Re: <nettime> Pascal Zachary: Rules for the Digital Panopticon (IEEE)

[Al Matthews <prolepsis@gmail.com>]

Hello list. On Tor,

>The US
>was slow to realize (or did they know this from the beginning?)

Surely the latter

It seems to me that [US] State feels a clear need to hold both sides of
this technology -- its availability, and its redress -- much as it avails
itself of diplomacy as well as espionage.

>> I don't think there is much of an uproar, outside relatively narrow
> civil liberties circles in the US and Europe (sadly enough). One of
> the reasons for this is that most people realize, somewhat dimly
> perhaps, that this system is for keeping people out, while they are
> happy to be inside. I think what very few people realize is how
> quickly the boundaries between inside and outside can be redrawn and
> how quickly one can suddenly find oneself on the outside. I think if
> the Occupy movement had been more successful, this is what would have
> happened.

>> To me, this is the real problem with the new kind of surveillance,
> it's easy not to feel it, until they yank the floor underneath your
> feet, and then you're outside, facing a very high wall. And there is
> no telling when it might happen.

I find this thread very useful but I find it, too, difficult to imagine
what "much" of an uproar might resemble. Would not the uproar be
necessarily reluctant to self-announce?

Even if we take for granted that that sort of movement cannot properly be
viewed in clear relief, there is, at the same time, a certain legal
nervousness both within and without the US, which reflects a seriousness to
the Snowden challenge. One can hear this in Obama's speeches on the issue:
minimizing Snowden by age and occupation, but mustering too an incredible
and -- we agree -- sinister response, not just to Snowden, but to
electronic disclosure in general.

> , that
> many will join these technological safe havens: pedophiles, pirates,
> drug dealers, terrorists, you name it. Their vibrant existence forces
> us to reconsider the social contract: we may have to surrender a
> certain level of order in order to benefit from the freedom that
> ensues.

This may be. Although doing so is not within my expertise, it seems helpful
to re-imagine the list and scope of the actors. I'm not even sure what the
contract could represent, since it is enforced by (first credit score and
later) killing. Or perhaps that is just eruption of an obvious lack of
control.


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