8 ms·

IT for Oppression

84 points by jcr 14y ago

LatvjuAvs 14y ago
Telly says so, must be true. Also, illusion. Illusion of fear, truth and lies. And sadly loss of self thinking. Works very well together.
hp50g 14y ago
This is an interesting dilemma. I'd rather have no technology than live under oppression powered by it.
- ZirconCode 14y ago
  Technology just magnifies the power of a person, so in saying that you would rather have no technology, are you not also implying that people who's incentives you dislike, already have more power in the world than the rest? Technology doesn't cause these problems, it magnifies them.
  - eru 14y ago
    Technology makes certain kinds of oppression (and means of gaining and keeping power) easier or possible at all, and makes certain other kinds harder or impossible. Technology does more than simple magnification.
    - ZirconCode 14y ago
      Both sides are present though, it's a pretty balanced arms race. Technology also helps people gain freedom, you can't simply look at one side of a sword, and say it has one edge. Many of the protests in Egypt were planned through social networks, and things like TOR can't be ignored either. North Korea on the other hand, manages perfectly well to oppress it's people without technology. Imagine what would happen if those people had an internet connection.
      - hp50g 14y ago
        It's definitely not balanced. It's a cat and mouse game with temporary advantages on both sides. However, all advantages are lost the moment someone legislates always in favor of the rulers which is what happened in the UK. Now we're tied and gagged with permanent threat of imprisonment for having an opinion (this has happened a LOT recently).
        zobzu 14y ago
        this. and we're acting as if those things couldn't happen anymore, that its a thing of the past - but its happening right now and we aint stopping it.
  - hp50g 14y ago
    You are correct. I'd say magnify is the wrong term. It empowers people who have disingenuous motives.
  - lmm 14y ago
    Pragmatically speaking, technology causes new problems. You might say it's already a problem that there exist crazy people who want to destroy the world, but really this is not a substantial issue nor one that is tractable to solve. So if there were a piece of new technology that meant that everyone had the power to destroy the world, that would for practical purposes be a new problem. There is an established, reasonable position (e.g. Watchmen) that it is bad to increase the power of individuals, because when large power can only be wielded by large societies this limits the damage it can do, compared to the same power in the hands of a single individual.
- wladimir 14y ago
  I understand your feeling, I know it very well. But that isn't a choice. There is no way to "stop technology". Humanity has always been about technology, from the moment we started picking up sticks. All we can really do is make sure that technology, and knowledge about it, is more evenly distributed, so that central control is more difficult: make sure it isn't seen as kind of magic to people that they deem is impossible to understand and out of reach to them. Technology is simply a set of tools and should be regarded as such. Centralized technologies with easily controlled, single points of failure are by far the most dangerous, and the most attractive for oppression. This is why DRM, for example, is really bad. It lives by obfuscation and being hard and/or undesirable to understand.
  - hp50g 14y ago
    Unfortunately technology's progression via marketing has turned it into a king of magic that is impossible to understand and is out of reach of them (past consumption). Look at most consumer IT products these days - black boxes for milking people. DRM, the cloud, closed source software, unified communications (commercial and government internet control) and surveillance already are enslaving us.
    - wladimir 14y ago
      I'm fully aware of what is happening, and how things appear to be going the "wrong" direction, at least according to the tech news. Don't let that despair you. What I proposed was something we (as in people with intimate knowledge about these things) could do to make this better. A lot of technical people are content with being high priests, and a lot of "consumers" content with not understanding what is going on. It may be possible to change that, albeit slowly. Looking beneath the surface level hyper commercialized pooha, there are quite active developments by in distributed protocols, mesh networks, cryptocurrencies, and people working on technology that is open and can meet basic human needs (for example see http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Construction_Set http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Constructio...), and so on. Another thing is that centralization makes things fragile. Even though centralization may be more efficient at first glance, once centralized systems collapse enough, people will look for more decentralized solutions.
- mikecane 14y ago
  The same "technology" that enables us to develop antibiotics so we can live also creates the biological threats that can massacre us during conflicts. Every knife cuts both ways.
