By Sophia Siedlberg.© 24 March 2009
Hopefully if things are running according to the adaptive plan, Dr Olaf Hiort of "Euro DSD" will have read something of my commentary so far and has chosen to ignore it. What he is probably expecting is for me to start some sort of Andrea James style investigation where I find out various things and document them meticulously on this site. The thing with this is that it does not work when done twice, Andrea James and Lynn Conway did an excellent job in exposing the activities of some less than ethical doctors, but other doctors are of course wise to the same approach being used twice.
The very fact that I am saying this openly will probably give a few people at Euro DSD reason to think that I have somehow forewarned them of what I am up to. I suppose it depends on how you look at this. In this section of the "Euro Dissed" archive, I am simply keeping a diary or blog of what I am doing, in the spirit of open debate. But I suspect that as I work through all this, Dr Hiort will try to intervene because his interest in "Data protection" will fail him a little.
He may even take certain proactive measures to stop me from publishing this little journal, but for me such measures will be useful indicators of what he is doing rather than what he thinks he can do. At the same time I have little doubt as time progresses he will have some of his shit hot experts going through this journal and probably digging where they should not, in order to gain some sort of advantage. And he may if he is really lucky, get to know what he wants, only to find that ultimately it serves me better to allow that.
Perhaps I can start with Dr Hiort's rather odd ego by pointing out a few things he may not want the world to know and has never committed to writing. Euro DSD does sound an awful lot like "Euro Disney" and the logo he uses does bear a striking resemblance to the "Delos Corporation" logo in Michael Crichton’s Westworld, which happens to be a movie he directed about a theme park. Only instead of this theme park being populated by people paid to play various roles, the fictional Westworld was populated by robots in one of three "zones", these being "West World" (of course), Medieval World and Roman world. I rather gain the impression that Dr Hiort has a bit of an interest in theme parks, or should I say, in a sort of "Sandbox society".
I know what you may be thinking. What has science fiction and theme parks got to do with a doctor of medicine setting up a database of intersex health and patient management? Well nothing except for his odd ego and the bit about a "Sandbox Society". Every human being has this habit of representing their ideas by referring them to something they aspire to. You may be thinking that I am indulging in a bit of amateur forensic psychology? Well if that is exactly what you are thinking, you are correct in that this is what I want you to think.
The name and logo are perhaps a little more obvious when you see it in a completely different light. The logo is a sort of threefold yin-yang which I have myself used before now, being intersexed, so it was not peculiar to the Westworld movie, but the recurring theme in Hiort's mission statements, imagery, ideas and his means of going about it are peculiar to the notion of a sandbox society.
And this is what all this truly reveals: the guy is a control freak. For example, most of his data gathering has been "Opt out" rather than "Opt in", his colleagues have often been criticized for sounding a little dictatorial during consultations about the data gathering process. And yes the idea of a "DSD register" does suggest something more disturbing than a simple medical database. Such methods and data collection are synonymous with a sandbox society.
What I hear you ask is, “What is a Sandbox Society?” Well, it would be like a park or village where people are told to keep off the grass and are that they are there to serve the interest of others who are more privileged. Gated communities are perhaps the best present day example of this idea, as are ghettoes. But we don't have to be talking about physical communities with physical walls to be talking about the sort of thing Hiort is talking about. What we are talking about is a social order where someone's place in it is determined so tightly the barriers are more mental than physical. Systems of apartheid are a good analogy; certain people are controlled by where they can go and what they can do.
The symbolism Hiort uses has the strange effect of describing just what those boundaries are. The DSD crowd are often unambiguous about how they regard "Gender variant" people (their term not mine). It is clearly about "Gender variant people" being either excluded from society or used in roles such as prostitution. Perhaps "Euro DSD" and the logo are Freudian slips hinting at themed prostitution being dressed up as something more respectable. Perhaps the very invasive level of proposed surveillance and the coercive approach to controlling people indicate something like that. Either way, Dr. Hiort is doing himself no favors by playing a sort of medical "Big Brother", and especially when a lot of his public image can be construed the way it will inevitably be construed.
What would I find if I gained access to the information he is currently keeping in Scotland? What is going to happen now I have hinted at this possibility? Given that 90% of hacking consists of social engineering of the sort I am using while writing this article, I am sure Dr Hiort is probably taking a little more notice right now. (If he isn't already). Well I am sure that Dr Hiort will be interested to know that now, conspiracy theorists will be running around claiming he wants to set up themed brothels or some other blunt speculation. I am even spelling out the way this is going to happen, without accusing him of anything like that.
If of course the tainted veneer of Dr Hiort's public image is hiding something as strange as that, it will come out, regardless of whether any specific conspiracy theories are true or false. And yes I am as bold as to spell that out as well.
Dr Olaf Hiort has got a problem. He is not being entirely honest about what he is up to, and the levels of security he is purporting to command are not as secure as he thinks. I also know how the information he is gathering without express consent can be misused by a number of people from government agencies to criminals and people with dodgy political agendas. The very second someone like Hiort says "This data is secure", I would say "No it isn't. The very fact that Hiort has this data makes it insecure because it is Hiort who is compiling it. Hiort has an agenda and whatever that agenda is, he’s very guarded about it, so he cannot be trusted!"
Actually you don't need a hacker or spook looking at Hiort's database in order to be worried, you only need one weak link, called Olaf Hiort. Unless he is open and honest about what his real intentions are, the conspiracy theorists will accuse him of running themed brothels or something equally as strange, and the rest of us will say "There is no smoke without fire".
Your move, Olaf!
This article is also available on OII's website: Click here
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