By Dirk Helbing
We continue FuturICT’s essays and discussion on Big Data,
the ongoing Digital Revolution and the emergent Participatory Market Society
written since 2008 in response to the financial and other crises. If we want to
master the challenges, we must analyze the underlying problems and change the
way we manage our technosocio- economic systems.
1.1. Global
financial, economic and public spending crisis
In March 2008,
when Markus Christen, James Breiding and myself worried so much about the
stability of the financial system that we felt urged to write a newspaper
article to alert the public [65] Unfortunately, at that time, the public was
not ready to listen. Newspaper editors found our analysis too complex. We
responded that a financial crisis would be impossible to prevent, if newspapers
failed to explain the complexity of problems like this to their audience. Just
a few months later, Lehmann Brothers collapsed, which gave rise to a
large-scale crisis. It made me think about the root causes of economic problems
[3–6] and of global crises in general [1, 2], and the need to address a change in
conventional economic thinking [65-67]. But my collaborators and I saw not only
the financial crisis coming. We also voiced the surveillance problem early on
and the political vulnerability of European gas supply. We studied conflict in
Israel, the spreading of diseases, and new response strategies to earthquakes
and other disasters. Shortly later, all of this turned out to be pretty
visionary... When I attended a Global Science Forum in 2008 organized by the
OECD [9], most people still expected that the problems in the US real estate
market and the banking system could be fixed. However, it was already clear to
me—and probably many complexity scientists—that they would cause cascade
effects and trigger a global economic and public spending crisis, which we
would not recover from for many years. At that time, I said that nobody
understood our financial system, our economy, and our society well enough to
grasp the related problems and to manage them successfully. Therefore, I
proposed to invest into a large-scale project in the social sciences—including
economics—in the very same way as we have invested billions into the CERN
elementary particle accelerator, the ITER fusion reactor, the GALILEO satellite
system, space missions, astrophysics, the human genome projects, and more. I
stressed that, in the 21st century, we would require a “knowledge accelerator”
to keep up with the pace at which our societies are faced with emerging
problems [10]. Today, business and politics are often based on scientific findings
that are 30 to 50 year old, or not based on evidence at all. This is not
sufficient anymore to succeed in a quickly changing world. We would need a kind
of Apollo project, but not one to explore our universe—rather one that would
focus on the Earth and what was going on there, and why.
1.2. Need
of a “knowledge accelerator”
As a
consequence, the VISIONEER support action funded by the European Commission www.visioneer.ethz.ch
worked out four white papers proposing large-scale data mining, social
supercomputing, and the creation of an innovation accelerator [7]. Already back
in 2011, VISIONEER was also pointing out the privacy issues of modern
information and communication technologies, and it even made recommendations
how to address them [8]. Then, in response to the European call for two
10-year-long one billion EURO flagship projects in the area of Future Emerging
Technologies (FET), the multidisciplinary FUTURICT consortium was formed to turn
this vision into reality www.futurict.eu. Thousands of researchers
world-wide, hundreds of universities, and hundreds of companies signed up for
this. 90 million EURO matching funds were waiting to be spent in the first 30
months. But while the project was doing impressively well, to everyone’s
surprise it was finally not funded, even though we proposed an approach aiming
at ethical information and communication technologies [8, 11], with a focus on
privacy and citizen participation [12]. This possibly meant that governments
had decided against FuturICT’s open, transparent, participatory, and
privacy-respecting approach, and that they might invest in secret projects instead.
If this were the case, a worrying digital arms race would result. Therefore,
while spending my Easter holidays 2012 in Sevilla, I wrote a word of warning
with the article ”Google as God?” [57]. Shortly later, Edward Snowden’s
revelations of global mass surveillance shocked the world, including myself [13].
These unveiled past and current practices of secret services in various
countries and criticized them as illegal. Even though an informed reader could
have expected a lot of what was then reported, much of it just surpassed the limits
of imagination. The sheer extent of mass surveillance, the lack of any limits
to the technical tools developed, and the way they were used frightened and
alarmed many citizens and politicians. The German president, Joachim Gauck, for
example, commented: “This affair [of mass surveillance] concerns me a lot....
The worry that our phone calls and emails would be recorded and stored by a
foreign secret service hampers the feeling of freedom—and with this there is a
danger that freedom itself will be damaged.” [14] Nevertheless, many important
questions have still not been asked: How did we get into this system of mass
surveillance? What was driving these developments? Where will they lead us? And
what if such powerful information and communcation technologies were misused? The
answer to these questions continues to form endeavours of the FuturICT commnunity.
1.3. We
are experiencing a digital revolution
One of the
important insights is: We are in the middle of a digital revolution—a third
industrial revolution after the one turning agricultural societies into
industrial ones, and these into service societies. This will fundamentally
transform our economy and lead us into the “digital society” [15]. I claim that
not only the citizens haven’t noticed this process early enough, but also most
businesses and politicians. By the time we got a vague glimpse of what might be
our future, it had already pervaded our society, in the same way as the
financial crisis had infected most parts of our economy. Again, we have difficulties
to identify the responsible people—we are facing a systemic issue.
