MCitizen or monitored citizen. Put on a digital file

"Totalitarianism is going towards full dominance over man. Concentration camps are laboratories in which the mastery of hell on earth is tried,” wrote Hannah Arendt in the "Concentration Camp investigation Project". I remembered her words by reading government bill on application mCitizen. Is digital totalitarianism born present – so hard to grasp, due to the fact that universal – digital totalitarianism? Are "States in Smartphone" modern laboratories? If so, what is tried in them?

In search of answers to these questions, it is worth to look for a book "The age of capitalism of surveillance. Fighting for the future of humanity on a fresh border of power” Shoshany Zuboff. The author, a retired prof. at Harvard University, notes that the expanding power of large Tech corporations, specified as Google and Facebook, has not been a totalitarian power for more than 20 years. It is simply a fresh kind of power that Zuboff calls instrumental power (instrumentism).

Totalitarian Authority

Harvard University prof. observes that "the alignment of instrumental power with totalitarianism makes it hard for us to realize it." It besides limits our power to put civilian opposition to supervisory capitalists.

Today we are in a akin situation as citizens (witnesses and victims) in the 20th century who had problem knowing what the power of Stalin and Hitler was.

Journalists, sociologists and politicians called these totalitarian regimes imperialism, due to the fact that they avoided systematic analyses until the end of planet War II.

“The western community, especially in the United States, was truly incapable to grasp the magnitude of what was happening. It virtually couldn't fit into your head. This intellectual paralysis was crowned on the cultural charts of the icon of that era, “Look”. The issue of August 15, 1939 published an article entitled “What Happens in Russia?”, written by erstwhile head of the Moscow office “New York Times” and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Walter Duranta. The article appeared only a fewer months after the end of the large panic period, erstwhile Stalin ordered the execution of full sectors of the russian population, from poets to diplomats, from generals to political loyalists from 1937 to 1938. According to the British historian, sovetologist Robert Conquest, 7 million arrests, 1 million executions, 2 million deaths in labour camps, 1 million people imprisoned, and another 7 million were inactive locked up in camps by the end of 1938. Although he was in direct proximity to disastrous evil, Duranty describes the Constitution of the USSR as 1 of the “most democratic in the planet (...) the foundation on which future democracy can be built”.’

Zuboff notes that the essay “What's Happening in Russia?” was published in the company of a photograph of handsome, smiling Joseph Stalin, signing: “Stalin, president of the interior ellipse of the communist party... is not a law like Lenin. Stalin, before making a decision, prefers to perceive to the views of his colleagues.” It is worth adding that a fewer months later, the magazine “Time” placed Stalin on the cover as “Man of the Year”.

One of the first comprehensive analyses of totalitarian power was not published until 1951. Philosopher Hannah Arendt, after six years of hard work, completed her survey “The Roots of Totalitarianism”. She wrote: “The fact is that the real problems of our times cannot be understood, not to mention solving them, without recognizing that totalitarianism has become a curse of this century simply due to the fact that in specified a terrible way he proceeded to solve its problems.”

Orwell planet vs. Skinner World

We associate totalitarian power in mass consciousness with Orwell's book " 1984". The fresh power, instrumental, large Tech corporation, which has been building its strength for 2 decades, should be associated with Skinner's book "Walden Two". The point is that the first 1 and its author are very popular in Poland, and the second 1 has not yet been published in 1948. I fishy Skinner is not as recognizable as Orwell. Besides, I only got curious in him a year ago erstwhile I read Zuboff's book.

The totalitarian power uses violence, instrumental power “radical behavior”.

Behaviorism is simply a “direction in psychology limited to examining behaviour, human and animal behaviour and responding to external stimuli under strict conditions” (dictionary of English). The aim of behaviorism is to anticipate and control behavior, claimed John B. Watson, its creator.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner, an American scientist from Harvard University, a behaviorist, conducted animal behaviour investigation in the 1930s. For this purpose, he created a ‘Skinner cage’ in which he placed, for example, rats or pigeons. The cage had a lever (button) and reinforcement tools specified as a food feeder, lamps or speakers. The level of the cage consisted of a grid that could be connected to the current. Skinner studied how animals respond to the reward and punishment system. Of course, taking care of animal privacy. "The behaviour can besides be observed with minimal interaction between the subject and the scientist, and this is simply a situation from which it is naturally trying to start," he said. He called the effects of his work "an instrumental condition". He dreamed of "behaviour technology". He believed that human behaviour (modifying his reaction) could be affected while controlling it.

