Tech Mogul, Peter Thiel, Says Google Is a Threat to National Security and May Have Committed Treason


President Trump indicated there may be a US investigation of Google after tech mogul, Peter Thiel, suggested that the company has been working and sharing its artificial intelligence (AI) information with the Chinese military instead of US armed forces — and that top management has become a hotbed for Chinese spies. Thiel posed questions for investigators’ probe into Google’s AI software: “How many foreign intelligence agencies have infiltrated Google? Have the Chinese, in particular, infiltrated? And why are you working with Communist China and not the U.S.?” Google replied that it does not work with the Chinese military. -GEG

President Trump said his administration will probe Silicon Valley
billionaire Peter Thiel’s claims that Google has “seemingly treasonous”
ties with China.

Trump signaled there will be a US investigation after Thiel over the weekend suggested that Google has been actively working with the Chinese military instead of the US armed forces — and that top management has become a hotbed for Chinese spies.

In a Tuesday morning tweet,
Trump called Thiel — a libertarian tech tycoon who helped bankroll
Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign — a “great and brilliant guy who
knows this subject better than anyone,” and said that the “Trump
Administration will take a look!”

In a Sunday speech before the National Conservatism Conference in
Washington, DC, Thiel said Google should be investigated by the FBI and
CIA “in a not excessively gentle manner.” He didn’t provide any evidence
for his concerns, but urged investigators to ask the search giant three
questions.

“Number one, how many foreign intelligence agencies have infiltrated
your Manhattan Project for AI?” Thiel said, likening Google parent
Alphabet’s DeepMind artificial intelligence project to the secret US program that developed the atomic bomb.

“Number two, does Google’s senior management consider itself to have
been thoroughly infiltrated by Chinese intelligence?” Thiel asked.

Lastly, he said the feds should ask Google executives if they
“consider themselves to be so thoroughly infiltrated that they have
engaged in the seemingly treasonous decision to work with the Chinese
military and not with the US military” because the tech would be stolen
by China anyway.

Under pressure from its own employees, Google last summer pledged
that it would not use AI in ways that could be considered unethical,
declining to renew a contract with the US military to use its AI
technology to analyze drone footage.

Read full article here…




China Profits by Billions in Forced Organ Transplant Business that Harvests Organs from Dissidents and Minorities


Experts estimate that between 60,000 and 100,000 organs are transplanted annually in China, as the country rakes in an eye-popping $10 billion to 20 billion in profits. The author makes the case that political dissidents and minorities are used as forced organ transplant ‘donors’ and offers the short wait time for organ recipients as evidence that ‘donors’ are being slaughtered for their body parts. Virtually every organ transplant in China costs the life of an innocent human being.

Zheng Qiaozhi — we will call him George — still has nightmares. He
was interning at China’s Shenyang Army General Hospital when he was
drafted to be part of an organ-harvesting team.

The prisoner was brought in, tied hand and foot, but very much alive.
The army doctor in charge sliced him open from chest to belly button
and exposed his two kidneys. “Cut the veins and arteries,” he told his
shocked intern. George did as he was told. Blood spurted everywhere.

The kidneys were placed in an organ-transplant container.

Then the doctor ordered George to remove the man’s eyeballs. Hearing
that, the dying prisoner gave him a look of sheer terror, and George
froze. “I can’t do it,” he told the doctor, who then quickly scooped out
the man’s eyeballs himself.

George was so unnerved by what he had seen that he soon quit his job at the hospital and returned home. Later, afraid that he might be the next victim of China’s forced organ-transplant business, he fled to Canada and assumed a new identity.

First-person accounts like George’s are understandably rare. The “transplant tourists” who
come to China are naturally told nothing about the “donors” of their new
heart, liver or kidney. And those who are executed for their organs
tell no tales.

Experts estimate that between 60,000 and 100,000 organs are
transplanted annually in China. Multiply that number times the cost of a
liver transplant ($170,000) or a kidney transplant ($130,000), and the
result is an eye-popping $10 billion to 20 billion.