lifeisstillgood 14y ago
This is not a technology issue - we should not expect everyone to become uber hackers in order to live free (silicon-chip rats?) This is about living under a constitution guaranteed by law. Syria and china are oppressed because people obey orders. Regimes have only ever changed because people stop obeying orders or get invaded. China knows if it uses totalitarian digital tools to opress it's citizens, they will simply avoid the digital world. And chinas growth will crumble and then there really will be a revolution. Yes privacy is dead, yes we need to create new laws that give a level playing field in surveillance, but when we solve that problem, it will not solve the problem that Facebook knows you are gay, so some people will sell you tickets to G.A.Y. And some wil put a pink triangle on your shirt. I do not believe that we should put vast resources into evading tracking so that people living under these regimes can do the digital equivalent of living like Anne Frank. The problem is not better hiding places - the problem is having to hide in the first place
- endgame 14y ago
  > The problem is not better hiding places - the problem is having to hide in the first place Do you consider the first a necessary prerequisite of the second?
- lsc 14y ago
  >The problem is not better hiding places - the problem is having to hide in the first place. You are missing the point of privacy. the whole point of privacy is that society is sometimes wrong. And if you can't tell I'm doing it without peeking in my bedroom window? (which is to say, if you can't tell I'm doing something without violating my privacy) well, that makes a reasonable heuristic for "maybe you shouldn't enforce rules about it"
  - lmm 14y ago
    The amount of things we can infer from publicly available information - where you were seen on the public streets, what you've worn when visiting certain groups - is growing immensely. For many, many things we only ever had "privacy through obscurity"; this is going away now and will not be coming back, and trying to make our lives private again is like trying to make bits uncopyable or water not wet. We should be figuring out how to adapt rather than trying to go back to how we were.
jcr 14y ago
The most interesting part that Schneier gets right is the relationships between the technologies used for censorship, propaganda, surveillance, and control. For example, if you want to use privacy to thwart surveillance and censorship, then you unfortunately make propaganda much easier, and in the sense that propaganda is effective, you also make control much easier. Though Schneier is great for stating the issues and relationships, he tends to avoid proposing any solutions, and also avoids citing any existing attempts towards solutions.
- zobzu 14y ago
  yes but on the other hand, he has exposure and he does sensibilize people in the right way. i doubt he actually has a solution - as he writes in his conclusion, someone has yet to figure it out. and I'd add, this will hopefully happen in our lifetime, otherwise, dark ages are ahead of us.
- mikecane 14y ago
  >>>Though Schneier is great for stating the issues and relationships, he tends to avoid proposing any solutions, and also avoids citing any existing attempts towards solutions. That's like criticizing someone who has discovered a disease because he hasn't also simultaneously created a cure.
  - bmj 14y ago
    Agreed. Many, many people will never even consider the sorts of connections that Schneier makes. Simply getting a few people to think more deeply about the role of technology in our lives is progress.
  - jcr 14y ago
    If you look at my HN submissions over the last half decade, you'll see I'm a huge fan of Bruce Schneier, I tend to follow his work closely. My criticism is quite mild and fair; he really does ask great questions and does a fantastic job of illuminating difficult problems, but he does so without proposing his own solutions or citing the proposed solutions of others. I believe part of the reason for his approach is for the sake of maintaining a strong defensive posture. For example, as the person who coined the phrase "Security Theater" in regards to the DHS airport screening, he did a great job of illuminating the problems. On the other hand, if he had proposed a solution, then he would have left himself open to criticism from political pundits. If he had stood up and said, "Abolish the DHS," then many would portray him as a kook and many would have written off his views. What he does is clever, but I'm uncertain how effective it is. Citing the research/proposals of others, without endorsement, would allow people to also see potential/proposed solutions, as well as see the problems.
Vlaix 14y ago
