Who needs democracy when you have data? - MIT Technology Review

Who needs democracy when you have data? - MIT Technology Review
"Here’s how China rules using data, AI, and internet surveillance.--by Christina Larson
People in Beijing are always under the watchful eye of Mao—and myriad surveillance cameras.
In 1955, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov published a short story about an experiment in “electronic democracy,” in which a single citizen, selected to represent an entire population, responded to questions generated by a computer named Multivac. 
The machine took this data and calculated the results of an election that therefore never needed to happen. 
Asimov’s story was set in Bloomington, Indiana, but today an approximation of Multivac is being built in China.
...How do you effectively govern a country that’s home to one in five people on the planet, with an increasingly complex economy and society, if you don’t allow public debate, civil activism, and electoral feedback? 
How do you gather enough information to actually make decisions? 
And how does a government that doesn’t invite its citizens to participate still engender trust and bend public behavior without putting police on every doorstep?
...Xi Jinping... his strategy for understanding and responding to what is going on in a nation of 1.4 billion relies on a combination of surveillance, AI, and big data to monitor people’s lives and behavior in minute detail.
...But police are increasingly stopping petitioners from ever reaching Beijing. 
“Now trains require national IDs to purchase tickets, which makes it easy for the authorities to identify potential ‘troublemakers’ such as those who have protested against the government in the past,” says Maya Wang, senior China researcher for Human Rights Watch. 
“Several petitioners told us they have been stopped at train platforms.” 
The bloggers, activists, and lawyers are also being systematically silenced or imprisoned...
...These initiatives include ...“social credit,” “smart city” plans, and technology-driven policing in the western region of Xinjiang. 
Often they involve partnerships between the government and China’s tech companies.
The most far-reaching is the Social Credit System, though a better translation in English might be the “trust” or “reputation” system. 
The government plan, which covers both people and businesses, lists among its goals the “construction of sincerity in government affairs, commercial sincerity, and judicial credibility.” 
...The algorithm is thought to highlight suspicious behaviors such as visiting a mosque or owning too many books.
Blacklists are the system’s first tool..."
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