Thanks for the details. It is always interesting how the most innocent things are seen as danger by an autocracy.

Everything which is not allowed is forbidden.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_which_is_not_forbid...

Sir John Laws, nominative determinism in action.

That is a bit optimistic. China doesn’t really list what is allowed, it’s whatever they want to allow or forbid after the fact.

Only the last sentence of your first paragraph is true: it’s legal to photograph the police and public spaces _but_ doing so may involve you needing to deal with lawless cops and that can be extremely risky depending on who you are and what mood they’re in. Dealing with that culture should be one of our top priorities.

Indeed, the ACLU agrees. Not sure how parent got that bad info, but there’s a rather famous pamphlet called “Photographer’s Rights” meant to carry in your pocket or camera bag to hand to abusive law enforcement, should one run into it.

https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/photographers-rights

https://www.krages.com/phoright.htm

At some point it was illegal in NYC to go out with a with a mask on, while it was also made illegal to go out without a mask on.

(That was when they were both protests that made them ban masks (that obscure the face), and Covid that made them mandate masks. But I think the laws were written broadly enough that both covering and not covering your face were technically forbidden.)

Do you have any reference for that? I live in NYC and was here for the whole pandemic, and this is the first I hear something like that.

I got it from Matt Levine's Money Stuff, Bloomberg email newsletter. It's the post from 2020/04/21:

> Everything is mask crime

> We talked last week about a hypothetical minimalist legal system with only two crimes: Wire fraud, for stuff you do in your house, and coronavirus-related curfew violations, for stuff you do outside your house. If you go to someone’s house and murder them, that’s violation of your local stay-at-home order and you can be arrested for that; who needs a law against murder? I wrote:

> > You’d need a regime of sentencing enhancements (leaving the house to do murder is worse than leaving the house to jaywalk), and you’d probably need like one more law for domestic violence, but the point is that you can get a pretty parsimonious legal system if that’s what you want. I do not actually think it’s what you want.

> The reason you shouldn’t want it is that any sort of minimalist legal system like this leaves huge room for discretion. If the only crime is a fairly common and trivial one like leaving the house, then the people who get prosecuted and severely punished for it might be the ones who leave the house to do murders, but they might not be. They might be people who leave the house and are otherwise disfavored by the police, prosecutors, judges and juries. Poor people, members of minorities, people with unpopular political beliefs, that sort of thing.

> Anyway a fun fact about New York state law (via public defender Sam Feldman) is that now:

> * It is illegal to be around people without a mask, and

> * It is illegal to be around people with a mask on.

> There’s an executive order requiring masks in public when you cannot social distance, and a state law forbidding them. So pretty much anyone who goes outside in New York is breaking the law. Presumably they won’t all be prosecuted.

He quotes https://twitter.com/srfeld/status/1251228271645208577 as the source.

That's a feature for authoritian regimes

This doesn't appear current. I can't find it on government sites for 240.35 (ex: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/240.35)

edit: I can find it before June 2020 so maybe they repealed the ban right after they enacted the mandate?

For the record: it is legal to photograph police in all of the US, and is a protected 1st amendment right. Some states or localities might try to outlaw it, but they always lose when challenged. Some police may simply ignore the law and punish you for exercising your rights, but that's different than it being illegal.

With regards to photography on US railroad tracks, there is no law against it. However, railroad tracks are private property and in the US private property owners can control your photography on their property or trespass you from their property, and due to the danger of pedestrians on tracks, railroads understandably disallow pedestrians on tracks for photography.

This. Some over-aggressive transit police will try to keep you from photographing their trains, but if you're not on their property, they can get over themselves.

I've had transit police notice that I was watching trains, and come over to see what I was doing. I told them that I was watching trains. I was in a place that had a clear view of their platform, and they didn't like me hanging out there and watching. They said they'd like me to watch trains somewhere else. I told them that I was on private property, and it wasn't their private property, so I didn't care what they'd like. (I did have permission from the property owner.) The transit cops didn't say anything more, they just looked rather startled..

Now, if a cop with jurisdiction tells you to leave, you may ask him to cite a statute, but in the end, if they insist on you leaving, you probably need to obey, even if they're wrong. But as you say, they are wrong - it's not illegal to watch railroad tracks from public property, and it's not illegal to photograph.

For many years, the most accurate (paper) maps of the Soviet Union were those created by the CIA. The USSR's own maps included lots of intentionally incorrect data.

