Unaffected Health, Wealth & Prosperity: Internet Use, 5G, AI and Facial Recognition

A lot has been said about health and 5G communications lately. This includes quite a handful of monetization attempts on the back of a topic that should not be traded as a secret revealed to customers only after their Clickbank payment has cleared but, rather, be brought into the limelight to gain more public attention. Else, we could easily miss the opportunity of having an adequate debate in order to find solutions to the inherent problems it presents. And while it is a good sign that something — or a lot — has been said at all, it may still come down to yet another example of Too Little Too Late. One of the major problems with the topic is that alarmists paint a very bleak picture and often focus on hard-to-understand aspects of the matter so that the other side is effectively helped to dismiss the entire group of experts as yet another bunch of conspiracy nutcases.

When it comes to 5G, the discussion usually centres around whether or not that technology is a weapons system but that question is largely missing the point when it comes to whether 5G will affect us or not, and is, therefore, largely irrelevant for anyone outside armed forces planning, military strategy or, on a more domestic level, policing. On top, that question of 5G being a weapons system or not can be answered rather easily — short answer: No, it is not; longer answer: much depends on how you define “weapon”. Yet, even if it isn’t, you still might want to prevent that technology from being implemented, as 5G — quite unlike anything we have seen in the past, from the invention of the automobile or radio and TV to the latest “breakthroughs” in slimming supplements or overall food design — is a technology that will be very hard to steer clear of if you are uneasy or reasonably concerned about it.

Here’s why:

As a thinking person and as part of one’s natural rights or generally accepted Human Rights, you are entitled to having views and opinions and make a choice accordingly. Your choices can determine whether you become successful, smart, wealthy, enjoy good health or suffer from long-term effects of bad choices (e.g. lower-pay or bad work-quality after dropping out or quitting rather than going and learn something, lung cancer from smoking or obesity from junk-food consumption, just to pick really simple ones for illustration), live your life aware of present and future pitfalls in order to navigate those treacherous waters of life and avoid suffering too many hard knocks along the way, or become one of the many (casualties, that is usually): a dumbed-down idiot left with nothing but a sense of entitlement, a feeling of having a “right” to still be protected from the consequences of one’s own bad choices (consumer protection, most product liability laws, class-action scenarios and/or socialism in general).

The matter may also be summed up as individualism (which is in line with western culture of Freedom and Human Rights derived from centuries and millennia of traditions having culminated in the Enlightenment and constitutional republics or “democracies” in present day political speak) versus collectivism (which isn’t, as it simply overturns all of the above for the purported larger good of “everyone” and runs amuck of both market principles and most any natural law or fact of life imaginable; unsurprisingly, then, the latter almost always come by way of revolution and are not very sustainable, usually breaking down within a decade or so — with the 72-year Soviet-style dictatorship holding the world record so far). Where individualism and its freedoms are granted and generally accepted, there is prosperity — admittedly in varying degrees, but generally benefiting everyone from lower classes all the way up to the elites by way of cascading streams of money brought about by productivity to which everyone is free to contribute — or, conversely, free to abstain from if they’ve got something better to do, but the point is that they do have a choice). Collectivism, on the other hand, lead to the opposite and less desirable result (examples would be China, Venezuela’s recent troubles, Cambodia, Myanmar, or the Eastern European allies of the former Soviet Union — all of which ended up in total breakdown and an immediate return to a more free and individualistic overall approach. No exception, (This already makes a powerful point for the nay-sayers and the I-told-you-sos in the first place and illustrates the vital need for competing opinions and approaches in *any* aspect of life! Who else could pick up the tab and pull the wagon out of the dirt once the dumbed-down idiots, above, haven’t learned their lesson from history, expected a different result this time and screwed up for the umpteenth time?)

With present attempts at data harvesting (both legally and, oh-so often, illegally after all when it comes to taking Facebook, Google and the other usual suspects to court and have someone look at it properly) you at least have the easy way of voting with your feet. Simply don’t use their BS if you don’t agree with what they’re doing and how they see you as a sheeple to be slaughtered when they think fit. Elsewhere, don’t like your bank or their attempt at making things “safe” largely by relying on browser cookies and similarly ridiculous measures? Don’t use online banking and disable your online-banking services, or protect your money and data by finding an entirely different solution altogether (different bank, using Crypto, sending cash by postal mail, you get the picture).

