How America's Tech Giants Are Helping Build China's Surveillance State (theintercept.com) 147
"An American organization founded by tech giants Google and IBM is working with a company that is helping China's authoritarian government conduct mass surveillance against its citizens," the Intercept reports.
The OpenPower Foundation -- a nonprofit led by Google and IBM executives with the aim of trying to "drive innovation" -- has set up a collaboration between IBM, Chinese company Semptian, and U.S. chip manufacturer Xilinx. Together, they have worked to advance a breed of microprocessors that enable computers to analyze vast amounts of data more efficiently. Shenzhen-based Semptian is using the devices to enhance the capabilities of internet surveillance and censorship technology it provides to human rights-abusing security agencies in China, according to sources and documents. A company employee said that its technology is being used to covertly monitor the internet activity of 200 million people...
Semptian presents itself publicly as a "big data" analysis company that works with internet providers and educational institutes. However, a substantial portion of the Chinese firm's business is in fact generated through a front company named iNext, which sells the internet surveillance and censorship tools to governments. iNext operates out of the same offices in China as Semptian, with both companies on the eighth floor of a tower in Shenzhen's busy Nanshan District. Semptian and iNext also share the same 200 employees and the same founder, Chen Longsen. [The company's] Aegis equipment has been placed within China's phone and internet networks, enabling the country's government to secretly collect people's email records, phone calls, text messages, cellphone locations, and web browsing histories, according to two sources familiar with Semptian's work.
Promotional documents obtained from the company promise "location information for everyone in the country." One company representative even told the Intercept they were processing "thousands of terabits per second," and -- not knowing they were talking to a reporter -- forwarded a 16-minute video detailing their technology. "If a government operative enters a person's cellphone number, Aegis can show where the device has been over a given period of time: the last three days, the last week, the last month, or longer," the Intercept reports.
Joss Wright, a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford's Internet Institute, told the Intercept that "by any meaningful definition, this is a vast surveillance effort."
Read what the U.S. companies had to say about their involvement with Chinese surveillance technology:
The Intercept contacted all the companies mentioned in their story.
The OpenPower Foundation -- a nonprofit led by Google and IBM executives with the aim of trying to "drive innovation" -- has set up a collaboration between IBM, Chinese company Semptian, and U.S. chip manufacturer Xilinx. Together, they have worked to advance a breed of microprocessors that enable computers to analyze vast amounts of data more efficiently. Shenzhen-based Semptian is using the devices to enhance the capabilities of internet surveillance and censorship technology it provides to human rights-abusing security agencies in China, according to sources and documents. A company employee said that its technology is being used to covertly monitor the internet activity of 200 million people...
Semptian presents itself publicly as a "big data" analysis company that works with internet providers and educational institutes. However, a substantial portion of the Chinese firm's business is in fact generated through a front company named iNext, which sells the internet surveillance and censorship tools to governments. iNext operates out of the same offices in China as Semptian, with both companies on the eighth floor of a tower in Shenzhen's busy Nanshan District. Semptian and iNext also share the same 200 employees and the same founder, Chen Longsen. [The company's] Aegis equipment has been placed within China's phone and internet networks, enabling the country's government to secretly collect people's email records, phone calls, text messages, cellphone locations, and web browsing histories, according to two sources familiar with Semptian's work.
Promotional documents obtained from the company promise "location information for everyone in the country." One company representative even told the Intercept they were processing "thousands of terabits per second," and -- not knowing they were talking to a reporter -- forwarded a 16-minute video detailing their technology. "If a government operative enters a person's cellphone number, Aegis can show where the device has been over a given period of time: the last three days, the last week, the last month, or longer," the Intercept reports.
Joss Wright, a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford's Internet Institute, told the Intercept that "by any meaningful definition, this is a vast surveillance effort."
Read what the U.S. companies had to say about their involvement with Chinese surveillance technology:
- Semptian, Google, and Xilinx did not respond to requests for comment.
