Big Data Meets Big Brother

Lead in - Leave no Dark Corner

Pre-reading:

Surveillance state (BBC video) Cloze:

Imagine a world ____ many of your daily activities were constantly monitored and evaluated: ____ you buy at the shops and online; ____ you are at any given time; ____ your friends are and ____ you interact with them; ____ many hours you spend watching content or playing video games; and ____ bills and taxes you pay (or not). 

____ not hard to picture, because most of ____ already happens, thanks to all those data-collecting behemoths like Google, Facebook and Instagram or health-tracking apps ____ as Fitbit. But now imagine a system _____ all ____ behaviours are rated as either positive or negative and distilled into a single number, according to rules set by the government. ____ would create your Citizen Score and ___ would tell everyone ____ or not you were trustworthy. Plus, your rating would be publicly ranked against ____ of the entire population and used to determine your eligibility for a mortgage or a job, ____ your children can go to school - or even just your chances of getting a date.

Vocab:

12 phrases

True or false?

1. The government document about the proposed credit system is very short.

2. Your Citizen Score will not be publicly available.

3. The Chinese government believes the system will help build trust throughout society.

4. The document on the plan is yet to be translated from Chinese.

5. The system is already being used in China.

On June 14, 2014, the State Council of China published an ominous-sounding document called "Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System". In the way of Chinese policy documents, it was a lengthy and rather dry affair, but it contained a radical idea. What if there was a national trust score that rated the kind of citizen you were?

Imagine a world where many of your daily activities were constantly monitored and evaluated: what you buy at the shops and online; where you are at any given time; who your friends are and how you interact with them; how many hours you spend watching content or playing video games; and what bills and taxes you pay (or not). It's not hard to picture, because most of that already happens, thanks to all those data-collecting behemoths like Google, Facebook and Instagram or health-tracking apps such as Fitbit. But now imagine a system where all these behaviours are rated as either positive or negative and distilled into a single number, according to rules set by the government. That would create your Citizen Score and it would tell everyone whether or not you were trustworthy. Plus, your rating would be publicly ranked against that of the entire population and used to determine your eligibility for a mortgage or a job, where your children can go to school - or even just your chances of getting a date.

A futuristic vision of Big Brother out of control? No, it's already getting underway in China, where the government is developing the Social Credit System (SCS) to rate the trustworthiness of its 1.3 billion citizens. The Chinese government is pitching the system as a desirable way to measure and enhance "trust" nationwide and to build a culture of "sincerity". As the policy states, "It will forge a public opinion environment where keeping trust is glorious. It will strengthen sincerity in government affairs, commercial sincerity, social sincerity and the construction of judicial credibility."

Others are less sanguine about its wider purpose. "It is very ambitious in both depth and scope, including scrutinising individual behaviour and what books people are reading. It's Amazon's consumer tracking with an Orwellian political twist," is how Johan Lagerkvist, a Chinese internet specialist at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, described the social credit system. Rogier Creemers, a post-doctoral scholar specialising in Chinese law and governance at the Van Vollenhoven Institute at Leiden University, who published a comprehensive translation of the plan, compared it to "Yelp reviews with the nanny state watching over your shoulder".

For now, technically, participating in China's Citizen Scores is voluntary. But by 2020 it will be mandatory. The behaviour of every single citizen and legal person (which includes every company or other entity)in China will be rated and ranked, whether they like it or not.

Read more:

The Social Credit System