Traveling abroad to asian countries it becomes immediately and shockingly clear how intolerable surveillance really can be. Between having your face and fingerprints scanned on a pirated windows xp pc to being fined heavily for going 51 kph in 50 zone it can be hard to imagine how much worse it can get from there, but it can.
On the other hand, as an American citizen living in Asia after spending most of my life in the USA, I like not getting mugged, assaulted, or run over by a speeding car.
I think you refer to China, or maybe Japan or Singapore. Not every country in Asia has advanced surveillance. The UK, Canada, and America have advanced the same technology but use it in other ways, which is why American police can’t make the subways or roads safe like the Japanese have, but monitor your social media posts and emails for signs of terrorism and political dissent.
Entering Japan there's a nice friendly line marked "Japanese" where everyone just passes in smoothly, and a grim dystopian line marked "Foreigner" at which your fingerprints and photo are taken before you're allowed entry. It's like humans vs. fookin' prawns in District 9. And this is Japan, one of the more liberal East Asian states.
Japanese businesses often refuse foreigners outright, or, like famed cheap-goods retailer Don Quijote, have notices posted indicating they can demand you cough up your passport at any time, so have it ready before entering.
At least the customs agents were friendly, in that Japanese way, even as they asked me probing questions like why I flew in from Helsinki on Finnair instead of over the Pacific on an American airline. Though they seemed content with my answer ("because it was cheaper").
You gave some exaggerations and misinterpretations.
Every country has separate immigration lines for citizens and foreigners. Immigration officials have access to national databases but not those of other countries. Like the USA and most other countries Japan has biometric data associated with passports, but only has direct access to match that for Japanese passports. Perhaps you have never experienced the “dystopian” foreigner entry process in the USA or your own country.
Don Quijote has no such signs and does not demand your passport to enter or shop. If you want to get the VAT refunded — a privilege many countries extend to foreign tourists — you can do that by showing you have a tourist visa. Essentially duty-free shopping extended out of the airport. The USA does not have a national VAT so no American store needs a passport to refund taxes.
Japanese businesses do sometimes exclude foreigners, mainly because they don’t have multilingual staff, but also because they want to reserve some places for Japanese and not have tourists overrun every locals restaurant and bar.
Customs and immigration officials everywhere ask probing questions to catch smugglers and criminals. Annoying perhaps but hardly a Japanese thing. Part of the job description. You have no right to enter a foreign country, the immigration officers get to determine that.
> Don Quijote has no such signs and does not demand your passport to enter or shop.
The one I visited had just such a sign posted at the entrance.
> Customs and immigration officials everywhere ask probing questions to catch smugglers and criminals.
I've never been asked such questions by customs in Australia, Canada, France, or the UK. The only ones who gave me a harder time were the American customs officials, as I was re-entering my own fucking country from Canada. They couldn't even be bothered to smile or act polite.
For good or ill, Japanese trust of foreigners is much lower than in the Western world. Maybe they loosened up a bit since 2011 but they're tightening back up now what with idiot streamers gaijin-smashing into construction sites and the like. Racism and open discrimination against people who even look foreign is higher than what a Canadian or Brit would be used to. Given that the Japanese are more interested in preserving their culture against foreign influence than the Brits or Canadians, it makes sense, yes. But it still felt dystopian at the point of entry. Once I'd cleared that hurdle, though, I had a great time in Japan and most of the people I met were pretty laid back.
Been to multiple Don Quijote stores many times, never seen such a sign or had anyone ask for my passport unless I applied for the VAT refund. Possibly a bad translation. Photo or I won’t believe it.
Edit: Japan (like many other countries) requires everyone to carry official ID at all times. Japanese have government ID cards. For foreigners that means your passport. Americans find that requirement off-putting because we don’t (yet) have to “show our papers” to police on demand.
I travel a lot. Only had immigration or customs ask anything in the USA (my native country), Canada (had my young son with me so understandable), UK multiple times. Never anywhere in Asia, and I live in SE Asia. It mainly comes down to appearance and attitude and the mood of the officer at the moment, hard to extrapolate to a national or ethnic tendency from a few anecdotes.
I’ve never had Thai immigration hassle me but I’ve seen them take young people who look rough aside, maybe to check for drugs, probably to make sure they had sufficient funds and an onward/return ticket. Asian cultures tend to more formality and higher expectations of appearance in public, so foreigners may call negative attention to themselves with their clothes or tattoos, and their entitled attitude.
Japan may feel closed off and xenophobic. On the other hand they don’t have foreigners marginalized into ghettos or rounded up by ICE. The USA and Canada have no ethnic identity, whereas Japan and other Asian countries do. Unfamiliar perhaps but I don’t interpret that as racist or hostile.
Back in the early ‘80s I lived in San Francisco, a city then overrun with tourists. The tourists got fleeced to ride the cable cars, locals paid less (if we used those at all). On Geary Street near Union Square we had the baseball-themed bar/restaurant Lefty O’Doul’s that had a big “No Tourists” sign out front, to keep the locals flavor of the place. Quite a few bars and restaurants would make tourists wait indefinitely. The famous Tadich Grill for years advertised no reservations, no credit cards to deter tourists, and made tourists wait outside on the street while seating regulars first, and they did actually take credit cards.
