When you hear of secret deportation flights, plain clothes agents, masked enforcers, cyber investigations and attempts by government to breach the the firewalls of citizen privacy in Social Security, IRS, and Human Services, than the current secretive enforcement campaign can be counted on to become a secret police.  This is the cyber age of being routinely tracked by someone if you own a computer or phone. You may have noticed your car already knows where you are going when you turn it on. Already we have seen innocent people suddenly disappear for short as well as long periods. We really have no idea how many people or their status at the time of arrest, are being arrested and covertly shipped out of country.  If we get used to this, the game is over.

Add in AI and every citizen in the country is vulnerable if you do any online shopping, use credit cards for banking, planning, taxes, or even something as benign as posting your concerns on the internet. Obeying the law is no longer the bar for citizen safety. You may  now, or at least soon, have to agree with national policy or be silent to stay off the evermore exacting radar of noncompliance. The law itself which held your protections in force has been partially benched at the level of the executive and supreme court. As and if unregulated AI technology is successfully combined with the dismantling of critical privacy protections it will become possible for you to be cyber-erased from official existence without due process or even howdy do. When I say “concerns on the internet’ I am not just talking about trash talk and violent threats but rather expressing a resistive mind set. AI has great potential for good, but we can never forget, intelligence gathering computational  tools have been in use to identify ‘undesirables’ since Nazi Germany punch cards.  Technology loves centralized power because it standardizes uncontrollable and undesirable diversity.  Unlike the human being, AI technology is binary down to nano universe, but binary never-the-less, micro or macro.  The power needed to create AI products is already an environmental concern which tells you how difficult it is to emulate a single human brain.  AI is not discernment, morality, kindness or contemplation even though AI can talk your ear off about those topics until the cows come home. Ethics, morality and kindness are limited to the realm and responsibility of humanity. The question in this posting is when does extra legal enforcement become the feared secret police of all autocratic realms.  If the answer isn’t ‘right now’, then our nation: is on track for ‘very soon’. 

A modest proposal for good.

Your ‘sense of good’ may become a liability in this era. This is not the time to comply with the caprice of extra-legal behavior from some of those responsible for your government. In a democracy however, good is also being cautious with the rule of law.  Breaking a law is punishable even in the good times of a functioning democracy. Operating outside the rule of law and due process however is, in itself, breaking the law, so yes we are now strangers in a strange land. Our quandary is our sense of good, even though it may include complying with the law as we understand it, may become an attribute of personal danger.  Good for this Project is holding yourself to a new challenging level of integrity in the matter of deciding what to do.  This isn’t a monopoly game.  The Good Decision was designed for moments like this time when your integrity and sense of democracy in an era of secretive police is on the line. Good is cautious, thoughtful, courageous discipline to the principles of democracy and deciding from your gut, heart and mind with integrity in that sequence leaving none of the three levels of decision out. Peace and safety to you,