Coming to a Tech-Monopoly Ruled Country By You: China Experiments With an System That Issues a Sonic Alarm to Indicate People Who Are Low In Their "Social Credit" System

Via Le Figaro, translation mine.

I'm sure Google and FaceBook are noodling with this sort of idea. Wouldn't it be useful to have your phone give off a signal of alarm whenever there's a Deplorable within 15 feet?

Quick, let's give them all the power to rule us before they can refuse it!

In the framework of its very controversial system of "social credit," the Middle Kingdom is experimenting in certain provinces with some measures intended to embarrass the citizens who declare themselves to the authorities to be bankrupt....

These "laolai" ["deadbeat debtors" in Chinese] are "bad payers" who drag around their credits on their back and suffer in consequence restrictions and daily humiliations due to the will of the communist leaders.

Since 2014, the communist government has been refining a system of "social credit," which measures daily Chinese citizens in order to punish the "bad" subjects of the Middle Kingdom and reward the most virtuous. A powerful instrument of social coercion, which is relies upon big data for collecting the information, the Chinese system of [ranking] punishes its "discredited" citizens, writes them into the blacklist of the communist party, for contracts and for bankloans, for getting an apartment, for taking a flight or even for using the trains of the country.

According to the report of the national center of credit information, China has blocked annually 17.5 million plane tickets and 5.5 million train tickets for such "discredited" citizens.

In the country's east, in the province of Guanyun, some telecom businesses, in collaboration with the local authorities, assign a special alarm for indebted inhabitants, which warns people looking to call them that they are about to contact a flagged citizen. To hell with the customary "wait" signal. This time, the traditional "beep" is replaced by recorded vocal message very embarrassing for the indebted citizen. According to the public press agency Xinhua, the wait-signal message goes like this: "The person that you are calling has been placed on the blacklist by the authorities of the province of Gunyun. If you would, please exhort this person to fulfill his legal obligations. The employees of the local government appreciate your support. Thank you!"

Besides Guanyan, the city of Huangshi, situated in the province of Hubai at the center of the country, and the city od Degfend, situated in the province of Henan, have likewise introduced similar measures. Started a year ago, the measure has only the goal of embarrassing the citizens who declared themselves to the authorities to be insolvent....

The supreme court of China established a base of information searchable on line, which [records] the indebted citizens of the country. Full names, identification numbers, age, city of origin and details of the debt, the private information of 13 million people with bad credit histories, according to the South China Morning Post, have been thrown into the public pasture for grazing. In the same vein, a province situated in the north of China has developed a mobile app which locates in a perimeter of 500 meters the indebted citizens around you. The bureaucrats, faithfuls of the communist party, affirm that this system is in operation, and thus 3.5 citizens or businesses have paid their taxes or debts thanks to this application.

Can't wait.

PS: Chase bank, here in the "free" USA, now refuses to provide bank accounts to those on its own private social credit blacklist.

Does everyone see where this is going? And I mean literally where this is going: It's going to America next. China is just the preview shows in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Working the kinks out of the production.

Don't be evil, Google said, and then implemented a system of data-collection and constant surveillance which was then used communist dictatorships to harass and humiliate its citizens.

Not that Google would ever be a party to anything like that:

Google has secret log of every online purchase you’ve ever made. "The log is compiled from receipts sent to your Gmail account, and goes back years."

posted by Ace of Spades at 12:49 PM

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