[discuss] How Snowdonia strengthens the real US position

[Ali Hussein]

Phillip

Nice contrarian view and I like it. In fact I'll go as far as to say that the only crime the US committed is to get caught..Big Brother Syndrome is prevalent in China and Russia and possibly a lot of other countries in the guise of Cyber Security. 

Ali Hussein

+254 0770 906375 / 0713 601113

"I fear the day technology will surpass human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots".  ~ Albert Einstein

Sent from my iPad

> On Jan 8, 2014, at 6:03 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <hallam at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> One of the assumptions that seems to underly the discussions here is that the Snowden disclosures have crippled the US position and made it more difficult for the US to get what it wants.
> 
> If we consider the US government position to be a coalition of views rather than a monolith, it seems to me that the factions within the administration that favor an open Internet have been considerably strengthened.
> 
> Snowdonia has certainly knocked the stuffing out of the NSA/DoD camp which is the faction that rather obviously sees US governance of the Internet as one of the jewels in the US imperial crown. This is actually rather good for the factions that understand the real value of the Internet and open speech as a means to disrupt and destroy some rather nasty authoritarian regimes.
> 
> I see two very different positions within the US camp. One position is that the US needs to ensure the openness of the Internet at all costs and that this requires the US ensure that control does not fall into the hands of the governments wanting global censorship. The other position is the oderint dum metuant crowd who just want their flag on top of everything. The difference being that the first group is more than willing to make concessions if they reinforce their actual goal while the second is not prepared to make any concession to the ungrateful foreigners under any circumstances.
> 
> Snowdonia has put the 'flag on top' faction on the defensive. they may understand that their position is very weak and tactical concessions may be required. If not, Snowdonia has made it much easier to replace them.
> 
> 
> The weakness of the US has also forced non-aligned parties to reconsider their positions. Merkel and Rouseff both know what it is like to live under a police state. They know what Putin is and what Obama is and that they are not two sides of the same coin. 
> 
> Nor are Russia and China the same. The actions of China are at least consistent with the theory that the upper strata in the Chinese leadership understands that their challenge is how to dismantle the one state system before it collapses without precipitating the conflict they are trying to avoid. The Cultural Revolution casts a long shadow there. Putin's objective on the other hand is unambiguously to seize and maintain absolute control.
> 
> When the US position was very strong it was quite logical for Brazil and the rest to work with Russia in an attempt to form a constituency capable of creating a counterbalance. That is a dangerous game now that the US is weak.
> 
> 
> Dismantling the NSA apparatus will come but it will come through different mechanisms than the conference. The NSA is not going to be shut down or have limits imposed through international treaty. There would be no way to verify such a treaty for a start.
> 
> The only way to dismantle the global intercept regime is to deploy ubiquitous strong cryptography. One way for Brazil to encourage that would be to declare itself a free trade zone for crypto by assuring developers that they will be free from the government harassment we get elsewhere.
> 
> -- 
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