I personally support the use of IT as a means of oppression by various regimes. Not so much because of some peculiar esteem I'd have for said regimes, but because I'm kind of fed up by squinty libertarians and source-code rioters telling us what software and IT are and what they should be used for. Not even talking about the validity of armchair journalists' opinions about world politics. IT is a bunch of tools, and tools don't have a nature or an intrinsic value but functions. Now a tool that is used to control information _will_ be used to slow its spreading if needed, even though its creator had another idea in mind. Damn, using a network to forbid information when it was intended to spread it is even a form of hacking if you thing about it. Now regarding the IT industry : the liberalism that allows startups to pop-up all the time at a tremendous rate also allows a company to sell products to clients that would be deemed shady in said company's nation. When you get by a system, you either accept its flows as well or play this hyper-hypocritical game of being outraged when things don't go your way.
- EliRivers 14y ago
  "I personally support the use of IT as a means of oppression ... because I'm kind of fed up by squinty libertarians and source-code rioters telling us what software and IT are and what they should be used for" Fortunately for the rest us of, children aren't allowed to vote, so maybe by the time you've grown up you'll have grown out of your tantrum and you won't approve of screwing everybody over because you're annoyed at a handful of people.
  - Vlaix 14y ago
    I've been able to vote for quite a long time, and never did so out of principle (in a country where 80%+ of the population votes, very much unlike the US). I actually think the need of surveillance for a number of nations (in particular Syria, which has been the target of widespread disinformation, slander and lies lately) is perfectly legitimate and I deem this opinion perfectly reasonable considered my general worldview. I put away childish things a long time ago. Where being screwed over is concerned, I'm fairly familiar with it and as nothing always goes the way I pray it won't, I feel entitled to a bit of vaguely legitimate retribution. It's widely unpopular, especially on a site such as HN where the average Joe has the mind-openness of a witch's tit (whatever the whole hacker/geek ethos might suggest), but I gave away popularity when I started socializing with anything else than cats.
zalew 14y ago
From a few recent posts around here I guess he's not very liked in the tech bubble circles, but in case anyone is interested in reading a tiny bit more about this topic, I recommend Morozov's book http://www.amazon.com/The-Net-Delusion-Internet-Freedom/dp/1610391063 http://www.amazon.com/The-Net-Delusion-Internet-Freedom/dp/1...
minikites 14y ago
Ted Kaczynski made a similar point: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabo... (context starts at section 171) >In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite—just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft- hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone’s physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes “treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or to make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals. >127. A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom often turns out to threaten it very seriously later on. For example, consider motorized transport. A walking man formerly could go where he pleased, go at his own pace without observing any traffic regulations, and was independent of technological support-systems. When motor vehicles were introduced they appeared to increase man’s freedom. They took no freedom away from the walking man, no one had to have an automobile if he didn’t want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automobile could travel much faster and farther than a walking man. But the introduction of motorized transport soon changed society in such a way as to restrict greatly man’s freedom of locomotion. When automobiles became numerous, it became necessary to regulate their use extensively. In a car, especially in densely populated areas, one cannot just go where one likes at one’s own pace one’s movement is governed by the flow of traffic and by various traffic laws. One is tied down by various obligations: license requirements, driver test, renewing registration, insurance, maintenance required for safety, monthly payments on purchase price. Moreover, the use of motorized transport is no longer optional. Since the introduction of motorized transport the arrangement of our cities has changed in such a way that the majority of people no longer live within walking distance of their place of employment, shopping areas and recreational opportunities, so that they HAVE TO depend on the automobile for transportation. Or else they must use public transportation, in which case they have even less control over their own movement than when driving a car. Even the walker’s freedom is now greatly restricted. In the city he continually has to stop to wait for traffic lights that are designed mainly to serve auto traffic. In the country, motor traffic makes it dangerous and unpleasant to walk along the highway. (Note this important point that we have just illustrated with the case of motorized transport: When a new item of technology is introduced as an option that an individual can accept or not as he chooses, it does not necessarily REMAIN optional. In many cases the new technology changes society in such a way that people eventually find themselves FORCED to use it.)