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“Skinner’s cage... points to something like the illusion of control. The rat seems to have an impact on his life, that his actions depend, for example, on access to food, while his life is actually controlled by individual else, any invisible force. This thought was developed 30 years later by Norbert Wiener, an American mathematician and philosopher, called the father of cybernetics.

He claimed that in the future, with decently advanced computers, equipped with appropriate sensors and computing systems, a man who did not know he was in it could be placed in specified a cage.

Scary vision. Here is individual – another man, company, government, machine, strategy – who controls me and my behaviour without my knowledge. At the same time, Wiener claimed that the threat was purely theoretical – a cage for man would should be gigantic and braided with a immense communication network," says Natalia Hatalska in the book “The Age of Paradoxes. Will technology save us?”

That was quick. It's only been 50 years and we have surveillance devices in our pocket; we have Quantum computers solve in a fewer minutes a problem that will take billions of years for our computer to solve.; we have artificial intelligence learning at an instant rate; we have an net network surrounding the full world. Is the threat inactive purely theoretical?

I think Skinner's book read respective times the creators of the capitalism of surveillance – Google and Facebook boys. Zuboff wonders: “What about the authors of the instrumentization project? How will we measure smiling images of fresh technological Titans erstwhile we re-watch their photos in the form of shining pixels on any twenty-first-century cover of the magazine “Look”?’

Totalitarian Authority and Instrumental Authority

What are the fundamental differences between totalitarian and instrumental power?

Instrumental power, unlike totalitarian power, is not curious in either mass murdering citizens or reforming their souls. The supervisors are curious in making everything we do available to them.

So they can do 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, data about us, undergo rendering, calculation, modification, coining and control operations.

"Totalitarianism is based on the control of force and is simply a kind of political religion, with surveillance moving towards automation and control of cognition and gives emergence to full indifference;

totalitarianism produces complete isolation of individuals, and cybernetic surveillance – their extremist connection; totalitarianism operates on mass, and surveillance on population; totalitarianism strives to reconstruct the human species through mechanisms of genocide and soul engineering, surveillance – to maximize usefulness; finally, totalitarianism is simply a political project, and instrumentalism is simply a marketplace project," writes Prof. Szymon Wróbel in the text "After Capitalism or fear of digital tyranny. Around “The Age of Capitalism of Surveillance” Shoshany Zuboff.’

What problems do the supervisors want to solve? They want to connect us all into 1 large community, they want to give us more information, they want to save our time, they want to make life easier in virtual reality, they want to... And what are the results of these treatments?

The level of social assurance in the planet is dropping rapidly at the same time as the capitalism of supervision flourishes.

Paraphrasing Hannah Arendt: "The real problems of our times cannot be understood, let alone solved, without recognizing that instrumentalism has become a curse of this century simply due to the fact that it has so terriblely begun to solve its problems."

Co-ordination of instrumental power with state authority

It is worth adding that GAFAM's surveillance capitalists (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) collaborate with state power. We know that, thanks to the signal from Edward Snowden, who revealed this in 2013. Zuboff quotes in a book by an American lawyer who says:

“The government employs technology companies to “create extended human file”.”

Of course, this collaboration takes place under the cloak of national safety and safety for all of us.

"Everybody will halt wondering that they are being followed and monitored, comfort, safety benefits and services will be besides great, (...) continuous monitoring will become the norm" – emphasizes Hal Varian, Google's chief economist.

Probably a large book lover of prof. Skinner.

What about Poland? The spotlight throws on this trend our expertise ‘Electronic communication law. Overseen society’. It is worth quoting here: "In November 2022, during the next phase of legislative work on the task p.k.e. at the request of the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of peculiar Services Coordinator (without conducting the essential public consultation) the scope of entities obliged to hold data and to make information about electronic communications available to their services and the catalogue of information subject to retention was extended to include "data clearly identifying the user on the network".

Turning this into a human language, Polish intelligence and military services demanded that the law be changed to 1 that would let them to read the content of messages from our communicators specified as Messenger or What’s Up.

App mCitizen

What does all this gotta do with the government's bill on the mCitizen app? A lot. A lot. It is worth reading the statements of Polish politicians who are resonance boxes (Volkoff) of the capitalists of surveillance. Read, reflect and connect dots.

Adam Andruszkiewicz, Secretary of State at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister: "The government application mCitizen is to remind, organize and inform about authoritative correspondence and besides let authoritative e-payments. It will be our digital assistant for contacts with offices; "The Sejm has passed the bill by a large majority (436 Members for), for which I thank you very much. This shows that digitalisation of public services is needed and that society expects these changes. We are going to have a digital revolution where we will all benefit from: the identity card in the smartphone will be as crucial as the plastic one."

