L29Ah @L29Ah@qoto.org

Первое апреля ж...

When I was immigrating to a Latin American country and saw a big office with thousands of paper folders in shelves, I fell in love with it.

I'm allergic to e-government services even though I agree they make a lot of things faster and easier. But it also allows dystopia. Most people can't imagine it, they still believe democracy delivers civilization, you don't have to go pick up mail to the post office or wait in line at some gov office and that's good. More on that later, but first...

In @a1b4ff41 one of the main ideas is "The machines took over". Wait, but they have not... taken over yet, did they? I believe they had decades ago. The machines were initially not a transistor tech though. The machines are processes, regulations, laws, corporate process rules, laws of conduct. These are the algorithms (although sometimes with fuzzy transition states) that control people. We wake up, go to some government office with a form, then get a stamp, go to a different form. The machine - the government - has "took over" basically in the name. So not very surprising to anyone who's looking.

We are the agents of the machine.

When machine moves from papers, stamps, permits and fuzzy rules to the digital realm, it becomes vastly more effective. That means, machines taking over will feel much more real and much less pleasant.

The second interesting thing is that when you talk to people about stateless societies, they will (after some short discussion about building roads) inevitably say "warlords will take over". If Putin, Trump, or other honchos are not warlords, I don't know who is. They might have their stories, justifications, but at the end of the day - they turn off your digital ID and you find yourself with (more or less rusty) rifle, thousands of kilometers from home, being shot at by strangers and shooting back (if only to survive). Your only chance is pretending it's not your problem and hoping you won't get conscripted or that other conscripts of some other country won't shoot at you.

This is the peak of civilization currently. Democracy is the best we have.

Of course you should have voted better if you wanted to avoid this unpleasant situation. Our supreme leaders are the result of this amazing process of democracy, without which we would be barbarians killing each other...

Oh, wait...

If you think you live in Sweden, Slovakia and this can't happen to you, so you'd take your chances to not carry a driver's license with you but prefer an app and you pay with a "beep" from your phone, you can easily wake up in a world where suddenly people vote for some crazy warlord who convinces them it's a good idea. And again - thousands of kilometers away, holding a more or less rusty rifle, being shot at.

When looking at what the plebs votes for in Slovakia, Hungary, but honestly almost anywhere, this is not a remote possibility, but a base case scenario.

I'll take my paper folder, shelves, government database that has super slow and expensive insert and select operations (even though it means I have to stand in line somewhere). And I want especially the search operation to be very expensive and very slow. I want my govenment slow and disfunctional. And preferably so small that you need a microscope to find it, but one can wish. And yes, I'd take my chances with the warlords, that we already have anyway.


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Reacting to:

How military conscription happens in Russia by Nick Hudson

Gosuslugi (the Russian digital ID system) has become a central hub without which life in Russia is almost impossible. Through it, people obtain documents, schedule doctor appointments, and more recently, receive electronic military summons. If a citizen does not confirm receipt, their rights are automatically restricted (leaving the country, selling property, driving a car) — which is a direct implementation of digitally "switching off" an individual from the system.

This represents one of the most radical examples of a state transforming into a digital control mechanism in modern history. What was once a portal for paying parking fees or booking passport appointments has become a digital cage.

Before this law (2023), a military summons in Russia had to be delivered in person and signed for. People would simply avoid opening the door or live at different addresses. Now, a summons is considered delivered the moment it appears in your personal Gosuslugi account — or, if you do not have an active account, 7 days after it is entered into the "Unified Register of Conscripts."

The travel ban activates immediately upon delivery of the summons — before the 20-day window begins. If a citizen then fails to report to the military office within 20 days, the following additional restrictions are triggered:

- Driving ban: The driver's license becomes invalid in the traffic police database.

- Ban on buying/selling real estate: The land registry (Rosreestr) blocks any transactions. You cannot sell property to leave the country.

- Credit ban: Banks automatically see that the applicant is subject to conscription restrictions and loan access is blocked.

- Business restriction: You cannot register a company or work as a freelancer (self-employed).

In Russia, it is nearly impossible to function without a Gosuslugi account. You use it to enroll your child in school or kindergarten. You receive QR codes through it (as seen during the pandemic).

When people began attempting to delete their accounts in March 2023 ahead of the spring conscription drive, the authorities disabled the "delete account" option on the website. This happened proactively on March 31, 2023—the same day the Defence Ministry announced electronic summonses—rather than in response to a mass exodus already underway.

The system is integrated with a network of over 200,000 cameras in Moscow equipped with facial recognition. In documented cases, the flagging has occurred specifically when a conscript contests his draft order in court—at which point the enlistment office enters him into the system as an alleged evader, triggering a facial recognition alert and enabling police to detain him on the spot. It is not confirmed as a blanket automatic trigger for anyone who has simply received a summons and not yet reported.

The state can effectively cut a person off from the social and economic bloodstream—without the ability to drive, manage money, or use property.

This became reality in Russia faster than almost anywhere else because the state used war as justification to merge all databases (tax, police, medical, and military) into one central system.

Russia no longer uses technology merely as a service for citizens, but as an operational tool of enforcement.

https://xcancel.com/NickHudsonCT/status/2037900175876751751?s=20