Controlling the Algorithms

Abstract

Where you have been, what you buy, who you know, how you drive, how your stu-dents rate you. These are just some of the factors on which Chinese authorities wish to base their citizens' credit rating. The objective of the Social Credit System is to cre-ate a national System that collects data from many different sources, both public and commercial, including social media. It is intended to encompass all citizens. In addi-tion to performing a credit rating, the System can also be used by landlords, employ-ers and potential sweethearts to assess what kind of person you are. The higher your score, the more opportunities open up. Ifyou achieve more than 600 points/ you can hire a car without paying a deposit. If you have more than 650 points, you can check out of hotels faster. And if you have more than 700 points, it becomes easier to get a visa to Singapore. The System will be in place by 2020. Access to vast amounts of data taken from social media, smart phones and wearable technology has resulted in a race to capture äs much data on citizens äs possible/ in order to be able to predict their behaviour, wishes and needs. Every dick, like and search gives businesses and government agencies access to data on users that they then feed into their algorithms. Recent years have seen great progress in the field of artificial intelligence. Automated decision-making based on Big Data and machine learning is being applied to an in-creasing number of purposes. We are at a juncture where there is a lot at stake. We must take advantage of this critical moment to point the use of technology in a direc-tion that safeguards the autonomy and integrity ofthe individual. The Social Credit System developed by the Chinese government shows the powerful potential offered by Big Data for monitoring and controlling the population. Technol-ogy no langer sets a limit to the amount of data that can be collected, stored and analysed. The absence of technological or legal restrictions paves the way for Big Da-ta solutions such äs the Social Credit System. Big Data can be put to a wide ränge of uses, including fighting malaria and offering us the films and books we like. Neverthe-* Bj0m Erik Thon has been Commissioner in the Norwegian Data Protection Authority (DPA) since May 2010. Before his appointment, he served äs the Norwegen Consumer Ombudsman for ten years. He has also held several political positions on local and national l'evel for the Social Liberal Party. He has written several books. The last one, The American president's Norwegian daughter, was published in September 2014. Catharina Nes, Specialist Director at the Norwegian DPA. She has worked extehsively with issues related to big data and profiling and has led the work on two reports on these topics: 'Big Data -privacy principles under pressure' (2013) and 'The Great Data Race -how commercial utilisation of data challenges privacy' (2015). Before she joined the DPA in 2008, she worked äs a