Is an International Cyber Migration Even Possible???
The implications of global events, still on-going, that have impacted so many, so significantly since 2020 as a campaign of agenda continues to ‘roll-out’, is a sort of phenomena unlike anything that has ever happened before.
One of the major reasons why this statement is true; is that, we’ve never been able to do or seek to achieve the sorts of things that have been accomplished, by the few, as the means through which it has been achieved couldn’t have been achieved without broadband, hand-held computing devices, apps and the underlying infrastructure (with all of its business systems deployed ideologies) that has been absolutely necessary for various agenda related missions to have occurred.
Yet — this is not simply about cyber, but moreover the cyber-physical relationships. The complexities are enormous and for the most part, poorly understood by the vast majority as the various other areas of extreme specialisation we are expected to accept as constituents of scientific realities, from the mouths of journalists and political leaders — akin to the existence of gravity; we are told, this is reality — requiring from us a particular response.
But as this has occurred, as people have been herded into a particular agenda seeking particular outcomes, often synchronised internationally — some of the outcomes have led to thing such as shortages of toiletries.
There are many other examples, but if any communication of them is made; as people are confined to domestic quarters, ‘off message’ statements may incur a removal of a persons online accounts; and with that, all of the digital evidence of they’re lives.
‘Digital assassinations’, ‘digital imprisonments’, sorts of ‘criminal punishments’ formerally reserved for the decree of a judge in a court of law for the biosphere constituency of a person who is in increasingly reliance of they’re ‘digital twin’, the ‘cyber-artificial intelligence’ related ‘prosthetic extension’ of self who may now be punished simply via rules, approved by unelected global leaders — who now mostly, profess to maintain the protection of the laws of California, the people of a place best known as ‘silicon valley’… and in-turn, the interests of the great nation of America.
Is fear of these sorts of repercussions for communicating ones concerns about their circumstances and any considerations they may have about the underlying reasons for circumstances of pain, harm and injury — a reasonable belief that some or many, throughout the world, may reasonably harbour?
What of the implications for group activities that is part of what it means to be human; whereby since the age of man in caves, we have gathered around fires or otherwise; to convene and discuss, decern what becomes considered to be some constituency to our present-day believes of ‘common-knowledge’ or common-sense; as required to form some sort of meaningful way, to employ agency.
Now that we are not allowed to participate in group activities in our real world, our biosphere; and must only do so online — what are the implications brought about by the dynamically controlled, with the support of software robots known as ‘artificial intelligence’, of they’re decisions; on our future.
On how it is, we are allowed at this stage, in response to a pandemic, to have some form of meaningful association to our rule of law, the concepts of human rights — which are only ever shown to be meaningful when there is a problem, not, when everyone is forced by threat of injuries to be compliant.
Whilst the implications of a negative nature may be differ between persons, what sorts of group or corpus interests do we have to ensure we are ruled by law with the support of a public service, a sector of public servants whose role it is to serve the interests of the public; as curated by consensus, as written into laws; by our elected members of parliament who are accountable to the people for whom they represent; not as rulers, but rather — as representatives of the people.
How is it, that any of these foundational assumptions can be maintained — if our ‘thought ware’ is restricted through the lens of what be considered to be in the commercial interest, of foreigners, almost exclusively from a single jurisdictional place — as may now exert influence, world-wide.
May I suggest that it may be of far more importance than anyone could reasonably consider via utterances at the present-time; for us to look for alternative solutions, in different jurisdictions world-wide; that may be better defined via legally coherent structured considerations that offer alternatives to the very few, whose lens it is — through which we now frame causality in relation to our actions; as does in-turn link to the concept that our observations, our observational reality; our ‘status as observers’ has a direct impact on the decisions we make, that play a part of our paths and that of others around us.
Historically, so the rules suggest, if we have a problem, a grievance — then we may take our complaint to a court of law to have the matter heard, considered and resolved in some way.
Perhaps, if we do not action in consideration of the jeopardy global monopolisation of human communications may bring about in ways that cannot otherwise be rapidly resolved; some form of meaningfully accessible alternative that ensures some capacity for human agency be maintained; then, the cost to us all, may be far greater than if we’d not responded in any meaningful way to COVID-19, the biological disease that is said to present a jeopardy of death to us all; this sort of claim, is not easily supportable — but if we’re unable to communicate, we’re unable to have custodianship over our means to think for ourselves as a fundamental human pre-requisite to life with some form of dignity and with the many consequences, we shall not have an evidentiary capacity for complaint.
I am concerned that the nature of this threat is of a kind that suggests, those we look to, with some sort of assumption of underlying dutiful accountability that is in some way punishable; that these sorts of considerations may in-effect, have no basis in fact or therefore merit.
