Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Social Credit

Wall Street Journal
More than three dozen local governments across China are beginning to compile digital records of social and financial behavior to rate creditworthiness. A person can incur black marks for infractions such as fare cheating, jaywalking and violating family-planning rules. The effort echoes the dang’an, a system of dossiers the Communist party keeps on urban workers’ behavior.

In time, Beijing expects to draw on bigger, combined data pools, including a person’s internet activity, according to interviews with some architects of the system and a review of government documents. Algorithms would use a range of data to calculate a citizen’s rating, which would then be used to determine all manner of activities, such as who gets loans, or faster treatment at government offices or access to luxury hotels.

When I first heard this, I though it was either "fake news" or a joke. It seems like an incredible intrusion of privacy but I guess no such thing exists in China. In the end, it's another tool for the CCP to control the population and stay in power. Why would anyone (Taiwan) want to live under such a system?

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