Japan faces the same problems with too many tourists, and too many of those who don’t respect the culture and people. I see that every day in Bangkok too. The difference is the Japanese and the Thais can identify foreigners on sight, whereas in San Francisco locals places had to use other techniques to discriminate.
> Entering Japan there's a nice friendly line marked "Japanese" where everyone just passes in smoothly, and a grim dystopian line marked "Foreigner"
So exactly like the US then? They take your fingerprints and photo and ask probing questions about your visit which the officer doesn't actually care about but are designed to rattle you and trip you up.
To be fair, getting fingerprints and photo taken is a standard nowadays for many countries in the world, especially if you need to apply for a visa. My guess would be that this is a norm for the majority of people not from the first-world countries. I personally had to do that for Canada, Japan, and EU
I flew through the EU on my way into Japan and didn't have to get printed. The bored Parisian customs guy didn't even stamp my passport properly... which caused a bit of trouble when I landed in Helsinki. But no one, not even the Finns, demanded my fingerprints.
Of course, this was 2011, which was forever ago in national-security time.
Finland along with most of the rest of western Europe will roll out biometric identification ( fingerprints and photos) as part of the delayed ETIAS program, scheduled for this year.
Come on. It's blindingly obvious to anyone not used to these things why it's inherently bad. To people who live in a police state you eventually get used to such things.
For example i really believe that traffic enforcement cameras are state oppression. They create more human suffering then they prevent. it's just that people are used to it so they don't protest.
> It's blindingly obvious to anyone not used to these things why it's inherently bad
What, like actually enforcing laws? I live in the US and I would love a way to rein in traffic. Enforcing traffic laws is literally the best thing the police do.
I asked because it wasn’t blindingly obvious, and I genuinely want to understand.
Taking the traffic enforcement then - we’re talking about a dangerous piece of machinery that you’re allowed to operate in a public place under certain conditions in order to reduce the risk to others. One of those conditions is speed. It seems blindingly obvious to me that if a society agrees those conditions it should also enforce them?
Yes but speed cameras quickly turn into a revenue source for greedy councils. It's hard to tell how much they actually care about speeding offences and doing what they think they can get away with.
As a general rule these things start with sincere intentions but often devolve into cynical exploitation. So if you weigh the benefits of speed cameras against the suffering they cause i think you would find they aren't a good thing.
Getting to your original question i think many people don't trust that their face and fingerprint scans will be used in a way that would be in the publics interest. Its more likely that the authorities would find a way to use that data against you.
How exactly do you weigh the “suffering” — I would call it inconvenience or annoyance — of traffic fines against bodily harm caused by dangerous drivers? A fine versus a hospital stay or worse?
I'm honestly not sure what the balance is, but there is a point where one bad accident is worth less then many speeding tickets. It's obvious when you think about it- otherwise the speed limit would be 20 mph everywhere.
I'm really not sure where and how you draw the line but i do think we should err on the side of less surveillance. That's the predominant view on hn.
I agree that I prefer less surveillance. But I have little sympathy for people who break the law and put others at risk. We all lose some freedom because of a relative few who put their “rights” above the public good.
Rather than rampant surveillance I would support confiscating the car and cancelling the license of reckless drivers on the second offense, and DUIs on the first offense.
That's hardly true. I'm pretty far from the doge end of the spectrum, but I want as little surveillance as possible (ideally: only via court order).
You need only read about what impact a simple census question about religious affiliation had in the 1930s/40s to realize that information about yourself can very quickly be used for very dark purposes.
We've already seen stories about red states using data from social media and phone apps to target women who may have gotten abortions.
I can think of plenty of not so great ways red light camera data can be (and probably already is being) used for things completely outside the scope of merely automating speeding and red light crossing tickets.
> Yes but speed cameras quickly turn into a revenue source for greedy councils.
This has been widely documented for red light cameras. Red light cameras are politically much easier because approximately nobody thinks blatantly running red light is ever acceptable (vs. speed limits which have a wide range of debate on what the correct number should be).
So, towns install red light cameras. And initially, it's good! Then when the town gets used to the revenue stream, they want more money. How to get more? They shorten the yellow light more and more and more so they can artificially increase the number of people "running the red light". What started as a good plan to punish people who blatantly run the light, becomes a gotcha trick programmed to maximize revenue at the cost of safety (rear end accidents increase substantially after people become trained to panic brake at yellow lights due to the excessively short time).
> The next time you approach that intersection, you slam on your brakes when the light turns yellow, fearful of another ticket. Only this time, the car behind you slams into you.
I don't understand how people can come to any conclusion other than blaming the following driver for not maintaining a safe distance. It's generally impossible to predict when the driver in front may have to perform an emergency stop (e.g. kid running into the road) and you have to leave enough room when following so that you don't crash into them if they need to stop. Surely this is just a basic driving skill?