"This is simply a breakthrough in the improvement of digitalisation and e-government in Poland".

Janusz Cieszynski, Secretary of State, typical of the Government for Cybersecurity: “The act on mCitytel adopted by overwhelming majority. A large success – our e-state will no longer be on the computer, but on the phone"; "Poles liked e-recepts, mCitizen app and the ability to settle various authoritative matters online. I am glad that society has a good opinion of this area and I know that the expectations for digitalisation are even greater."

Well, in my opinion, the mCitizen app is simply a breakthrough step in a different direction from Mr Adam Andrushkiewicz. This is simply a step towards the improvement of cyber threats concerning delicate data of Poles and critical infrastructure of our country.

The fact that, thanks to the digitisation of everything, we are all targeted by Russian, American and Chinese services, I wrote in the text "Cyber weapon and zero-day. You are on target”. So I'm not gonna repeat myself here.

However, I will mention a fragment of the opinion of the president of the Office for individual Data Protection from the public consultation of the bill mCicietel: “The bill proposed gives emergence to a number of doubts of the supervisory authority, in peculiar due to its blank character and the imprecise designation of roles in data processing processes.

Some of the provisions proposed in the proposed law are fundamentally contrary to the rules on data processing laid down in Regulation 2016/679 and may seriously affect the standard of data processing by public entities in Poland." It goes on to read: “This kind of solution creates a hazard of creating a “megabase” operating outside the legal framework of individual public registers and should so be preceded by an analysis of the rules governing the functioning of these registers for mCitizen applications and the adoption of appropriate regulations at statutory level”.

What does the government say? ‘The hazard analysis indicated that the mechanisms implemented guarantee that the level of risks identified is acceptable’.

I wonder if this government hazard analysis is akin to the analysis of the safety risks of correspondence in the Chancellery of the Prime Minister. It refers here to the alleged email scandal, i.e. the acquisition by hackers of message correspondence by the head of KPRM Michał Dworczyk in June 2021.

The application mCitizen has been downloaded so far by nearly 10 million Poles. The more data we have in the digital world, the easier it will be to paralyze our lives and our household erstwhile the strategy fails or critical infrastructure is attacked. See the usage of cyber weapons by Russians in the war in Ukraine.

The vote in the Sejm on the mCitizen Act showed that the largest opposition parties against each another voted in accordance. Well, I could say that this is an example of “sticking Poland”. But in this case, I'll compose it differently. Paraphrasing Vladimir Volkoff from his book “A Brief past of Disinformation. From Trojan horse to Internet” I will say this:

It is almost certain that something bad is happening erstwhile opposition parties agree with each another even in detail.

Selection alternatively of digitization

What do I demand? Choice. Anyone who wants to usage the mCitizen app, who does not want to usage the office.

You might ask around here, but what do you mean, there's a choice. That's what the government talks about, the media say, the experts say. Yes, present we have a choice, the question is what happens tomorrow.

An example of life. In 2000 there were over 95 1000 telephone booths in Poland. How many are there today? I'm presently forced to own a cell phone.I had a choice at first. I don't have it anymore. There utilized to be public transportation in the countryside. People had a choice, they don't have 1 today. They're excluded by transport. We inactive have cash today. She might not be here tomorrow. due to the fact that the supervisory capitalists are rolling War on cash.

And finally, a question from Shoshany Zuboff:

"Will we fall victim to the same nearsightedness as those who were incapable to see the flourishing of totalitarianism, hypnotized by the large power of the large another (instrumental power—at ed.) and its omnipresence, engaged in gathering needs and confused by the speed, discretion and success of the supervisory camera?"

If you're inactive asleep, wake up, 'cause you and your kids are gonna end up like those rats in Skinner's cage, just a small nicer.

***

Tracks into the rabbit hole:

1. Skinner Burrhus F., Science and human behaviour, Warsaw, PWN Publishing House, 2022.
   "This is the most comprehensive of Skinner's works, bringing together all the most crucial themes of his imagination of psychology as a discipline of human behavior" – Prof. Przemysław Bąbel.
2. Duong Roland,Shoshana Zuboff on Surveillance Capitalism, 2019.
   Dutch documentary available on YouTube. You gotta include Polish subtitles in the settings.
3. Kreft Jan, Platform power. Behind Google, Facebook and Spotify, Kraków, Universitas, 2021.
   Polish author. Polish view of large Tech corporate power. Global analysis.

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