China Pilots a System That Rates Citizens on 'Social Credit Score' To Determine Eligibility For Jobs, Travel (technologyreview.com)

Speculations have turned out be true. The Chinese government is now testing systems that will be used to create digital records of citizens' social and financial behavior. In turn, these will be used to create a so-called social credit score, which will determine whether individuals have access to services, from travel and education to loans and insurance cover. Some citizens -- such as lawyers and journalists -- will be more closely monitored. From a report on MIT Technology Review: Planning documents apparently describe the system as being created to "allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step." The Journal claims that the system will at first log "infractions such as fare cheating, jaywalking and violating family-planning rules" but will be expanded in the future -- potentially even to Internet activity. Some aspects of the system are already in testing, but there are some challenges to implementing such a far-reaching apparatus. It's difficult to centralize all that data, check it for accuracy, and process it, for example -- let alone feed it back into the system to control everyday life. And China has data from 1.4 billion people to handle.

Comments

Only in China? Nah.

[argStyopa]

In a US where there is a broadly sweeping and growing generational consensus that government should:
- provide all healthcare
- protect everyone from any conceivable harm whether practical, realistic or not (from terrorists to pedophiles), - even from their OWN CHOICES - and at literally any expense ...you're fooling yourself.

"Any government powerful enough to give the people all that they want is also powerful enough to take from the people all that they have."

Famously NOT said by T.Jefferson, but pretty damned good comment nonetheless.

Old news.

[The Raven]

New to /. maybe, but this was revealed over a year ago. Extra Credits did a pretty good video covering the dystopian system from a game developer point of view.