Re: <nettime> Call for publication of all Snowden papers gets louder

["t byfield" <tbyfield@panix.com>]

On 16 Nov 2014, at 12:20, Molly Hankwitz wrote:

> Go, Geert! Great thought. Also, a great and powerful demonstration of 
> how publishing is out if bounds to censorship today!

I wouldn't bet on that.

Exploring the net's potential as a kind of 'middleware' to facilitate 
material production has been central to Geert's thinking for a long time 
-- hence, for example, nettime, which was conceived not just as an end 
in itself (i.e., a mailing list and a website) but as a means to bring 
people together around artifacts and productive settings where things 
like ~books were made and circulated.

But that was at a time when the 'youth' of the net was much more 
apparent -- when it was seen as a vehicle for younger generations to 
circumvent the exclusionary logic of ~local contexts and institutions 
(publishing, the art system, higher ed, etc). So Geert's remarks about 
Snowden can be seen in that historical light, which of course is just 
one aspect among many. But, even so, something strange has happened when 
we look to books to liberate us from the strictures of the net.

I'd like to share your optimism, but I don't. When Wikileaks first 
published the tranche of documents that came to be called 'cablegate,' 
one consequence was that Amazon's hosting services came under political 
pressure and gave them the boot. At the time -- which was only a few 
years ago -- Amazon was still more closely associated with its roots as 
a purveyor of books. And since book vendors (awkward term, but it 
account for the changing constellation of activities in print) have 
traditionally been one of the front lines for free-speech aspirations 
and activities for centuries, Amazon's actions struck me as an affront 
to the obligations that come with the roles they were busy 
disintermediating. So I did a little experiment, which I wrote up here:

	http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-1102/msg00058.html

It's safe to assume that anyone and anything involved in publishing the 
Snowden doc en bloc would be severely punished: people would be jailed, 
institutions shuttered, assets confiscated, networks put under 
excruciating pressure -- the works.

And it's not just Snowden. I worked for a long time with public-interest 
publishers who on occasion were forced to produce some books (e.g., 
exhibition catalogues that included 'sexual' material like Mapplethorpe 
photos or literary accounts of incest) with printers that specialized in 
porn -- because 'normal' printers were afraid any controversy would 
result in boycotts by rightist culture warriors. That was decades ago. 
Boycotts by customers probably aren't such an issue now, but clampdowns 
via financial institutions are probably a much more serious threat.

Publishing the complete Snowden corpus would be a symbolic act -- maybe 
a very important one, but symbolic nonetheless. I agree with John Young 
that the way in which they're being released has led to a kind of 
cottage/hothouse industry with very identifiable beneficiaries. And, 
right now, that industry isn't doing so well because it magnifies and 
distorts the actions of a handful of people -- notably Matt Taibbi, John 
Cook, and behind them Pierre Omidyar -- in ways that undermine Snowden's 
stated aims and what many people see as the restoration of a more sane 
world order.

But I also agree with Patrice that a 'completist' approach wouldn't 
substantially change things. The Snowden corpus, after all, and the 
Manning corpus as well, are fairly haphazard and incomplete selections. 
What's the point of completely publishing an incomplete corpus? I 
wouldn't say I disagree with Patrice that we know the gist, but nor 
would I agree with him. It's wiser to assume that we don't. But, as he 
noted, the questions remains *what is to be done?* based on what we know 
-- and waiting for more is, well, just more waiting. For what? What 
morsel of info would finally trigger whatever action is needed?

It's unfortunate that, as civil society digests the Snowden material, so 
much attention has been channeled into 'opsec.' The material is 
technical, and for that reason it invites a technical response. And some 
of that response is a good thing, because the social and political 
forces that benefit from the hodgepodge we call networked communications 
make for strange bedfellows: intelligence services, criminal networks, 
and random ankle-biters. But, really, securing all your communications 
is a trap. Security architectures make perverse assumptions about 
communications and expression -- about what they are, and most important 
what they can mean. Opsecifying everything extends those assumptions.

Imagine that books from the very beginning had been encrypted and 
'secured' in order to limit who could read them. That's the historical 
vision proposed by opsec advocates. OK, so let's say we secured 
everything -- now what?

In many ways, the goal of state security as it's now understood is to 
ensure that no unexpected eruption, no *event*. The opsecification of 
everything advances that aim by drastically curtailing much of what we 
call the public sphere. That may be a shrewd transitional political 
tactic (I think it is), but it isn't an end in itself, let alone a 
strategy for building a better future.

Cheers,
T


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