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I think technology has a high potential for increasing accountability. However, it's likely much larger superpowers i.e. US, China, etc. will take decades or c

I think technology has a high potential for increasing accountability. However, it's likely much larger superpowers i.e. US, China, etc. will take decades or centuries before being held accountable in this manner, which is honestly a little too tragic. I was thinking "we don't have this accountability in the States," when I realized we sorta do -- to an extent, this is Wikileaks and whistleblowers, except this is considered illegal. It's crazy to think at a high level that we have made "accountability" illegal and somehow this is just fine.

mieseratte 7y ago
Accountability is predicated on outcome. If the extent of outcome is some keyboard warrior outrage or a minor stock dip nothing will change.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  The process of establishing a ground truth is itself useful, most especially if that has been sorely lacking previously. I'm not going to insist that justice is impossible where fundamental agreement on truth is scarce. But it's far more difficult.
sverige 7y ago
"Accountability" used to be the job of the Fourth Estate, at least ostensibly, but they abandoned that job no later than the 80s, and now need to be held accountable themselves, since they're manifestly incapable of self-policing. The hope would be that somehow independent organizations would use the internet to do this, but the gatekeepers of search make this impractical. Consider the trajectory of WikiLeaks' perceived credibility, and that is best case. Everyone else has been reduced to"conspiracy theorists."
- JKCalhoun 7y ago
  Agree. And WikiLeaks sort of jumped out at me from the OP's comment. Not much accountability when it is actually SelectiveWikiLeaks.
  - stochastic_monk 7y ago
    Wikileaks was nothing more than a counterintelligence operation by the USSR for their interests. Informants weren’t, necessarily — e.g., Snowden, but that is definitively resolved.
    - romaaeterna 7y ago
      > Wikileaks was nothing more than a counterintelligence operation by the USSR for their interests The USSR, huh? Are they operating from a hidden base on the moon? (No doubt having signed a non-aggression pact with the Nazis who are out there too.)
      - shadowprofile77 7y ago
        This comment gave me my good chuckle of the evening. Cheers for that.
    - mindslight 7y ago
      Is this supposed to be some sort of indictment? If Wikileaks is publishing inconvenient truths about USG, then they are furthering the interests of US citizens, period. That the accountability Wikileaks brings couldn't happen at home in the US merely reflects the neutering and corruption of our domestic fourth estate.
    - fit2rule 7y ago
      Nonsense. There is zero evidence that Russia was behind Wikileaks, save a few butt-hurt American patriots who don't like knowing the truth about their country's evil mis-adventures around the world. Just because it hurts your feelings doesn't mean its the Russians behind it. Maybe your country is just doing evil, illegal things that the world should know about, ASAP.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    It's still accountability, even when it's selective - it's accountability for those that it watches. Granted, universal accountability would be great, but some is better than none. Also, Western media does an okay job holding those accountable that aren't aligned with Western interests, so WL's selective accountability fills a gap in that regard.
- L_Rahman 7y ago
  The Fourth Estate didn't abandon that job in the 80s, private equity companies saw their advertising based recurring revenue streams, bought them in LBOs, decimated the teams and extracted profits until nothing was left. Online advertising finished off the rest.
  - dgellow 7y ago
    To be bought you have to accept to sell. That’s maybe what the other commenter meant by “abandon their job”.
    - wallace_f 7y ago
      CIA and military have much deeper, more significant roles in media, hollywood then you would believe. This information is freely available through Google searches. But there is also a trend where the big media corporations seem to be turning to evil. I mean, I don't know what better word there is for it. What I mean is the kind of stuff described here: https://www.salon.com/2016/09/20/betraying-snowden-theres-a-special-place-in-journalism-hell-for-the-washington-post-editorial-board/ https://www.salon.com/2016/09/20/betraying-snowden-theres-a-...