In-order to allay these sorts of concerns; it appears to me, that the process of identifying and encouraging persons to make use of software and/or platform services produced elsewhere, perhaps from EU vendors — may be a sensible thing to do, to ensure a proportionate response to a circumstance that brings with it, great jeopardy. Whilst the benefits of EU Sourced apps, platforms, Software and ICT services benefit EU Citizens differently to others, elsewhere in the world; the broader benefit economically for the EU may be compelling for them, and overtime be considered a vital contribution to a global marketplace now almost entirely dominated by global corporations (often with similar ownership / investors, integrated linkages) in a singular juristiction worldwide.
We must be allowed to choose to use they’re products and services rather than allowing a world to be manifested without choice.
By ensuring ‘choice of law’ choices — are available, the people are able to have some sense of agency about what corporations they choose to trust with their ‘thought ware’, and with that; how it is they elect to participate in various forms of civil and civic discourse as is of vital importance for civics, safety and the preservation of both rights and responsibilities.
Throughout the world there will be democratic elections that are vital constituency elements to any liberalised democracy, in any part of the world.
The Major platforms have systemically shown themselves to have influenced opinions, become rulers of ‘approved communications’ / speech; not simply unto the law as they apply for persons in America as Citizens of America; but moreover as these provisions may be applied upon legal aliens of their domestic jurisdictional legal responsibilities and perhaps if we do not consider how a marketplace of opportunity must exist for the citizenry seeking to form opinions about who they should elect as electoral constituents.
Perhaps if nothing is done, then there is little point in voting at all, as a vaccine passport like credential may more easily be issued by the platform provider to tell us who best suits them.
It is my strong suggestion; that there is a significant effort to look at what alternatives exist to the traditional platforms that most people with a smart-phone depend upon for they’re address books and recordings of lived experiences, of times of enjoyment and sadness with others in they’re lives; of times where social participation in the real-world, was not a matter of political disobedience or an act that could warrant a right for law enforcement officers to assault a person, free of liability or reasonably accessible possibility of compensation or repercussion.
The duality of online media presenting assaults by persons who are sworn to act with efficacy of the public trust bestowed upon them for they’re income generating roles; via platforms that prioritise what we do see, what we are encouraged to engage with; whilst simultaneously acting to confuse, disorientate, disassociate and/or punish persons. The areas of my concern are not about the evil things, the sorts of things that these platforms, regardless of how they demonstrate they’re remarkable capabilities — still seem not to solve. Rather, its that the orts of things they are increasingly known to be common-place occurrances, impacting experts in different fields; whilst others, who clearly do not have that expertise write judgements, seeking compensatory impunity — these behaviours, are not merely ‘accidental’, they are designs.
These platforms are not provided without socio-economic considerations having a meaningful role to the incentive structures linked to they’re choices; and if there are no alternatives, they are in a far better position to be making demands, in secret, linked to the products they employ for profit that can remove both speech and any actor who may dare to raise questions of a nature that can be made ‘not allowed’.
Furthermore; if the underlying reason for those decisions is indeed in relation to some sort of juristictionally governed secret agreement / ‘regulatory duty’, then the best way to try to see whether or not that’s the case, is to decentralise how it is that a person forms an online environment to support their needs.
The real-world reality is that platforms, software, online services, apps; they’re never really ‘free’, it takes human effort and infrastructure to make and maintain anything. So whilst the best options have some cost, this does not need to be prohibitive; indeed, the cost of not doing so, may be found to be far too expensive in the end.
SO, what could someone do if they wanted to build, engage and interact with others on platforms that are provided by organisations outside of California?
Well, lets just work on it like we’re playing a game and we’re going to be a little ‘superstitious’, we’ll get our wand made of holly-wood to light our path in the dark, and go about an adventure — whilst many are locked down, in their homes…
So — what’s the first thing people need? probably — an email address.
There’s a few options but one of the well known ones is ProtonMail. As noted by its the wikipedia entry about it, its ‘juristiction’ is Switzerland which is well respected by many privacy experts worldwide. Similarly for chat, Threema is also governed via Switzerland and offers a means to communicate with others, that is far less likely to result in observations that appear to suggest a persons search results or media presented in apps changes as a consequence of conversations (for some reason, although, apparently its just that anyone who thinks any such thing exists should be dismissed as being ‘crazy’…).,
There’s this concept in quantum physics about ‘status of the observer’, i always or moreover increasingly find the short-video of Henry Strapp making an attempt to simplify the concept — fairly exceptional stuff… But in-essence, the ability to have a conversation on the belief that it is to some-degree private, or at least not subject to commercialisation by commercial agents selling pieces of you as ‘data’ or bait, for whoever is willing to pay them; well, it changes the foundations upon which any conversation can be had at all. When thinking about it more recently, my thoughts led me to think about the importance of this concept as it applies to courts of law; that people, or so its said, have been traditionally encouraged to go into the safe environment of a court-house to engage in and settle disputes.
