VICE News
1 HN recommender · recommended in 4 months, 2020–2026
12:56 · 4.5M views · Dec 23, 2019
VICE News reporter Elle Reeve investigates China's rollout of facial recognition and mass surveillance technology and what it means for citizens. The report originally aired on VICE on HBO.
Cited as a vivid demonstration of the scale of Chinese state surveillance, especially in TikTok and privacy debates.
7 comments from Hacker News
For those who are unaware, India banned Tiktok recently: [LINK] I support this move - in addition to censorship, there are serious consequences of collecting facial features en-masse with no checks/balances, especially by the CCP who probably already has a massive database of non-Chinese nationals. This also applies to any company (Facebook/Apple/etc) but I am significantly more concerned about CCP having this data than any other government in the world. People who are about to present with a counter US whataboutism, they need to first watch the Vice clip on how China tracks people: this video
This is far better than having facial recognition data in the hands of CCP. I am not a fan of US gov, but if I had the choice, I wouldn't side with CCP. The genie is already out and we've failed to put laws in place to stop all this data collection way back in 2004. Surprisingly, I feel comfortable with Microsoft having this data. What a world we've created. For those who are skeptical, just watch the Vice doc on how China tracks people, it's on a whole another level: this video
While I don't condone President Trump's behavior and his approach towards China, and with US losing its place in the world; I find it equally amusing that we in democratic society are willing to kowtow to an authoritarian regime, despite of its overwhelming [1] state of surveillance, Han-supremacy motifs and funding it with more asymmetrical trade policies. Democracy is eroding in front of our eyes and no one seems to care. Hey, at least we can even protest in the west (while getting tear gassed, but not tanks and bullets causing a massacre like 1989). "Take that, America!!!" seems to get people entertained. Not defending America, there are plenty of Americans wanting to say "Take that, China!!!". EU folks are bashing US, US folks are speechless at what their nation is going through, India and China are at arms, Australia has Chinese infestation, Japan is the most Sinophobic country in the world, Taiwan is nervous, Hong Kong is decimated, Eastern EU is going authoritarian, UK is spiraling into isolation, etc. This is not going to be fun to watch. [1] Vice, How China Tracks Everyone: this video
I would even say - the general public needs to boycott Zoom and shift to something else that's open. Large scale (never this large in the history of mankind) data collection of facial features across the globe along with other meta data such as name and email address, perhaps a phone number - this is unprecedented amount of data that any government agency would kill to have. Just in a couple of months, the world has given up privacy in a snap. I would say the same thing about Facebook. Look at what we've created: this video
I believe that Palantir is behind China in surveillence software (especially gathering data about people from public cameras, but of course using GPS data is much easier. Of course the funniest thing is that the name of the surveillence software is SkyNet, because the CEO of the company loves Terminator. this video