youngerdryas 14y ago
>Surveillance is necessary for personalized marketing Say that to yourself a few times. It's newspeak. Personalized marketing is creepy in the same way a robot that looks human is creepy. The more accurate it is the creepier it becomes.
- willismichael 14y ago
  That's a fascinating variant of the Uncanny Valley principle that I hadn't considered before (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley)
smutticus 14y ago
I would like to tell a story about a small part I played in this game once. I was working for a network equipment manufacturer, let's call them Acme Routers, and I was visiting a medium sized residential ISP in a EU country. The reason I was visiting this ISP was because they wanted us to develop a feature for them to "trap-and-trace" their residential internet subscribers. In the industry we call this "lawful interception" and it's how the government snoops on people. Acme Routers didn't want to develop this feature and we were making a display of showing how difficult it would be for us and how much it would cost us. We wanted guarantees that they would purchase more from us if we developed this feature. It was only during the actual meeting that I realized the ISP didn't want this feature either. No one wanted to deal with this feature. The ISP didn't want the hassle and added expense and Acme wanted to spend time on features that would make us more competitive. But the ISP needed this feature in order to be compliant with their laws. They would face penalties if they could not give law enforcement access to their subscribers. If Acme decided not to make this feature the ISP would just pick another vendor. So we developed the feature for them. The moral of the story is that technical people don't always get to decide the direction of technology. It's policy makers and their penalties that sometimes force technical folks into developing things they would rather not. There is no getting around the law as an operator if you wish to remain an operator for long. " The world is run by men who use laws for tools." -- Talib Kweli So we have to change the law, because that's the only way we can remove the tools of evil men. As technologists we want to think there is a technical solution to this dilemma, but there isn't. The only way to prevent technology from being used as a tool of oppression is to change the law so it cannot be used in such a way. And if we cannot change the law then we must change those wielding it, through peaceful means if possible and violent means if necessary. Education plays a primary role here. As a technologist other people look to you for interpretations of our modern world and technology. Lead them by example and explain your actions along the way. Educate those around you about issues relating to technology and ethics. We take for granted just how many people there are who don't know anything about these issues. They might care about it but they are truly ignorant of the issues. Fix that. Let's make the term technologist synonymous with a person who understands ethics and technology.
- snowwrestler 14y ago
TomJoad 14y ago
This is exactly why I don't take government work that comes with a clearance, despite it being the most plentiful and profitable work in my area (D.C.). Some people's work gets put to malicious purposes despite their best intentions, but someone has to develop that maliciousness. I personally sleep better at night knowing I am not developing that maliciousness.
denzil_correa 14y ago
Like most other things designed for humans, technology is a double edged sword. I wonder if there would be a "technology disarmament" treaty someday on the lines of "nuclear disarmament". I guess before that happens there would be a technological disaster viz. the Hiroshima/Nagasaki equivalent of IT.
snowwrestler 14y ago
Oppression is a cultural and legal problem, and can only be addressed with cultural and legal solutions. You have to define your preferred reality and then convince other people to agree with you. You have to become politically active to achieve political solutions. Granted: this is hard for engineers to wrap their heads around. In the engineering mindset, math and physics can be trusted; people and institutions cannot. But math and physics don't have police powers--people and institutions do. The rules that govern our actions matter more than what we know and can prove mathematically. It doesn't matter how well-built a bridge is, if men with guns can keep you from crossing it. The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act is an example of how it's possible to set limits on the cultural and legal implications of powerful new technologies. Internet activists looking for a model should look a lot more carefully at the SOPA campaign, than at the latest crypto chat tool or peer to peer software. Internet activists and companies beat that law through better propaganda, not better technology.
doctornemo 14y ago
Interesting to see Schneier make this point. Assange et al argue similarly in _Cypherpunks_.

