Reminds me of Mccarthyism. Most people targeted were never arrested, never charged, but they still made their lives a living hell just through systematic harassment and intimitation.
What we're headed toward is ultra-fine-grained algorithmic McCarthyism.
In the future it will be possible to establish, with the aid of big data and machine learning, profiles of "normal" (a.k.a. desired) human behavior and to engage in fine-grained surveillance, harassment, or "nudging" of individuals who deviate from desired behavior.
Over time this creates a self-reinforcing feedback loop: felons can't vote, and "soft persecution" could negatively impact peoples' careers causing more and more wealth to systematically accrete into the hands of desirable individuals. Put these two things together and combine them with fine-grained propaganda based on big data and cognitive modeling and you have a recipe for... well... I can't help but see this as the formula of a new dark age of totalistic orthodoxy and immovable dogmas.
The last dark age was built on self-enforcement of social norms as dictated by religious orthodoxy. This one might be built on big data and fine grained surveillance and control of the population by a technocratic orthodoxy. Instead of the pope and the Vatican we have the corporate-state complex and the NSA (and private corporations like Google). Collectively the administrators of this system are the technocratic analogs of the Holy See in the middle ages.
