Photodeus Blog

After a long break, I’ve decided to re-add my blog about me, my insights and thoughts on photography, web technology, internet privacy and security.  So hello world, welcome (back?) to my blog!

I don’t blog for anyone else but myself,  it’s sort of a concerned Netizen’s diary. I have no posting schedules, but I’ll try to add an entry whenever I read something interesting that I feel like sharing or want to remind myself of it, if I ever read back on what I wrote.

I’d rather share my links on my personal blog than say, Facebook. There data seems to disappear rather quickly and become irrelevant and invalid before you can say “Hi, I am Seppo Vuolteenaho, I’m a big optimistic pessimist and I would like to say this…”. By the time you’ve done that you notice you were flooded by messages about cute pink  Farmville cows and ducks that have lost their way who need your immediate attention. I’m fairly certain that duck was just a decoy to make us ignore more important matters such as Keystroke Dynamics.

Who would be interested in technology that could be used to figure out your anonymous identity anyway? If someone invested enough time into wiretapping your keystrokes via some malicious Firefox add-on or even a JavaScript library included on each web page this could certainly be plausible. What if we have this type of system installed in every public library and internet café? The pessimist in me says it’s gonna happen for sure some day. When an idea or system is made into a simple-to-use dynamic library that is easy to install, we’ll be subjects to multitude logging and monitoring methods. Before you know it, we’ll have fingerprint scanning inside the mouse – click a link, et voilà, your index finger was just scanned and the data logged forever without you ever knowing who stored the information and where.

Paranoia? Crazy? Why would it be. The government and law enforcement is already surprisingly keen on tracking your communication and behavior. I’m usually pretty lazy in showing evidence of things we all should already know (recent EU legislation changes, FRA-law in Sweden, blah blah), so I won’t link you to sites telling how our internet traffic is already being recorded, how there are plenty of surveillance systems installed in that street corner, that GSM network, that email system, that internet service provider’s router, that payment system. I’m sure you can take my word for it that everything you do, is somehow traceable back many years. You might not care that very moment you did it. But how about 10 years later? 50 years later?

If you think you didn’t do anything wrong now, you might think there’s no problem with anyone knowing then. But I’m more of the attitude, that if I say “it’s none of your business”, then it really is none of anyone’s business. If you can’t justify why you need to know, then you shouldn’t ask. Likewise, if there’s no reason to record everything, then they shouldn’t just because it’s possible.

So you just happened to be in that city that specific date when there was some parade demonstrating that thought and idea, your location can be backtracked based on data from credit cards, phone details etc. And you clicked on that website talking about that issue. Oh well, now you’re automatically labeled as a person into that, whatever it happens to be.

As more and more information is recorded, even minute details can be recorded. Iinstead of the normal “Female, in her fifties, likes knitting” -profile, we’ll be able to build up huge databases collected by some automated computerized system: “Female, 55.2 years, loves pink sneakers, into naked pictures of underage puppies, supports ultra-left-wing political ideologies, takes a skinny-dip every Monday and Thursday, 23% homosexual tendencies, 15% racist tendencies towards Caucasians, 10% towards Cubans, predominantly watches TV shows tagged with labels: weapons, drugs, rape. Possible psychological disorders: Paranoid Schizophrenia 5%”. And those are just the basic details.

I’m not being completely serious, but I’m still concerned. I don’t dare go  speculate too much of a dark future where we’ll all be categorized into demographics with aforementioned pinpoint precision. There will most likely never be complete profiles for all of us, but there certainly will be profiles containing probabilities and estimations based on our actions. In a way it’s quite interesting too, if (and when!) this becomes possible.

Most simplistically a telemarketer’s dream scenario is to have as accurate a profile as possible. On a broader view, accepting the fact that all people have many kinds of tendencies, we’ll learn to accept diversity more than ever when they get proper labels and are trivialized. There’s certainly more to us than religious beliefs, skin color, age and gender!

Widespread introspection of the human psyche and understanding “who and what you are” might aid the general population in accepting minorities  by making things come out in the open. Educating people about observed deviations from the norm would make it easier to handle problems instead of sweeping them under the rug: Oh, did you hear our little boy Johnny has 15% arsonistic tendencies, so we’re sending him to little arsonist summer camp to burn some things and learn to keep his inhibitions at bay with like minded people. Oh and he would like to molest grandma, but he’s undergoing therapy for that. Luckily the Government funded Mind-Monitor alerted us in time before he did something stupid.

Arsonists Anonymous wouldn’t have to or wouldn’t be able to be so anonymous anymore. But don’t worry. We’ll keep an eye on you and we love you the way you are (right..?) Maybe we’ll finally feel less guilt for not having the sensation of belonging into a big lump of too broadly generalized individuals.

Would it assist in controlling the society if we become too pedantic about it?

If for example we learn that someone with tendency x likes to push the pedal to the metal whenever they hear a crazy tune at 130 bpm on the radio? Okay, so let’s prevent their car radio from playing that kind of music, because otherwise there’s an increased risk of a traffic accident! This is of course possible in the future, since everyone will have a personalized radio station with a mix of talkers and songs created on the basis of your mental profile. Maybe it would even be government enforced: You’re only allowed to own a car radio that has a “Biometric Personality Encoded Ribonucleic Vector” (B-PERV) lock and key to unlock it. That way you’ll never listen to content that can trigger any unwanted behavior.

Call me crazy, but the more they know, the more they will want to excerpt control. Sorry, but that’s how it goes and there’s going to be more and more (speed) limits on your preferences that aren’t accepted. Comply, get treated or get locked away – or run off to the wilderness and be cast away from the perfectly controlled society.

Links for this blog:

http://33bits.org/2009/01/15/de-anonymizing-the-internet/ (the whole blog is worthy of a proper read!)

A movie I like and is related to the topic of this blog:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0238380/ Equilibrium. A future dystopia in which all forms of emotional expression are illegal, and citizens are forced to take daily injections of drugs to suppress their emotions.