Is China's social credit system coming to Australia?

Haikou, capital of the Chinese island province of

a

Hainan. Links established through sister-city relationships are commonly understood to be a springboard to wider networks of co-operative arrangements. Such connections may provide opportunities for cultural exchange, but also for technological exchange.

Recently there have been reports on how smart city plans in Darwin draw inspiration from the Chinese social credit surveillance system.

The potential of the system for gathering data on citizens' use of public services, such as Wi-Fi, has been noted. The potential to enhance council profitability through sale of user data to the private sector is significant. More so is the potential for this system to track citizen movements in real time.

Dot 2. The 2019 Northern Territory government budget earmarks A$1.4 million for expanding the local CCTV network as part of "Investing in a Safer Territory". This figure might yet be supplemented by "proceeds of crime" funds, making the investment much larger.

That's enough money to roll out biometric facial recognition software, which can link your face from a live CCTV image to your driver licence or passport, as well as "triggerfish" apps that can access, for example, identifying data on your smartphone remotely without your knowledge. All of these systems can be automated.

Dot 3. The Encryption Act, rushed through federal parliament in December 2018, gave law enforcement and intelligence agencies unprecedented access to communications technology. Telecommunications providers must now provide potentially unlimited back doors into private data. They must also, by law, conceal that they have done so from customers/citizens.

https://phys.org/news/2019-05-china-social-credit-australia.html