Sadly, i think its reasonable to be concerned about whether this is still ‘in fashion’, but it is certainly unlikely to be made any better — if we’re made unable to communicate about our concerns of it.
The next sorts of issues; are those such as personal and professional networking, ability to engage with others in an environment of safety for group works on some particular topic or common-interest; ability to collaboratively develop documents, preparation of works to further interests of some form or type, ability to engage with knowledge and/or information.
There’s alot to it.
Whilst i’m doing some work looking into it all, here’s some initial findings (and i’ll likely do some sort of additional work, when i figure it out more).
- Domain Names Gandi is worth a look. I think it’s french. I find it interesting to see how many US platform providers (of MIT linked experts); get their domain names via Gandi. So, seems recommended…
- For an alternative for Documents, i’ve found Cryptpad which describes itself: ‘CryptPad is built to enable collaboration. It synchronizes changes to documents in real time. Because all data is encrypted, the service and its administrators have no way of seeing the content being edited and stored.’.
- For Hosting i Found Hostinger which has two addresses, one in Lithuania the other in Cyprus. There’s a bunch of different providers, and its a really difficult thing for lay people to figure out how to sort all this sort of ‘complicated’ stuff out; but if groups organise and go down the ‘let’s light-up a server and do stuff ourselves’, then there’s lots of different options, that does scale based on how many users, functionality, etc. But depending on how all that sort of stuff is organised; it can end-up being fairly affordable on a per-household or per-person basis. I’ll go into some of the open-source server platform based solutions below, but note, its not just about setting it up (and paying the bills), its also about maintaining it…
- For a Web Browser, this is really hard. Wikipedia has a list, but Its a bit like the range of choices available for operating systems, particularly mobile operating systems; I think Opera assocaites to Oslo; but for the most part, the browser companies are decision makers about web-standards, and in-turn cryptography. Its very difficult to find tools made outside of the USA. Personally, as a consequence i’m currently using Brave; but, this is an area that requires alot more study. The Browser companies link in-turn to Search (and platforms) which in-turn links to discoverability of Websites (and machine-readability of health records, amongst other things); so, whilst i would advocate for greater investment outside of the USA, the costs (inc. time) may be more significant than is superficially transparent.
- In terms of ‘search’, one of the most well known ‘privacy’ related alternatives is duckduckgo, which is built into some of the alternative browsers. The thing about selecting different search engines, is that they come-up with different results. So, if you’re looking for alternatives to silicon valley apps in say —Google, they’re likely to be harder to find…
There’s a bunch of sites i’ve seen that appear to provide alternatives to platforms like YouTube such as Rumble (Canadian), Bitchute (British); and the others around audio, but they’re hard to find… Whilst both Los Angeles and San Francisco are in California; and other US based services may be located in New York or other juristictions throughout the USA, the challenges between Games, Platforms, Software, Entertainment and other forms of media (with platforms bankrolled by capital that’s also located ‘somewhere’) is really complex. There’s often commonalities, which is why examples are particularly well known, but moreover spoken about historically, before we were all required to get ‘vaccine passports’ and ‘check-in’ apps for our ‘safety’.
The difficult thing about social networks is that, the way they work at the moment; the value in it, is when everyone is using it; so, as its an addressbook related application — i think its worth setting up accounts and figuring out how to communicate that you’ve got them, in-order to provide enough of the basics to furnish an opportunity for alternatives to be made able to grow…
with respect to Social apps,
- Alternative to ‘linked in’, seems to be XING which is based in Hamburg (German). I’ve recently logged into my account, which it seems i first setup some 14 or more years ago (v.long time ago); but, its still all new to me.
- For personal purposes, there’s an array of alternatives provided by Amercian companies like GAB (Pennsylvania), Parler (nevada) & MeWe (california), but i’m still looking for the alternatives provided by companies elsewhere in the world… But what about european alternatives? Well… I found Panion(Sweden), but i’ve never used it…
Even in reviewing the WikiPedia entry (indeed also, no alternative to wikipedia comes to mind either); I think one of the underlying problems, in a way i think its put most simply; is the cost of bandwith or CDN services for these sorts of platforms can be very high, so unless some sort of support or partnership is formed; it could be prohibitively expensive to bring to market alternatives, not because people are not creative and/or innovatively elsewhere; but rather, kinda secret politics…
SO, whilst i believe there’s enormous merit in further exploring all the options; i think, for now, i’ll set the examples aside and hope others can help fill in the gaps. Nonetheless, there are a bunch of useful open-source software packages that i noted (re: hosting) i’d make a point of quickly illustrating.
