cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1402217/how-cops-are-treating-mass-surveillance-as-a-joke-cops-search-flock-database-typing-reas

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/59066615

Archived

China has imposed a range of sweeping new rules restricting travel in and out of the country in a move that observers say will give the government even more control over its citizens.

Citizens deemed to have "harmed" China's national security or interests while overseas can also be barred from leaving China for up to three years.

But the law also says that it will apply to anyone considered a threat to the country's industrial or technological security.

[...]

Under the new rules, border officials are now also required to advise Chinese nationals against travelling to countries and regions deemed "high-risk".

[...]

But even prior to the rules being announced, some people were already restricted from going to certain countries. Civil servants were among the earliest groups subjected to these controls, which later expanded to include state-owned enterprise employees and ordinary citizens.

A retired grassroots civil servant in Anhui told BBC Chinese that around 2018, his workplace made employees surrender their passports. His passport remains in the custody of his former employer even though he retired last year.

According to the ex-civil servant, employees had to apply and explain their reasons for overseas travel, and not all requests were approved.

For example, trips to visit relatives were more likely to be approved than tourism trips, he said.

"It is mainly to prevent corrupt officials from fleeing or transferring assets abroad," he said. "For more senior officials, it may also be intended to prevent the disclosure of state secrets."

[...]

A man identified by his pseudonym, Xiao Wang, who works at a state-owned financial institution in Beijing, told BBC Chinese that his fellow employees have long been required to surrender their passports and get approval for overseas travel.

The 32-year-old said managers have verbally reminded staff that "sensitive countries such as Japan are definitely off-limits".

[...]

The rules could also affect citizens who work in areas such as human rights, say analysts.

"This is another tool designed to control what Chinese citizens do and say overseas," said Professor Tom Kellogg, Executive Director of the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown University.

"In some cases, in order to prevent individuals from criticising the Chinese government overseas or to punish their rights advocacy activities, state security authorities directly refuse to issue passports."

One 26-year-old Chinese citizen, who wished to be identified only as Pipi, told BBC Chinese that his passport application in 2023 was rejected and he believes it was because he attended the massive pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019.

According to Pipi, he was interviewed by Hong Kong media outlets during the protests. When he returned to mainland China, he was questioned by state security police.

He said one immigration official told him that he could not get a passport "because of the Hong Kong issue" – but this was not confirmed in writing to him.

"I don't know whether I'll ever be able to leave [China]," he said.

[...]

Banning smart glasses from major Adelaide precincts is on the cards as a bill to restrict the technology is expected to hit parliament later this year.

The fight against Islamism is the rationale behind Marine Le Pen’s RN party, but research data suggests that head-covering in keeping with Islamic tradition is not politically motivated.

After nearly a decade of misgendering and delay, a Mexico City judge recognized Paola Buenrostro as a woman and reclassified the case as aggravated femicide.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1401393/xcancel-service-is-suspended-until-further-notice

Hacker News.

Source: Xcancel.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/59066615

Archived

China has imposed a range of sweeping new rules restricting travel in and out of the country in a move that observers say will give the government even more control over its citizens.

Citizens deemed to have "harmed" China's national security or interests while overseas can also be barred from leaving China for up to three years.

But the law also says that it will apply to anyone considered a threat to the country's industrial or technological security.

[...]

Under the new rules, border officials are now also required to advise Chinese nationals against travelling to countries and regions deemed "high-risk".

[...]

But even prior to the rules being announced, some people were already restricted from going to certain countries. Civil servants were among the earliest groups subjected to these controls, which later expanded to include state-owned enterprise employees and ordinary citizens.

A retired grassroots civil servant in Anhui told BBC Chinese that around 2018, his workplace made employees surrender their passports. His passport remains in the custody of his former employer even though he retired last year.

According to the ex-civil servant, employees had to apply and explain their reasons for overseas travel, and not all requests were approved.

For example, trips to visit relatives were more likely to be approved than tourism trips, he said.

"It is mainly to prevent corrupt officials from fleeing or transferring assets abroad," he said. "For more senior officials, it may also be intended to prevent the disclosure of state secrets."

[...]

A man identified by his pseudonym, Xiao Wang, who works at a state-owned financial institution in Beijing, told BBC Chinese that his fellow employees have long been required to surrender their passports and get approval for overseas travel.

The 32-year-old said managers have verbally reminded staff that "sensitive countries such as Japan are definitely off-limits".

[...]

The rules could also affect citizens who work in areas such as human rights, say analysts.

"This is another tool designed to control what Chinese citizens do and say overseas," said Professor Tom Kellogg, Executive Director of the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown University.

"In some cases, in order to prevent individuals from criticising the Chinese government overseas or to punish their rights advocacy activities, state security authorities directly refuse to issue passports."

One 26-year-old Chinese citizen, who wished to be identified only as Pipi, told BBC Chinese that his passport application in 2023 was rejected and he believes it was because he attended the massive pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019.

According to Pipi, he was interviewed by Hong Kong media outlets during the protests. When he returned to mainland China, he was questioned by state security police.

He said one immigration official told him that he could not get a passport "because of the Hong Kong issue" – but this was not confirmed in writing to him.