Rather than
blaming companies or people, our effort should be to raise awareness for the
implications of the techno-socio-economic systems we have created: intended and
unintended, positive and negative ones and to point the way to a brighter
future. As it turns out, we do in fact have better alternatives. But before I
discuss these, let me first give a reasonably short summary of the current
insights into the side effects of information and communication technologies,
as far as they must concern us.
1.4. Threats
to the average citizen
Let me begin
with the implications of mass surveillance for citizens. It is naive and just
wrong to assume mass surveillance would not matter for an average citizen, who
is not engaged in any criminal or terrorist activities. The number of people on
lists of terror suspects comprises a million names [17]—other sources even say a
multiple of this. It became known that these lists contains a majority of
people who are not terrorists nor linked with any. Furthermore, since friends
of friends of contact persons of suspects are also under surveillance,
basically everyone is under surveillance [18]. Of course nobody would argue
against preventing terrorism. However, mass surveillance [19] and surveillance
cameras [20] haven’t been significantly more effective in preventing crime and
terror than classical investigation methods and security measures, but they
have various side effects. For example, tens of thousands of innocent subjects
had to undergo extended investigation procedures at airports [21]. In
connection with the war on drugs, there have even been 45 million arrests [22],
where many appear to be based on illegal clues from surveillance [23].
Nevertheless, the war on drugs failed, and US Attorney General Eric Holder
finally concluded: “Too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long,
and for no truly good law enforcement reason” [24]. Recently, many people have
also been chased for tax evasion. While I am not trying to defend drug misuse
or tax evasion, we certainly see a concerning transition from the principle of
assumed innocence to a situation where everyone is considered to be a potential
suspect [25]. This is undermining fundamental principles of our legal system,
and implies threats for everyone. In an over-regulated society, it is unlikely
that there is anybody who would not violate any laws over the time period of a
year [26]. So, everyone is guilty, in principle. People (and companies) are even
increasingly getting into trouble for activities, which are legal—but socially undesirable,
i.e. we are increasingly seeing phenomena that remind of “witch hunting.” For
example, in December 2013, thousands of people got sued by a law firm for
watching porn [27]. For the first time, many people became aware that all of their
clicks in the Internet were recorded by companies, and that their behavior was tracked
in detail.
1.5. Threats
so big that one cannot even talk about them
On the side of
the state, such tracking is being justified by the desire to protect danger from
society, and child pornography is often given as one of the reaons. Again, nobody
would argue against the need to protect children from misuse, but this time the
subject is even so taboo that most people are not even aware of what exactly one
is talking about. You can’t really risk to look up information in the Internet,
and you are advised to delete photographs depicting yourself when you were a
child. Only recently, we have learned that Internet companies report thousands
of suspects of child pornography [28]. It is not known what percentage of these
people have ever touched a child in an immoral way, or paid money for unethical
pictures or video materials. This is particularly problematic, as millions of
private computers are hacked and used to send spam mails [29]; illegal material
might easily be among them. Note that passwords of more than a billion email
accounts have been illegally collected, recently [30]. This might imply that
almost everyone living in a first world country can be turned into a criminal
by putting illegal materials on one of their digital devices. In other words,
if you stand in somebody’s way, he or she might now be able to send you to
prison, even if you have done nothing wrong. The evidence against you can be
easily prepared. Therefore, your computer and your mobile device become really
dangerous for you. It is no wonder that two thirds of all Germans don’t trust
anymore that Internet companies and public authorities use their personal data
in proper ways only; half of all Germans even feel threatened by the Internet [31].
1.6. Are
we entering an age of discrimination?
On the side of
big business, our clicks are being collected for the sake of personalized advertisements,
but also to make cash in ways that are highly problematic. Whenever you apply
for a loan or a health insurance, between 3,000 and 5,000 personal data about
you might be used to determine the rate you have to pay - or whether you get an
offer at all. You would probably be shocked to see what is known about you, and
how many thousand or million people in the world have access to these data. The
people looking into our sensitive personal data, including health data, range
from secret services over border police to banks and insurance companies to the
businesses that sell and provide advertisements. While these data are collected
even if you don’t implicitly agree to share them (by accepting the terms of use
of a software, browser, or app), it has become common to apply them in
increasingly more business areas. Some of the data that were collected without
informed content may be “whitewashed” by intermediary data providers buying
illegal data and declaring their legal origin (“data laundry”). Personal data
are used, for example, to make personalized offers when buying products on the
Internet. In fact, offered products and prices now often depend on your
country, neighborhood, and salary. In other words, if you live in the “wrong
neighborhood,” you may have to pay a higher price, and if you don’t walk enough
or if you frequently eat at fastfood restaurants, your life insurance may be
more expensive. In other words, discrimination will increasingly become an issue
[15,57,68]. Besides, about half of the personal data sets contain mistakes [32].
