It is hard to disagree that every person has broken state laws in their life, and often multiple times. Smoking in unauthorized areas, traffic violations, conducting business without a license or with other violations, selling personal belongings without declaring them to the tax authorities, and even simple verbal statements that the state deems illegal—these and other similar acts have been committed by many people. Moreover, some actions that do not imply a violation of the law at the time they are committed may, after some time, be interpreted as an offense—retroactively and without a statute of limitations, applying the highly controversial yet widespread practice of qualifying actions undesirable to the authorities as a “continuing offense.” For example, an administrative case was recently brought against a Russian woman for “LGBT propaganda,” triggered by a video recorded and published on VK back in 2010, where a friend kissed her on the lips for her birthday.
And it would be one thing if such violations were typically accidental, minor, and did not imply harm to people, meaning it would be unlikely that government authorities would even notice them. But modern and especially promising technologies will allow them to track any human activity. U.S. intelligence is already developing AI that will collect and analyze data about citizens and means of transport from surveillance cameras, drones, and even from webcams and smartphone cameras. In France, police have been allowed to remotely connect to the cameras and microphones of citizens’ smartphones. Roskomnadzor in Russia is actively testing AI to block websites and analyze materials published on social networks. As for China, there is nothing to say—total surveillance has long since become a commonplace there. And in Iran, AI is even used for religious repression—AI cameras recognize women who do not wear a hijab.
Of course, if a stationary bandit attempts to punish everyone for even the smallest violations, they will quickly become overloaded, and serious discontent may arise among the people. However, there is little sense in picking on everyone. The problem lies more in the fact that individual people can become victims of intentional harassment, both by the state as a whole and even by individual employees of government agencies. For example, someone might run a business that competes with the business of a civil servant’s friends or relatives, or the official might want to “provide protection” for someone’s business, or perhaps some girl rejected them in a relationship, or they have a conflict with a neighbor over a parking space—in such situations, a civil servant can easily ruin the life of a person who has displeased them simply by using information from surveillance systems. As we have already said, one can find at least minor violations for any person, and at the very least, they can be buried under fines.
A serious problem also lies in the fact that in such a scenario, the civil servant themselves will not technically be breaking the law. It is often argued that one can simply complain about any civil servant to higher authorities. But while such an argument might still be considered in cases of direct threats, abuse of power, or other similar actions, it becomes completely meaningless in the case of harassment following the scheme described above. Complaints against the systemic harassment of opposition members or other people undesirable to the state will also be rendered useless—by resorting to such a scheme, a stationary bandit can harass a person using perfectly legal methods.
As we can see, the power of the state in the age of high technology poses an enormous threat to the lives and well-being of people. Any person who becomes inconvenient to the stationary bandit or even just to his individual officials can be hounded in such a way that no laws are broken by the hunters—the person being hunted will be declared a malicious lawbreaker. Therefore, the “monopoly on violence” can no longer be called a system that works for the benefit of mankind.