84 points by jcr 14y ago

Telly says so, must be true. Also, illusion. Illusion of fear, truth and lies. And sadly loss of self thinking. Works very well together.

hp50g 14y ago

This is an interesting dilemma. I'd rather have no technology than live under oppression powered by it.

ZirconCode 14y ago
Technology just magnifies the power of a person, so in saying that you would rather have no technology, are you not also implying that people who's incentives you dislike, already have more power in the world than the rest? Technology doesn't cause these problems, it magnifies them.
- eru 14y ago
  Technology makes certain kinds of oppression (and means of gaining and keeping power) easier or possible at all, and makes certain other kinds harder or impossible. Technology does more than simple magnification.
  - ZirconCode 14y ago
    Both sides are present though, it's a pretty balanced arms race. Technology also helps people gain freedom, you can't simply look at one side of a sword, and say it has one edge. Many of the protests in Egypt were planned through social networks, and things like TOR can't be ignored either. North Korea on the other hand, manages perfectly well to oppress it's people without technology. Imagine what would happen if those people had an internet connection.
    - hp50g 14y ago
      It's definitely not balanced. It's a cat and mouse game with temporary advantages on both sides. However, all advantages are lost the moment someone legislates always in favor of the rulers which is what happened in the UK. Now we're tied and gagged with permanent threat of imprisonment for having an opinion (this has happened a LOT recently).
      - zobzu 14y ago
        this. and we're acting as if those things couldn't happen anymore, that its a thing of the past - but its happening right now and we aint stopping it.
- hp50g 14y ago
  You are correct. I'd say magnify is the wrong term. It empowers people who have disingenuous motives.
- lmm 14y ago
  Pragmatically speaking, technology causes new problems. You might say it's already a problem that there exist crazy people who want to destroy the world, but really this is not a substantial issue nor one that is tractable to solve. So if there were a piece of new technology that meant that everyone had the power to destroy the world, that would for practical purposes be a new problem. There is an established, reasonable position (e.g. Watchmen) that it is bad to increase the power of individuals, because when large power can only be wielded by large societies this limits the damage it can do, compared to the same power in the hands of a single individual.
wladimir 14y ago
I understand your feeling, I know it very well. But that isn't a choice. There is no way to "stop technology". Humanity has always been about technology, from the moment we started picking up sticks. All we can really do is make sure that technology, and knowledge about it, is more evenly distributed, so that central control is more difficult: make sure it isn't seen as kind of magic to people that they deem is impossible to understand and out of reach to them. Technology is simply a set of tools and should be regarded as such. Centralized technologies with easily controlled, single points of failure are by far the most dangerous, and the most attractive for oppression. This is why DRM, for example, is really bad. It lives by obfuscation and being hard and/or undesirable to understand.
- hp50g 14y ago
  Unfortunately technology's progression via marketing has turned it into a king of magic that is impossible to understand and is out of reach of them (past consumption). Look at most consumer IT products these days - black boxes for milking people. DRM, the cloud, closed source software, unified communications (commercial and government internet control) and surveillance already are enslaving us.
  - wladimir 14y ago
    I'm fully aware of what is happening, and how things appear to be going the "wrong" direction, at least according to the tech news. Don't let that despair you. What I proposed was something we (as in people with intimate knowledge about these things) could do to make this better. A lot of technical people are content with being high priests, and a lot of "consumers" content with not understanding what is going on. It may be possible to change that, albeit slowly. Looking beneath the surface level hyper commercialized pooha, there are quite active developments by in distributed protocols, mesh networks, cryptocurrencies, and people working on technology that is open and can meet basic human needs (for example see http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Construction_Set http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Constructio...), and so on. Another thing is that centralization makes things fragile. Even though centralization may be more efficient at first glance, once centralized systems collapse enough, people will look for more decentralized solutions.
mikecane 14y ago
The same "technology" that enables us to develop antibiotics so we can live also creates the biological threats that can massacre us during conflicts. Every knife cuts both ways.

