Tag Archives: Stasi

08Sep/22

Digital nomads have rejected the office and now want to replace the nation state. But there is a darker side to this quest for global freedom

Dave Cook, UCL

A ‘network state’ is ideologically aligned but geographically decentralised. The people are spread around the world in clusters of varying size, but their hearts are in one place.

In June 2022 Balaji Srinivasan, former chief technology officer of the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange, published an ebook entitled The Network State: How To Start a New Country. It is the latest in a flurry of utopian visions by self-styled digital visionaries, crypto believers and web 3.0 evangelists who are lining up to declare the death of the traditional concept of countries and nationhood.

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02Sep/22

Saudi snitching app turns citizens into social media police

  • Saudi government apps seen encouraging citizen spies
  • Apps needed for greater efficiency, authorities say
  • Digital vigilantism on the rise worldwide

By Nazih Osseiran

BEIRUT, Sept 2 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A Saudi app that lets ordinary people “play the role of a police officer” may have alerted authorities to the tweets of a student whose sentencing to 34 years in jail has drawn international condemnation.
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26Aug/22

The inside story of the CIA v Russia – from cold war conspiracy to ‘black’ propaganda in Ukraine

In the early 1990s, Senator Patrick Moynihan campaigned for the abolition of the CIA. The brilliant campaigner thought the US Department of State should take over its intelligence functions. For him, the age of secrecy was over.

In a New York Times opinion piece, Moynihan wrote:

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28Jul/22

Revealed: untold story of the CIA/Stasi double agent abandoned after 22 years of service

Eleni Braat, Utrecht University and Ben de Jong, Leiden University

I was naked, tied to a hard chair with handcuffs. Three or four burly fellows in uniform are standing around me, one of them behind me with a truncheon… ‘Sie sind ein Verräter! [You are a traitor!],’ they snap.

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