Photo credit: Matthew Henry
I remember my dad calling my siblings and I to the kitchen. My mom leant against the kitchen counter. Dad wanted to discuss something important and although my mom didn’t say a word, it was obvious she was in on it too.
That important conversation was this: since we now lived in Syria, there were three things we were never to speak about in public.
Politics/Religion
Money
Sex
The Consequences of Sharing Opinions.
None of those topics were something an 11-year old girl (me) and her younger siblings would gravitate towards in conversation with friends. I knew I was Christian, but I knew nothing about politics, and sex made me uncomfortably shy. But for my dad to bring this up around the kitchen table, I knew it had to be serious.
“You can’t trust anyone. Not even your friends. Especially your friends, because they will tell their parents and they will tell the police. Don’t talk about these things. Even the walls have ears here.”
My dad feared that our opinions and beliefs could jeopardize our safety, or worse, our lives. So from that moment on, I kept my mouth shut because I didn’t want my words to betray us.
Living like that meant I morphed into a chameleon, hiding and reflecting back people’s beliefs and opinions in order to keep safe. I did this even when I didn’t believe what other people believed in, which was, surprisingly, often the case.
Am I Pushing the Boundaries?
Only as a grown woman – actually, only until very recently that I’m in Canada and life is different – have I begun to shed the layers of silence. It’s not been easy. It’s taken me time, painful self-work and healing to feel that it’s safe to speak up. To unlearn what had been tattooed in my DNA at 11 years-old: that it’s dangerous to have and to share opinions.
Today, I write The Misfit newsletter. In it, I’ve talked about the failures of our governments, how I think it’s unfair that our current societal systems are built upon the backs of the less fortunate, about how inhumane our monetary system can be, and how I think bitcoin can help. It’s politics merged with money, but no sex.
I never thought I’d share my thoughts on these complex topics that my dad warned me to stay away from some decades ago. Or that I would stretch and test the boundaries of my freedom through writing. And yet, in my so-called freedom, I feel that at some point, this free speech will bite me in the ass.
Why? Because technology is becoming a voracious half-beast, half-monster.
The Perils of Surveillance & Technology.
Aside from the natural conveniences of technology, they often bring with them additional surveillance and control. Look at what’s happening with money alone.
Most of us don’t think much about the fact that our use of cash is disappearing. Sure, it’s convenient to use our credit card or Apple Pay, but convenience always comes at a price. Always, always.
Each transaction reveals a lot about us – from the content of the things we buy (like books or abortion appointments) to the associations we’re a part of, to the geographical location we’re in. And yet no one’s asking the question: what are the consequences when so much about our private lives is exposed to the managers of our financial rails?
Does it mean that if we veer off politically-correct behaviour, we get financially cut off? It certainly seemed that way for the Canadian truckers who were cut off from banking services for protesting against COVID-19 vaccine mandates (whether they were right or wrong is a different point).
Does it gradually and unintentionally (or intentionally) chip away at our freedom? Again, like cutting our banking accessibility or confiscating our assets?
Do we become silenced out of fear?
What are the real-life implications when our financial data reveals so much about us? Does it become easier to know and predict and influence us? Is it possible that could become dangerous?
It’s a terrible way of thinking, I know, but it’s important to question the blind trust we place on third parties before it goes too far. We only have to look across the Pacific to see what too far looks like.
Surveillance Gone Too Far in China.
China is quickly turning into what some would say, an Orwellian world.
The Chinese Communist Party has hundreds of millions of cameras overseeing society. All that data is being sorted by supercomputers in real-time. Dissidents (according to whatever the government’s definition is at the time) get sent to surveillance camps to be punished (source).
Below is an excerpt from an article published by The New Yorker titled Surviving the Crackdown in Xinjiang, in which it shares a woman’s struggle to free herself from mass detentions and surveillance in China.