pjc50 7y ago
Accountability is subject to power. Gambia, like South Africa before then, can have a Truth and Reconciliation because they have overthrown the reign of terror. The US (and for that matter UK) have not had the thorough regime change that would enable a true accounting. And yes, this has to include the media and the permanent state.
- space_fountain 7y ago
  I'm going to say something that seems to be way more controversial than I expect, but we also haven't really had a reign of terror in awhile.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    Well, we did, but we exported it. In the case of the UK it was Northern Ireland; thereafter for both it was Afghanistan and Iraq. Admittedly there we took over from a different reign of terror, but the whole situation remained lawless. The US built a special law-free zone so it could apply indefinite unaccountable punishment to a few dozen people. A police microstate.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      I always saw Guantanamo Bay as proof that the cases against these people were for the most part so flimsy that they would not have held up in an actual court of law.
      - orthoxerox 7y ago
        I think the evidence was conclusive enough, but obtained in a way that made it inadmissible in any non-marsupial court. So the US had two options: try and free known terrorists who now harbour even deeper hatred against the US after having been tortured, or keep them in legal limbo until they die. We know which one they picked.
        jacquesm 7y ago
Despegar 7y ago
This comment is veering into John Perry Barlow's "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" territory. The only thing that's become eminently obvious in recent years is what an intellectually bankrupt ideology it is. And I think even most self-reflective "cyberlibertarians" (who are probably in there 40s, 50s, and 60s) would agree with that at this point. Technology is not inherently emancipatory. In fact it's being used to subjugate and oppress people all over the world. At best technology is neutral. Representative governments are sovereign. The only thing that is going to emancipate mankind are the things that have always: self-determination, rule of law, strong institutions, and people who adhere to enlightenment values. No one wants to be ruled by an unaccountable technocratic elite who are mostly from the west coast of the US.
- dmix 7y ago
  I mostly agree but how many people were really motivated with this ideology where it’s worthy of punishment? Even the average person in the Bay Area just wanted cool stuff and liked technology, automation, and the power software gave them to create anything from scratch with only their mind (and of course some capital and state support systems). The techno liberation ideas were typically pushed after-the-fact by journos looking for a narrative or a potential side benefit in the minds of founders. Obviously the original source of this was was all predictive of the future before it all took shape and critically before it reached scale. This why the whole idea of captain retrospect’s punishing people for once holding these views might be misguided. I remember even with Web 2.0’s whole wiki-fication, wisdom of the crowds, and semantic web stuff were all treated largely as academic/pop science narratives and was met with plenty of skepticism. Even from people who actively contributed to it. This isn’t the first time either. We’ve been battling the concepts of decentralization vs centralization forever. I’m remember reading some great critiques by HL Mencken about the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ type arrangements and from the 1920s when the debates over representative democracy were raging... thanks to the rise of anarchists, socialists, etc who challenged norms: > The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre—the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. Not all of HLs words are relevant to tech, but he’s right that scale is the critically important test in these liberations and wisdom of groups things, which IMO break down far faster the bigger the platform gets and sum of the whole gets a lot more mediocre in order to be tolerable to everyone. I also think this is why small countries like Canada and Scandinavia are more functional politically but that’s another story. The first French Revolution also worked great in war time Paris until it went to the country sides and they went back to monarchy for a few more decades.
