The KGB relied on human agents and analysts, and it just couldn’t place a human agent to follow every citizen. Fifty years ago, the KGB couldn’t follow 240m Soviet citizens 24 hours a day, nor could the KGB hope to effectively process all the information gathered. Today, for the first time in human history, technology makes it possible to monitor everyone all the time. One method is for the government to monitor people, and punish those who break the rules. There are two main ways of achieving this. In order to stop the epidemic, entire populations need to comply with certain guidelines. The second is between nationalist isolation and global solidarity. The first is between totalitarian surveillance and citizen empowerment. In this time of crisis, we face two particularly important choices. What happens when everybody works from home and communicates only at a distance? What happens when entire schools and universities go online? In normal times, governments, businesses and educational boards would never agree to conduct such experiments. Entire countries serve as guinea-pigs in large-scale social experiments. Immature and even dangerous technologies are pressed into service, because the risks of doing nothing are bigger. Decisions that in normal times could take years of deliberation are passed in a matter of hours.
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