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Yes, yes I am. For years, my two biggest spheres of advocacy have been environmentalism and privacy/anti-surveillance. What I've noticed, with that background
by Bartweiss 9y ago
Yes, yes I am.
For years, my two biggest spheres of advocacy have been environmentalism and privacy/anti-surveillance.
What I've noticed, with that background, is that privacy activism has steadily become more like environmental activism.
With rare exceptions (e.g. the ozone layer), environmentalism is an endless, grinding rear-guard action. Extinct species do not become unextinct. Destroyed habitats do not recover, at least not within hundreds of years. Draining the Glen Canyon Dam will not restore Glen Canyon; Church Rock will never be remediated. And the threats are endless and everywhere: 4,500 species are critically endangered right now, global warming is set for 3+ degrees Celsius, the Great Barrier Reef might die entirely.
Attacks on privacy aren't new, but they seem have changed. The Clipper Chip was a central, recognizable enemy, promoted by branches of the government citizens can relate to. 24 hour turnaround on surveillance legalization for intelligence agencies is part of a new and horrible political landscape. SOPA and PIPA were indirect attacks, part of a state-corporate partnership that lets each party do the things the other is barred from. And even those were too central and easy to oppose - now they're coming back piecemeal, in budget bills and trade agreements where they're harder to address.
And as with the environment, what's lost is lost. Repealing surveillance laws is rare and unsustainable. Fighting surveillance in open courts is impossible; fighting it in FISA courts is a Kafkaesque nightmare of secret evidence and lack of standing. Corporate data-gathering is unprovable, and user information breaches are irreversible. Stolen identities can't be changed or recaptured.
So yes: I'm tired. I'm tired, and it's not an accident, because we're on the wrong end of an asymmetric fight.
- mattmanser 9y agoAnd depressingly it won't rollback until tyrannical governments get in power and run amok. The sheer damage politicians across the world are inflicting on future generations with these privacy laws are very depressing.
- mLuby 9y agoBut it's to prevent attacks in the short-term. If passing these laws were more immediately damaging than an actual attack (ie moving long-term consequences up) they might stop doing this.
- saltmanisacuck 9y agoThe big question is "damaging to who?" Laws that give the government broad surveillance power give money and power to defense contractors (reliable political donors), and give power to the political group that currently holds power. These laws damage freedom for all citizens, and they undercut political opponents. As such, the laws might be harmful to democracy, but are valued by those who have power and wish to further consolidate it.
- sethgecko 9y agoKinda off-topic but 4,500 species are critically endangered right now Based on the fact that more than 99.9% of all the species are now extinct, how is this an alarming sign? It seems like a part of the natural evolutionary process.
- QAPereo 9y agoAccelerated by us, and about to consume us whole.
- xkcd-sucks 9y agoMaybe the critically endangered species are not competitive with humans so they're cute and nice, while the species that thrive are competitive with humans so they're ugly, dirty and scary?
- Xeoncross 9y ago> 4,500 species are critically endangered right now How many new species has evolution produced in that time? Zero?
- sethgecko 9y agoAre you implying that the more species in existance the better? If so why?
- adjkant 9y agoDo you want to live in a world without any other living things? How many living things do you want? Is life less interesting if there are only two types of living beings? I think that the world as we know it is valuable to us because we enjoy it, and nothing more. If we can't appreciate the beauty of life (most of us can't persist on the pure beauty of mathematics or conceptual analysis), what's the point?
- smhost 9y agoI agree that biodiversity is a source of joy and education for me, and I'd add that it's also because we know something about ourselves--we know of the insatiability, the psychopathy, and the destructive nature that comes hand-in-hand with classical capitalism. Many of us see our conservation efforts as a necessary opposing force and as a way of saving ourselves from ourselves.
- whatshisface 9y agoMaybe we'll end up with a new political subculture that derives pride and some sense of personal identity from fighting this stuff; just like gun people almost enjoy supporting the NRA. (In some way I think computer rights would be a lot more fun to support if a large fraction of the public was against it, then we would have the satisfaction of arguing.)
- snerbles 9y agoTo be fair, a large fraction of the public does subscribe to the notion of "I have nothing to hide, so mass surveillance is OK".
- spenczar5 9y agoI think that already exists. The political subculture is "privacy nut" computer nerds who wear EFF shirts. There just aren't that many of them.
- eigenstuff 9y agoA large fraction of the gun community actually HATES the NRA for exactly the same reasons everybody else does. There's just no highly visible organizations for gun owners that, y'know, promote reasonable gun control and don't try and whip their members into wannabe race war frenzies. Source: sitting in the gunsmith shop I work in right now