Electronic surveillance

Is Chinese-style surveillance coming to the west?

The scale of China’s domestic surveillance apparatus is extraordinary. The country is in the process of developing a “social credit” system which has been described as Big Brother, Black Mirror and every dystopian future sci-fi writers have ever dreamed up all rolled into one, and which is due to be operational next year.

The social credit system will enable the government and others to access details of people’s behavior, rate them and make them publicly available. The potential to “name and shame” people for minor lapses such as late-paying of bills is obvious but so is the way such ratings could also be employed to deny citizens employment or to justify detaining them for political reasons.

Both in the west and in China, the use of the internet to track individuals is facilitating oppression and paving the way towards authoritarianism.

We in the west are beginning to comprehend the sheer extent to which we are monitored and manipulated via social media companies tracking our data and monetizing it by selling it to political parties, retailers and even foreign governments.