alt Hacker NewsChina is already doing abominable things; how people react to additional surveillance is always related to what the state is actually doing with that information.
So a system that supports the abduction of polital rivals (an actual human rights violation) is not the same as a system that supports the lawful arrest of someone breaking a law that's accepted as part of a democracy.
I also think the scale of investment plays a part, the investment in surveillance in China is absurd. Its a significant number of people (per capita) that do nothing but monitor people. These new systems are rather cheap; so much so that they feel a whole lot more inevitable.
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Democracy is when you get abducted and sent to CECOT because some shitty AI face app said so
ICE does not care about "lawful arrests". Like common, that is not their thing.
That's a totally wrong way to think about it, akin to "I have nothing to hide so why not let the government look into all my communications"
> abduction of political rivals
Couldn’t have timed it better, we just pulled off the most high profile abduction of a geopolitical rival in history.
In both systems the law is being carefully followed to support inhumane goals
> is not the same as a system that supports the lawful arrest
That is not the system that the US has had since 2025, and the executive has made it very clear that it is not the system that it wants the US to have.
Meanwhile, SCOTUS has made it very clear that nothing this executive does will have any consequences for it.
Rule of law is a fairy tale when ICE can snag anyone they want off the street and throw them into some CECOT torture pit.
Rule of law is a fairy tale when the executive disregards direct judicial orders.