As a consequence, you will get wrong offers without any chance to check and
challenge them. It is obvious that we have currently a great lack of
transparency, and also of mechanisms to get wrong data corrected.
1.7. Threats
to companies
But the age of
Big Data is not only becoming a threat to citizens. The same applies to
companies as well. There is an increasing risk of espionage of sensitive trade secrets.
For example, it has been proven that intellectual property of the Enercon company
was stolen and patented by a competing company [33]. One may wonder, how such
cyber espionage works, but most computer systems are more vulnerable than one
would think [34]. Every hour, there are thousands of cyberattacks, and it is
often just a matter of time until one of them succeeds. It does not have to be a
secretary who opened a virus or trojan horse attachment of an email. Stuxnet, for
example, was even able to reach computers that are not directly connected to the
Internet [35]. Any USB port may be a problem [36], too, and even your water boiler
in the kitchen [37], not to talk about hardware backdoors [39] or software vulnerabilities
such as zero day exploits, which may spread by autoupdates [40]. Most mobile
devices can be easily hacked [41], and the xKeyscore program is said to be able
to follow the correspondence of any known e-mail address, and even keyboard
entries as you type [42] (which also means that there is probably no safe password).
As there are about a million people who have (had) access to data on the same
level as Edward Snowden [43], among them mostly people working for private companies,
business espionage may not necessarily involve government employees. It could
as well be done by employees of private businesses with privileged access to the
information infrastructure of a secret service or just similar technology.
Encryption is only a partial protection. Many encryption methods have been
weakened [44], not to talk about problems such as the heartbleed bug [45] or
interfaces for remote service access [46]. This has made sensitive data, such
as money transfers or health data highly vulnerable. The providers face
increasing difficulties to guarantee data security. Many companies recently had
to report the theft of sensitive data, and the same applies to public
authorities, including the military [47].
1.8. Political
and societal risks
However, the age
of Big Data also implies considerable political and societal risks. The most
evident threat is probably that of cyberwar, which seriously endangers the
functionality of critical infrastructures and services. This creates risks that
may materialize within miliseconds, for extended time periods, and potentially
for large regions [48]. Therefore, the nuclear response to cyber-attacks is
considered to be an option [49]. Some countries also work on automated programs
for responsive cyber attacks [50]. However, as cyberattacks are often arranged
such that they appear to originate from a different country, this could easily
lead to responsive counterstrikes on the wrong country—a country that has not
been the aggressor. But there are further dangers. For example, political
careers become more vulnerable to what politicians have said or done many years
back—it can all be easily reconstructed. Such problems do not require that
these people have violated any laws—it might just be that the social norms have
changed in the meantime. This makes it difficult for personalities—typically
people with non-average characters— to make a political career. Therefore,
intellectual leadership, pointing the way into a different, better future,
might become less likely. At the same time, Big Data analytics is being used
for personalized election campaigns [51], which might determine a voter’s
political inclination and undermine the fundamental democratic principle of
voting secrecy.With lots of personal and social media data it also becomes
easier to give a speech saying exactly what the people in a particular city
would like to hear—but this, of course, does not mean the promises will be
kept. Moreover, if the governing political leaders have privileged access to data,
this can undermine a healthy balance of power between competing political parties.
1.9. Are
the secret services democratically well controlled?
It has further
become known that secret services, also in democratic countries, manipulate discussions
in social media and Internet contents, including evidence, by so-called “cyber
magicians” [52]. In South Korea, the prime minister is even said to have been
tweeted into office by the secret services [53]. But not always are secret services
playing in accord with the ruling politicians. In Luxembourg, for example, it
seems they have arranged terror attacks (besides other crimes) to get a higher budget
approved [54]. They have further spied on Luxembourg’s prime minister Jean-Claude
Juncker, who lost control over the affair and even his office. One may therefore
hope that, in his current role as the president of the European Commission, he
will be able to establish proper democratic control of the activities of secret
services. In fact, there is a serious but realistic danger that criminals might
get control of the powers of secret services, who should be protecting the
society from organized crime. Of course, criminals will always be attracted by
Big Data and cyber powers to use them in their interest, and they will often
find ways to do so. In Bulgaria, for example, a politician is said to have been
trying to get control over the country’s secret services for criminal business.
The Bulgarian people have been demonstrating for many weeks to prevent this
from happening [55].
1.10.What
kind of society are we heading to?
Unfortunately,
one must conclude that mass surveillance and Big Data haven’t increased societal,
econonomic, and cyber security. They have made us ever more vulnerable.We,
therefore, find our societies on a slippery slope. Democracies could easily
turn into totalitarian kinds of societies, or at least “democratorships,” i.e.
societies in which politicians are still voted for, but in which the citizens
have no significant influence anymore on the course of events and state of
affairs. The best examples for this are probably the secret negotiations the
ACTA and TTIP agreements, i.e. laws intended to protect intellectual property
and to promote free trade regimes. These include parallel legal mechanisms and
court systems, which would take intransparent decisions that the public would
nevertheless have to pay for. It seems that traditional democracies are more
and more transformed into something else. This would perhaps be ok, if it
happened through an open and participatory debate that takes the citizens and
all relevant stakeholders on board. In history, societies have undergone
transformations many times, and I believe the digital revolution will lead us
to another one. But if politicians or business leaders acted as revolutionaries
trying to undermine our constitutional rights, this would sooner or later fail.
