Summary
A New York man, Chen Jinping, pleaded guilty to operating an undeclared Chinese police station in Manhattan for China’s Ministry of Public Security.
The station, part of a transnational repression scheme, aided Beijing in locating and suppressing pro-democracy activists in the U.S., violating American sovereignty.
Authorities say the station also served routine functions like renewing Chinese driving licenses but had a more sinister role, including tracking a California-based activist.
Chen faces up to five years in prison, while a co-defendant has pleaded not guilty and awaits trial.
What makes this scarier than gangs or mobs? An organized group of violent people acting in a way you can’t defend yourself from. Just like the cops themselves. This isn’t any scarier than the actual existence of all of those other groups.
Presumably, these have the resources of a country behind them.
It’s far more well resourced, focused, managed, and targeted. A state sponsored gang is always going to be much scarier than one that emerges on its own funded only by the revenue of its actions.
Thanks comerade, here’s 50 cent.
Your own police - a regulated force you can sue, but not resist.
A gang or a mob - likely butt buddies with your own police, but there are possibilities to use law and police against them, and they can’t put you in jail for resisting.
A foreign police - like a gang or a mob, but also reliant on a foreign nation state for resources, those including intelligence about you, technical means (like some targeted spyware attacks maybe), more likely to be able to just kidnap you or murder you than a simple gang or a mob. Another level of professionalism.
So the only difference is that if you survive your encounter with the police you can get some taxpayer money?
I think people would be more upset about a secret foreign police force if they had any sort of faith in the non-secret local police.
Well. In general the difference between some armed men and some other armed men is that they may have different bosses treating you differently.
I mean. It doesn’t have to be scarier than those things to be worthy of fear. A tiger isn’t necessarily any scarier than a lion. Doesn’t mean I’m not scared of a tiger mauling me if it got its claws on me
Well the original comment I was replying to was implying it was scarier because there could be other foreign govts doing the same thing. I dunno, the comment just seemed to imply this was some new and dangerous threat when we’ve been living with equal and much worse when you consider the actual cops have the backing of the courts and the federal govt to royally fuck your life up.