
Soros at Davos: China's social credit system and Big IT are mortal threat - _red
https://www.businessinsider.com/george-soros-davos-2019-criticism-of-china-xi-jinping-ai-it-monopolies-2019-1
======
fixermark
My personal prediction for the US is that Americans will continue to rail
against Chinese-style government oversight of a social credit system while
supporting private institutions that de-facto create the same system without
government oversight, laws to mandate the information in the datasets pass a
smell-test for truth, etc. We already have financial credit reporting agencies
and private organizations scraping datasets for mugshots, court cases, and
legal sanctions; couple that with some social media datasets and you've got a
potential employer's dream tool for candidate screening.

America tends to run so hard from the risk of a Big Brother scenario that they
end up smacking into Snow Crash without even realizing it.

~~~
sonnyblarney
These moral/technical equivalency memes I don't think hold water.

Nobody in the US is going to censor your email so that if you say something
about Trump it gets magically deleted.

Court cases and mugshots are _public information_ and a matter of
transparency. When you murder someone, well, that's part of the deal. That's
very different from the government measuring other, minute aspects of your
life and making it public to everyone.

If your social media posts are marked private - which is your choice - then
for the most part they're not going to be available to arbitrary 3rd parties,
moreover, there are definitely social media solutions you can use that don't
share anything.

There is an ongoing war over your information mostly for advertising by the
way (not hiring) and hopefully some legislation will take care of that, and
some dialogue over NSA/Snowden type things. Thankfully, there are actually
laws, warrants, judges in the mix.

Surely we have to judge China's actions from a completely different angle, as
they have their own history, social system etc. - but the equivalency
arguments just don't work.

I think if you tried to text someone a message about Obama, and it was
magically deleted by the US government, it would send shivers down your spine,
and however political or not you were, you'd be signed up for the first
protest/action - as would most of us.

We all have some concerns about our system but it's manageable - what's
happening in China is right out of a novel.

Also note that 'it's just begun'. This is possibly only the first tranche.

The de-facto objective may be to leverage tech to it's max - the result is
effective total control over everyone's lives.

~~~
lustysocietyorg
In our western democracies, especially the USA, not only messages are deleted
but persons are.

Either by lies or by harassment or by prison or by murder or by wars against
entire countries and their population.

Notable examples:

\- Julian Assange.

\- Russia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Venezuela, ...

America Has Been at War 93% of the Time – 222 out of 239 Years – Since 1776
[https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-has-been-at-
war-93-of-...](https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-has-been-at-war-93-of-
the-time-222-out-of-239-years-since-1776/5565946)

When was the last war promoted by Russia or China where hundreds of thousands
of people died ?

Madeleine Albright says 500,000 dead Iraqi Children was "worth it" wins Medal
of Freedom [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omnskeu-
puE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omnskeu-puE)

And do not forget corruption of information by corporations and secrets
services like the FBI and CIA.

Whistleblower Exposes Facebook Censorship Techniques - Mindblowing:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UzFTAeEzJ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UzFTAeEzJ8)

SHOCKER: FBI Admits Sabotaging Progressive Politicians As Policy!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LYJSb-h9m8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LYJSb-h9m8)

Macron vows to tighten media control because 'fake news threatens democracy'
[https://www.rt.com/news/414945-macron-france-fake-news-
law/](https://www.rt.com/news/414945-macron-france-fake-news-law/)

Food libel laws
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_libel_laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_libel_laws)

~~~
sonnyblarney
Your comments have entirely nothing to do with state regimes who monitor or
coerce arbitrary citizens arbitrary communications.

FYI 'Julian Assange' is wanted for specific crimes, this is normal in any
nation - hopefully, if he is arrested, he'll have a chance to defend himself
against specific claims. That would be a very, very public trial with a lot of
scrutiny.

... and 'Russia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Venezuela' are not 'notable examples' of
anything in this context.

~~~
ghtrytttttnsa
FYI Once a stubborn man is named the crime will either be found or invented.

~~~
sonnyblarney
If the US gov charges someone with something, they'll have to provide evidence
of a crime.

It will happen in front of the world with full transparency.

The US could fudge 'findings' from the CIA on Iraq, but they can't make up
evidence in court.

~~~
lustysocietyorg
You are very naive.

Julian Assange would be free if the USA respected journalism. But the USA does
not.

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/nov/16/julian-
assange...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/nov/16/julian-assange-
wikileaks-have-criminal-charges-been-prepared-us)

For the USA, this is about about national pride and personal revenge. Trump
said that a death sentence is appropriate.

The trial and accusation might be kept secret. Like in Guantanamo and similar
places around the world where people are held captive without trial and where
torture is normal.

