We cannot reliably know in advance whether a utopian or dystopian scenario awaits us in the future, whether we will experience sustainable prosperity or miserable existence. However, we can take a closer look at what is happening in the world right now and try to build the future from the bricks of the present. This app is our little brick warehouse.
Table of Contents
Transparency of government structures
In Brazil, the so-called Transparency Law has come into effect, requiring all levels of government, including municipalities with populations up to 100,000, to report their income and expenses in real time. Thousands of Transparency Portals have been created for this purpose, where one can find astonishing information.
For example, a list of all individuals who received payments from the federal government, which shows that a certain Abelina Rosa Dos Santos Barros received a social benefit of 68 reais in 2010.
Or it is possible to find out what purchases were made at the government’s expense, who won the contracts, and for what amount—down to the last penny. All contracts with external companies and organizations, where budget funds, state or municipal budgets were allocated, salaries paid in state government departments. And this is the case everywhere—across the country and at all levels.
Sources: http://brasileiro-ru.livejournal.com/163979.html The text for translation: ,. http://www.transparencia.goias.gov.br/
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The media in the Czech Republic have been granted the ability to publish information obtained from the wiretapping of politicians’ phones.
According to the amendment to the Law on Personal Data Protection, which came into effect on August 1, 2011, Czech media were given the opportunity to publish materials obtained from wiretaps, including recordings of telephone conversations.
The disclosure of this information is deemed justified only in cases of what is known as “public interest,” and pertains, for example, to the criminal activities of Czech politicians and other government officials.
At the same time, the ban on publishing information related to an ongoing criminal investigation remains in place. An exception is only permissible if the public interest outweighs the principle of privacy.
The actions of the media related to the publication of “wiretaps” can be challenged in court. According to an amendment to the law, the final authority that assesses the purpose, method, and outcome of such actions by the press is exclusively the court.
Source: http://ria.ru/world/20110802/410650327.html
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Citizens of Slovenia will be able to monitor government spending online. The country’s Commission for the Prevention of Corruption has launched a portal called “Oversight” as part of its “Transparency” program. With this tool, citizens will be able to see how government entities have used taxpayers’ money.
To obtain the information of interest, the user simply needs to enter the name of a specific government agency, such as one of the ministries, in a special field, and in response to the request, a list of the organization’s expenditures will appear. Moreover, from the list, it is easy to find out who received payments for various services.
The developers of “Nadsmotshchik” are currently working on an application that will provide users with information about lobbying activities in Slovenia. It will help users understand who in the power structures advocates for the interests of various business circles.
Source: http://tasstelecom.ru/news/one/4025
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On September 26, 2011, the President of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, delivered a report on the country’s progress regarding the development of the e-government concept. Estonia is one of the world leaders in this field.
It is believed that any forms of government systems for tracking people, voters, votes, medical records, financial transactions, and so on lead directly to totalitarianism. “Big Brother” is becoming a reality. Estonia has addressed this issue in the following way:
The basic infrastructure of the entire system, known as the X-road project, is decentralized and belongs not to the state, but to the citizens. Information concerning citizens is legally owned by them, and they have full access to any data. Moreover, it is legally prohibited to create databases that store duplicate information. If you need any information about a citizen, obtain it from the X-road rather than creating your own copy.
All transactions involving data are tracked. Anyone can see who has inquired about their data and for what reason. Moreover, those who have shown interest are required to prove the legitimacy of their inquiry upon request.
A journalist is writing an article and wants to find out the source of a government official’s income, who drives a Cayenne — no problem! A police officer wants to help his friend find her ex-husband who owes child support, without officially opening a case — absolutely not! Get out of the police force and pay a fine. Because that very ex-husband was able (there was a real case!) to track through X-road who was interested in his data and when. In this sense, electronic data better protects privacy than paper files. If the same police officer were to rummage through paper files for his own purposes, it would go unnoticed.
