Dystopias

“Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital 'pocket litter.'”

To be fair, the US government has given significant contributions to the research and development of free speech and anonymity technologies, such as the Tor Project.[26] Technologies created and fostered by the US government have been invaluable in the fight for freedom all around the globe. After all, it was the US military that created the precursor to the internet, called ARPANET. But without the ability to be accountable for its own crimes, and to protect the rights of those in opposition to its own policies, the US continues its greatest tradition of hypocrisy. The Obama administration lifts up the struggles of those fighting its enemies with one hand, while attacking those who speak up about injustices of US-sponsored regimes with the other. All the while, it is slowly and secretly building up its omni-present police state at home.

Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.

privacy in an open society requires anonymous transaction systems

Privacy in an open society also requires cryptography. If I say something, I want it heard only by those for whom I intend it. If the content of my speech is available to the world, I have no privacy. To encrypt is to indicate the desire for privacy, and to encrypt with weak cryptography is to indicate not too much desire for privacy. Furthermore, to reveal one's identity with assurance when the default is anonymity requires the cryptographic signature.

the democratization of surveillance — may herald the end of anonymity

facial recognition is proliferating so quickly that some regulators in the United States and Europe are playing catch-up. On the one hand, they say, the technology has great business potential. On the other, because facial recognition works by analyzing and storing people’s unique facial measurements, it also entails serious privacy risks

researchers also identified the interests and predicted partial Social Security numbers of some students.

‘The problem with many scientists is that they want to do things because they want to experiment. That is not a good enough rationale.’

‘The reason for doing these experiments is to understand more about early human development and come up with ways of curing serious diseases, and as a scientist I feel there is a moral imperative to pursue this research.

Human-animal hybrids are also created in other countries, many of which have little or no regulation.