These sound like common blacklist-style defenses. As examples, mail services use RBLs to prevent spam, Cloudflare services often require captchas from Tor exit node IP addresses, many websites decline signups from throwaway email addresses like Mailinator. Credit card companies use various indicators to prevent fraud.
I'm not saying these measures are perfect or fair, but they are not related to government (though government may also use them); they are just obvious ways to prevent unwanted activity such as spam, fraud, hacking attacks, etc.
> Their AI determined that people using particular email providers need to be watched
How do you know that government has concluded 'particular providers need to be watched', and that the decision was performed by an AI?
> for using a privacy focused email address when signing up for services operated by a government entity
The type of monitoring used was disclosed as was the "likely cause" of me being flagged. This wasn't a secretive kind of thing. Of course one can't "know" anything as it's a black-box. But it's not a stretch to see how such systems may conclude, from automated profiling, that users of privacy-centric services are more likely to be associated with fraud and hence flagged. This also represents a more general issue with the application of machine learning.
You're basically saying that you've been caught up in some surveillance dragnet/watch list, and that you have no proof but think it is for for using ProtonMail on a government website.
When your payment was declined, the company 1) had access to this watch list that you're on, 2) was able to share with you that you were on a watch list, and 3) you were able to figure out why this is. This sounds very unbelievable to me. The data that comes from programs like this isn't generally being passed around to businesses, and if it is, the support folks are not going to be in the know.
It still sounds more like you're being hit by algorithmic blacklisting than that you're on some secret not-secret blacklist. That, or you got added to a public sector blacklist, by some security company because you use ProtonMail which has issues with abuse by fraudsters.
No, you've misconstrued what I've said. I am not implying that the payment being declined by a merchant is anything related to the government. Nor am I implying that the government shared my information with any company. Nor I am on any kind of blacklist (at least that I'm aware of). Read my original post, they are two separate issues.
> The type of monitoring used was disclosed as was the "likely cause" of me being flagged
You're correct, I misremembered how you wrote that. Unfortunately, that makes it even less believable. How did you find out that you were being monitored, and why was that disclosed to you? Who disclosed this monitoring to you? Did you run some sort of FOIA request (whatever your nation's version is)? You're making a very big claim with very little to substantiate. Keep in mind ProtonMail has over 50 million users, It beggars belief that using PM is sufficient to get yourself monitored in any serious capacity.
all this nonsense would go away if we had some sort of universal identification system on the internet.
people act like anonymity is some kind of right, but it really wasn't in the past. You needed to prove who you are to get a loan, drivers license, etc.
Anonymity is the default, we don’t walk around with our names and all our interests and thoughts attached to a label to be read by anyone. If anything, internet made it go away. Eg. even if you knew a person’s name you wouldn’t be able to look up other information about them before, now you can. Previously, you’d be able to go to a store and buy a thing without giving any information, now you have to give the “email” that collects most information about you. Your examples of loan, licence etc are not like 99% of interactions, and those can be handled as special cases like before.
> Previously, you’d be able to go to a store and buy a thing without giving any information
We can still do that, it's called paying with cash. Paper money is the people's money.
> Your examples of loan, licence etc are not like 99% of interactions, and those can be handled as special cases like before
With regards to loans, it is possible for state governments to establish regional public land loan offices to issue equity loans in reference to the production and replacement cost of existent tangible personal property fixed or held on site without monitoring all of the purchases of movable personal property by the borrower to determine credit-worthiness. The borrower just has to prove there is some tangible artifact of personal property which exists, which the loan office can auction if the debt goes bad or write off if the artifact is destroyed.
We just have to mandate the loan offices don't do something stupid, like issue loans against the excess value of real estate attributable land scarcity and resell mortgages to private investors which will resell derivatives, to avoid generating a real estate bubble and the accumulation of $100+ trillion in derivatives. Additionally we'd probably need to replace many regressive taxes with distributive land taxes to ensure that households and cooperatives had cheaper access to land in order to obtain a deed or long term lease granting the security for spatially fixed personal property necessary to qualify for such loans.
I don't know where you live, but at least in North America the requirements for a loan are laughably low. I once was interested in getting a vehicle loan on a new vehicle purchase. I gave the financial guy all my information and he showed me the terms. I agreed to them and bought the vehicle.
I have no idea how, but he issued me a loan on that vehicle using incorrect information for basically everything except my address. Name, birthday, etc. did not match. Somehow the system had a completely different set of records. When I called the lender about it, they didn't even seem surprised. Just took a phone call to get everything corrected and a new set of paperwork mailed out to me.
I imagine few people doubt the practicality of trust in a transaction or application as you mention.
But we should be able to sit in a cafe and discuss our plans for cultural subversion and last night's sports event without the *till* shopping us out to the thought police.
Just make it zero-knowledge. You use the ID server to prove that you're not a sock puppet of someone already registered, but that's all the site needs to know.
I'm not saying these measures are perfect or fair, but they are not related to government (though government may also use them); they are just obvious ways to prevent unwanted activity such as spam, fraud, hacking attacks, etc.
> Their AI determined that people using particular email providers need to be watched
How do you know that government has concluded 'particular providers need to be watched', and that the decision was performed by an AI?
> for using a privacy focused email address when signing up for services operated by a government entity
How do you know the cause?