The Great Database of China: Rating Moral Behavior, Blacklisting Citizens

from the really-bad-credit-score dept

The Great Firewall of China is well known; a report in the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant discusses a translation by Rogier Creemers of China's new Social Credit System plan -- a national store of citizens' ratings that promises to become the Great Database of China:

The intentions of the new system are not only economical, fighting fraudulent practices, but also moral. 'This is a deliberate effort by the Chinese government to promote among its citizens "socialist core values" such as patriotism, respecting the elderly, working hard and avoiding extravagant consumption', says Creemers. A bad 'credit code' can result in being not eligible for certain jobs, housing or credit to start a company. 'On the labour market you might need a certain score to get a specific job.'

Here are some details about how this would apply to online activities:

Forcefully move forward the construction of online sincerity, foster ideas of running the Internet according to the law and using the Internet in a sincere manner, progressively implement the online real-name system, perfect legal guarantees for the construction of online credit, forcefully move forward the construction of online credit supervision and management mechanisms.

The "online real-name system" is something we've written about before. A small consolation here is that China has been trying to bring this in for over a decade; its continuing failure to do so offers hope that the Great Database of China might be even harder to construct.

Establish online credit evaluation systems, evaluate the credit of the operational behaviour of Internet enterprises and the online behaviour of netizens, and record their credit rank. Establish network credit files covering Internet enterprises and individual netizens, vigorously move forward with the establishment of exchange and sharing mechanisms for online credit information and corresponding credit information in other areas, forcefully promote the broad application of online credit information in various areas of society.

The following section of the planned Social Credit System is particularly chilling:

Establish online credit black list systems, list enterprises and individuals engaging in online swindles, rumourmongering, infringement of other persons’ lawful rights and interests and other grave acts of breaking trust online onto black lists, adopt measures against subjects listed on black lists including limitation of online conduct and barring sectoral access, and report them to corresponding departments for publication and exposure.

As well as the sheer ambition of this database, which would cover the entire population of China, another novel aspect is where some of the ratings will come from, as de Volkskrant explains:

Innovative will be the active contribution of citizens rating other citizens. 'Imagine a Chinese person being able to rate his doctor or his professor, as is already happening in the US. And he or she might also give a bad score to polluting companies, as the system will be applied to companies and institutions as well', says Creemers.

Of course, online rating systems are already commonplace in other fields. There, they have led to fierce arguments and costly legal battles. The proposed system in China probably won't suffer from those problems, since the Social Credit System will presumably be secret. However, it will be far more insidious since the resulting "credit score" will have a major impact on people's lives and the opportunities open to them, notably for anyone that finds themselves -- unbeknownst -- on one of those blacklists.

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Filed Under: behavioral rankings, blacklists, china, credit rankings, great database, moral behavior

Wikileaks Says US Pressure Resulted In Donation Account Being Shut Down

from the financial-censorship dept

While it's sometimes difficult to take the claims of persecution from Wikileaks founder Julian Assange seriously, it is interesting to see that Wikileak's donation account with Moneybookers has been shut down, and the company itself told Assange that it was due to the site being added to a US watchlist and an Australian blacklist. It's unclear what "watchlist" the US has for websites, but if this is accurate, it seems like another unfortunate example of US gov't censorship, this time through blocking financial resources.

Filed Under: blacklists, censorship, donations, pressure, wikileaks

AT&T Wants Government Website Blacklists, Hadopi-Style Tribunal

from the ma-bell-daydream dept

Companies like Verizon and Qwest recently took their cooperation with the entertainment industry to an entirely new level -- by not only forwarding DMCA warning letters to users (which has been going on for years) -- but by also now threatening broadband users with account termination (which, at least in Verizon's case, appears to be a bluff). Both companies are using the flimsy and unreliable DMCA letter process as a foundation, and layering a completely non-transparent termination process (where grandmothers wind up falsely accused) on top -- obviously a winning formula for success. So far AT&T hasn't been willing to play along with this new voluntary program, and in filings with the White House's Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, make it clear it's primarily just worried about covering its legal posterior:

"Private entities are not created or meant to conduct the law enforcement and judicial balancing act that would be required; they are not charged with sitting in judgment of facts; and they are not empowered to punish alleged criminals without a court order or other government sanction. Indeed, the liability implications of ISPs acting as a quasi-law-enforcement/judicial branch could be enormous."

It's interesting, because AT&T not only argues that ISPs shouldn't be acting as content nannies, but it also acknowledges that the entire DMCA process is built on a platform where such letters can impact non-infringing members of a household, people with "valid defenses," or people with unsecured wireless networks. At first, AT&T's argument reads much like an EFF complaint -- the company even going so far as to insist that (as we've long said) disconnection from the Internet isn't a suitable punishment for downloading that first season of the Golden Girls.

However, AT&T isn't necessarily against some kind of graduated response system -- they would just prefer it if Uncle Sam was the one screwing up. AT&T's filing argues that it doesn't want this handled by the courts, rather, it wants an expedited faux-legal system set up much like the Hadopi-run process we've critized in France, where a Judge is given all of five minutes to determine a user's guilt or innocence. Though AT&T consistently complains about government regulation (at least when applied to them), it takes things even further by arguing the government should "create and maintain a list of international websites known to host and to traffic in infringed copyrighted works."

So while Qwest and Verizon engage in non-transparent threats against their users based on flimsy evidence, AT&T wants taxpayers to fund an entirely new government organization tasked with non-transparent threats against users based on flimsy evidence. For good measure, AT&T wants a website blacklist whac-a-mole program that -- like most filtering programs -- won't accomplish a damn thing aside from pushing pirates further underground and blocking access to legitimate content. Perhaps AT&T should stick with struggling to run a wireless network?

Filed Under: blacklists, copyright, hadopi
Companies: at&t

Security Experts Hope To Write Eulogy For Blacklists

from the black-death dept

Blacklists have always been a significant tool in the security industry's anti-malware arsenal. For years, the basic anti-virus model was simply to maintain a list of known viruses (and their permutations) and match any potential virus against that list. As malware started to proliferate and vary wildly, security firms have augmented this approach with other techniques, though the basic blacklist still remains. Blacklists are also used to protect against spam and identify websites that may be hostile. But just as the model has come to be inadequate in the traditional anti-virus space, so too is it seen as deficient for other purposes. Among the complaints about blacklists include the fact they're easy to accidentally fall into, while easily gamed by those looking to get off them. Essentially, blacklists are a blunt weapon unsuitable for the complexity of good security systems. Just ask the customers of Verizon, who at times have had all of their foreign email blocked, because the company's overly aggressive anti-spam software. Interestingly, one major user of blacklists is Google, which uses them to warn users about potentially malicious sites that they may encounter through searches. Seeing as the company is ramping up its security business, it will be worth watching whether it continues to push blacklists, or if it seeks out more sophisticated mechanisms for discerning what's legitimate online.

Filed Under: blacklists, security, spam