Germany Has a Digital Fuhrer + Norway Goes in The Opposite Direction
PaulCraigRoberts.org
Germany Has a Digital Fuhrer
Enforced digitalization will deprive people of privacy and independence, but business profits and government control are more important.
Wissing says it openly for the first time: Everyone should be forced into the digital world and deprived of their privacy
Norbert Häring
Until now, it could only be seen in their actions, but now Transport and Digital Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) has spoken out. The government is relying on digital compulsion, wants to put data protection and privacy aside and take away citizens’ options to switch to non-digital offers. “Digital first” is to become “digital only”, the declared goal: more data for digital companies. The fact that Berlin is pushing this forward so ruthlessly has a geostrategic background.
It is a measure of the deterioration of our society that a minister can openly say something that sounds so exaggerated and pointed without being swept away by a storm of indignation. According to a press release from his ministry, Wissing said on the occasion of the publication of the ” 2nd progress report on the federal government’s digital strategy ” on October 18th :
“Millions of citizens are using new digital services such as the Deutschlandticket, Bund-ID or e-prescription. It is time to turn the digital strategy into a ‘digital-only’ strategy. We must consistently dismantle analog parallel structures and rely on completely digital processes. This is not only more efficient and saves costs, but also improves data availability. Only if we become a fully digital country can we develop Germany into a leading AI location and strengthen our position in international competition.”
Accordingly, Wissing also praises the digital coercive measures of the government and especially his ministry as successes:
“Over 13 million people use the digital Deutschlandticket – conveniently on their smartphone or as a smart card.
Since June 9, 2024, the BahnCard will be offered exclusively digitally. This saves 30 tons of plastic per year.
Digital vehicle registration has broken the million mark. Drivers have saved time and money over 1.5 million times with i-Kfz. The fees for registration, change of ownership or deregistration are up to 70 percent lower online than at the counter.”
It could hardly be made much clearer that the government’s digitalization strategy is not about the needs of citizens, but about satisfying the data greed of corporations and the government. And if you are not willing (to go digital), I will use force, is the motto. Accordingly, privacy, voluntariness and data protection do not appear at all in the progress report and only in a few clichéd asides in the digital strategy . According to the digital strategy, the ” profitable use ” of data includes improving the availability of data and creating “new legal regulations for a modern and opportunity-focused data economy”. “Opportunity-focused” means concentrating on the possible advantages and accepting disadvantages such as the loss of privacy and control over one’s own data without complaint. Another way of putting this is that “data should be easier to combine and thus more usable for everyone” and that “isolated data islands” should be put to an end.
With almost unsurpassable stubbornness, the ministry writes : “We want to give everyone the same opportunities in the digital world” – and only in the digital world. Those who cannot or do not want to use the digital world will not be given the same opportunities and should not be given them. At best, they will be offered help with digital networking. Millions of citizens are forced to use the Deutschlandticket in the Deutsche Bahn’s data kraken app on a smartphone and to disclose their mobility data to Deutsche Bahn and the US digital corporations that use the data. Protests from many associations are simply ignored. Most users of student semester tickets , even ten-year-old schoolchildren and customers of railways and transport associations that offer no alternative to the digital ticket, are forced to use smartphones. Anyone who does not have a sufficiently modern smartphone is excluded from the offers.
Authorities use the pretext of service-oriented digitization to isolate themselves from citizens . Anyone who does not have a modern smartphone can often no longer receive their shipments sent by the partially state-owned DHL group. The postal law was specifically changed to address this, but DHL is allowed to ignore the regulations without penalty . Many trade fair companies are doing away with box offices and forcing visitors to strip off with their data .
The extreme energy consumption of AI applications is not mentioned anywhere. But a mere 30 tons less plastic per year is supposed to be a reason to force millions of BahnCard subscribers to use their smartphones and the DB Navigator app? For comparison: That’s roughly equivalent to the plastic packaging waste produced by 850 people in the EU per year. Wissing thinks we’re idiots.
The electronic patient file and the e-prescription are also based on forced happiness . The latter has become a must, the former is being introduced as an opt-out procedure, whereby everyone who does not expressly object on their own initiative receives the file. Otherwise, very few people would have ordered them. With the electronic ID function, the option to opt out has been completely abolished.