benologist 7y ago
Technology is already making a difference. $30,000 watches and yachts on Instagram are revealing corruption and tax evasion all over the world. Police violence is being recorded and distributed. Secrecy is harder than ever - Russia sent agents from the middle of nowhere to kill someone and from low-quality photos the internet pieced together their identities, ranks, where they lived, their career paths. We're not far from it being impossible for one parent of a child to remain unknown or unaware, that's going to be a funny one.
- throwaway927 7y ago
  And when the great detectives of the internet get things wrong, which is the vast majority of the time, and potentially ruin people's lives, who is holding them accountable?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- konart 7y ago
  >Russia sent agents from the middle of nowhere Well, actually not from the middle of nowhere. Thanks to the said investigation and checks' photos we know that they were sent literally from one of the HQ buildings in Moscow.:D
whatshisface 7y ago
>US, China, etc. will take decades or centuries before being held accountable in this manner Remember Snowden.
- sschueller 7y ago
  Don't forget Manning and Assange which are currently both in Prison.
  - mieseratte 7y ago
    Manning was pardoned for her leaks.
    - lawn 7y ago
      I thought her sentence was commuted which only reduces her sentence but it doesn't wash away her guilt. Edit: Also she's back in prison for refusing to testify against Assange.
      - mieseratte 7y ago
        > Edit: Also she's back in prison for refusing to testify against Assange. Well that's orthogonal to punishment for leaks.
    - vuln 7y ago
      She was never pardoned. Obama commuted most of her remaining sentence. There is a big difference between pardoned and commuted.
      - mieseratte 7y ago
        Ah then I'm in the wrong, bit different. Bit strange that they went for one and not the other, really.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      On the contrary. And if anything Manning is proof that Snowden got it right: the system will happily take revenge.
atoav 7y ago
Accountability is very relative in a time where the fabric of the real itself is beeingcalles into question by deep fakes and exteemely potent tools to synhesize images and voices. We will have to find societal responses towards these technological shifts or they will find us. And it is already happening: young people comparing their mirror image to the digitally optimized selfies they see of influencers they like. And then they figure out how to fake it themselves, but their parent generation believes everything they see online: a gang of foreign dark skinned men tricking the state wellfare into giving them 8 grand a month each, while the local people have to fear about beeing thrown out of their houses? outrage! No, online media is a double-tripple-edged sword and we need to find solutions to this that are not censorship or thought police. I’d opt for education, but I am afraid we’re a bit late to start that now.
- SomeOldThrow 7y ago
  > Accountability is very relative in a time where the fabric of the real itself is beeingcalles into question by deep fakes and exteemely potent tools to synhesize images and voices. All the more reason we need accountability on what wikileaks did release now. How else can we trust our government at all?
api 7y ago
Seems to me that the superpowers have already figured out how to neutralize the Internet: flood it with bullshit. Disinformation works on the same principle as radar chaff. When something is trying to see you you blow out a bunch of shiny tinsel and nobody can tell signal from noise. You can't keep secrets but you can definitely drown the truth. Online conspiracy nuts and other useful idiots are happy to help out by adding their own amateur BS to the noise screen.
- mlb_hn 7y ago
  Wharley (1982) is a great paper formalizing how militaries use deception [1]. There's a lot of combinations of tactics to use disinformation to distract from the truth beyond the chaff case. [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01402398208437106 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/0140239820843710...

