- 05/03/2018
- Category: Commentaries
Imagine a future where your citizenship is “gamified”; being an abiding subject grants you benefits, and being a non-compliant one rewards you with punishments. However far-fetched, this is not science fiction—this governance model has already been experimented in China, and possibly in many other countries soon. This is made possible by the data revolution we have today, where the exponential growth of our data enables state-wide behavioral engineering programs. Nonetheless, no matter how well-meaning this “big governance” is planned in the first place, it will pose several ethical dilemmas about the state and its power over us. This article seeks to explain what “big governance” is, and discuss these ethical dilemmas in short. These discussions will be necessary for us to rethink: what does it mean to be a citizen in the digital age?
Let us begin with “big governance”—what is it, how it is built, and why we are using it. As explained before, the ubiquity of data today necessitates a new form of data management, called simply as big data analytics. The International Data Corporation predicted that all the data we produce will double by size biannually and reach 44 trillion gigabytes in 2020.[i] This model of data analytics harnesses the “3Vs” characteristics of big data – Volume, Velocity, and Variety – and enables new insights to be made from massive amounts of unstructured data.[ii] The data we produce every day, through our interaction with electronic devices for example, can be translated into valuable information through big data analytics. Naturally, it’s in the interests of governments to utilize big data analytics to better govern its citizens. Research in this direction has produced several data-powered policy platforms, such as HealthMap, a global platform predicting public health trends and disease outbreaks; PredPol, a predictive policing software analyzing crime data to help law enforcement agencies; and Billion Prices Project, a digital platform aggregating global price data to predict inflation in real-time.[iii] Another similar but far more ambitious program have arisen in China that aims to tackle the problem of state-wide social compliance enforcement. This program is called the Social Credit System.
The story of China’s Social Credit System, or SCS in short, had begun since the State Council of China published its policy plans in 2014, titled “Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System”.[iv] While the full scale of SCS had only been planned to be implemented in 2020, the State Council seems to be taking this data governance approach seriously, as evidenced by their previous digital credit experiments, such as those developed by China Rapid Finance and Sesame Credit (all partners/subsidiary of China’s tech giants with close links to the government, Tencent and Alibaba). These experiments are easily distinguished by their micro-level analysis of citizen data—for example, the two examples mentioned also measure each person’s behavior or preference, and their network of interpersonal relationships. The SCS however, is determined to be the most comprehensive social credit system in China’s history, as it monitors not only behavior and relationship data, but also each individual’s location in any given time, online activity data, to public facility payment patterns.[v] These massive datasets are crunched to produce a single number: the Citizen Score. These scores will be publicly ranked to determine individual rights to access public goods, i.e. jobs, mortgages, education, etc.[vi] Additionally, someone may change their own score by doing deeds: a person doing social work would be earning bonus points; and vice versa, another person caught cheating online or jaywalking would face point reductions.[vii]
While until now the SCS system has only been experimented in several of China’s provinces, this project—which is planned to become a state-wide system in its final form—will be the government’s entry point to control all citizens, through what is known as “nudging”—defined as giving hidden incentives to shape the behavior of individuals. These incentives may manifest in the form of rewards or punishments. Individuals with high enough ratings are entitled to faster administration process and VIP facilities; and conversely, those in the low ranges will have to cope with restricted mobility and opportunities, or limited access to public facilities.[viii] Interestingly, this system also plans to include naming-and-shaming mechanisms as another punishment to reinforce compliance. Someone blacklisted for political corruption or criticizing their government will have their identities exposed at designated public TV screens, or their dial tones personalized to remind the caller of their social faux pas. Even something as simple as having close relationships with those on the list may harm someone’s rating, thus enforcing social exclusion.[ix]
While undoubtedly ingenious in design, the SCS system is immensely problematic from an ethical standpoint. Not only does it rely on a systematic breach of personal data to function, but the privilege of information inherent in the system’s design may also lead to more imbalance in China’s already unequal society. Boyd and Crawford discussed this problem by delineating data-aware societies into three classes based on access to information: those creating, collecting, and analyzing data. While those analyzing data hold the highest privilege due to their data-access rights and the power to process them, the two classes underneath may not be able to access the information crucial to their livelihood.[x] In China’s case, this may be complicated by its non-democratic governance, where those in power do not hold the obligation of accountability to their subjects. This adds a whole another level to China’s chronic problem of government control, where every possible instrument of power is exploited to surveil and repress potential dissent. Seeing that other countries had begun to take similar big data governance path, it would be wise to ask ourselves big questions—those such as, is it ethical to gamify social obedience? And ultimately, is there a limit to technology being implemented in our life—and if so, where do we draw the line?
Editors: Diah Ratna Pratiwi, M.Dev & Nabeel Khawarizmy Muna, S.IP
Picture: pexels
[i] Emc.com. (2018). Executive Summary: Data Growth, Business Opportunities, and the IT Imperatives. [online] Available at: https://www.emc.com/leadership/digital-universe/2014iview/executive-summary.htm [Accessed 13 Feb. 2018].
[ii] De Mauro, A., Greco, M. and Grimaldi, M. (2016). A formal definition of Big Data based on its essential features. Library Review, 65(3), pp.122-135.
[iii] World Bank (2017). Big Data in Action for Government. Big Data Innovation in Public Services, Policy, and Engagement. [online] Washington, DC: World Bank Group. Available at: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/26391/114011-BRI-3-4-2017-11-49-44-WGSBigDataGovernmentFinal.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y [Accessed 14 Feb. 2018].
[iv] Botsman, R. (2017). Big data meets Big Brother as China moves to rate its citizens. [online] Wired.co.uk. Available at: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-credit-score-privacy-invasion [Accessed 14 Feb. 2018].
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] Ibid.
[viii] Jing Zeng, M. (2018). China’s Social Credit System puts its people under pressure to be model citizens. [online] Theconversation.com. Available at: https://theconversation.com/chinas-social-credit-system-puts-its-people-under-pressure-to-be-model-citizens-89963 [Accessed 14 Feb. 2018].
[ix] Ibid.
[x] boyd, d. and Crawford, K. (2012). Critical Questions for Big Data. Information, Communication, & Society, 15(5), pp.662-679.
