Table of Contents
Critique of the requirement for registration and the resulting possibility of the existence of unregistered things or people.
Registration is a blunt tool that illustrates the very idea. In a functioning system, registration… won’t be needed The concierge in the entrance doesn’t “register” you; he “recognizes” you. So, the fact that a thief stole a painting from the museum is impressive, but he won’t be able to approach the museum unnoticed and leave without being seen. The system will know exactly who the thief is and where he went. However, yes, it is possible to keep something a secret at home. The only problem is that everyone will have a part of the public surveillance system in their own home, solely for their own safety.
Look at something like registration in today’s world. Passports. Yes, they seem like a good tool, but they have their flaws. This is precisely because of that very “registration.” However, what proves who I truly am is not my passport, but the people who have surrounded me since my birth. No matter how elaborate a spy’s “legend” may be, they can always be exposed simply by showing their classmates with whom they supposedly studied. An information system will handle “registration” as a constant proof of the continuity of people’s and things’ histories. In such a tracking system of “historical continuity,” any additional identifiers would only be needed as a precaution. By the way, this method of identifying everything and everyone makes it, at the very least, quite difficult to edit history for any criminal or hacking purposes. Continuity is disrupted one way or another. If not for a specific object, then for the objects surrounding it.
Criticism based on the impossibility of equipping all deserts and dark corners with surveillance systems.
It’s not necessary, in fact, to force a system that demands complete presence in any place. If people want to do something in secret from others, they will find a way to be alone. The question here is not so much about the advantages of some secret activities, but rather about the greater benefits of fully open activities.
For example, when a crime is committed, it is very easy to outline a circle of possible beneficiaries and take a closer look at the activities of those who have no alibi. In a situation where an alibi is technically provided for almost everyone, suspicions and, consequently, the work of the investigative evidence will be directed towards that one individual who had no alibi but stood to gain.
Also, if a person goes into the desert or the mountains, they already take devices with them that ensure their connection to the outside world for their own safety. We are already afraid to go outside without our mobile phones. Tomorrow, these devices will turn into universal trackers, and we will feel very uncomfortable without them. People will want others to know where they are and what they are doing. The system will also know that someone has gone into the desert at that point and will be “waiting” for their return.
It should also be understood that in a society where there are both people who constantly document their activities and those who do not, criminals will choose unprotected victims for their cunning plans, prompting society to build such defenses. In a city where locks are on every door, the house that will be robbed is the one with the door left open. And if there are no locks anywhere, then the first one they come across.
At the same time, even if we assume some kind of secret conspiracy took place in the desert, the real benefit from this conspiracy could only be gained through the exchange of unregistered assets, rather than legal money. This will be discussed further below.
Criticism based on the assumption of the existence of a parallel, shadow society.
The impossibility of a parallel economy, to put it briefly, is well illustrated by the fact that even now, any illegal trade does not utilize such systems. Fortunately, the modern, and even more so the future world, is heavily dependent on infrastructure and things that require significant capital investment. It is hardly possible to organize the production and sale of cars without money, for example. You cannot use water, electricity, sewage, roads, bridges, public services, etc., without money. You can’t even buy a washing machine without money. Moreover, if you grow a ton of wheat in some “unregistered” way, you still need to do something with it, like store it somewhere and in something. And you have to pay for that with some legally circulating money. And as we remember, money is fully accounted for. Additionally, members of this “shadow” group must constantly navigate around surveillance cameras to avoid getting caught in the “record,” as described above.
Any society primarily revolves around the needs of households that earn and spend money. If you want to benefit from these households in some way, you need to figure out how to do so without using money. It’s hard to imagine viable systems under such conditions. The drug mafia, in any case, sells drugs for money, which comes into the mafia when a user buys another dose from a dealer. Money is the weak link in the drug trade. If they could operate without money and instead take, say, donated blood for drugs, they would have already done so.
