1.9 Do We Need to Sacrifice Our Personal Freedom?
9
Fig. 1.1 Illustration of how citizens could be punished for any minor transgression of law, even if
it is entirely harmless to society. Note that the traffic authority figured out my foreign address to
send me this ticket for going 1 km/h too fast with my car, while I was actually not even the driver
(which they didn’t check)….
this might sound like a dystopian science fiction fantasy, much of this is already
happening. China is now even planning to rate the behavior of all its citizens on
a one-dimensional scale, including what they do online.
16 Opinions that match the
thinking of the communist political party will be rewarded. The resulting score will
be used to determine whether or not a person gets a particular job or loan.
Can such surveillance-based technology- and data-driven approaches turn a
country into a “perfect clockwork”? And given that every country is exposed to global
competition, is it just a matter of time until all democracies adopt such approaches?
If you think this is far-fetched, it is probably good to recall that several influential decision-makers have recently praised China and Singapore as models for the
16 China rates its own citizens—including online behaviour, see http://www.volkskrant.nl/buiten
land/china-rates-its-own-citizens-including-online-behaviour~a3979668/; China: Kontrolle über
alles, see http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2015-07/china-plangesellschaft-xi-jinping.
9
Fig. 1.1 Illustration of how citizens could be punished for any minor transgression of law, even if
it is entirely harmless to society. Note that the traffic authority figured out my foreign address to
send me this ticket for going 1 km/h too fast with my car, while I was actually not even the driver
(which they didn’t check)….
this might sound like a dystopian science fiction fantasy, much of this is already
happening. China is now even planning to rate the behavior of all its citizens on
a one-dimensional scale, including what they do online.
16 Opinions that match the
thinking of the communist political party will be rewarded. The resulting score will
be used to determine whether or not a person gets a particular job or loan.
Can such surveillance-based technology- and data-driven approaches turn a
country into a “perfect clockwork”? And given that every country is exposed to global
competition, is it just a matter of time until all democracies adopt such approaches?
If you think this is far-fetched, it is probably good to recall that several influential decision-makers have recently praised China and Singapore as models for the
16 China rates its own citizens—including online behaviour, see http://www.volkskrant.nl/buiten
land/china-rates-its-own-citizens-including-online-behaviour~a3979668/; China: Kontrolle über
alles, see http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2015-07/china-plangesellschaft-xi-jinping.