Facial recognition technology not about ‘total surveillance society’ – minister

https://hexbear.net/post/5916355

Imagine if China did this
Do you think China doesn't do this?

China has massively increased laws specifically to prevent it. Premises require explicit and direct permission from an individual in order to use facial recognition, facing steam criminal fines for non compliance. This came into effect on June 1st of this year.

scmp.com/…/china-lays-down-law-facial-recognition…

The UK (i live here) is a mass surveillance hellscape.

No facial recognition without consent: China lays down the law on pervasive tech

Measures from cyberspace regulator and police ministry taking effect on June 1 mark first major attempt to regulate widely used technology.

South China Morning Post

the article is behind a paywall for me.

From the few sentences I was able to read it seems like they're talking about private providers.

I have a personal (positive) anecdote about facial recognition in China. My friend was drunk and decided to press SOS button near the river "just for fun", and and hour later he recieved a call asking if everything was ok.

Facial recognition was everywhere in China when I left about a year ago. I haven't been in the UK for a while, but as far as I know from others there's more surveillance in China than the UK.

Bypassing paywalls needs to be a basic skill you know how to do in the year of our internet 2025.

archive.is/ZnIU6

I don’t know why you think the laws magically don’t also apply to the government itself. If your take is going to always be “yeah but the evil communists aren’t going to be applying that to their own government” then there is literally never going to be any convincing you of anything being better in China, ever, because your baseline is always going to be disbelief.

but as far as I know from others there’s more surveillance in China than the UK.

The fuck are you on about mate? The UK is the surveillance capital of the world. China is absolutely fucking better than us in this regard. They have consistently tightened privacy laws of late, beginning with PIPL in 2021 which is as strong if not stronger than the EU’s GDPR law because it does not provide a “legitimate interest” processing scope and they have been increasing privacy with the new tighter laws this year.

They are absolutely better than the US and UK in this regard, and because the EU is bureaucratically slow China is now pulling ahead in privacy laws. Some of the new EU laws currently under consideration are looking towards China’s implementation because they are becoming first to implement and thus leading other countries on implementation.

Saying that China doesn't have mass surveillance is as ridiculous as saying that it'll collapse in a year.
Is the mass surveillance in the room with us right now?
According to you it is in the room with you, but it's not allowed to be anywhere else outside of the UK.

Mate you are not being coherent.

The point here is whether western digital privacy is superior to Chinese digital privacy. What you have not caught up on is the fact that Chinese digital privacy has significantly surpassed the west and you are too much of a racist west-supremacist to take on new information that contradicts your supremacist ideology. You spent so much time on reddit internalising the concept that dem sneaky chinese are lies and cheats that your brain just completely shuts down at the very idea that they might be doing it better than the superior white west that deserves supremacy. This is the ideology guiding your thought process.

The only thought you have in your head is “china = mass surveillance” and “west = superior”. You have nothing going for you beyond that, it’s entirely vibes based which is what makes it so obvious it’s a thought created by propaganda. On the otherhand I could talk quite precisely about the information we have on five eyes, nsa and gchq mass surveillance. The UK’s use of face recognition. Palantir. Snowden. And so on. China? No evidence. All you’ve got is “they censor the internet” which, funnily enough, the UK that I’m cursed to be stuck in is doing significantly fucking more.

Chill out a bit, and try to make less assumptions. If somebody disagrees with you, it doesn't mean that they think that "the west" is superior, or they're racist. In fact it's normal to see positives AND negatives.
Cunts like you are the same as those who are sucking American cock on the other side of the world, because "Trump is a strong man".
You don't speak the language, you don't understand the culture, you have no idea about any nuances, but you think you know everything about a country.
你去了一趟中国,学会了中文再说哈?TMDSB

Mate if you’re explicitly denying material reality because it causes too much cognitive dissonance to reckon with the fact that China has clearly surpassed the west in this area I am going to analyse why that might be.

White supremacists get cognitive dissonance about facts to do with racial hierarchies. Cis-hetero male supremacists (patriarchy) get cognitive dissonance about facts to do with gender hierarchies.

You are another kind of supremacist. A western-supremacist. And you are experiencing cognitive dissonance dealing with the fact that the west is not superior to China in this area anymore. The west has declined, China has ascended and continues to improve.

You haven’t actually made any argument with your response here. All you’ve said is “NOOOOOOO YOU’RE WRONG SLUR. IT’S ABOUT NUANCEEEEEEEE” with absolutely zero justification or explanation of what this magical nuance is. You haven’t given any explanation because you don’t have one, you have vibes, that’s it, that’s all. And the fact that the information I’m giving you clashes with your vibes-based feelings about this topic causes you emotional distress resulting in cognitive dissonance. This causes you to sling slurs, because it’s all you have. A reactionary outburst perfectly in line with all the other reactionaries.

Do I give a shit whether you can speak some Chinese? Absolutely fucking not when you don’t know any of the laws we’re talking about.

Are you ok? Did I call you a slur? Do you mean "cunt" is a slur? Are you even a Brit? You've spent the whole night arguing with me...
But I do like your message with all the hashtags and 5x "cognitive dissonance"..

As for the nuance... The point is that it's a FUCKING NUANCE. Visit the fucking country, and in the future try talking shit, or glazing it ONLY after a visit.

