I don't have to buy a phone. Yes, the apps make the border easier for Covid, but don't be ridiculous. I can fallback to filling out a piece of paper. Furthermore, I can buy an [PinePhone, Librem 5, etc] phone and "fully control" that.
As for c) that's been part of life since the government got the right to tap your phone or telegraph.
Right now there are troubling signs for the direction of American democracy, but the courts have held up and life is still pretty good and, for some, getting better. I know mistakes happen and it isn't perfect, but we're no where close to being forced to own and carry a device.
In Denmark where I live there are now trivial things that are impossible to do without an Apple or Google smartphone, and important things that are becoming very hard. Unless laws are specifically enacted to enshrine "analogue rights" or whatever, it will become impossible to exist here without a smartphone over the next decade.
Cash is largely dead and will die when the legal requirement to accept it is phased out at some point in the next few years. In addition to credit cards, there is one app for payments (owned by the largest retail bank) that has become the de facto standard for person-to-person transfers. So we are already at the point where not having a smartphone makes you a second class citizen, unable to participate in some parts of the economy.
- Your ID card already has RFID, and it will only get more powerful
- credit, payment, banking, passports, air travel ... all getting centralized.
- Go ahead and fallback to paper, that just means the paper is entered into a computer when you hand it in and they "review" it. What will probably happen is that the all-paper route will become FAR MORE ONEROUS will submitting to facial recognition, DNA samples, and the like to back-verify your identity, higher fees, wait times, until you submit to practical day-to-day needing a on-body computer device like a phone.
- all democracies know laziness is the key to functionally subverting rights, it's only going to get worse.
- even if you don't submit, all they people you know WILL, and the government can track you by tracking the people you know. So I guess, no friends for you.
Now, for every place I said government, cross that out and put in "multinational corporation that is a monopoly or cartel in all its markets"... and it's all there, turnkey, same policies, but even less legal / constitutional protection.
Parking in many places requires an app from an app store.
There's lots of small community things, local classifieds etc., that exist in niche things that only have an app. Like I said, trivial things, but they add up to everyday life becoming harder.
As for legal requirement: the government single sign-on that is used to interact with all government services and is also mandated for many important things like banks, insurance etc., is app-centric, though not app-only. They used to send one-time pads on cardboard but recently switch to electronic tokens. All government ID (for public health etc.) is also moving to apps. You can still get plastic cards, of course.
BTW, if you want to make a call over the telephone network, neither the PinePhone nor the Librem 5 carry a modem you can control. In both cases, the modem is a black box with non-free firmware that you're probably not even allowed to modify, depending on jurisdiction.
Oh, and it doesn't even have to be an emergency. You might find out that your hospital only accepts appointments made by phone, and will turn you around from the door due to COVID restrictions when you try to schedule a visit. What will you choose?
Granted, it's not a legal requirement to take advantage of your legally mandated health insurance, but it's a catch-22 that was constructed out of a clash of laws.
It's the idea of an actual smartphone not just maybe, hypothetically but "right now becoming" a legal requirement that seems to be -- more than a bit of stretch, here,
My bank has made it (almost) impossible to make payments without a phone, btw. Either you need to receive SMS messages or use their proprietary app. I could receive SMS messages without a phone but I would expect this to be a solution that eventually gives me more trouble than it's worth.
My bank has several buildings full of people, all within driving distance of my house. Any of those people will happily accept a stack of paper bills.
If you don't want to use digital forms of payment, why on earth are you using a bank that doesn't have physical branches located near your home?
Many banks require you to call ahead if you want to make a large cash withdrawal, and if you make a large deposit you need to be able to document where you got the money from or had the authorities called on you.
Have you actually tried depositing large amounts of cash on a regular basis? Sounds like a good way to get your account flagged and suspended.
Not to mention the Treasury's seeming animosity toward cash as an instrument of payment.
1. OP said "make payments", not "receive money". Literally no one is going to give a shit if you make your mortgage or car payment in cash.
