A Rabble interview with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Kaveh Shahrooz offers a troubling window into Canadian politics. Last month the left-wing website, for whom I’ve written for two decades, published “Understanding the dynamics of the protests in Iran”. Everything about the article should have raised red flags. Described as “a lawyer and human rights activist”, Shahrooz
In the Haidilao Hot Pot restaurant in. Vancouver, more than 60 surveillance cameras watch 30 tables and send feeds to China. The cameras, manager Ryan Pan explains, are there to people track and are part of the social credit system in China.
In 2014, China s State Council issued guidelines for the establishment of a national social credit system by 2020, with the feeds from about 626 million surveillance cameras and smartphone scanners and with data from a multitude of sources . For example, criticizing Chinese ruler Xi Jinping would result in the lowering of an individual s score. There are consequences for low-scored individuals.
Why did Beijing select Ryan Pan s restaurant for such intensive collection of information? For starters, it is near to the home rented by Huawei Technologies for staff attending to Meng Wanzhou, the firm s chief financial officer. Meng is in the middle of a multi-year struggle to avoid extradition to the U.S. for alleged bank fraud relating to sanc