- The OpenPower Foundation said in a statement that it "does not become involved, or seek to be informed, about the individual business strategies, goals or activities of its members," due to antitrust and competition laws...." A spokesperson for the OpenPower Foundation declined to answer questions about the organization's work with Semptian, saying only that "technology available through the Foundation is general purpose, commercially available worldwide, and does not require a U.S. export license."
- An IBM spokesperson said that his company "has not worked with Semptian on joint technology development," but declined to answer further questions.
- Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said "It's disturbing to see that China has successfully recruited Western companies and researchers to assist them in their information control efforts."
Sadly (Score:5, Insightful)
The news release is no less accurate if it reads, "How America's Tech Giants Are Helping Build America's surveillance state.
Difference (Score:5, Insightful)
How America's Tech Giants Are Helping Build America's surveillance state.
Partially true but there is a difference - America's government is at least partially accountable, if someone can uncover misdeeds.
There is zero accountability for Chinese government overreach.
It's really a bad mistake to equate the two as there is a large difference in degree of what is happening.
Re:Difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Partially true but there is a difference - America's government is at least partially accountable, if someone can uncover misdeeds.
Put the right judges on the supreme court, push for a decade or two and that can all be made to vanish.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Indeed. I was talking about the residual accountability still in place.
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Don't forget too, that those guys are protected by our hyper partisan system. As we have witnessed over the transition for the 2nd term Obama into the Trump admin the out of power party will accuse anyone trying to reign those guys in with one of:
1) Threatening national security
2) Trying to cover something up
3) violating norms of agency independence
because its an easy way to score cheap political points
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Yeah, and we all know how well that worked out for the Soviet Union....
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"Remember, "they needed a killin'" was and still is a valid defense in Texas."
I can only assume you've never actually been to Texas. Texas is more political and politically polarized than anywhere I've lived. In most places the vast majority of people really don't have too many fucks about politics or like the parties at all. In Texas everyone is solidly in one camp or the other and the major cities are more progressive than you'll find in California. Austin is arguably the most progressive city in the coun
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It's really a bad mistake to equate the two as there is a large difference in degree of what is happening.
Indeed, there is a big difference: Americans are four times more likely to be arrested and imprisoned by their government.
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Americans put up with it because they are distracted. We've been divided and conquered. One side is being led to believe there are racist homophobic sexist rape monsters everywhere who are armed and desensitized to violence out to get them all. The other side is led to believe there are raping, pillaging, Christmas destroying evil hordes trying to swarm over the border with no respect for the culture that drove America to dominance just trying to overwrite it with the imported culture which led to the failu
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Ahem, I don't see NYC on the list.
https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/blog/top100safest
Re:Difference (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed, there is a big difference: Americans are four times more likely to be arrested and imprisoned by their government.
Yes, that's a thing, and a point I bring up a lot with people who harp on about "the land of the free" or other such nonsense. But you're comparing to China here. America does pretty bad stuff to its citizens and the prison and justice system needs fixing badly, but it doesn't harvest organs from political prisoners or just flat out disappear a whole bunch of people.
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"Actually, the US did flat out disappear a whole bunch of people - after Sep 11th 2001. A bunch of people were imprisoned for several weeks with no report to anyone of what happened to them."
In this context, "disappeared" is like "bricked" in that you don't come back from it. So no,.
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"But in the US, It's said that 1/4 black kids by the age of 12, will experience a parent in jail. That 1 in 3 blacks are likely to experience some time in incarceration in their lifetime.
I suppose for SOME ethnicities, there's the land of the free and other nonsense, but for others, not at much."
That has nothing to do with ethnicity and everything to do with the culture in those communities. Any effort to fix it is "racist" so politically you can't touch it. The big poster child was the crack vs cocaine thi
Find a stats 101 textbook (Score:2, Offtopic)
It's really a bad mistake to equate the two as there is a large difference in degree of what is happening.
Indeed, there is a big difference: Americans are four times more likely to be arrested and imprisoned by their government.
(1) And how much more likely are Americans to commit serious and/or violent crimes? I expect well over 4 times, You forgot rule #1 from stats 101, comparison require all other things to be equal and they are not in this case.
(2) The likelihood of a Chinese prisoner to become an organ donor is far far greater.
