“It is a question of having access to all the services of the State without having a computer, smartphone or tablet.”
As the world becomes steadily digitised, it is getting harder and harder to do even the simplest of things offline, while surveillance and control of the online world is escalating. Access to essential services is increasingly restricted to a specific platform or app that is often linked to Big Tech platforms and services. At the same time, many of those same apps and tech platforms are undergoing a process of rapid “enshittification” — so much so that Macquarie Dictionary has crowned the Cory Doctorow-coined term as its word of the year.
Here’s how the Australian dictionary defines enshittification:
“The gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking.”
App-Controlled Lockers and Car Park Meters
Just yesterday, my wife and I tried to rent a luggage locker at a Mexico City bus station for a couple of hours to avoid having to lug our luggage around with us before catching our connecting journey, only to find that doing so required downloading an app and sharing our personal data and bank details with the app company — all to pay one dollar fifty in storage fees. Needless to say, we declined.
In Germany, the logistics giant DHL has introduced new, “lean” parcel lockers where customers can only collect parcels if they use the company’s “Post & DHL App” on their smartphones. As the European Digital Rights network (EDRi) reports, anyone who is unable to receive a parcel at home may be redirected to one of these lockers: “in this case, the only way to receive parcels without the app is to request a second delivery to the original address – an option that is time-limited and well-hidden on DHL’s website.”
Another example I’ve noticed during my recent visits to the UK is parking. For decades motorists using a car park in my home town had fed coins into a meter and got a ticket. Then, about ten years ago, a new meter was introduced offering a card alternative to cash, which seemed like a good idea at the time. Some years later a parking app was included. Yet more choice! Then a new meter was unveiled – payment by card or app only. Within a year, the meter had disappeared altogether. In its place stood a sign instructing customers to pay by app only.
The assumption was clear: every driver wishing to park their car has a smart phone and knows how to download and operate apps, and is quite happy to share their personal data and bank account information with an obscure, probably foreign-based app company.
To cap things off, the mobile coverage was poor and the price of parking had gone up to include an extra fee for the app company. Worse still, in many parts of the UK enterprising fraudsters have begun placing QR code stickers on top of the parking apps’ QR codes, directing unsuspecting carpark users to fake websites designed to extract their bank card or account details. Victims of these scams end up losing far more than the price of a couple of hours’ parking. The ultimate insult: many get fined for not buying a parking ticket.
So, what had begun as a process of broadening customer choice had ended up narrowing it to the point at which the only way for customers to pay for their parking was with a smart phone. And instead of costs going down, they were going up, so that the app company – a new 21st century middleman – could turn a tidy profit. Rather than being quicker and more convenient, this new system is making life more difficult for many customers, and is even making some easy prey for fraudsters. As the Sheffield Star reports, customers are not happy:
Anne Middleton, of High Green, said: “I’m not to keen on that idea actually. I quite like to put my cash in. I’m not good with the apps, I always get it wrong.”
She said she had used apps and had one or two on her phone. But she added: “Generally they go wrong, so we end up not bothering or we find one that takes cash.”
Briony Salter, from Wincobank, agreed parking companies only allowing apps was unacceptable. She said: “I wish they would do parking meters – it’s easier if people have got change.
“Not everyone has a smart phone so I think it’s a very new generation thing. There are a lot of older people who may not be very handy with a phone. Maybe just going back to old payment systems is a lot easier than it is currently.”
Sara and Ian Hobson, from Woodhouse, both felt app-only was unacceptable.
Ian said: “Most people don’t know how to do it with an app. You have to download the app, then you have to pay. It’s easier just to get some coins out and put them in.”
“Digital Coercion”
Unfortunately, governments, banks and businesses in many countries are doing everything they can to drive out the use of cash for basic services like public transport and parking, and replace them with purely digital payment means. They are also making it increasingly difficult to interact with government and receive state benefits without using smart phone apps. Ukraine’s “Diia” digital ID and governance platform, launched in February 2020, offers a perfect template, according to USAID, the European Union and the United Nations Development Program.
