Move over, Big Brother. The Chinese regime has proposed a new plan to take the surveillance state to the next level: a system that would centralize personal information about citizens into an “all in one” card, logging many of their personal activities and financial information, all held in the tender clutches of the security agencies.
The system would bring together the information about every citizen that is now spread across multiple agencies and databases, linked to their existing national identification number. The data would include name, address, date of birth, also credit score and credit card information, business registrations, and, potentially more sinisterly, flight and train records, hotel bookings, and all other activities that require an identification card.
The Public Security Bureau would be the custodian of all this information.
This plan was proposed by the General Office of the Communist Party’s Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council, two high-level agencies in the Party and state apparatus, according to a Xinhua report on April 13. No timetable for implementation accompanied the report, and it’s not yet clear whether and to what extent it will be fully implemented.