And where do these hundreds of thousands of organs come from? George was told nothing about the background of the young man whose kidneys he fatally removed except that he was “under 18 and in good health.”

But experts like Ethan Gutmann, author of several books on the
subject, believe that the vast majority are obtained by executing
prisoners of conscience.

One particularly rich source of fresh organs for China’s transplant
industry in recent years has been the Falun Gong, which was declared a
heretical Buddhist sect in 1999 by then-Party Secretary Jiang Zemin.
Hundreds of thousands — perhaps millions — of the group’s followers have
been arrested and disappeared into a vast network of secret prisons,
many never to reemerge — at least in one piece.

Read full article here…




The Dark Side to China’s Smart Cities: Everyone’s Being Watched



About 500 of the roughly 1,000 smart cities being built worldwide are in China, but the money allocated for the cities, $74 billion in public and private investment, has instead been spent on enhancing government surveillance of Chinese citizens. The security apparatus uses a vast network of cameras, facial and even gait recognition along with artificial intelligence and cloud computing to identify and track many of China’s 1.34 billion people. Most citizens are required to download apps on their phones that let the authorities monitor what they look at and track their movements, which can land someone in one of the gulags.

Earlier this year, a U.S. congressional committee commissioned a
report on China’s development of “smart cities,” with a particular focus
on whether they were smarter than their American counterparts.

The
U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission’s (USCC) request for
submissions was revealing because it showed that, despite the hype, not
much is known about the fruits of China’s efforts to build such cities.
Smart cities are highly digitally connected and use the latest
technology to manage services.

About 500 of the roughly 1,000
smart cities being built worldwide are in China, according to Chinese
state media, government figures and estimates from Deloitte. Under a
five-year plan to the end of 2020, the Chinese government expects $74
billion of public and private investment in these cities.

Yet while scattered futuristic pilot examples can be found — from intelligent lighting and power grids to smart traffic management — there is little evidence that this grand vision is dramatically improving the lives of the masses.

Instead, it appears that the bulk of the resources poured into smart
city development has gone into improving surveillance of Chinese
citizens by the pervasive domestic security services. For nearly a
decade, China has spent more on internal security than on its defense
budget. Put another way: The Communist Party spends more on monitoring
its own people than on guarding against foreign threats.

“It’s
very clear that surveillance is a significant element in China’s
conception of smart cities,” says Rogier Creemers, an expert in Chinese
law and technology at Leiden University in the Netherlands. “This
involves across-the-board surveillance that is partly political and
partly about mechanizing ordinary street-level policing.”

The
security apparatus uses a vast network of cameras, facial and even gait
recognition along with artificial intelligence and cloud computing to
identify and track many of China’s 1.34 billion people.

Read full article here…




Hong Kong Police Fire 150 Cans of Tear Gas at Demonstrators at Mass Protests Against Extradition Law



Citizens gathered for mass protests in Hong Kong against their communist rulers in mainland China as they consider a new law allowing extraditions from Hong Kong to greater China. Hong Kong officials complained that the lack of extradition created a haven for criminals from the mainland. Hong Kong Police Commissioner Stephen Lo has said “low fatality weapons,” including rubber bullets, bean bags and tear gas canisters, were used to clear the protests, claiming that demonstrators charged police lines with weapons.[/su_note

Over the past few days, huge numbers of protestors have gathered in Hong Kong to take a stand against another change in Hong Kong law instituted by Mainland China.  The protests turned ugly when police fired tear gas at the outraged demonstrators.

China instituted another change in Hong Kong law that has infuriated Hong Kong citizens.
The Hong Kong Free Press reported:

Hong Kong Police Commissioner Stephen Lo has said “low fatality weapons” were used to clear Wednesday’s anti-extradition law protests because demonstrators charged police lines with weapons.

