China’s Social Credit System

There exists in China a “Social Credit” system, which is used to decide an individual's status as regards the state. This system works much like a traditional credit score does in the way of permitting you credit to make purchases. Each individual is granted …

From penalising irresponsible dog owners to blacklisting dissenters, critics warn China’s social credit system enables authorities to define “desirable and undesirable behaviour” and could allow unprecedented control of citizen’s lives. The fledgling initiat…

German Chancellor Angela Merkel took China to task, albeit diplomatically, over its climate record on the second day of her latest visit to the world's second-biggest economy. Speaking to students at Huazhong University in the city of Wuhan, Merkel said "cli…

From penalising irresponsible dog owners to blacklisting dissenters, critics warn China's social credit system enables authorities to define "desirable and undesirable behaviour" and could allow unprecedented control of citizen's lives. The fledgling initiat…

from the free-speech dept It appears that the idea of SLAPP suits has moved to China. The Chinese internet giant Tencent is apparently fed up with its own users criticizing the company on its own WeChat blogging platform, and has sued a bunch of them (possib…

The Trump administration is considering a proposal that would use Google, Amazon, and Apple to collect data on users who display characteristics that could lead to violent behavior.  This authoritarian use of information is common in Communist regimes like Ch…

I am a founder of Harris Bricken, an international law firm with lawyers in Los Angeles, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, China and Spain. I mostly represent companies doing business in emerging market countries. It has taken me many years to build my netwo…

Since 9/11, I’ve had the view that America’s security measures were wildly excessive and counterproductive. They very likely ended up costing lives by making flying so unpleasant. In the past, I’ve assumed that this reflected irrational fears among the public…

A university in China has installed facial recognition cameras in classrooms that monitor students’ behavior such as nodding off or playing with their cellphones. China Pharmaceutical University in Nanjing, East China’s Jiangsu Province, is piloting the syst…

Evil tech giants planning China-style "social score" rollout across America; red-flagged people to be denied access to restaurants and public events