Let us quote a fragment from the presidential report:
“In Estonia, a decentralized system called x-road, owned by citizens, has been developed, and research is currently underway to create a number of similar systems. This contrasts the Estonian model with Orwellian models, although people’s concerns about government databases seem insurmountable. We have implemented guarantees that any unauthorized access to data will be detected. Every time someone accesses the data, their actions are automatically recorded. Attempts to access others’ data without the necessary permissions are also automatically logged.”
In emergency situations, access to private data, such as medical records, can be granted without the citizen’s consent, for instance, when they are brought to the intensive care unit unconscious. However, once they regain consciousness, they will be able to find out who accessed their personal information, for what purpose, and to what extent.
Let’s be honest. People will try to steal data. But electronic data is much better protected. A police officer rummaging through her boyfriend’s files will be caught if it involves an electronic database, but she wouldn’t leave any records or traces if we were still living in the days when cases were handled in paper folders. Decentralization and strict access control, along with logs of access attempts, etc., play a crucial role in earning users’ trust in the databases of any government or public service.
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On March 24, 1992, in Helsinki, the “Open Skies Treaty” was adopted by 27 participating states of the OSCE.
The purpose of the treaty is to provide its participants with the opportunity to conduct unplanned overflights of each other’s territories. This is intended to strengthen trust between the states. As of today, the treaty has already been signed by 34 countries.
Source: http://www.president.ee/en/official-duties/speeches/6512-president-toomas-hendrik-ilves-at-icegov-conference-international-conference-on-theory-and-practice-of-electronic-governance-september-26-2011-viru-conference-center/index.html The text for translation: ,. The text you provided is a URL link to a Wikipedia page about the Open Skies Treaty in Russian. If you need information or a summary about the Open Skies Treaty, please let me know!
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Electronic democracy
Russian blogger, lawyer, and opposition figure Alexei Navalny gained prominence on the internet primarily through the project rospil.info—a website that publishes information about dubious and clearly corrupt government procurement and tenders. The team of lawyers behind the “Rospil” project seeks to annul or bring into compliance with the law and common sense any suspicious tenders through the courts.
Another project by Navalny is RosYama. It helps to inform the traffic police and local authorities about potholes, bumps, and ruts on the roads, and to monitor the resolution of these issues. Recently, a Ukrainian “branch” of the site was launched — UkrYama.
Sources: http://navalny.livejournal.com The text for translation: ,. http://rospil.info/ ,. http://rosyama.ru/ ,. http://ukryama.com/
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Another Russian internet project resembles RosYama but has a broader scope. “My Territory” is designed to address any local issues. In addition to citizens, official representatives of government authorities can register on the platform to receive feedback quickly and directly, monitor the work of contractors, and so on.
Naturally, similar projects appeared much earlier in the English-speaking internet; for example, the English website MySociety.org was registered in 2003. It brings together several services aimed at promoting electronic democracy and ensuring direct communication between citizens and local authorities and parliament members.
Source: http://streetjournal.com
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The book “Cloud Democracy” by Leonid Volkov and Fyodor Krasheninnikov is an attempt to model the future of democracy considering the possibilities of the internet. The authors suggest moving away from the traditional model of representative democracy and building a more dynamic and transparent system based on information technologies.
The practical implementation of the ideas presented in the book is the website democratia2.ru, where users can form groups and parties in real time, discuss ideas and projects, and vote on them.
Source: http://cdem.ru/
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The website DalSlovo.ru tracks the promises generously made by politicians and officials and monitors their fulfillment (or lack thereof).
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The mayor of Vinnytsia, Volodymyr Groysman, who was re-elected for a second term in 2010 with a record 78% of the vote in Ukraine, first took office in 2006 at the age of 28. Over the years, he broke the resistance of bureaucrats and transformed the post-Soviet bureaucratic apparatus of the city into a municipal service modeled after Western European standards. Citizens can address all issues—from obtaining certificates to registering businesses—in a single room with transparent walls. The possibility of resolving matters behind closed doors has been reduced to zero.
