Grigory Yavlinsky’s web-site, 6.04.2020

We could observe the first results of the introduction of electronic passes in Moscow in [overcrowded] metro yesterday [due to the authorities total check of all the passengers for their passes]. To allow such a crowd in the subway at the midst of the epidemic and quarantine means to demonstrate a complete inability of governing in emergency conditions, in a situation of force majeure.

This is one more evidence that negative selection of personnel is operating in the Putin system. This is called kakocracy, that is, the rule by the worst. People occupy posts not because of competition and professional qualities, not through social elevators, but solely due to loyalty to the regime and its bosses, dedication and … dullness. Because such staff are the safest for authoritarian authorities. The same applies to the governor’s corps and the government. When difficult times come, when an emergency occurs, these people who were appointed not by their business criteria are incapable of non-standard decisions and responsible actions. Attempts by such leaders to use modern technologies, as we saw in the Moscow metro on 15 April, end in counterproductive nonsense.

It is true that digital technologies are inevitable in the 21st century. But these technologies become an effective tool and even a weapon against freedom and human dignity in the hands of an non-transparent, irremovable, corporate-mafia government. It is not surprising that, on 14 April, under cover of coronavirus, the State Duma passed a bill to conduct an experiment in Moscow on introduction of “artificial intelligence technologies”. According to the new law, it will now be possible to conduct photo- and video surveillance of Muscovites with the help of such technologies, as well as conduct online voting in elections through a public services portal completely controlled by the authorities.

In general, in a country where there is no transparency of financial flows, almost no politically influential free press, no independent courts, no real parliament, no political competition and fair elections, digital technologies in the service of the state will be directed primarily against its citizens, at total control over them and their suppression.

And the matter is not at all in coronavirus. It will pass sooner or later. But digital control, artificial intelligence, and other fundamentally new information technologies will increasingly penetrate into our lives. This is the natural development of the humanity, we will all have to live with this. But if these modern tools fall into the hands of an uncontrolled authoritarian-mafia or totalitarian regime, then digital technologies in the form of regular electronic passes will turn into digital slavery for all citizens of the country under the pretext of “necessary security measures”, “experiments” or without any pretext at all.

Recent events in Russia – the actual demolition of the Constitution, the transfer of responsibility for combating the epidemic to the regions, the questionable attempts to use artificial intelligence to control citizens – demonstrate in the most obvious way that the task of creating an honest, transparent, legitimate government in our country, the task of building a state based on the rule of law, which could be trusted and which would serve people, is becoming increasingly relevant and urgent. Only citizens themselves, united into a political force, can accomplish this task.

Source

Grigory Yavlinsky

is Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the YABLOKO Party, Vice-President of Liberal International, Doctor of Economics, Professor of the National Research University “Higher School of Economics”.