China said 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.
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.
[...] China has flagged plans to roll out a system that will allow government bodies to share information on its citizens’ trustworthiness and issue penalties based on a so-called social credit score.
China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains
INSIDE CHINA'S VAST NEW EXPERIMENT IN SOCIAL RANKING
China’s dystopian social credit system is a harbinger of the global age of the algorithm
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @03:09AM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by black6host on Tuesday March 20 2018, @03:14AM (5 children)
I think with all the things coming to light these days in the US that we could potentially face a similar future. The infrastructure is being laid. Has been for quite some time. I bet we see some really "creative" ideas on what to do with all the data being collected these days. "Hoover it up now, boys. We'll find a use for it later..."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AndyTheAbsurd on Tuesday March 20 2018, @12:58PM (3 children)
I don't see how it's so different from the US's No Fly List, except that it applies to trains as well as planes.
So what I'm saying is, we're already there in the US.
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Tuesday March 20 2018, @03:47PM
Assuming that the social contract data is accurately maintained, then it's actually better than the No Fly list. The NFL is so absurdly arbitrary, that you can end up on the list for nothing more than having a name similar to a name "they" don't like.
Course, the whole thing is completely ironic, considering how corrupt the gov't is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @08:01PM (1 child)
The No Fly List is nominally people who are a danger to the act of flying planes (e.g. they are liable to take the people there hostage, or fly the plane into a building). It's rife with abuse, mistakes, and other such negative things to the point that I personally think it should be abandoned, but nominally it makes sense. "If we let Bob onto the plane, he'll cause death and destruction, so we won't let him onto a plane."
This is a "if you badmouth the government, or we just 'don't like you,' you won't be allowed to travel." It is clearly a coercive system trying to get everybody to toe the line and fall in order.
I think the difference is pretty clear myself, but that's just me.
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday March 21 2018, @01:51AM
Wouldn't it be simpler just to check Bob's luggage and such really close, or is he going to rip out a window or such?
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Tuesday March 20 2018, @05:47PM
> The infrastructure is being laid.
Yep, that's the other thing that people with "Bad Social Credit" also get banned from.
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @03:31AM (8 children)
It's sad to see China becoming more and more like the US.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Captival on Tuesday March 20 2018, @05:24AM (7 children)
The left is absolutely salivating at being able to put together something like this.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by MostCynical on Tuesday March 20 2018, @07:29AM (5 children)
Huh?
The anti-individualists may love this, but the classic "left" *are* individualists, with the loony far end being collectivist-anarchists.
Maybe it is the people who are centre-right, but who look left to the majority of USA hard right types who would like state-control, or maybe the left as in National Socialist (who were honest with the first part of their name)?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @12:13PM
Sorry man, your brand is tainted beyond belief. Shit like "Get racist fired" blogs et al is so far beyond the pale that unless you actively disavow with your every breath you are culpable.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 20 2018, @04:53PM (3 children)
Yeah, this makes me wonder about my political orientation. I normally consider myself fairly liberal, but I actually kinda like the idea of this thing: keeping trouble-makers and smokers off of planes and trains seems like a good idea to me! Honestly, I'm not sure I see the problem here, and I can imagine how a similar system would be done here in the "land of the free" US: it'd be done as a voluntary database shared by companies, rather than top-down by the government, but the effect would be mostly the same. If you're a shitty passenger on a plane who abuses flight attendants or has a kid who kicks other peoples' seats or smokes in the lavatory, airlines should be free to put your name in a database, and refuse to sell any more tickets to you (private businesses almost always have the right to refuse service to people, especially when they've had trouble with that customer before). And there's no law I'm aware of that prevents them from sharing that information with their competitors, so that a bad customer doesn't cause an incident with them too. Honestly, I'm not sure why the airlines haven't already done this. And at least if the government is running such a system, in a democratic republic you at least have the power, in theory, to get your elected leaders to change the law if it's bad and amend it so, for instance, someone can get their name off the list after a long enough time, or taking classes on how to behave on planes, or whatever, whereas with something privately-run it's up to the whims of the companies that own it.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday March 20 2018, @06:12PM (2 children)
Please note China's poverty: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Countries_by_poverty_rate_world_bank_data.png [wikimedia.org] This is a way for them to keep the dirty masses away from the well to do.
Keeping "trouble-makers" off planes and trains sounds "good", but who defines "trouble-maker"? There's no real "smoking" issue in the USA anymore. Unless you're talking about finding a restaurant that allows someone to smoke. Personally, I would call it an invasion of privacy and would be too easily abused to have such a database of "trouble-makers". I can see being tempted to create a list of the disruptive people, but actually doing that on a National scale would be a step towards a dystopian future.
I'm over 9000% more likely to support a push for legal recreational drugs than any National database (public / private) that companies / government could use to track you even more. Private companies have the right to refuse service and block you from using them in the future. Locking a person out of public transportation and / or other things for one bad day would be really messed up. I'm also guessing pretty much every convicted felon would get on this list as well. Even for a person who is regularly a pain to deal with, it's not a path we should go down.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 20 2018, @06:55PM
Keeping "trouble-makers" off planes and trains sounds "good", but who defines "trouble-maker"?