The number of officials in the city has been significantly reduced, the number of housing maintenance offices has been cut by two-thirds, permitting procedures have been minimized, databases of various municipal structures have been consolidated, dispatch services have been integrated, and the city administration is transitioning to electronic document management. The processing times for most documents have been reduced several times over.
Large investors are eager to work with Vinnytsia. The city is home to the largest confectionery factory in Europe and a dairy plant being built by the Roshen corporation, as well as the reconstruction of the Sperko-Ukraine pharmaceutical factory and an oil and fat plant. In total, investments exceed $100 million—an enormous amount for the province.
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The project http://alterrussia.ru was created in April 2011 as a democratic online platform for discussing and developing citizen initiatives. Every registered user of the portal can propose their own law or amendment to existing laws of the Russian Federation. All proposals that receive a majority vote from the user community are granted the status of law in the virtual republic. They are then communicated to officials, ministers, deputies, and leaders of political parties in the Russian Federation.
The distribution of responsibility is based on the trust citizens have in one another. Based on their personal opinions about various citizens, users of AlterRussia can delegate their votes to others—those they consider the most competent. This way, a “layer” of Experts and a “layer” of Ministers is formed— the most authoritative users with the highest number of delegated votes and leaders in terms of delegated votes within a particular virtual Ministry.
OIS.
The open national project of Russian bloggers “A Country Without Nonsense,” founded by photo bloggers Dmitry Ternovsky and Ilya Varlamov, aims to protect the rights and freedoms of individuals as enshrined in the Constitution and current legislation of the Russian Federation. One of the main goals of the project is to advocate for the freedom of photography and videography in public spaces. As part of the project, there is an initiative called “Photography is Allowed.” Cafés, shops, and any other organizations wishing to participate in the initiative officially permit photography on their premises and display a sign reading “Photography is Allowed” in the form of a green camera in a visible location. The sign was designed and is distributed for free by the Artemy Lebedev Studio. “Common sense continues to spread across the country. Clinical stupidity, idiotic restrictions, and the complexes of security guards and doormen are withering away and retreating,” he writes in his blog.
Source: http://ternovskiy.livejournal.com/83332.html
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The security company Portoss, in collaboration with the biometric equipment manufacturer GRI and with the support of local authorities, promises to make the city of León in the Mexican state of Guanajuato “the safest city in the world.” The organizers plan to issue a biometric passport to every resident of the city, turning the entire area into one large experiment: the city will be filled with surveillance equipment, sensors, and scanners. A centralized database will also be created to store information about every resident of the city.
The companies’ plans are not limited to just one city — the official press release states that “every citizen, place, or thing on this planet will be connected to our system within 10 years. If you are a shoplifter, security will receive complete information about you as soon as you enter any store; if you are a criminal, you will not be able to board a plane.” The creators of the project believe that the speed of automatic monitoring systems based on retinal scanning allows for their widespread implementation.
Mexico did not become a pioneer in implementing such a system by chance ‒ the crime rate in the country is one of the highest in the world.
Source: http://www.3dnews.ru/news/Meksikanskiy-gorod-stanet-samim-bezopasnim-v-mire-Bolshoy-brat-uzhe-zdes
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On December 1, 2011, the website Wikileaks.org began publishing documents about companies that provide technologies for monitoring citizens—such as internet and phone network surveillance, voice recognition, and tracking mobile phone movements. These companies’ services are actively used by both dictatorial regimes and democratic countries. In both cases, authorities prefer not to discuss such topics—“secrecy” and “security” take precedence above all.
Source: http://wikileaks.org/the-spyfiles.html
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The concepts of “reverse” and “equiveillance” refer to the equalization of citizens’ rights with those of the state and intelligence agencies through the use of technical means to record everything happening around a person. These phenomena have already become an integral part of our lives—more and more people are installing dash cams in their cars, and filming with mobile phone cameras during elections or mass protests helps reduce the level of falsifications and violence from authorities. Enthusiasts of reverse surveillance are creating individual “black boxes” equipped with cameras and other sensors for constant wear.
Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance ,. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equiveillance ,. I’m unable to access external websites, including Wikipedia. However, if you provide me with specific text or information from that page, I would be happy to help translate it into English!
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The so-called “hyperlinks in the real world” are tags applied to objects that can be scanned with a special scanner or camera. They allow users to access information about the object from the internet or track its movements. The prototype of such tags is the standard barcode. More modern versions include the QR code, or two-dimensional barcode, which can hold much more information, and RFID, or radio chip. These tags are widely used in logistics and retail to track the movement of goods. In recent years, QR codes have started to appear on advertisements and posters, enabling smartphone users to access a company’s website simply by taking a picture of the code.
This technology also works in reverse — with the same smartphone, you can scan the code of any product in a store and get a detailed description or compare prices online.
Technologies are being actively developed to link real-world objects with information on the internet without any artificial markers, using computer vision technologies.
Sources: http://www.pcworld.com/article/236573/15_shopping_apps_that_can_save_you_big_bucks.html ,. http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/17807/ ,. http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=18368&ch=infotech ,. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_world_hyperlinks
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In the fall of 2011, Facebook introduced the “trusted friends” password recovery feature. You can choose between three to five of your closest friends and leave them “backup keys” to your account. If your account is hacked or you forget your password, you can regain access by asking your friends to provide you with special access codes. Thus, in an emergency situation, authentication is carried out not through technical means or official documents, but through your social connections.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=119897751441086
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Starting January 1, 2013, the European Union will only allow prescription medications in pharmacies that have a unique number on the packaging, encoded in a two-dimensional barcode or RFID tag, which allows for the precise identification of individual packages rather than batches or categories of drugs. This measure is aimed at preventing counterfeiting. The next step envisioned by the EU is the widespread application of this technology to food products and then to other goods. This means that in the near future, every product will have a unique identifier, and the sales process will include verification of their origin. If a specific package has an incorrect code or is marked in the database as already sold, it will not be possible to sell it. Previously, such practices were only applied to the trade of cars and some other expensive items.
Source: http://ec.europa.eu/health/files/eudralex/vol-1/dir_2011_62/dir_2011_62_en.pdf The text for translation: >..
Distributed Finance and Management
Crowdfunding is a collective fundraising method for the development or creation of a project, and it is increasingly being used on the internet. Thanks to crowdfunding, we have Wikipedia, the anti-corruption project RosYama, and many others. The website kickstarter.com specializes in launching various projects through crowdfunding. This platform is used to create books, films, music, games, and to produce tangible goods such as clothing, gadgets, and household appliances. Many projects raise tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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The closest sibling of crowdfunding is crowdsourcing, which involves creating something with the help of a large number of people on a voluntary basis. It is much more widespread; almost all popular open-source software is developed this way. All social networks, collaborative blogs, and all wiki projects, including Wikipedia itself, are created through crowdsourcing.
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The project quirky.com brings crowdsourcing ideas into the real world. On this site, anyone can propose an invention idea and, with the help of the community, bring it to fruition. Quirky selects the most popular and promising projects and handles production and sales. Among the items created on Quirky are household appliances, toys, everyday items, sports equipment, and much more.
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http://www.thepoint.com is a platform for collaborative actions, similar to Kickstarter, but in a more general sense. You can support a project you like not only with money but also through direct actions. Thepoint is often used to organize political or social campaigns.
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The social micropayment system flattr.com offers a solution to the challenges faced by online creators—bloggers, photographers, writers, and musicians. It provides an incredibly convenient way to reward your favorite authors. By registering in the system, you pay a fixed amount of money each month, and authors place buttons on their pages similar to “Like” or “+1” found on social networks. Your monthly payment is then distributed among all the authors whose buttons you clicked.
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In recent years, websites offering financial services based on P2P principles—peer-to-peer banking or peer-to-peer lending—have been rapidly gaining popularity. These financial systems are built on social connections and reputation, and their operational algorithms resemble the principles of the Lloyd’s insurance market.
Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_to_peer_banking ,. http://www.wiseclerk.com/group-news/