lifeisstillgood 14y ago

This is not a technology issue - we should not expect everyone to become uber hackers in order to live free (silicon-chip rats?) This is about living under a constitution guaranteed by law. Syria and china are oppressed because people obey orders. Regimes have only ever changed because people stop obeying orders or get invaded. China knows if it uses totalitarian digital tools to opress it's citizens, they will simply avoid the digital world. And chinas growth will crumble and then there really will be a revolution. Yes privacy is dead, yes we need to create new laws that give a level playing field in surveillance, but when we solve that problem, it will not solve the problem that Facebook knows you are gay, so some people will sell you tickets to G.A.Y. And some wil put a pink triangle on your shirt. I do not believe that we should put vast resources into evading tracking so that people living under these regimes can do the digital equivalent of living like Anne Frank. The problem is not better hiding places - the problem is having to hide in the first place

endgame 14y ago
> The problem is not better hiding places - the problem is having to hide in the first place Do you consider the first a necessary prerequisite of the second?
lsc 14y ago
>The problem is not better hiding places - the problem is having to hide in the first place. You are missing the point of privacy. the whole point of privacy is that society is sometimes wrong. And if you can't tell I'm doing it without peeking in my bedroom window? (which is to say, if you can't tell I'm doing something without violating my privacy) well, that makes a reasonable heuristic for "maybe you shouldn't enforce rules about it"
- lmm 14y ago
  The amount of things we can infer from publicly available information - where you were seen on the public streets, what you've worn when visiting certain groups - is growing immensely. For many, many things we only ever had "privacy through obscurity"; this is going away now and will not be coming back, and trying to make our lives private again is like trying to make bits uncopyable or water not wet. We should be figuring out how to adapt rather than trying to go back to how we were.

jcr 14y ago

The most interesting part that Schneier gets right is the relationships between the technologies used for censorship, propaganda, surveillance, and control. For example, if you want to use privacy to thwart surveillance and censorship, then you unfortunately make propaganda much easier, and in the sense that propaganda is effective, you also make control much easier. Though Schneier is great for stating the issues and relationships, he tends to avoid proposing any solutions, and also avoids citing any existing attempts towards solutions.

zobzu 14y ago
yes but on the other hand, he has exposure and he does sensibilize people in the right way. i doubt he actually has a solution - as he writes in his conclusion, someone has yet to figure it out. and I'd add, this will hopefully happen in our lifetime, otherwise, dark ages are ahead of us.
mikecane 14y ago
>>>Though Schneier is great for stating the issues and relationships, he tends to avoid proposing any solutions, and also avoids citing any existing attempts towards solutions. That's like criticizing someone who has discovered a disease because he hasn't also simultaneously created a cure.
- bmj 14y ago
  Agreed. Many, many people will never even consider the sorts of connections that Schneier makes. Simply getting a few people to think more deeply about the role of technology in our lives is progress.
- jcr 14y ago
  If you look at my HN submissions over the last half decade, you'll see I'm a huge fan of Bruce Schneier, I tend to follow his work closely. My criticism is quite mild and fair; he really does ask great questions and does a fantastic job of illuminating difficult problems, but he does so without proposing his own solutions or citing the proposed solutions of others. I believe part of the reason for his approach is for the sake of maintaining a strong defensive posture. For example, as the person who coined the phrase "Security Theater" in regards to the DHS airport screening, he did a great job of illuminating the problems. On the other hand, if he had proposed a solution, then he would have left himself open to criticism from political pundits. If he had stood up and said, "Abolish the DHS," then many would portray him as a kook and many would have written off his views. What he does is clever, but I'm uncertain how effective it is. Citing the research/proposals of others, without endorsement, would allow people to also see potential/proposed solutions, as well as see the problems.

