The predictable dystopian trajectory of China's Citizen Scores

China's Citizen Score system combines surveillance of your social media and social graph with your credit report, your purchase history and state spy agencies and police files on you to produce a "trustworthiness" score — people who score low are denied access to high-speed travel, financial products, and other services like private school for their kids.


Also: being friends with low-scoring people pulls your score down.

Liu Hu is a Chinese journalist who is critical of the state — he was recently ordered to apologize for critical social media posts and then sanctioned for being "insincere" — and it has earned him a low Citizen Score. Now he can't buy airplane tickets or property, or send his kid to private school.


When Liu Hu recently tried to book a flight, he was told he was banned from flying because he was on the list of untrustworthy people. Liu is a journalist who was ordered by a court to apologize for a series of tweets he wrote and was then told his apology was insincere.

“I can’t buy property. My child can’t go to a private school,” he said. “You feel you’re being controlled by the list all the time.”


China Assigns Every Citizen A ‘Social Credit Score’ To Identify Who Is And Isn’t Trustworthy
[Ben Tracy/CBS]

(via /.)