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The Digital Rights Delusion

This book examines the ever-increasing impact of technology on our lives and explores a range of legal and constitutional questions that this raises.

It considers the extent to which concepts such as ‘cyberspace’ and ‘digital rights’ advance or undermine our understanding of this development and proposes a number of novel approaches to the effective protection of our rights in this rapidly evolving environment.

Finally, it shows how the abuse of the adjective digital has demoted legal rights into subjective and individual claims.

The work will be of particular interest to scholars of privacy, artificial intelligence and free speech, as well as policymakers and the general reader.

Available on Routledge Website, Amazon.com and all other major online bookstores.

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Allegations against Pavel Durov call into question Big Tech’s stay in Europe

The publication of a press release by the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office on the arrest of Pavel Durov allowsus to delve a little more (but not too much) into the context of the affair because it contains the list of charges brought against the founder of Telegram.
To summarise, the legal bases for Pavel Durov’s arrest are the offences set out in the LOI n° 2023-22 du 24 janvier 2023 d’orientation et de programmation du ministère de l’intérieur, which inserts Article 323- 3-2 and an additional paragraph (the twelfth) to Article 706-73-1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and by the Loi n° 2004-575 du 21 juin 2004 pour la confiance dans l’économie numérique that subjects the use of cryptography for uses other than authentication and integrity checks to ministerial authorisation (in practice if it serves to prove one’s identity in an e-commerce service, encryption is freely usable, if it serves to encrypt information it must be authorised by the government) by Andrea Monti – Initially published in Italian by Strategikon – Italian Tech La Repubblica Continue reading “Allegations against Pavel Durov call into question Big Tech’s stay in Europe”

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What Pavel Durov’s arrest means for social media and smart device manufacturers

A Reuters press release informs of the arrest in France of Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram, with dual Russian and French citizenship. According to TF1, the reason for the arrest is the lack of content moderation, the failure to cooperate with law enforcement and the type of ‘tools’ -such as cryptocurrencies and disposable phone numbers- freely available on the platform. The French investigators considered that in doing so, Durov did not merely ‘fail to control’ but was a real accomplice in the commission of the crimes. Since we do not have access to the case file of this affair, and therefore do not know whether there are indications of Durov’s involvement in specific acts, it is not possible to say more on the merits. However, this case does allow for some more general reflections on the subject of Big Tech’s liability for the way it designs devices and services that control our existence. by Andrea Monti – Initially published in Italian by Strategikon – Italian Tech La Repubblica

Continue reading “What Pavel Durov’s arrest means for social media and smart device manufacturers”

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Apple’s sense of Privacy

Big Tech has always – like any other industry – promoted institutional contacts at various levels to represent its demands to legislators and intervene on measures that endanger its interests. ‘Institutional relations’ consultants – lobbyists, in other words – spend their time gathering information on what is happening in the precints of power and, on the other hand, make available documents, technical analyses and statistical data that decision-makers often do not have the means or the opportunity to obtain, or support public events organised by institutional actors as a form of ‘civil engagement’ and ‘social responsibility’. For some time now, however, the activity of influencing political choices has also begun to extend to interaction with civil society – activists and associations for the defence of ‘digital rights’ – and then, finally, directly to the people, or rather, to people’s perception of the concept of rights by Andrea Monti –  Initally published in Italian by Strategikon – Italian Tech La Repubblica Continue reading “Apple’s sense of Privacy”

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How Big Tech has exploited our craving for reality escape

In a world now enjoyed artificially through screens of various shapes and sizes, Big Tech has masterfully exploited some of the deepest and most disturbing aspects of human frailty. Behind the promise of new forms of interaction or entertainment, they capitalise on a state of deep unease: the inability to cope with our limitations and the isolation that often accompanies modern life by Andrea Monti – Initially published in Italian by La Repubblica – Italian Tech

What is particularly worrying is how these companies pursue this goal, encouraging an escape from reality and blurring the line between having desires and insisting that these desires be fulfilled as a right.

The rise of digital platforms has coincided with, and perhaps exacerbated, a widespread sense of loneliness that is channeled into the search for ‘new worlds’ where one can start over or, more modestly, live a ‘separate reality’. Although these platforms claim to bring people together, they often do the opposite, fostering a culture in which superficial interactions replace meaningful relationships. The tools provided by social platforms, photo filters, but also communication ‘styles’ based on empty self-praise, envy or presenting oneself as what one is not, encourage users to construct idealised or even non-existent versions of themselves, offering others a completely altered perception.

