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Current Chinese governance worries us because it is the first advanced technological civilization to impose full identification on everyone for all acts at any time. Street lamp cameras record every action anyone does, and permanently file the good, the bad, the ugly, the generous, the illegal _ a computer replacement of an omniscient god who never forgets anything.

Meanwhile, tribal profiling does not work anymore. Stores used to be able to ban whole groups of people they did not much like _ blacks, Jews, Italians, Irish, or hippies. Until now there has been more to gain by letting masses of those folks shop than by keeping a few criminals out. 

A modern workaround has been places like Costco and online retailers who can simply refuse membership to anyone who has done something bad to them in the past, a form of profiling. In fact, it is hard to see how these trends do not soon merge, replacing profiling with intimate ID recognition. 

There continue to be those fighting for the dream of privacy. I suspect that is already as vanished as the ancient wild frontier. Most people already accept the benefits of being economically well known _ credit scores _ or socially famous over the internet. It’s not a slippery slope, but a free fall.

Of course, as always, “the honest citizen has nothing to fear.” Believe that and I’ll head over to sell you a bridge.