Everywhere, authorities and transport companies are eliminating the option of paying in cash and forcing citizens to hand over their data to financial and IT companies. Consistent dismantling of analogue parallel structures is what they call this “progress”. The progress report reveals the reason why so many transport companies are eliminating or reducing the option of paying in cash. Wissing’s ministry will provide funding if you do this:
“A new call for funding for the digitalization of municipal transport systems has been launched. The aim is to improve existing transport infrastructures through intelligent technologies and to promote multimodal mobility solutions, e.g. through innovative information and ticket services.”
Even the new funding guidelines of the “AI Lighthouses for Environment, Climate, Nature and Resources”, which are hard to beat in terms of non-intelligence (NI), and which I reported on when they were introduced , are cited in the progress report as successes of the digital strategy.
The geostrategic background
When a government so determinedly pursues an agenda that goes against the wishes of its own citizens, the profit interests of the corporations and, in particularly blatant cases, military and geostrategic goals are usually the decisive factors. Both are likely to be the case here. The interest of the big data octopuses such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, Paypal and Visa in all of our data is obvious. It goes without saying that the federal government is not focusing on the advantages for foreign corporations, but rather on the advantages for German digital start-ups. But these are negligible compared to the former, especially since successful start-ups are bought up or pushed out by the large corporations anyway.
But it’s not just about the power and profits of the hugely influential US corporations here. Since 2018, two commissions in the USA led by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt have been investigating a geostrategic question of the utmost importance for the USA : How can we prevent China from overtaking the USA in digital technology and artificial intelligence in the near future, thereby inevitably depriving the USA of economic and military dominance in the world? The answer from the National Security Commission on AI, or NSCAI for short, and the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) is: The reason China is overtaking is that non-digital infrastructures are relatively poorly developed in China, there is little data protection, and the close cooperation between the government and corporations in the provision and use of citizens’ and companies’ data.
The counter strategy is to learn from China. Between the lines, but clearly, one could read in the reports that analogue alternatives must be dismantled, data protection ignored and the government’s cooperation with digital companies intensified. In order to coordinate activities in this direction with the US allies, including our government, a Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) was created by the US military and intelligence services.
What Wissing announced as a strategy when presenting the digitization progress report is fully in line with the strategy proclaimed by the aforementioned commissions to preserve US dominance in the world: less data protection, all data to the corporations and eliminating analogue alternatives for citizens. Anyone who knows even a little about the IT business has no doubt that this is primarily to satisfy the data hunger of US corporations. Processes such as those at Gaia-X, the European “ecosystem for business models and products based on data”, ensure that it stays that way.
Gaia X was originally intended to ensure greater European IT sovereignty. But then the large US IT companies were brought on board, or rather let on board, certainly under strong pressure from Washington. The German government refers to this very Gaia X in its digital strategy for networking data islands and creating open data availability. It is also symptomatic that the German government and Berlin are supporting a center for global government technology at the World Economic Forum in Berlin . The World Economic Forum is the lobby of the largest global corporations, the largest of which include the US IT companies.
Original Article: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2024/11/10/germany-has-a-digital-fuhrer/
Norway Goes in Opposite Direction from Germany and Escapes from Digital Tyranny
PaulCraigRoberts.org
Norway’s digital turnaround: return to cash and the analog world
Rainer Rupp
Norway has been at the forefront of the digital age since the beginning, pursuing the vision of a cashless and digitized society and is considered one of the most advanced countries in Europe in this area. Now, however, the downsides and dangers have been recognized.
With a remarkable change in the law, the Norwegian government recently strengthened the rights of citizens to an analog life and to cash payments. The new law makes the notices “No cash accepted” or “Card payment only” posted in shops and at checkouts throughout Norway illegal. This is not only a departure from total reliance on digital payments, but also a remarkable social change.
The dark side of a cashless society
In Germany, too, it is no longer considered a conspiracy theory that it cannot be the case that the exercise of fundamental rights, participation in social life and use of public infrastructure (trains, post office, medical care) is dependent on whether people have internet access, carry a smartphone, have a certain app installed and also know exactly how to use all of this.
This digital compulsion, forced upon society by powerful financial and economic interests, means a tangible disadvantage and even the complete exclusion of large social minorities from public services. This affects not only old, sick or visually impaired people who cannot use the technology, but also people who simply cannot handle the corresponding techniques, or even poor people whose money is not enough for such things. But it even affects tech-savvy people who are well-versed but do not want to constantly send personal behavioral data all over the world or indiscriminately install new apps on their devices in order to avoid being excluded from public life and necessary services.
