Business As Usual For The NYSE

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Where the broom does not reach, the dust will not vanish of itself.     —Mao Zedong

1.

From “An Opportunity for Wall St. in China’s Surveillance Boom” in the September 11 New York Times:

Li Runsen, the powerful technology director of China’s ministry of public security, is best known for leading Project Golden Shield, China’s intensive effort to strengthen police control over the Internet.

But last month Mr. Li took an additional title: director for China Security and Surveillance Technology, a fast-growing company that installs and sometimes operates surveillance systems for Chinese police agencies, jails and banks, among other customers. The company has just been approved for a listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

The company’s listing and Mr. Li’s membership on its board are just the latest signs of ever-closer ties among Wall Street, surveillance companies and the Chinese government’s security apparatus.

Wall Street analysts now follow the growth of companies that install surveillance systems providing Chinese police stations with 24-hour video feeds from nearby Internet cafes. Hedge fund money from the United States has paid for the development of not just better video cameras, but face-recognition software and even newer behavior-recognition software designed to spot the beginnings of a street protest and notify police.

According to Terence Yap, vice chairman and chief financial officer of China Security and Surveillance Technology:

his company’s software made it possible for security cameras to count the number of people in crosswalks and alert the police if a crowd forms at an unusual hour, a possible sign of an unsanctioned protest.

2.

The New York Stock Exchange Foundation supports programs that:

help to achieve equality for all people by promoting civil rights, inclusiveness and respect for people’s differences …

It’s a good thing the Foundation only funds these programs in New York.

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Image source: The Age

Comments

[Tom Cannon]

"The capitalists will sell us the rope by which we will hang them." ...Lenin

[Albert]

Yes, the rope and the rationalizations. Not too surprisingly some of the apologists for the Chinese argue that these surveillance measures are designed to root out terrorists, like the terrorists calling for the Chinese to leave Tibet.

Having inured ourselves to torture and the denial of due process in our own country, we don’t blink when it’s a matter of making a buck off the apparatus that will send people into the Chinese">http://hrw.org/englishwr2k7/docs/2007/01/11/china14867.htm">Chinese gulag. We and the Chinese have become jack-booted doppelgangers. We part our hair on the right, they on the left.

[Phil]

Excellent post. Control freaks have a lot in common whether they head governments or corporations. We have all gotten used to the idea that the "people at the top" will supervise us one way or another, for our own good, probably, what with all the Terrorists running around.

[erasmus]

This is chilling. The NYSE Foundation guidelines make my longstanding doubts about corporate philanthropy flare up again.