In recent years, some Americans have monitored China’s implementation of a “social credit” system with unease. “Under the system, both financial behaviors like ‘frivolous spending’ and bad behaviors like lighting up in smoke-free zones can result in stiff consequences,” Nadra Nittle wrote at Vox last year. “Penalties include loss of employment and educational opportunities, as well as transportation restrictions.”
Any country implementing such a system is unsettling in its own right. But could something like that be established in the United States?
In an editorial in The Wall Street Journal, academic and onetime Donald Trump campaign advisor F.H. Buckley makes the case that it could. His argument is a wide-ranging one, riffing on everything from cancel culture to Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. But his conclusion is a worrying one, regardless of ideology:
The District of Columbia has 540 surveillance cameras on its street corners to catch drivers who run red lights. The U.K. has at least four million such cameras, 500,000 in London alone. I used to think libertarians were paranoid to worry about this. Now I’m not so sure.
And certain recent events have borne out concerns about surveillance prying into unexpected corners of everyday life. Consider the recent case of Ismail Ajjawi, who arrived in the United States to begin studying at Harvard only to be turned away by a Customs and Border Patrol agent who took umbrage with some of Ajjawi’s friends’ social media posts. Not anything Ajjawi had posted himself, mind you.
The number of ways people can be surveilled has increased dramatically in recent decades — and to think that this technology won’t be abused in some way is a luxury many do not have.
Editor’s Note: RealClearLife, a news and lifestyle publisher, is now a part of InsideHook. Together, we’ll be covering current events, pop culture, sports, travel, health and the world. Subscribe here for our free daily newsletter.
Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.
