The problem is that people become used to the conditions they are living in, so the disaster is always in the future. People expect some sharp, intolerable transition.
Traveling abroad to asian countries it becomes immediately and shockingly clear how intolerable surveillance really can be. Between having your face and fingerprints scanned on a pirated windows xp pc to being fined heavily for going 51 kph in 50 zone it can be hard to imagine how much worse it can get from there, but it can.
On the other hand, as an American citizen living in Asia after spending most of my life in the USA, I like not getting mugged, assaulted, or run over by a speeding car.
I think you refer to China, or maybe Japan or Singapore. Not every country in Asia has advanced surveillance. The UK, Canada, and America have advanced the same technology but use it in other ways, which is why American police can’t make the subways or roads safe like the Japanese have, but monitor your social media posts and emails for signs of terrorism and political dissent.
Entering Japan there's a nice friendly line marked "Japanese" where everyone just passes in smoothly, and a grim dystopian line marked "Foreigner" at which your fingerprints and photo are taken before you're allowed entry. It's like humans vs. fookin' prawns in District 9. And this is Japan, one of the more liberal East Asian states.
Japanese businesses often refuse foreigners outright, or, like famed cheap-goods retailer Don Quijote, have notices posted indicating they can demand you cough up your passport at any time, so have it ready before entering.
At least the customs agents were friendly, in that Japanese way, even as they asked me probing questions like why I flew in from Helsinki on Finnair instead of over the Pacific on an American airline. Though they seemed content with my answer ("because it was cheaper").
You gave some exaggerations and misinterpretations.
Every country has separate immigration lines for citizens and foreigners. Immigration officials have access to national databases but not those of other countries. Like the USA and most other countries Japan has biometric data associated with passports, but only has direct access to match that for Japanese passports. Perhaps you have never experienced the “dystopian” foreigner entry process in the USA or your own country.
Don Quijote has no such signs and does not demand your passport to enter or shop. If you want to get the VAT refunded — a privilege many countries extend to foreign tourists — you can do that by showing you have a tourist visa. Essentially duty-free shopping extended out of the airport. The USA does not have a national VAT so no American store needs a passport to refund taxes.
Japanese businesses do sometimes exclude foreigners, mainly because they don’t have multilingual staff, but also because they want to reserve some places for Japanese and not have tourists overrun every locals restaurant and bar.
Customs and immigration officials everywhere ask probing questions to catch smugglers and criminals. Annoying perhaps but hardly a Japanese thing. Part of the job description. You have no right to enter a foreign country, the immigration officers get to determine that.
To be fair, getting fingerprints and photo taken is a standard nowadays for many countries in the world, especially if you need to apply for a visa. My guess would be that this is a norm for the majority of people not from the first-world countries. I personally had to do that for Canada, Japan, and EU
I flew through the EU on my way into Japan and didn't have to get printed. The bored Parisian customs guy didn't even stamp my passport properly... which caused a bit of trouble when I landed in Helsinki. But no one, not even the Finns, demanded my fingerprints.
Of course, this was 2011, which was forever ago in national-security time.
Finland along with most of the rest of western Europe will roll out biometric identification ( fingerprints and photos) as part of the delayed ETIAS program, scheduled for this year.
Come on. It's blindingly obvious to anyone not used to these things why it's inherently bad. To people who live in a police state you eventually get used to such things.
For example i really believe that traffic enforcement cameras are state oppression. They create more human suffering then they prevent. it's just that people are used to it so they don't protest.
> It's blindingly obvious to anyone not used to these things why it's inherently bad
What, like actually enforcing laws? I live in the US and I would love a way to rein in traffic. Enforcing traffic laws is literally the best thing the police do.
I asked because it wasn’t blindingly obvious, and I genuinely want to understand.
Taking the traffic enforcement then - we’re talking about a dangerous piece of machinery that you’re allowed to operate in a public place under certain conditions in order to reduce the risk to others. One of those conditions is speed. It seems blindingly obvious to me that if a society agrees those conditions it should also enforce them?