The turnover of unrecognized (unregistered, lacking a history) goods is problematic because, in the legal framework where the owner is tied to the product, anyone can take an unrecognized item and declare themselves its owner. This means that the owner of unregistered goods puts their very right to ownership at risk.
Summary: A “shadow” economy might be possible, perhaps hypothetically and with a lot of stretching, but it would result in a standard of living comparable to the Middle Ages and subsistence farming. Moreover, it would raise many questions for the monitoring system. For example, you might not be detected buying food, yet you haven’t starved. Why is that?
Criticism based on the hypothesis of system vulnerability and hacking
Yes, we are all influenced by Hollywood and tend to demonize hackers. However, data centers for payment systems do exist; distributed systems with multiple redundancies and geographically dispersed data are also in place; even now, there are virtual storage solutions based on peer-to-peer technology, where your data is stored in pieces across hundreds of thousands of other people’s computers. You can always access it, even if some computers are turned off. And you can’t tamper with it, as there are multiple copies. Additionally, the very philosophy of the system complicates information forgery, as it not only records but also “tracks history.” You won’t be able to “erase” an event without altering the history of surrounding people and things. It would stand out. Here. — an illustration of the architecture of such a system. There is no room for hackers, dependence on electricity, or physical registration of people. Also, the illustration provided by link It shows that the system itself does not require human involvement at all, eliminating the weak link of, say, mass-hired system administrators. It practically describes a highly advanced automatic registrar that is constantly communicating with its “colleagues.”
The hackers themselves are participants in the system. They are not anonymous individuals; the system keeps track of them. I don’t think it will be difficult to recognize specific hacking activities. And even if a hacker manages to achieve something, they won’t remain unidentified and unexposed. Moreover, there is a very serious issue regarding access rights. I’m not sure that anyone will even have the access rights to delete or modify archives, especially if someone figures out how to archive data on rewritable media.
This also falls into the category of criticism regarding the absolute power of system administrators and the potential for them to usurp authority. Share this with the IT department director of the company. He can’t even find out other people’s passwords. He can reset them, but he can’t see them. Moreover, he won’t be able to “undermine” the boss. And, as we remember, there’s a surveillance camera watching every administrator’s back in the system :-). Figuratively or literally.
In general, questions about system hacking are questions of budget. No one has actually hacked truly important systems so far. It’s possible to find out a password, not by hacking, but through methods like thermorectal cryptanalysis (or just bribing with chocolate). But will passwords even be necessary in a world where every device can recognize you by face?
And about the honesty of administrators. One does not need to be more honest than others to be trusted with “sacred secrets.” The reliability of information is confirmed not by the authority of the “administrator,” but by its traceability over time. Every state of someone or something should be validated by a chain of previous states. The fact that I am Vasya Pupkin is confirmed not by a photo ID, but by my biography, my parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, and so on. Even if I lose all my documents, I can prove who I am—at least to those who care about who I am.
Criticism based on the assumption of the existence of a “person outside the system,” who would, therefore, be all-powerful.
Despite what has already been written above, I would like to add. Theoretically, yes, it is conceivable. However, any “outsider” who is truly outside the system must be 100 percent outside the system—meaning they should not go to the store or acquire anything from others who do shop (since those who go to the store need money that circulates within the system, not something else). Any “parallel economy” is not just about “shadow transactions,” but also about a parallel system of producing goods, as complete shadowing implies a total rejection of transactions with the system.
If it were possible to organize a developed, parallel system to the official one, drug dealers would have done just that. However, they sell drugs for money issued by the system, drive cars registered in the system, and pay road fees to the system when using roads built by the system. They communicate on phones connected to the system’s networks. They might be capable of having their own communication channels, but a drug addict calls a dealer on a regular phone and pays regular money for drugs wrapped in ordinary plastic produced in a regular factory. When talking about a utopia “outside the system” — envision it fully. If you are outside the system, then you do not exist for it. The system is indifferent.