BBC segment on cctv surveillance in China

[Liberty]

 

Scary big brother stuff.

[Jurgis]

Have you read about Chinese Citizen Score:

 

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2990203/security/aclu-orwellian-citizen-score-chinas-credit-score-system-is-a-warning-for-americans.html

 

BTW, it is presumably used even for dating sites. "Bad citizen! No dates for you!"  :-X

[DTEJD1997]

Hey all:

 

There is already a little bit of this going here in the USA.

 

For example, In Michigan, your auto insurance is partially based on your edukation level, credit score, and a myriad of other questionable factors.

 

Of course, some parts of Michigan have the most expensive auto insurance in the whole of the USA.

 

I suspect there is all sorts of goofiness going on that there is no general knowledge of.  This is one of the reasons that I have a very limited "social media" profile.

[Cigarbutt]

Speaking of auto insurance and "surveillance", insurance contracts rebates tend to be given if you accept to use a smart app on your phone or have a tracking device installed on your car.

 

The sales pitch now is that the info gathered by the insurer will remain private and protected ( ::)) and the process is put in place only to "encourage" good behavior. More or less like the social trust score concept put forward by the Chinese Politburo.

 

My understanding is that these devices work quite well at first because you can improve your "score" almost instantaneously (Pavlovian response). But people tend to forget about it after a while. People may forget about the potential unintended consequences: the insurer may change the rules of the game along the way, the info may eventually be sold to ?, the info could be used against you in an accident fault discovery process, privacy matters, etc.

 

The smart app is particularly insidious as studies have shown that many carry the "intelligent" device everywhere they go. The correlation between the location of cell phones and their owners is likely similar to the pattern that may be shown if you had the device implanted under your skin.

 

Some say it's really clever. Perhaps too clever.

Some insurers say it's good for society...

My understanding is that Facebook used to have a privacy terms of service that said: 'We are not going to give your information to anybody." Now they make a significant portion of their income by entering into deals where your private information is used to market things to you.

 

The story of Progressive is interesting as it was one of the first players in this field. At first, the program was used as an incentive to reward good habits. Eventually, the data collected was used to penalize "bad drivers". Of course, that shouldn't disturb you if you believe (like many surveys show) that you are part of the 90% who are better than the average.

 

So, in China, the dang'an will be taken to the digital level.

Disquieting. Gamified obedience?

Apparently, from official documents, the social credit system will "allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step".

 

Still trying to bring a powerful idea into one paragraph.

 

[Liberty]

Have you read about Chinese Citizen Score:

 

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2990203/security/aclu-orwellian-citizen-score-chinas-credit-score-system-is-a-warning-for-americans.html

 

BTW, it is presumably used even for dating sites. "Bad citizen! No dates for you!"  :-X

 

This is some Black Mirror shit...

[Travis Wiedower]

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2990203/security/aclu-orwellian-citizen-score-chinas-credit-score-system-is-a-warning-for-americans.html

 

Woah that is frightening. Hadn't seen that before  :o

[DooDiligence]

 

So, in China, the dang'an will be taken to the digital level.

Disquieting. Gamified obedience?

Apparently, from official documents, the social credit system will "allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step".

 

Still trying to bring a powerful idea into one paragraph.

 

 

One small step refused a single man

One giant leap for mankind

Onto a desolate landscape

 

---

 

Move Fast and Break Things is the riveting account of a small group of libertarian entrepreneurs who in the 1990s began to hijack the original decentralized vision of the Internet, in the process creating three monopoly firms--Facebook, Amazon, and Google--that now determine the future of the music, film, television, publishing and news industries.

 

Jonathan Taplin offers a succinct and powerful history of how online life began to be shaped around the values of the men who founded these companies, including Peter Thiel and Larry Page: overlooking piracy of books, music, and film while hiding behind opaque business practices and subordinating the privacy of individual users in order to create the surveillance-marketing monoculture in which we now live.

 

The enormous profits that have come with this concentration of power tell their own story. Since 2001, newspaper and music revenues have fallen by 70 percent; book publishing, film, and television profits have also fallen dramatically. Revenues at Google in this same period grew from $400 million to $74.5 billion. Today, Google's YouTube controls 60 percent of all streaming-audio business but pay for only 11 percent of the total streaming-audio revenues artists receive. More creative content is being consumed than ever before, but less revenue is flowing to the creators and owners of that content.

 

The stakes here go far beyond the livelihood of any one musician or journalist. As Taplin observes, the fact that more and more Americans receive their news, as well as music and other forms of entertainment, from a small group of companies poses a real threat to democracy. Move Fast and Break Things offers a vital, forward-thinking prescription for how artists can reclaim their audiences using knowledge of the past and a determination to work together. Using his own half-century career as a music and film producer and early pioneer of streaming video online, Taplin offers new ways to think about the design of the World Wide Web and specifically the way we live with the firms that dominate it.

 

---

 

Interesting book review & I suspect that it's true:

 

2.0 out of 5 starsGreat, if only it was a 30 page book.

ByKevin A.on October 11, 2017

Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase

 

Save yourself time and skip right to the last chapter (I loved the co-op economy idea). Everything prior to page 247 (first edition) is a long listing of Taplin's problems. I don't read books to get more problems, I read them for solutions. This man also seems to blame all of America's problems on libertarians, then advocates for subsidiarity. That was just one of the many contradictions I found. He also frequently neglected to point out *any* redeeming qualities of the views that he opposed (there are many).

 

---

 

We're no different than the Chinese...

[Cigarbutt]

From a Fast Company interview (few months back), the formal Dylan tour manager is quoted as saying: "There is hope. There are little signs of resistance everywhere."

 

The outcome may depend on the institutions and in our capacity for self-renewal.

Place your bets.

 

[DooDiligence]

From a Fast Company interview (few months back), the formal Dylan tour manager is quoted as saying: "There is hope. There are little signs of resistance everywhere."

 

The outcome may depend on the institutions and in our capacity for self-renewal.

Place your bets.

 

All in baby!

[Pelagic]

A little more in depth look at China's citizen score.

 

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-credit-score-privacy-invasion

 

Sharing what Sesame Credit refers to as "positive energy" online, nice messages about the government or how well the country's economy is doing, will make your score go up.

 

Cultivating a country full of Baghdad Bobs

 

 

[valueorama]

It is all relative to who is observing i guess.

 

I feel Social security number and credit score is Orwellian in nature! Almost for everything people do ask for SSN.

 

Now China has added a new dimension to tracking.