Mass surveillance and control
Six week from now, China will push its massive social experiment a step forward as it bans people with poor 'social credit' from riding on planes and trains for up to a year, according to statements recently released by the country's National Development and Reform Commission.
The social credit system will be fully unveiled by 2020 and is a government-run scoring of personal 'trust'. The behaviour of every single citizen and company China will be rated and ranked, whether they like it or not. It will monitor purchases, crimes, credit, and who your friends are via a "complex algorithm" that spits out a score.
It's all run via a partnership with Alibaba, which sounds like a pretty good reason to invest if you don't mind profiting from totalitarianism.
Where is this going? Look to northwestern China and Uighur minority in Xinjiang where GPS tracking systems are on all cars, government spy apps are loaded on all mobile phones and there are cameras with face ID and checkpoints everywhere. Authorities are alerted when targets stray more than 300 metres from their home or workplace.
Maybe that's an isolated incident in China, or maybe it's a beta test for the whole country. Hopefully not the whole world.
