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author | Andrew <andrew@andrewyu.org> | 2022-09-25 21:19:03 +0800 |
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committer | Automatic Merge <andrew+automerge@andrewyu.org> | 2023-07-15 00:29:25 +0800 |
commit | 22d5ef25658b13e8b2fa3a7870b9a5ccc6c23140 (patch) | |
tree | b3fbe2c8736aee787990d980452dbbf6a6ffca03 | |
parent | 7f7a85e759650649d9580b94714825adc9d4530c (diff) | |
download | www-22d5ef25658b13e8b2fa3a7870b9a5ccc6c23140.tar.gz |
/article/fsw-edu-china*: Clarify ``Chinese Government'', not just ``China''
-rw-r--r-- | article/free-software-education-in-china-and-covid-19.html | 11 |
1 files changed, 4 insertions, 7 deletions
diff --git a/article/free-software-education-in-china-and-covid-19.html b/article/free-software-education-in-china-and-covid-19.html index 4fb7f5b..d7d463e 100644 --- a/article/free-software-education-in-china-and-covid-19.html +++ b/article/free-software-education-in-china-and-covid-19.html @@ -62,19 +62,19 @@ </p> <p> - In th beginning of this email, I mentioned COVID-19. You might be wondering how China fully put the pandemic under control in just 5 months, which is seemingly impossible if all you know is how the US dealt with this situation. + In th beginning of this email, I mentioned COVID-19. You might be wondering how the Chinese government fully put the pandemic under control in just 5 months, which is seemingly impossible if all you know is how the US dealt with this situation. </p> <p> - The answer is that China is implementing strict contact tracing. This is extremely easy because of the prevaliance of survillance. Many would argue that this is a benefit of survillance, which I believe to be true. However, no comparisons were given between losing privacy and increasing the risk or infection. Briefly inspecting this idea in my head, it's really hard to think about—privacy and freedom is important in the long term, at the cost of many lives in the pandemic. The lives of these dead are gone—they lose not only privacy and computing freedom, they lose their lives, which costs them their oppurtunity to persue their dreams in this world, and they have no freedom of choice, speech, etc as they aren't alive. Once again, this is hard to wrap my mind around, therefore I would especially like to invite the community to discuss this. + The answer is that the Chinese government is implementing strict contact tracing. This is extremely easy because of the prevaliance of survillance. Many would argue that this is a benefit of survillance, which I believe to be true. However, no comparisons were given between losing privacy and increasing the risk or infection. Briefly inspecting this idea in my head, it's really hard to think about—privacy and freedom is important in the long term, at the cost of many lives in the pandemic. The lives of these dead are gone—they lose not only privacy and computing freedom, they lose their lives, which costs them their oppurtunity to persue their dreams in this world, and they have no freedom of choice, speech, etc as they aren't alive. Once again, this is hard to wrap my mind around, therefore I would especially like to invite the community to discuss this. </p> <p> - The contact tracing system used is not Free Software. At first I didn't understand why (except for the explanation that they want to profit from harming citizens), but I noticed that the authenticity and accuracy of the system may be affected if users are allowed to modify their software. This seems to be the core of some problems with regards to software freedom—here, the user is not running software to complete their tasks. Rather, it's the government's way to maintain public safety, therefore I believe that whether users should be able to modify software in these conditions is up to discussion. Back to the point, since a green-code proof from the system is needed to get in a lot of places, a person basically needs to use proprietary software to live a normal life (to get into coffee shops, for example). + The contact tracing system used is not Free Software. At first I didn't understand why (except for the explanation that they want to profit from harming citizens which is hopefully just a hypothetical ``explanation''), but I noticed that the authenticity and accuracy of the system may be affected if users are allowed to modify their software. This seems to be the core of some problems with regards to software freedom—here, the user is not running software to complete their tasks. Rather, it's the government's way to maintain public safety, therefore I believe that whether users should be able to modify software in these conditions is up to discussion. Back to the point, since a green-code proof from the system is needed to get in a lot of places, a person basically needs to use proprietary software to live a normal life (to get into coffee shops, for example). </p> <p> - In America and other countries, things aren't that good either. For one, the pandemic isn't controlled well. As a consequence, a lot of places require negative COVID tests to do stuff. <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2021-08/msg00008.html">A thread on the LibrePlanet mailing list</a> discusses this issue, as a lot of these tests require nonfree software on users' phones. Note that this thread spans several months long, as it is a hot discussion, so look in the september and october archives too. The thread explains the implications clearly, thus I am not discussing it here. + In the US and other countries, things aren't that good either. For one, the pandemic isn't controlled well. As a consequence, a lot of places require negative COVID tests to do stuff. <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2021-08/msg00008.html">A thread on the LibrePlanet mailing list</a> discusses this issue, as a lot of these tests require nonfree software on users' phones. Note that this thread spans several months long, as it is a hot discussion, so look in the september and october archives too. The thread explains the implications clearly, thus I am not discussing it here. </p> <p> @@ -82,9 +82,6 @@ </p> <p>I am looking foward to a freer society, or at least one where the above problems get solved.</p> - - <p>Sincerely,<br> - Andrew Yu</p> <div id="footer"> <hr /> <p><a href="/">Andrew Yu's Website</a></p> |