"I don't know whether I'll ever be able to leave [China]," he said.

[...]

This one is fully feral, lucky to get a pic before it ran away

A plastic pollution tide has swept across the globe & is choking the ocean. It’s time to identify the main polluters & hold them to account.

TL;DR

1. Coca Cola
2. McDonalds
3. Cadbury
4. Red Bull
5. Walkers

The announcement of the polio vaccine's safety and effectiveness was on April 12, 1955, by Thomas Francis, Jr., of the University of Michigan, the monitor of the test results. Within minutes of his announcement to the audience of scientists and reporters, news of the event was carried coast to coast by wire services and radio and television newscasts. When the vaccine was announced as successful, it led to spontaneous celebrations across the United States. It was the world's first successful polio vaccine, declared "safe, effective, and potent." It was possibly the most significant biomedical advance of the twentieth century.

Literally 1955, dude. Holy fuck how do people get this stupid

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/59066415

Archived

[...]

• An investigation found officer at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) in London acted at the direction of the bank’s Beijing headquarters to pursue explicitly political objectives for its majority shareholder, the Chinese state: cement alliances, acquire natural resources and expand control over communications, energy and transportation infrastructure globally. ICBC is the world’s largest bank by asset size.

• ICBC stepped up to help Russian mining giant Norilsk Nickel, aka Nornickel, a company partly owned by four sanctioned Russian oligarchs aligned with the Kremlin, to finance the firm in renminbi, the Chinese currency, to avoid U.S. dollar transactions, and applauding Nornickel’s idea of building a smelting plant in China to label their products Chinese.

• ICBC served clients linked to autocrats, oligarchs and Chinese companies with political connections. Among the clients: a bank owned by the daughters of Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s longtime authoritarian ruler; Angola’s state oil company, then controlled by cronies of dictator José Eduardo dos Santos; and a Chinese company that partnered with a Belarusian firm sanctioned by the European Union for its ties to Alexander Lukashenko’s regime.

• In 2019, after the U.S. Justice Department indicted Huawei, ICBC bankers were quickly transferring $1.3 billion in “emergency cash” for the tech giant. The transaction, while not illegal, triggered a wave of recriminations and infighting at the bank, particularly from its own financial crime prevention unit, which was not told about the move ahead of time.

• Since 2014, courts and regulators in eight jurisdictions have hit ICBC and its overseas branches and subsidiaries with adverse court rulings and penalties totalling at least $96 million. The confidential records also show that ICBC executives were aware of compliance issues at its units in the U.K. and other countries.

[...]

[The investigation] also lays bare what experts describe as the bank’s “muscular” lending tactics, which have burdened some of Africa’s most economically vulnerable states.

In 2011, the bank signed a loan with ZESCO, the Zambian state-owned power company, for $285 million. Seven years later, as the drought-stricken nation of 18 million was barreling toward sovereign default, ICBC came for its first payment of $20 million. This was just after ZESCO had paid the bank $15 million in “management fees” for a separate loan that “put some pressure on the company’s financial situation.” But the utility had little recourse; Zesco had already set up an account at ICBC London for the $285 million loan. Keen to collect the first payment, ICBC headquarters pushed officers in the U.K. to take the money out of Zesco’s account and send it to Beijing before ICBC London had completed the necessary checks on the client, as required by the bank’s compliance policy.

Few outside the bank and the government knew the extent of Zambia’s indebtedness to ICBC and other Chinese banks. The lack of transparency paralyzed debt relief efforts, triggering a financial crisis in 2020 that tanked the value of its currency and made daily staples unaffordable for an already impoverished population.

China Capital’s rare view of ICBC’s inner workings comes from the confidential archives of the bank’s London branch and a U.K. subsidiary, dated between 2005 and 2024 — a span when China ascended on the world stage and President Xi Jinping rose to power.

The trove includes reports marked as trade secrets; internal emails in English and Chinese; confidential dossiers and lists on more than 4,000 corporate clients; meeting minutes; suspicious transaction logs; and directives from the bank’s Communist Party committee, an internal cell that facilitates party activities and advances government policies.

[...]

The records highlight the hybrid nature of ICBC, a commercial bank that often appears to act like a development bank, contributing to China’s rise as the largest nondemocratic actor in global finance. The bank helped Chinese state firms secure lucrative contracts overseas, financing the acquisition of key transportation, energy and telecommunications infrastructure in foreign countries. Its clientele included companies and individuals accused of corruption, environmental violations, theft of trade secrets and harmful market practices by courts or regulators in other countries. ICBC also loaned millions to foreign state entities as a way to boost China’s alliances and economic power. As is the case for many other Chinese banks, though, ICBC’s lending activities have remained opaque.

[...]

The Kolhapur District Disaster Management Authority has trained over 2,500 volunteers in the last decade. In 2019, it created the state’s first all-women rescue unit, the ‘Aapda Sakhi’ team, which now counts more than 500 trained volunteers. But ahead of this year’s monsoon, officials decided to try something unique.

“We thought, why not train a transwomen team,” said Prasad Sankpal, District Disaster Management Officer, Kolhapur. “So a first-of-its-kind transgender disaster management and rescue team initiative was begun in the country.”