This more or less artificial online presence may attract likes and comments, but it rarely leads to a human connection of any solidity. On the contrary, it increases the sense of empty loneliness: it shows people the irrelevance of their existence and can have very unpleasant consequences when, precisely because of this fake image, one is called into a confrontation not mediated by a keyboard and a monitor.

Big Tech has not only recognised the importance of this loneliness, but has turned it into an industrial model, the “capitalism of loneliness”, a concept I dealth with in The Digital Rights Delusion. They offer platforms that promote artificial values (not only the ubiquitous ‘likes’, but also the useless ‘badges’ or other patches that can be added to one’s profile), where people can seek recognition and connections.

However, these platforms are designed in such a way that, like slot machines, users practically always lose, only to return for more, in constant search of what they will rarely find: to be ‘certified’ as existing in life by the fact that someone notices them. And when this does not happen, or when they discover that the ‘nod of approval’ they thought they had is meaningless, they do not resign themselves to the fact that for the most part they will pass through this earth without anyone noticing. But instead of striving to better themselves and create socially healthy interactions, they rely on the algorithms that drive these platforms, which are instead designed to keep users engaged in chasing illusions, creating a vicious cycle in which the more isolated people feel, the more they turn to digital interactions for solace, and the more disconnected they become from reality.

This condition is exacerbated by another worrying trend: the erosion of the boundary between desire and entitlement.

Traditionally, desires have been seen as aspirations that cannot always be fulfilled. The denial or impossibility of doing what we want or would like is part of the human experience and something we learn to cope with, making a pact between ourselves and reality. In the context of Big Tech, however, these desires are increasingly presented to users as demands that must be met immediately and completely.

This shift is evident in the way social interaction platforms operate.

The guiding idea is that each of our desires must be immediately accessible and achievable. Whether it is the desire for attention, the need to feel powerful, or the urge to escape life’s challenges, these platforms are designed to satisfy these urges without delay. All you have to pay for it is money – or, more often, personal data and time spent in front of a screen, thanks, once again, to the promise of ‘superpowers’ and ‘magic’.

It is no coincidence that the marketing of gadgets that revolve around this dystopian system misuses these very concepts in order to transfer the desire to escape reality to non-technological interactions, as demonstrated by the increasing number of cases of ‘recreational surgery’ that, without any medical reason, transforms the appearance of people into that of demonic or animal-like beings, or those that implant chips and sensors of various kinds in the human body.

However, this instant gratification comes at a price. By removing the natural barriers that exist between desires and their fulfilment – or rather, the right to their fulfilment – Big Tech promotes a distorted perception of what is a right. Users begin to expect that their wants and needs will always be met, and become frustrated when reality does not conform to their dictates. This applies not only to rights, but also to other areas of life, affecting the way individuals perceive their relationships, their careers and even their identity.

The result is a society in which people are not only more isolated but also more dissatisfied, constantly searching for something that seems out of reach, driven by platforms that promise the moon at the bottom of the well but rarely allow you to reach it, while the person who has dived headlong can only drown in the murky, muddy waters that have taken the place of the bright satellite reflected on the surface.

This dynamic also affects the way individuals relate to others. The constant reinforcement of entitlement can undermine the ability to be patient, empathetic and able to cope with difficulties, which are essential qualities for civilised living. When desires are treated as rights, the approach shifts from mutual understanding and the ability to mediate to the desire to realise one’s individual claim at all costs, regardless of the rest.

In a wider social context, the emphasis on instant gratification and the removal of boundaries creates a culture in which self-centredness becomes the norm, leading to a decline in social cohesion and an increase in conflict. The emphasis on personal desires, unchecked by the objective constraints of reality, can undermine the foundations of community and cooperation that are essential for an acceptable functioning society.

The role of Big Tech in this cultural shift is obvious. They have created and continue to promote systems that exploit and contradict human loneliness and the natural desire for relationships, while encouraging the desire to overwhelm others and escape reality.
In doing so, they not only profit from the widespread sense of isolation and discontent, but also help to perpetuate it, with little concern for what they are doing to the lives of each and every one of us.

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Imane Khelif should be a scandal, but for an entirely different reason

The case of Imane Khelif, the Algerian boxer who is the subject of heated controversy at the Paris 2024 Olympics because as a ‘trans’ woman she cannot fight a woman should, yes, make a scandal, but not for the reasons that many are arguing by Andrea Monti – Initially published in Italian by Italian Tech – La Repubblica.

