• ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOPM
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    1 year ago

    It’s pretty funny how people in the west worry about surveillance China while same and worse is happening at home. Western media constantly running negative stories about China is a really insidious propaganda tactic because the implication behind these stories is that this sort of thing couldn’t happen in the west. In effect what they’re saying is look at how scary China is, aren’t you lucky that you live in a free and democratic western society.

    • Dudewitbow@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      You would be suprised how many people are actively fighting against it in the west. Autonomous vehicles vs civilians is a huge topic in San Francisco, which is the key difference between the two countries. One accepted it, the other is actively fighting against it.

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOPM
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        1 year ago

        What we see in the west is what’s generally known as controlled opposition. There is a bit of preformative dissent allowed to make people feel like they have a say in these things. The reality is that if you’re think you’re fighting it, then you’re way too late to the party. Everybody has a phone that tracks them everywhere, plenty of people now have devices like Alexa that record all their conversations. All this data goes to corporate servers, and then straight to NSA and anybody else willing to pay for it. The west is one of the most surveilled societies in human history, but people living in the west don’t even realize it.

        • Dudewitbow@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          The type of surveillance and who its going to is not necessarily the same body, and both corpo and government are not always on the same side on the issue. Which is why its such a gray area, at least in the states.

          For instance, although San Francisco approved of the Waymo/Cruise usage in the city, it also was one of the leading figures that blamed Cruise for its ”interruption" that killed a homeless guy who was not hit by a cruise vehicle. But a bus, which they blamed cruise for interrupting the hospital van.

          Its also hard to compare China and the U.S due to how the governments are structured. Yes, its fairly common knowlege that the NSA has backdoors in a lot of things, its still fundamentally a Federal branch which has its powers restricted on what it can do due to States rights being significantly larger, vs a more centralized government who can act almost immediately on some action.

          Take example for something fairly basic, weed. Even if weed was federally illegal, the states rights usually matter more unless youre specifically on federally owned institution (e.g a military base)

          • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOPM
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            1 year ago

            The federal government in US literally has the power to disappear US citizens and ship them off to places like gitmo without any process. Not sure how anybody can pretend their powers are somehow limited. Something basic like weed does not threaten the regime, take something basic like reporting war crimes and see how long before you’re disappeared and tortured.

            • Dudewitbow@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              So would you claim that Justin Stoner for instance is currently deported or in jail for whistleblowing against the Maywand district murders?

              Not implying that it doesnt happen, but youre believing that they have more power than they actually do, a governemnt thats already approaching its next shutdown because it routinely doesnt get stuff done.

                • Dudewitbow@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  But you mention you couldnt report warcrimes when someone has clearly done ao far and is not in the situation that you say. Not saying that there arent people in Gitmo who are conpletely innocent locked away there forever, but its not the government thats locking up all whistleblowers as its clearly untrue. Especially when its the butt of the joke that there are way to many prisoners in the system (as there are), youd think that if they were serious, gitmo would also be as ridiculously overcrowded as regular prisons are but it isn’t.

                  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOPM
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                    1 year ago

                    Look at Assange and Manning as examples, is that somehow untrue just because your regime is selective with whom they make an example of?

                    The point is that they can disappear your ass any time they want.