What Happens Next Will Amaze You
(Talk by Maciej Ceg??owski on September 14, 2015, at the FREMTIDENS INTERNET conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.) Good morning! Today's talk is being filmed, recorded and transcribed, and everything I say today will leave an indelible trace online. In other words, it's just a normal day on the Internet. For people like me, who go around giving talks about the dystopian future, it's been an incredible year. Let me review the highlights so far: We learned that AT&T has been cooperating with the NSA for over ten years, voluntarily sharing data far beyond anything that the law required them to give. The infamous dating site for married people Ashley Madison was hacked, revealing personal information and and easily-cracked passwords for millions of users. Some of these users are already the subject of active extortion. Australia passed an incoherent and sweeping data retention law, while the UK is racing to pass a law of its own. The horrible Hacking Team got hacked, giving us a window into a sordid market for vulnerabilities and surveillance technology. The 2014 Sony Pictures hack exposed highly sensitive (and amusing) emails and employee data. And finally, highly sensitive and intrusive security questionnaires for at least 18 million Federal job applicants were stolen from the US Office of Personnel Management. Given this list, let me ask a trick question. What was the most damaging data breach in the last 12 months? The trick answer is: it's likely something we don't even know about. When the Snowden revelations first came to light, it felt like we might be heading towards an Orwellian dystopia. Now we know that the situation is much worse. If you go back and read Orwell, you'll notice that Oceania was actually quite good at data security. Our own Thought Police is a clown car operation with no checks or oversight, no ability to keep the most sensitive information safe, and no one behind the steering wheel. The proximate reasons for the culture of total surveillance are clear. Storage is cheap enough that we can keep everything. Computers are fast enough to examine this information, both in real time and retrospectively. Our daily activities are mediated with software that can easily be configured to record and report everything it sees upstream. But to fix surveillance, we have to address the underlying reasons that it exists. These are no mystery either. State surveillance is driven by fear. And corporate surveillance is driven by money. The two kinds of surveillance are as intimately connected as tango partners. They move in lockstep, eyes rapt, searching each other's souls. The information they collect is complementary. By defending its own worst practices, each side enables the other. Today I want to talk about the corporate side of this partnership. In his excellent book on surveillance, Bruce Schneier has pointed out we would never agree to carry tracking devices and report all our most intimate conversations if the government made us do it. But under such a scheme, we would enjoy more legal protections than we have now. By letting ourselves be tracked voluntarily, we forfeit all protection against how that information is used. Those who control the data gain enormous power over those who don't. The power is not overt, but implicit in the algorithms they write, the queries they run, and the kind of world they feel entitled to build. In this world, privacy becomes a luxury good. Mark Zuckerberg buys the four houses around his house in Palo Alto, to keep hidden what the rest of us must share with him. It used to be celebrities and rich people who were the ones denied a private life, now it's the other way around. Let's talk about how to fix it. There's a wonderful quote from a fellow named Martin McNulty, CEO of an ad company called Forward 3D: ???I never thought the politics of privacy would come close to my day-to-day work of advertising. I think there???s a concern that this could get whipped up into a paranoia that could harm the advertising industry,??? I am certainly here to whip up paranoia that I hope will harm the advertising industry. But his point is a good one. There's nothing about advertising that is inherently privacy-destroying. It used to be a fairly innocuous business model. The phenomenon whereby ads are tied to the complete invasion of privacy is a recent one. In the beginning, there was advertising. It was a simple trinity of publisher, viewer, and advertiser. Publishers wrote what they wanted and left empty white rectangles for ads to fill. Advertisers bought the right to put things in those rectangles. Viewers occasionally looked at the rectangles by accident and bought the products and services they saw pictured there. Life was simple. There were ad agencies to help match publishers with advertisers, figure out what should go in the rectangles, and attempt to measure how well the
Re: VW
Jaromil, I agree with much of what you say, so I'll try to find a
focused place where a response might actually get somewhere.
On 2 Oct 2015, at 10:31, Jaromil wrote:
Relying on open-source metaphor-mantras ('Would you buy a car with
the
hood welded shut?') to analyze peculiar dynamics of the car industry
this is NOT a peculiar dynamic of the car industry. This is how the
current
necrotizing capitalist regime of patents works in every sector of
industrial
production, thriving wherever no open source business model is
embraced, let
alone the free software ethic. There are different degrees of
responsibility
<...>
This 'curatorial' approach to quoting turned what I said into its
opposite, the better to rail against. Here's what I actually wrote:
Jaromil, I think it's a bit premature to counter claims that this is
'just about Volkswagen,' because no one said anything like that.
