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Coming to a State Near You Soon: The Good Citizens of the Digital Dictatorship

[ EXCERPTED FROM Leave no dark corner BY the Australian Broadcasting Corporation) ]

What may sound like a dystopian vision of the future is already happening in China. And it’s making and breaking lives.

The Communist Party calls it “social credit” and says it will be fully operational by 2020.

Within years, an official Party outline claims, it will “allow the trustworthy to roam freely under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step”.

Social credit is like a personal scorecard for each of China’s 1.4 billion citizens.

In one pilot program already in place, each citizen has been assigned a score out of 800. In other programs, it’s 900.

Those, like Dandan, with top “citizen scores” get VIP treatment at hotels and airports, cheap loans and a fast track to the best universities and jobs.

“It will allow the trustworthy to roam freely under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.”

Those at the bottom can be locked out of society and banned from travel, or barred from getting credit or government jobs.

The system will be enforced by the latest in high-tech surveillance systems as China pushes to become the world leader in artificial intelligence.

Surveillance cameras will be equipped with facial recognition, body scanning and geo-tracking to cast a constant gaze over every citizen.

Smartphone apps will also be used to collect data and monitor online behavior on a day-to-day basis.

Then, big data from more traditional sources like government records, including educational and medical, state security assessments and financial records, will be fed into individual scores.

Trial social credit systems are now in various stages of development in at least a dozen cities across China.

Several companies are working with the state to nationalise the system, co-ordinate and configure the technology, and finalise the algorithms that will determine the national citizen score.

It’s probably the largest social engineering project ever attempted, a way to control and coerce more than a billion people.

If successful, it will be the world’s first digital dictatorship….

RTHWT @ EXCERPTED FROM Leave no dark corner

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Ulysses Toole September 24, 2018, 6:00 PM

    What makes you think it is not already happening in the FUSA. I notice cameras everywhere around the city. Notice how fast they can capture some criminals? Thanks Google, you are evil.

  • David Foster September 24, 2018, 6:29 PM

    In the US, censorship is both a fast-growing career option, and a hobby pursued by many:

    https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/56427.html

  • John A. Fleming September 24, 2018, 6:49 PM

    Imagine the day, soon, at a public assembly where “right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” is abridged because the crystalline silicon overhead watchers see only a mass assembly of coolie or yardworker hats.

    Perhaps even such hats modded with non-obvious IR-masking linings and integral bump caps.

    Oh the horror! No data! Ohmygod, the AI would go insane and hit the panic button. AI has no loyalty to any d*** Constitution. All police, all drones, water cannons, dogs, flamethrowers, rubber bullets, tear gas, sonic cannons, burning microwaves, pepper spray, tanks, MRAPs, SWATs, everybody!, Everybody!, EVERYBODY!, will be mobilized to destroy this mortal threat to mechegemony.

    Buy yourself a straw (local, not amazon) and a bump cap, pay cash, get a space blanket and some assembly required. Be creative. Enlist your friends. Make it your style. Smash the machines! Imagine soon the day when any whitey normie deplorable wearing a straw gets a beatdown by the cops and their mech “assistants” and “dogs”. Where wearing a straw in public is the prima facie de facto ultimate act and declaration of open rebellion. Now whinordeps will know what it felt like to be caught by anglo LA cops in public while wearing a zoot suit.

  • ghostsniper September 24, 2018, 7:01 PM

    We’ve all been sold out.
    By each other.
    Desperate people do desperate things in a frantic effort to survive.
    Is this the beginning of the end times you’ve always heard about?

    New WoodPile!
    http://www.woodpilereport.com/

  • Charlie Moore September 24, 2018, 8:00 PM

    Nice PR piece by the ABC. Sounds like they’re really looking forward to it becoming a world wide program. It won’t hurt a bit.

  • Casey Klahn September 24, 2018, 9:01 PM

    Come on! Just a little Communism? Open up! Here comes the airplane….brrrrr…here comes Mr Spoon.

    Socialism is just Communism light. I now refer to all of it as Socialism, for rhetorical reasons. I don’t want even a little of that shit.

