First Social Credit System in Europe: Rewards for Exemplary Citizens?

Amidst a lot of controversy and hassles, a city in Italy is going to implement a social credit system that will be implemented through an app. This is going to be deployed in the city of Bologna. The move was announced by Councillor Massimo Bugani and Mayor of Bologna Matteo Lepore. The usage of social ...

Armin Auctor

A building flying the Italian and EU flags.

China’s Social Credit System Rears Its Ugly Head

What happens when you suffer from the actions committed by someone else in China’s Social Credit System? Even if the other is a family member, it doesn’t sound fair, and the normal preference is to hold oneself accountable for his or her actions. This is difficult, as shown in the story below, when government surveillance ...

Armin Auctor

A university classroom.

CCP Tracking Private Messages on Chinese Social Media

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been using an online surveillance program to track private messages of users on apps like WeChat and QQ, a data leak shows. The leak was discovered by Victor Gevers, a security researcher who works for the non-profit GDI foundation that campaigns for a free Internet. Tracking social networks Gevers ...

Armin Auctor

CCP's Message Tracking

How China Exports Social Control Tech to Venezuela

Venezuela has adopted China’s Social Credit System, which is an example of what happens when an authoritarian government gets tech savvy. The system basically puts the entire billion-plus population of China under government control, with officials determining which citizens should be given loans, train passes, special privileges, and so on. Citizens who have negative scores ...

Nspirement Staff

Woman holding mobile phone.

Millions Blocked From Travel Due to China’s Social Credit Surveillance

Over 9 million Chinese citizens have been blocked from buying flight tickets due to their low Social Credit Rating, a system that measures a citizen’s “trustworthiness.” Three million people were also barred from buying business-class train tickets. The Chinese Communist Party plans on fully implementing the system in Beijing starting in 2020. Banning travel to ...

Nspirement Staff

A China Airlines jet.

China Installs Facial Recognition in Religious Institutions

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is extending surveillance technologies like facial recognition in China, with religious places being seen as a critical area to be brought under monitoring. Authorities in Jiangxi Province recently instructed all state-run places of worship to be equipped with facial recognition cameras and allocated 1 million RMB (approx. US$151,253) towards the ...

Nspirement Staff

People stop to have their faces scanned before entering a place of worship in China.

How the Chinese Communist Party Infiltrates Universities in Australia

Australian universities earn billions of dollars from thousands of Chinese students that flock to the country every year. However, there is now a fear among many Australians that such an arrangement may be compromising their academic independence as well as national security. ABC’s Four Corners program recently exposed the seriousness of the matter. The exposé Alex Joske, ...

Max Lu

A pro-Beijing student group.

Your Soul for Data: Fair Trade?

In an increasingly data-driven world, are we just walking data sources for the benefit of giant multinational corporations? Every single minute, there are 3.8 million search queries on Google, 4.5 million videos watched on YouTube, almost $1 million spent online, and 41.6 million messages sent via WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger — and these are a ...

Troy Oakes

Hands pressed against a data screen.

Why Using Chinese Smartphones Is Cause for Concern

Of late, there have been growing worries globally that China might be trying to infiltrate other nations’ security and communication systems by flooding markets with its tech products. Samantha Hoffman, an analyst of Chinese security issues at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), believes that Chinese smartphones are a big security threat to the world. ...

Armin Auctor

A smartphone on a map of the world.