Gestapo agents in our pockets
I began this week, like many others, fighting through the waves of media covering the most recent release of the Epstein files. Photographs, and emails, and videos, served to the general public like a great Pacific Garbage Patch of media. I sifted through emerging headlines as the files were examined by news sources and novel faces joined the now infamous ones of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Bill Clinton, and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Of course, I found the files to be deeply unsettling. I read emails sent to Epstein from redacted correspondents, thanking him for the torture video they so “enjoyed”. Emails describing little girls as “sexy”, emails using code words to “order” children to elite bedrooms. As I write this, I get the strange sensation that I am writing nonsense, a conspiracy theory documented with the enthusiasm of a member of Q-Anon. And yet, it appears to be true - files recording these revolting crimes have been formally released by the US DOJ.
Despite this essay’s beginning, it is not one about Jeffrey Epstein, or even sex trafficking. I am merely sharing the development of my thoughts over the last few days, in wake of this political and moral scandal. This essay began with the release of the Epstein files - in particular the pictures disclosed to the public. It struck me as strange that so many images existed of people, at the apex of power in society, committing crimes. I examined many of the pictures closely. They were all taken on digital cameras - the flash quality was clear, rendering the images’ lighting ominously warm despite their context. They also mostly appeared to be candidly taken - rarely posed. They invited the image of espionage, as though the very purpose of the picture being taken was not for the moment, but existed as part of a vault of blackmail. Perhaps my imagination is taking creative liberties here, and this was never the intended purpose of these pictures. We may never know. But with all of these photographs, riddled with political and business elites, I began to think about data collection and surveillance. And so we arrive at the topic that this essay hinges upon.
I was taking in all this information while sick with the flu. I lay in bed for hours, face focused on my phone screen. All that time, as the Epstein files succeeded in awakening an unpleasant paranoia in me, I thought about how my phone could have been collecting information on me, as those photographers had on Epstein and his deranged circle. Perhaps a strange comparison - I am not a sex trafficker, nor am I a powerful politician or CEO. I have gone through life for years not thinking twice about accepting cookies on websites, agreeing blindly to the terms and conditions contracts that are essential to agree to when opening an account on TikTok, YouTube, Google, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Whatsapp…I never considered the value of my data. Even in those rare times that I did, I always approached it with confusion. What could a tech company possibly want to do with a digital compilation of my mundane life as an ordinary Western citizen?
Well, as it turns out, quite a lot. The intent varies widely. It can be as benign and harmless as targeting an advert to sell you a new pair of slippers, or as consequential as feeding you misinformation so that you vote in favour of a certain political party. Unfortunately, the latter is not banished to the realm of a hypothetical - in 2018 Cambridge Analytica was discovered to have been hired by the Trump presidential campaign in 2013, in order to use the private data of 87 million Facebook users so as to target them with pro-Trump content and advertising. Few of us have forgotten the feeling of horror that arrested us when he won the presidential elections of a global superpower a few years later.
It is easy to do as I did until a mere week ago, and dismiss one’s data as unimportant and disposable. Yet data is a currency that makes one vulnerable to manipulation, and that is precisely why tech firms and governments so covet it. To be exposed to a device that can essentially observe your every waking move and thoughts (your location, your interactions with friends and family, your camera roll, your notes app and bank details) makes one susceptible to targeted advertising that may no longer even be presented as advertising to you. In a recent study conducted in Germany, four TikTok accounts were created and each interacted with social media posts from one of Germany’s four main political parties. The “For You” algorithm was then allowed to dish information to each account. 70% of the content served was found to be AfD related (Germany’s far-right party). And yet TikTok’s political content is never labelled as an advert, in the same way that an influencer’s recommendation of a product may not be, without you ever knowing they were paid to do so. Manipulation is all too easy.
The very omnipresence of technology in our lives should somewhat alarm us. To use a crude example, the Nazi party in 1930’s Germany infamously utilised the People’s Radio device, which had a shorter bandwidth than most other radios at the time, so that German citizens were solely exposed to state approved radio propaganda. The price point of these radios was artificially subsidised so that purchases increased. By the end of the 30s, almost every German household had one. Perhaps the only silver lining in this sinister historical episode is that the German people could turn off their radios if they so wished, and couldn’t be listened to in the privacy of their own homes. Distressingly, we no longer have that luxury. We live with a Gestapo agent in our pocket at all times.
