The Stasi were among the most successful security and intelligence services in the Cold War. Behind the Berlin Wall, colleagues, friends, husbands and wives, informed on each other. Stasi chief, General Mielke, prided himself on this situation. Under Marcus Wolf, Stasi agents were spectacularly successful in gaining entry into the West German Establishment and NATO. Some remain undiscovered. Now, for the first time in English, two British experts reveal how the Stasi operated. Based on a wealth of sources, including interviews with former Stasi officers and their victims, the book tells a fascinating yet frightening story of unbridled power, misguided idealism, treachery, widespread opportunism and lonely courage.

"The Chinese Social-Credit System Experience - A National Reputation System In The Making" is a subject very much calling out to be further explored by Americans, in particular. What follows is an examination of a social, business, political and legal point-based system for determining good and bad businesses and citizens - among other things; and what can result from such ratings.What this book presents is the views of journalists and scholars looking from the outside, but also of journalists and scholars looking at this significant social, business, political and legal development from the inside - and even from one of the most important developers of the system himself!Lin Junyue is the name of that developer, and in the highly detailed article "Retrospect: 1999-2009 Achievements In Social Credit Construction Of China", he tells the important early story of the development of the Chinese Social-Credit System. It is foundational information that sets the stage for the studies which follow in the book - among them, the most important feature the writings and translation work of Rogier Creemers.Yes, the scholar, Rogier Creemers, is an important contributor to understanding the amazing breadth of details involved in this social credit system. He lends crucial translation and editing work to the official Chinese government presentation of the "Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System (2014-2020)" of June 14, 2014, and updated on April 25, 2015. And he also brings great understanding of the system with his own article of May 9, 2018, titled, "China's Social Credit System: An Evolving Practice Of Control."There are numerous unfavorable critiques of such an enormous undertaking, with so many implications for Chinese political, economic, social and legal policy-making. But the development of such a system could have widespread global implications as well, if others should choose to use China's system as an example for their own! Probably the greatest criticism is directed at measures that could be seen as Orwellian, dystopian, Big Brother public/government intrusion, characterized by more widespread public surveillance, and less personal privacy. The other target of heavy criticism is the idea of using something like a very public point system to rate people and businesses - and the effects such ratings can have!Nevertheless there are some positives to a system like the one envisioned by the Chinese, if perhaps somewhat toned-down in terms of intrusiveness. The most positive feature, especially through the eyes of the Chinese, is that this is a "sincere" effort to bring more trustworthiness and moral value to the actions and behaviors of citizens, businesses and government officials. And in this day and age of what is happening in the U.S. politically, it's hard to find fault with such a sentiment! And the idea of bringing sincerity, trustworthiness and behavior based on better moral values is a longstanding and treasured Chinese aim and desire! As it "should" be globally!Especially important is that a great deal of this system has strong economic and potential legal implications for businesses in China - both domestic and foreign, because businesses and industrial development could be subject to strong government influence based on political, economical and social priorities determined by the central government!And globally, people need to be aware of what is happening in China, because of the implications these developments could have for the worldwide community, whatever the form their current social, political and economic systems take!

Where is the line between digital utopia and digital police state? Surveillance State tells the gripping, startling, and detailed story of how China’s Communist Party is building a new kind of political control: shaping the will of the people through the sophisticated—and often brutal—harnessing of data. It is a story born in Silicon Valley and America’s “War on Terror,” and now playing out in alarming ways on China’s remote Central Asian frontier. As ethnic minorities in a border region strain against Party control, China’s leaders have built a dystopian police state that keeps millions under the constant gaze of security forces armed with AI. But across the country in the city of Hangzhou, the government is weaving a digital utopia, where technology helps optimize everything from traffic patterns to food safety to emergency response. Award-winning journalists Josh Chin and Liza Lin take readers on a journey through the new world China is building within its borders, and beyond. Telling harrowing stories of the people and families affected by the Party’s ambitions, Surveillance State reveals a future that is already underway—a new society engineered around the power of digital surveillance.

As the Internet diffuses across the globe, many have come to believe that the technology poses an insurmountable threat to authoritarian rule. Grounded in the Internet's early libertarian culture and predicated on anecdotes pulled from diverse political climates, this conventional wisdom has informed the views of policymakers, business leaders, and media pundits alike. Yet few studies have sought to systematically analyze the exact ways in which Internet use may lay the basis for political change. In O pen Networks, Closed Regimes, the authors take a comprehensive look at how a broad range of societal and political actors in eight authoritarian and semi-authoritarian countries employ the Internet. Based on methodical assessment of evidence from these cases—China, Cuba, Singapore, Vietnam, Burma, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt—the study contends that the Internet is not necessarily a threat to authoritarian regimes.