“Digital coercion” — a term I learnt from the German financial journalist and digital rights activist, Norbert Häring — is on the rise just about everywhere. As Häring reported in September, this should hardly come as a surprise given that one of the main organisations pushing for the rapid rollout of digital public infrastructure (digital ID, digital health passes, instant payment systems, central bank digital currency…) is the corporate-controlled, WEF-partnered United Nations.
In September, a Global Digital Pact was quietly adopted at the UN Future Summit. According to Häring, neither the UN nor the German government, which was significantly involved in the preparation of the summit, “made serious efforts to inform the public about what is planned, or even to have it discussed in parliaments and the media”:
It has also not been disclosed which corporations, foundations and hand-picked representatives of so-called civil society are allowed to sit at the negotiating table.
In the text of the treaty, we learn by way of introduction that digital technologies “offer immense potential benefits for human welfare and the progress of societies” and that we must therefore eliminate any digital divide between countries and within countries. The declared goal is “a digital future for everyone”.
What is important is what is not in the contract. The word voluntary occurs only in connection with the signing of the contract. For the citizens, however, there is no right to choose a future for themselves other than a completely digitised one. After all, that would open up a digital divide that must no longer exist. There is no provision for a right to settle many of one’s affairs in the traditional way in dealing with other people instead of computers. No one should be allowed to choose that their children are taught by teachers instead of computers, or that conversations with the doctor and treatments remain a secret instead of being packed into the servers of the IT companies. Nothing in the treaty indicates that such a right was even considered.
But digital coercion may soon be less of a problem for the residents of the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel. A few days ago, an overwhelming majority of citizens (91%) voted by referendum to adopt a constitutional amendment that guarantees its citizens a right to “digital integrity”. As Häring notes, the new constitutional law offers sweeping digital protections (machine translated):
This includes the right to protection against abusive data processing, to security in the digital realm, to an offline life so that the state cannot impose digital relationships, and to be forgotten online. The right to live offline is intended to ensure that people are not forced to operate exclusively in the digital world. The canton also undertakes to offer access to human contacts in the administration. Well worth imitating.
The cantonal government now faces the challenge of protecting these new rights. As RTS reported last week, the central government sees the right to digital integrity as primarily symbolic since the scope of its application is limited to relations between the State and citizens. This would seem to suggest that the cantonal government cannot force private companies to comply with the rules.
“The risk of such a symbolic provision, of very limited scope, is to create disproportionate expectations among the public that ultimately may not be met,” said Crystel Graf, the State Councillor in charge of digital affairs.
That said, it is usually local or central government departments or state-owned companies that are pushing digital-only options for public services. As such, making sure that government services can be accessed through non-digital means is a step in the right direction.
Neuchâtel is not the first canton to take this step, nor is it likely to be the last, with similar projects under consideration in the cantons of Vaud and Jura. Last year, the people of Geneva voted overwhelmingly (94%) to enshrine digital integrity within the canton’s constitution. According to the RTS article, a year later, the results are not yet visible to the general public, but they are taking shape behind the scenes (machine translated):
For example, all cantonal laws have been scrutinised with one objective: to ensure that they respect digital integrity.
…It is a question of having access to all the services of the State without having a computer, smartphone or tablet or, conversely, of ensuring the security of our data if we wish to go digital.
According to the spokesperson for the Geneva Department of Digital Affairs, it is difficult to draw a quantitative assessment following this vote. He specifies that this new article of law has the merit of creating a new fundamental right to be respected in any new action or decision of the State.
It will be interesting to see if this trend travels beyond Swiss borders. Earlier this year, Digitalcourage, a German privacy rights and digital rights organisation, launched a petition calling for a new fundamental law: the right to access basic services without being forced to use a digital solution. As governments in both the West and the Rest of the World, including all five of the founding BRICS nations, herd their populaces toward a Big Tech-controlled Digital Gulag, a bill of digital rights is needed more than ever before.
