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China Government

China To Bar People With Bad 'Social Credit' From Planes, Trains (reuters.com) 170

Posted by msmash from the next-level-regulation dept.
China says it will begin applying its so-called social credit system to flights and trains and stop people who have committed misdeeds from taking such transport for up to a year. From a report: People who would be put on the restricted lists included those found to have committed acts like spreading false information about terrorism and causing trouble on flights, as well as those who used expired tickets or smoked on trains, according to two statements issued on the National Development and Reform Commission's website on Friday. Those found to have committed financial wrongdoings, such as employers who failed to pay social insurance or people who have failed to pay fines, would also face these restrictions, said the statements which were dated March 2. It added that the rules would come into effect on May 1.
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China To Bar People With Bad 'Social Credit' From Planes, Trains More

China To Bar People With Bad 'Social Credit' From Planes, Trains

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  • Video from 2015 on it:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHcTKWiZ8sI

    Very chilling.

    • Re:So Sesame Credit is out of beta? (Score:5, Informative)

      by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Friday March 16, 2018 @03:09PM (#56271271) Journal

      Black mirror S03EP1

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by q4Fry ( 1322209 )

      Break Motherland's rules and she grounds you. Literally.

      • Break Motherland's rules and she grounds you. Literally.

        And there's no info on how long you have to remain in time-out.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      That video does not scare me one little bit, why would it apart form it being a massive waste of tax payer funds. I am great a computer games, I am certain with hours, I could learn to game the system with my real name and get a fantastic MMORPG score, would not even take much effort. I hope you can win something for a really great score though, otherwise it would take the fun out of it. You know what really great about the digital privacy invasion age, they all got as lazy and fat and spying on everyone di

      • > That video does not scare me one little bit, why would it apart form it being a massive waste of tax payer funds

        Then you obviously weren't paying attention.

        > Have a secure wallet for you phone, nowdays you don't wear the tinfoil hat, you phone does, turn it off and pack it away and you disappear, make use of their laziness to secure your privacy and if they are tracking you, annoying the crap out of them.

        Hmm. Citizen rtb61 is engaging in obviously deceptive behavior. Knock 50 points off his Sesame

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dwye ( 1127395 )

      You are surprised? So, what part of "Communist Dictatorship" did you not understand?

  • Dunno how I feel about the law over all, like a lot of things in China it seems pretty oppressive and overly broad. But it sounds good to punish employers that try to skirt stuff like social insurance. Employers should take care of their employees, might make labor conditions a little less crappy.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Dunno how I feel about the law over all...

      Instead of reading what the law says it will do, try projecting into the future a little bit. Imagine the unintended consequences, the potential for abuse. Consider what you know about China. It all becomes rather black and white pretty quickly, doesn't it?

    • It's very bad. You should not be cheering this in any way, as its primary purpose is to groom the citizenry for compliance. I posted this elsewhere in these comments:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHcTKWiZ8sI

      That's how it will work. Like an even more invasive version of the Black Mirror episode on social networks. In a nutshell your score determines privileges like being able to travel, or in the next step, getting jobs, credit/mortgages, etc. If you post things critical of the government (even if - E

  • So no more Politicians on trains and planes? Cool.

    • So no more Politicians on trains and planes? Cool.

      ... then they can justify the cost of charter flights, billed directly to the tax payers.

    • Well, party officials loyal to Xi never lie. And ones not loyal are going to get arrested for anticorruption charges. Why let them get on the train and make a scene?

  • And people wonder why the TSA wants to search passengers smart phones.

  • Wow....Social Credit that you would have to keep track of in order to live. That's simply horrific.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        "The modus operandi of ANY GOVERNMENT is to service and protect itself first and foremost. All other objectives (and people) are expendable in that pursuit."

            FIFY

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dwye ( 1127395 )

          "The modus operandi of ANY GOVERNMENT is to service and protect itself first and foremost. All other objectives (and people) are expendable in that pursuit."

          I don't know. That certainly wasn't true for the Weimar Republic. Nor Buchannon's presidency in the USA.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by stooo ( 2202012 )

      Nothing new here.
      The exact same system applies in USA :
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • I mean, we can discuss a blacklist vs. an automated score and the differences if you like. As well as the importance of whether the system is used to punish dissenters or a constrain security risks.

    • Wow....Social Credit that you would have to keep track of in order to live. That's simply horrific.

      If you drive them into poverty, then they will commit crimes, and then you can break them up for parts and sell their organs to the highest bidder [wikipedia.org]. Or, perhaps, to whoever has the most social credit.

  • Nazis had pieces of flair that they made the Jews (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Friday March 16, 2018 @03:05PM (#56271249)

    The Nazis had pieces of flair that they made the Jews wear

  • Actually, I think this is a pretty decent idea. The trouble is with what they would apply it to. In China, I could see them applying it to people who complain about Emperor Xi. And that would be bad in my opinion.

