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Comment by jstanley | Hacker News Reader

> Random NSA people knowing stuff they shouldn't isn't the same as 1984 on machine-learning steroids tracking your every thought.

I'm pretty sure the Chinese government has some sort of "1984 on machine-learning steroids" type stuff as well, so they might not be as different as you think.

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Sorry I haven't written clearly so you've missed what I was saying. I mean that the privacy violations of the US are of a lower order than the industrialised scale of the Chinese, and not just collecting and filtering for terrorist flags but plugging into eg. citizen scores.

You realize that automated credit scores are a thing in the US right? China is taking the concept a step further, but it's not unique to them

US credit scores are subject to many laws, including the length of time that data records can affect scores and processes for disputing data records. Individual businesses have the option of ignoring credit scores, e.g. by charging a premium for high-risk customers, or implementing their own proprietary scoring mechanism tailored to specific markets and risk profiles.

This is a world of difference from opaque centralized scores without due process.

> You realize that automated credit scores are a thing in the US right? China is taking the concept a step further, but it's not unique to them

That's a disingenuous and misleading comparison. Your American credit score isn't going to drop if you criticize the president on twitter, or do investigative journalism that makes a government official look bad.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/chinese-blacklist...

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