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China Creates App To Tell You If You're Near Someone In Debt, Encourages You To Report Them (techspot.com)
The Chinese government has developed a mobile app that tells users if they are near someone who is in debt. The app, called a "map of deadbeat debtors," flashes when the user is within 500 meters of a debtor and displays that person's exact location. TechSpot reports: News of the app has caused quite a bit of controversy after it was originally reported by the state-run China Daily. It is an extension to China's existing "social credit" system which scores people based on how they act in public. The app is available through the WeChat platform which has become immensely popular in China. The government stated that "Deadbeat debtors in North China's Hebei province will find it more difficult to abscond as the Higher People's Court of Hebei on Monday introduced" the app. Once a user is alerted that they are close to a debtor, the user can then view their personal information. This will reveal their name, national ID number, and why they were added to the debtor list. The debtor can then be publicly shamed or reported to the authorities if it is deemed that they are capable of repaying their debts.
Because you want to shape the behavior of the populace to turn on each other over such things. It worked well before.
That's the real reason for this -- to keep those not in power fighting each other, rather than looking upwards. It also happens in the west (just via different mechanisms).
The tyranny of absolute safety is hardly safety at all...or worth living for.
If you have nothing bad, why you want to hide.
The problem is that 'bad' constitutes different things to different people. A society with no privacy is a perpetual witchhunt against those who dare to think differently. Such societies rot from the inside.
Chinese pick security.
Chinese also choose to run over students with tanks, or disappear people who practice peaceful religions.
If you have nothing bad, why you want to hide.
What "not bad" today may be "bad" tomorrow, maybe something innocuous that YOU do. And whose definition of "bad" are we using, anyway? Yours? Mine? The Chinese government's?
Chinese pick security.
Chinese pick totalitarianism. No thanks. It's bad enough in the US, we don't need petty bureaucrats second-guessing everything we do. Hey, is someone at your door, humaniverse? Were you watching something bad on the internet?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...