In America, surveillance has always played an outsized role in the relationship between creditors and debtors.
Because these credit agencies operate in the dark, they are allowed to be terribly unfair and unaccountable.
If you're in poverty and all you have is a debit card or a prepaid card or you pay in cash, it does not report to a credit bureau. If it doesn't report to a credit bureau, it cannot create a credit score for yourself.
There is no class of people in the world, who have such good memories as creditors.
The broken consumer credit market had to be repaired by making sure that consumers had the right information and could use it effectively. That meant consolidating the bloated patchwork of ineffective agencies and regulations so that a single agency could act as a voice for consumers.
The credit reporting system suffers from inaccuracy and often from outright injustice.
Because the American credit reporting system relies on both good and bad reports of creditworthiness, a consumer must have some kind of credit - not just the absence of bad credit.
Children and other Americans with limited or non-existent credit histories are particularly vulnerable to having the SSNs misused for synthetic identities.
