China’s Orwellian social credit controls are in full force at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, where a New Jersey woman was removed from a Rockettes show after facial recognition tagged and ID’d her as an employee of a certain law firm.
Security guards “knew my name before I told them,” Kelly Conlon said to NBC New York. “They knew the firm I was associated with before I told them. And they told me I was not allowed to be there.”
“It was pretty simultaneous, I think, to me, going through the metal detector, that I heard over an intercom or loudspeaker,” she continued. “I heard them say woman with long dark hair and a grey scarf.”
Social credit schemes armed with facial recognition work just as instantly as unlocking an iPhone using FaceID.
Conlon was visiting New York City with her young daughter and her Girl Scout troop over Thanksgiving, where they tried to see a show. But the show saw her first. While the Girl Scouts and other moms enjoyed the Rockettes, Conlon had been removed by security.
Her crime? Conlon works for the law firm of Davis, Saperstein and Salomon, which has long been engaged in a personal injury lawsuit against a restaurant owned by the same parent company, MSG Entertainment, that owns Radio City Music Hall.
For our VIPs: The Fed Is Piloting a Chinese-Style Social Credit Score—and Your Bank May Be in on It
“I don’t practice in New York. I’m not an attorney that works on any cases against MSG,” Conlon explained. But none of that mattered once the computers in charge decided she didn’t have enough social credit to attend a show.
One strike and you’re out, even if it isn’t actually a strike.
A spokesperson for MSG wrote in a statement:
MSG instituted a straightforward policy that precludes attorneys pursuing active litigation against the Company from attending events at our venues until that litigation has been resolved. While we understand this policy is disappointing to some, we cannot ignore the fact that litigation creates an inherently adverse environment. All impacted attorneys were notified of the policy, including Davis, Saperstein and Salomon, which was notified twice.
Except that Conlon wasn’t an attorney “pursuing active litigation against the Company.”
Now imagine that Conlon’s firm — but not Conlon herself — had been involved in a similar lawsuit against United Airlines, and the company had installed similar social controls at its boarding gates.
“Sorry, ma’am, you can’t fly with us. It doesn’t matter if you were going home to be with your parents for Christmas.”
I’ve spent years warning that Communist China-style social credit controls were coming to this country. China uses a combination of ever-present facial recognition in public spaces and private snitching to determine whether citizens “deserve” to ride the train, fly a plane, or use other supposedly public accommodations.
Think of it as a digital Stasi. Your neighbor catches you smoking in a non-smoking area, and reports on you with his phone. The state telecom notices you’re spending too much time playing online videogames. Your latest social media post gets too many downvotes. Or maybe someone at work you’re having problems with just makes something up. It could be almost anything, but once your social credit score turns negative, your life can become a living hell, and with no legal recourse. You’ll have to become a conspicuously good little Communist to turn your credit positive again.
“Michelle Malkin,” I wrote in that 2019 column, “revealed last Thursday that she had ‘triggered’ Google’s social credit system. According to a whistleblower, Malkin’s popular michellemalkin.com has been digital-blacklisted by the search & data giant.”
We’ve found workarounds for digital blacklists, like our member-supported VIP content.
But what’s the workaround for getting kicked out of a Rockettes show, or being denied boarding a plane back home for Christmas?
There really isn’t a workaround, and that’s why I’ve been sounding the social credit alarm for years. If you’d like to help PJ Media keep up that fight, please consider becoming one of our growing numbers of VIP supporters while we’re still running our best-ever promotion.
But if not, thanks for taking the time to read this column — and please help spread the word about the digital infrastructure being built to keep us all good little conformist serfs.
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