I was going to start out this article with the phrase “As we
live in an increasingly sophisticated world,” but suddenly found myself
stopping in mid-sentence. Technology
changes the way society functions, and often changes the balance of power.
Technology changes the way we live our lives, the way we do business, the way
we fight wars, the way we govern, and certainly the way I do my job, but I’m
not at all sure it makes us more sophisticated.
As a licensed private investigator, I deal a lot with both privacy
issues and technology.
Public and private sector entities we depend on for information
are in a constant state of flux. Government
authorities around the world are building super-tools to track perceived
threats against them. Data mining and
cyber-warfare tools are being built faster than courts and politicians can figure
out the difference between email and texting. Online merchandisers are building super-tools
to increase sales opportunities, and those who attack authority are developing
their own technological tools to wield in the struggle to hold the digital high
ground, a fascinating balance of power.
Today, government entities are wielding surveillance tools
that are so powerful they have no historical precedent. At the same time, adversaries of governments have
become more nimble and adaptable too. Which
brings us to today’s window on the world of technology.
In tech battles, the advantage often goes to the attacker. When malevolent actors in places like
Afghanistan attack authority, creative melding of technologies turns the
advantage to the attacker. Like recombining
old cellphones and unexploded munitions and turning them into tank-killing
IED’s, cheap and easy technology can serve to help us annihilate each other. Once
in a long while, however, someone comes up with an inspirational marriage of
technology that helps us to not destroy one another. Today’s find was one of those unlikely marriages.
Civil Rights Defenders, a Swedish NGO, (http://natalia.civilrightsdefenders.org/#how)
has introduced the Natalia Project, a marriage of existing technology that actually makes it harder for
evil people to get away with violence. In
high risk parts of the world, human rights advocates are taken in the middle of
the night when no one is around. Civil
Rights Defenders took the social networking of a twitter feed or Facebook page,
and the geolocation technology of a GPS offender tracking system, and melded
them together. The resulting technology
is an alarm device for human rights defenders.
Activists, journalists, and others at risk of abduction, murder, or
being taken as a political prisoner latch the device, a clunky orange bracelet,
around their wrist. When a human rights
defender realizes he or she is being attacked, they activate the unit by
pushing a button. Like a silent alarm
from a bank to the police, once cut open or triggered, the wristband sends out
a signal. That signal will hopefully hit
a cellular or wireless network, sending an SMS text message back to Sweden and sounding
the alarm to network members in the area, along with the wearer’s GPS
coordinates.
The idea is that through notification and mass media, midnight
assaults against human rights defenders become increasingly risky to the
aggressors, especially if someone with a video camera can get to the incident
quickly.
Initial distribution of the device began in Stockholm on
April 5. The devices are not for sale to the public. They’re looking at having the devices on 55 at-risk
civil rights defenders by the end of the year, many of whom are in former Warsaw
Pact or Soviet states.