    If this were to go into effect in North America, I would think that stupid little twat who wouldn't take her feet off the seats of that train would have been afforded a more suitable punishment than beating her ass (although I think these whiny people who don't think they should show some personal

    • Re:Depends if the 'Crime' Fits the Punishment (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jmccue ( 834797 ) on Friday March 16, 2018 @03:42PM (#56271499) Homepage

      Actually, I think this is a pretty decent idea

      Trying to up your social credit already :)

      That idea is bad in so many ways one cannot count. Who decides what "social credit" is ? If a Citizen of China reads anything about Taiwan, Tibet or Tiananmen Square will that decrease their social credit. What about "Term Limits", I just heard that is a banned phrase in China.

      What about this post on a US Site by a non-China citizen, will this very post get me marked as having bad social credit in China, thus denied a visa ? I can see China can easily export they thought control to other countries.

      Well I guess I will never get to visit that country now. For visa denial, this social credit thing seems to be being done by a lot of countries, even the US in rare cases. But so far at least the US and most countries does not use "Social Credit" for internal purposes.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It will be immediately farmed and an industry will be created to increase your credit. Trolls will abuse it, cops will abuse it, the government will use it to subvert the legal system that is already a joke...

        I expect Britain will adopt it soon.

    • The problem with any system like this is due process.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dwye ( 1127395 )

        Do you mean that there might actually be a "due process" in the PRC? That would be a problem, I suppose.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      If this were to go into affect in say any five eyes countries, I would expect a whole series of web sites open up about gaming the system. Consider this game, am I being tracked. So register with a web site and make a whole lot of anti US government post and hmm flavour of the month, pro Russian government posts and then start exhibiting random digital behavioural acts, phone location and on or off state. So if you can, travel to a location near a Russian embassy and switch off you phone and have lunch. To

    • In no way is this a good idea, this social credit thing is some next level 1984 shite if you look a little deeper into it.

  • The black payoff for all this tracking tech (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Catbeller ( 118204 ) on Friday March 16, 2018 @03:25PM (#56271379) Homepage

    What else can be said. Obedience or your life is hell. And we walked, ran, danced into the flames.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dwye ( 1127395 )

      All this does is replace the Stasi with computers. Given that the Stasi employed a large fraction of the DDR, this will probably increase unemployment in the PRC until the aperatchiks band together, overthrow the system, and re-institute a HUMAN secret police force.

      And Xi's "colleagues" not killing him, like the Russians did with Lavrenti Beria when HE wanted to take the top job, is the "walked, ran, danced into the flames."

  • Looks like Xi Jinping is a fan of Black mirror...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The show isn't supposed to be an instruction manual damnit.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by fazig ( 2909523 )
      Maybe. Maybe, just like the writers of that Black Mirror episode, they realized how crazy people can get about virtual points on the internet and how easily it can shape human behaviour when those virtual points are at stake. On sites like Reddit or Imgur it's called the "hive mind", where dissent is downvoted into 'oblivion'. Here on Slashdot itself it's not too different.
      And what makes it even scarier is findings like this: https://motherboard.vice.com/e... [vice.com] which I can confirm from personal experience. D
    • Or "The Orville".

  • http://www.independent.co.uk/n... [independent.co.uk]

    You can say that's different, but I'd argue it's just a little farther up the slippery slope.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • It works both ways though. Does your country's leader make decisions contrary to common sense? Does he often get called out for just plain lying? Then his karma score is going to go through the floor!

      • It works both ways though.

        There is zero chance that this system would ever be applied equitably to anyone with substantial political connections. The country's leaders will somehow always manage to have excellent "social credit" no matter what they do.

  • Political crimes? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by myid ( 3783581 ) on Friday March 16, 2018 @05:54PM (#56272287)

    My main concern is that the Chinese government might use this as low-level punishment (lower than imprisonment) for political crimes. For example, punishment for talking about the heroic [wikipedia.org] "tank man [youtube.com]" in Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989.

    Or rolling your eyes [npr.org] at easy questions asked by a reporter.

    By the end of the day, Liang Xiangyi's name had been censored on China's largest search engines, the video deleted from Chinese websites and millions of Chinese netizens were suddenly worried about what would become of their newfound hero.

  • Anyone watched the anime psycho pass?

    Seriously, if I'm going to be disallowed access to things in society due to my personality, I'm going to have a pretty bad reaction.

  • In 1995, French philosopher Giles Deleuze, building on the work of Foucault, perfectly explained what is going on here in his 3-page text "Postscript on societies of control". We are moving from societies of discipline to societies of control, he explains.

    Discipline
    - A system punishes people once they break the rules (law), but not before.
    - Transparent and accountable, at least in current western societies.
    - Ultimately builds on the governments monopoly of power. You play by the rules because the gover

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