Yes but speed cameras quickly turn into a revenue source for greedy councils. It's hard to tell how much they actually care about speeding offences and doing what they think they can get away with.
As a general rule these things start with sincere intentions but often devolve into cynical exploitation. So if you weigh the benefits of speed cameras against the suffering they cause i think you would find they aren't a good thing.
Getting to your original question i think many people don't trust that their face and fingerprint scans will be used in a way that would be in the publics interest. Its more likely that the authorities would find a way to use that data against you.
How exactly do you weigh the “suffering” — I would call it inconvenience or annoyance — of traffic fines against bodily harm caused by dangerous drivers? A fine versus a hospital stay or worse?
I'm honestly not sure what the balance is, but there is a point where one bad accident is worth less then many speeding tickets. It's obvious when you think about it- otherwise the speed limit would be 20 mph everywhere.
I'm really not sure where and how you draw the line but i do think we should err on the side of less surveillance. That's the predominant view on hn.
I read that article this morning, that was also my reaction.
Do they not remember Snowden?
Although the level of accessing "social media" posts, and internal government docs, for use in persecution of an individual is rising to new levels with The Cheato administration.
I get why large scale surveillance technology is an evil thing but what i don't understand is this articles fixation on protecting immigrants.
It's the duty of a government to protect their countries borders. If individuals will bring a negative benefit to the country then they must be sent away. I don't know why that should be controversial but it's something that the Biden administration and the Uk both struggle with.
I've noticed it's a common tactic, apparently to get the left motivated? But yes, I think it is an odd one in the general.
In this case however, el pais, with their largest audience being in latin america, is probably honestly concerned about how migrants are being treated by the trump admin.
The subhead says "have accelerated", which is bigger than the headline's "is turning into".
Turning into one?
It's been one for at least the last twenty years.
The problem is that people become used to the conditions they are living in, so the disaster is always in the future. People expect some sharp, intolerable transition.
Traveling abroad to asian countries it becomes immediately and shockingly clear how intolerable surveillance really can be. Between having your face and fingerprints scanned on a pirated windows xp pc to being fined heavily for going 51 kph in 50 zone it can be hard to imagine how much worse it can get from there, but it can.
On the other hand, as an American citizen living in Asia after spending most of my life in the USA, I like not getting mugged, assaulted, or run over by a speeding car.
I think you refer to China, or maybe Japan or Singapore. Not every country in Asia has advanced surveillance. The UK, Canada, and America have advanced the same technology but use it in other ways, which is why American police can’t make the subways or roads safe like the Japanese have, but monitor your social media posts and emails for signs of terrorism and political dissent.
Entering Japan there's a nice friendly line marked "Japanese" where everyone just passes in smoothly, and a grim dystopian line marked "Foreigner" at which your fingerprints and photo are taken before you're allowed entry. It's like humans vs. fookin' prawns in District 9. And this is Japan, one of the more liberal East Asian states.
Japanese businesses often refuse foreigners outright, or, like famed cheap-goods retailer Don Quijote, have notices posted indicating they can demand you cough up your passport at any time, so have it ready before entering.
At least the customs agents were friendly, in that Japanese way, even as they asked me probing questions like why I flew in from Helsinki on Finnair instead of over the Pacific on an American airline. Though they seemed content with my answer ("because it was cheaper").
You gave some exaggerations and misinterpretations.
Every country has separate immigration lines for citizens and foreigners. Immigration officials have access to national databases but not those of other countries. Like the USA and most other countries Japan has biometric data associated with passports, but only has direct access to match that for Japanese passports. Perhaps you have never experienced the “dystopian” foreigner entry process in the USA or your own country.
Don Quijote has no such signs and does not demand your passport to enter or shop. If you want to get the VAT refunded — a privilege many countries extend to foreign tourists — you can do that by showing you have a tourist visa. Essentially duty-free shopping extended out of the airport. The USA does not have a national VAT so no American store needs a passport to refund taxes.