2. LOL, yes, I deposit cash all the time, including a quite large sum at least twice a year (charity events). Cash-based businesses are still very much a thing.
3. I write like $10K worth of checks every month, and deposit around $3K-$6K worth of checks every month. No smartphone required.
Are you sure? To get a mortgage they check the source of your down payment and it cannot be cash. Seems odd if they don't also check source for payments.
Yes, absolutely sure.
> To get a mortgage
I said:
>> make your mortgage or car payment
Making payment on existing loan != taking out a new loan.
> they check the source of your down payment and it cannot be cash.
If you mean literal physical cash: the main reason for this is that no one involved in the transaction is interested in taking on the risk of carrying briefcases full of cash across town.
If you mean money in a bank account that is of unknown provenance: This isn't really an issue unless you make a huge lump sum deposit just before closing and have absolutely zero documentation regarding where it came from. Even then, giant sums recently deposited isn't a problem. You just have to prove that it's of non-criminal provenance. Recent pay stubs or sales receipts will do.
That has nothing to do with the money being "cash" or not, though.
And even then, it's mostly about access to giant piles of credit. If you don't need to borrow huge piles of someone else's money, then no one gives a shit. E.g., I've purchased property with a cashier's check, which is about as close to literal cash as you can get without major security risks involved.)
That's actually incorrect, to my understanding. If you have 100k in your bank account for a year, the lender doesn't care when you pay your down payment out of that regardless of where it came from. They object when there's a recent transfer/deposit of that money because it could indicate an undocumented loan, throwing off the debt to income calculations.
> They object when there's a recent transfer/deposit of that money because it could indicate an undocumented loan, throwing off the debt to income calculations.
Right. It's not some authoritarian plot. They just wanna make sure you're not a fibbing about your net worth before handing you a giant stack of their money. If you can prove the money is yours then they're fine.
I haven't been to a store that has refused cash and have never been required to use a banking app.
Just because you choose to use e-banking doesn't mean that cash and checks are inaccessible, or even particularly inconvenient.
In stores I mostly use cash, except for larger purchases where it becomes inconvenient. Those go to the credit card which I'll then pay with a check.
Bills here are paid with bank transfer. It doesn't have to be done though online banking, but doing so is obviously easier.
But yes, you can go into banks and deposit money (even frequently, and in reasonably large amounts).
The flagging and suspending stuff is more what I'd be wary of using paypal or something similar, not an actual bank.
Anyway, Germany used to require people to join the military and kill other people. Now they don't. Progress.
Many in this branch of discussion seem to be measuring their possibilities against a current situation in their area - while in some other regions the situation is worse to desperate - and they are not seeing a trend.
You can (and in a way should) also wake up the sleepers, but it will be hard or less feasible to properly reach the masses.
It will take a while of it getting progressively worse before an apathetic consumer class will finally be exploited enough to start demanding proper rules around all of this. I don't think progress will stop when the situation at it's worst. But I do think we'll have to get through that first.
We'll see about that, I guess. Revolutions in the past were successful because you couldn't control people so strongly and you needed the to work to be able to tax them.
With our new surveillance tech and automation I am afraid this has changed for the worse
1) Initially, when a new technology is discovered and leads to a paradigm shift, commercial/capitalist ventures are most efficient at digging down and innovating quickest. A depth first search if you will: relentlessly driving down costs, improving the technology and consuming or destroying the competition. Then, once the time is right, the exploitation begins. No longer are the newest models of $TECHNOLOGY strictly better than their predecessors, any progress is incremental and genuine innovation is partially co-opted by marketing.
When this happens the screws start getting tightened. Companies used to rapid growth due to merit try to maintain growth velocity by cutting cost, exploiting regulatory loopholes yet to catch up with the paradigm shift, and any other things not directly related to their new niche that the risk/reward calculators deem worth it (breaking laws, anti-patterns, etc.).