Remember that the constitution—at least in many European countries— explicitly
demands from everyone to protect privacy and family life, to respect the secrecy
of non-public information exchange, to protect us from misuse of personal data,
and to grant the possibility of informational self-determination, as these are
essential functional preconditions of free, human, and livable democracies [56].
The secret services should be protecting us from those who question our
constitutional rights and don’t respect them. Given the state of affairs, this
would probably require something like an autoimmune response. It often seems
that not even public media can protect our constitutional rights efficiently.
This is perhaps because they are not able to reveal issues that governments
share with them exclusively under mutually agreed confidence.
1.11.“Big
governments” fueled by “Big Data”
In the past
years, some elites have increasingly become excited about the Singaporean “big
government” model, i.e. something like an authoritarian democracy ruled according
to the principle of a benevolent, “wise king,” empowed by Big Data [57]. As
logical as it may sound, such a concept may be beneficial up to a certain
degree of complexity of a society, but beyond this point it limits the cultural
and societal evolution [15, 57]. While the approach to take decisions like a
“wise king” might help to advance Singapore and a number of other countries for
some time, in a country like Germany or Switzerland, which gain their power and
success by enganging into balanced and fair solutions in a diverse and well
educated society with a high degree of civic participation, it would be a step
backwards. Diversity and complexity are a precondition for innovation, societal
resilience, and socioeconomic well-being [15]. However, we can benefit from
complexity and diversity only if we enable distributed management and
self-regulating systems. This requires to restrict top-down control to what
cannot be managed in a bottom-up way. That is, where the transformative
potential of information and communication systems really is: information
technology can now enable the social, economic and political participation and
coordination that was just impossible to organize before. It is now the time
for a societal dialogue about the path that the emerging digital society should
take: either one that is authoritarian and top-down, or one that is based on
freedom, creativity, innovation, and participation, enabling bottom-up engagement
[16]. I personally believe a participatory market society is offering the better
perspectives for industrialized services societies in the future, and that it
will be superior to an authoritarian top-down approach. Unfortunately, it seems
we are heading towards the latter. But it is important to recognize that the
dangers of the current Big Data approach are substantial, and that there is
nobody who could not become a victim of it. It is crucial to understand and
admit that we need a better approach, and that it was a mistake to engage into
the current one.
1.12.We
must move beyond September 11
The present Big
Data approach seems to be one of the many consequences of September 11, which
did not change our world to the better. By now, it has become clear that the
“war on X” approach—where “X” stands for drugs, terror, or other countries—does
not work. Feedback, cascade and side effects have produced many unintended
results. In the meantime, one is trying to find “medicines” against the side
effects of the medicines that were applied to the world before. The outcome of
the wars on Iraque and Afghanistan can hardly be celebrated as success. We
rather see that these wars have destabilized entire regions. We are faced with
increased terrorism by people considering themselves as freedom fighers, a
chaotic aftermath of Arab spring revolutions, devastating wars in Syria, Israel
and elsewhere, an invasion of religious warriors, increased unwelcomed
migration, poverty-related spreading of dangerous diseases, and
larger-than-ever public spending deficits; torture, Guantanamo, secret prisons,
drones and an aggressive cybersecurity approach have not managed to make the
world a safer place [58]. As these problems demonstrate, globalization means
that problems in other parts of the world will sooner or later feed back on us
[59]. In other words, in the future we must make sure that, if we want to have
a better and peaceful life, others around us will also find peaceful and
reasonable living conditions. To better understand the often unexpected and undesirable
feedback, cascade and side effects occuring in the complex interdependent
systems of our globalized world, it is important to develop a Global Systems
Science [1]. For example, it has been recently pointed out, even from
unexpected sides such as Standard and Poor’s, that too much inequality
endangers economic and societal progress [60]. It is also important to
recognize that respect and qualified trust are a more sustainable basis for
socio-economic order than power and fear [61, 68]. I believe the dangerous
aspect of mass surveillance is that its impact will become obvious only over a
time period of many years. By the time we notice this, it might be too late to
protect us from harm. Like nuclear radiation, one cannot directly feel the
effects of mass surveillance, but it nevertheless causes structural damages—in this
case to democratic societies. Mass surveillance undermines trust and
legitimacy. However, trust and legitimacy is the glue that keeps societies
together—they create the power of our political representatives and public
institutions. Without trust, a society becomes unstable.
