https://papersplease.org/wp/2018/11/02/what-china-calls-social-credit-the-us-calls-risk-assessment/What China calls ?social credit?, the US calls ?risk assessment?A viral video of an announcement on a Chinese high-speed train and a series of reports (here and here) on NPR have prompted a surge of interest this week in China?s ?social credit? system:
Dear passengers: People who travel without a ticket, behave disorderly, or smoke in public areas will be punished according to regulations, and the behavior will be recorded in individual credit information system. To avoid a negative record of personal credit, please follow the relevant regulations and help with the orders on the train and at the station.
Despite unwarranted comparisons to US financial credit scores, ?social credit? scoring in China is used by the government and para-statal entities, not just private companies, and not just for financial decision-making.
One of the NPR stories as well as a report last month by the Australian Broadcasting Co. include interviews with people who discovered they were barred by the Chinese government from travel on high-speed trains as a result of ?social credit? scores, regardless of their ability to pay for tickets.
Dystopian? Yes.
Unjust? Yes?
?It can?t happen here?? No.
It already happens here, every day, to everyone who travels by airline or engages in bank or credit card transactions.
You may not realize it until you are mysteriously unable to obtain a boarding pass or complete a financial transaction, but each of these activities is already subject to secret, permission-based, extrajudicial prior restraint by the US government.The default is ?no?. Since a little over 10 years ago,
US Federal regulations have forbidden any airline from issuing a boarding pass unless and until it has sent the would-be traveler?s itinerary and identifying information to the DHS and has received back an individualized, per-passenger, per-flight, permission-to-travel message from the DHS. The
DHS generates a secret ?risk score? for each passenger, which determines how closely they are searched and questioned, whether the airline is instructed to call the police when they try to check in, and other aspects of how they are treated.
Even before airlines or banks get to the point of consulting the government, ?carrier sanctions? and similar sanctions against financial institutions give them a financial incentive to err on the side of saying ?no?, not ?yes?.
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What China calls ?social credit scoring?, the US calls ?risk-based screening?.
Government blacklists and real-time pre-crime policing are being applied to control a growing range of activities of daily life. But
air travel and financial transactions are the areas where the US government already has a fully deployed and operational real-time ?social credit? system in which private service providers are seamlessly integrated with government agencies to surveil and control our everyday activities.The question isn?t whether the US should have a ?social credit? system ? it already does ? but whether it should be expanded to more aspects of our lives, or rolled back....
