Your "FEDERAL KEY SCORE" Is The Government Rating Of How Much You Mouth Off
By Donna Lewis
Federal databases, like "XKEYSCORE" and others, rate you on how much of a trouble maker you are. It is like a credit score for activism. The higher your KEY SCORE, the more surveillance is placed on you. Google, Facebook and Twitter supply 75% of the data to the NSA, EDS and contract services (like Edward Snowden worked at) to create your secret FEDERAL KEY SCORE.
Your KEY SCORE equates into something similar to a one to ten rating. An average person is a #2. A journalist is a #7. Snowden and Assange have special #11 ratings on a system that essentially is only supposed to go up to 10 (ie: "Spinal Tap"). The numbers are not actually that simple but they transpose out as that mundane of a thing. The more you get out of the line of sheep and nine-to-five slave labor, the higher your number.
China, which steals quite a bit from the USA, has copied the FEDERAL KEY SCORE system.
STEPHEN JOHNSON describes the system: By 2020, China plans to assign each
of its 1.4 billion citizens a “social credit score” that will determine
what people are allowed to do, and where they rank in society.
It’s part of a broad effort in China to build a so-called reputation
system that will measure, in theory, the credibility of government
officials and businesses, in addition to citizens. The Chinese government
says the system will boost “trust” nationwide and build a culture of
“sincerity.”
A handful of private data companies are helping the government develop the
system. One is a firm called Sesame Credit, which assigns citizens a
fluctuating score between 350 and 950 points, based on factors like what
people buy, whom they associate with, and what they post. For instance,
sharing a post praising the Chinese government would be recorded as having
“positive energy” by Sesame Credit, and would make one’s score go up.
Low scores will result in punishment, as a 2016 government report
describes:
“If trust is broken in one place, restrictions are imposed everywhere,
safeguard judicial authority, raise judicial credibility, and create an
upward, charitable, sincere and mutually helpful social atmosphere.”
Some citizens have already suffered punishment, such as Chinese journalist
Liu Hu, who discovered he was banned from flying because his name was on a
list of “untrustworthy people". In 2013, Liu was arrested for defamation
after publishing posts that were highly critical of government officials,
a crime for which he was ordered to apologize. The court found his apology
insincere.
“I can’t buy property. My child can’t go to a private school,” he told
CBS. “You feel you’re being controlled by the list all the time.”
Other potential punishments for low-score citizens could include slower
internet speeds, restricted access to businesses, and being prohibited
from entering certain professions.
A massive network of surveillance cameras will also help to record and
measure citizen behavior. It’s estimated that China has 176 million
surveillance cameras in operation now, with plans to more than double that
by 2020. The stated goal of this surveillance infrastructure is to deter
criminals, but so far there seems to be no crime too small to punish. For
instance, Chinese officials in Fuzhou have been publishing the names of
jaywalkers, and it’s been reported that citizens might soon be punished
for being seen smoking in non-smoking areas or driving poorly.
If it sounds like Orwellian doublespeak to hear the Chinese government say
the plan will foster a “sincere” and “mutually helpful social atmosphere,”
you’re not alone.
“It’s Amazon's consumer tracking with an Orwellian political twist,” wrote
Johan Lagerkvist, a Chinese internet specialist at the Swedish Institute
of International Affairs, adding that the program also records what books
people read.
Rogier Creemers, a post-doctoral scholar who specializes in Chinese law
and governance at the Van Vollenhoven Institute at Leiden University,
likened the system to “Yelp reviews with the nanny state watching over
your shoulder.”
Perhaps the most popular comparison has been to the 'Nosedive' episode of
Black Mirror, in which everyone in a future society has a social credit
score that can be nudged up or down based on interactions with other
people.
But criticism hasn’t stopped millions of Chinese citizens from voluntarily
signing up for the program before it becomes mandatory in 2020. That’s
partly because of China’s widely unregulated market, where many signed
contracts aren’t kept, and where counterfeit and substandard products move
freely. The Chinese government says these problems represent a “trust
deficit” that could be fixed with a codified credibility system.
“Given the speed of the digital economy it’s crucial that people can
quickly verify each other's credit worthiness,” Wang Shuqin, a professor
at the Office of Philosophy and Social Science at Capital Normal
University in China, who is helping the government develop the system,
told Wired. “The behavior of the majority is determined by their world of
thoughts. A person who believes in socialist core values is behaving more
decently.”
Of course, it’s also possible that Chinese citizens are signing up for the
program out of fear of reprisal if they don’t. And then there’s the
incentives: A 2017 Wired cover story points out that high social credit
scores are seen as a status symbol, and they earn people more prominent
visibility on dating apps, as well as perks at businesses–gift cards,
faster check-ins at hotels and airports, and no required deposits for
rental cars.
In an interview with CBS, Ken Dewoskin, a senior advisor and eminence
fellow to Deloitte Services LP for China research and insight, was asked
how far the social credit system goes into people’s daily mundane
activities.
“I think that the government and the people running the plan would like it
to go as deeply as possible to determine how to allocate benefits and also
how to impact and shape their behavior.”
One internet privacy expert described China’s plan as a dangerous
intervention into human behavior.
“What China is doing here is selectively breeding its population to select
against the trait of critical, independent thinking. This may not be the
purpose, indeed I doubt it’s the primary purpose, but it’s nevertheless
the effect of giving only obedient people the social ability to have
children, not to mention successful children.”