    If China gets this, we’re next in line because of the inevitability of tech. But, hey! If you’re doing nothing wrong, what’ve you got to worry about? (Holds up a drawing of a Jew to see if you match…)

    Heavy footsteps and a knock heard at the door…

  • Casey Klahn September 24, 2018, 9:52 PM

    I wrote a longer comment in purgatory now. Let’s be brief: we’re fucked.

  • Dr. Jay September 25, 2018, 5:49 AM

    State-sponsored selfies. Baruch Hashem! What could go wrong?

  • Stan Smith September 25, 2018, 5:53 AM

    There’s an episode of “Black Mirror” (“Nosedive” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5497778/) that takes this to its logical conclusion. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

  • John the River September 25, 2018, 6:30 AM

    Here in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts they started building replacement road signs; the XX miles to Exit 5 type.
    Except instead of the static display of the (always) fixed distance to those far away points on the road the display included the time that it will take to drive to those exits.
    Watching them being constructed I noticed the size of the boxes for the electronics mounted on the backside of the sign. Also the power supply and (curiously) the tower and antenna that was part of every sign installation.

    It’s impossible to find out anything on the state websites about these installations; but as they went into operation they (in fact) displayed varying and changing times for the travel down the highway.
    How? Took a while to spot the cameras and I can’t be completely sure but I’m guessing that the method of operation involves optical plate scanners and tracking the progress of those cars down the road and pass the successive installations. Car A (plate abc123) is recorded passing sign X and then is recorded passing sign Y some time later; then just do the math. With a big enough sample of vehicles being monitored an accurate display of travel times, adjusted for traffic problems, is easy.

    It is also easy to track individual cars (and their occupants), what time you left and what time you returned. Down the line at some point, drivers that definitely exceeded the speed limit (no question about it, we did the math) can be tapped for revenue.
    The state has been using plate recognition on the toll roads and the bridges for a few years. They caught me using a bridge that had never had a toll or toll booth in the north bound direction before, I never even saw a sign. The notice of a fee for bridge use just showed up in my mailbox a couple of weeks later (with a ‘convenience fee’ of 80 cents included and added on).

    Finally I saw a short story in the local paper (buried on page eight) that a State House committee was discussing a proposed law to allow Mass Highway to collect tolls on any road maintained by Mass Highway via optical scanner. The speeding fines and the individual tracking is just gravy.

  • Casey Klahn September 25, 2018, 7:10 AM

    I imagine someone could invent scramblers for these spy cams. We are not defenseless, you know.

    Although I am watching, out of the corner of my eye, the inventor of the 3D print rifle get gang raped by justice. I guess he’s on the lam.

  • jwm September 25, 2018, 7:30 AM

    These aren’t the science fiction stories that were supposed to come true in the future.
    Somewhere along the line we got gypped.

    JWM

  • Jack September 25, 2018, 8:40 AM

    I’m all for killing the enemy and while we cannot kill the corporations I do believe it possible to name and identify that MF’s behind these things and execute them. They want totalitarian rule….deny them that by taking them out.

  • Jewel September 25, 2018, 9:35 AM

    We shall have to go back in time to discover the most successful methods of sabotage that will be necessary to subvert this technology.

  • Eskyman September 25, 2018, 10:15 AM

    For at least the last two decades there have been revenue-raising radar cameras called “multanovas” in Western Australia. These sit on the side of the road & take pictures of the cars that pass by which are “speeding,” i.e. going one or more km/hr over the speed limit.

    When they first came out they were unattended; but when people realized what they were doing, they started being destroyed, so now they all have an attendant sitting in a nearby van, and they’re placed where no one can “accidentally” run over them. They generate huge amounts of revenue for the state government.

    These radar cameras not only capture the license plate but also the driver’s face. My daughter is one of the few that once got away without paying a speeding fine because the police dept. had mislabelled the place where the photo was taken, and she was able to prove that she hadn’t been there at the date & time indicated. She was guilty, and they had proof, but their mistake in labelling was all that saved my daughter from over $100 in fines; she’d been going 63km/hr in a 60 zone.

