depressing
"
China's
All-Seeing Eye"
I ask
Zheng whether China's surveillance boom has anything to do with the
rise in strikes and demonstrations in recent years. Zheng's deputy,
a 23-year veteran of the Chinese military wearing a black Mao suit,
responds as if I had launched a direct attack on the Communist
Party itself. "If you walk out of this building, you will be under
surveillance in five to six different ways," he says, staring at me
hard. He lets the implication of his words linger in the air like
an unspoken threat. "If you are a law-abiding citizen, you
shouldn't be afraid," he finally adds. "The criminals are the only
ones who should be afraid."
[...]
Walton's paper did have an impact, but not the one he had hoped.
The revelation that China was constructing a gigantic digital
database capable of watching its citizens on the streets and
online, listening to their phone calls and tracking their consumer
purchases sparked neither shock nor outrage. Instead, Walton says,
the paper was "mined for ideas" by the U.S. government, as well as
by private companies hoping to grab a piece of the suddenly booming
market in spy tools.
Awesome!
In more, unpleasant, news; the commodities bubble is either caused
by
loss
in confidence in the central banks or because
investors are blithering morons. Which one is it? Who the fuck
knows!