My mother has worked at UNESCO for all her active life, so like all the UN staff, her retirement pension is managed by the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund (UNJSPF).

She's a very smart, but by and large Not Online woman. She does not spend her time obsessing over the latest political or societal catastrophes as we do here; she enjoys music and poetry, plays the piano, and visits Italian museums instead. (Yeah, she's way smarter than I am.)

Today, she sends me this article: https://www.unjspf.org/newsroom/unjspf-showcases-blockchain-based-digital-identity-solution-at-government-blockchain-association-executive-roundtable-on-capitol-hill/ and says: "what typically nonsensical babble 🙄"

Except, folks, it's not nonsensical babble. I understood every sentence in the article, and if you read it, chances are you will too. And it chilled me to the bone.

The article is a best-of all the harmful bullshit of the past decade. I broke it down for her:

• Blockchain: last decade's buzzword, useless in this context: scam
• Digital identity solution: data gathering, surveillance technology
• Prevent fraud, waste and abuse: Trumpspeak meaning cutting public services and embezzling public money
• Biometrics, geolocation: surveillance and disenfranchisement technology
• Artificial intelligence: the current speculative bubble, which will probably crash soon, taking down a huge chunk of the economy with it, and that would be the good outcome
• Deepfake detection: Orwellian speak, AI is used for deepfake creation, and said "detection" is disenfranchisement technology
• "Ensuring the authenticity of our beneficiaries": disenfranchisement technology
• Kiosk mode: disenfranchisement
• Post quantum: valid in certain specific contexts, this one is not that, here it's just a buzzword: scam
• Trustworthy digital ecosystem: trustworthy for whom? Certainly not the users.

I concluded by saying that after reading the article, I was seriously worried for the future of her pension, and if there was the slightest possibility for her to move away from the UNJSPF, she should jump on it. She believed me (told you, she's smart) but answered that there was no way to move, she's stuck with them.

And she's not alone. All the retired UN staff is in the same boat. I don't know what they can do. I don't know what I can do.