Obviously there are many ways in which this is symptomatic of broader
structures. But Lehman Brothers and Fukushima were symptomatic as
well, and would you really argue that 'there was nothing to be learned
there' either? *And* hold hold up Android's OEMs cheating on
benchmarks as a more illuminating example? I don't think so. Relying
on open-source metaphor-mantras ('Would you buy a car with the hood
welded shut?') to analyze peculiar dynamics of the car industry is
like relying on Godwin's Law to understand neo-nazis. :^)
My point isn't that VW -- or Fukushima or Lehman Brothers (or
Hackingteam or Greece) -- is sui generis, and that we should flit from
one spectacle to another without connecting the dots. On the contrary,
they're all *symptomatic* of structural problems; and they're also (not
'but...instead of') edge cases that we, and various publics, can learn
from. Unless you're hoping for some apocalyptic total transformation
from the 'necrotizing capitalist regime of patents works in every sector
of industrial production' to a garden of open-source delights, progress
will be happenstance and incremental. As you yourself point out:
wake up to these news: there is an actual dark market for software
like the one VW used to counterfeit their autos
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/volkswagen-wasnt-the-only-company-rigging-emission-levels-says-expert-a6668611.html
If the VW fiasco (which, like 'Greece,' is far from over) ends up
shedding more light on the complicity at the heart of environmental
regulatory regimes, so much the better. But my first mail on the subject
was aimed at pointing out the *many* ways in which the fiasco might
unfold. If you think that waving aside the knock-on effects in every
context except for IP fights is the best strategy, then do that. I don't
think it is. And while I can't speak for Florian, I think he was
pointing out different ways in which VW and the issues *as reported*
(not as they 'are' according to a reductive and universalizing
ideological conflict) are embedded in larger social and political orders
-- which move at different speeds. VW's place in the particular postwar
order of Saxony unfolds according to one logic, and the ways in which
trade secrecy obfuscate systemic problems unfold according to another.
Their coincidence -- when a break in the smooth functioning of trade
secrecy invites us to think about political orders at different scales
-- is akin to what Mako called 'revealing errors.' Thinking about them
isn't opposed to what you're advocating.
<...>
for software, sure, and there could be various degrees of attention on
different parts of software, as Florian mentions, sure, but then with
open
access at least we'd have infinite possibilities for researchers to
choose
their independent code analysis MA project, etc. etc. instead of
isolated
scandals popping up here and there. We need to switch to such a
condition as
tech is becoming more pervasive and entrenched with life-critical
functions,
there is no way out of this and I hope we can thrive in the open
system picture
that John gives us with a numerous enough population, rather than
after a total
desaster.
Again, I agree with much of what you say, but it's also pretty much the
same message that we hear when crypto advocates tell us to 'trust the
math' and hobble along on antiquated proposals that everyone should
review the source code themselves. I don't 'trust the math' because the
math has to be implemented in concrete contexts -- and there are
countless ways in which those implementations can introduce subtle
biases and weaknesses. The power to do that, to analyze it, and to the
review the source code, may be here but it's unevenly distributed.
People with a disproportionate share of those power can wear whatever
color hat they want -- black, white, gray, transparent, whatever. But as
the Hackingteam fiasco you mention shows, the shared 'interests' of the
people wearing those hats draws many of them together; and their more or
less a
Re: VW
dear Ted,
On Sun, 27 Sep 2015, t byfield wrote:
> On 27 Sep 2015, at 5:02, Jaromil wrote:
>
> >to debate this thing as if it would be just about Volkswagen is so
> >naive! srsly. There is nothing to be learned there.
>
> Jaromil, I think it's a bit premature to counter claims that this is
> 'just about Volkswagen,' because no one said anything like that.
> Obviously there are many ways in which this is symptomatic of broader
> structures. But Lehman Brothers and Fukushima were symptomatic as
> well, and would you really argue that 'there was nothing to be learned
> there' either? *And* hold hold up Android's OEMs cheating on
> benchmarks as a more illuminating example? I don't think so.
I believe that in 2015 and on top of all the literature we have been imbued
there is no point for us to engage blaming VW as the evil manufacturer, or take
political correctsy postures about institutional funding one or the other
takes, FWIW.
do you think the VW is any different than the hackingteam affair? its not.
HT was allegedly buying and reselling scriptkiddoz 0days available for anyone
on the oh-so-sexy "dark-market" to spray holes in the mobile phones of their
classmates, until some sharks got their rich and berlusconi-looking friends to
VC boost them to-the-moon by putting such ridicolous digital hairballs in
quarantine before selling them for thousands of euros to the booming security
industry - which is by the vast majority populated by clueless and militarized
people in uniforms collecting certifications and verifications to hide their
idiocy behind a soon-to-be-academic title in every cyber-crime 5star catered
conference they go, because sure! these kids are s dangerous!
this is a sketch of how the industry works today. the automotive is not
different and as I said in my previous email on HT the problem is not
hackingteam per se, as much as now the problem is not VW per se.
wake up to these news: there is an actual dark market for software like the one
VW used to counterfeit their autos
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/volkswagen-wasnt-the-only-company-rigging-emission-levels-says-expert-a6668611.html
> Relying on open-source metaphor-mantras ('Would you buy a car with the
> hood welded shut?') to analyze peculiar dynamics of the car industry
this is NOT a peculiar dynamic of the car industry. This is how the current
necrotizing capitalist regime of patents works in every sector of industrial
production, thriving wherever no open source business model is embraced, let
alone the free software ethic. There are different degrees of responsibility
for software, sure, and there could be various degrees of attention on
different parts of software, as Florian mentions, sure, but then with open
access at least we'd have infinite possibilities for researchers to choose
their independent code analysis MA project, etc. etc. instead of isolated
scandals popping up here and there. We need to switch to such a condition as
tech is becoming more pervasive and entrenched with life-critical functions,
there is no way out of this and I hope we can thrive in the open system picture
that John gives us with a numerous enough population, rather than after a total
desaster.
anyway ok, today the trend is to blame german car manufacturers, to me sounds
just like that "blaming german people for the greek crisis" fart a month ago.
ciao
--
Denis Roio aka Jaromil http://Dyne.org think &do tank
CTO and co-founder free/open source developer
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