mieseratte 7y ago

Accountability is predicated on outcome. If the extent of outcome is some keyboard warrior outrage or a minor stock dip nothing will change.

dredmorbius 7y ago
The process of establishing a ground truth is itself useful, most especially if that has been sorely lacking previously. I'm not going to insist that justice is impossible where fundamental agreement on truth is scarce. But it's far more difficult.

sverige 7y ago

"Accountability" used to be the job of the Fourth Estate, at least ostensibly, but they abandoned that job no later than the 80s, and now need to be held accountable themselves, since they're manifestly incapable of self-policing. The hope would be that somehow independent organizations would use the internet to do this, but the gatekeepers of search make this impractical. Consider the trajectory of WikiLeaks' perceived credibility, and that is best case. Everyone else has been reduced to"conspiracy theorists."

JKCalhoun 7y ago
Agree. And WikiLeaks sort of jumped out at me from the OP's comment. Not much accountability when it is actually SelectiveWikiLeaks.
- stochastic_monk 7y ago
  Wikileaks was nothing more than a counterintelligence operation by the USSR for their interests. Informants weren’t, necessarily — e.g., Snowden, but that is definitively resolved.
  - romaaeterna 7y ago
    > Wikileaks was nothing more than a counterintelligence operation by the USSR for their interests The USSR, huh? Are they operating from a hidden base on the moon? (No doubt having signed a non-aggression pact with the Nazis who are out there too.)
    - shadowprofile77 7y ago
      This comment gave me my good chuckle of the evening. Cheers for that.
  - mindslight 7y ago
    Is this supposed to be some sort of indictment? If Wikileaks is publishing inconvenient truths about USG, then they are furthering the interests of US citizens, period. That the accountability Wikileaks brings couldn't happen at home in the US merely reflects the neutering and corruption of our domestic fourth estate.
  - fit2rule 7y ago
    Nonsense. There is zero evidence that Russia was behind Wikileaks, save a few butt-hurt American patriots who don't like knowing the truth about their country's evil mis-adventures around the world. Just because it hurts your feelings doesn't mean its the Russians behind it. Maybe your country is just doing evil, illegal things that the world should know about, ASAP.
- luckylion 7y ago
  It's still accountability, even when it's selective - it's accountability for those that it watches. Granted, universal accountability would be great, but some is better than none. Also, Western media does an okay job holding those accountable that aren't aligned with Western interests, so WL's selective accountability fills a gap in that regard.
L_Rahman 7y ago
The Fourth Estate didn't abandon that job in the 80s, private equity companies saw their advertising based recurring revenue streams, bought them in LBOs, decimated the teams and extracted profits until nothing was left. Online advertising finished off the rest.
- dgellow 7y ago
  To be bought you have to accept to sell. That’s maybe what the other commenter meant by “abandon their job”.
  - wallace_f 7y ago
    CIA and military have much deeper, more significant roles in media, hollywood then you would believe. This information is freely available through Google searches. But there is also a trend where the big media corporations seem to be turning to evil. I mean, I don't know what better word there is for it. What I mean is the kind of stuff described here: https://www.salon.com/2016/09/20/betraying-snowden-theres-a-special-place-in-journalism-hell-for-the-washington-post-editorial-board/ https://www.salon.com/2016/09/20/betraying-snowden-theres-a-...

pjc50 7y ago

Accountability is subject to power. Gambia, like South Africa before then, can have a Truth and Reconciliation because they have overthrown the reign of terror. The US (and for that matter UK) have not had the thorough regime change that would enable a true accounting. And yes, this has to include the media and the permanent state.

space_fountain 7y ago
I'm going to say something that seems to be way more controversial than I expect, but we also haven't really had a reign of terror in awhile.
- pjc50 7y ago
  Well, we did, but we exported it. In the case of the UK it was Northern Ireland; thereafter for both it was Afghanistan and Iraq. Admittedly there we took over from a different reign of terror, but the whole situation remained lawless. The US built a special law-free zone so it could apply indefinite unaccountable punishment to a few dozen people. A police microstate.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    I always saw Guantanamo Bay as proof that the cases against these people were for the most part so flimsy that they would not have held up in an actual court of law.
    - orthoxerox 7y ago
      I think the evidence was conclusive enough, but obtained in a way that made it inadmissible in any non-marsupial court. So the US had two options: try and free known terrorists who now harbour even deeper hatred against the US after having been tortured, or keep them in legal limbo until they die. We know which one they picked.
      - jacquesm 7y ago

Despegar 7y ago

This comment is veering into John Perry Barlow's "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" territory. The only thing that's become eminently obvious in recent years is what an intellectually bankrupt ideology it is. And I think even most self-reflective "cyberlibertarians" (who are probably in there 40s, 50s, and 60s) would agree with that at this point. Technology is not inherently emancipatory. In fact it's being used to subjugate and oppress people all over the world. At best technology is neutral. Representative governments are sovereign. The only thing that is going to emancipate mankind are the things that have always: self-determination, rule of law, strong institutions, and people who adhere to enlightenment values. No one wants to be ruled by an unaccountable technocratic elite who are mostly from the west coast of the US.

