the editor talks with you

Iam not writing this to frighten you. If you read George Orwell’s “1984” or any other dystopian novels, don’t be fooled. They are more than fantasy.

China uses technology to spy on Muslims in their country. Egypt plans a new capital with cameras to control the entire city.

Moscow already has 5,000 cameras to track your movements in their country.

As repressive as this sounds just wait, say security and technology experts Richard Fontaine and Kara Frederick.

Sophisticated new technology can wind up in the hands of strongmen and police states to undermine basic rights and meddle beyond their own borders.

China and Russia are poised to take advantage of this and it will soon be available to Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and other tyrannies to monitor and mislead their people with propaganda.

One is automated micro-targeting that relies on personality assessments to tailor propaganda to your likes and dislikes.

Russia reportedly did this during the 2016 US presidential race. With data from Facebook, they sent messages to voters based on race, ethnicity and identity to influence your thinking and your votes.

Until now, this have been limited in our country to advertising. Facebook conducts micro-targeting and Google labeled users “left-leaning” or “right-leaning” for political advertisers in the 2016 election.

Technology will change the way tyrants deliver propaganda. State-controlled online “bots” (automated accounts) already plague social media. During Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea, researchers found that half of the tweets from accounts that focused on Russian politics were from bots, Fontaine and Kara Frederick say.

Democracies will need to sanction anyone using technology for repression, inflict penalties on technologists complicit in human-rights abuse, invest in countermeasures and harden their own systems.

We need to support new technology for good – law enforcement and national defense – and oppose its use for single-party control and curtailing our basic rights.

“Dictators from Caracas to Pyongyang will seek to exploit the enormous potential for political misuse inherent in the emerging technologies, just as they have over the decades with radio, TV and the internet. Democracies will need to be ready to fight back,” Fontaine and Kara Frederick say.

I read “1984” as a teenager and was angered and disgusted by Big Brother, New-speak and other methods of mind control of vulnerable people.

This was Orwell’s vision of a totalitarian state that controlled every action and thought through propaganda, secrecy, constant surveillance and harsh punishment.

It became reality in Hitler’s Germany and worse in Stalin’s Soviet slave state.

“If you want a vision of the future,” Orwell wrote, “imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”