It’s trite to point out that the internet is an increasingly weird and difficult space to explore. AI-generated ‘slop’ muddies search results and even ends up in published scientific papers. Bots roam social media freely, making it nearly impossible to know whether interactions are organic or automated. Your voice and face can be cloned and reproduced by AI, making security breaches and fraud much more likely.

The response from tech and government is to push for heightened identity verification and so-called “proof of humanity”, with one example being Sam Altman’s WorldCoin project and its iris-scanning Orb.

It didn’t used to be like this. Signing a legal agreement running into the thousands of pages in order to buy a pair of jeans is not normal. A business demanding that you install their app on your phone so it can track your location, spending habits, and browser data is not normal. Being forced into a surveillance dragnet to prove you aren’t a bot is definitely not normal.

Is there a way that technology can protect our civil liberties instead of eroding them?

Can we re-establish privacy as a default setting in the hands of the public or are we past the point of no return?

To examine these questions and more, I spoke with Shady El Damaty, co-founder of the Holonym Foundation, whose mission is the establishment and protection of “natural digital rights for privacy, security, and data ownership”.

One of their projects, Human.Tech, is developing “human-centric technology that fosters freedom, resilience, and opportunity in a connected, borderless digital world.”

Through applied cryptography, they believe they can provide the tools for “digital personhood” in a way that gives the individual control over what data is shared, how, and when.

In 2009, Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google at the time, told CNBC that “if you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.”

In 2006, security expert Bruce Schneier wrote that “[p]rivacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.”

The tech sector has broadly been on Team Schmidt for a generation. It’s time to hear from Team Schneier before it’s too late.

You can visit human.tech to find out more about Holonym’s work.

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