When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the relationships which connected them to another, and to assume the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and the Laws of Man entitle them, specifically in the Laws of Technological Progression (Scientific Advancement) outlined by authors such as Scott Christiansen and Thomas Samuel Kuhn (only two in a growing body of research), a decent respect to the livelihood of all mankind requires that they declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
A Declaration of Independence 3.0
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Reason, Property, and the continuous pursuit to Live as equals among their peers.—That to secure these rights, Systems are instituted among Mankind, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any System or Organization becomes destructive of these ends, it is Man's Right to alter or to opt-out, and to institute new Systems, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its set of behaviors which define their Character in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to protect their Rights and their pursuit to Live.
Different from the environmental conditions of this document’s predecessor, there exists no clear enemy as a single point of failure. Routing a people’s mind to a single enemy is an ideal form of persuasion that can rally people’s attentions like little else; but such thing does not truly exist in these times. Thus, the call to action is not a direct attack against any single person or group of people, but one of a greater coordinated effort to upgrade the technologies which shape the Systems to which we belong.
It could be said that a long string of decisions, decided in a democratic manner, have taken us down a path which we wish we could undo, transform, or fork. And whether it has been the nature of the policies brought forward to voters, or the general idea that the majority gets its say, or that new knowledge takes a long time to be understood and propagated to a majority, we face the fact that whatever the steps have been which have taken us to this point, there is great discontent in where we have arrived, and we, as a people, have the tools, the power, and the ability to forgive the past, delete what has brought us here, and forge ahead in a new direction on terms upon which we can agree.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Systems long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But (i) when the Old Systems aptly fit fewer, and fewer people, inadvertently, or even directly, demonstrating a long train of abuses and usurpations upon a growing number of people, who pursue invariably the same Object, and the design, even if unintended, reduces them to a resigned people with no feeling of agency, and (ii) when new technologies exist that prove to be a reliable alternative, and are cheap and ready to be adopted, and, upon being seen and learned by any person, cast a new moral light upon prior choices and behaviors, giving polarity to a once bad, ambivalent, or inactive moral compass, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Systems, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of the individual; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems.
The history of the present technological Systems, which includes Government (a technology whose ethics are expressed both physically and digitally through Governance) is a history of (i) unprincipled policy-making, reacting to the momentary beliefs derived from the volatile problems each day brings, effectively widening the gap between the path one sees beneath their feet each day and the path they wish to walk, imagined from their long term values, (ii) the deterioration of a belief in any levers or mechanisms within the System in which one can takes action to affect an outcome, (iii) repeated denial of, or recognition of a new class of information to include within a person’s property rights, rightfully allowed by and born in the hands of the corporations and Government, but is time to pass on as an integral property of the individual, and (iv) a common, even expected, invasive practice with complete and utter disregard for a person’s privacy— which has been violated so much that memes have been formed, SNL skits have been made, and the default assumption is that one’s information, anytime there is a digital interaction, is shared somewhere and seen by someone.
To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
Personal Technologies:
- Personal devices installed in people’s homes and in their pockets constantly listen to their owner’s conversations.
- Companies sell personal data to other companies.
- The digital things people own are subject to the laws of the platform on which they are owned, displaying that the meaning of ownership has changed from one definition, “something one has a right to and no one can take away”, to, “something one can purchase, but can be taken or withheld from them at any point for any reason.”
Governance:
- New paper money is minted and spent freely with no respect for paying it back, or it being tied to any real system of value. (Accounting is as true as gravity, and misspending or denial of value will only bite everyone using its currency in the end.)
- A bottlenecked Government process makes engaging in democracy too slow, and passed laws are carried out in symbolic representations rather than concrete representations from levels local to federal.
Structural:
- Our Systems are built on the backs of geniuses who created such Systems, and inserted them into a society who relies on significant education to be able to maintain them, and does not have the education.
- A poor Education system, with an incentivized structure by the Government to become even worse, puts their certificate of approval on people’s abilities, qualifying them to do things they are unqualified to do.
- Poor Regulatory Compliance creates a false senses of security to where even if a company is 100% compliant with SOC2, or NIST-800-171, or CIS <insert-OS-here> regulations, while they're safe against "known exploits" from script kiddies, they are not safe from people who know how to exploit tech today.
Annual number of data compromises and individuals impacted in the United States from 2005 to 2023
Large Cybersecurity Attacks Against the Institutions We Trust:
Equifax Data Breach (2017)
WannaCry Ransomware Attack (2017)
NotPetya Cyberattack (2017)
SolarWinds Supply Chain Attack (2020)
Colonial Pipeline Ransomware Attack (2021)
JBS Foods Cyberattack (2021)
Cerner Corporation Cybersecurity Incident (2021)
Rackspace Ransomware Attack (2022)
Cisco Cyber Attack (2022)
NATO Data Breach (2022)
US Airport Websites Hacked (2022)
Twitter Data Breach (2022)
Microsoft Data Breach (2022)
Samsung Data Breach (2022)
ION Derivatives Supply Chain Attack 2023)
MoveIT Software Data Breaches (2023)
LockBit Ransomware Attack Against ICBC (2023)
LockBit Ransomware Attack Against Boeing (2023)
Caesars and MGM Casinos “Scattered Spider” Ransomware Attacks (2023)
Marina Bay Sands Data Breach (2023)
DDoS Attack Against Google (2023)
UnitedHealth Group Cyber Attack (2024)