How technology is creating a global identity crisis
Among the crucial concepts in shaping the social fabric that can be profoundly affected by technology are identity and privacy. Subject to major variations in different countries ranging from tradition to political systems, these two concepts are giving rise to increasingly complex situations.
Some countries have decided, directly, to simply deny the right to privacy and to exercise ever-more rigorous control over their population. China is at one end of the spectrum: Xi Jinping has ended the moderate policies of Hu Jintao in a move toward total control that includes the elimination of online anonymity and banning virtual private networks or VPNs, even going so far as to arrest providers.
India’s plans to introduce the world’s largest biometrics identity management scheme, Aadhaar, which aims to create a nationwide population database, attracting the interest of Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Morocco, Russia, Tanzania and Tunisia, have come up against the Constitutional Court, which recently ruled that privacy is a fundamental right, thus throwing into doubt the future of the ambitious initiative.
The application of machine learning to biometrics is now creating concerns: increasingly accurate algorithms are capable of recognizing people with their faces partially covered by spectacles, hats or handkerchiefs, as well as detecting our sexual preferences, a worrying development for anybody living in or considering visiting country’s where homosexuality is illegal, such as Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which understands that artificial intelligence will be key to exercising global power. Moscow has already developed a huge cyber-army able to infiltrate power plants and distribution companies, as well as interfering with elections. The potential use of robots in war is as frightening as the use of artificial intelligence to control populations: it is estimated that half of Twitter accounts in Russia discussing the country’s politics are false, part of a huge propaganda machine focused on preserving the power of its leader, who in turn is following the example of China, which now has more people dedicated to monitoring and controlling the internet than in the army.
Meanwhile, in the West, threats to our privacy are increasingly a cause for concern. In Europe, limits have just been established on the control companies can exercise over their employees’ emails, while in the United States, which offers no such guarantees, but where 65% of people working in the tech sectors use a VPN at all times.
Precisely in the US we have witnessed the most serious theft of personal information in history: the credit histories of some 143 million people, including their full names , dates of birth, social security numbers, driver’s licenses, postal and electronic addresses, transaction histories and credit card numbers have been stolen from Equifax. Instead of reporting the theft when it was discovered on July 29, the company kept it secret for several months until early September, allowing some executives to sell their stock. With the data on nearly half the population now being marketed on the internet and likely to be used for all sorts of crimes, many people now questioning the way the country manages the personal information of its citizens, with systems such as the social security number, the driver’s license or the mother’s maiden name used ubiquitously as a key in countless sites and thus highly vulnerable.
What is clear in all this is that the technology used to manage our identity is not up to the task, and can be used by criminals or repressive regimes. The time has come to rethink these key aspects of the social contract and to look for alternatives that guarantee our right to privacy.
(En español, aquí)