    Couple this multanova technology with the ubiquitous red-light cameras at most city intersections, and you can follow anyone anywhere without moving from your office; this evil is spreading fast, and it’s coming to you soon if it isn’t there already!

  • edaddy September 25, 2018, 10:32 AM

    Oh, hell yeah! Just like what Al Gore did with carbon credits, they’re going to do it with social credits.

    You watch. The day is coming in China when you can buy and sell social credits. Thus, a social credit market, social credit traders, trends, prognosticators, etc…

    My guess is that they’ll scrap the system when it is secretly revealed to the politburo that people with the most social credits are underground Christians. Either that or they’ll outlaw ethical behavior in order to keep their social economy afloat.

  • Old Fert September 25, 2018, 12:46 PM

    John the River–
    Doesn’t take special cameras to track cars…try Wave. https://www.waze.com/livemap

    Don’t need to sign up. It’ll show all the cute cars driving along a given route and show you reported construction delays, police, stopped cars, wrecks, etc. It uses the GPS from your cell phone, if I remember correctly.
    With convenience comes incredible creepiness.

  • Melinda September 25, 2018, 1:18 PM

    But….Russia!

  • pbird September 25, 2018, 2:57 PM

    Its WaZe, old Fert. And I suppose you are making some sort of very clever statement with the Hebrew.

  • John the River September 25, 2018, 4:13 PM

    I purged Waze from my tablet, yes it was sickening cute.
    I don’t think the state is using that, other than a backup.

  • ghostsniper September 25, 2018, 5:37 PM

    .80 caliber paintball guns
    fill the balls with cyanoacrylate

  • John The River September 25, 2018, 6:01 PM

    That’s going to leave a mark!

  • jwm September 25, 2018, 7:00 PM

    How simple it will be. Say some badthink on facebarf, or twatter, and the SJW’s fine you ten social credits. But have no fear! You can earn them back with a voluntary contribution to the SPLC, NOW, or if you prefer, BLM. Prices seasonal, like lobster. Soon enough, some wizard will find a way to completely game the market, and you’ll be able to buy and sell personal status with bitcoin on the dark web.

    JWM

    JWM

  • John A. Fleming September 25, 2018, 10:21 PM

    The Wachowski’s I now have to admit were very prescient. Like the Matrix this all-encompassing “social credit” system will crash and burn and have to be rebooted multiple times, and The Architect will never get it right, until The One finally smashes it permanently.

    There will be gaming as several have suggested above. These are government drones running this after all, not uber-competents motivated by pricing and competition. There will be instability-caused “flash crashes”, where everybody’s score suddenly drops by 500 pts, and the entire country is paralyzed. There will be hacks and worms and insider attacks and datavores, it’s the juiciest target out there. The tighter they attempt to control, the more brittle the system will become.

    For instance, imagine all the irredeemables suddenly engaging in a concerted action, doing something that only normals do all the time. All normal will be re-tagged as deplorables. Flash-crash. Imagine that the irredeemables, with nowhere else to go, hide in plain sight and construct a parallel economy among themselves. Maybe they all wear a little pin somewhere on their clothing that the machines don’t or can’t pick up on. There won’t be telescreens everywhere, and written accounting ledgers can be maintained out of sight of the watchers.

    And finally, think about what happens when the economy takes a dump, and suddenly the government, while at this moment flush with tax receipts and borrowing, then can’t pay its bills or make payroll. The social credit system will be abandoned for … more traditional and forceful methods of unrest repression. It’ll be like Mexico: a libertarian paradise as long as you don’t look like a direct challenge to the rulers or the warlords.

  • Casey Klahn September 26, 2018, 8:48 AM

    I think your scenarios (in the comments) are missing the fact that social credit is granted by the party. High credit goes to those in step with the party, and nothing else. If the party says shit is orange and floats in thin air, then shit is orange and it floats in thin air! You will express this effusively, online, and immediately. Did you delay your post by a 3 seconds? No points for you!