Japanese businesses do sometimes exclude foreigners, mainly because they don’t have multilingual staff, but also because they want to reserve some places for Japanese and not have tourists overrun every locals restaurant and bar.
Customs and immigration officials everywhere ask probing questions to catch smugglers and criminals. Annoying perhaps but hardly a Japanese thing. Part of the job description. You have no right to enter a foreign country, the immigration officers get to determine that.
To be fair, getting fingerprints and photo taken is a standard nowadays for many countries in the world, especially if you need to apply for a visa. My guess would be that this is a norm for the majority of people not from the first-world countries. I personally had to do that for Canada, Japan, and EU
I flew through the EU on my way into Japan and didn't have to get printed. The bored Parisian customs guy didn't even stamp my passport properly... which caused a bit of trouble when I landed in Helsinki. But no one, not even the Finns, demanded my fingerprints.
Of course, this was 2011, which was forever ago in national-security time.
Finland along with most of the rest of western Europe will roll out biometric identification ( fingerprints and photos) as part of the delayed ETIAS program, scheduled for this year.
I’m interested in how strong your reaction is to those two examples. Could you explain why those are such terrible things?
Come on. It's blindingly obvious to anyone not used to these things why it's inherently bad. To people who live in a police state you eventually get used to such things.
For example i really believe that traffic enforcement cameras are state oppression. They create more human suffering then they prevent. it's just that people are used to it so they don't protest.
> It's blindingly obvious to anyone not used to these things why it's inherently bad
What, like actually enforcing laws? I live in the US and I would love a way to rein in traffic. Enforcing traffic laws is literally the best thing the police do.
I asked because it wasn’t blindingly obvious, and I genuinely want to understand.
Taking the traffic enforcement then - we’re talking about a dangerous piece of machinery that you’re allowed to operate in a public place under certain conditions in order to reduce the risk to others. One of those conditions is speed. It seems blindingly obvious to me that if a society agrees those conditions it should also enforce them?
Yes but speed cameras quickly turn into a revenue source for greedy councils. It's hard to tell how much they actually care about speeding offences and doing what they think they can get away with.
As a general rule these things start with sincere intentions but often devolve into cynical exploitation. So if you weigh the benefits of speed cameras against the suffering they cause i think you would find they aren't a good thing.
Getting to your original question i think many people don't trust that their face and fingerprint scans will be used in a way that would be in the publics interest. Its more likely that the authorities would find a way to use that data against you.
How exactly do you weigh the “suffering” — I would call it inconvenience or annoyance — of traffic fines against bodily harm caused by dangerous drivers? A fine versus a hospital stay or worse?
I'm honestly not sure what the balance is, but there is a point where one bad accident is worth less then many speeding tickets. It's obvious when you think about it- otherwise the speed limit would be 20 mph everywhere.
I'm really not sure where and how you draw the line but i do think we should err on the side of less surveillance. That's the predominant view on hn.
I read that article this morning, that was also my reaction.
Do they not remember Snowden?
Although the level of accessing "social media" posts, and internal government docs, for use in persecution of an individual is rising to new levels with The Cheato administration.
Although, Cheatos are the wrong shade of orange. I feel like the Orange Immigration Man is something more like a Kraft Single.
it was all downhill since the red scare
Ever since McCarthy where friends, neighbors and co-workers were pressed into narcing and ratting on each other.
I get why large scale surveillance technology is an evil thing but what i don't understand is this articles fixation on protecting immigrants.
It's the duty of a government to protect their countries borders. If individuals will bring a negative benefit to the country then they must be sent away. I don't know why that should be controversial but it's something that the Biden administration and the Uk both struggle with.
I've noticed it's a common tactic, apparently to get the left motivated? But yes, I think it is an odd one in the general.
In this case however, el pais, with their largest audience being in latin america, is probably honestly concerned about how migrants are being treated by the trump admin.
> If individuals will bring a negative benefit to the country then they must be sent away.
What if I told you that almost none of them bring a "negative benefit"?
That would be a lie.
The time for action was n years ago when sane people were trying to convince idiots to stop being dumb. Stop being dumb!