The tyranny of digital media.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9BiTV9vvZ4

An article by Turner, Professor of Communication Science at Stanford University, USA, on the risk of state totalitarianism based on digital media, was published in the Zurich-based print newspaper NZZ on 8.7.2020. We offer the most important statements of this collaboration and some comments of our own.

Leading Silicon Valley entrepreneurs – from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg – have declared that digital media contribute to a society that is more egalitarian, more collaborative and totally free of state tyranny. By now, perhaps they shouldn’t be so sure. For in recent years, people around the world have begun to realize a striking irony: The very aspects of digital media that were thought to make our societies more democratic are in the process of undermining democratic institutions and norms.

Surveillance and disinformation

The supposed manifestation of the voices of all forgotten individuals, through social networks, has not really expanded the scope of the public sphere, but has instead resulted in a great cacophony. The ease with which digital images and texts can be altered is gradually eroding our trust even in the facts themselves. In the USA, one can sense that the social and cultural foundations of democratic debate, and with it the democratic state itself, are beginning to crack. (¿Es la democracia un engaňo?

At the same time, the foundations of a new form of authoritarian governance are emerging globally. States are not only developing and using their own technologies, for surveillance and propaganda purposes, but are also favoring the operation of national and international technology companies to be imposed.

Some examples: The Saudi Arabian government tracks its opponents with surveillance technology developed and manufactured in Israel. The People’s Republic of China uses Wechat, a system that is used in all moments and situations of life, from payments to agreements to the dissemination of news, to keep track of each of its citizens individually. And in the United States, companies like Palantir work hand-in-hand with government forces, from local law enforcement agencies to the National Security Administration (NSA). La verdad versus la mentira

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Democratic states, therefore, take advantage of new technologies, which is as paradoxical as it is tragic: the very technologies that have the potential to promote individual freedom of expression can also dilute it.  And this because they can be used to monitor the entire population, accumulate data that enable monitoring of their behavior and develop algorithms that counter potential threats by predicting them.

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Situation in China

Digital technologies have dramatically expanded the capabilities of the Chinese state in all these dimensions. Wireless networks that allow the masses to talk online make it possible for the state to track their activities at the individual level with extraordinary precision.

Every action of a user of digital instruments creates an electronic trace. And because these traces are electronic in nature, they require little storage space. The warehouses full of paper files, typical of the surveillance policies of pre-digital states, can now be replaced by hard disks the size of a shoebox. In this way, data is accumulated, analyzed and instantly put back into circulation. And using machine learning and artificial intelligence, these data sets are able to predict almost in real time who might act against the state.

This encourages the Chinese government to allow and even provoke individuals to express their opinions online, which citizens interpret as greater freedom. At the same time, however, this allows the state to track emerging protests and nip them in the bud, first by deleting digital messages and then punishing their authors. It also allows it to pay many thousands of users to flood the Chinese Internet with pro-government content and mails, to make believe that these are entirely spontaneous democratic actions. This 50-cent party, as these measures are ironically called, greatly increases the popularity of the state and makes it increasingly difficult to oppose it.

But the most effective state strategy in digital technology is to link different types of data. In Xinjiang province, for example, the government has tried to tame a restive minority in this way. Thus, the state has implemented an extensive system of video surveillance, camera drones and GPS trackers to follow the movements of every citizen.

Gathering various data sources and using techniques such as facial recognition, fingerprint sensors and DNA testing, China’s big brother manages to monitor and control the regional population with an extraordinary degree of individual precision. As soon as the data leads to the suspicion that someone has crossed the line, the police are immediately called to the site in question.

However, the Chinese system is not perfect. After all, it is still developed and operated by fallible human beings, and it supports a complex state regime that, like any other, suffers from internal conflicts. On the other hand, this regime is extremely powerful. And, therefore, it opens our eyes and shows us a possible sad future for Western democracies.

The future risk for democracy

An effective surveillance network already exists in Western democratic states as well. Just think of the data that Facebook has collected from its users, or the data that Google acquires in a day full of search queries.

This naturally gives rise to a temptation in the States. They could, in times of crisis, demand that companies hand over their data or algorithms under threat of forced intervention. Or they could simply force those companies to cooperate through appropriate regulation. A state, and especially an authoritarian state, has an almost infinite appetite for information technology and the power it enables. It is easy to imagine the money that digital companies could make in exchange for satisfying these digital needs.

The relevant collaboration of digital companies with the state in the USA does not yet seem to match the level of state-controlled centralization we see in China. But it could get to this very quickly. That would be – as mentioned at the beginning – a kind of irony of recent history. Citizens would have to resign themselves to the fact that their desire to advance individual freedom has contributed to the establishment of a new form of state power, directed down to the smallest detail.