The rollicking story of a young man who goes to China with the misguided notion that he will help bring the Chines into the modern world, only to be schooled by the most resourceful and creative operators he would ever meet.

The world is going mobile at an astounding pace. Estimates show 80 percent of global Internet access will take place through mobile devices by 2016. Smartphones, tablets, and handheld devices have reshaped communications, the global economy, and the very way in which we live. The revolution is an electronic nirvana: for the first time in human history we have sophisticated digital applications to help us learn, access financial and health care records, connect with others, and build businesses. But the one trillion dollar mobile industry is still relatively young. Leaders in both the public and private sectors need to figure out how to apply mobile technologies or mobile devices to optimize education, health care, public safety, disaster preparedness, and economic development. And the ever-expanding mobile frontier presents new challenges to law, policy, and regulations and introduces new tensions; one person's idea of cautious deliberation can be another's idea of a barrier to innovation. In Going Mobile, Darrell M. West breaks down the mobile revolution and shows how to maximize its overall benefits in both developed and emerging markets. Contents 1. The Emergence of Mobile Technology 2. Driving Global Entrepreneurship 3. Alleviating Poverty 4. Invention and the Mobile Economy 5. Mobile Learning 6. Improving Health Care 7. Medical Devices and Sensors 8. Shaping Campaigns and Public Outreach 9. Disaster Relief and Public Safety 10. Looking Ahead

The "world's factory" has long been patronized as a place of copying, rather than creativity. But in fact, since its founding, the People's Republic has been driven by dreams of rapid modernization and innovation, with engineers turned politicians drafting policy at Zhongnanhai. Apps in China now operate at scales American entrepreneurs only dream of.Our China issue explores the situation on the ground, from biometric surveillance of Muslims in Xinjiang to the new global map that Chinese tech is drawing.

This open access book offers unique insight into how and where ideas and instruments of quantification have been adopted, and how they have come to matter. Rather than asking what quantification is, New Politics of Numbers explores what quantification does, its manifold consequences in multiple domains. It scrutinizes the power of numbers in terms of the changing relations between numbers and democracy, the politics of evidence, and dreams and schemes of bettering society. The book engages Foucault inspired studies of quantification and the economics of convention in a critical dialogue. In so doing, it provides a rich account of the plurality of possible ways in which numbers have come to govern, highlighting not only their disciplinary effects, but also the collective mobilization capacities quantification can offer. This book will be invaluable reading for academics and graduate students in a wide variety of disciplines, as well as policymakers interested in the opportunities and pitfalls of governance by numbers.

Named a Notable Work of Nonfiction of 2020 by the Washington Post As heard on NPR's Fresh Air, We Have Been Harmonized, by award-winning correspondent Kai Strittmatter, offers a groundbreaking look, based on decades of research, at how China created the most terrifying surveillance state in history. China’s new drive for repression is being underpinned by unprecedented advances in technology: facial and voice recognition, GPS tracking, supercomputer databases, intercepted cell phone conversations, the monitoring of app use, and millions of high-resolution security cameras make it nearly impossible for a Chinese citizen to hide anything from authorities. Commercial transactions, including food deliveries and online purchases, are fed into vast databases, along with everything from biometric information to social media activities to methods of birth control. Cameras (so advanced that they can locate a single person within a stadium crowd of 60,000) scan for faces and walking patterns to track each individual’s movement. In some schools, children’s facial expressions are monitored to make sure they are paying attention at the right times. In a new Social Credit System, each citizen is given a score for good behavior; for those who rate poorly, punishments include being banned from flying or taking high-speed trains, exclusion from certain jobs, and preventing their children from attending better schools. And it gets worse: advanced surveillance has led to the imprisonment of more than a million Chinese citizens in western China alone, many held in draconian “reeducation” camps. This digital totalitarianism has been made possible not only with the help of Chinese private tech companies, but the complicity of Western governments and corporations eager to gain access to China’s huge market. And while governments debate trade wars and tariffs, the Chinese Communist Party and its local partners are aggressively stepping up their efforts to export their surveillance technology abroad—including to the United States. We Have Been Harmonized is a terrifying portrait of life under unprecedented government surveillance—and a dire warning about what could happen anywhere under the pretense of national security. “Terrifying. … A warning call." —The Sunday Times (UK), a “Best Book of the Year so Far”

"Beginning with a refined definition of the concept of digital citizenship and the related literacy, this research book endeavors to cover many other different components engaged with the digital world responsibilities, creating awareness as a digital citizen capable of helping or conflicting with others in the digital world especially during a period of crisis"--