HAVE WE OPENED PANDORA’S BOX? We must move beyond 9/11

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

1. D. Helbing (2013) Globally networked risks and how to respond. Nature 497, 5159, see http://www.researchgate.net/publication/236602842_Globally_ networked_risks_and_how_to_respond/file/60b7d52ada0b3d1494. pdf; also see http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/ 130501131943.htm

2. D. Helbing (2010) Systemic Risks in Society and Economics. International Risk Governance Council (irgc), see http://www.researchgate.net/publication/ 228666065_Systemic_risks_in_society_and_economics/file/ 9fcfd50bafbc5375d6.pdf

3. D. Helbing and S. Balietti (2010) Fundamental and real-world challenges in economics. Science and Culture 76(9-10), 399417, see http://www.saha.ac.in/cmp/camcs/ Sci_Cul_091010/17%20Dirk%20Helbing.pdf

4. Ormerod, P. and D. Helbing (2012) Back to the drawing board for macroeconomics, in D. Coyle (ed.) Whats the Use of Economics?: Teaching the Dismal Science after the Crisis, London Publishing Partnership, see http://volterra.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/2_ Back-to-the-Drawing-Board-for-Macroeconomics.pdf

5. D. Helbing and A. Kirman (2013) Rethinking economics using complexity theory. Real- World Economics Review 64, 2352, see http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/ issue64/HelbingKirman64.pdf; also see http://futurict.blogspot.ch/ 2013/04/how-and-why-our-conventional-economic_8.html

6. D. Helbing (2013) Economics 2.0: The natural step towards a self-regulating, participatory market society. Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review 10, 3-41, see https:// 12 Foreword: Pandora’s Box www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/eier/10/1/10_D2013002/_pdf; also see http://www.todayonline.com/singapore/new-kind-economy-born

7. D. Helbing, S. Balietti et al. (2011) Visioneer special issue: How can we Learn to Understand, Create and Manage Complex Techno-Socio-Economic Systems? http://epjst.epj.org/index.php?option=com_toc&url=/articles/ epjst/abs/2011/04/contents/contents.html

8. D. Helbing and S. Balietti, Big Data, Privacy, and Trusted Web: What Needs to Be Done, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2322082

9. 9. OECD Global Science Forum (2008) Applications of Complexity Science for Public Policy: New Tools for Finding Unanticipated Consequences and Unrealized Opportunities, http: //www.oecd.org/science/sci-tech/43891980.pdf

10. The FuturIcT Knowledge Accelerator: Unleashing the Power of Information for a Sustainable Future, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_ id=1597095; see also http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.0788.

11. J. van den Hoven et al. (2012) FuturICT—The road towards ethical ICT, Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 214, 153-181, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjst/ e2012-01691-2#page-1

12. S. Buckingham Shum et al. (2012) Towards a Global Participatory Platform, Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 214, 109-152, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/ epjst/e2012-01690-3#page-1

13. For an overview of the Snowden revelations, see http://www.theguardian.com/ world/the-nsa-files

14. Heise Online (July 25, 2013) Bundesprsident Gauck “sehr beunruhigt” ber US-¨berwachung, http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/ Bundespraesident-Gauck-sehr-beunruhigt-ueber-US-Ueberwachung-1924026. html; for further interesting quotes see http://www.spiegel.de/ international/europe/eu-officials-furious-at-nsa-spying-in-brussels-and-germany-a-908614. html

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