[[Concepts]] | [[Information Security|InfoSec]] # The O'Brien Problem ## What is it? Given an environment of a totalitarian government that largely controls the flow of information, there is an inexorable problem facing the would-be dissident; one I call "The O'Brien Problem", named after the character in [[George Orwell|George Orwell's]] book, [[1984]]. To gain the critical mass required to affect change, any revolutionary force would first need to gather like-minded individuals such that they could influence the authoritarian government in question. However, as this threatens the power and stability of said government, the government is incentivized to prevent or destroy any such efforts. For the sake of brevity, and as a callback to 1984, I will refer to the fictitious authoritarian regime as "The Party" and their anti-dissident forces as "Thought Police". First, the party would need to establish dominance and control over the flow of information, such that they can outlaw any dissident communication and begin the process of jailing, re-educating, or simply executing any dissident populace to prevent the possibility of it hitting critical mass. Second, the party would want to establish fake revolutionary cells seeded with thought police, so that they could prevent the formation of an effective underground movement outside of typical communication channels (e.g. a [[SneakerNet]]). As a dissident would have no ability to distinguish between genuine revolutionaries and the thought police, they could not safely organize without at some point encountering thought police and getting purged. This second layer of defense against dissidents is what I specifically am referring to when I say "The O'Brien Problem". However, it would not be possible without first establishing the layer of control over behavior and communications. ## Relevance to real-world politics - Attempts to censor or reduce the protections granted by the 1st amendment in the US - European efforts to ban E2EE - Chinese social credit system, great firewall, and re-education camps - Russian banning of dissident protests and communications - World-wide crackdowns on VPN traffic and other encryption techniques for bypassing government restrictions - Real life example of the problem in action: [ICE infiltrating an activist group and using it to hunt down members of said group](https://www.wired.com/story/ice-is-running-one-of-the-largest-anti-left-surveillance-operations-in-us-history/#:~:text=After%20a,vehicles)