“In 2005, the Chinese government began placing surveillance cameras throughout the country, in a plan called Project Skynet. After Xi Jinping came to power, China rolled out an enhanced version, Sharp Eyes, envisioned as a system of half a billion cameras that were “omnipresent, fully networked, always on and fully controllable.” In Beijing, virtually no corner went unobserved. The cameras were eventually paired with facial-recognition software, giving the authorities a staggering level of intrusiveness. At toilets in Beijing’s Temple of Heaven Park, facial scans ensured that users could take no more than seventy centimetres of toilet paper at a time.” (source)
In addition, the following are additional ways Chinese people are being surveilled:
“QR codes [were added] to the exterior of homes, which security personnel could scan to obtain details about residents.”
“All cars were fitted with state-issued G.P.S. trackers.”
“Even an “abnormal” beard might be cause for concern.”
“Socializing too little was suspicious, and so was maintaining relationships that were deemed ‘complex.’”
“If a person seemed insufficiently loyal, her family was also likely infected.”
“Every new cell-phone number had to be registered, and phones were routinely checked…”
“Physicals for All” was launched, gathering biometric data—blood types, fingerprints, voiceprints, iris patterns—under the guise of medical care.”
“Xinjiang residents between the ages of twelve and sixty-five was required to provide the state with a DNA sample.”
**You can read the full article here.
What this shows is that the Chinese Communist Party is actively seeking ways to track and surveil its citizens – from the cars they drive, to the iris patterns in their eyes and their blood types, to the social relationships they form.
What for? It can’t be good.
Could the Rest of the World Follow China?
Apparently the Chinese Communist Party is selling their surveillance technology to other countries too – including European countries (source). Countries which will also have their own ways of discriminating and punishing their own people.
“In Great Britain, camera operators have been found to focus disproportionately on people of color. According to a sociological study of how the systems were operated, "Black people were between one-and-a-half and two-and-a-half times more likely to be surveilled than one would expect from their presence in the population." (source)
Here’s the truth. Surveillance will never be fair. It will be biased and plagued with prejudices. It may not even stop big crimes and it will never be a mirror pointing back at the heads of our banking systems, who (some argue) commit the biggest of crimes.
“Surveillance never stopped crime. Surveillance is the license given to the people who are on the top of that to control our lives. They will commit crimes, they will commit the worst of crimes, what I call mega crimes… A mega crime is one where, for example, you foreclose on a million homeowners and don’t go to jail. We’re doing surveillance and analytics to catch a petty drug dealer who’s selling pot for bitcoin. Who’s doing surveillance and analytics for Lockheed Martin? Who’s doing surveillance and analytics on money laundering banks? Nobody.” – Andreas M. Antonopoulos
**Lockheed Martin is an aerospace, arms, defense, information security, and technology corporation.
My questioning continues: who’s keeping the checks and balances in place? Who’s balancing the dangers of abuse by surveillance? Will the benefits outweigh the potential dangers?
These questions deserve answers.
One Last Thought.
When my dad feared I had walls listening in on my words, I don’t think he ever imagined that in the same lifetime I’d have my computer, my phone, street cameras, banking services, and government surveillance tools now tracking my every move, word, habits, transactions, location, likes and dislikes, opinions and beliefs.
I don’t think he’d imagine the world was gearing up to know the most intimate parts of regular, everyday people.
Would he have thought The Misfit newsletter was aggravating the issue? Would he have told me not to write it? Or, to write it but tone it down? Or….? There’s no way of knowing. He’s no longer earth-side.
Though he's since passed away, I can imagine us sitting around a different kitchen table, with a glass of wine, talking about the deadly combination of opinions and digital surveillance; talking about how being tracked 24/7 will make it dangerous to be an independent, thoughtful, free citizen in the long-run.
It's certainly a possible path we might end up following.
We would have swirled our glass of wine countless times and said we should play the game the only way it can be played: to trust yourself and no one else. To guard our privacy as if our life depended on it… because in the future, it may do.
Con mucho cariño,
– Ayelen xx
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Check out the latest two articles on The Misfit.