Re:Find a stats 101 textbook (Score:4, Informative)
Having ultra-severe penalties for crimes does tend to deter.
Bragging China has a "lower" crime rate is like bragging a town ruled by a cartel has a lower "pissing off the cartel" rate.
Re: Find a stats 101 textbook (Score:2)
That's absolutely right! There was very little crime during communism in my homeland.
Everyone was afraid since the most powerful mob was ruling the state...
Re:Difference (Score:5, Insightful)
"Americans are four times more likely to be arrested and imprisoned by their government."
And Chinese are infinitely more likely to be given the death penalty for tax fraud, since we don't do that here.
How much more likely are Chinese to be arrested for practicing (let alone preaching) Christianity and pressed into hard labor than they are here?
There are things wrong (I tried to swipe that word three times and Google kept miscorrecting it as "Wong", even when I deliberately paused over the "r") with America, but don't imagine that anyone is dumb enough to believe that China is freer, even on slashdot.
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"Partially true but there is a difference - America's government is at least partially accountable, if someone can uncover misdeeds."
Maybe. It depends on who's in power, their relation to the accused, how much money can be spent on the defense, and loads of other factors. Justice is far from blind.
"It's really a bad mistake to equate the two as there is a large difference in degree of what is happening."
You can directly compare the two, because the only distinction is in degree. The USA is apparently well o
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For one historian's analysis of Hitler's rise to power, read Benjamin Carter Hett's The Death of Democracy. Or at least this interview. [historynewsnetwork.org]
Societal trends now resemble those of Weimar Germany. But the organization of the US federal and state governments would rule out the sort of complete federal takeover that occurred in Germany. And the sad state of the post-WWI/pre-depression German economy is missing.
And if you read the book, you'll realize that Hitler was a lot smarter and more talented than Trump.
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America's government is at least partially accountable, if someone can uncover misdeeds.
Are you kidding? All right, I suppose you meant that: "Some members of America's government are held accountable, if someone can uncover misdeeds." That much is true.
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Partially true but there is a difference - America's government is at least partially accountable, if someone can uncover misdeeds.
It is interesting that you believe that. Has anyone been held even partially accountable for PRISM and the other nifty things that Mr. Edward Snowden revealed?
Yeah. Your beliefs should probably ought to change. The only difference between the American and Chinese internal spying systems is that Americans at least have a legal basis for whining and bitching about something they can't change. The complete and utter disrespect given to the citizens of each country by their respective governments is breathtakin
Re:Sadly (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, if you can sell the same stuff twice...
In the end, that is probably the biggest challenge the human race faces besides climate change: How to keep something remotely resembling a desirable civilization going with the possibilities technology now hands to all sorts of unsavory authoritarians.
Re: Sadly (Score:1)
We have become a caricature of the Soviet Union.
Tyranny FTW!
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Change "Designed in California, made in China" to "Developed in China, Deployed in the USA"
You are mistaken ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The news release is no less accurate if it reads, "How America's Tech Giants Are Helping Build America's surveillance state.
You are mistaken, it is actually much less accurate your way. America's tech giants are increasingly refusing to work with American law enforcement and the American military while being perfectly willing to work for Communist China's law enforcement, state security and military. Perhaps those Chinese contracts have a no compete clause.
In any case it is quite hypocritical and likely not beneficial in the long run. Like most American venture's in China. Its likely China's 5 or 10 year plans have the American companies being replaced by Chinese counterparts. The Americans are merely training their future competition with their joint efforts. Just like so many American companies before them. Did they thing it would be different this time? Because, you know, "big tech"?
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They are still implementing the american surveillance state, but they're skipping giving any power to the government.
"It's all about the Economy" (Score:2)
The problem is with Bill Clinton winning line. "It's all about the Economy".
Much like this and other phrases like "The business to place the share holders interest first"
Has integrand into peoples mind, and moved from a suggestion to a harden fast rule.
Having a strong economy with businesses investing money for growth is indeed an important aspects of being American. However we hooked onto the idea of Free Market Capitalism at the cost of our freedom. Any organization be it a Religion, a Company, a Club, o
It is just a beta test... (Score:3)
Re:It is just a beta test... (Score:5, Funny)
More like an Alpha test. CCTV and all the other tools were perfected and tested in China, a fascist regime where there would be no resistance and 1984-style control of the media.