Lo said the protests were organised, describing them as a “riot.” He added that around 150 tear gas canisters,
“several” rounds of rubber bullets, and 20 beanbag shots were fired
during the protest clearance. In comparison, 87 rounds of tear gas
canisters were used during the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests.

Eleven people were arrested for crimes in relation to disorderly
conduct in public, unlawful assembly, assaulting police officers, and
riot-related offences. He said 22 police officers were injured.

The protests are in response to changes to be voted upon in Hong Kong law –

It explicitly allows extraditions from Hong Kong to
greater China – including the mainland, Taiwan and Macau – for the first
time, closing what Hong Kong government officials have repeatedly
described as a “loophole” that they claim has allowed the city to become
a haven for criminals from the mainland.

Read full article here…




‘Social-Credit System’ Is Turning All of China into A Virtual Prison


Chinese people who have low social-credit scores are harassed and ostracized through warnings about them on their cell-phone ring tones, which everyone can hear. They are subject air-travel bans, excluded from well-paying jobs, barred from owning a car or home, and publicly identified on a ‘Deadbeat Map’. Their social-credit system is slated to go nationwide in 2020. The effect will be a culture of fear and a nation of informants, because individuals can earn positive points by snitching. The Chinese Communist Party has given birth to the world’s first high-tech digital dictatorship and now it is selling its system to other like-minded socialist dictatorships. Venezuela was its first customer. -GEG

Imagine calling a friend. Only instead of hearing a ring tone you
hear a police siren, and then a voice intoning, “Be careful in your
dealings with this person.”

Would that put a damper on your relationship? It’s supposed to.

Welcome to life in China’s “Social Credit System,” where a low score can ruin your life in more ways than one.

Say you arrive at the Beijing airport, intending to catch a flight to
Canton 1,200 miles south. The clerk at the ticket counter turns you
away because — you guessed it — your social credit score is too low.

Not only are you publicly humiliated in the ticket line, you are then
forced to travel by slow train. What should have been a three-hour
flight becomes a 30-hour, stop-and-go nightmare.

All because the government has declared you untrustworthy. Perhaps
you defaulted on a loan, made the mistake of criticizing some government
policy online or just spent too much time playing video games on the
internet. All of these actions, and many more, can cause your score to
plummet, forcing citizens onto the most dreaded rung on China’s deadbeat
caste system, the laolai.

And the punishments are shocking. The government algorithm will go as
far as to install an “embarrassing” ring tone on the phones of laolai,
shaming them every time they get a call in public.

But an embarrassing ring tone, flight bans and slow trains are just
the beginning of the dystopian nightmare that is now daily life in China
for tens of millions of people.

A low social credit score will exclude you from well-paid jobs, make
it impossible for you to get a house or a car loan or even book a hotel
room. The government will slow down your internet connection, ban your
children from attending private schools and even post your profile on a
public blacklist for all to see.

According to Australia’s ABC News,
the government has produced a “Deadbeat Map” via an app on WeChat,
which shows a radar-style graphic identifying every laolai in the
vicinity of the user.

“Tapping on a person marked on the map reveals their personal
information, including their full name, court-case number and the reason
they have been labeled untrustworthy. Identity-card numbers and home
addresses are also partially shown,” ABC reported.

Read full article here…




China Says Its Social Credit System Has ‘Restored Morality’ by Blacklisting Over 13-Million People



China revealed that, as of March, the Social-Credit system has blocked an unspecified number of citizens from buying over 23-million airplane, train, and bus tickets. It blocked over three times the number of plane tickets as train tickets, suggesting the government is suppressing international travel more than domestic. -GEG

China’s state-run newspaper Global Times
revealed in a column defending the nation’s authoritarian “social
credit system” Monday that the communist regime had blacklisted 13.49
million Chinese citizens for being “untrustworthy.”