Do you really think the world is worried about Julian Assange because a fair
trial is expected ?

Do you really think that he has spent his life in the Ecuadorian embassy since
2012 because a fair trial is expected ?

Do you really think that Ecuador has protected Julian Assange in the embassy
since 2012 because a fair trial is expected ?

~~~
sonnyblarney
Stop posting on HN.

~~~
lustysocietyorg
> Stop posting on HN.

I guess you are one of the US citizens who promote hate and war against Russia
and China and thus want to censor free speech and messages to defend and
promote your worldview.

Your words from the first comment I replied to: Nobody in the US is going to
censor your email so that if you say something about Trump it gets magically
deleted.

Your last comment proves that you are no better and you would love to have my
comments deleted or having me banned from HN.

I guess it is also you who downvotes my comments.

You know you have nothing to say against the proofs that I linked.

------
howlingfantods
I remember some weeks ago, I sent over a picture of the Chinese President as
Winnie the Poo (a popular meme at the time) to some friends on WeChat. It
showed up as sent in my WeChat but my friends confirm it never actually
reached them. Maybe 10 minutes later, it had been deleted from the chat logs
on my phone as well.

~~~
perfmode
Was it a bit for bit copy of a circulated image? Or a screenshot?

Because it’s possible to ship a bloom filter to detect banned images without
breaking e2e encryption

~~~
hedora
You can also block screenshots, scaled, noises, recolored, cropped, occluded
images, but you have to send a larger model to the device.

That’s not the point though. The point is that the expectation moving forward
with these platforms is that you police yourself, or the machine learning
algorithms will do it for you (and also ban you from mortgages, airplanes,
employment, etc, if it has to intervene too frequently).

Facebook does (in a very limited way) this by upranking posts it thinks will
boost engagement.

LinkedIn is a bit further down the slippery slope, since it’s able to
influence hiring decisions (and is joined to the MS Office 365 cloud,
presumably).

Amazon Now had some related screwup recently where it redlined minority
neighborhoods in a bunch of cities, since it used spending habits to predict
they’d be less profitable.

~~~
zozbot123
> Facebook does (in a very limited way) this by upranking posts it thinks will
> boost engagement.

Facebook (and Twitter, and Patreon, and countless other firms) _will_ block
you from posting if you post something that they regard as violating their
policy. And "what is against policy" is a fuzzy enough line that "don't use
Winnie the Poo pictures to make fun of the effin' President of the country" is
a lot clearer than that. You may agree with the policy or not, you may think
it's misguided, but WeChat is a private firm, and private firms aren't
restricted by anything like the First Amendment. They provide services to you
at their pleasure.

------
bawana
I dont get it. We are concerned over IP theft. Meanwhile China has the Great
Firewall and mass surveillance apparatus. Then you get their vice president
saying ' I cannot control my unruly children who vandalize American
businesses' So doesnt their IT infrastructure and super snooping ability
figure out who are the transgressors? Why dont they round up ten of the worst
and deport them and the assets of their companies as a show of good faith? Is
it because we are doing the same? or is it because the offenders are 'too big
to punish'?

~~~
koboll
If you actually think China is worried about its nationals' theft of foreign
IP, I have a Great Wall I'd be interested in selling you.

------
throwpromisea
I think it's refreshing that finally someone with some notoriety speaks out
openly against the threat of a dictatorship/authoritarian China paired with
sentient technologies. Even if it's Soros.

Most people are too tied to the corporation "benefits" to speak out against
the evil Chinese government and its arms Huawei, ZTE and Alibaba. Even though
many countries have now banned Huawei (US, Japan, UK, New Zealand, Australia,
Taiwan), and others are thinking of banning (Canada, Germany, Poland), most
aren't openly castigating China with exception of US and Taiwan. And even
then, even though the US president is one of the few individuals that is
openly confrontational with the Chinese regime, he still sometimes offers a
conciliary tone. Even muslim countries like Pakistan and Malaysia that suffer
from their religioius brothers imprisoned by the millions, raised a few
outbursts but then went silent.

------
bb101
What's the end game for China, and indeed the world? One dystopian preview is
Ma Boyong's award winning short story "City of Silence", published as part of
Ken Liu's Invisible Planets.

One can also read it at
[https://web.archive.org/web/20120221185906/http://worldsf.wo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120221185906/http://worldsf.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/tuesday-
fiction-the-city-of-silence-by-ma-boyong/) and
[https://web.archive.org/web/20120229091732/http://worldsf.wo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120229091732/http://worldsf.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/tuesday-
fiction-the-city-of-silence-by-ma-boyong-part-two/)

Edit: added part 2.

~~~
joejerryronnie
The end game seems to be moving more and more toward armed conflict between
China and the US. I honestly don’t see both societies continuing their current
trajectories without running headlong into each other. Perhaps it will just be
another cold war and we’ll see who’s economic system blinks first.