Allow me to invoke another overused and tired cliche: Orwell. I read 1984 for the first time relatively late in life, at 18, for my final year of high school. I predict that I will read it many more times in the years to come. Most of us are aware of this cornerstone of dystopian fiction. When I read it again, more recently, I was acutely aware of the parallels between Winston and Julia’s (for those who are unaware: the novel’s protagonists) world and ours. The enormous screens that serve not for entertainment, but for surveillance. A populace so wildly distracted by porn, vapid amusement and the struggles of daily survival that they do not concern themselves with the nightmare they find themselves in. It is not so hard to see the similarities between this fictional world and reality, particularly in the distracted masses. Orwell’s proles may have been seduced with the drinking houses and cheap magazines, but we have been kept sleepy under the spell of TikTok and Instagram reels.
To address this social problem is difficult, and there are no obvious solutions that would be easily implemented. However, I write in a week in which Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s billionaire CEO, has purchased the Washington Post and proceeded to conduct mass layoffs. I can certainly make the easy vow to never buy products on Amazon again. I write in a month in which Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, denies the imminent catastrophe of climate change (despite hurricanes and floods in the Americas and Asia which have killed thousands), instead presenting it as a manageable challenge. I am sure it has nothing to do with the fact that many of his shareholders are fossil fuel giants. In any case, another easy vow made to never purchase a Microsoft product again.
When I was around fourteen, I had a passionate affair with veganism, which did not last very long. During the leadup to it, I read and watched dozens of articles and videos on the subject. One of them continues to pop into my conscience every so often. It was a video made by a vegan YouTuber, Joey Carbstrong. In the video, he told his audience to imagine the following metaphor every time they were at a supermarket, and struggled to make the difficult decision to buy vegan meat over the real thing. Imagine every animal product you purchase is a vote in the ballot box, a vote to support a party which holds animal welfare in such low regard that the modern day farm animal could be said to lead a tortured existence. In the same way, vegan meat is a vote for another party - a party which concerns itself with animal wellbeing and plans to liberate billions of farm animals from slavery and death. Who do you vote for?
While this metaphor was used in the context of veganism specifically, its principle can be extrapolated to any market. It is all rather simple. In a world in which the economy is at the heart of political motives, every dollar, yen and euro is a currency of power. Money is literal power. Thus, we can think of who we choose to give our money to as a reflection of who we choose to vote for. Up to now, we have consistently voted for Bezos, Zuckerberg, Gates and Musk. We have placed enormous power in the hands of people who have violated our privacy knowingly, who have manipulated us and polarised our societies. Some have even moved in the social circles of known sex traffickers and child rapists.
If we wish to shake off the shackles of this increasingly Orwellian episode in history, then we must educate ourselves first. To understand politics, we must understand the economy. That is where I am going to start. To limit the damage we have already done by transferring excess power to today’s billionaires, we must prioritise second hand and vintage shopping where possible. Overproduction has made that venture laughably simple. And finally, we must treat the access we give to our data by unknown actors - be it Cambridge Analytica, or Google, or Apple - with the utmost care. This may involve deleting social media accounts, unplugging Alexas and sticking covers on our phone and computer screens. Unfortunately, access to our data can only be limited, not completely overthrown.
Most importantly, we must never delude ourselves into the comforting belief that our data is boring, uninteresting. We must hold higher standards for our intellect and refrain from scrolling on ‘for you’ algorithms that radicalise and divide us.
I will leave you with Dostoevsky’s infamous line: the best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to ensure he never knows he is imprisoned.
If you made it this far, here are a list first of sources that I used (i won’t link the Epstein files, but they’re available online to the public), and a list of interesting videos which inspired this essay
Sources:
https://www.uu.nl/en/news/data-for-sale-mapping-of-purchasing-of-company-data-by-dutch-governments
Videos: