I think many of you will twist your finger at your temple and recommend the author of the article a headdress made of non-ferrous metal. But I still recommend thinking. At least in the most general terms.
Why is it important? What does an ordinary person care about information security issues? Most of the people with whom I had to communicate in my life on this topic say that they have nothing to hide, because they are law-abiding citizens, and their personal life is not interesting to anyone.
However, there is an elementary misunderstanding of what and to whom they let know about their personal life. After all, even the most radical of them do not want to post their personal letters on the bulletin board at the entrance and want their conversations “face to face” to remain so in the future. Where does this contradiction come from?
The problem lies in the fact that the information space is not perceived as an interested subject of information interaction. For most people, it's just a "box" where you can put whatever you want, giggle and put away when you want. The supposed circle of information consumers is perceived to be quite definite and controlled.
Psychologically, a person perceives these actions as communication with a vending machine selling newspapers or tickets in the subway. He is not aware of the mass of potential caring audience, whose interests he is not even able to represent. How difficult it is for him to imagine and how valuable a seemingly empty and incoherent stream of consciousness of hundreds of millions of hamsters can be.
Even when they post everything or almost everything about their lives on the Internet, most of them believe that they have not communicated anything important and this cannot harm them. Next, I will try to explain why this is a cruel delusion.
Since this material is aimed at people who are far from understanding modern technological wonders, I will not go into details, my task is to show the main principles and trends, and let the reader draw conclusions himself.
So, let's outline the main directions and decide on the subject of the conversation.
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In the article, I will only touch upon the issues of automated processing and analysis of information collected using technical means. I will focus on those cases of loss of control over personal data that occur regardless of the wishes or understanding of the data subject.
To begin with, you should understand the fundamental technologies that allow you to know much more about you than you want to tell your enemy about yourself.
1. Technology of speech recognition and identification of a person by voice.
Allows you to translate live speech into text for subsequent automatic analysis of the content, emotional coloring, the main topic.
Automatic identification of the speaker's identity based on voice prints.
2. Technology of pattern recognition and identification of a person by face.
Allows you to automatically recognize text, manuscripts, classes of subjects from a digital image. In particular, highlight faces in images, determine emotions and other parameters. Automatic identification of a person from a photo of a face.
3. RFID technology and RFID infrastructure.
Allows microscopic devices embedded in almost any object to receive and transmit at least their identification number.
At the beginning of the 2000s, the dimensions of the radio tag were 1-2 mm2.
While there are problems with antenna miniaturization, the problem is being solved.
4. Technology of smart cards, including contactless.
In fact, a specialized terminal device for storing any information in a standard plastic card case. Highlighted from point 3 for better clarity.
5. Global positioning systems.
They provide ground devices with the ability to determine their coordinates and exact time on the entire surface of the planet.
6. Systems of mobile personal radio communication.
They provide transmission and reception of any digital information from the user's mobile terminal.
7. Global information network. In particular, the "Internet".
Connects all of the above points to a global data exchange network in real time.
I have listed here what is indisputable and obvious. That's not all, but for the purposes of this article, that's enough.
It should be borne in mind that wherever we are talking about radio tags or the so-called NFC technology (short-range communication), for example, in passports and smart cards, the radius of stable information exchange goes far beyond 10 centimeters. Because it is limited only by the parameters of the antenna of the device that requests communication. And it can easily be 100 meters or more, which is confirmed by the practice of the experiment.
That is, the contents of your wallet may well be radiating to the entire Red Square, which no one will tell you about when advertising the convenience of an NFC smart card.
The key problem for integrating all this heterogeneous information into a single picture of the world is the problem of unique identification of a specific person.
For the full functioning of the system being created, it is extremely necessary that any transmitted information has the imprint of its owner, the one who generates this flow.
For this purpose, various state and interstate identification registers have been created and are being created, in which a specific individual must be assigned a globally unique identification number.
This is the first and main step. Without this, this entire automatic system cannot function with sufficient reliability for management tasks.
The second problem is the imperceptible collection of basic biometric information about all the inhabitants of the planet and training them to freely exchange critical information about themselves. What can be considered basic biometric information?
1. Photography
2. Voice print
3. Gender
4. Age
Adding the identification number to this, we get everything we need to clarify all the rest of the information.
The problem posed has been successfully and brilliantly solved over the past 10 years.
Initially, all states possessed at least photographs of their citizens.
With the advent of cellular communication, now there are as many samples of the voice of these same citizens, but it is not always clear what kind of citizens they are, because communication can be used not only by the owner of a specific SIM card. But even at this stage, the information is more than enough for commercial purposes.
But now social networks, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Telegram appeared. Almost all services suddenly became very concerned about security and now really want to know your mobile phone number, obsessively wanting to protect you from "intruders".
A huge number of people rushed to spread everything about themselves. Starting from the number of the school, photographs and clever thoughts and ending with the total disclosure of your family circle and social circle.
Some were smarter and didn't post their photos. But their friends and relatives helped them, helpfully linking in their photographs the images of their beloved faces with profiles devoid of their image.
Someone posted it, but then deleted it. But - alas! Nothing can be deleted from the Internet.
Why isn't anyone warned about this first thing? Ugliness.
It is difficult to find a person under 30 years old who would not participate in one of the social networks with all the strength of his vivid virtual image.
Selfless companies with convoluted names generously donate gigabyte storage capacity for mailboxes and cloud storage to those in need of their privacy. But why bother? No one is interested in our personal life.
Only this is exactly as long as the smart “uncle” does not want to make money on you.
And he will definitely want to. Fortunately, he knows almost everything about you. You told yourself.
He knows with whom and what you are talking about on the phone, near the phone, by mail, what you are talking about in the video posted by your second cousin from washing a new car. He knows what you are wearing, he was informed about this by radio tags in your shorts, boots and tie. He knows what kind of phone, computer and tablet you have.
What you read, watch and listen to, what you argue about on the forums, where you are and with whom.
Do you think he has no time to look after you? Of course there is no time. He doesn't look closely. To do this, there are dozens of companies, large and small, that collect grains and monoliths of your footprints all over the planet, bring it together with the help of high-speed computing systems. And at the exit, the uncle receives your personal data as a potential consumer of pizza, beer alcoholic, tourist, programmer or … terrorist. Maybe this is the case. As if everything was started for this. Or not?
It would all be funny. Until, upon arrival at the bank, you will not be denied a loan or opening an account. Until the tax office begins to align your expenses with your income. Or before the first blocking of your credit card by the bank, because an automatic expert system with AI (Artificial Intelligence), surfing the vastness of millions of little things, came to the conclusion that you are probably making or receiving an illegal transaction.
And then you will not be funny at all, but the train has already left, now you are forever marked for the system. She looks at you with thousands of video cameras, tracks your clicks, knows everything about your social contacts.
It all started with the fact that you voluntarily gave her some unimportant information about yourself in exchange for the hypothetical convenience of digital virtuality.
And now the cherry on the cake. What is vital to the system for your complete enslavement? We need a real trifle. She needs your identification number to be inseparable from you. Physically.
Now, of course, you have SNILS, INN and something else. But you can not use all this, although it is difficult now. But now UEC, MIR, the portal of the State were born. Services, the Unified System of Identification and Authentication (it has been working since last month), the Federal Tax Service now receives data from retailers about purchases in real time, the legislator is concerned about labeling shoes, clothes and medicines with RFID tags …
By the way, the legislators are on the alert. They are in full swing discussing the legal connection of a citizen with the actions committed using his phone. Because mobile communications have almost 100% penetration, and if the phone is equated to a passport, bright horizons open up for a caring legislator.
The next step will require the FTS to indicate the buyer's phone number on the check.
Otherwise, there is no point in building the system that they started with online cash registers.
So banks are now collecting your photos and voice legally.
And now all the garbage of the Internet takes on a completely different sound, the future is knocking on the door, “Open, police of the truth!”.
I apologize for the laxity of the presentation and deviations from the topic, I do not want to turn the article into a report