The Beta test was, and continues to be, Australia. A so-called western Democracy with a government that sold out to fascist globalists long, long ago. A government that has already passed legislation requiring an absolutely controlled, monitored Internet routed through a central government NetNanny, with secret blacklists that cant' be appealed. IMO Australia tests whether a population that is drunk, divided, and distracted will even notice or care as their freedoms are taken away. The answer seems to be... no.
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Why the fuck is this post modded funny? lol its funny because the world is going to shit lolololololol. Right?
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I honestly have no idea, maybe the last line is darkly comedic to some
IBM was in bed with Nazis (Score:2, Insightful)
What makes you think they'd have any moral qualms about working with the Chinese government?
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I think they'd have some professional qualms, considering a lot of people remember them working with the Nazis.
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I think they'd have some professional qualms, considering a lot of people remember them working with the Nazis.
I don't think they have any qualms whatsoever. Their Nazi collaboration seems to have had no impact at all on their profitability, and they have no difficulty finding and hiring talent.
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IBM is still in denial about their role in the Holocaust, and most people dismiss it as something the Germans did, ignoring that the payments for the service contract were paid directly to IBM in Armonk.
But then, most people are severely in denial about the US' influence in the war in general. We sold fuel to the Reich, knew it was going on, but let it continue through most of the war - then seized the proceeds afterwards, the combination of which amounts to the government having sold the fuel (since they c
Re:IBM was in bed with Nazis (Score:4, Informative)
You seem to forget the American public had just been pulled into WWI which really really had nothing at all to do with us but none the less after promising not our far and away most treacherous president ever Wilson dragged us into that war..
Lots of American boys were little used as cannon fodder. When it was over we secured very little in the way of real economic or security advantage for our participation in Europe's war. After than we suffered a long economic depression. At the start of WWII massive domestic federal spending was just starting to make the economy work again. The memory of Wilson's betraying his electorate and the sight of butter on tables for the first time in a long time left many Americans with very little appetite for trading in their butter for guns.
I think our leaders and public alike could very much be forgiven for their reluctance given their recent experience. Who'd want to send their sons and daughts off to be uses a target decoys again for yet another one of Europe's wars?
As it turned out the scale of the war and the Marshal plan afterwords paid enormous dividends for us as we escaped the devastation but at the time it would have been difficult to imagine that conclusion.
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As it turned out the scale of the war and the Marshal plan afterwords paid enormous dividends for us as we escaped the devastation but at the time it would have been difficult to imagine that conclusion.
Would it have been? I'm not so sure. One could imagine it from playing war games with more than two sides, and observing that you wind up in a great position when your competitors spend their resources and you don't. Or... studying history.
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**Claps**
That is my point its not that simple and it DID NOT WORK that way after WWI. The only CERTAIN things about getting into WWII from the perspective of the American electorate at the time was that doing so would cost an already financially struggling nation an enormous amount of money and more of their sons would get on buses leaving their home towns never to see home again.
My point was that politically WWII would not have been easy sell in this nation at all before the Nazis scaled up their ethnic c
Paranoia Runs Deep (Score:2, Funny)
Re: Paranoia Runs Deep (Score:2)
"It's only to serve them targeted advertising"
Anyone who still believes ubiquitous mass surveillance is about "advertising" should call me right away. I've got a great deal on a slightly used bridge in Brooklyn, and I'm certain they will be interested!
Sarcasm obviously (Score:4, Insightful)
China has its own 'No Fly', 'No Train' list. Get on the wrong side of the state and they'll slap you on it.
And then there's the concentration camps in in Xinjiang full of ethnic Uygurs. The UN says China is holding upwards of a *million* people in those camps.
Don't think it would happen here? You know he's holding those kids, separating them from Aunts and family, classing them as 'unaccompanied infants' so the court order stopping separation doesn't apply. That little girl who went for a wedding to Mexico with her aunt, came back and got locked up, had a bracelet "American Parent, call 0123 456789", it didn't stop them seizing her or failing to call her parents.