dmix 7y ago
I mostly agree but how many people were really motivated with this ideology where it’s worthy of punishment? Even the average person in the Bay Area just wanted cool stuff and liked technology, automation, and the power software gave them to create anything from scratch with only their mind (and of course some capital and state support systems). The techno liberation ideas were typically pushed after-the-fact by journos looking for a narrative or a potential side benefit in the minds of founders. Obviously the original source of this was was all predictive of the future before it all took shape and critically before it reached scale. This why the whole idea of captain retrospect’s punishing people for once holding these views might be misguided. I remember even with Web 2.0’s whole wiki-fication, wisdom of the crowds, and semantic web stuff were all treated largely as academic/pop science narratives and was met with plenty of skepticism. Even from people who actively contributed to it. This isn’t the first time either. We’ve been battling the concepts of decentralization vs centralization forever. I’m remember reading some great critiques by HL Mencken about the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ type arrangements and from the 1920s when the debates over representative democracy were raging... thanks to the rise of anarchists, socialists, etc who challenged norms: > The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre—the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. Not all of HLs words are relevant to tech, but he’s right that scale is the critically important test in these liberations and wisdom of groups things, which IMO break down far faster the bigger the platform gets and sum of the whole gets a lot more mediocre in order to be tolerable to everyone. I also think this is why small countries like Canada and Scandinavia are more functional politically but that’s another story. The first French Revolution also worked great in war time Paris until it went to the country sides and they went back to monarchy for a few more decades.

benologist 7y ago

Technology is already making a difference. $30,000 watches and yachts on Instagram are revealing corruption and tax evasion all over the world. Police violence is being recorded and distributed. Secrecy is harder than ever - Russia sent agents from the middle of nowhere to kill someone and from low-quality photos the internet pieced together their identities, ranks, where they lived, their career paths. We're not far from it being impossible for one parent of a child to remain unknown or unaware, that's going to be a funny one.

throwaway927 7y ago
And when the great detectives of the internet get things wrong, which is the vast majority of the time, and potentially ruin people's lives, who is holding them accountable?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
konart 7y ago
>Russia sent agents from the middle of nowhere Well, actually not from the middle of nowhere. Thanks to the said investigation and checks' photos we know that they were sent literally from one of the HQ buildings in Moscow.:D

whatshisface 7y ago

>US, China, etc. will take decades or centuries before being held accountable in this manner Remember Snowden.

sschueller 7y ago
Don't forget Manning and Assange which are currently both in Prison.
- mieseratte 7y ago
  Manning was pardoned for her leaks.
  - lawn 7y ago
    I thought her sentence was commuted which only reduces her sentence but it doesn't wash away her guilt. Edit: Also she's back in prison for refusing to testify against Assange.
    - mieseratte 7y ago
      > Edit: Also she's back in prison for refusing to testify against Assange. Well that's orthogonal to punishment for leaks.
  - vuln 7y ago
    She was never pardoned. Obama commuted most of her remaining sentence. There is a big difference between pardoned and commuted.
    - mieseratte 7y ago
      Ah then I'm in the wrong, bit different. Bit strange that they went for one and not the other, really.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    On the contrary. And if anything Manning is proof that Snowden got it right: the system will happily take revenge.

atoav 7y ago

Accountability is very relative in a time where the fabric of the real itself is beeingcalles into question by deep fakes and exteemely potent tools to synhesize images and voices. We will have to find societal responses towards these technological shifts or they will find us. And it is already happening: young people comparing their mirror image to the digitally optimized selfies they see of influencers they like. And then they figure out how to fake it themselves, but their parent generation believes everything they see online: a gang of foreign dark skinned men tricking the state wellfare into giving them 8 grand a month each, while the local people have to fear about beeing thrown out of their houses? outrage! No, online media is a double-tripple-edged sword and we need to find solutions to this that are not censorship or thought police. I’d opt for education, but I am afraid we’re a bit late to start that now.

SomeOldThrow 7y ago
> Accountability is very relative in a time where the fabric of the real itself is beeingcalles into question by deep fakes and exteemely potent tools to synhesize images and voices. All the more reason we need accountability on what wikileaks did release now. How else can we trust our government at all?

api 7y ago

Seems to me that the superpowers have already figured out how to neutralize the Internet: flood it with bullshit. Disinformation works on the same principle as radar chaff. When something is trying to see you you blow out a bunch of shiny tinsel and nobody can tell signal from noise. You can't keep secrets but you can definitely drown the truth. Online conspiracy nuts and other useful idiots are happy to help out by adding their own amateur BS to the noise screen.

mlb_hn 7y ago
Wharley (1982) is a great paper formalizing how militaries use deception [1]. There's a lot of combinations of tactics to use disinformation to distract from the truth beyond the chaff case. [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01402398208437106 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/0140239820843710...