The ‘Social Credit System’ – Here and in China

One of the most frightening aspects of the Chinese Communist Party’s growing malevolence is an innovation known as the “social credit system.” By combining several hundred million surveillance cameras, facial-, voice- and walk-recognition software, quantum computing and artificial intelligence to spy on transactions, communications and other behavior, China is able to monitor practically everything about its people in real time.

Beijing is now using such data to reward those who conform to its conduct requirements and punish those who don’t. The penalties can involve denial of travel opportunities, education, employment, housing and result in incarceration.

Worse yet, such Orwellian abuses of personal information are proliferating. The Washington Post reports that hundreds of thousands of American college students are being monitored by their schools with a view to effecting behavior modification. Unless we act to stop this creeping totalitarianism, it will metastasize further.