Free Republic

If you have ever owned a smartphone, shopped online, bought an airline ticket or used a credit card, you are being secretly scored in ways that can impact your wallet. The scorers are businesses we buy products and services from every day. They are called Customer Lifetime Value or CLV scores. All sorts of retailers and businesses use them to judge our value as consumers... most businesses will not tell you what your score is. “It’s not your right as a consumer right now,” Thomas said. “Nobody has legislated that it’s your right to see it and to have input...

* China's National Reform and Development Commission has completed its initial assessments, which will be used to label firms excellent, good, fair or poor. * Foreign firms fear they will be targeted in the event of a trade dispute or to give domestic firms a commercial advantage. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ China is moving forward rapidly its plans for a controversial social credit rating system that will include 33 million companies, raising fears of reprisals among foreign firms as Beijing seeks to extend its control over the business environment in the country. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) is pushing ahead with...

Fast Company has caught on to what Breitbart News has been highlighting for some time: that the Big Tech Masters of the Universe are developing systems to monitor and regulate personal behavior that closely resemble China’s totalitarian “social credit” system. The “social credit” system assigns all Chinese citizens a “social credit score.” A citizen’s score drops if he engages in a range of disfavored activities, ranging from littering to supporting political dissidents. Citizens whose score drops low enough can find themselves subject to strict punishment, including bans from the use of public transport, exclusion from top jobs, and prohibitions on...

In a piece headlined "Uh-oh: Silicon Valley is building a Chinese-style social credit system," Fast Company's Mike Elgan reports on similar, albeit extralegal efforts to create something similar right here in the United States. Ever gotten out of an Uber and given your driver a low rating because his car was dirty or he drove unsafely? Well, he can rate, you too, as can other "gig" service providers. Elgan writes:

In China, it's becoming common for subjects of the Communist state's growing digital apparatus to be denied air travel or business class train tickets, have their internet bandwidth throttled, have their kids denied admission to better schools, denied employment in certain sectors, or even have their dogs taken away. It's called "social credit," it's kept track of digitally and with zero transparency, and Beijing is trotting it out in stages by 2020 as a sort-of kinder, gentler totalitarianism. Think of it as a digital Stasi. Your neighbor catches you smoking in a non-smoking area, and reports on you with his...

In China, scoring citizens’ behavior is official government policy. U.S. companies are increasingly doing something similar, outside the law. Have you heard about China’s social credit system? It’s a technology-enabled, surveillance-based nationwide program designed to nudge citizens toward better behavior. The ultimate goal is to “allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step,” according to the Chinese government. In place since 2014, the social credit system is a work in progress that could evolve by next year into a single, nationwide point system for all Chinese citizens, akin to...

Have you heard about China’s social credit system? It’s a technology-enabled, surveillance-based nationwide program designed to nudge citizens toward better behavior. The ultimate goal is to “allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step,” according to the Chinese government. In place since 2014, the social credit system is a work in progress that could evolve by next year into a single, nationwide point system for all Chinese citizens, akin to a financial credit score. It aims to punish for transgressions that can include membership in or support for...

The world has been watching China’s social credit system with grim fascination, a real-life compulsory Orwellian horror in which citizens’ lives are determined by their social score. Daily activities are monitored and tracked, then distilled into a single number according to rules set by the government. Intended to be fully implanted by 2020, its goal is to “standardize the assessment of citizens’ and businesses’ economic and social reputation.” Standardize. That word alone should send shivers down your spine. Let the meaning sink in: standardize. That means conformity is enshrined and individuality and innovation are attacked. When criticized about its draconian...

"To help identify and prevent fraud, information about how you use your device, including the approximate number of phone calls or emails you send and receive, will be used to compute a device trust score when you attempt a purchase," Apple explained."