The current White House appears to have elevated the protection of the concept of “social credit score” – a method of controlling citizens’ behavior championed by China – to a US national security issue.
Namely – a letter originating from the Treasury states that a US state law that aims to prevent the introduction of a social credit score system represents a national security threat.
The local press in Florida revealed the letter, sent by Treasury Department’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson to California Congressman Brad Sherman, a Democrat, referring to Florida’s House Bill 989, which became law this year.
The Florida law, among its other provisions, aims to give recourse to customers of financial institutions who believe they are unfairly targeted by those institutions.
Nelson’s letter notes that the law considers a financial institution deciding which customer to serve on any factor other than those that are quantitative and standard – an unsafe practice. And, banks are not allowed to discriminate against clients based on their affiliations or business sector, the US government official notes.
As far as Nelson is concerned, this means Florida is restricting banks – and that this may be taken as “undermin(ing) efforts to promote national security.”
Of course, Nelson would not say that the banks are essentially prevented from engaging in the “woke de-banking” phenomena, as a form of pressure and punishment of political opponents.
Instead, the letter asserts that the law, and some other of the state’s legislative efforts, could be making “anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) and sanctions compliance programs” less effective.
Florida Governor DeSantis’ office wants to make sure he understands the big picture correctly.
“So let me get this straight: Duly enacted legislation to curtail the ESG agenda is a ‘national security threat’, but the current US Secret Service leadership is not?,” a spokeswoman for DeSantis said, the reference to the Secret Service having to do with the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
The mention of ESG, meanwhile, has more to do with the Treasury official’s letter and trying to frame the Florida law as a “national security” issue. The ESG initials stand for “environmental and social impact and governance” – and provide “performance metrics” that assess how an organization is doing when it comes to meeting “sustainability goals.”
That’s a lot of words to describe the essence of one of the mechanisms behind what’s known as a “social credit score” system.
