China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

Re:China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nob... by brokenmachine on Thursday February 22, 2018 @10:39PM (#16444015)

> China’s existential threat is an opportunity or technology which enhances its ability to control citizens but leads, in the long term, to destabilization of the regime. Could be AI, could be something else. But at some point one of these forbidden fruits will poison and what appears to be a manageable, technical problem will become a societal one that no one can control or censor.

I don't understand. Can you explain that more? How does AI or other tech create something that cannot be controlled or censored? I can only see, say, facial recognition, being bad for freedom of the Chinese citizens.

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Re:China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nob... by ordinaryradical on Friday February 23, 2018 @12:22AM (#16444418)

Probably the law of unintended consequences. Imagine now that this makes the surveillance of the bureaucracy itself more or less infallible. Someone, or many people, now know which party officials are meeting with which, know who their mistresses are, know the places they are going to hide assets or crimes, know the people bribing them. Now you have a roadmap for corruption of the state.

If that data leaks, is hacked by a state actor and released, or becomes the tool by which bureaucrats seek to manipulate and blackmail each other, it could destabilize the party itself.

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Re:China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nob... by brokenmachine on Friday February 23, 2018 @12:36AM (#16444463)

Nice example. Interesting, thanks for that.

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