Beyond tensions of privacy and security, we are witnessing today a real confrontation between control and freedom, not only of the individual, but of entire populations and regions, enhanced by technologies and massive collection and analysis of data—from predicting and influencing behaviours, to the automation of public services and the ability to fully control and disrupt those services, even remotely. From gaining access to a global communications platform to losing the ability to protect the rights of those who are interconnected through those platforms. Are we witnessing a new form of digital colonialism?
Several governments rely on communications infrastructure that are completely located in the cloud (i.e., in foreign data centres under foreign-applicable laws). Furthermore, those services are provided under constantly changing terms of use and arbitrary suspension of services. The problem is not only about dependency on a foreign provider or applicable laws to digital data; the problem is also about the absence of public policies to address the issue at all levels. The situation of digital domination, close to colonialism, still fails to fill the top priorities of the global political agenda. Almost forty years after the invention of the Internet, the ability of politicians and social leaders to understand the dimensions of the problem still falls short.
Never before has a small sector had so much power over the entire World, to monitor the present and predict future behaviours of not just individuals, but entire populations. The problem is more alarming when we consider how the public and private sectors are merging in joint ventures in a quest for global domination, penetrating every government, every citizen movement, mediating every action in every connected person’s life through digital devices and data collection.
This article is quite an eye opener on the power of technology to literally sway politics and to create dependencies like we’ve never seen before. It also lays bare some of the dependencies around the adoption of cloud computing by governments.
See Digital sovereignty or digital colonialism? – Sur – International Journal on Human Rights
#technology #digitalcolonialism #digitalsovereignty #cloudservices #digitaldivide
New tensions of privacy, security and national policies