i think this is related and relevant to recent discussions. src: http://www.dmytri.info/hackers-cant-solve-surveillance/
quoted in full for your convenience: > Hackers can’t solve Surveillance > > Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors without Borders, is > an organization that saves lives in war-torn and underdeveloped regions, > providing health care and training in over 70 different countries. MSF > saves lives. Yet, nobody thinks that doctors can “solve” healthcare. It’s > widely understood that healthcare is a social issue, and universal health > care can not be achieved by either the voluntary work of Doctors or by way > of donations and charity alone. > > Just as Doctors can’t solve healthcare, Hackers can’t solve surveillance. > Doctors can’t make human frailty disappear with some sort of clever medical > trick. They can help mitigate issues, fight emergencies, they can be > selfless, heroic. but they can’t, on their own, solve healthcare. > > One of the ways that Hackers can fight surveillance is to develop better > cryptographic communications tools, and train people how to use them.. This > is certainly critical work that hackers can contribute to, but we can’t, on > our own, solve surveillance. > > Nothing that Hackers can do on their own can eliminate surveillance. Just > as universal healthcare is only something that can be achieved by social > means, privacy respecting mass communications platforms can only be > achieved by social means. Safe mass communications platforms can not be > created by private interests, neither commercially, nor voluntarily. > > As we well know, private medical provisioning provides unequal health care. > The reason is obvious, health needs and the ability to pay are not usually > corelated. Private provisioning means that those who can’t pay, wont be > served by profit-driven institutions, and though this can be mitigated by > voluntarism and charity, it can’t be fully overcome. > > Likewise, mass communications that are built for the profit motive either > need to charge a fee, and thereby be exclusive, or be advertising > supported. Other options can exist for connected and technically savvy > users, but these will be niche by necessity. For the masses, the main > options available will always be well funded platforms with employees to do > support, development, and marketing, without wich, it’s impossible to > build-up a mass user base. > > The lucrativeness of advertising-based platforms, makes it difficult even > for fee-based systems to compete, since they don’t generally produce enough > revenue to invest significantly in support, development and marketing, > which makes them less attractive even to users who could or would pay, but > the major issue that kills such platforms is that the fee means that some > people will not be able to use it at all. > > Thus, commercial mass platforms tend to be advertising driven. This means > that the business of platforms operators is selling audience commodity. > Commodities are sold by measure and grade. You can buy 10lbs of Fancy Grade > Granny Smith Apples, or two dozen Grade A free range eggs. Or 2 million > clicks from age 18-35 white males. > > Audience commodity, the users of the platform, are sold to advertisers, by > measure of clicks or conversion, and by grade. For advertisers, audience is > graded by specifications that include age, sex, income level, family > composition, location, ethnicity, home or automobile ownership, credit card > status, etc. The Demographics, as they say. > > Since an advertising funded platform must grade audience commodity, it must > collect data on it’s users in order to grade them. This means that the one > thing such a platform can not offer its users is privacy. At least not > privacy from the platform operators and their advertisers. > > And so long as the platform operators collect such data, there is no way > that this data will not be made available to local and foreign intelligence > agencies. > > This hard reality has been hard to grapple with, especially for a hacker > community who saw the Internet as a new realm, as John Perry Barlow wrote > in the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace: “We are creating a > world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how > singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.” His > colleague, John Gilmore, famously claimed “The Net interprets censorship as > damage and routes around it.” > > Those two quotations, born of the 90s hey-day of net.culture, contrast > starkly with what Adam Curtis describes in his BBC documentary All Watched > Over By Machines of Loving Grace: > > “The original promise of the Californian Ideology, was that the computers > would liberate us from all the old forms of political control, and we would > become Randian heroes, in control of our own destiny. Instead, today, we > feel the opposite, that we are helpless components in a global system, a > system that is controlled by a rigid logic that we are powerless to > challenge or to change” > > Oddly, the film doesn’t credit Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron who coined > the term the “Californian Ideology” in there seminal 1995 text, which was > among the first to identify the libertarian ideology endemic in Silicon > Valley culture. > > The visions of a free, uncensorable cyberspace envisioned by Barlow, > Gilmore and others was incompatible with the needs of Capital, and thus the > libertarian impulses that drives Silicon valley caused a change in tune. > Cyberspace was no longer a new world, declared independent with its own > unalienable rights, it was now an untamed frontier, a wild-west where > spooks and cypherpunks do battle and your worth is measured by your crypto > slinging skills and operational security. Rather than united denizens of a > new terrain, we are now crypto individualists homesteading in hostile > territory. > > This, as Seda Gurses argues, leads to Responsibilization, “Information > systems that mediate communications in a way that also collects massive > amounts of personal information may be prone to externalizing some of the > risks associated with these systems onto the users.” > > Users themselves are responsible for their privacy and safety online. No > more unalienable rights, no more censorship resistant mass networks, no > more expressing beliefs without fear of being silenced. Hack or be hacked. > > Since libertarian ideology is often at odds with social solutions, holding > private enterprise as an ideal and viewing private provisioning as best, > the solutions presented are often pushing more entrepreneurship and > voluntarism and ever more responsibilization. We just need a new start-up, > or some new code, or some magical new business model! This is what Evgeny > Morozov calls Solutionism, the belief that all difficulties have benign > solutions, often of a technocratic nature. Morozov provides an example > “when a Silicon Valley company tries to solve the problem of obesity by > building a smart fork that will tell you that you’re eating too quickly, > this […] puts the onus for reform on the individual.” > > Karl Marx makes a similar argument in Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis > Bonaparte: > > “The proletariate […] gives up the task of revolutionizing the old world > with its own large collective weapons, and, on the contrary, seeks to bring > about its emancipation, behind the back of society, in private ways, within > the narrow bounds of its own class conditions, and, consequently, > inevitably fails.” > > Solutionism underestimates social costs and assumes that social issues can > be solved by individuals and private interests, and some may be, but where > universality, equality and fairness need to be provided regardless of skill > or wealth this is not the case. These sorts of things can only be provided > socially, as public goods. > > Many Hackers have always known this. In a excellent Journal of Peer > Production essay Maxigas quotes Simon Yiull: > > “The first hacklabs developed in Europe, often coming out of the traditions > of squatted social centres and community media labs. In Italy they have > been connected with the autonomist social centres, and in Spain, Germany, > and the Netherlands with anarchist squatting movements.” > > Early hacklabs didn’t view their role as being limited to solutionism, > though hackers have alway helped people understand how online > communications works and how to use it securely, hackers where embedded > within social movements, part of the struggle for a fairer society. Hacker > saw themselves as part of affinity groups fighting against privatization, > war, colonialism, austerity, inequality, patriarchy and capitalism, they > understood that this was the way to a new society, working shoulder to > shoulder with mass movements fighting for a new society, and that here > their knowledge of networks and communications systems could be of service > to these movements. > > Yet, as Maxigas goes on to argue,, “hackerspaces are not embedded in and > not consciously committed to an overtly political project or idea.” > > Instead, hackerspaces often focus on technological empowerment, which is > certainly beneficial and important, but like community health centers that > teach health maintenance practices are beneficial, they can’t solve larger > social issues, such each-one-teach-one projects can not, on their own, > solve social issues like privacy or health. > > Hackers need to understand that there is no business model for secure mass > communications. In order to achieve a society where we can expect privacy > we need more hackers and hackerspaces to embrace the broader political > challenges of building a more equal society.
