MasterCard, Microsoft Developing a “Digital Identity” System to Run Your Life

Amid controversy over the Chinese “social credit score” system, MasterCard and Microsoft are developing a “universally-recognized digital identity.”

The plan, which Fast Company’s Cale Guthrie Weissman criticized as “frightening,” revolves around creating a “digital identity” people will use when they drive, apply for a job, rent a home or board a plane, according to a recent tweet by MasterCard News.

“What this announcement seems to be describing is a streamlined identification system: a not-too-far-off world where people are identified under a universal protocol that checks in on them at various points during their lives–when they vote, when they get married, etc.,” reported Weissman. “It’s the kind of a citizen-check system a totalitarian regime could only dream of.”

The announcement met with backlash on Twitter, with Weissman and other critics comparing the program’s “universal protocol” aspect in particular to the “social credit score” system being implemented in China in which every citizen is assigned a “score,” based on their obedience, which determines whether they can travel or buy essential goods.

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