How Chinese telecom giant helps Chavismo keep tight reign on Venezuelans

[GatoGordo]

How ZTE helps Venezuela create China-style social control

Chinese telecoms giant ZTE is helping Venezuela build a system that monitors citizen behavior through a new identification card. The "fatherland card," already used by the government to track voting, worries many in Venezuela and beyond.
By ANGUS BERWICK in Caracas Filed Nov. 14, 2018, 1 p.m. GMT
(En español)

In April 2008, former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez dispatched Justice Ministry officials to visit counterparts in the Chinese technology hub of Shenzhen. Their mission, according to a member of the Venezuela delegation, was to learn the workings of China’s national identity card program.

Chávez, a decade into his self-styled socialist revolution, wanted help to provide ID credentials to the millions of Venezuelans who still lacked basic documentation needed for tasks like voting or opening a bank account. Once in Shenzhen, though, the Venezuelans realized a card could do far more than just identify the recipient.

There, at the headquarters of Chinese telecom giant ZTE Corp, they learned how China, using smart cards, was developing a system that would help Beijing track social, political and economic behavior. Using vast databases to store information gathered with the card’s use, a government could monitor everything from a citizen’s personal finances to medical history and voting activity.

“What we saw in China changed everything,” said the member of the Venezuelan delegation, technical advisor Anthony Daquin. His initial amazement, he said, gradually turned to fear that such a system could lead to abuses of privacy by Venezuela’s government. “They were looking to have citizen control.”

The following year, when he raised concerns with Venezuelan officials, Daquin told Reuters, he was detained, beaten and extorted by intelligence agents. They knocked several teeth out with a handgun and accused him of treasonous behavior, Daquin said, prompting him to flee the country. Government spokespeople had no comment on Daquin’s account.

The project languished. But 10 years after the Shenzhen trip, Venezuela is rolling out a new, smart-card ID known as the “carnet de la patria,” or “fatherland card.” The ID transmits data about cardholders to computer servers. The card is increasingly linked by the government to subsidized food, health and other social programs most Venezuelans rely on to survive.

-snip-

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/venezuela-zte/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=twitter

1) Family information;

2) Employment and income;

3) Property owned;

4) Medical history;

5) State benefits received;

6) Presence on social media;

7) Membership of a political party; (PSUV)

8) Participation in Socialist Party events;

9) Whether/when/where you have voted.

"Hey Pedro... I know you want some pork for the holidays. But I can't sell it to you at the "subsidized price" unless you have a Carnet. The Carnet is needed to make sure all these 'free things' go to people who need them."

"Hey Lupe... I know your mom needs medicine. We have the medicine, but we also know that you haven't been going to our big rallies lately. We are giving those medicines to 'good Chavistas'. You go find your own."

[DetlefK]

1. Google "Ali Baba" and "social credit" if you want to know how this system works in practice.

Your whole life runs via your electronic card. Your full ID, how much money you spend on what, what reservations you make for what, what donations you make for what, what car you own, when and how much you paid for car-repair...

They know what you do at all times.

And if you exhibit a behavior that they don't like, they punish you by ruining your life and your career.

For example, the journalist Liu hu is banned from flying, banned from buying real estate, and his children are banned from attending private schools. Because he reported about a corrupt mayor.
http://www.wdbj7.com/content/news/Chinas-behavior-monitoring-system-bars-some-from-travel-purchasing-property-480688761.html



Who punishes you and why?

That's the beauty of the system: Nobody knows what exactly constitutes punishable behavior and there is no oversight of the people in charge of punishing people.

The result is a perfect dystopia of self-censorship and complacent subjects.