.com/garrytan/status/1963310592615485955
American capitalists are ideologically driven hypocrites.
Are we allowed to criticize Garry Tan here?
Yep, it's converging to the same system...
In China government is controlled by chosen members of the ruling party who become wealthy through it;
In the US the government is controlled by billionaires who become powerful through it.
Neither is a "government by the people" nor a "democratic people's republic" and both are enacting more and more similar policies.
> When China did this, this was seen as a terrible violation of rights
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" [1].
Beijing showed the way. We followed their path. Both are at fault.
[1] https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....
> Beijing showed the way. We followed their path.
lol, just like China invented social credit scores which are for social control and definitely not like US credit scores which are just good business sense
Edit: to be clear I am saying this from a US centric viewpoint. China is catching up but they’ve been behind us for over a century tech wise and the US has been really good at pioneering new forms of injustice. I’m laughing at the idea that we were trailing behind them on learning new for handling their population
> like China invented social credit scores which are for social control and definitely not like US credit scores which are just good business sense
…yes. You don’t get your credit score dinged because you tweeted something naughty. You can be a felon with perfect credit.
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>"When China did this, this was seen as a terrible violation of rights.... Now that we do this hundreds of times a day, it has become routine."
Normally questions like this would be labeled as whataboutism, false equivalence etc. One rule for thee, another one for me.
Personally I think we (The West) are heading to disaster. I really missed older times before 9/11
America is not the West. There are a lot of things wrong in my country but we don't worship Jesus nor billionaires.
How is pointing out this inconsistency whataboutism? It might be reasonable to ask if it's a strawman since it seems reasonable to wonder if perhaps the people against what the Chinese are doing might also be against what ICE is doing.
Regardless, it's quite relevant to point out that at this point two of the world's superpowers are actively engaging in this. Claiming that the technology won't be used this way - that people are just fearmongering - clearly doesn't hold water. (Not that it ever did, but now we've got concrete evidence.)
>"How is pointing out this inconsistency whataboutism? "
It is not, I said it is usually labeled as one here
This is the default response whenever HN commentators have no other way to say "china bad".
But china is safe and clean and nice, so it might be worth it. Anyway we got no privacy anymore, cameras are everywhere and we all captured on someone hard disk, so might as well take advantage of the benefits that comes with this technology
China is not "safe, clean and nice" for everybody.