The reaction to this is two fold: 1a) governments want to stick their hand in the newly-added piece of the pie, 1b) people don't like being more and more exploited.
2) People understand when they're being screwed. Our sense of 'justness' is about as evolved as can get, people might not always be able to pinpoint what is screwing them over, but the anger still builds. I believe (really can't justify any of the things I'm claiming here as truth, it's just my opinions) that trust takes longer to build than to destroy. I loved google for 2 years, I've hated them for much longer. I feel intuitively that I'm being exploited when forced to help their machine learning algorithm detect traffic signs that only a few people will profit off. I feel like I've never entered into a fair contract where I'm obtaining search results in exchange for some of my attention; I'm just forced to fill these things out every once in a while to access a site unrelated to google. Can you believe my GP's site has a google captcha page on the contact form? Where I enter medical data? I _HATE_ that.
3) People like me (and you?) spread the word. After the initial rush described in point 1. other ways of working gain speed. Technology, organization, open source, education, they all make it easier and easier to replicate what was an enterprise deployment a decade ago as a small group, or even individual, today. One day a matrix bridge will allow me to message all my friends from a single, polished place, with good UX. One day later a friend will see me using it, and the word will spread.
The inherent nature of information favors the communicators, integrator and middle men. It's impossible for a silo to detect with certainty that you are not actually using a third party app, like a matrix bridge, to talk to your friends. A false positive will lead to more feelings as shown in point 2, a false negative is the natural result of progress in point 3.
4) Governments cannot afford a completely tech illiterate population. Security and military forces around the world have recognized for years already that information technology is another avenue to achieve their goals. Knowledge of the possibilities of information technology is a natural (but certainly not perfect) antidote to some of the ways an opponent might exploit your population. Organizations (in a liberal country) in this sphere will focus on education, partially to increase their own resilience against attack, and create a fertile recruiting ground for new recruits.
We gotta hold on till we get there.
For those unfamiliar, the Amish are a religious-society that avoid the conveniences of modern technology. They live in houses without electricity, and travel by in horse and buggy. It's sort of like they hit a point in history and saw where the world was going and decided, "nah, we're ok, we like how things are now."
When frustrated, I imagine a new-Amish. A secular society, who lives their lives (mostly) off the Internet. I'm not exactly sure what that would entail, nor do I think I'd actually want to live that way. It's just a fun thought experiment.
I agree, their religion probably does a lot to hold the Amish society together. It sets out a common set of rules that everyone plays by. There is also the strict punishment of social shunning for not following the rules. I wonder how fa
I disagree that a societal value system _must_ be religiously-transcendent to be effective. I can't name any such system that has had 100% success, but I reject the notion that it's impossible for a a functioning secular society to work.
To be sure, my idea of a new-Amish whose only rule is minimal Internet usage, would not work as a tight-knit community. There would have to be a bigger connection than a common disdain for the Internet.
Bullshit.
Much of Silicon Valley likes to think they would be Ludds but they do so while hailing an Uber from their iPhone and hoping that their DoorDash is devlivered on time so they can eat while they watch a HBO Max show and they hope that nobody stole their Amazon Prime package.
Which would be very interesting because it's the Ludds who are building that tech. But hey, it pays well...
Much of Silicon Valley is just looking for a way to pay their exorbitant rent and/or become million(billion)aires. SV isn't going to take a principled stance on anything. Heck, the big players all know which side their bread is buttered on and the bigger they are, the more entwined in the corruption they are.
No, quite the opposite
They're the ones who buy "smart locks" then get locked out of their place because they dropped their iPhone in a puddle or the lights went out
They're the ones who come with genius ideas like reinventing the bus with Uber or fall for stuff like uBeam because they're too lazy to plug their phone into a charger
1. key
2. iPhone
3. PIN pad.
(You can tell I've been watching too many LockPickingLawyer videos.)
