There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. -1984, George Orwell
Last summer I had a conversation with an acquaintance who had recently visited China. There was discussion about China's Social Credit System (SCS) and its impact on people's daily lives. The Social Credit System is a system that assigns scores to citizens based on their reputation, and that score can impact someone's ability to be outside in the evening, their eligibility to book a travel ticket or their suitability for a loan. It's similar to a Credit Score that North Americans are more familiar with but more encompassing as the SCS takes non-financial data into account. My acquaintance said that the initial feedback was positive - her friends and family felt safer walking the streets at night knowing that people deemed dangerous wouldn't be allowed outside.