Title: China's Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone - The Atlantic
Headings: China's Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone
Global
China's Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone

Content: Now, the Communist Party of China is finally building the extensive, multilevel data-gathering system it has dreamed of for decades. While the Chinese government has long scrutinized individual citizens for evidence of disloyalty to the regime, only now is it beginning to develop comprehensive, constantly updated, and granular records on each citizen’s political persuasions, comments, associations, and even consumer habits. The new social credit system under development will consolidate reams of records from private companies and government bureaucracies into a single “citizen score” for each Chinese citizen. In its comprehensive 2014 planning outline, the CCP explains a goal of “keep [ing] trust and constraints against breaking trust.” While the system is voluntary for now, it will be mandatory by 2020. Already, 100,000 Chinese citizens have posted on social media about high scores on a “Sesame Credit” app operated by Alibaba, in a private-sector precursor to the proposed government system. The massive e-commerce conglomerate claims its app is only tracking users’ financial and credit behavior, but promises to offer a “holistic rating of character.” It is not hard to imagine many Chinese boasting soon about their official scores. While it isn’t yet clear what data will be considered, commentators are already speculating that the scope of the system will be alarmingly wide. The planned “citizen credit” score will likely weigh far more data than the Western FICO score, which helps lenders make fast and reliable decisions on whether to extend financial credit.