Vlaix 14y ago

I personally support the use of IT as a means of oppression by various regimes. Not so much because of some peculiar esteem I'd have for said regimes, but because I'm kind of fed up by squinty libertarians and source-code rioters telling us what software and IT are and what they should be used for. Not even talking about the validity of armchair journalists' opinions about world politics. IT is a bunch of tools, and tools don't have a nature or an intrinsic value but functions. Now a tool that is used to control information _will_ be used to slow its spreading if needed, even though its creator had another idea in mind. Damn, using a network to forbid information when it was intended to spread it is even a form of hacking if you thing about it. Now regarding the IT industry : the liberalism that allows startups to pop-up all the time at a tremendous rate also allows a company to sell products to clients that would be deemed shady in said company's nation. When you get by a system, you either accept its flows as well or play this hyper-hypocritical game of being outraged when things don't go your way.

EliRivers 14y ago
"I personally support the use of IT as a means of oppression ... because I'm kind of fed up by squinty libertarians and source-code rioters telling us what software and IT are and what they should be used for" Fortunately for the rest us of, children aren't allowed to vote, so maybe by the time you've grown up you'll have grown out of your tantrum and you won't approve of screwing everybody over because you're annoyed at a handful of people.
- Vlaix 14y ago
  I've been able to vote for quite a long time, and never did so out of principle (in a country where 80%+ of the population votes, very much unlike the US). I actually think the need of surveillance for a number of nations (in particular Syria, which has been the target of widespread disinformation, slander and lies lately) is perfectly legitimate and I deem this opinion perfectly reasonable considered my general worldview. I put away childish things a long time ago. Where being screwed over is concerned, I'm fairly familiar with it and as nothing always goes the way I pray it won't, I feel entitled to a bit of vaguely legitimate retribution. It's widely unpopular, especially on a site such as HN where the average Joe has the mind-openness of a witch's tit (whatever the whole hacker/geek ethos might suggest), but I gave away popularity when I started socializing with anything else than cats.

zalew 14y ago

From a few recent posts around here I guess he's not very liked in the tech bubble circles, but in case anyone is interested in reading a tiny bit more about this topic, I recommend Morozov's book http://www.amazon.com/The-Net-Delusion-Internet-Freedom/dp/1610391063 http://www.amazon.com/The-Net-Delusion-Internet-Freedom/dp/1...

minikites 14y ago

Ted Kaczynski made a similar point: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabo... (context starts at section 171) >In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite—just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft- hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone’s physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes “treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or to make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals. >127. A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom often turns out to threaten it very seriously later on. For example, consider motorized transport. A walking man formerly could go where he pleased, go at his own pace without observing any traffic regulations, and was independent of technological support-systems. When motor vehicles were introduced they appeared to increase man’s freedom. They took no freedom away from the walking man, no one had to have an automobile if he didn’t want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automobile could travel much faster and farther than a walking man. But the introduction of motorized transport soon changed society in such a way as to restrict greatly man’s freedom of locomotion. When automobiles became numerous, it became necessary to regulate their use extensively. In a car, especially in densely populated areas, one cannot just go where one likes at one’s own pace one’s movement is governed by the flow of traffic and by various traffic laws. One is tied down by various obligations: license requirements, driver test, renewing registration, insurance, maintenance required for safety, monthly payments on purchase price. Moreover, the use of motorized transport is no longer optional. Since the introduction of motorized transport the arrangement of our cities has changed in such a way that the majority of people no longer live within walking distance of their place of employment, shopping areas and recreational opportunities, so that they HAVE TO depend on the automobile for transportation. Or else they must use public transportation, in which case they have even less control over their own movement than when driving a car. Even the walker’s freedom is now greatly restricted. In the city he continually has to stop to wait for traffic lights that are designed mainly to serve auto traffic. In the country, motor traffic makes it dangerous and unpleasant to walk along the highway. (Note this important point that we have just illustrated with the case of motorized transport: When a new item of technology is introduced as an option that an individual can accept or not as he chooses, it does not necessarily REMAIN optional. In many cases the new technology changes society in such a way that people eventually find themselves FORCED to use it.)