Don’t like facial recognition? “Free” WiFi in buses and trains? Speed cameras at the roadside? Mugshots when arrested? Slightly different story there: unavoidable. Now you might say that preventing joyrides and speeding or mugshots are “necessary” — whatever your views, the real point is you can get around them by not setting off that speed camera or not having them come after and arrest you. Not so with 5G though, where everybody is eaten alive by the thing independent of their earlier choices or acts, whether they have “done something wrong” or not. These and similar pitfalls will be affecting you, your health, your wealth, your prosperity (or happiness) exactly the way that was supposed to be forbidden by various schools of thought, not limited to the Declaration of Independence but throughout all of what we thought was our great civilization and culture. You are likely going to be screwed though, simply because you dare to live during times that are not so good and free and “just” as some thought, after all…

So, again, the problem with 5G — and quite an array of related technologies waiting in the wings, including Artificial Intelligence, Bill-Gates-sponsored upcoming satellite technologies (yes-yes, the “philanthropist”), facial recognition, so-called life sciences (often rather a tool for administering death, disease and environmental damage: remember the Gates Foundation’s purely philanthropic Zika virus out of Panama?), some medical inventions, or certain aspects of robotics — is that you are not likely to have an ability to opt-out anymore. All of them are risk technologies, but they are not dealt with accordingly, nor are the risks even formally assessed and then called and analyzed as actual risks. There will be very little to no room for the naysayers to find a niche and carry on with doing things better (nor for salvaging the inevitable trainwreck once it will have happened). It is like the discussion about biodiversity, the purported anthropogenic cause of any climate change and radical environmentalism, yet this time without the blessing of Geroge Soros, Greta Thunberg and the rest of the public circus.

When it comes to cellphones, mobile technology, or wireless, we commonly used to think of 2G, 3G etc. of just a new phone or some device with better features.

• the “first generation” mobile phone was entirely feature-less. It was not even encrypted, enabling anyone so inclined to listen in on calls — much like with CB radio — and leading to infamous leaks of phone calls between Prince Charles and Camilla back in the 80s, which led to recognizing a “need for privacy” (and resulted in “things going digital”, not really provide Privacy but only “security by obscurity” which is always a shamefully insufficient approach).
• later on, some real encryption was integrated in 2G or GSM communications networks. leading to mass-adoption of the first load of cellphones: among those were Gordon Gecko‘s bone-shaped monstrosity developed by Motorola and gaining notoriety being sported by Michael Douglas in Wall Street while walking down the beach in Westhampton on Long Island, or the much more elegant Nokia cellphone series, or their own folding Communicator in the early 90s.
• following suit were 3G devices, breaking loose from cell towers’ 29-users limitations that stemmed from limited numbers of available channels in the network layer and now, for the first time, freeing up sufficient bandwidth for the data portion of the usage spectrum and enabling mobile applications (or “apps”) that have become so ubiquitous these days. 3G also increased average density to around 100 cellular-enabled devices per square mile.
• 4G technology, just like the previous ones, brought us yet another wave of new “phones” with “better” features and — briefly — yet more stuff, so we might be forgiven for thinking a “new G” simply means “more beautiful” phones or tablets.

Yet, this is most definitely not so when it comes to 5G, as 5G neither is “just a faster” technology nor would there be any reasonably conceivable need for one — or do we really need or want to live-stream every piece of junk-food people choke down at their Burger arcades in 4K-or-higher resolutions for every butthead out there to see on-the-go on their equally-ridiculously overkill gadgets? Apart from the question if this would bring us much closer to living a meaningful life, the real problem of 5G is that it means the dawn of integrating those emerging and so misleadingly called “smart” technologies into a larger infrastructure of “smart” networks, “smart” or autonomous cars and ocean vessels, RFID technology tracking (radio-frequency ID), tagged products to communicate with internet-connected toasters or fridges, biometric passports, facial-recognition checkpoints, cameras and drone-swarms run by police, SWAT teams (or look-alikes going after frightfully similar jobs but, at the end of the day, turning out to be enemies of the state; it is a lot like Sicily up to the 1990s where the Cosa Nostra and the revenue service essentially did the same, admittedly for different beneficiaries each). Total capacity with 5G will increase to multiple 5-figures (that’s hundreds of thousands) of devices per square mile! So the potential for uses (and a tremendous range of abuses across the spectrum) is quite obvious.