I remember from my childhood (early seventies is Soviet Union) that it was allowed to print road maps with straight lines only and distances between cities were always at least several kilometers wrong. I also remember when my classmate lost the map when orienteering (these were relatively accurate) and he and his parents had a lot of trouble because of that.

I believe back then you could only get orienteering maps from the military too.

Funny since the USSR spent quite a lot of effort making good maps of other countries.

Never had any issues. Noone cared about my camera while I was there. And I created like 5K photos there. Not that I ever use GPS, because it eats away your batter, but noone really cared about it.

If my memory is still correct, in China camera products must have their GPS module removed/disabled before they're licensed for sale. Since these products looked the same from the outside, and are commonly used by everyone who wants to, nobody will bother to check every single one.

Unless of course, if the camera gets too close to (say) a military/civil defense installation (often includes their office buildings), their security will probably do a check or just ask people to leave. They usually setup a sign near by to indicate "No trespassing" and maybe "No photographing" etc, just don't bring the camera over the line (I mean, better stay out completely if it says "No trespassing").

Most of the cameras do not have GPS module. And for some cameras like Canon 5D Mark IV [1], or 6D Mark II [2], they do have GPS even for Chinese market.

However, for the Camera which have GPS module, you will need additional filing to license your product. So some of the companies just hide the feature.

Clearly it is not "must have GPS removed".

[1] https://www.canon.com.cn/product/5dmk4/spec.html

[2] https://www.canon.com.cn/product/6dmk2/spec.html

That was completely from my memory, and I don't work in the industry, so my information/interpretation maybe inaccurate.

Thanks for the additional info.

In many products, there are different firmware or software loads for the PRC market (specifically PRC -- until recently not the HK versions) and the rest of the world. In some devices it's possible to lock satellite positioning to only Chinese constellation (BeiDou), or introduce error, or just not include positioning by default.

Of course, some of those devices get through, or are carried in by tourists, or are enabled by enthusiasts who load the non-China firmware. This seems to be understood. The Chinese are smart enough, one presumes, to know that actual state-level competitors can get accurate (in the chosen geodetic system) location data without relying on tourists' geotagged Google Photos uploads.

But that does lead to the question, "why, then?" -- if your adversaries know your secret, it's probably not worth the effort of protecting, anymore. (And why, in the US, we know about stuff like VENONA now.) The Chinese seem focused on a different threat: they don't care if a few people have good location data, even if some of them work for the US NGA, they just don't want everyone to have that data.

Which is interesting, because it suggests that that they're less concerned about a foreign government with strategic intelligence, than they are their own domestic population.

This isn't about state secrets vs other states; it's about denying their own population a capability that they find valuable, and thus threatening.

It's the commie way of "fixing" things to deter "enemies of the state": eastern radio bands, inaccurate maps, neighbour spy networks, serveral people on a landline so somebody can always listen, listening rooms for secret police inside state companies, heavily wiretaping citizens, continous party propaganda etc. Most of it is bs and it doesn't work or it's easy to circumvent, but one can never be too careful.

Those laws are there to be applied selectively.

When you are a nobody, they wont care. When you are a person of interest this law will be applied to you.

If they want you are just a tourist, otherwise you are a spy who took 5000 photos.

Sure, you watch too many movies :DDD

The government can use facial recognition etc, yet the people can't even make maps. What a nightmare of a country is that.

Ironic, that socialist/communist regimes always win power on the idea of giving control and ownership of assets back to "the people"

The reality, of course, is that the people end up giving control and ownership to a one-party state.

The four remaining Marxist-Leninist states are China, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_socialist_states#Marxi...)

In 2024, their Freedom Indices (out of 100) are:

China: 9

Cuba: 12

Laos: 13

Vietnam: 19

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices

China isn't Marxist-Leninist - the CCP split from Marxist thinking and Comintern early in the PRC's history.

It's become it's own thing because anything "communist" is just lip service at this point. Public veneration of past Chinese empires and dynasties is way more common than some idealized view of a proletariat state.

Same with Vietnam (basically a crony capitalist country) and Laos (basically a buffer between Thailand, VN, and China where all three meddle)

You might want to edit Wikipedia's list of Marxist-Leninist states, in that case?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_socialist_states#Marxi...

Also the page on China, which states the government is a "Unitary Marxist–Leninist one-party socialist state"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd be interested to see how that edit would be received by other editors of the page.

> Wikipedia's list

It's basing "Marxist-Leninist" on national constitutions, which themselves are de facto useless when the Politburos in China, Vietnam, and Laos make drastic policy changes every decade (eg. 10 years ago it was expected for Chinese Premiers to step down after a 10 year term). Also, that list doesn't seem to actually link sources to assertions.

The CCP's charter calls itself "Marxist-Leninist" but every single "thought"/ideology pushed by the CCP's leadership when a new Premier arises is de facto diametric to Marxism-Leninism, and it has always been this case since Mao.

I recommend reading "The Chinese Reassessment of Socialism, 1976–1992" by Yan Sun , "A Nation-state by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism" by Suisheng Zhao, and "China: Development and Governance" by Yongian Zheng and Gunwu Wang if you want to actually understand the ideological underpinnings of Chinese governance.

I have Chinese language sources as well I'd recommend but that's a whole other issue.

> I'd be interested to see how that edit would be received by other editors of the page

Just like they taught all of us from elementary school to college - Wikipedia IS NOT a reliable source.

Wikipedia should always be used to spark conversations, but it is up to you to actually use Primary and Secondary sources to validate whether content on Wikipedia is valid or not.

Wikipedia as an editorial organization has a lot of issues, internal rivalries, and astroturfing (especially w/ regards to highly controversial topics such as Asian politics).

As such, it's best to use Primary and credible Secondary sources.

Those "freedom indices" come from countries that are all located in the Western sphere of influence, it's like relying on the opinion of an Arsenal supporter when talking about Tottenham (and vice-versa).

> Freedom indices all come from free countries!

Wow, what a shocker. Next you're gonna tell me that the democracy indices people use come only from democracies.

You're equating "freedom" with "democracy", which as a far from established fact.

I can access Xinhua without using a VPN in the US, and cannot be prosecuted for using a VPN.

I cannot access BBC in China without using a VPN, and can potentially be prosecuted for either action.

I can say Biden/Trump are horrible and need to rot in jail, and my comment with not be deleted by a censor. If I say "Xi dada needs to step down and Li Keiqiang should have been Premier instead, and HK was never an integral part of China" it will get deleted on Sina, and if they really had it out for me prosecute me under NSL.

I can Google for Jan 6th photos without censorship. I cannot Baidu search photos of the Tiannamen square protests and subsequent massacre.

The freedom house index does have issues, but China is absolutely unfree.

Authoritarian states aren't completely unfree (it's organizationally impossible), but China is definetly fairly unfree compared to other authoritarian states like Russia or even Vietnam (though Vietnam is trending towards a more authoritarian future now that Tô Lâm is almost assured to be the next leader)

Students in the US are now getting their bodies hurt (not to mention the legal and career-ending consequences) by hundreds to thousands of policemen for the simple crime of protesting a genocide happening half-way around the globe, let's cut the charade, it doesn't help anyone.

No they're not. They're being removed by police for setting up encampments on private property. You can't just start setting up tents wherever you want on private land and taking over the area.

It might still be a bad idea to remove them, but if they were just doing standard protests in public areas, it'd be much less of an issue.

So you're saying the Chinese authorities were right in evacuating the Tiananmen Square, after all you cannot forcefully block public places without the proper authorization either. Like I said, let's cut the charade and look at the facts.

lol, "evacuating". Come the fuck on.

Merely arresting people and forcing them out of the square would've meant it would be a blip in history. The Tiananmen Square massacre is famous because it was a massacre. Even official figures said that hundreds of people died.

Absolute freedom exists nowhere.

Absolute unfreedom also exists nowhere.

Still, some places are more free than others. alephnerd made a number of comparisons of the US to China; you have refuted none of them. You merely complain that the US is not absolutely free of consequences for your actions. Well, that's true, but if that's what you're looking for, try an uninhabited island (and you may not even find it there).

Yea, and what does Chinese police do to protesters? Be it the White Paper protests in Shanghai and Beijing in 2022 [0], the wave of ethnic Mongol protests in 2020-21 [1], etc.

Police will inevitably crack down on protests everywhere, yet protests continue to happen on a daily basis in the US with minimal long term ramifications.

Also, none of what you pointed out actually refutes my points above about internet censorship, and as such clearly shows an attempt at whataboutism.

P.S. Both HRW [2] and Amnesty [3] have unequivocally voiced their support for the right to protest in the US, and as such if you try to say "oh human rights organizations are a tool of the west" it's complete bullshit.

[0] - https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/01/26/china-free-white-paper-p...

[1] - https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa17/3086/2020/en/

[2] - https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/04/26/us-universities-should-r...

[3] - https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/amnesty-internatio...

Impressive, countries that are not capitalist, or not entirely capitalist, do not perform well on capitalist metrics, like "market freedom", or "economic freedom". Who could have guessed...?

If you have no opportunity to own the fruits of your labour, you are not free. You are a slave.

Economic freedom is freedom.

Workers do not own the fruits of their labor, in capitalism the fruits go to who owns the means of production.

In capitalism, any worker is able to own the means of production. Anyone can start their own business or purchase a share of someone else's business if they want to benefit from its 'fruits'

In socialism and communism, only the state can own the means of production.

Which is plainful wrong. Why the supermarket employers work as employers if they could own their own supermarket? Most people cannot own the relevant means of production, otherwise salaried work would be impossible and capitalism would not exist. Your comment about socialism is also plainful wrong. In Yuguslavia, cooperatives did not owned the means of production?

Under capitalism, if you work for a supermarket and want to own some of company and share some of the profit, you buy some of the stock (there are often generous deals to encourage this). Alternatively, if you want to start your own business selling goods, you can - at any scale, whether it's a market stall or a supermarket - usually you'd work your way up from small to big, provided you have the work ethic to do so.

You mentioned cooperatives. This is tangential to the discussion as cooperatives are neither socialist nor capitalist, per se. They can freely exist in capitalist societies, and also in some socialist societies (although they are often tightly controlled by the state, and may be seized by the state).

Bullshit. A full share of an equity stock is much more than what a regular worker can afford. Here where I live a supermarket worker earns around 1500$, a full share of wallmart stock is around 2000$ (in local currency). Sure, there are incentives to buy fractional shares: a regular person who does so will not earn much, is not a real owner, will need to keep working for all her life, but the important is that she bought not the stock, but the ideology that she is as capitalistic as the supermarket owner that leeches her work and do not need to work.

Cooperatives are a socialist proposal. A country run solely by cooperatives is not a capitalist country.

Obviously we wouldn’t expect people doing menial work with low responsibility to be able to own a large share of their employer. But under capitalism any worker can start a company and own 100% of the stock in that company. This is a unique opportunity that is not available under socialism, where the state owns the means of production, and everyone is basically working for the state, with no hope of profiting from the growth of the thing they’re building.

You say the owners are “leeching” from workers. Sounds like they have it easy, right? So - become an owner! I think you’ll find building a company, employing people and taking on all the financial risk of doing so is harder than you thought. Perhaps if you give it a try, you’ll understand why company owners get the rewards they do.

> But under capitalism any worker can start a company and own 100% of the stock in that company.

You confuse legal possibility with real possibility. By the law and social norms, nothing forbids me from levitating in the street. Likewise, nothing forbids a worker to become a bourgeoisie. Sorry, but most people cannot start their own company. And the few that can, will be just providing services for the margins of the market, where the real big companies do not operate because it is not profitable enough. Doing this, they will keep needing to work like any other worker, in contrast with the burgoisie.

> You say the owners are “leeching” from workers. Sounds like they have it easy, right? So - become an owner!

Again the confusion with "legally allowed" with "real possibility". Contrary to most burgoisie, I did not inherited a lot of capital and money. So I cannot become part of the burgoisie, except with negligible probability. Even if the law does not forbid me (likewise, the law is not forbidding me to transform into a dinosaur).

> employing people

This is not a favor. They employ so that they can leech the fruits of other people's labor, and pay for them less than what they produced. A slave owner also provides an "employment" for his slaves, do you think this is a favor? The owner cannot produce without the workers. But workers can produce without the owner (like in a cooperative). The workers are the ones that are doing a "favor" to the owner.

> taking on all the financial risk

This is ridiculous. In capitalism, both the owner as the worker are sellers. The first has its company and sells what it produces. The second sells his labor force. Both of them can fail to sell their products and face risks: if the worker fails to sell his product, he becomes unemployed, and face risks like suffering hunger, dying of sickness because cannot afford treatment, and living in misery. If the owner fails to sell his product, the company fails, and the risk is losing some money, but not all the money because it is invested in lots of different companies. The worker deal with much more financial risks than the owner.

Never thought my camera being old enough to need a separate astrotracer GPS would have advantages.

Wouldn't this also include every single smart phone.