Things To Come: Social Credit System

The Coming Social Credit System

Rod Dreher

Regular readers know that my belief is that the coming “soft totalitarianism” will rely on a social credit system, like the one the Chinese use, to control the masses and to compel conformity without having to use “hard” methods. From Live Not By Lies:

Beijing’s use of consumer data, biometric information, GPS tracking coordinates, facial recognition, DNA, and other forms of data harvesting has turned, and continues to turn, China into a beast never before seen worldwide, not even under Mao or Stalin. In China, the tools of surveillance capitalism are employed by the surveillance state to administer the so-called social credit system, which determines who is allowed to buy, sell, and travel, based on their social behavior.

“China is about to become something new: an AI-powered techno-totalitarian state,” writes journalist John Lanchester. “The project aims to form not only a new kind of state but a new kind of human being, one who has fully internalized the demands of the state and the completeness of its surveillance and control. That internalization is the goal: agencies of the state will never need to intervene to correct the citizen’s behavior, because the citizen has done it for them in advance.”

He is talking about Beijing’s pioneering use of artificial intelligence and other forms of digital data gathering to create a state apparatus that not only monitors all citizens constantly but also can compel them to behave in ways the state demands without ever deploying the secret police or the threat of gulags (though those exist for the recalcitrant), and without suffering the widespread poverty that was the inevitable product of old-style
communism.

The great majority of Chinese pay for consumer goods and services using smartphone apps or their faces, via facial recognition technology. These provide consumer convenience and security, making life easier for ordinary people. They also generate an enormous amount of personal data about each Chinese individual, all of which the government tracks.

The state has other uses for facial recognition technology. Television cameras are ubiquitous on Chinese streets, recording the daily comings and goings of the nation’s people. Beijing’s software is so advanced that it can easily check facial scans against the central security database. If a citizen enters an area forbidden to him—a church, say—or even if a person is merely walking in the opposite direction of a crowd, the system automatically records it and alerts the police.

In theory, police don’t have to show up at the suspect’s door to make him pay for his disobedience. China’s social credit system automatically tracks the words and actions, online and off, of every Chinese citizen, and grants rewards or demerits based on obedience. A Chinese who does something socially positive—helping an elderly neighbor with a chore, or listening to a speech of leader Xi Jinping—receives points toward a higher social credit score. On the other hand, one who does something negative—letting his or her dog poop on the sidewalk, for example, or making a snarky comment on social media—suffers a social-credit downgrade.

Because digital life, including commercial transactions, is automatically monitored, Chinese with high social credit ratings gain privileges. Those with lower scores find daily life harder. They aren’t allowed to buy high speed train tickets or take flights. Doors close to certain restaurants. Their children may not be allowed to go to college. They may lose their job and have a difficult time finding a new one. And a social-credit scofflaw will find himself isolated, as the algorithmic system downgrades those who are connected to the offender.

The bottom line: a Chinese citizen cannot participate in the economy or society unless he has the mark of approval from Xi Jinping, the country’s all-powerful leader. In a cashless society, the state has the power to bankrupt dissidents instantly by cutting off access to the internet. And in a society in which everyone is connected digitally, the state can make anyone an instant pariah when the algorithm turns them radioactive, even to their family.

You think it can’t happen here? As I show in the book, Google, Facebook, and other major corporations already collect tons of data from every one of us, based on how we use the Internet and our smartphones. If you have an Alexa, or any other “smart” device in your home, then whether you realize it or not, you have consented to allow all kinds of personal data to be hoovered up by the device and shared with a corporation. The technological capacity already exists in this country. The data are already being collected. 

And Covid has pushed the United States much farther down the road to becoming a cashless society.  There is an obvious safety-related reason for this. But banks have a vested financial interest in weaning Americans off of cash:

“Big Finance is the key driver moving us to a cashless society,” he said. “You’ll notice banks have been slowly closing branches and ATMs and they’re doing so in an effort to nudge us more toward their digital platforms. This saves them labor, it saves them a lot of real estate costs, and it improves their bottom line.”

What happens when you can’t buy things at stores with cash? It’s already happening now. I’ve been to stores here in Baton Rouge that will only transact business with credit or debit cards, citing Covid, or the inability to make change because of a coin shortage. It’s understandable, but you should be well aware that the move to a cashless society makes each of us completely vulnerable to being shut out of the economy by fiat.

Beginning as a trend largely orthogonal to public safety and homeland security concerns, the market for social credit system infrastructure will ultimately become a mainstream component of both business and public policy.

Social credit system infrastructure includes analog and digital surveillance, Internet-enabled devices like smartphones, wearable devices, security systems sensor-enabled physical objects, and surveillance devices that use biometrics and computer vision. Technologies include broadband wireless (WiFi, LTE, and 5G), IoT, AI algorithms, and big data analytics platforms, processes, and procedures. While each of these systems has market value individually, and are deployed separately for various purposes, it is the convergence of these otherwise disparate technologies that will facilitate value within the social credit market. For example, combined AI and IoT systems will be leveraged to identify important events that require immediate action versus those that are merely archived.

It is important to note that there is great overlap between the technologies used for social credit systems and other solutions such as public safety, homeland security, and smart cities applications of many types including smart transportation (highways and surface streets, parking, autonomous vehicles, etc.), intelligent buildings, environmental monitoring (light, temperature, pressure, etc.). Many of these infrastructure elements are already planned for smart cities implementations and will, therefore, be multi-purposed including support of the social credit market.

At the heart of social credit systems are large-scale data repositories that may store virtually any type of data that may be correlated to or associate with citizens and businesses in terms of both identity and behaviors. This includes raw observational data as well as listings (white, gray, red, and black) and meta-data to tie together data elements and allow for ease of information queries. Without the use of AI and big data technology, it would be problematic to implement social credit market systems in a meaningful way as massive amounts of disparate data must be correlated.

More...