1.13.What
needs to be done
It is not
unreasonable to be afraid of the “ghosts out to of the bottle” that mass surveillance
released. Some people consider it to be one of the things that escaped from
Pandora’s Box in the aftermath of September 11. But hope is last. What can we do?
First of all, to ensure accountability, it seems necessary to record each
access to personal data (including the computational operation and the exact
data set it was executed on). Second of all, one must restore lost trust by the
public, which requires a sufficient level of transparency. For example, the log
files of data queries executed by secret services and other public authorities
would have to be accessible to independent and sufficiently empowered
supervising authorities. Similarly, log files of data queries executed by
companies should be regularly checked by independent experts such as qualified
scientists or citizen scientists. To be able to trust Big Data analytics, the
public must know that it is scientifically sound and compliant with the values
of our society and constitution. This also requires that users, customers, and
citizens have a right to legally challenge results of Big Data analytics. For
this, Big Data analytics must be made reproducible, such that the quality and
law compliance of data mining results can be checked by independent experts. Furthermore,
it should be ensured that the power of Big Data is not used against the
justified interest of people. For example, I recommend to use it to enable
people, scientists, companies and politicians to take better decisions and more
effective actions rather than applying it for the sake of large-scale law
enforcement. The use of Big Data for criminal investigation should, therefore,
be restricted to activites that endanger the foundations of a well-functioning
society. It might further be necessary to punish data manipulation and data
pollution, no matter who engages in it (including secret services). Given the
many instances of data manipulation today, data traces should not be considered
as pieces of evidence themselves. Furthermore, for the sake of just and legitimate
sanctioning systems, it must be ensured that sanctions are not applied in an
arbitrary and selective way. In addition, the number of criminal investigations
triggered by data analytics must be kept low and controlled by the parliament.
Otherwise, in an over-regulated society, Big Data analytics might be misused by
the elites to shape the society according to their taste—and this would surely
end in a disaster sooner or later. In particular, the use of Big Data should
not get into the way of freedom and innovation, as these are important
functional success principles of complex societies. It is also important to
recognize that the emergent digital society will require particular institutions,
as it was also the case for the industrial and the service societies. This
includes data infrastructures implementing a “new deal on data” [62], which would
give users control over their own data and allow them to benefit from profits created
with them. This can be done with the “Personal Data Purse” approach, which has
recently been developed to comply with the constitutional right of
informational self-determination [63]. Further infrastructures and institutions
needed by the digital society are addressed in [15]
1.14.A
better future, based on self-regulation
Finally, I recommend to engage
into the creation of self-regulating systems. These can be enabled by real-time
measurements, which the sensor networks underlying the emerging “Internet of
Things” will increasingly allow. Interestingly, such applications can support
socio-economic coordination and order based on selforganization, without
requiring the storage of personal or other sensitive data. In other words, the
production of data and their use for self-regulating systems would be temporary
and local, thereby enabling efficient and desirable socio-economic outcomes while
avoiding dystopian surveillance scenarios. I am convinced that this is the
information-based way into a better future and, therefore, I will describe
further details of this approach in an upcoming book on the self-regulating
digital society [64].While our writings to date have
been more focused on concerns related to the current trends and developments, a
forthcoming book will be focused on the question, what we can do to promote a
“happy end.”
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank many
friends and colleagues, in particular the world-wide FuturICT community, for
the inspiring discussions and the continued support.
References
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15. D. Helbing (June 12, 2014) What the Digital Revolution Means for Us, Science Business, http://www.sciencebusiness.net/news/76591/ What-the-digital-revolution-means-for-us, see also [16]
16. See the videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_Lphxknozc and http: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=AErRh_yDr-Q
17. The Intercept (August 5, 2014) Barack Obamas secret terrorist-tracking system, by the numbers, https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/08/ 05/watch-commander/
18. Foreign Policy (July 17, 2013) 3 degrees of separation is enough to have you watched by the NSA, http://complex.foreignpolicy.com/posts/ 2013/07/17/3_degrees_of_separation_is_enough_to_have_ you_watched_by_the_nsa; see also “Three degrees of separation” in http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/nov/01/ snowden-nsa-files-surveillance-revelations-decoded#section/1
