Covid-19, food for Big Brother
This is not a good time for individual freedom, privacy, and even less so for those who fight for a radically more just, free, egalitarian and peaceful world.
It is a proven fact that Covid-19 will show its pernicious effects well beyond the official period of the official declaration of the pandemic. We are seeing it day by day. Either as a direct consequence of the economic slowdown derived from the confinements; already by the opportunism of capital, which intends to use this impasse to accelerate readjustments taking advantage of the state of social shock; Already due to the eternal interest of the state powers in controlling citizens, everything indicates that many processes that had begun before the crisis are going to be catalyzed.
The picture presented is not very rosy. It is true that the pandemic has stripped capitalism again, that more and more people know that the famous hand of the market, if it is invisible, is simply because it does not exist, and that those from below, in times of difficulty, can only trust states and our own class or personal networks. Only the people save the people. But another thing is how this forced awareness is going to be managed and how the political forces that supposedly represent us, are going to react to the received reality bath. Losing de facto sovereignty and capacities to act on public health issues, at a time when you see how tens of thousands of citizens die without receiving adequate medical treatment, must be tough, but also clarifying for any government. This is only arranged with more state, with more public investment and with a greater redistribution of wealth. But its effective implementation will only be possible if citizen mobilization demands on the streets to rebuild a public health and welfare state destroyed after years and years of cuts and loss of rights. Otherwise, our leaders will soon forget about it and return to short-sighted and alienating short-termism.
This is not a good time for individual freedom, privacy, and even less so for those who fight for a radically more just, free, egalitarian and peaceful world.
It is a proven fact that Covid-19 will show its pernicious effects well beyond the official period of the official declaration of the pandemic. We are seeing it day by day. Either as a direct consequence of the economic slowdown derived from the confinements; already by the opportunism of capital, which intends to use this impasse to accelerate readjustments taking advantage of the state of social shock; Already due to the eternal interest of the state powers in controlling citizens, everything indicates that many processes that had begun before the crisis are going to be catalyzed.
The picture presented is not very rosy. It is true that the pandemic has stripped capitalism again, that more and more people know that the famous hand of the market, if it is invisible, is simply because it does not exist, and that those from below, in times of difficulty, can only trust states and our own class or personal networks. Only the people save the people. But another thing is how this forced awareness is going to be managed and how the political forces that supposedly represent us, are going to react to the received reality bath. Losing de facto sovereignty and capacities to act on public health issues, at a time when you see how tens of thousands of citizens die without receiving adequate medical treatment, must be tough, but also clarifying for any government. This is only arranged with more state, with more public investment and with a greater redistribution of wealth. But its effective implementation will only be possible if citizen mobilization demands on the streets to rebuild a public health and welfare state destroyed after years and years of cuts and loss of rights. Otherwise, our leaders will soon forget about it and return to short-sighted and alienating short-termism.
SMART CITY MOBILE SURVEILLANCE
But I want to focus here only on aspects related to social control and those derived from the generalization of the use of those popularly known as new technologies. During the crisis, the technological dependence of our societies has increased enormously. Advances in information technology can serve to democratize access to knowledge, to facilitate human contact, to have access to any product or service from almost anywhere in the world, to work, for leisure, to get informed or to inform… but also for infinity of topics related to the effective loss of individual rights, with citizen espionage, manipulation, the elimination of privacy, the elimination of dissent and, ultimately, the curtailment of liberties. For the record, I'm not seduced by cyberpunk aesthetic dystopias outside the cinema. I am actually a technophile who firmly believes that science and technology, used with wisdom and the right direction, can improve the lives of people, of all people, and their relationship with each other and with the environment. Although the truth is that I do not have too much confidence in those who govern the designs of the world and what they intend to do with the possibilities that technology puts at their service.
The use of coins and bills has always been associated with something truly dirty. Since the emergence of Covid-19 in our lives, there have been many articles and recommendations to dispense with the use of physical currency and exchange it for plastic money, for virtual money. Overall, what difference does it make? Money has long since ceased to have any physical reference to be little more than a political convention with more military than economic references. I do not doubt the comfort of not having to go to banks to refuel the vile metal stocks, of not having to plan to take money to go anywhere, but leaving a digital trace of any payment you make is very dangerous. Any government, company or any clever hacker could have the catalog of preferences, hobbies, tastes ... available to everyone in a community. It would be the dream of advertising companies like the evil Google, but also that of unscrupulous politicians with despotic desires or that of the sewers and intelligence services of the states. The freedom to choose how to make an economic transaction must continue to exist as a right. Obviously, it will be increasingly difficult, given the prevailing social and economic trends, but it should not stop being a personal choice. Whoever does not want to continue feeding - even more - Big Brother, should be able to maintain that option.
The use of coins and bills has always been associated with something truly dirty. Since the emergence of Covid-19 in our lives, there have been many articles and recommendations to dispense with the use of physical currency and exchange it for plastic money, for virtual money. Overall, what difference does it make? Money has long since ceased to have any physical reference to be little more than a political convention with more military than economic references. I do not doubt the comfort of not having to go to banks to refuel the vile metal stocks, of not having to plan to take money to go anywhere, but leaving a digital trace of any payment you make is very dangerous. Any government, company or any clever hacker could have the catalog of preferences, hobbies, tastes ... available to everyone in a community. It would be the dream of advertising companies like the evil Google, but also that of unscrupulous politicians with despotic desires or that of the sewers and intelligence services of the states. The freedom to choose how to make an economic transaction must continue to exist as a right. Obviously, it will be increasingly difficult, given the prevailing social and economic trends, but it should not stop being a personal choice. Whoever does not want to continue feeding - even more - Big Brother, should be able to maintain that option.
