February

The People's Republic of China is making progress in implementing its mandatory "social credit system", and is advising multinational businesses in China to be aware of it.

The social credit system is a national credit score for each citizen and business, and is one that reflects more than just creditworthiness. While the system is voluntary during an initial pilot stage, and run by nominally private entities, the Chinese government has indicated that by 2020 it will have established fundamental laws, regulations and standard systems for social credit and will give complete rein to mechanisms to encourage compliance. Media sources have indicated that the government will at that point officially control the system, which will then be mandatory.

Local governments are also presently working to set up their own social credit systems. Information collected in the systems of local governments, government agencies, and private entities will eventually be funnelled into a national database.

In June, the State Council of China published a document that introduced the idea of implementing a national trust score that would rate its citizens.

This Social Credit System would rate the trustworthiness of its 1.3 billion citizens and is intended to build a culture of sincerity. This system, which will become mandatory by 2020, has been compared to, "Yelp reviews with the nanny state watching over your shoulder." Big players in the plan include China Rapid Finance, a partner of the social-network Tencent and developer of WeChat, Sesame Credit, which is run by insurance and loan company Ant Financial Services Group. This group also owns AliPay, a payment system used for buying online and paying for things like taxes, school fees and retail stores.

The resulting repercussions of the system's findings are simple: If trust is broken in one place, restrictions are imposed on everything, from slower internet speeds, to restricted access to restaurants and nightclubs.

With no dedicated law governing pre-emptive screening (Pre-employment screening) in India, employers must rely on general laws to be sure they are making the right selection for a job selection.

The country's biggest problem with pre-emptive screening is the possible non-compliance with privacy norms. Until recently, employers have not faced any legal repercussions regarding pre-emptive screening, but India is slowly maturing to an advanced regime in privacy laws. A nine-judge bench of the Honourable Supreme Court (SC) recently was constituted to consider whether privacy is a fundamental right, delivering a unanimous verdict that the right to privacy is protected as an "intrinsic part of the right to life and personal liberty".