Special Big Data in China: a new Big Brother?
[WSJ] China’s New Tool for Social Control: A Credit Rating for Everything
HANGZHOU, China—Swiping her son’s half-fare student card through the turnstile here one Monday afternoon, Chen Li earned herself a $6 fine and a reprimand from a subway-station inspector for not paying the adult fare.
A notice on a post nearby suggested more-dire consequences. It warned that infractors could be docked points in the city’s “personal credit information system.” A decline in Ms. Chen’s credit score, according to official pronouncements, could affect her daily life, including securing loans, jobs and her son’s school admission.
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By JOSH CHIN and Gillian Wong
Source: wsj.com
[MIT Technology Review] China Turns Big Data into Big Brother
It was a drab, chill day in November, and the clocks were striking thirteen. As the woman passed through Hangzhou Railway Station, she moved quickly through the ticket gates—though not quickly enough to avoid detection by the transport authority, which noticed her failure to swipe the correct transit pass. It was too late. She had received a black mark on government records that would make it harder than ever for her to travel in the future.
That’s a reimagining of the introduction to George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. But it’s also set to become a reality for citizens of China if the government’s dream of an authoritarian big-data scheme comes to fruition.
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By Jamie Condliffe
Source: technologyreview.com
[Bloomberg] Alibaba’s Jack Ma Urges China to Use Data to Combat Crime
Chinese billionaire Jack Ma proposed that the nation’s top security bureau use big data to prevent crime, endorsing the country’s nascent effort to build unparalleled online surveillance of its billion-plus people.
China’s data capabilities are virtually unrivaled among its global peers, and policing cannot happen without the ability to analyze information on its citizens, the co-founder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. said in a speech published Saturday by the agency that polices crime and runs the courts.
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Source: bloomberg.com