When you say “China” do you mean the Chinese government? It’s pretty clear the US has pervasive access to us company data, whether via techniques documented by Snowden or the massive rise in classified NSLs.

But in the US it is preferred that such systems be assembled in the private sector and not restricted in a way that government oversight would be.

I was thinking of public FB, Twitter etc activity. But you raise an important point.

FB scans and processes all FB messenger traffic as does Twitter DMs (unlike, say, iMessage or, currently, SMS). They use the info for the usual customization, profiling, and ad sales. I don’t believe they sell the actual data itself but really there’s no reason why not, or why they couldn’t sell scoring info to the big guys.

And now I think of it, FB, Google, and Amazon could easily buy those bureaux (each could buy one) to supercharge the rating system in both directions. It would be like Google’s purchase of doubleclick.

Putting your data on Google/FB/Twitter is still for the most part opt-in and not clearly linked to your real identity. Can't say that about a government enforced Social Credit System.

FB also doesn’t have a prison system or armed forces.

The point is that the US uses the private sector to collect info that they are legally barred from collecting. Then they obtain that info from the private sector, via spying, classified request, or simple purchase.

So for example, private sector info is used by ICE to hunt down undocumented workers and imprison them. The end result is that armed agents put people in (private sector) prisons, no different from other countries in end result.

We don't know what Equifax has. Maybe there's no proof that they have access to Facebook and Gmail and the like, but they may well have it and there's no way to know they don't. These big companies have serious trust issues to overcome and they do comply with the law in countries which DO have social credit systems.