~~~
boznz
You mean armed conflict between some dick politicians in China and some dick
politicians in the US in which everyone else but them will suffer.

History has taught us nothing.

------
candiodari
It's funny how privacy protections are turning out. Every week or so we see
the same pattern repeat. The BIG problem with privacy is government data
sharing. Medical records, police records, travel records, financial records,
... we keep hearing stories of real people really getting hurt because of
these data sharing agreements.

And yet all we hear about is Google data sharing, Facebook data sharing. And
when it comes to problems with that, we hear about a few commercial disputes.

And yet in law the situation is that we are protecting against the second
case, with everywhere exceptions for the first case. And while I'm happy for
such protections, I feel protections against government data sharing
(especially against them sharing mistakes/inaccuracies/out of date info) would
have much more positive results.

~~~
loudmax
My feeling is that there will be more and more data sharing and we're going to
have to reorganize our society around the assumption of transparency. Cheap
cameras connected to the cloud will continue to proliferate and face
recognition software will get better and more widely available. Trying to
prevent big corporations and the government from using data about people is
going to be an uphill battle, and probably hopeless. If you start from the
assumption that massive amounts of data on people will be collected and exist,
I don't see how you successfully keep it all secret without turning into a
police state.

The solution will be to make this data available to everyone. Not just
government and the financially powerful, but everyone.

Some types of activities should remain private, especially when it's practical
to do so. Encryption works, so conversations can be private so long as all
participants agree. Certain types of medical records should be kept private,
and some types of legal records where few people are involved. But general
activity that falls outside of the bands that society has deemed worthy of
special protection should be considered public.

Travel records? Forget it, that stuff's all over the place. As far as
financial records, society has an interest when large sums of money are
involved. IMHO we'd be better off if privacy and wealth were inversely
correlated.

~~~
candiodari
yeah but how many people are getting oocked out of the us because of a holiday
in Pakistan or Iran ?

------
_bxg1
"At the center of his anti-China argument was the concept of a centralized
database of personal information called a "social credit system."

While Soros acknowledged that such a set-up doesn't yet exist..."

But it does in China, right? I've read many articles about it and I could
swear they weren't just future-looking.

~~~
howlingfantods
There's currently no one 'social credit score' in China. There's some local
government pilots and some private enterprise "credit scores." The ones you
hear about often are stuff like Alipay's Sesame Credit, which gives you a
score based on your activities in Alibaba's app ecosystem. Currently, Sesame
credit is pretty harmless, and gives you discounts on online orders or
financial products if your score is good. The danger is that the national
government will soon get its ducks in order and hoover all this data into one
overarching national credit score and use that to police behavior.

~~~
tallanvor
Well, there's the one that blocks people from flying or even taking trains.

~~~
throwaway-fut
So like a Chinese “No Fly List?”

~~~
_bxg1
Except instead of applying to known terrorists or criminals, it applies to
people who posted something the government doesn't like on social media, or
have been unemployed for too long.

------
whyever
Here is a talk that looks a bit closer at the different social credit systems
in China:

[https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9904-the_social_credit_system](https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9904-the_social_credit_system)

------
GreeniFi
We make a big hoo-ha about “social credit”, but I would argue that western
financial credit scores function (or will function) in a very similar way
given the amount of data some of the third party credit score providers pull
and can pull in. The threat is huge because pretty much everyone needs credit
to buy a home, and if you’re not a good boy or girl, that possibility will be
taken from you.

And here’s the dark feeling: Facebook profile and use creates a personality
profile. Personality profile is valid credit-score data. That data was
possibly stolen from FB. If so, your financial credit score (and by axiom
social credit score) is now available to anyone who will pay for it.

I’ve been particularly aware of this, because as a self-employed entrepreneur,
my credit score has taken a pummeling - I think largely due to erratic cash
flow. I see it as a long term threat to risk-taking. Basically, the lesson is
clear: by seeking to change things, as entrepreneurs do, you’re not being a
good boy or girl.

------
diminish
How is George Soros perceived in USA and West Europe? Any comments?

~~~
Wohlf
He's the boogeyman for people on the right, much like the Koch brothers are
the boogeymen for the left, at least in the USA.

~~~
bitxbitxbitcoin
That's a fair assessment whether you're on the right or left!

------
arcaster
With Soros himself being the exception to the definition of a "mortal threat"?