19. The Washington Post (January 12, 2014) NSA phone record collection does little to prevent terrorist attacks, group says, http: //www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/ nsa-phone-record-collection-does-little-to-prevent-terrorist-attacks-group-says/ 2014/01/12/8aa860aa-77dd-11e3-8963-b4b654bcc9b2_story.html? hpid=z4; see also http://securitydata.newamerica.net/nsa/analysis
20. M. Gill and Spriggs: Assessing the impact of CCTV. Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate (2005), https://www.cctvusergroup.com/ downloads/file/Martin%20gill.pdf; see also BBC News (August 24, 2009) 1,000 cameras ‘solve one crime, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/ england/london/8219022.stm
21. Home Office (September 2012) Review of the Operation of Schedule 7, https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/ References 13 attachment_data/file/157896/consultation-document.pdf; also see http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/ david-miranda-detained-uk-nsa
22. National Geographic (January 22, 2013) The war on drugs is a “miserable failure’, http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/22/ the-war-on-drugs-is-a-miserable-failure/
23. Electronic Frontier Foundation (August 6, 2013) DEA and NSA team up to share intelligence, leading to secret use of surveillance in ordinary investigations, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/ dea-and-nsa-team-intelligence-laundering
24. The Guardian (August 12, 2013) Eric Holder unveils new reforms aimed at curbing US prison population, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/12/ eric-holder-smart-crime-reform-us-prisons
25. The Intercept (March 7, 2014) Guilty until proven innocent, https: //firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2014/03/07/ guilty-proven-innocent/; see also http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ 2014/08/15/unlawful-arrests-police_n_5678829.html
26. J. Schmieder (2013) Mit einem Bein im Knast, http://www.amazon.com/ Mit-einem-Bein-Knast-gesetzestreu-ebook/dp/B00BOAFXKM/ ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8; see also http://www.spiegel.tv/filme/ magazin-29122013-verboten/
27. Spiegel (December 9, 2013) Redtube.com: Massenabmahnungen wegen Porno-Stream, http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/ porno-seite-redtube-abmahnungen-gegen-viele-nutzer-a-938077. html; see also http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/ massenabmahnungen-koennen-laut-gerichtsurteil-ein-rechtsmissbrauch-sein-a-939764. html
28. International Business Times (August 7, 2014) Microsoft tip leads to child porn arrest; Google, Facebook also scan for vile images, http://www.ibtimes.com/ microsoft-tip-leads-child-porn-arrest-google-facebook-also-scan-vile-images-1651756
29. MailOnline (January 12, 2013) The terrifying rise of cyber crime: Your computer is currently being targeted by criminal gangs looking to harvest your personal details and steal your money, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2260221/ Cyber-crime-Your-currently-targeted-criminal-gangs-looking-steal-money. html; see also https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/03/ 12/nsa-plans-infect-millions-computers-malware/
30. New York Times (August 5, 2014) Russian Hackers Amass Over a Billion Internet Passwords, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/technology/ russian-gang-said-to-amass-more-than-a-billion-stolen-internet-credentials. html?_r=0
31. Spiegel Online (June 5, 2014) Umfrage zum Datenschutz: Online misstrauen die Deutschen dem Staat, http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/ umfrage-deutsche-misstrauen-dem-staat-beim-online-datenschutz-a-973522. html
32. Focus Money Online (August 8, 2014) Test enth¨ullt Fehler in jeder zweiten Schufa- Auskunft, http://www.focus.de/finanzen/banken/ratenkredit/ falsche-daten-teure-gebuehren-test-enthuellt-fehler-in-jeder-zweiten-schufa-auskunft_ id_4046967.html
33. Versicherungsbote (July 2, 2013) Wirtschaftsspionage durch amerikanischen Geheimdienst NSA - Deutsche Unternehmen sind besorgt, http://www.versicherungsbote.de/id/89486/ Wirtschaftsspionage-durch-amerikanischen-Geheimdienst-NSA/; see also http://pretioso-blog.com/der-fall-enercon-in-der-ard-wirtschaftspionage-der-usa-durch-and http://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/wirtschafsspionage100. html 14 Foreword: Pandora’s Box
34. Zeit Online (April 17, 2014) Blackout, http://www.zeit.de/2014/16/ blackout-energiehacker-stadtwerk-ettlingen
35. Stuxnet, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Stuxnet, http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/ stuxnet-attackers-used-4-windows-zero-day-exploits/ 7347, http://www.itworld.com/security/281553/ researcher-warns-stuxnet-flame-show-microsoft-may-have-been-infiltrated-nsa-cia
36. PC News (July 31, 2014) Researchers warn about ‘BadUSB exploit, http://www. pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2461717,00.asp
37. Mail Online (October 31, 2013) China is spying on you through your KETTLE: Bugs that scan wi-fi devices found in imported kitchen gadgets, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2480900/ China-spying-KETTLE-Bugs-scan-wi-fi-devices-imported-kitchen-gadgets. html
38. The Verge (June 6, 2013) Secret program gives NSA, FBI backdoor access to Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft data, http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/6/4403868/ nsa-fbi-mine-data-apple-google-facebook-microsoft-others-prism; see also http://techrights.org/2013/06/15/nsa-and-microsoft/, http://techrights.org/2013/08/22/nsa-back-doors-blowback/