But then they save the PIN on their phone instead of their memory because tiktok burned out their brain and they left the key home because "why do you need it since you have your iPhone!?11" and if this last point looks ridiculous remember this is exactly what happened with some Tesla owners going into areas of low cell service.
And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?
...
And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Any QR code which can be printed, can be copied. There's a vested interest for the operators of these systems to reduce the copyability of these codes (think: vaccine passports). Embedding a temporal code, changing the QR code every few minutes, and invalidating old codes, essentially OTP, is the most straightforward and industry standard way of doing this; it's inevitable.
Are there places which are legally required to only accept test result certificates?
Not in NL. Why does this matter?
Anyone can make "forward looking statements". If they're going to be useful and not dismissed as hysterical fear-mongering, then it helps if they're actually credible.
In some societies, "ability and availability to install mobile applications" is now taken for granted. This comes from the fact that in some societies the vast majority of the members take sheepish "what others do must be right" behaviour as granted. Those mentalities are enablers for regulations that may claim to mirror alleged "de facto" situations - making relevant prospects credible.
Surely many state supported sacrifices to privacy of the recent times (in some regions) were "supported" with "Don't they have FB anyway?" (thing is, of course, no they don't - a few would never).
> projecting and extrapolating from recent historical events
When some of the «recent historical events» come in "support" of already established desiderata of some parts (say, cashless society - to be intended as option dropping), creating an acceleration towards said trends, then they get relevant.
We are right now in the process of…
But precedents that simply overturn other laws -- or as applies to the matter at hand, in the United States at least: the 4th Amendment - no.
What's in everyone's coffee this morning?
I understand the slippery slope argument, even if I think it's kind of alarmist, but... I mean, come on. Present tense?!?! We are sooooo far off from a legal mandate to carry a smartphone that I'm not even sure how to politely react to this statement.
> it's not unreasonable to think we might end up in a situation like this.
This is perhaps a good use of the double negative, because it's certainly not reasonable either.
Just like the government doesn't have to pass laws or implement systems for surveillance when they can just rely on FANG to do all the data collection for them.
People who believe that smartphones are "legally required" in the US certainly do have a firm grip on "reality".
Am I doing this double quote thing right?
The migration to "Oh we now have mobile enabled -- X" is already happening, with "X" being boarding pass, driver's license, building pass, payment method, etc.
First, it's a convenience, then it becomes a requirement.
At that point, we'll need two devices. One to act like a wallet does now, with all those various passes, permits, and payment methods. For those wealthy enough and who GAF about various issues, that would be a very cheap device and the second device would be your "real" one.
Who does any of the things you listed?
AFAIK we're actually in exactly the opposite situation. I can be imprisoned for not having a physical copy of my driver's license while operating my vehicle!
> First, it's a convenience, then it becomes a requirement.
What requires a smartphone app?
> At that point, we'll need two devices.
So, just to be clear, you're going to carry two smartphones. One that has a PNG of your driver's license on it and another that doesn't.
...why? What's the "win" here? And if you're so concerned with privacy why on earth are you carrying around that second smartphone? Just carry around the first one with the appropriate PNGs/QR codes and leave it at that.
I mean, all of this is kind of beside the point, but I'm asking for clarification because I'm genuinely bewildered about your threat model.
> For those wealthy enough and who GAF about various issues, that would be a very cheap device and the second device would be your "real" one.
If by "wealthy enough" you mean "has 40 bucks, or any friend who bought a smartphone in the last 3 years and doesn't want their old one."
>>why? What's the "win" here? The win would be that the one carrying all your 'required' stuff is not the same one as the one you use for telecommunications & other work. Separation. The one with all your licenses, accounts, etc. has ONLY that stuff.
And sure, if you want to carry only one with the minimal stuff, go for it.
>>If by "wealthy enough" you mean "has 40 bucks..." Yes, I'd make the license/pass/etc phone a cheap one, but it still might require a separate plan, which is monthly maintenance, etc...
>>I'm genuinely bewildered about your threat model.
I'd say the main post described it rather well.
