Friday, November 5, 2021

Things To Come: Digital Surveillance And Social Credit Scores

The Power Of Digital Surveillance To Create Social Credit Style Scores

 TOM PARKER/



Patent and trademark attorneys Dr. Gal Ehrlich and Maier Fenster of Ehrlich & Fenster recently had a US patent approved for a technology that aims to surveil people via their digital activity, give them a score that defines "the potential level of super-spreading activity of each individual," and then vaccinate people based on this score.

The patent proposes collecting a wide range of personal information from sources such as mobile devices, apps, social media, web browsing records, payment records, medical records, employment records, the government, and surveillance cameras.


It also suggests collecting highly specific personal information via these sources such as:

- Precise location data
- The length of time people spend at the locations they visit
- The ventilation rate of the places people visit
- Images of people looking at the screen of their mobile phone
- Sounds from the microphones in personal devices
- Facial recognition data


The patent proposes numerous potential surveillance applications for this data which include detecting when people are using public transport by using "geolocation and/or regular start-stop movement that matches a public transportation profile," monitoring when people are washing their hands by "analyzing sounds of water running or movement by a smartwatch," and checking whether people are wearing a mask by "analyzing images taken during calls or other looking at screen of cellphone."


Once the data has been gathered, the technology outlined in the patent analyzes the data and assigns a "score" to their electronic device. It suggests using this score to predict the "the potential level of super-spreading activity of each individual" and recommends "vaccinating according to score."

Not only does the patent suggest mass electronic surveillance of people to create a social credit style score that determines when they should be vaccinated but it also proposes that the technology could be deployed as part of a "dedicated mandatory app" where "the government may order the citizens to install a dedicated application on their smartphones (or other smart devices like tablets, smartwatches, smart glasses, etc.) to help the government with the logistics of the vaccination procedures."








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