Folks, this is getting down to the wire. I am not aware of any silver bullets to forestall or stop 1984 - quite likely Google's spearhead in China shall be transplanted at "an appropriate moment" into 'the West' - forewarned is as close to forearmed perhaps, yet civil disobedience - i.e. conscientious objection - is going to be required big time from the sounds of the following China reality today: Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2018 09:56:14 +1000 (AEST) Subject: China - real life Big Brother ("1984") digital dictatorship http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-18/china-social-credit-a-model-citizen... Naive "good" citizen Dandan says “If, as our government says, every corner of public space is installed with cameras, I’ll feel safe.” OMG! Meanwhile, Liu Hu, who is "an investigative journalist who has uncovered corruption at the top levels of the Party and solved serial murder cases", has "lost his social credit when he was charged with a speech crime and now finds himself locked out of society due to his low score. It’s destroyed his career and isolated him, and he now fears for his family’s future. The social credit system has closed down his travel options and kept him under effective house arrest in his hometown of Chongqing. In an apartment above the streets of Chongqing city, Hu tries to use a phone app to book train tickets to Xi’an. The attempt is rejected. '[The app] says it fails to make a booking and my access to high-speed rail is legally restricted,' he explains. Hu’s social media accounts, where he published much of his investigative journalism, have also been shut down. Hu claims his combined Wechat and Weibo accounts had two million followers at their peak but are now censored." ...and of course the rest of our world is gradually heading the same way.