Closely related to monetary control is the data obtained from smartphones and watches. Among other things, because these devices have become payment instruments by carrying the same information and the same chips as the credit cards that we still carry in our wallets - perhaps for a short time. But today's phones are much more than that, in fact they are tens of thousands of times more powerful than, for example, the computer that took the first manned mission to the Moon. The most important of all, for the purposes that interest us, are the positioning systems that work from the operating systems themselves. Any mobile can be positioned using the North American GPS (Global Positioning System), the Russian GLONASS (Global’naya Navigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya System) and the telephone antennas simultaneously. In short, the system will include locating modes in indoor environments (large areas, hospitals, airports, museums ...) so that there is no place out of the reach of its sensors.
Will Mobile Phones Soon Replace Credit Cards?
Geo-positioning is activated by default on mobiles, although it can be removed with a few clicks. However, it is used, for example, to locate traffic jams in navigation and other similar apps that work by joining the fingerprints of hundreds or thousands of users collaboratively. If a high number of users on an expressway is going at an abnormally low speed, the system detects that there is a problem and alerts other drivers to use caution or to choose a faster route. Interesting right? That is the nice part of the matter.
Telephone companies have the millions of data generated by their users. For some time, they have set up specialized departments to exploit these enormous databases to carry out studies of all kinds. Some very typical are the tourist ones. With the collaboration of the telephones, we can know how many people visit a region, a town or a specific monument, where they are from, in which means of transport they arrived, where they have slept, where they went later, their academic level, where they ate and, if in The study was joined by a credit card company, how much they spent and on what. The precision is brutal if we compare the samples used in Big Data studies compared to, for example, the usual demoscopic studies that have statistics of a few thousand people surveyed. If we use a telephone of the majority companies, we will easily have millions of data with which to plan advertising, infrastructure renovation or investment priority actions.
What is the negative side of Big Data management? Well, something very similar to what we talked about in the previous case. In principle, companies generate anonymised data, with the identity erased, to understand us; but from there to be able to get absolutely all the information that is needed with name and surnames by fraudulent means there is a very easy step to take. Our recent history is full of highly illustrative examples of espionage by the intelligence services of the states themselves. Much easier will be now that they are in the hands of private companies.
To top it off, we have been told that the ubiquitous telephones are the best help to control the spread of a virus and that part of the secret of the success of the fight against the covid-19 pandemic in Asian countries has fallen on the broad use of Big Data to locate infected people and their contacts or detect who has broken mandatory confinement. Supposedly the data is anonymous or will be in the hands of authorities, but if it is crossed with other information in small areas it is easy to reliably specify a specific identity. The coronapps have brought to light not a few infidelities in the places where they have been implemented ...
Telephone companies have the millions of data generated by their users. For some time, they have set up specialized departments to exploit these enormous databases to carry out studies of all kinds. Some very typical are the tourist ones. With the collaboration of the telephones, we can know how many people visit a region, a town or a specific monument, where they are from, in which means of transport they arrived, where they have slept, where they went later, their academic level, where they ate and, if in The study was joined by a credit card company, how much they spent and on what. The precision is brutal if we compare the samples used in Big Data studies compared to, for example, the usual demoscopic studies that have statistics of a few thousand people surveyed. If we use a telephone of the majority companies, we will easily have millions of data with which to plan advertising, infrastructure renovation or investment priority actions.
What is the negative side of Big Data management? Well, something very similar to what we talked about in the previous case. In principle, companies generate anonymised data, with the identity erased, to understand us; but from there to be able to get absolutely all the information that is needed with name and surnames by fraudulent means there is a very easy step to take. Our recent history is full of highly illustrative examples of espionage by the intelligence services of the states themselves. Much easier will be now that they are in the hands of private companies.
To top it off, we have been told that the ubiquitous telephones are the best help to control the spread of a virus and that part of the secret of the success of the fight against the covid-19 pandemic in Asian countries has fallen on the broad use of Big Data to locate infected people and their contacts or detect who has broken mandatory confinement. Supposedly the data is anonymous or will be in the hands of authorities, but if it is crossed with other information in small areas it is easy to reliably specify a specific identity. The coronapps have brought to light not a few infidelities in the places where they have been implemented ...
Generic studies were already started long ago. Police states like Israel have been studying their citizens intensively for more than 20 years through mobile phones. The Spanish State drew up in the midst of a pandemic a special regulation, which supposedly will cease to have effect when the state of alarm ends, to study the mobility of the population by analyzing 40 million phones through a program called DATACovid. But in addition, our solidarity collaboration is requested or will be asked to install intrusive small apps, to achieve a common good, what difference does it make to lose a little privacy if we can thus save our lives and the lives of others? We are argued. In this sense, it will be necessary to be attentive to the application that Apple and Google are preparing these days. Between them they cover almost all of the world's mobile operating systems and it promises to be the definitive telematic weapon against the pandemic.
If they can permanently know where we are, who we are going with and where we spend our money; If they can also know our ideology just by taking a look at the social networks or the books we buy, it is that we already live fully in an Orwellian world. But that is not all, let's add the installation of video surveillance cameras everywhere, equipped with facial recognition through artificial intelligence, the extension of telemedicine services, the installation of health passports to allow flying or traveling, of necessity An increasing number of digital signatures endorsed by states… In short, the times are not good for individual freedom, privacy, and even less so for those who are fighting for a radically more just, free, egalitarian and peaceful world. We know very well what Big Brother was doing with dissent ...
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