[intended]

That just makes you an exception.

A majority of india uses aadhar, a biometric ID. The govt constantly coerced and frightens the remanant people into getting aadhar.

A biometric ID is as obviously a lynchpin of a surveillance state as the necessity of a unique key to run a database.

London and the U.K. had invested surveillance in old school cameras even before the internet blew up.

China is China.

A majority of the world is already OK with a surveillance state. And most of the affected aren’t in a position to understand why it matters.

—————

Further- after the impact of the American election and brexit on america and the U.K. respectively, all nation states are aware that other nation states can hijack their national “thought streams” or whatever you want to call them.

No matter what, countries are not going to let that happen to them.

The added bonus of political advantage is not lost on the political class.

It’s not much to make sweeping statements from that position.

Especially given that all of private tech enterprise depends on snooping on your private information.

Hah. We are well and truly the product being sold on the larger global market.

Perhaps Nations are simply building fences to keep their products from being stolen.

[rohit2412]

> A biometric ID is as obviously a lynchpin of a surveillance state as the necessity of a unique key to run a database.

That's disingenuous. A government is also a lynchpin for a surveillance state, so you'll support anarchy?

A biometric id is very useful for various purposes. Subsidy targeting, financial inclusion, simplification of various datasets, and cracking down on tax evasion to name a few.

[shuaib]

>>> That just makes you an exception.

Sounds like a sweeping statement. Not sure your example of aadhar is relevant. Everyone needs to have some form of ID so they can be represented in "a database".

My reply was in the context of the new mass surveillance equipment referred to in the article.

[intended]

Aadhar is specifically relevant since

1) india already has a plethora of ID options which were not mandatory and not biometric

2) similar biometric ID programs have been shot down in the US and UK precisely because of the threat to privacy and surveillance

3) a majority of Indians, as you will see even on HN, support such programs. The support is under the same aegis that Chinese citizens defend their firewall - it makes their life better, cost to privacy, threat of surveillance state be damned.

Even more obvious surveillance tools are acceptable and championed by the citizenry.

Such sweeping statements are not sweeping but factual representations of the state on the ground in the second most populous nation in the world.

The only people I know who are now organized and trying to combat it are the IFF.