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Numbers Don’t Lie

Jan 25, 2018
by Caroline Miller
credit ratings, credit scores, FICO Score, FISA, hacked companies, Mara Hvistendahl, social credit rating in China
2 Comments

Courtesy of google.com

Recently, I spent an hour dealing with one of the companies that provides credit score histories. I didn’t have a problem.  I was trying to prevent one after the business was hacked.  I’m not clear how these enterprises came into existence, or why they’re allowed to  track my personal information.   In the good old days, before computers, a lender checked my credit worthiness by contacting my landlord or a few neighbors.  Today, algorithms make it easy for just about anyone to follow our electronic trail. But what may be convenient for business isn’t always a boon to the customer.  And if the company is careless with personal data, it can create a nightmare.   

Now days, the moment we get a social security number, we get a FIC0 score, a number that rates us as being trustworthy or untrustworthy consumers. To fall from grace is easy.  Forget to make a mortgage payment and years or months can pass before a person can repair the oversight.  Sometimes, we aren’t aware we’ve fallen from grace until we’ve been turned down for a loan. After that, adding insult to injury, we may have to pay for a report to discover why. 

We’ve grown so used to this level of snooping, most of us have failed to consider where it can lead.  In 2014, China began attaching a “social credit” to the credit score.  That number weighs almost everything a citizen does electronically and can also be affected by the social credit numbers of friends.  (“Are You a Number?” by Mara Hvistendahl, Wired, January 2018, pgs. 048-059.) The Chinese government justifies this Orwellian peeping.  They want to make certain “bad people in society don’t have a place to go, while good people can move freely and without obstruction.” (Ibid pg. 053)  The government decides what’s good or bad and if a score drops low enough, an individual can be barred from buying so much as a bus ticket.  Not kidding. And don’t expect friends to stick with the fallen.  They don’t. They want to protect their scores. Worse, rank low enough and a public shaming is sure to follow.  Call it China’s algorithmic form of crowd control.

Nothing like this could happen in the United States, right?  It’s true, we citizens have grown so comfortable with government surveillance that when Congress  renewed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, (FISA) hardly anyone squawked. (Click)  But, are we ready for Facebook’s judgement?  In 2012, the company “patented a method of credit assessment that could consider the credit scores of people in your social network.”  (Ibid pg. 059.)  Consider that Orwellian prospect the next time you click “accept” when stranger asks to be your friend.

 

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2 Comments
  1. Pamela Langley January 30, 2018 at 1:45 pm Reply
    I once wrote an essay about the grave dangers and invasions of the "bio-political tattoo." It is one of my most fervent concerns.
    • Caroline Miller January 30, 2018 at 3:56 pm Reply
      I uncerstand. And we continue to have every reason to worry. Thanks for worrying with me.

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Contact Caroline at

carolinemiller11@yahoo.com

Portland, Oregon author Caroline Miller had distinguished careers as an educator, union president, elected official and artist/advocate.

Her play, Woman on the Scarlet Beast, was performed at the Post5 Theatre, Portland, OR, January/February 2015

Caroline published a serialized novelette, Marie Eau-Claire, on the website, The Colored Lens.  She also published the story Gustav Pavel,  a parable about ordinary lives, choice and alternate potential, on the website Fixional.co.

Caroline has published four novels

  • Ballet Noir
  • Trompe l’Oeil
  • Gothic Spring
  • Heart Land

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