Check It Out: Do you value your privacy?
By Joan Janzen
The husband said, “My wife thinks I don’t give her enough privacy. At least that’s what she said in her diary.”
While everyone wants their privacy to be respected, it’s becoming increasingly difficult. This week I’ve heard similar concerns expressed about digital identification, but from two different perspectives. Which, in turn, inspired me to bring it to your attention.
MP Leslyn Lewis noted that Canada is one of the first countries, along with the Netherlands, to sign on to the World Economic Forum’s pilot project to introduce a Known Traveller Digital Identity (KTDI). Other partners include Air Canada, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport, and Toronto’s Pearson Airport.
The idea is that world travellers can increase “global” trust as they travel around the world. She notes, that although it sounds good, building up trust points through your activities is literally a credit score. By signing on to such an ID, we would be allowing a global body to determine what meets the requirement for an “acceptable” or “safe” traveller.
It could begin with a travel ID, but the WEF has suggested that this could be expanded to include one’s digital currency, banking information, carbon footprint, health records and driver’s license. Journalist, Anthony Furey suggested, although digital IDs may appear convenient and innocent, Canadians need to think long and hard before accepting them, as privacy boundaries begin to erode.
The second perspective on this topic was presented by a researcher at the University of Cincinnati and recent US immigrant by the name of Pei Li. He said he fled the People’s Republic of China and came to the west in search of freedom.
“But now I’m seeing troubling signs that remind me of what I left behind,” he said. “The loss of freedom doesn’t happen overnight. The social credit system in China has been decades in the making. It was OK at first; these things always are.”
In the 1990’s Chinese banks developed a financial bank rating system to increase lending in rural areas. It sounded convenient, but government officials soon realized similar programs could be set up to gather other information about the behaviour of citizens. By 2014, new technology allowed the government to monitor what people said, read and searched on the Internet.
“More data equals more control,” Li said. He witnessed the central government issue pilot programs in 43 cities across the country. Local officials labelled certain behaviours as acceptable and others as unacceptable. Citizens gained or lost points depending on whether their public and private behaviour conformed to government standards. If someone lost too many points, they would also lose privileges such as loss of Internet, bank loans and plane tickets.
Grumbling about state policy and discussing religion were unacceptable behaviours. “It’s assumed that this system will be mandated for all citizens,” Li said. Some Chinese citizens think the system promotes good behaviour, addressing everything from crime, bad driving, and financial delinquency, but the system doesn’t stop there.
“Chinese authorities have drawn up massive blacklists for those deemed unacceptable,” Li said. According to The Guardian in England, 23 million names are on the blacklist.
A journalist named Liu Hu published articles exposing government corruption and censorship. The system banned him from flying, travelling by train, taking out loans and buying property without any due process. Many people have been sent to re-education camps for unacceptable behaviour.
Leslyn Lewis said concerns expressed in Canada are often dismissed as “conspiracy”. However Li said “Everything we see in China, we are starting to see here in the west.”
He went on to list mandates preventing Canadians from flying within and outside of their country, the freezing of bank accounts, disfavouring businesses like oil companies, and parents being criticized for objecting to what’s being taught in public schools.
Li is speaking as someone who fled from government control, and Leslyn Lewis is speaking as a lawyer with a PhD in International Law.
“The social credit system is the future of the People’s Republic of China,” Li said. “We must be vigilant. We don’t want it to be the future of our countries in the west.”