Timothy Birdnow

A Chinese style "social credit system" is now coming to Russia.

Report: Moscow Plans Social Credit System

From the Breitbart article:

Social credit systems monitor residents in various ways and feed huge amounts of data about them into algorithms that evaluate the quality of their citizenship, including their loyalty to the ruling regime. Those flagged as "poor citizens” can find themselves automatically stripped of benefits, barred from employment, or prevented from traveling, usually with little chance of appealing the system’s judgments.

The Moscow Times summarized Open Media’s report, which was based on public documents filed by Moscow municipal agencies:

Moscow City Hall has since 2017 been collecting the gender, age, income level, and relationship to other people signed up to its mos.ru website as part of the internet activity monitoring system called IS STATS.

Open Media reported that Moscow City Hall placed a 280 million ruble ($3.7 million) tender last week to expand the system’s capabilities.

The digital profiles will now include information about Muscovites’ violations, fines, debts, and participation in various events, according to the cited documentation. The data will be compared with information from public Wi-Fi networks and mobile phone operators.

Moscow City Hall will be able to divide the data into groups that include "signs of loyalty,” according to Open Media.

The IT department at Moscow City Hall insisted it would keep the data the system amassed and analyzed anonymous and studied more for trends than punishing or rewarding individuals, which would be a major difference from China’s system. Skeptics doubted those promises of anonymity, with Internet rights activist Stanislav Shakirov bluntly stating that he expects the Moscow social credit system will be "personalized down to every citizen” and its data will probably end up on the black market.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:41 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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