I wonder if this is a portend to an American social credit score, like where China uses facial recognition to identify criminals at concerts[1], and jaywalkers, etc. which severely impacts a person's ability to get a job, housing, etc.
I can't help but assume this is already being used at retail establishments, but now it could be tied into law enforcement databases, and .. communicate..
I think the post's argument is that we are on the way to something akin to China's social credit system (but not there yet).
> What we have aren't unified social credit systems…yet. They're fragmented behavioral scoring networks that don't directly communicate. Your Uber rating doesn't affect your mortgage rate, and your LinkedIn engagement doesn't determine your insurance premiums. But the infrastructure is being built to connect these systems. We're building the technical and cultural foundations that could eventually create comprehensive social credit systems. The question isn't whether we have Chinese-style social credit now (because we don't). The question is whether we're building toward it without acknowledging what we're creating.
Those systems depend on enforcement. If a private system keeps score and gate keeps you usually have alternatives (utilities excluded), if it’s the gov and they decide to enforce it, then things get dire…
But what if Target security cooperates with the government, and they share capabilities, so that a facial recognition inside of a Target location would notify law enforcement who also has an interest in that person? In such a scenario.. Target would freely give its data but not necessarily acting an agent of the government.
People need to work to reverse the Bush and Obama initiated and then continued practice (setting precedent) of bypassing direct surveillance by buying data from data brokers. The Biden and Trump admins just continue this practice. That’s where people need to reverse the practice. I mean you had the FBI and probably others wiretapping Congress folks so… it’s like they don’t care.
Or we need to focus on making data brokers illegal, period. Taking a page from the GDPR would be a good start. As long as the surveillance databases continue to exist, they will be juicy targets for anyone attracted to the power. And not just for the de jure government, but also plenty of "private" businesses that adopt them nearly in lockstep. If you get blackballed in the one used by say Target, it's not like Walmart is going to make it a point of competition to serve the small fraction of people who would be good customers but for getting tripped up by Target. Rather they will all use the same databases, shutting you off from most commerce. That's effectively creating a de facto government, independent of any de jure government adoption.
"American" "social" credit scores were instituted long ago. Distracting from this was the whole reason the media added the word "social" to the term - to other the idea as something that happens over there, never here.
That was the carrot. This new development is the stick.
I can't help but assume this is already being used at retail establishments, but now it could be tied into law enforcement databases, and .. communicate..