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Looking at how “states”, compared to individuals around the world seem to have gained the upper hand, the idea of our holding onto more than a small amount of freedom and privacy may at first appear hopeless. Take for example, Mexico’s implementation of biometric ID this year for every resident, China’s planned surveillance by facial recognition for all its 1.3 billion citizens, and Google’s soon-to-have ability to monitor every square foot of the earth via real-time micro satellite.
But what to think when an authoritarian state – in this case Russia – feels so threatened that it must arrest people for flying paper airplanes, and engaging in a “pussy riot”?
First to define some terms. The reader probably already has an idea of what “the state” is – all of them arguably being variations on the theme of an entity exercising substantial control over its citizens, and taxing them so as to redistribute the proceeds to selected groups and get re-elected, thereby enabling politicians so-favored to continue “serving the people”.
Then there’s the paper airplane “issue”. That’s the symbol for Telegram, the world’s ninth most popular mobile messaging app, whose active user base had as of March, exceeded 200 million people. Russia’s FSB Security Service wants to access users’ encrypted messages, so as to “guard against terrorist attacks”. Telegram has refused to comply with these demands, leading to an impasse with the Russian government.
CEO Pavel Durov posted a Tweet, which said, “Threats to block Telegram unless it gives up private data of its users will not bear fruit. Telegram will stand for freedom and privacy.”
In the process, according to Reuters, Telegram is getting ready to launch what may become the world’s largest initial coin offering (ICO), which has already attracted $1.7 billion during its pre-sales offering.
Paper airplanes, plus Pussy Riot, equals problems for the state. Pussy Riot, for those not into punk rock music, is a feminist rock group based in Moscow. With such provocative song/video titles as “Police State” https://tinyurl.com/y9fxn3yg , “Putin Lights up the Fires” and “Make America Great Again”, the group was getting a bit of attention even before its current fling at creating an “air force”.
The crunch came when activists stood outside Russia’s Federal Security Service headquarters and began making/flying colored paper airplanes – the image of the iconic Telegram logo – as a show of support.
As noted at bitcoin.com, Telegram’s Founder, Pavel Durov wrote on April 22, “If you live in Russia and support free internet, fly a paper plane from your window at 7 PM local time today. Please collect the airplanes in your neighborhood an hour later – remember, today is Earth Day. My thanks to all the members of the #Digitalresistance movement. Keep up your great work setting up socks5-proxies and VPNs and spreading them among your Russian friends and relatives. They will be needed as the country …read more
Source:: david morgan
The post Why the State Can’t Stop Paper Airplanes or a Pussy Riot. appeared first on Junior Mining Analyst.
From:: Junior Mining Analyst