Guest Post by Doug Casey
The world has become totally digitized over the last couple of decades. Thanks to the Internet of Things [IoT], there are sensors everywhere. They’re not just on every street and in every store. They’re in your television, your car, your refrigerator, and God knows where else.
If you buy a new appliance today, it’s extremely hard not to end up with something that will monitor you. Of course, the argument’s made: “Well, if you don’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.” I suppose that’s true. Here’s a tip: you definitely shouldn’t commit a murder within purview of one of these devices.
But as Harvey Silverglate pointed out in his book, Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, you don’t know what crime you may or may not be committing. Your only hope is that the government is too busy or too incompetent to focus on you.
It’s probably true that the average person only committed three crimes a day when Silverglate wrote the book in 2009. But so many laws have passed since then that the average person probably commits more like five or six crimes a day now.
So you don’t want to make it easy for them to zero in on you, no matter how unlikely that might seem. Nor should you hope the courts will help if you’re caught in a Kafkaesque dragnet for some real or imagined infraction. District attorneys, prosecutors, are generally much more interested in convictions than justice. Apart from the fact “justice” is determined by judges, who are either appointed by politicians, or act as politicians when they’re elected – and afterwards. Even if a judge follows precedents, he’s likely to pick out precedents that suit his personal and political inclinations. So, it’s basically a charade. Your first line of defense is to deny adversaries information about yourself.
But that’s veering into a different subject. The point is that the less the Authorities know about you – even if you’re as pure as the driven snow – the better off you are.
Your Only Real Defense
I now have a cell phone. But I only use it when I’m traveling; pay phones have ceased to exist. Cell phones are the most dangerous monitoring device because they’re ubiquitous. You may think you’re safe when your cell phone is turned off. But the things can be hacked.
The same is true for devices like the Echo. Even though they say it’s activated only when you say “Alexa,” or whatever keyword it needs to hear. All these things can be hacked by experts.
Your only real defense is that you’re one of 300 million people in the country. It’s very hard for them to monitor everybody. But if for some reason they decide to look at you, a million eyes will be focused on you. Am I exaggerating? Certainly not when Artificial Intelligence and quantum computing are fully perfected in the near future.
I’m not being paranoid, just prudent. For instance, should a cop knock on your door, you should be friendly, but avoid inviting him in. If he’s competent – and some of them are – he’s going to reflexively eyeball everything. The papers on the table. Your library. Photos on the wall. These things become part of your profile. And it can’t possibly do you any good. But these devices are much worse. They’re like having a cop sit in your house 24 hours a day.
In Sweden people are getting chips implanted in their hands to save themselves the inconvenience of having to swipe their cell phone to pay for things, use a card to gain admission to buildings, or whatnot. I’m not a Bible person, but this is really the modern incarnation of the Mark of the Beast.
And even if you can dodge these things, keeping too low a profile could also be suspicious. We’re already seeing this play out in China, where your social credit rating is dinged if you don’t have an active social media account. If it seems like you’re avoiding surveillance, that in itself will draw surveillance on to you.
This Is All Advancing at the Rate of Moore’s Law
About 20 years ago, Larry Ellison, who founded the giant technology company Oracle, was asked about this very same subject. He said something to the effect of “Privacy? Forget about privacy. It’s an illusion. Don’t kid yourself.”
That was a long time ago, before cell phones and ubiquitous cameras. But even then he was absolutely correct. Of course, he’s much more correct now. In the near future privacy simply won’t exist. I mean literally, not just in a manner of speaking.
Governments all over the world already share financial information, so you have zero privacy in that regard now. But it’s going to be much, much worse in a few years. Why? The government will undoubtedly come out with Fedcoin – or whatever they’ll call it – its own cryptocurrency. At that point cash will be an anachronism; everything will be done electronically. Every transaction will be trackable to the penny. Every account will be capable of being blocked at the push of a button.
All this increasingly makes me want to be where I am right now, which is basically reading paper books on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Although, let’s admit it, Joe Louis was right: you can run, but you can’t hide.
We know what’s happening in China with its social credit system. It’s going to spread all over the world. People will want to get “Good Little Lamb” points, the way they now try to earn airline frequent flyer points. I just don’t know how you evade such a major trend.
On the bright side, this trend is one indication Ray Kurzweil was right about the Singularity. This is the idea that in about 20 years artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and genetic engineering will have evolved to such an extent that the actual character of existence itself will be different. Technology – the invention of gunpowder, the printing press, and thousands of other things – has always, eventually, increased the freedom of the common man.
The real threat, as always, is the government. Big Brother. All you can do is be as prudent and as aware as possible. There’s nothing much we can do to change the big picture. Just try to insulate yourself from the fallout.
The government is certainly not going to do anything, beyond cosmetics, to restrict what they do with things they learn about you. That would be cutting off their easiest and most reliable sources of data and information.
I don’t see how this trend is going to change. On the contrary, it’s going to continue accelerating. It’s got a life of its own at this point. It’s extremely scary from the point of view of somebody interested in freedom.
What to do? For sure don’t use Alexa, Siri, or the like. And treat your cell phone like a loaded gun.
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Unlike many people, I don’t think money will or can completely go away – because our country is too big and spread out.
Despite the hype from cell phone countries, there are still large chunks of the country that are without reliable cell phone service. There are as large, if not larger, chunks without reliable high speed internet access – and one of the two is REQUIRED for a cashless system, as well as for automated surveillance.
In cities, there is already a high level of tracking and there are businesses there that do not accept cash; those who talk about cashless and other modern ideas almost universally ignore the needs of those outside of cities … and I’m sure they will until that ignorance leads to problems. Problems like interrupted food, fuel, or electricity delivery – cities NEED rural areas in ways that rural areas don’t need cities.
In Sweden, where a majority of transactions are currently cashless, the government is slowing further adoption because of connectivity problems and because of concerns about how a cashless system will operate in times of disaster (natural or manmade).
I read something once about how many Germans used bartering to avoid taxes. It is funny telling my kids about when there were no cells phones or personal computers. I thought life was good.
Be sure to tell them how when you were a kid your house had one phone, a wall mount in the kitchen, color black, rented from AT&T.
Communication privacy is not a new issue? They had the same problem with smoke signals.
On the off chance that Doug is reading this, go fuck yourself, you dickless blowhard. Unlike you, I think anybody who pays you any money for any of your “advice” is an unfortunate sucker, a victim of an asshole, and I’m sorry for them. You I have nothing but contempt for.
No need to sugarcoat it. lol. But truth is, I agree with what you say about Casey’s advice. He was right….once. In 1979. And he’s been riding that for 40 years. He was telling people to buy silver in the early ’90s. In the mid ’90s silver bottomed around $3.50. Some folks lost a lot of money following his “advice”. But you have to give him credit for one thing. He’s a great self promoter.
I am an old guy now, but over the course of my life I have learned a few things. One of them is that people who use foul language do so only to make up for lack of intelligent argument.
Scott McNealy, not Larry Ellison.