Sure 2000-3000 kids in camps isn't the same as 1 million people, but I'm sure they can scale it up.
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>> You know he's holding those kids
Who is "holding those kids"? Do you actually mean "the enforcement of America's immigration laws" (invented and shaped by decades of life-long politicians, who-- get this-- passed those laws because they championed American sovereignty, then did a complete turnaround now that Bad Orange Man is in office)?
Or, are you actually an NPC parroting the mainstream media's ridiculous Orange Man Bad talking points?
At any rate, progressives are more and more overtly pushing ope
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It's only to serve them targeted advertising, and if you've done nothing wrong, you've nothing to fear.
Until Trump and his ilk expand the definition of ‘wrong’ to include Lèse-majestè.
Re: Paranoia Runs Deep (Score:2)
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"Give me 12 lines written by the most honest of men, and I shall find something (within) to hang them."
Nothing to fear indeed...
Natural Result of Technological Society (Score:3, Interesting)
Surveillance states are the logical outcome of highly advanced technology. Obviously, automation necessarily implies allowing the user to control a larger set of physical objects than they would have been able to otherwise. Not so obviously, there is nothing special about policing / politics that makes it immune to automation. Therefore, the end result is an increasingly large number of people being managed by a smaller number of bureaucrats. Even though politicians in earlier periods of time could claim to have more legal power than anyone alive today, there is a difference between legal-power and actual power. Despite how much one might have wanted it, no god-king could have created a searchable database of his subject's activities which was updated 24/7/365. People seem to believe that the level of control has actually decreased, though, because political systems themselves have generally trended towards liberalization over the last few hundred years. That can be disproven by becoming a fugitive; in which case 1st world countries will now use phone wiretapping, facial recognition, unmanned drones, relative DNA, decades of messaging / spending history, and satellite imagery to capture somebody (albeit, depending on how wanted the fugitive is).
Unfortunately for the world, the luddites were completely right. Modern humans have got along just fine for hundreds of thousands of years, but a change to the agrarian status quo has been made. And for what? For the most part, hedonism. Now 200 years since the industrial revolution, the planet is already too polluted to make returning to those lifestyles realistic. So instead, society will keep marching in the same direction, regardless if that leads to the real-life implementation of sci-fi nightmares.
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200 years since the industrial revolution, the planet is already too populated to make returning to those lifestyles realistic. So instead, society will keep marching in the same direction, regardless if that leads to the real-life implementation of sci-fi nightmares.
There fixed that for you. Actually I pretty much agree with the point you are arguing. However I don't think pollution is really / would really be a problem if the world return to 1820's population levels.
Wait (Score:1)
Didn't they have Huawei? Now all of a sudden it's american companies helping chinese do the work that chinese are supposed to be experts at? What gives?
I don't see a problem (Score:2)
I don't see how applying an American perspective to this means much. China is dealing with a vastly different culture, and with much higher population densities in the areas where they're doing this.
They aren't caning people for spitting on the sidewalk like Singapore. It's OK for different countries, at different developmental levels, with vastly different population numbers, to try different things. If it becomes too intrusive the population *will* revolt.
Try not to assign your own beliefs to other cultur
Re:I don't see a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
" China is dealing with a vastly different culture"
And what? You think having a different culture is a green light to mass human rights abuse?
" If it becomes too intrusive the population *will* revolt."
How touchingly naive. Ask them how well that went in 1989 long before this sort of tech was around.
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So it's OK if London does it, but not China?
Think about that. Why are you so upset about China doing this?
Remember when Google at least tried not to be evil (Score:2)
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just stop the hypocrisy already (Score:2)
the U.S.A. is authoritarian and conducts surveillance against its citizens. Decades ago we decided to do business with China even though it has programs of persecution against various ethnicities and religious groups.
But now suddenly there is an issue? No, there isn't. The ship sailed decades ago.
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We didn't inter U.S. citizens in concentration camps because of ethnicity? Yes, we did.
Yeah big difference...
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Shareholder value model (Score:2)