The Verifiers (The Verifiers #1)

by Jane Pek

Each person is assigned a score that rises if they behave like a good citizen in the eyes of the government, such as performing community service, and falls if they don’t, which constitutes anything from criticizing the Communist Party to misappropriating a handicapped seat on the train. If your score is high, you get treated well, including being eligible for additional government benefits. If your score is low, life becomes pretty crappy. According to Michael, the Western media has been primarily outraged by the extent of ongoing surveillance that the Chinese population is subject to, the system’s lack of transparency, the notion of a government policing its people’s lives. But that’s just phase one. By collecting all this data on its citizens’ prior acts, the Chinese government hopes to eventually build algorithms that can predict their future behavior. Rather than punishing someone for what they have done, the ideal would be for the initial infraction never to occur at all.