[discuss] Blogpost: So What Do We Do Now? Living in a Post-Snowden World

Thu Jan 2 23:50:14 UTC 2014

Thanks Nigel, perhaps you could add a comment as per your note below to the
blog
<http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2014/01/01/so-what-do-we-do-now-living-in-a-p
ost-snowden-world/> ... It might be interesting to see if others agree or
disagree...

Best,

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: Nigel Hickson [mailto:nigel.hickson at icann.org] 
Sent: Friday, January 03, 2014 6:07 AM
To: michael gurstein; discuss at 1net.org
Subject: Re: [discuss] Blogpost: So What Do We Do Now? Living in a
Post-Snowden World

Michael

Good evening; I found this interesting but factually incorrect concerning

ICANN (your paragraph re surveillance).

Best

Nigel  

On 1/2/14 4:24 PM, "michael gurstein" < <mailto:gurstein at gmail.com>
gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

>Blogpost (with links):

>[MG>] 

>
<http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2014/01/01/so-what-do-we-do-now-living-in-a->
http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2014/01/01/so-what-do-we-do-now-living-in-a-

>po

>st-snowden-world/

> 

> <http://tinyurl.com/pvghcey> http://tinyurl.com/pvghcey

> 

>So, What Do We Do Now? Living in a Post-Snowden World

> 

>Michael Gurstein

> 

>As the avalanche of Snowden revelations resumes after it's brief

>organizational regrouping and holiday hiatus a few learnings and even more

>direct and pertinent questions are starting to emerge.

> 

>Evegeny Morozov in an otherwise interesting piece in the Financial Times

>is

>surely incorrect in his bald statement that "Snowden now faces a growing

>wave of surveillance fatigue among the public".  The emotion isn't

>"surveillance fatigue" but rather shell shock at the revelations as they

>keep coming, in wave after uncomfortable wave.  The first reaction of

>course

>was shock (and awe), the second was a feeling of anger and rising

>resistance; but as the revelations have kept coming, each one more

>disturbing than the last; but now shifting from pointing to quantity of

>surveillance (everything, everyone, everywhere, forever), to quality (from

>metadata to communications content to networking to instantaneous

>full-spectrum profiling).  The emotion is now-what on earth can we do-this

>is impossible, democracy or even any form of popular sovereignty is at

>immediate risk, but what on earth can we do?

> 

>The techies who started off shocked and appalled and over-all angry (at

>feeling personally and professionally betrayed) and vowing (or at least

>those whose organizational or corporate affiliations didn't leave them

>irretrievably compromised) vowed to fight back and there were heated

>discussions in various tech forums of various technical strategies for

>turning the surveillance tide.

> 

>But the revelations have just kept on coming and the tech community like

>everyone else recognizes the scope and depth and ultimately overwhelming

>power of an agency with access to the full might and resources of the

>richest, most powerful country on earth led by a President who himself

>seems

>to be either in thrall of the surveillance machine or indentured to it for

>reasons we may never know. They, now equally stand blinded by the

>headlights

>of a headlong careening tank, are recognizing with appalled

>self-incriminations what a horror they have allowed and contributed to

>being

>born.

> 

>Quite clearly technical solutions won't work (or at least won't scale) if

>the dominant power doesn't want it to work, and anyway who would trust

>that

>anti-surveillance solutions were working after all we know of how the

>corporate sector and the tech community has been (willingly or or no)

>brought in as semi-aware co-conspirators.

> 

>And by now, it appears reasonably evident (based on the overall

>indifference

>to doing anything much by the political masterclass in DC and elsewhere)

>up

>and down the decision tree and including its FiveEyes handmaidens, that

>the

>decisions have been made not only that resistance measures won't be

>allowed

>to work but that they will be actively resisted and "attacked" with all

>the

>forces and resources that have already gone into building the existing

>machine.

> 

>Even the corporate sector (US) has become extremely uneasy at the damage

>that has and is being done to their reputation for trustworthiness and

>reliability and with that damage would appear to be escalating costs and

>penalties.

