You’ve all probably heard a lot about China's social credit system, a nationwide surveillance technology-based program designed to push citizens to improve their behavior. The ultimate goal is "to allow the trustworthy to roam throughout the Middle Kingdom, while making it difficult for the discredited to take one step."
Since 2014, the social credit system has been under development, and by next year it may become a single nationwide scoring system for all Chinese citizens, akin to a financial score. A negative score will be regarded as punishment for violations such as misconduct, late payment of taxes and refunds to banks of loans, criticism of the government, unwillingness to sweep the sidewalk in front of your home or store, smoking, loud music, and so on. Membership in banned organizations - so it goes without saying.
The penalties for all of this can be very severe, for example - a ban on leaving the country, a ban on public transport, a ban on hotel accommodation, refusal to hire or accept a child to school. There is also such a limitation as reducing the speed of the Internet connection up to a complete disconnection from the network. Finally, as a last resort, it is envisaged to place the violator on a nationwide blacklist and to completely socially obstruct him.
When information about this became known to the public in the West, all this was characterized as "gamified authoritarianism" and it seemed to many that such madness could not exist in democratic countries. However.
As it soon turned out, such systems are not entirely unique to China. Invisible to people, but almost the same type of system is secretly developing and gradually being introduced in the United States. The largest private companies and Silicon Valley are behind this system. How does the system they build work?
For starters, insurance companies. So, earlier this year, the New York State Department of Financial Services announced that life insurance companies can create premiums for clients, which will be calculated based on the analysis of their posts on social networks. For example, your post will be found on Facebook, where you write that you do sports or love yoga very much. The insurance company gives you a discount for the totality of such posts.
However, if a photo of you teasing a grizzly bear in Yellowstone is found somewhere on Instagram, or where you are standing with a bucket of refrigerated martinis in one hand and a cigarette in the other, a set of such photos will make your insurance more expensive.
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Next - the public catering system and trade in general, the new principle of operation of which we will consider using the example of PatronScan. The company operates globally, but only sells three products - dedicated portable systems designed to help bar and restaurant owners manage their customers. PatronScan is a subsidiary of the Canadian software company Servall Biometrics, and its products are currently marketed in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.
PatronScan helps detect fake IDs and troublemakers. When customers contact a panel using PatronScan, their ID is scanned. At the same time, PatronScan completely independently maintains a list of "unwanted clients", designed to protect public places from people previously removed from institutions for "fights, sexual assault, drugs, theft and other types of bad behavior." And this list is automatically distributed to all PatronScan clients. As a result, being blocked for one reason or another in a particular bar / restaurant in the USA, PatronScan automatically blocks you in all similar establishments in the USA, Great Britain and Canada that use the PatronScan system.
Logically, the idea is kind of wonderful and correct - none of the restaurant owners needs a client who fumbles in his pockets or breaks furniture. But the problem is that a person is added to the list “at the discretion of the managers of the establishment”. That is, they brought you a cutlet in which you found a stone, you roll up a scandal - and immediately you automatically become persona non grata in all restaurants in the world, you will not even be allowed to McDonald's.
Another example is Uber and Airbnb, global travel service providers. In March, Airbnb boasted that it had over 6 million accounts on its system. Moreover, he can ban any of them for one reason or another for life. For what? For an explosion in a hotel or an airplane shooting? No, everything is much simpler.
For example, Uber is actively introducing another “innovation”: whenever you get out of your car after an Uber ride, their app calls your phone and prompts you to rate the driver. At the same time, passengers do not even know that the driver also receives an invitation to evaluate the passenger he has just serviced. As a result, Uber gets an “average rating” for both passenger and driver. A driver with a poor rating is fired, and a passenger is forever prohibited from using the service.
And these are the two largest travel service providers, so if even one of them blocks you, it will seriously limit your travel opportunities.
Finally, the Internet, which we will consider using the example of the WhatsApp application. So, the company's policy is that if a certain number of users block you, WhatsApp will automatically block you. In the US, this service is not very popular, but in some regions, blocking WhatsApp is tantamount to a ban on carrying your phone.
Nobody, of course, likes antisocial, violent, rude, unhealthy, reckless, selfish, or ruthless behavior. What's wrong with using new technology to get everyone to do the right thing?
The idea is good, of course, but the most disturbing attribute of the social credit system is not that it is aggressive, but that IT IS OUT OF THE LAW.
That is, the concept of "crime" is no longer defined by the Ministry of Justice, but by some firm. And it is not a court who punishes a person for a “crime”, but some manager or Artificial Intelligence in general. That is, all these new “crimes” are outside the legal system, which means there is no presumption of innocence, no legal representation, no judge, no jury, and often no appeal. In other words, it is an alternative legal system in which the accused has fewer rights. Or it doesn't.
Only in contrast to the policy of the Chinese government, the social credit system that is being formed in the United States is provided not by a totalitarian state, but in general by some kind of private companies. At the same time, if the public does not like the federal judge and does not like the Senate, which adopts some laws, then at least theoretically people can re-elect all these citizens. But how do you re-elect the PatronScan rulemakers?
The growing number of social “privileges” associated with transportation, accommodation, communication and the rates we pay for services (such as insurance) are either controlled by technology companies or depend on how we use technology services. And the rules of Silicon are becoming more stringent every day.
If current trends continue, it is possible that in the near future, most offenses and even some criminal offenses will not be punished by Uncle Sam, but by some uncle from Silicon Valley. In this case, the social system in our country will no longer be called democracy, but corporatocracy.
