Naomi Klein: China's All-Seeing Eye (Rolling Stone)

[kpete]

China's All-Seeing Eye
With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.
NAOMI KLEIN

Posted May 29, 2008 3:24 PM


Now, as China prepares to showcase its economic advances during the upcoming Olympics in Beijing, Shenzhen is once again serving as a laboratory, a testing ground for the next phase of this vast social experiment. Over the past two years, some 200,000 surveillance cameras have been installed throughout the city. Many are in public spaces, disguised as lampposts. The closed-circuit TV cameras will soon be connected to a single, nationwide network, an all-seeing system that will be capable of tracking and identifying anyone who comes within its range — a project driven in part by U.S. technology and investment. Over the next three years, Chinese security executives predict they will install as many as 2 million CCTVs in Shenzhen, which would make it the most watched city in the world. (Security-crazy London boasts only half a million surveillance cameras.)

The security cameras are just one part of a much broader high-tech surveillance and censorship program known in China as "Golden Shield." The end goal is to use the latest people-tracking technology — thoughtfully supplied by American giants like IBM, Honeywell and General Electric — to create an airtight consumer cocoon: a place where Visa cards, Adidas sneakers, China Mobile cellphones, McDonald's Happy Meals, Tsingtao beer and UPS delivery (to name just a few of the official sponsors of the Beijing Olympics) can be enjoyed under the unblinking eye of the state, without the threat of democracy breaking out. With political unrest on the rise across China, the government hopes to use the surveillance shield to identify and counteract dissent before it explodes into a mass movement like the one that grabbed the world's attention at Tiananmen Square.

Remember how we've always been told that free markets and free people go hand in hand? That was a lie. It turns out that the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state, fortressed with American "homeland security" technologies, pumped up with "war on terror" rhetoric. And the global corporations currently earning superprofits from this social experiment are unlikely to be content if the lucrative new market remains confined to cities such as Shenzhen. Like everything else assembled in China with American parts, Police State 2.0 is ready for export to a neighborhood near you.

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George Tenet, may be guilty of violating U.S. law

The company’s reticence to publicize its activities in China could have something to do with the fact that the relationship between Yao and L-1 may well be illegal under U.S. law. After the Chinese government sent tanks into Tiananmen Square in 1989, Congress passed legislation barring U.S. companies from selling any products in China that have to do with “crime control or detection instruments or equipment.”

Be sure to read the whole article in Rolling Stone, it’s excellent.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20797485/chinas_allseeing_eye/print

[KG]

1. america has reched rock bottom when it has to import its police state

remember back in 2001, when the US could still create its own police state? good times, good times....

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. She is one of them Cassandras

and according to the Pollyanas we shouldn't really worry 'bout this, since we can still post at places like DU :sarcasm:

:hi: Agent Mike

[kpete]

3. Agent Mike

can kick my sorry ass, kpete

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Well you know exactly who this is meant for

and not quite Agent Mike

:hi:

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. kick