- We all know that
happiness in the world is based on one thing: your looks on a scale from one to 10. But now, one country is messing with a perfectly good system. China. The Chinese government does like the idea of scoring people, but instead of looks, like god intended, their score is based on everything you do. It's called your social credit score. But how do you keep constant tabs on a country with over a billion people? Technology has the answer! China's innovated a way of tracking people by using facial recognition technology. I keep trying to do more research but I type in facial and then
I get wildly sidetracked. Yes, facial recognition. Chinese officials want to use cameras and software to score
everyone's every move. They say it can track your behavior and even read your mood. Here in Hong Kong, people have been pushing back against the
government a lot lately. Paul Haswell is a technology lawyer here, and we met on a park
bench down by the docks in full view of government cameras. Oh, my opium's here! I know there is cameras everywhere. There's one there, there, there. There's about a million over there. Talk about what's happening in China with the social credit score. - By 2020, they're rolling out a system where every single citizen in China will have a score, a social credit score. - So it's like your Uber number but for everything. - Yeah, judging how good you are as a person. Whether you got drunk in public, you've jumped in a queue, taken someone's chair on the train, it's that sort of thing. - But once you get a one-star rating, you can never get it back. - That's it, you're stuck. - I think where I'm having a problem here is that people are in trouble for things that aren't illegal. - Yeah, being a little bit naughty. - Right. - And then your score
goes down low enough, you can't get a plane ticket, your kids can't go to the school you want them to go to. You might not be able to get a job if your score's too low. - Is that the whole public so, before I go on a date with a girl could I check out if she's a good person and vice versa. - Yes, people will post
them on dating apps, this is how trustworthy
I am so please date me. - But women like a bad
boy, they'd be like ooh, he's probably been up to no good. He's probably kicked a
pregnant, disabled woman out of her seat on a bus. Is there a danger that
you could be targeted by a person and given a bad score? And like if this person is reporting you again and again and again. - They frame you for something. It's like there was an
episode of Black Mirror where people were being scored. It's like someone saw that and thought, this is a great idea. - And who decides what
are banned activities? I've been drunk in public yesterday. - Ultimately it will
be whichever government agency is in charge it will decide what's good, and what's bad. - Sending a dick pic? - Probably bad. - Yeah probably bad. - What if you got a real
nice looking dick though? - Still, probably bad. - Probably bad. - The governments can
only do this creepy stuff because a bunch of tech geeks invented it. I wanted to meet them but
of course it's a hassle just to walk in their front door. (door buzzer) What? This is bullshit. I'm at a company called Alcon. They're inventing potentially world- changing technology in this shitty industrial building on Kin Fat Street. Thank you for letting
me into your evil lair. It's not quite as sinister
as I thought it would be. Turns out getting in the door can be easy, if you submit to being
added to their database. - Does it know that I'm hungover? - What did the audio say? So I can come into this
place now because it recognizes that it's me. How accurate is this technology? - At the moment it's almost 95% accurate. - 95%, sounds pretty good. But doesn't that mean
that out of every 100 people, 5 people could get misidentified. So out of a billion
people that's potentially 50 million people who
could be, as Confucius say, f**ked! Like what if I had an evil twin, could they murder someone, I'd get blamed? - You can't rule out that possibility. - What about like plastic surgery, will that affect their facial recognition. - It won't match. - So it wouldn't have been able to tell a young Michael Jackson and an old Michael Jackson. - That would be like two different faces. - Scary stuff! But who should really be worried about this technology? Probably protestors. So I met up with two people who have a history of doing just that. Tao, a documentary filmmaker, and Ricky, a social activist and passable Asian John Lennon impersonator. - What made you become an activist? - I mean, personally, I
don't want to be a slave. - Right. - And by 2020, there
will be four billion CCTV camera installed in every corner of China. - Four billion? - Big Brother is watching you. - Yes There's two cameras up there, two up there. Camera. China is tightening its grip on Hong Kong. And all summer, regular citizens have launched massive protests. What started as a fight
against the Chinese extradition law has
exploded into a broader backlash against the government. And how many people attended this protest? - More than a million
people, young people. - It probably f**ked traffic up, right? All right, so, this is where
the protest was here, right? - [Tao] Yeah. - [Ricky] On the road. - [Jim] This bridge and the area around it was packed with people. But just imagine what a
protest will look like in a few years. When there are so many cameras it's impossible to dodge them. The Chinese government
could use facial recognition to scan the entire crowd in real time. That's not gonna be good for your score. But unfortunately, just like lots of tech companies in the U.S., the people creating the technology don't seem super concerned about how it might be used. If people are protesting the government, couldn't they just put
a camera on everyone and immediately put
them on their databases? - It's difficult to answer. Technically it's probably
not a problem to do. It can be done. - What's the worst thing that
could happen with all this? - Have you read the book "1984?" George Orwell. - I've seen the Apple commercial. - Okay, that, that is the worst thing that can happen. And this isn't just applying to China, this is everywhere. If you have a technology
that monitors people 24/7, but also then rates them and controls what they can do based on that monitoring, then you can end up in a dystopia. It's like the science
fiction writer's dream. - And he's right, it's not just China. Facial recognition has
already made it to America. Amazon, despite concerns about accuracy, sells facial recognition
software to police departments. It's in offices, airports, at concerts, and lots of times we don't
even know it's there. Should Americans be
paying attention to what's happening here? - Yes, there is very much a
mentality with any technology, that, well, that's interesting
what's happening there, thank goodness I'm not there. And then it sneaks up on you. In China, if you speak out
against the government, your score will go down. You can see that being
exported to other countries, even the U.S. could start to go that way. I'm sure Trump would like to have a system where nobody can criticize him. - Right. All right, but luckily, we're not China. I'm sure we have laws to
regulate all this stuff. - In the U.S. it's largely unregulated. - F**k! Well can we write some rules already? And tech companies,
just know, you'll never be able to guess how I really feel inside. What does your algorithm
say just from my face? - Oh, you look very angry. - Have you ever heard the
term "resting bitch face?" - [Woman] Resting bitch face. (laughs)
