3 ms·

John Perry Barlow – Online privacy double agent

30 points by denzil_correa 12y ago

pmoriarty 12y ago
Barlow seems to agree with David Brin's thesis in "Transparent Society"[1] that the inevitable loss of privacy of ordinary citizens will correspond with an increase in transparency of governments, the powerful, and the aparatus they create. This is dangerously naive optimism. The asymmetry in power and resources ensures that no such balance in transparency is possible. Ordinary citizens do not have gigantic datacenters and armies of mathematicians, spies, and computer scientists at their beck and call to monitor the government with. That's not to say there hasn't been some notable progress with respect to government transparency, but they are a few fireflies when compared to the floodlights that the powers that be have at their disposal. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society
- parasubvert 12y ago
  Depends on how you define power. Power to me is command over resources: land, labour, capital, energy, knowledge. As the economy progresses, knowledge becomes the key resource to maintaining secrets. But knowledge is leaky and always getting obsoleted by new knowledge. Today, privacy is enforced by a power imbalance in the knowledge between how to encrypt or verify and the power to forcibly decrypt or forge. What happens if hacks become commonplace tools? If Assymetric encryption gets compromised through a new tool that can factor primes more quickly on a cloud, for example. Will global commerce halt? Will global espionage stop? I doubt it. More likely we will erect broader political and social structures to fight forgery, and otherwise to expect transparency.
  - fulafel 12y ago
    But in context of mass surveillance we are talking about a power and capital intensive system for producing that secrely kept knowledge ("intelligence"). It hasn't been about breaking crypto, just stick and carrot to get cooperation from infra providers and then building systems to refine it all. This'd is not about to become accessible for the average citizen.
    - parasubvert 12y ago
      "It hasn't been about breaking crypto" It has to a large extent, and will continue to be so as non-cooperating application/service providers encrypt their end-to-end data to minimize snooping. The final source of power I neglected is the power to incarcerate or do violence, of course. Though the average citizen doesn't have that power to compel the installation of a tap on the AT&T backbone. But it's a very crude power that can only be taken so far without backlash.
- VLM 12y ago
  You could analyze historical examples of asymmetric power and see how they turned out, to predict what might happen. Good outcome: Rural electrification in the '30s Unionization in the early industrial era (over a century ago) 70s era OSHA, EPA Civil rights in the 60s Bad outcome: Redlining real estate Gerrymandering consolidation of capital into very few hands consolidation of income into very few hands Native Americans vs the Army Internment camps for Japanese in the 40s or concentration camps for arabs today Anything ending in complex aka military industrial complex, or rephrased the merger of .gov and .com Overall it looks like a negative outcome is likely, although it is possible, it hasn't happened for generations.
xnull2guest 12y ago
I don't really get a sense from this article that Barlow is a double agent.
- irremediable 12y ago
  Agreed. Presumably, the article's use of quotation marks means he described himself that way. I'm guessing it was tongue-in-cheek, though.
- mathattack 12y ago
  Even the Economist, a paid site, has been reduced to LinkBait.

30 points by denzil_correa 12y ago

Barlow seems to agree with David Brin's thesis in "Transparent Society"[1] that the inevitable loss of privacy of ordinary citizens will correspond with an increase in transparency of governments, the powerful, and the aparatus they create. This is dangerously naive optimism. The asymmetry in power and resources ensures that no such balance in transparency is possible. Ordinary citizens do not have gigantic datacenters and armies of mathematicians, spies, and computer scientists at their beck and call to monitor the government with. That's not to say there hasn't been some notable progress with respect to government transparency, but they are a few fireflies when compared to the floodlights that the powers that be have at their disposal. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society

parasubvert 12y ago
Depends on how you define power. Power to me is command over resources: land, labour, capital, energy, knowledge. As the economy progresses, knowledge becomes the key resource to maintaining secrets. But knowledge is leaky and always getting obsoleted by new knowledge. Today, privacy is enforced by a power imbalance in the knowledge between how to encrypt or verify and the power to forcibly decrypt or forge. What happens if hacks become commonplace tools? If Assymetric encryption gets compromised through a new tool that can factor primes more quickly on a cloud, for example. Will global commerce halt? Will global espionage stop? I doubt it. More likely we will erect broader political and social structures to fight forgery, and otherwise to expect transparency.
- fulafel 12y ago
  But in context of mass surveillance we are talking about a power and capital intensive system for producing that secrely kept knowledge ("intelligence"). It hasn't been about breaking crypto, just stick and carrot to get cooperation from infra providers and then building systems to refine it all. This'd is not about to become accessible for the average citizen.
  - parasubvert 12y ago
    "It hasn't been about breaking crypto" It has to a large extent, and will continue to be so as non-cooperating application/service providers encrypt their end-to-end data to minimize snooping. The final source of power I neglected is the power to incarcerate or do violence, of course. Though the average citizen doesn't have that power to compel the installation of a tap on the AT&T backbone. But it's a very crude power that can only be taken so far without backlash.
VLM 12y ago
You could analyze historical examples of asymmetric power and see how they turned out, to predict what might happen. Good outcome: Rural electrification in the '30s Unionization in the early industrial era (over a century ago) 70s era OSHA, EPA Civil rights in the 60s Bad outcome: Redlining real estate Gerrymandering consolidation of capital into very few hands consolidation of income into very few hands Native Americans vs the Army Internment camps for Japanese in the 40s or concentration camps for arabs today Anything ending in complex aka military industrial complex, or rephrased the merger of .gov and .com Overall it looks like a negative outcome is likely, although it is possible, it hasn't happened for generations.

xnull2guest 12y ago

I don't really get a sense from this article that Barlow is a double agent.

irremediable 12y ago
Agreed. Presumably, the article's use of quotation marks means he described himself that way. I'm guessing it was tongue-in-cheek, though.
mathattack 12y ago
Even the Economist, a paid site, has been reduced to LinkBait.