The article did not specify what these individuals did to find
themselves on the list, though the regime has revealed the system
assigns a numerical score to every Chinese citizen based on how much the
Communist Party approves of his or her behavior. Anything from
jaywalking and walking a dog without a leash to criticizing the
government on the internet to more serious, violent, and corrupt crimes
can hurt a person’s score. The consequences of a low credit score vary,
but most commonly appear to be travel restrictions at the moment.

China is set to complete the implementation of the system in the
country in 2020. As the date approaches, the government’s propaganda
arms have escalated its promotion as necessary to live in a civilized
society. Last week, the Chinese Communist Youth League released a music
video titled “Live Up to Your Word
featuring well-known Chinese actors and musicians who cater to a
teenage audience. The song in the video urged listeners to “be a
trustworthy youth” and “give thumbs up to integrity” by abiding by the
rules of the Communist Party. While it did not explicitly say the words
“social credit system,” observers considered it a way to promote the
behavior rewarded in social credit points.

Monday’s Global Times piece claimed it will “restore
morality” by holding bad citizens accountable, with “bad” solely defined
in the parameters set by Communist Party totalitarian chief Xi Jinping.
The federal party in Beijing is also establishing a points-based metric
for monitoring the performance of local governments, making it easier to keep local officials in line with Xi’s agenda.

“As of March, 13.49 million individuals have been classified as
untrustworthy and rejected access to 20.47 million plane tickets and
5.71 million high-speed train tickets for being dishonest,” the Global Times
reported, citing the government’s National Development and Reform
Commission (NDRC). Among the new examples the newspaper highlights as
dishonest behavior are failing to pay municipal parking fees, “eating on
the train,” and changing jobs with “malicious intent.”

China had previously revealed
that, as of March, the system blocked an unspecified number of
travelers from buying over 23 million airplane, train, and bus tickets
nationwide. That report did not say how many people the travel bans
affected, as the same person could presumably attempt to buy more
than one ticket or tickets for multiple means of transportation. The
system blocked over three times the number of plane tickets as train
tickets, suggesting the government is suppressing international travel
far more than use of domestic vehicles. At the time of the release of
the initial numbers in March, estimates found China had tripled the
number of people on its no-fly list, which predates the social credit
system.

The Chinese also reportedly found
that some of the populations with the highest number of system
violations lived in wealthy areas, suggesting Xi is targeting
influential businesspeople with the system to keep them under his
command.

In addition to limited access to travel, another punishment the
Chinese government rolled out in March was the use of an embarrassing
ringtone to alert individuals of a low-credit person in their midst. The
ringtone would tell those around a person with low credit to be “careful in their business dealings” with them.

Read full article here…




China To ‘Regulate’ All Fentanyl Drugs, But Will Continue to Produce Them


China has agreed to regulate all fentanyl-related drugs as a controlled substance. Fentanyl drugs are responsible for many of the deaths in America’s opioid crisis. Chinese chemists create new opioids faster than the old ones can be banned. US officials say that China is the main source of synthetic opioids shipped into America by mail or transported via Mexico. China, however, denies the claim. President Trump says the crackdown could be “a game changer” for the United States where tens of thousands of people die from opioid overdoses annually. [Pardon our skepticism but listen carefully to the exact words Chinese officials use in this announcement. One gets the impression they will increase regulations but they say nothing about banning these drugs or even reducing production. Who cares how much regulation they administer if the drugs continue to be easily available. A major portion of the drug crisis stems from ‘regulated’ opioid prescriptions from medical professionals.In the world of politics, regulations are made to be circumvented by the highest bidder.] -GEG

China said Monday it would begin regulating all fentanyl-related
drugs as a class of controlled substances, in a change U.S. officials
had long advocated as a way to stem the flow of lethal opioids from
China.

The sweeping change in the way China regulates drugs that
mimic fentanyl takes effect May 1 and could help end the game of
regulatory whack-a-mole with chemists who can manufacture novel opioids
faster than they can be banned. It could also facilitate prosecutions of
opioid merchants in China, who until now have skirted the law by
manufacturing and exporting fentanyl variants that were technically
legal in China.

