Three Things Should Frighten You
- In China, the government is using data to control the country’s population. By building a firewall around China and then replacing the blocked global tech services with locally owned versions it can control, the government is able to create a digital profile of each person’s actions, affiliations, statements, acts, and misdemeanors. On this, people are “scored” within a “social credit” system and rewarded or penalized accordingly.
- The recent coverage of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook shows just how much corporations in the West know about us without us knowing. The sting on Cambridge Analytica and extensive reporting by Carole Cadwalladr, along with the Facebook Senate hearings, have shown how companies that manipulate public opinion are operating in a way that very few people, and clearly not our lawmakers, can really understand.
- Quantum computing will soon be able to break modern encryption, laying open everything we so far thought was private and safe, and more powerful computers will be able to search and map this data going back through digital time. Yes, today’s quantum computing is far off from doing this, but think of your current iPhone compared to your first PC, and assume that somewhere in the future, computers will be more powerful and capable than anything we can imagine today.
In all three scenarios, let alone all three combined, privacy is threatened on a scale we have never thought about. We are entering the post-privacy age.
Most of all, I feel for our children. They are growing up in a world where everything is connected, viewable, shared. They obsess over their image, worry about their following and who likes their posts.
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