Well, for airplanes, I'd say whenever there's incidents where people scream at flight attendants, get drunk and disorderly, kids kick peoples' seats, people get into fights, etc., that these constitute "trouble-makers". Do you disagree?
There's no real "smoking" issue in the USA anymore.
Yes, there is. It's not *that* common, but people still do sneak cigarettes into the lavatories in airplanes and smoke there, even though it's against federal law. I don't see why anyone caught doing this should ever be allowed to fly again. Felons are commonly punished in strong ways, by removing many of their rights, and this is no different.
Personally, I would call it an invasion of privacy and would be too easily abused to have such a database of "trouble-makers".
How is it an "invasion of privacy" to have a database of criminals? You do realize that it's criminal behavior to smoke on an airplane, don't you? And that it's criminal behavior to disobey flight attendants? Are you saying that criminals should have some expectation of privacy, and that their criminal records should be kept secret, especially when their crimes jeopardize safety in-flight? You really think airlines shouldn't be able to refuse service to these people?
I'm also guessing pretty much every convicted felon would get on this list as well. Even for a person who is regularly a pain to deal with, it's not a path we should go down.
So people who have *proven* themselves to be a real problem and danger in a thin aluminum cylinder hurtling through the air at close to the speed of sound should somehow be allowed to continue to be a disruption?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Tuesday March 20 2018, @07:01PM
Very much this. You only implement government policies that are obviously authoritarian when you know you can get away with it (the population is too stupid to notice, or lacks the ability to do anything about it). Until that point is reached, you implement things that seem innocuous enough on their face, then slowly turn up the heat by bending them to your original purpose.
The U.S. isn't quite to that point yet because avoiding massive protests still seems to be a thing people slightly care about.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday March 21 2018, @02:00AM
Wasn't it the right who already implemented the "No Fly List" for those the State doesn't like?
(Score: 5, Funny) by LVDOVICVS on Tuesday March 20 2018, @04:23AM (2 children)
China BIGLY demonstrates no respect for IP by obviously ripping off the "Nosedive" episode of Black Mirror.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @07:05AM
China was doing it more than a year before that episode aired: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-34592186 [bbc.com]
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gov.cn%2Fzhengce%2Fcontent%2F2014-06%2F27%2Fcontent_8913.htm&edit-text=&act=url [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @07:33AM
That's not all!
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/03/peoples-republic-of-desire-film-review-yes-black-mirror-is-already-here/ [arstechnica.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @04:36AM (3 children)
I won't and don't want to live under this kind of system, but having said that, a large number of people really want this system. In fact I will wager that most people actually want a strong state to dish out punishments to everyone except their family.
I think the real news is how much the western concept of 'freedom' and 'individual responsibility' have actually absolutely nothing to do with progress, as shown by China.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by tftp on Tuesday March 20 2018, @04:52AM (1 child)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @07:28AM
The city and civilization as its extension serves to isolate and provide comfort to its participants away from the dangers of nature starting from the stress of gathering food to avoiding malaria spreading mosquitoes. The rulers are just managers who want to run this system, and I will argue that they are not particularly driven to harm the people as much as build and maintain this system. If you are not invested in the system as much as a certain critical number of people want you to be, then you are considered part of the very nature - a potentially dangerous animal - and animals don't get to participate in the society.
And isn't that the definition of progress?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @10:45PM
Clearly you've never had Thanksgiving at my house. Do it just once and you'll understand why I don't think my family should be excluded.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @04:47AM (3 children)
If you want people who are entrepreneurial, creative, and want to think outside the box, you don't go looking among your staid rule-followers.
It might be interesting to identify the politically disadvantaged who display some aptitude, and offer them sweetheart deals for immigration.
"Look, Chu, we know that you got into trouble for dissing the chinese government. Here in the US? That's business as usual. We call Trump a fat orange fucker on the regular. If you want it, we have a green card, and, based on your high school scores, college admission. How does Caltech sound?"
You'll get some turds, but quite a few gems as well.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @06:38AM (1 child)
We may call Trump names but we may not protest him https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/14/donald-trump-inauguration-protest-website-search-warrant-dreamhost [theguardian.com]
US is sadly not so different from China.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 20 2018, @05:10PM
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 20 2018, @04:55PM
Importing people too dishonest or stupid to not smoke on a non-smoking train is not going to help our economy. In fact, it's better to leave them overseas where they can cause problems over there, and we can continue to sell them tobacco which is good for our economy (it's one thing the US is really good at making and exporting).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by nobu_the_bard on Tuesday March 20 2018, @12:43PM (2 children)
I want to point out, this is not how it's being sold to the Chinese people by the government. The press may say otherwise but the government thus far as been avoiding saying "people with poor credit are banned/restricted" but has been trying to say things like "people with good credit are rewarded with access/privileges". This positive spin is part of why the system has been as successful as it has been.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @03:45PM
People with respectable scores will be allowed the privilege of continued existence.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday March 20 2018, @06:53PM
So basically the argument the idiots are using to kill Net Neutrality.
Uncomfortable number of correlations with authoritarian governments here in the U.S. these days...
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"