The most severe problem with 5G is that it is not “just a device”, it is not simply a technology or a platform that you hold in your hands like your common smartphone addict these days, but that you can still put aside or turn off and not use. The troubling fact about 5G is that you cannot turn it off or step away from it any other way. Technically, 5G is the platform and you will be integrated in it whether you want it or not. You do not have the choice of not using it (for whatever good reason you may decide you want to opt out, be it privacy protection, health, IT security considerations, criminal intent, national security, espionage, or military strategy). Technology is only acceptable if it serves people or if it is a tool for someone doing something better with it than without. With 5G, you cannot opt out. Technology is not there for you, but you will be there for technology! You are no longer “the user”, you are no longer “only” forced into being fleeced for your personal data when using a “free” or even a paid-for service over the internet (which is bad enough already), but you are being integrated into the smart network and increasingly streamlined into some internet you never wanted to have nor thought possible: welcome to IoT, the Internet of Things! The Brave New World of an Aldous Huxley will pale by comparison; it already paled when it comes to Youtube-addiction levels that clearly surpass any Soma consumption poor Huxley could ever have dreamed up. The Internet of Things and 5G, coupled with Artificial intelligence, will spectacularly surpass every oppression, every subversion, every level of persecution we have experienced or on record throughout all of human history.

At least the risk and potential for incredible harm is present with 5G and related technologies, unless they are adequately classed as risk technologies and their use strictly limited, unless deployments merely approximating the scale of what is already deployed in Chinese cities at the time of this writing are entirely outlawed, unless counter-measures are developed, freely distributed and used by everyone still caring about their personal affairs, health, wealth, privacy or personal safety (as well as building security, business secrets, or other similar means of production and prosperity).

These counter-measures need to be in a similar way as home burglar systems or an online-banking PIN are today. Development and distribution of counter-measures is also as legitimate as alarms and PINs are today, and largely for the very same reasons. The need for these may also open up tremendous profit potential for creative minds developing these direly needed devices that are so much more important than the 5G and AI-based gadgets the mainstream envisions. (Amazon Alexa-Skills are here already and might be seen as a sandbox for developers in that wider niche.)

Instead of blindly deploying 5G and embarking on yet another dumb trial humanity has thought up, risks and benefits should be discussed first. Sure enough, this does not happen though. With potential profits for some (large) players, the focus is on the usual talk of “creating jobs”, “promoting technology”, and “becoming more modern” as if any of these mattered to the ones made redundant by robots, made sick by unknown or falsely disputed health effects of wireless technologies, or impoverished by the economic ripple effects or unintended consequences of 5G technology.

On top of the momentum being engineered strongly in favor of 5G by various interest groups in government (most likely deep-state commandeered ones), industry and academia, any possible counter-measures, methods of defense, security technologies or other ways of evasion are disproportionately more difficult to achieve and more complex than with any other technology we had to deal with previously. Even today, a simple firewall is a complex thing and can easily be inefficient due to mis-configuration. Plus, it is an annoyance to set up, use and properly maintain. Simple passwords or metallic shields protecting your NFC-enabled payment cards are, provably, already totally beyond more than 90% of users who should care about having and using them. So how likely is it that you will want (or even be allowed) to wear a face mask, shield your NFC-enabled payment cards, even bother and tell your utility company that you want to opt out of the smart meter and want the “old one” back? So far, people do not even refrain from checking every Tweet or useless Facebook-Like that vibrates in their smartphone-equipped pockets, let alone wait with that perhaps confidential call until they are back home, use a landline phone and close their office door behind them.

Yet more troubling, most of the technology involved with 5G is, at least to some extent, Chinese-manufactured or exposed to Chinese manipulation that could easily be used to subvert infrastructure, communications networks or other vital installations in other countries. It may not be a coincidence that the Chinese have adapted their Great Wall to infotech decades ago and are now relaying all internet connections in and out of China behind some kind of “imperial firewall”, effectively shielding their own authorities, as well as corporations, against even a peek of what is going on inside or what they are including and embedding in those items exported back to users at all levels in other countries.

Even though it is not specifically a “weapons system”, 5G clearly holds a lot of destructive potential, particularly when seen in a wider context and in light of the related technologies it will quite likely be married with. Boats were invented for fishing and for hunting seals, yet there have been one or two warships wreaking havoc somewhere.

It remains to be seen how “smart” it will be of us as a species, and effectively having put ourselves in charge of all living organisms on this planet already, to actually go ahead and use these technologies, even if they are not even “risk technologies” at first sight. As long as they are not strictly limited from areas of unsuitability — and these are many! — and blocked from intruding upon things they simply have no business with, we will likely be surprised at the unintended consequences ruining some “great” albeit delusional dream most in the mainstream seem to have yet another time.

(December 2019)