“We firmly believe that listing the entire class
of fentanyl substances will completely block the loopholes that enable
law breakers to evade punishment by simply modifying one or several
atoms, functional groups or other groups,” said Liu Yuejin,
vice-commissioner of China’s National Narcotics Control Commission. “It
will effectively prevent the massive abuse of fentanyl substances and
illegal drug trafficking and smuggling activities, and contribute to
global drug control with China’s wisdom and power.”

China already
controls 25 variants of fentanyl, plus two precursors used to make the
drug. Data from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration have shown that
when China bans a variant of fentanyl, seizures of that analog in the
U.S. fall.

U.S. officials have repeatedly pointed to China as the
main source of synthetic opioids shipped into the country directly by
mail or transported via Mexico. China on Monday again denied that claim.

“China’s
control over fentanyl drugs is very strict,” Liu told reporters. “It
cannot be the main source for the United States. The U.S. accusation
lacks evidence and is contrary to the facts.”

Read full article here…




Trump Tweeted He Wants 5G and 6G in America As Soon As Possible!


Last week, Trump tweeted that he wants 5G and even 6G technology in the US as soon as possible, claiming that the US must always be the leader, especially in technology.  People will be exposed in their homes to 5G, which utilizes millimeter wave technology that causes cancer. China is the model for technological tyranny and is using technology and applying punishments designed to modify behavior.  5G brings automation, which will force tens of millions of Americans out of their jobs.  Commentator Gary Gileno says Trump was installed to pacify the right, but he is bringing in harmful technology.  While the Democrats and the courts have blocked Trump’s every move, they are allowing Trump’s roll out of 5G as both parties want absolute control over the people.




DoD Report: China’s EMP Weapons Pose Grave Threat to America



The Department of Defense has declassified a report saying that China is building specialized nuclear warheads so potent that a single explosion may be enough to devastate America with an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea for many years have recognized America’s total reliance on electricity and electronics and their military are targeting this vulnerability. An EMP can take out computer networks, telephone networks, fuel pipelines, the electric grid, transportation system, banking systems, credit card-payment systems, and much more. The EMP Commission estimates that 90% of the American population would die within a year of an EMP attack. Yes, 90%. [See Offline, a documentary available from Reality Zone that looks, not at the possibility of an EMP attack from an enemy, but at the certainty of a mega flare from the sun ] -GEG

See Offline, a documentary available from Reality Zone that looks, not at the possibility of an EMP attack from an enemy, but at the certainty of a mega flare from the sun

China is building specialized nuclear warheads so potent that a
single one may be enough to devastate America with its enhanced
electromagnetic pulse (EMP), according to a report the Department of
Defense (DoD) recently declassified.

The report,
Nuclear EMP Attack Scenarios and Combined-Arms Cyber Warfare, was
written by Dr. Peter Vincent Pry for a congressionally mandated
commission investigating the threat from EMPs to the United States.

The
report warns that future wars may look entirely different than past
wars due to people’s increasing reliance on technology.  China,
alongside Russia, Iran, and North Korea, have recognized America’s
extreme reliance on electricity, electronics, and technology, and
subsequently adapted their military plans to target this dependence.

Detonation of a single generic nuclear bomb between 30-400 kilometers
above earth will create an EMP that propagates outward towards earth
with a radius of between 600 and 2,200 kilometers.  The effects of an
EMP would be catastrophic and could plunge a nation into indefinite
darkness.  There would be widespread destruction of computers, nuclear
power plants, satellites, phones, refrigerators, transformers, and more.

The EMP commission estimates a full 90 percent of the American population could die within a year of an EMP attack.

The threat posed by EMP is widely recognized at this point. For
instance, in 2018 alone, both the Department of Homeland Security and a
group of experts from inside the normally reticent DoD, released reports
recognizing the need for urgent action, respectively titled the
Strategy for Protecting and Preparing the Homeland Against Threats of
Electromagnetic Pulse and Geomagnetic Disturbances, and the
Electromagnetic Defense Task Force Report.

The
newly declassified report is startling because it goes beyond just
acknowledging the theoretical threat posed by an EMP attack. It provides
alarming and concrete details on how EMP attack is actually core to the
planning of various nations adversarial to America.

Chinese leaders consider the EMP attack to be a revolution in
military affairs, referring to this change with such names as Sixth
Generation Warfare, Non-Contact Warfare, or Electronic Warfare.

Iranian, North Korean, and Russian military doctrines closely mimic China on these points.

For instance, China’s Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) published a paper
asserting that an EMP attack could be considered the “’Pearl Harbor
Incident’ of the 21st century” and that the “United States is more
vulnerable to attacks [from EMP] than any other country in the world.”

Another
Chinese paper explained that an EMP attack could be used to destroy,
“an enemy’s telephone network, fuel pipelines, electric grid,
transportation control system,” and much more.

One PLA textbook explains that EMP attacks can destroy a nation’s
computer networks which mean a “country will slip into a state of
paralysis and the lives of its people will ground to a halt.”

Read full article here…




China Is Data Mining Directly from the Brains of Workers


YOURCOMMENTSHERE

China is deploying emotional surveillance technology that mines data from the minds of its citizens. Essentially, they’re data mining by reading their brains.

The light-weight sensory helmets have been rolled out on an industrial scale. The mind data-mining and emotional surveillance programs are eerily similar to trends in the United States to monitor and probe the mental health of its citizens through facial recognition.

This past spring, Facebook landed in hot water over a data leak which felt like a major privacy violation to millions of its users…

…But China was taking data mining to the next level.

Around the same time, however, China quietly reported that its government is openly fishing data from workers’ minds: making a Facebook leak pale in comparison.

South Morning China Post describes a typical production line at Hangzhou Zhongheng Electric and reports:

[…]the workers wear caps to monitor their brainwaves, data that management then uses to adjust the pace of production and redesign workflows, according to the company.

The company said it could increase the overall efficiency of the workers by manipulating the frequency and length of break times to reduce mental stress.

Hangzhou Zhongheng Electric is just one example of the large-scale application of brain surveillance devices to monitor people’s emotions and other mental activities in the workplace, according to scientists and companies involved in the government-backed projects.

The wireless sensors are concealed under a normal uniform hat and constantly monitor brain waves while sending the data back into main computers that use AI algorithms to detect any unpleasant emotional spikes such as “depression, anxiety or rage.”

Read full article here…

 




Stock Market Roils on News of China-US Trade Deal and Arrest of Executive of Chinese Tech Giant

Trump reached a 90-day trade truce with China at the G20 meeting, but there was some confusion over it, and Trump later threatened that if China refused the deal, he is a “tariff man”.  This agitated the stock market on Tuesday and led to an 800-point drop.  During the G20 dinner, unbeknownst to Trump, the US Department of Justice ordered the arrest of the CFO of Huawei, a Chinese tech giant with strong ties to the Chinese government.  The arrest is reported to be linked to violations of trade sanctions against Iran.  US intelligence agencies have warned that Huawei is a national security threat.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell sharply Tuesday, losing nearly 800 points for its fourth worst day ever on worries over the US-China trade deal and concerns over economic growth.  President Trump dined with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday during the G20 trade summit and agreed upon a 90-day truce, with reports that some US tariffs could be repealed.  However, there was confusion over the start date and there were no written commitments, which contributed to the stock market drop.
.
As the diplomatic dinner took place, Chinese national Sabrina Meng Wanzhou, the CFO of Huawei Technology, was arrested in Canada on the orders of the US Department of Justice, without President Trump’s knowledge.  However, reports indicate that Ambassador John Bolton was aware of the arrest as he sat also down for dinner at the G20 meeting.  Some critics have speculated that the arrest is an attempt by the deep state to embarrass and undermine Trump.  It is not known who ordered the arrest.  Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was reported to be aware of the arrest during the dinner.   Meng is facing extradition to the US from Canada.
.
Meng is the daughter of the founder of Huawei, a Chinese tech company that was ranked the seventh largest in the world, which specializes information and communications technology (ICT).  She was arrested for allegedly violating trade sanctions against Iran.
.
US intelligence agencies are very concerned over national security issues around Huawei and its smart phones that they claim can spy on users.  Google’s smart phone is also capable of spying on users and stealing their data, but US intel agencies show very little concern about Google.  A Chinese analyst said that the US and China are competing against each other in global trade and both are trying to dominate the new 5G market.  The arrest could be used as a bargaining chip in trade with China.
.
In June, Facebook was accused of data sharing with Huawei, which was flagged as a ‘threat’ by US intelligence agencies.  Huawei was founded by a former engineer in the People’s Liberation Army, and has close ties to the Chinese government. The CIA, NSA, and FBI and the Director of National Intelligence have warned American consumers not to use Huawei devices.  In October, a US-based tech startup, CNEX, accused Huaweiof stealing its technology for solid-state drive (SSD) for mass information storage and improperly recruited 14 of its employees.

 




China Has Built the World’s First Digital Mark of the Beast. Most Other Countries Are Not Far Behind.

China’s communist government is implementing a “social credit” scorecard in order to control and coerce more than a billion people into compliance. This is accomplished by high-tech surveillance systems, including facial recognition, body scanning, and tracking. Smartphone apps monitor daily behavior. The score also depends on educational and medical records, state security assessments, and financial records. Already, about 10-million people with low scores have been punished with bans on travel, employment, and credit. A Communist Party document says the program will “allow the trustworthy to roam freely under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step”. Anyone who is critical of the government will be classified as discredited. This is the goal of all collectivist systems. GEG

China is building a digital dictatorship to exert control over its 1.4 billion citizens. For some, “social credit” will bring privileges — for others, punishment.

Dandan Fan is very much the modern Chinese woman.

A marketing professional, she’s diligent and prosperous — in many ways she’s a model Chinese citizen.

But Dandan is being watched 24 hours a day.

A vast network of 200 million CCTV cameras across China ensures there’s no dark corner in which to hide.

Every step she takes, every one of her actions big or small — even what she thinks — can be tracked and judged.

And Dandan says that’s fine with her.

What may sound like a dystopian vision of the future is already happening in China. And it’s making and breaking lives.

The Communist Party calls it “social credit” and says it will be fully operational by 2020.

Within years, an official Party outline claims, it will “allow the trustworthy to roam freely under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step”.

Social credit is like a personal scorecard for each of China’s 1.4 billion citizens.

In one pilot program already in place, each citizen has been assigned a score out of 800. In other programs it’s 900.

Those, like Dandan, with top “citizen scores” get VIP treatment at hotels and airports, cheap loans and a fast track to the best universities and jobs.

“It will allow the trustworthy to roam freely under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.”

Those at the bottom can be locked out of society and banned from travel, or barred from getting credit or government jobs.

The system will be enforced by the latest in high-tech surveillance systems as China pushes to become the world leader in artificial intelligence.

Surveillance cameras will be equipped with facial recognition, body scanning and geo-tracking to cast a constant gaze over every citizen.

Smartphone apps will also be used to collect data and monitor online behaviour on a day-to-day basis.

Then, big data from more traditional sources like government records, including educational and medical, state security assessments and financial records, will be fed into individual scores.

Trial social credit systems are now in various stages of development in at least a dozen cities across China.

Several companies are working with the state to nationalise the system, co-ordinate and configure the technology, and finalise the algorithms that will determine the national citizen score.

It’s probably the largest social engineering project ever attempted, a way to control and coerce more than a billion people.

Read full article here…