U.S.-based geographer Brian Jefferson argues in a new book that “smart city” systems tech firms such as IBM have built in New York City and Chicago extend carceral management systems into urban spaces. He shows how “cellular towers, cooling equipment, environmental sensors, fiber-optic cables, local area networks, mobile devices, server rooms, and smart cameras” are engineered to allow governments and private technology firms to supervise entire communities in a manner that increasingly resembles carceral management. The Shawan “Safe City” shows that in less democratic contexts, such systems connect even more directly to mass detention systems.
Philosopher Gilles Deleuze suggests that contemporary societies are moving away from systems of discipline to systems of control. While in the past the material limits of schools, religious institutions, factories, and prisons trained people to be self-disciplined, in the digital age societies are shaped by flexible systems of cod
Posted by Joseph Brouwer | Dec 22, 2020
New investigations by ChinaFile and The New York Times reveal the complexities of the vast and diffuse organs tasked by the Chinese state with understanding (and manipulating) online public opinion. The Great Firewall, the “Fifty Cent Party,” and CDT’s “Directives From the Ministry of Truth” are well known examples of the Chinese government’s efforts to control the internet. The investigations by ChinaFile and The Times show that public-private partnerships built on sophisticated software programs are the new frontier of internet control in China.
Jessica Batke and Mareike Ohlberg’s ChinaFile investigation used government procurement documents to show that
Posted by zctph48 | Jul 30, 2018
Described by rights activist Michael Caster as “crimes against humanity,” the targeted persecution of Xinjiang’s Muslim Uyghurs is worsening, and journalists, academics, and politicians are calling for awareness and action. Recent statistics show the region constituted 21% of all arrests in China last year, despite comprising just 1.5% of the national population. In addition, Professor Adrian Zenz demonstrated that “at least several hundred thousand, and possibly just over one million” Uyghurs have been detained in extralegal re-education camps which would not register in arrest statistics.
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Qu xuexi,” meaning to go or be sent to study, is one of the most common expressions in Xinjiang these days. It is a euphemism for having been taken away and not having been seen or heard from since. The “schools” are re-education centers in which the detainees are being forced to take courses in Chinese and patriotism, without any indictment