youngerdryas 14y ago

>Surveillance is necessary for personalized marketing Say that to yourself a few times. It's newspeak. Personalized marketing is creepy in the same way a robot that looks human is creepy. The more accurate it is the creepier it becomes.

willismichael 14y ago
That's a fascinating variant of the Uncanny Valley principle that I hadn't considered before (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley)

smutticus 14y ago

I would like to tell a story about a small part I played in this game once. I was working for a network equipment manufacturer, let's call them Acme Routers, and I was visiting a medium sized residential ISP in a EU country. The reason I was visiting this ISP was because they wanted us to develop a feature for them to "trap-and-trace" their residential internet subscribers. In the industry we call this "lawful interception" and it's how the government snoops on people. Acme Routers didn't want to develop this feature and we were making a display of showing how difficult it would be for us and how much it would cost us. We wanted guarantees that they would purchase more from us if we developed this feature. It was only during the actual meeting that I realized the ISP didn't want this feature either. No one wanted to deal with this feature. The ISP didn't want the hassle and added expense and Acme wanted to spend time on features that would make us more competitive. But the ISP needed this feature in order to be compliant with their laws. They would face penalties if they could not give law enforcement access to their subscribers. If Acme decided not to make this feature the ISP would just pick another vendor. So we developed the feature for them. The moral of the story is that technical people don't always get to decide the direction of technology. It's policy makers and their penalties that sometimes force technical folks into developing things they would rather not. There is no getting around the law as an operator if you wish to remain an operator for long. " The world is run by men who use laws for tools." -- Talib Kweli So we have to change the law, because that's the only way we can remove the tools of evil men. As technologists we want to think there is a technical solution to this dilemma, but there isn't. The only way to prevent technology from being used as a tool of oppression is to change the law so it cannot be used in such a way. And if we cannot change the law then we must change those wielding it, through peaceful means if possible and violent means if necessary. Education plays a primary role here. As a technologist other people look to you for interpretations of our modern world and technology. Lead them by example and explain your actions along the way. Educate those around you about issues relating to technology and ethics. We take for granted just how many people there are who don't know anything about these issues. They might care about it but they are truly ignorant of the issues. Fix that. Let's make the term technologist synonymous with a person who understands ethics and technology.

snowwrestler 14y ago

TomJoad 14y ago

This is exactly why I don't take government work that comes with a clearance, despite it being the most plentiful and profitable work in my area (D.C.). Some people's work gets put to malicious purposes despite their best intentions, but someone has to develop that maliciousness. I personally sleep better at night knowing I am not developing that maliciousness.

denzil_correa 14y ago

Like most other things designed for humans, technology is a double edged sword. I wonder if there would be a "technology disarmament" treaty someday on the lines of "nuclear disarmament". I guess before that happens there would be a technological disaster viz. the Hiroshima/Nagasaki equivalent of IT.

snowwrestler 14y ago

Oppression is a cultural and legal problem, and can only be addressed with cultural and legal solutions. You have to define your preferred reality and then convince other people to agree with you. You have to become politically active to achieve political solutions. Granted: this is hard for engineers to wrap their heads around. In the engineering mindset, math and physics can be trusted; people and institutions cannot. But math and physics don't have police powers--people and institutions do. The rules that govern our actions matter more than what we know and can prove mathematically. It doesn't matter how well-built a bridge is, if men with guns can keep you from crossing it. The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act is an example of how it's possible to set limits on the cultural and legal implications of powerful new technologies. Internet activists looking for a model should look a lot more carefully at the SOPA campaign, than at the latest crypto chat tool or peer to peer software. Internet activists and companies beat that law through better propaganda, not better technology.

doctornemo 14y ago

Interesting to see Schneier make this point. Assange et al argue similarly in _Cypherpunks_.