The point about hosting your own software on your own hosting accounts, is that it makes whoever’s managing those hosting accounts in control of the environments. Whilst this costs more, and requires more time / effort / expertise, it may be important to be aware of if you’re trying to do something meaningfully useful with others given recent history of problems people have been having all around the world for reasons that cannot be explained other than via a lens of politics and a bunch of stuff, i’m fairly sure we’re not told…
- Only Office has both a hosted version, but people can also set-up a server with it. The problem about online office platforms, is they take-up a lot of resources — and so, the hosting costs are fairly expensive. But for group work, where you’re looking for something that’s not using Google or similar; Only office looks fairly good.
- In terms of group teleconferencing — I was impressed by Jitsi Meet. As noted, there are other apps and a whole array of other solutions but certainly out of the array of available examples — Jitsi is worth knowing.
There’s obviously a bunch of other areas of social interaction and group works where its desirable to have alternatives to popular silicon valley provided platforms, particularly for people who would be unsafe if they left their homes for health or social safety related reasons; Yet, it is fairly hard to find these alternatives.
Jack Dorsey is best known as the co-founder of Twitter. Yet recently, it apepars he has decided that it is important to start work on decentralised Alternatives, as such, bluesky is developing whilst an array of other works are underway.
Most often, the common problem is that they lack funding and are only really able to be progressed through work practices that could be considered a form of digital or web slavery, as the means to ensure people involved in getting things moving get rewarded or even more simply acknowledged, if far from reliably available.
I think the last thing i might make a note of in this article, is a point about the underlying purposes of Verifiable Claims, which is now more-commonly understood or known as ‘vaccine passports’, being deployed world-wide.
The thing about ‘verifiable claims’, is that they were designed to help produce digital evidence, that if needed was defined in such a way that should allow the instrument to be presented in a court of law as evidence about a particular subject, circumstance or fact. So whilst Governments are working cooperatively to deploy these instruments as ‘health credentials’ via an initiative that appears to have been turned into legislation in California, that appears to be targeting many different types of health information…
personal health information, the communication of this information, including medical test results source
That will increasingly be required by law in-order to physically participate in society, regardless of what experts such as is illustrated by the video below presented by Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of Ethereum…
Government leaders in Australia have declared that ‘the vaccinated are going to be allowed to participate in the economy’, yet the efficacy of the vaccines, particuarly if administered in a rushed fashion, depending on the type of vaccine; changes based upon an array of science that maintains a position irraspective of political will to force a position upon the natural sciences…
SO; whilst the greatest of all beneficiaries is most likely to be California, whilst the search-engine technology produced by the major search & platform providers have already prepared their systems to manage health data. Whilst there are elements of this that are unlike any form of historical circumstance so negatively impacting so many around the world, 3.5 billion in lockdown at a time last year as brought to effect at broadband like speeds; if we are going to be able to positively influence how these technologies help us as citizens…
Then, perhaps an important thing to do, is to think about all of the possible applications this digital alternative to a signed official statutory declaration, that can in-turn incorporate a media file and any media file related derivative; in a format that is being made by our governments to be fit for purpose for medical purposes and court-determinations as to warrant imprisonment of persons; how is it, that ‘verifiable claims’ technology COULD BE USED, to aid those who need some sort of digital evidence, as our lives are being recorded; to ensure, disputes do not need to be entered into in our public spaces or places that via public funds provide ‘services’ of importance for human rights of community members. Whether it be family law or education related, or law enforcement or whatever it may be; if people need a recording in a format that can be transcoded from audio to text and packaged as evidence. If people need a Machine Readable Payslip — that would have stopped RoBoDebt, or Point of Sale Receipt, or contract, public stats, facts or whatever; what is it that these technologies should be employed to make, what is it that those who claim to work in the public service as public servants, as it seems the concept be inverted; what is it, that could be of vast and significant benefit to the people — how do we make lists of these examples, and then ask our elected representatives. Ask our leaders, Ask the departments of government; to show us where they’ve been working on these solutions or why it is they have not.
We are either going to make use of technology to manifest a world that has common-sense association to concepts such as ‘truth’, ‘reality’, ‘science’ and otherwise; which are always subject to scrutiny, ideally in ways that may at worst be resolved in courts of law; or, that system will be made mute.
The problem becomes that the choices of any such fanticists have agendas, and if we are unable to talk about the problems that may come about; we’ll be defenceless when those who are most adapt in that form of competitive environment seek to take advantage of the things, children, values that are dear to us; and as soon as the software platforms they use to manipulate the environment for any such poor moral choices see threats, it’ll quickly shift.
at broadband speeds…
I hope you’ve enjoyed my story. Here’s a nice little meme for your time. Indeed, if you can find a good platform to store photos, let me know; seems some of my memes are thougth best be ‘not allowed’, i wonder what the implications are for galleries or the artists who make thoughts of wonder…
We will yield the produce of what it is we manifest from the present.
oh and fwiw — i know, i probably haven’t drafted this very well, but if that’s the biggest problem — i think, i’m moreover looking for a different audience.