Jordan Peterson Warns of Surveillance State, Future ‘Secret Police’

Psychologist and author Jordan Peterson has warned members of the U.S. Congress that the collusion of governments with banks, along with emerging technologies like digital identity systems and central bank digital currencies, could turn countries into totalitarian surveillance states.

And that increased surveillance could in turn enable police to become more secretive and furtive in their operations, he said.

The combination of governments and technologies “can and will facilitate the development of a surveillance state, the scope of which optimistic pessimists of totalitarianism such as George Orwell could scarcely imagine,” Mr. Peterson said on Capitol Hill on March 7.

Mr. Peterson made the comments in front of the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Committee chair and Republican Jim Jordan announced in January that the committee had obtained documents showing the U.S. government flagged bank transactions that used terms associated with former President Donald Trump.

Mr. Peterson said around the world there appears to be a collusion between “gigantic, self-interested corporations and paranoid security-obsessed anti-human governments.” He said these two entities are using online data and sophisticated algorithms to develop images, “not only of our actions, but of our thoughts and words, so that deviation from the desired end can be mapped, rewarded, and punished.”

The Canadian psychologist warned that with corporations increasingly able to track the purchasing decisions and online patterns of users, as well as develop algorithms to predict future actions, the information could be used to “track, monitor, and punish everything we do and say.”

Mr. Peterson also raised concerns about the Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) being explored and developed by some countries and about which critics have raised privacy concerns. The Bank of Canada has said it is exploring the possibility of issuing a CBDC, but in an August 2023 report noted there are “significant” barriers to adoption.

China’s Surveillance System

Mr. Peterson brought up China’s social credit system, saying it allows the Chinese Communist Party to have “full control” over the online access of its citizens. The country’s social credit system gives each citizen an electronic score that can be raised or lowered depending on their behaviour. Those with low enough scores can be denied access to jobs, public transportation, and banking.

“This allows you purposefully to be shut out of all activities that can be virtualized, and in a rapidly virtualizing world, this increasingly means all activities: driving, shopping, working, eating, finding shelter, even fraternizing with friends and family,” Mr. Peterson said.

He warned that since many countries in the West had copied China’s strategy of implementing lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, they could also be “walking step by step in the same direction” as that country’s social credit system.

When asked about the possibility of using surveillance and artificial intelligence to increase public safety, Mr. Peterson said privacy often seems to be eliminated to neutralize an “immediate proximal” threat, which he called “a short-term justification for engaging in a tremendous long-term danger.”

‘A Police So Secret’

Mr. Peterson said more efficient surveillance systems will inevitably give the state increased ability to prosecute people, and police will become more covert in their operations.

“With the increasing ability to monitor not only the actual attention patterns and behaviours of citizens, but to predict those that are most likely, the persecution of even potential crime becomes ever more likely,” he said.

“‘If you have nothing to hide, you will have nothing to fear’ will be the slogan commandeered by those most likely to turn to surveillance to protect their control.”

He noted the well-known quote attributed to Lavrenty Beria, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Joseph Stalin: “Show me the man and I'll show you the crime.”

“Those words were true enough in the time of Stalin’s KGB and the police were secret enough then as well, but that’s nothing compared to what we can and likely will produce now—a police so secret that we will not even be able to adapt their comprehensive and subtle activity, monitoring crime so pervasive that everyone under the dictates of the system will have something to hide.”