39. MIT Technology Review (October 8, 2013) NSAs own hardware backdoors may still be a “Problem from hell, http://www.technologyreview.com/news/519661/ nsas-own-hardware-backdoors-may-still-be-a-problem-from-hell/; see also http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/ nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security, http://www.eteknix.com/ expert-says-nsa-have-backdoors-built-into-intel-and-amd-processors/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_ANT_catalog
40. RT (July 3, 2014) NSA sued for hoarding details on use of zero day exploits, http://rt. com/usa/170264-eff-nsa-lawsuit-0day/; see also http://www.wired. com/2014/04/obama-zero-day/
41. Private Wifi (March 31, 2014) New drone can hack into your mobile device, http://www.privatewifi.com/ new-drone-can-hack-into-your-mobile-device/; see also http://www. privatewifi.com/new-drone-can-hack-into-your-mobile-device/, http://securitywatch.pcmag.com/hacking/314370-black-hat-intercepting-calls-and-cloning-phones-http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/07/15/ 201490397/How-Hackers-Tapped-Into-My-Verizon-Cellphone-For-250, http://www.alarmspy.com/phone_hacking_9.html
42. The Guardian (July 31, 2013) XKeyscore: NSA tool collects ‘nearly everything a user does on the internet, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/ nsa-top-secret-program-online-data; see also http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/XKeyscore
43. Business Insider (June 10, 2013) How a GED-holder managed to get ‘top secret’ government clearance, http://www.businessinsider.com/ edward-snowden-top-secret-clearance-nsa-whistleblower-2013-6
44. The Guardian (September 16, 2013) Academics criticise NSA and GCHQ for weakening online encryption, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/16/ nsa-gchq-undermine-internet-security
45. BBC News (April 10, 2014) Heartbleed bug: What you need to know, http://www.bbc. com/news/technology-26969629; see also http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Heartbleed
46. Huff Post (July 25, 2014) Apple May Be Spying On You Through Your iPhone, http:// www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/26/apple-iphones-allow-extra_ n_5622524.html; see also http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/ chinese-media-calls-apples-iphone-a-national-security-concern-227246. html References 15
47. The Guardian (May 20, 2014) Chinese military officials charged with stealing US data as tensions escalate, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/ 2014/may/19/us-chinese-military-officials-cyber-espionage; see also http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/07/washington/ 07identity.html, http://blog.techgenie.com/editors-pick/ data-theft-incidents-to-prevent-or-to-cure.html, http: //articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/keyword/data-theft/ recent/5
48. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfareandhttp://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber-attack and http://www.wired.com/2013/ 06/general-keith-alexander-cyberwar/all/
49. The National Interest (June 24, 2013) Cyberwar and the nuclear option, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/ cyberwar-the-nuclear-option-8638
50. Wired (August 13, 2014) Meet MonsterMind, the NSA Bot That Could Wage Cyberwar Autonomously, http://www.wired.com/2014/08/ nsa-monstermind-cyberwarfare/
51. InfoWorld (February 14, 2013) The real story of how big data analytics helped Obama win, http://www.infoworld.com/d/big-data/ the-real-story-of-how-big-data-analytics-helped-obama-win-212862; see also http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/509026/ how-obamas-team-used-big-data-to-rally-voters/; Nature (September 12, 2012) Facebook experiment boosts US voter turnout, http://www.nature.com/ news/facebook-experiment-boosts-us-voter-turnout-1.11401; see also http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2012/09/13/ us-election-can-twitter-and-facebook-influence-voters
52. RT (February 25, 2014) Western spy agencies build ‘cyber magicians’ to manipulate online discourse, http://rt.com/news/ five-eyes-online-manipulation-deception-564/; see also https: //firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/, https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/14/ manipulating-online-polls-ways-british-spies-seek-control-internet/, http://praag.org/?p=13752
53. NZZ (August 18, 2014) Ins Amt gezwischert? www.nzz.ch/aktuell/startseite/ ins-amt-gezwitschert-1.18202760
54. Secret services are there to stabilize democracies? The reality looks different, https:// www.facebook.com/FuturICT/posts/576176715754340
55. DW (June 26, 2013) Bulgarians protest government of ‘oligarchs, http://www.dw.de/ bulgarians-protest-government-of-oligarchs/a-16909751; see also Tagesschau.de (July 24, 2013) Zorn vieler Bulgaren ebbt nicht ab, http://www. tagesschau.de/ausland/bulgarienkrise102.html
