The age of ultra-surveillance is already here. Everywhere you go, everything you buy and everything you say is already being monitored and the CCTV, online systems and 5G network needed to watch you and gather all information about you is already installed or on the verge of being installed.
The old methods of surveillance using moles and paper files to keep tabs on people with ‘different’ ideas, most obviously used in the former East Germany, has already been replaced by technology and artificial intelligence (AI) and extreme examples of how this type of surveillance can be used to control and persecute people who want to live life in a different way is already evident, such as in China’s Uyegar people.
“But if you have nothing to hide, why should you worry?”
But if you have nothing to hide, why should you worry?
The current epidemic is a good example of why you should perhaps be worried.
I recently set up a benign advert on Google to advertise therapy rooms for hire at the Light Centre, only to have the advert rejected by Google because it was deemed ‘sensitive’. I appealed by clicking a button only to have some mysterious system reject it again. After finally opening a ‘chat’ with what I presume was a human being, I was told that the reason for the rejection was that the advert was pointing at a website that contained ‘unauthorised’ information about Covid-19 and I was told that having been identified, this ‘unauthorised’ information would now additionally be suppressing the Centre’s natural search on Google. I inspected the website only to find equally benign information about the Covid precautions we were taking such as social distancing. After debating the information with the Google ‘representative’ I was told that a form would need to be filled in that would ‘whitelist’ the website and unlock the restrictions.
Looking around the internet it is now obvious that as well as ‘benign’ websites not knowing that they are being censored and having to jump through hoops to be whitelisted, any opinion not ‘in tune’ with the current narrative on the disease or the methods of tackling it are also being heavily monitored and censored, not just by governments, but now also by big private companies who overwhelmingly control the flow of information.
All through the pandemic there have been experts and scientists with alternative views on how we should deal with it, but even in supposedly free societies, governments and centralised authorities are showing that, when under pressure, they have little tolerance for open debate when it doesn’t suit their agenda and are willing and able to brand any dissenting voice as being harbingers of ‘disinformation’ or ‘conspiracy theories’ and will use their direct and indirect powers over private businesses and the media to ensure that their selected narrative is the only one heard through conventional information channels.
It is then hardly surprising that the views of everyday people, who only get to hear one side of the story, go on to conveniently reflect the government’s agenda and that this narrative then typically shows up as being the majority opinion in polls. After all, what nobody knows, can’t form part of their ‘opinion’. Such polls are then used to further marginalise and dissuade those who might have good reason to disagree.
Very few advances in knowledge came from ‘consensus’ opinion. It should be clear by now that societies that promote free debate are the ones who innovate and progress fastest. A tolerance for ideas that may not always stand up to scrutiny is necessary in order to find ones that do and that is how we have so far moved forward in the world.
This website offers credible and well researched ideas on how we might build a better world, but in addressing current issues it risks being censored and downregulated by search engines such that people are likely to only come across the information if it is recommended to them directly by another individual. Is that a free society?
Part of this website also calls into question the track record of modern medicine and public health advice (especially when it comes to chronic health conditions that result from modern lifestyles) and points at ways in which people can take back responsibility for their own health and wellbeing. For a number of years there have been growing ‘voices’ who want to shut down health advice that doesn’t fit that given by conventional medicine and yet despite its advances in acute care, the track record of modern medicine in keeping people from chronic disease is appalling and getting worse by the day. Is alternative health advice the next to be surveilled and censored? Will AI be let loose on every word written on every health website with Google then stepping in to deem anything unorthodox as ‘unauthorised’.
Will AI search every word you say and ‘censor’ anything that is not mainstream or ‘nudge’ you when you buy anything that it doesn’t think is good for you? Will your access to social media platforms and payment channels be ‘suspended’ if your profile doesn’t please the ruling party? And if that happens will you be able to get hold of a human being to try to justify your words or actions?
You may think this a rather dramatic appraisal of the current and imminent state of surveillance and censorship, but bear in mind that China only started its journey to ‘utilising’ AI in 2017 and in just a few years their use of AI is having a profound effect on its citizens. Our governments may be a few years behind, but now they have the infrastructure in place they’re going to catch up quickly and their successes in suppressing dissent over the current pandemic will make it extremely tempting to apply the same tactics to other areas of our lives.
You may shrug this off and say that we live in a society with a benevolent government made up of elected representatives who surely have everyone’s welfare at heart, but current experiences would suggest that that could be extremely naïve. Recent examples have showed that censorship can be subtle and no longer needs to be enforced openly with sticks and bats. Dissent can now easily be ‘cancelled’ and big private corporations and the media can easily be coerced into playing their part.
So if, like me, you are slightly spooked by this oncoming tsunami of surveillance and censorship, what can you do about it? Buying things on Amazon is just so easy and cheap, every person you know and everything you do is probably now mediated by social media platforms or smart phones and free news channels are so much more accessible and comprehensive than other sources. It would be easy to think that you now can’t do without them.
If your life is intertwined with these ‘free’ conveniences then there may indeed be nothing or at least very little you can do about it. You can take steps to protect your information, but as every user of commercial websites knows, you now need to ‘log in’ to everything online in order to use it and as anyone who’s attempted to opt out of cookies and personalised adverts knows, it’s a full time job to understand and block them and just when you think you have, the company simply resets the system and forces you to go through the same process again.
It is now obvious that this is going to be the price of continuing to live in a globalised, consumerist world, dominated by big corporations and centralised control systems and the only alternative is to either to change the type of government we vote for or opt out of that world altogether. But how?
In our ‘manifesto for a better world’ we propose a new set of policies and principles that could be presented by an existing or new political party. In democracies, we still have the power to elect new governments and despite all the resistance and fear tactics that the current vested interests will throw in people’s paths, there is still just about time to form and elect a government with an agenda to put the people’s and planet’s wellbeing first and marginalise big corporations and globalised agendas.
But as anyone who has tried to protest knows, most people only vote red or blue and whichever government gets into power, they’re ears are rarely if ever open.
In the absence of real political change perhaps the only thing left for free-thinking people to do is to choose to set up and live in an autonomous self-sufficient community (such as the one we are proposing here), one that keeps all the good bits of modern life, but keeps out the vested interests and controlling influences.
The choice is still (just about) yours.
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