> 

>Even the cyber-libertarian pro-US chorus has gone silent - recognizing as

>they had no choice but to do, the most fundamental of contradictions

>between

>freedom and surveillance. Some of course, are opting for the. "but your

>guys

>are worse" argument (but without having any idea of whether there is any

>'your' as in "your guys" anywhere to speak of). Is anybody anywhere

>(except

>in Fox News fantasies) coming to the support of Russia or China or Saudi

>Arabia as an alternative in all of this.

> 

>And of course, the cyber crowd has spent the last 20 years systematically

>denigrating and tossing rocks into the spokes of any regulatory or

>governance vehicle that might, however remotely, be able to mount a

>framework that could tame the surveillance juggernaut.So, at the end of

>the

>day who is there to call when there is an existential threat to the very

>foundation of Western values and democratic processes. Ghost Busters? Even

>they seem too busy warding off other threats from "real" aliens to the

>existential well-being of the Western world.

> 

>The international community might, just might be able to do something, if

>they were to gang up on the US (as seemed possible, if only briefly,

>following President Rousseff's speech to the UN General Assembly). But as

>"saner heads" and diplomats are coming into the game that seems to be

>fading

>into the dusty hallways of the UN, likely never to be heard from again.

> 

>There is still some hope from President Rousseff's meeting in Brazil in

>April but the apparent lacklustre interest from other of the world's

>leaders

>- they themselves presumably being compromised up the yin yang and in

>their

>hearts having as little interest in retaining even the possibility of a

>functioning democracy as those Stasi folks in the NSA and surrounds;

>alongside the ceding of a co-management role in the conference to ICANN,

>itself a potentially compromised player in the global Internet governance

>(if not directly surveillance) game; leaves the responsibility of making

>an

>effective case on behalf of global democracy to Civil Society and the

>Technical Community both of which themselves have yet to have fully (or in

>most instances even partially) redeemed themselves let alone publicly

>turned

>their back on their full-throated (and deeply misguided) alliance with the

>US and its allies in the "Internet Freedom" crusade at the 2012 Internet

>Governance Forum and the World Conference on International

>Telecommunications (WCIT); this "crusade" in retrospect seemingly at least

>circumstantially to have been a tactic to ensure that all possible

>opposition to Internet mass surveillance was made either unlikely or

>ineffective.

> 

>Let's be clear. We are talking about the future of the world as we have

>come

>to believe it might be-democratic, with freedom of expression and of

>thought, with an openness to popularly initiated and supported change,

>with

>increasing accountability and transparency of the governors to the

>governed,

>where governmental as other action is responsive to the rule of law and

>all

>the other things that the various Western government sponsored training

>programs in democracy go on about at such considerable length. Whether it

>will become a version of Orwell's 1984 (some already think we are over

>that

>edge).

> 

>Whether we will live in a world where one country and its 5 allies have

>access to all worthwhile information which allows them to control any

>possibility of dissent (even before it happens), control the inputs into

>and

>outputs from elections or any form of political campaign, control

>financial

>markets and bank accounts, control the behaviour of individuals and

>ultimately groups and that's for starters-those are things we can

>interpolate based on what we know, not as would surely be more realistic,

>interpolating from what else we can foresee-these guys as we all know,

>have

>access to effectively unlimited financial resources and the brainpower

>that

>goes with it.

> 

>Most certainly this is not Lenin's question "What is to be done" which was

>rhetorical (he already knew very well what had to be done and had the will

>to find (seize) and apply the resources to do it).  No, our question is

>much

>more problematic-we don't know what to do, and we clearly don't have the

>will or the resources to do it even if we knew what the solution was.

> 

>Over it all of course, there is the reality that the possibility of

>concerted action is foreclosed on by the rather surprising political

>identification with and ultimately support for the surveillance apparatus

>by

>the centre-left and right-both evidently gaining too many benefits from

>the

>status quo to even contemplate rocking the boat even in the service of the

>democracy to which they so loudly and regularly pledge allegiance.

> 

>It appears that it is only at the fringes on the right and on the left

>(and

>of course, among those who have an inkling of the reality and significance

>of what is going on-most notably the technical community) that there is

>any

>real alarm and desire to do something . anything that might work.  But

>even

>here, the right is too deeply enthralled by the logic of their position to

>even contemplate alternatives (governmental based) that might work. And

>the

>left is too weakened after vicious assaults over the last decade to launch

>any worthwhile opposition.

> 

>So what are we to do.

> 

> 

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