ROGER KIMBALL: The Tech Totalitarians Are On The March.
The Chinese were pathbreakers.
With their system of “social credit,” which seeks to enforce conformity by “grading” an individual’s or business’s adherence to the party line and imposing penalties for deviations, they have showed the West the way.
If you don’t espouse the right attitudes, you might find yourself barred from public transportation, from work permits or travel visas, from preferred jobs and other social—which includes economic—perquisites.
It’s a totalitarian’s dream—one that was dreamt by George Orwell in the pages of “Nineteen Eighty-Four”—and it’s made all the more total by advances in technology.
Winston Smith, Orwell’s unhappy protagonist, had to contend with a tiny two-way television set in his flat that he could not turn off and that constantly eavesdropped on him.
Chinese citizens have to contend with having their texts, emails, and internet activity constantly scrutinized, which also means having every phone conversation docketed and financial transaction tracked.
Cameras, backed up with facial-recognition technology, are everywhere, watching, listening, building up a record that can always be marshaled as an indictment.
It’s a good thing, isn’t it, that we in the freedom-loving West eschew such totalitarian intrusiveness?
Just kidding.
The American Department of Justice showed how it is done in the land of the formerly free when it employed all those techniques to track down, arrest, and incarcerate hundreds of people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, protest at the Capitol.
Phone and social media accounts were hoovered up and dissected; facial recognition technology was deployed and weaponized; financial transactions and travel records were subpoenaed and combed through.
Hundreds of people are still languishing in a Washington, D.C. gulag, waiting while the authorities expend vast amounts of legal ingenuity to transform various misdemeanors into felonies.
In many ways, Prime Minster Justin Trudeau of Canada went even farther in dealing with the “Freedom Convoy” of truckers.
He had banks shut down the accounts of the protesters, prevailed upon entities like PayPal and GoFundMe to deny them access to funds that third parties had raised; he confiscated their property, and went after anyone who provided aid, comfort, or even coffee to them.
Xi Jinping must be proud of him.
Probably.