Just the combination of nice-to-have options becoming mandatory/primary, the underlying device thus also becoming mandatory, and the device explicitly working against our interest.
While 'I've got nothing to hide', I still don't like my devices gathering data on me that isn't also useful to me.
E.g., right now, it's pretty optional to be tracked - just leave the smartphone behind, bring cash and your license/badge/whatever. We can't do that when all those passes are on the same device, along with our communications history and more...
[0] https://blog.dormakaba.com/this-is-why-smartphones-will-repl...
Certain new models, maybe. Certain rental cars, maybe. But in the general case?
And where in the world is one required to run an app to use public transportation?
I just don't find this factual distortion from "could happen, might happen" to "is in the process of happening right now" to be very helpful.
>>~First a convenience, then a requirement.
It is starting at this stage as a convenient option [0][1]. The stage to be concerned about is when it becomes ubiquitious, then default, then mandatory. Might not be soon, but it is a large round rock rolling downhill. Might be stoppable, but that's usually the default progression.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_driver%27s_license [1] https://www.cnet.com/news/your-future-drivers-license-could-...
That said, another part of it was clearly in the future tense. >>At that point, we'll need two devices.
So, thanks for the alert, I'll try to be more clear next time.
My main concern was the assertions made in the comment I initially responded to, several layers up. Whose author seems to have ghosted us, since making them.
b) The device is FULLY controllable by me I can guarantee that.
c) I am glad it does, though this particular one isn't against my own personal interests.
So what I am saying is a Butlerian Jihad is always a solution.
But that's what affluent people have always been doing whenever given unrestricted freedom. That's because they are better at using technology and finances and everything else.
Bitcoin was supposed to free money from financial institutions. But that's naive -- financial institutions have way more firepower and experience at subverting markets to their will.
The same goes for anything else. The larger the company the easier time it has to influence lawmaking, judicial, executive.
Maybe what we need is an equivalent of Butlerian Jihad but against organisations that are too big to be controlled.
Butlerian Jihad represent!
Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.
Hence why people will settle space. It's treated as a pie in the sky joke today, but once it's "affordable" (ie, 250K per ticket) many people will go. Long term, it'll be an essential pressure release valve, as various discontents and dissidents go there to try and build their own versions of society. And that's great, the rest of us will just sit here trading freedoms for comfort and everyone will be happy.
There's already a movement to live at sea, in international waters, which makes a hell of a lot more sense -- but that movement has insufficient traction with the rich to fund itself. Living in space in the future will always be more expensive than living at sea is now.
Rich people have little reason to be dissidents (though they may want to pose themselves that way), and also it's near impossible to become rich in the first place without being highly conformist toward power, and those attitudes propagate even to heirs.
That’s awfully vague. Are specters doing this to you?
Seems that some power analysis is in order.
The power elite sets policy. Not vague sentiments.
Thanks. Will do.
> The power elite sets policy. Not vague sentiments.
What do you mean by this? What's a power elite; doesn't it, in a democracy, rule with the approval of the society, and why would one be happy with a power elite's policy that lets it intrude into your private life anyway?
Please don't feign naivety. It is a distraction to critical thought.
Here you distort a laxness in COVID mitigation to describe it as the very opposite.
The pandemic didn’t turn out to be a bogeyman that had no impact. Oh shucks—just a common cold after. But I guess that’s too “blue pill” of me to say.
a) becoming legally required to own and carry a particular kind of device and
b) being legally unable to fully control said device and
c) having that device explicitly working (again by legal requirement) against our own interests
It will be interesting to watch how things will progress and whether governments or corporations will be the ones holding control over the devices.
It will also be interesting to see how the mandatory usage and mandatory anti-user-services will be implemented in detail.
I guess that mandatory usage will be a race between mobile payment and government services like eID and eLicense. Anti-user-services will take some time to be fully developed, but I guess the first thing will be content scanning in messenger apps, closely followed by a list of illegal words or names.