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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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
After all, this is the perfect wrong-think system. Refuse to engage in political correctness or say something like "there are only 2 genders" or "free speech is an inalienable right" and you can have other things granted by the state taken away. Considering the triggered snowflakes going around these days, I'm sure they'd love it as well. Anyone want to take bets on the first western university to follow up and try implementing a system like it? A coercing version of no-platforming to boot perhaps?
Om, nomnomnom...
The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.
We are getting there. Thanks for the warning, George. Too bad nobody listened.
Coming soon to a country near you.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
In fact, there have been more gun control laws passed these past three years than in the entire history of the nation combined. Are we safer? Definitely not.
Oh please, this is just plain dumb. Obviously, you must be extremely young, because guns are easier to get and much more ubiquitous than they have been in a long time, and the laws are much more relaxed. Go back to the 70s: legal concealed carry didn't exist back then, and states that are now open-carry were not. It's easier and cheaper than ever to get an AR-15 rifle and all the accessories you could possibly want for it. Now they're even trying to legalize suppressors. The variety of guns you can get now is overwhelming too; back then it was mainly just crappy revolvers; now there's an endless array of guns of all types, many specifically designed for concealed-carry.