For private service providers, digitization is a goldmine, because the savings from eliminating office rents and workplaces are enormous. In the brave new digital world, there is no friendly lady or nice gentleman in an office in the next town where the analog person could previously call or drop by for advice or information. Even the telephone number provided, which many a soul lost in the digital quagmire desperately calls, is answered by a computer programmed to put the customer on hold and finally throw him off the line without having achieved anything, with the request to find a solution to his problem on the company’s own website. The reason: these so-called “information centers” of the providers are also totally understaffed in order to maximize profits.
The additional profits that corporations are making as a result of digitization presuppose that helpful spirits must be found everywhere among the digitally illiterate: among relatives, neighbors, caregivers, etc., who voluntarily and free of charge do the work that used to be done by the service providers’ employees from their offices or during home visits to customers.
The whole thing is reminiscent of the Merkel scam: “We can do it.” In this way, the gigantic extra work of taking in and caring for over a million migrants in a single year was done everywhere by volunteers with free labor, and not infrequently also using their own finances to provide the people with the essentials. However, there was a difference between that and the current exploitation of the willingness to help: in the “We can do it” case, the state organs were kept from collapse. Only the corporations benefit from the voluntary overtime of the digital helpers, and that makes the rich even richer – at the expense of the solidarity prevailing among the population. This is another important reason why the development towards a purely digital society with digital compulsion as a consequence must be stopped at all costs. Corresponding initiatives in this direction already exist, including in the Bundestag.
The change in Norway
Until recently, hardly anyone would have thought that Norway, one of the world’s leading countries in terms of digitization, would ever take a step back towards cash. After all, according to a survey by the Norwegian central bank, only three percent of the population paid with cash when they last purchased a real object. But the new amendment to the Financial Contracts Act ensures that cash will once again play a greater role as legal tender and offers citizens the option of paying in cash, even if other payment options are available.
This step is more than symbolic. It marks a shift away from the unconditional acceptance of the digital world and a renewed focus on avoiding the marginalization of entire population groups. Even in a digitally savvy country like Norway, there are people who cannot or do not want to keep pace with modern technologies, while others have become so immersed in digitalism that the majority do not even notice how dependent they have become on it. Such a development may seem like natural progress, but dependence on digital tools has enormous drawbacks, for example if there is a power outage for a period of time.
The new legislation aims to support people who have difficulties with digital payments. This is by no means limited to older people or those who are not tech-savvy. It is an expression of the increasing awareness that not everyone is benefiting from the digital revolution. While the younger generation has grown up with the speed and convenience of card payments, there are a significant number of people who continue to rely on cash. Around 600,000 Norwegians, about ten percent of the population, have difficulty using digital payment methods. For them, cash is not just a means of payment, but also a matter of self-determination.
It is noteworthy that Norway is now recognizing that this development is not without risks. In the discussion about the new law, the fact that cash is the only means of payment that works independently of electricity and the internet also played a role. It remains stable even when the grid fails or digital attacks paralyze the infrastructure. In times of cyberattacks and increasing global uncertainties, cash is therefore invaluable to society.
The invisible barrier
With the digital imperative, modern societies have created an invisible barrier that favors those willing to give up their data and keep pace with the latest technology. But what does this mean for our freedom? What happens when basic rights and services are only accessible if you are willing to submit to the digital surveillance network?
Norway’s U-turn sends a strong signal to the rest of the world. Although digitalization brings many benefits, it is not a panacea. If we want to avoid a world in which people without a smartphone have no access to fundamental rights or services, then we must all follow Norway’s example and stop the digital tsunami. In Germany, too, there are already organizations such as digitalcourage that want to stem the digital tsunami – albeit still under the radar of the system media.
Digital courage refers, for example, to Article 3 of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany, which prohibits the disadvantage and discrimination of people, regardless of skin color, faith or origin. According to digitalcourage, this article should be supplemented to include a ban on discriminating against people in their basic services if they do not use a particular device or digital platform. Therefore, the organization calls on the Bundestag to include a right to life without digital coercion in the Basic Law!
Currently, however, developments in this country are continuing in the opposite direction: in more and more places, we are being forced to log in, register online or download an app – and in doing so, disclose personal data. And all this in order to use services that are part of basic care!
Original Article: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2024/11/10/norway-goes-in-opposite-direction-from-germany-and-escapes-from-digital-tyranny/
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