56. Aus dem Volksz¨ahlungsurteil des Bundesverfassungsgerichts (BVerfGE 65, 1 ff; NJW 84, 419 ff, see http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksz\unhbox\voidb@x\ bgroup\let\unhbox\voidb@x\setbox\@tempboxa\hbox{a\global\ mathchardef\accent@spacefactor\spacefactor}\accent127a\ egroup\spacefactor\accent@spacefactorhlungsurteil): “Mit dem Recht auf informationelle Selbstbestimmung wren eine Gesellschaftsordnung und eine diese ermglichende Rechtsordnung nicht vereinbar, in der Brger nicht mehr wissen knnen, wer was wann und bei welcher Gelegenheit ber sie wei. Wer unsicher ist, ob abweichende Verhaltensweisen jederzeit notiert und als Information dauerhaft gespeichert, verwendet oder weitergegeben werden, wird versuchen, nicht durch solche Verhaltensweisen aufzufallen. [] Dies wrde nicht nur die individuellen Entfaltungschancen des Einzelnen beeintrchtigen, sondern auch das Gemeinwohl, weil Selbstbestimmung eine elementare Funktionsbedingung eines auf Handlungsfhigkeit und Mitwirkungsfhigkeit 16 Foreword: Pandora’s Box seiner Brger begrndeten freiheitlichen demokratischen Gemeinwesens ist. Hieraus folgt: Freie Entfaltung der Persnlichkeit setzt unter den modernen Bedingungen der Datenverarbeitung den Schutz des Einzelnen gegen unbegrenzte Erhebung, Speicherung, Verwendung und Weitergabe seiner persnlichen Daten voraus. Dieser Schutz ist daher von dem Grundrecht des Art. 2 Abs. 1 in Verbindung mit Art. 1 Abs. 1 GG umfasst. Das Grundrecht gewhrleistet insoweit die Befugnis des Einzelnen, grundstzlich selbst ber die Preisgabe und Verwendung seiner persnlichen Daten zu bestimmen. See also Alexander Rossnagel (August 28, 2013) “Big Data und das Konzept der Datenschutzgesetze, http://www.privacy-security.ch/2013/Download/Default.htm
57. Foreign Policy (2014) The Social Laborary, see http://www.foreignpolicy. com/articles/2014/07/29/the_social_laboratory_singapore_ surveillance_state; also see Dirk Helbing (March 27, 2013) Google as God? Opportunities and Risks of the Information Age, http://futurict.blogspot. ie/2013/03/google-as-god-opportunities-and-risks.html; see also From crystal ball to magic wand: The new world order in times of digital revolution, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AErRh_yDr-Q
58. Live science (January 6, 2011) U.S. torture techniques unethical, ineffective, http://www.livescience.com/ 9209-study-torture-techniques-unethical-ineffective.html; see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effectiveness_of_torture_ for_interrogation and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/ 04/11/cia-harsh-interrogations_n_5130218.html; The Guardian (January 7, 2013) US drone attacks ’counter-productive’, former Obama security adviser claims, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/07/ obama-adviser-criticises-drone-policy; see also http://www. huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/us-drone-strikes-ineffective_ n_3313407.html and http://sustainablesecurity.org/2013/ 10/24/us-drone-strikes-in-pakistan/; NationalJournal (April 30, 2014) The NSA isn’t just spying on us, it’s also undermining Internet security , http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/ the-nsa-isn-t-just-spying-on-us-it-s-also-undermining-internet-security-20140429; see also http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/07/ 31/usa_freedom_act_update_how_the_nsa_hurts_our_economy_ cybersecurity_and_foreign.html
59. D. Helbing et al. (2014) Saving human lives: What complexity science and information systems can contribute. J. Stat. Phys., http://link.springer.com/article/10. 1007%2Fs10955-014-1024-9
60. Time (August 5, 2014) S&P: Income Inequality Is Damaging the Economy, http:// time.com/3083100/income-inequality/
61. Physicstoday (July 2013) Qualified trust, not surveillance, is the basis of a stable society, http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/ news/10.1063/PT.4.2508; see also the Foreword in Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World (February 2012) http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/ files/privacy-final.pdf, which starts: “Trust is essential to maintaining the social and economic benefits that networked technologies bring to the United States and the rest of the world.”
62. World Economic Forum (2011) Personal Data: Emergence of a New Asset Class, see http://www.weforum.org/reports/ personal-data-emergence-new-asset-class
63. Y.-A. de Montjoye, E. Shmueli, S. S. Wang, and A. S. Pentland (2014) openPDS: Protecting the Privacy of Metadata through SafeAnswers, http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371% 2Fjournal.pone.0098790; see also ftp://131.107.65.22/pub/ debull/A12dec/large-scale.pdf, http://infoclose.com/ References 17 protecting-privacy-online-new-system-would-give-individuals-more-control-over-shared-digital-http://www.taz.de/!131892/, http://www.taz.de/!143055/
64. Dirk Helbing (August 14, 2014) The world after Big Data: Building the self-regulating society, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_Q_-Pk-btY or https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_Lphxknozc
65. How and Why Our Conventional Economic Thinking Causes Global Crises http://futurict.blogspot.de/2013/04/how-and-why-our-conventional-economic_8.html
66. “Networked Minds” Require A Fundamentally New Kind of Economics (19 March 2013) http://futurict.blogspot.de/2013/03/networked-minds-require-fundamentally_19.html?spref=fb and see also How Natural Selection Can Create Both Self- and Other-Regarding Preferences, and Networked Minds (19 March 2013) http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130319/srep01480/pdf/srep01480.pdf
67. Global Networks Must Be Redesigned (1 May 2013) http://phys.org/news/2013-05-global-networks-redesigned-professor.html#jCp
68. From Technology-Driven Society to Socially Oriented Technology-The Future of Information Society - Alternatives to Surveillance ( 9 July 2013) http://futurict.blogspot.ie/2013/07/from-technology-driven-society-to.html
A very good article.
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