As for having no clue... You most probably have zero idea about the country you're talking about. You don't care about me knowing the language and the culture means YOU dont actually care about it. If you cared to learn enough you'd learn to appreciate how much of a culture is IN the language...
Cunts like you only care about pushing your idea...

Are you ok? Did I call you a slur? Do you mean “removed” is a slur?

Hexbear automatically removes slurs. The only thing anyone on hexbear sees when you slur is “removed”.

Are you even a Brit?

I don’t know why you think you have a free slur use card everywhere because whichever slur you’ve decided to spew here might be normalised in Britain.

As for the nuance… The point is that it’s a FUCKING NUANCE. Visit the fucking country, and in the future try talking shit, or glazing it ONLY after a visit.

Why are you assuming I have not? Continuing your trend of providing absolutely no explanation or justification though I see. Does screaming NUANCE over and over usually go well for you offline with people who are well educated? Have you considered that when you do this people just think to themselves “this guy’s an idiot and there’s going to be no valuable conversation to be had with him when he can’t talk about any of the topic beyond screaming the same word over and over” and then decide to disengage from conversation with you about it? Do you ever think about how other people see or judge you or do you go through life blissfully unaware of more complex social interaction?

As for having no clue… You most probably have zero idea about the country you’re talking about. You don’t care about me knowing the language and the culture means YOU dont actually care about it. If you cared to learn enough you’d learn to appreciate how much of a culture is IN the language… removed like you only care about pushing your idea…

This is true. I’m impressed. There’s a brain in there somewhere trying to express actual thoughts. It’s also absolutely nothing to do with any of the points that were previously made though.

My slur was "C.U.N.T".
I'm not even going to finish reading your message, because you cunts(See yoo en tee es) aren't even able to read a fucking word. It's fucking hilarious!
I'll probably take a look tomorrow, and send you a message back. But it's hilarious that your "fres speech" community doesn't allow a word (c)(u)(n)(t)

I've tried a few different ways to spell the word, but afraid it might be too offensive for you 😨

Mate the filters are there for a reason. I know you’re desperate to say slurs but have some fucking respect for other people yeah?

You wonder why I’m being so aggressive and shitty with you? It’s because it’s blatantly obvious you’re a shithead mate. Hope nobody fell for your sexpat attempts.

your “fres speech” community

We do not believe in free speech what are you on about? We explicitly believe that some speech and some people should absolutely be ruthlessly controlled and cracked down upon. Specifically the bourgeoisie and bourgeois ideology. We think the opposite about the working class and its theory of liberation - socialist ideology.

For someone who has visited China you don’t seem to really know a whole lot about communist ideology. What did you actually do when you were there? Besides tourist shit for crackers without a brain I mean. Would you be able to talk with me at an adult level about the court system? The electoral system? Any of the laws? The organisational structure and ideology that makes it an immensely successful society and emerging world leader? Or is your knowledge really basically just surface level tourist shit and the usual predatory cracker attempts at being a sexpat?

Holy shit...
I'm sorry for assuming that free speech is allowed here.
Abuse is ok, calling somebody a sexpat is ok, personal offences that are not based on anything are ok, but the C word is too much?
It's fucking hilarious.
Yes, I know more about China and the USSR than you do.

Honestly I'd love to accidentally meet you in real life and have a proper conversation, but I'm done for now.

It was a very stupid and pointless conversation.
Enjoy your day!

This provides evidence for a hypothesis I had a few months(years?) back. That as conditions in the west worsen, people in the west will just insist that the “bad guy countries” are worse, regardless of evidence or material reality. It really does look like as the survalliance state increases and worker’s and minority rights collapse in the west, westerners will still be insisting it is “fine” because evil China is even worse. “We may be forced by our capitalist overlords to work 24 hours a day, but those damn evil chinese commies force their people to work 25 hours a day!”
You're basing your assumptions on words of a person who probably has never been to China, instead of the one who lived there for over a decade...
I was trying to point out that there is no perfect country, and "the grass is always greener...", but your outtake was that "the evil west is pushing it's idea through lusterko0 ?
No, I’m saying that you clearly have fallen for the idea that no matter how awful things get in the west, the west’s enemies must always be just as bad or worse. You think you’re the reasonable one here, doing a “both sides” thing, but you’re not. You’re falling for bullshit, and think it makes you a genius because you can “see both sides” (but oddly are only ever supporting one side in that).

Thank you for being level-headed.

You're correct that I'm trying to go for "both sides", but what I'm trying to say is that both sides aren't good.
It's hard to explain, but China is not that Utopia that you're looking for...
Lots of people thought that the US was a fucking utopia a decade or so ago...

No one here is saying China is a utopia, I think that’s the problem you’re having here. People are saying that quality of life in China is improving, while it is getting worse in the west, and in some areas (like surveillance) the west is now worse than China and will continue to get worse over time. This isn’t because of some mindless “pro-China” attitude, but pattern recognition and an understanding of how a socialist government acts vs capitalist governments.
I mostly agree with you. Quality of life in China has improved a lot. Even if we compare 2010 to 2020, you'd be able to see tons of progress in economy, society, infrastructure, etc.
But I disagree that the surveillance in China is not as bad as it is in the west, also calling China "socialist" is a bit of a stretch.