Imane Khelif’s case should be a scandal because, in the name of ‘fair play’, a woman —because Khelif is a woman—  is forced to undergo medical treatment to ‘get back to normal’ and not ‘kill the competition’.

Khelif, in fact, is hyperandrogynous, i.e. able to produce more testosterone than the female body can normally do. This has an effect on physical morphology and athletic ability that allows ‘off-the-charts’ performance, but in any case entirely natural because it is the result of a condition not altered by exogenous substances.

We are not talking about doping because it should be remembered, in fact, that the rules on sports doping punish the taking of substances or the use of methods that alter sports performance, but nowhere do they provide for the opposite, i.e. that an athlete who is too strong should be penalised because, precisely, he or she generates a ‘disturbance in strength’.

In other words, the world of sport makes this reasoning: if nature gives you an exceptional genetic trait, this is not good because if you are too strong, you always win, and so you alter the ‘level playing field’ but — it springs to mind in more pragmatic terms — you also devalue the spectacularity of the competition, that is, its economic and advertising value.

So, it is as if a basketball player who is too tall to be ‘stopped’ were asked to saw off his legs, or a sprinter who is too fast to run with ballasts, or, as in the case of Caster Semenya in 2009 and Dutee Chand in 2014 (South African and Indian respectively), to accept a reverse doping in order to reduce their performance precisely because they are hyperandrogynous.

Caster Semenya’s case deserves special attention because instead of being subjected to the diktats of the world athletics federation, the sprinter decided to contest them, arriving, but at the end of her career, as far as the European Court of Human Rights, which, with a ruling issued only in 2023, thus after thirteen years of legal battles, decided not to decide, missing the opportunity to issue a historic verdict for the right to personal identity and gender.

First of all, the court, as the English would say, mixed orange and apples.

Semenya’s case did not concern transgender athletes, whose participation in competitions with athletes belonging to the ‘target’ sex poses different problems than those under discussion. This altered the basis of the decision, which should, instead, have been exclusively about one point: is it permissible that, in the name of ‘normality’, a human being should be forced -constrained- to take drugs that alter their physiological ‘functioning’ in order to compete in a sporting event? Or, if one wants to pose the question from the perspective of a sports federation, is it permissible for a sports federation to force an athlete to perform interventions on his own body that not even a (democratic) state system would have the power to do? 

In the (Italian) legal system, chemical castration (because that is what it is) as a penalty for committing sexual offences has never gone beyond the level of a political stance. And what would we say if Parliament were to pass a law stating that those who are too intelligent must be chemically made stupid?

The answers to these questions are obvious enough, but in the world of sport, pharmacologically intervening on the body and mind of athletes is an accepted practice, indeed an accepted rule.

To understand the violence of this position, one only has to read what the Swiss Supreme Court and the Court of Arbitration for Sport wrote in the documents brought to the attention of the European Court of Human Rights: ‘CAS and the Federal Supreme Court had concluded that her characteristics were “not sufficiently female” for the purposes of the sports classification’ and that undergoing ‘depotentiating’ hormone therapy has side effects that, by their very nature ‘were no different from those experienced by the thousands, if not millions of other women with XX chromosomes who took oral contraceptives’ (and therefore ‘normal’? , n.d.a.)

Who does not cringe at these words?

Be that as it may, the elephantine judgment of the European Court (58,365 words, almost a book) has given birth to a mouse: the procedural rules of sporting justice do not guarantee an effective procedural possibility to defend oneself (paragraph 200) and therefore there is no need to examine the most important question, that of the admissibility of a sporting rule that forces one, on pain of exclusion, to suffer a violation of one’s psychophysical integrity (paragraph 203).

In other words, with a masterpiece of balancing act: the Court decided not to decide whether sporting rules imposing compulsory medical treatment as a condition for competing are correct or not because it is a matter for ‘ordinary’ justice, which, however, did not guarantee an effective right of defence.

Moreover, paragraphs 215 and 216 of the judgment state that it is not humiliating enough to merit legal protection to give up one’s career in order not to undergo ‘treatment’.

The human story of Kehlif and, before her, of Chand, Semenya and the female athletes who are in a condition, according to sporting rules, of ‘non-normality’ is obviously very complex and concerns the crucial issue of the relationship between biological, personal and legal identity. A topic that certainly does not end with the issues of sporting rules, but which, once again, forces us to reflect on the extent to which anyone’s body, regardless of gender and identity, can still be considered an inviolable barrier by states and, all the more so, by private bodies whose primary purpose is profit.