What’s the point in having technology if you can’t use it? Just ask North Korea and Iran, who can’t understand the logic of other nations trying to restrain them.

On a less ambitious scale, information technology’s reach has made the sharing of data comprehensive and extensive to make life easy for everyone who follows the rules. Take the US FICO system. Popularly called the credit score, almost everyone is assigned a number ranging from 300 to 850 that rates their creditworthiness. Higher the score the better, and anything above 740 is considered excellent.

Various factors go towards the calculation of this score, and they include whether you have paid your bills on time (late payment hurts you), how much debt you are carrying (not too little and not too much), how many accounts you have (not too many, nor too few); see, it is already a mystery. Fair Isaac, the company that generates the score based on your credit report does not reveal its mysteries.

Having a good score goes a long way to make life easy, especially when you apply for a loan. Lending terms, including interest rates, vary depending on your score. Even insurance companies and landlords use the score. If you are generally tardy in paying your bills and have a poor score, don’t expect to be able to rent in the good neighbourhoods.

China, which leaps over everyone and everything, has taken this idea further into its social credit score. With its extensive camera networks, face-recognition technology and connectivity, it is able to watch everyone. With tight controls over the use of the internet, it knows what you write. It is all for a good cause — to help improve the behaviour of its citizens.

In a recent report, the Guardian , quoting China’s National Public Credit Information Center’s report, says that in 2018, 23 million Chinese were discredited by the social credit system, compared to 6.15 million in 2017. It’s not that the people are behaving worse; they are just catching more people.

Offences that can lead to negative points include not paying taxes or fines, spreading false information, taking drugs, smoking on a train, or even walking a dog without a leash. These blots on society have a hard time when they try buying plane or train tickets, or when they want to leave the country (they can’t).

Of course, it is not all punishment. You can get rewards too. For instance, when you write nice things about the government, or bad things about the government’s enemies on social media, you get credit.

I’m sure many other countries would love to be able to run such a system. Have you noticed all that doggy poop on the pavements of Paris? Just imagine, with a social credit system, dog owners would have been brought in line a long time ago. And managing traffic in India? It’s a cinch with a social credit system. The rude two-wheeler that thinks it can cut in front of you and even ride on the pavement will find it difficult to fill petrol when it gets to the gas station. We can even use it to prevent celebrities taking questionable loans and then moving to London. I suspect those who are up to some mischief will scream ‘Privacy!’ if we suggest a social credit score. But if it’s okay for obscure private corporations to track us every time we use a credit card, why are our hackles going up when the government wants us to behave better?

The writer is a professor at Suffolk University, Boston.

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