Borja Moya - Data Dictatorships: The Arms Race to Hack Humankind

for

the crazy ones who believe they can change the world. For the people who take an active role in any revolution and push it forward. But not only do they push it, they also bring people with themthey inspire others to join the revolution. This is for the Data Rebels.

To L.

I was being followed.

I didnt know where to hide. And I didnt even know I had to hide.

I had no idea who was following me. But they knew my secrets. My most private secrets. At this point I didnt know it yet, but the biggest surveillance system in the world was tracking me down.

The most sophisticated censorship surveillance apparatus the world has ever seen had a target on my back.

Im talking about a powerful machine that incessantly spies on millions of people every hour and everyday.

And I had become a target. I was in its bullseye and there was no way I could escape.

There were thousands of cameras connected all around me. Cameras with facial recognition software and enormous computing power, capable of tracking millions of people down in a matter of minutes.

There was no way out.

I happened to be in a city that was not just fueled by CCTV cameras. But by a system that gathers information from every possible source, including my private conversationsespecially my private conversations.

I thought I had nothing to hide, but still the machine chose me. My face appeared on a big screen at the other end of these cameras. Right there I became a target. And then in a matter of seconds I was under the microscope.

What had I done?

I didnt know.

I didnt even know this process had taken place.

But everything was about to change when the police kicked on my door and took me into a Chinese prison.

T heres something about me that you should know: I went to marketing school.

When I was a kid I wanted to be a paleontologist. I know, its a long story. But that changed from the moment I got an Internet connection on my old computer. An undiscovered and thrilling world opened up to me and it became clear to me that I wanted to study computer engineering. And just like most computer guys, I didnt like the idea of a lack of privacy. So from an early age I tried to conceal my online identity.

Since I spent most of my time in front of a screen, and school bored me, I didnt do very well in school. And because of that, I thought I could never become an engineer. Afterwards I thought I didnt want to either (maybe it was true, but who knows.) I simply had no idea of what I wanted to do with my life.

I dont know what went wrong along the way, but I ended up studying marketing.

When I started studying marketing in University I was surprised that people still praised the tricky and clever messages that triggered people into buying stuff they didnt need or want. Somehow it was like a badge of honor in the profession if you could come up with a creative way of communicating some bullsh*t.

The fact is that most marketers would probably use any trick they could to get you to buy or do something you may not want or need. If they have many tricks, theyll use them all. That, as they say, is that.

If it were up to them, theyd run subliminal ads all the long. But they cant. So they push things to the edge, close enough to the heat but without getting burnt.

Marketers are not just good guys turned into bad guys. Or bad guys turned into good guys. Bad guys are always bad guys. But the truth about the marketing industry is that it normalizes certain kinds of aggressive and cunning behaviors. So a lot of good guys turn into bad guys.

Most marketers would use any trick in the book to profit from any given situation. And still, most would believe theyre doing the right thing. In the end, theyre trying to help people, right?

That was what I was taught.

Since the beginning I was fed into the marketers bubble, where the sole goal was to trick people to buy your stuff. But even worse, I was taught that hey, we do this for the customer. Because were here to satisfy their needs.

The narrative was always about making ads more relevant to people. Even if we werent asking ourselves whether people would want to see those ads in the first place.

Right then I began to have a direct conflict with my own idealsthe ideals I grew up with of keeping private stuff private. My online privacy was important to me. But at this point I thought it wasnt that bad to invade other peoples privacy. Everybody in the sector was doing this, so it couldnt be that bad.

At this point I told myself were all the good guys, right?

I was feeding myself with my own bullsh*t.

I was all in it.

All the way through college. All the way through my first years after college working in the field of marketing.

I thought that interrupting people was okay.

Too often when we want to believe something, we believe whatever were swayed to believe. And people who blindly believe any argument against their values (as I did), spread the word and convince people to change their core values for these new ones.

Time passed, and during my career as a professional marketer I began to use the surveillance tools that were at my disposal. Because every marketer was using them. And the industry made you believe that you couldnt be a marketer without using the tools Google, Facebook and other tech giants offered you. Because they were so good you couldnt ignore them.

What I didnt know was that this same technology that powered my industry was about to turn against me.

I n the summer of 2015 I lived and worked in Beijing for a short time. I loved the experience and the culture so much that when I came back to Spain (my home-country), I decided that I would move back to China as soon as I could.

Almost year later I moved to Shanghai and got a job there as a marketing manager of a small company. And my entire job was to spam peoplebasically trick them into buying more and more stuff from us. I wasnt proud of my job and early on I had inner dilemmas with these practices, that would eventually lead me to quit my job. But this wasnt until something unexpected happened to mean experience I will never forget.

From the moment I landed in Shanghai I could tell that something was different since the last time I had been thereeven though it had been just less than a year.

Maybe I didnt pay attention the first time I was here, but I doubt itthe shift was just too blatant. From the moment I arrived, I noticed that a lot of surveillance cameras had appeared across the city. I mean, a lot of them.

And from the moment I landed I had the sense of unease that I was being monitored. All the time. Every step I took. Every conversation I had. Where I went. What I bought. Who I talked to. I could tell I was under the microscope.