Stephenson Gives "Heretical" Speech @ Privacy Summit

skatedork writes: "From a Washington Post article: 'Speaking last night after the annual presentation of the "Orwell Awards," Stephenson challenged the more than 1,000 people who had gathered from around the world to focus their attention less on installing encryption software against the vague threat of snooping by Big Brother, a reassuringly simple fantasy of a totalitarian state, and more on the very real pattern of injustice brought to bear on people through employers and other institutions. Stephenson said he was less worried these days about broad, theoretical privacy issues than about a recent incident in which a stray bullet crashed through a window at a friend's house and narrowly missed a sleeping child.'"

Comments

Finally, some sense

[Anonymous Coward]

At long last someone has come out and said what is obviusly true, given less paranoia and a more rational sense of people's places in today's society. Big Brother is not watching you, in fact Big Brother does not give a flying fuck about you.

After all, the sort of people here on /. who are constantly worried about their privacy are what - they're either programmers who work for companies of no importance working on projects with even less importance, or they're sys admins who sit around all day at work reading /. and little else. Do you really think that the NSA or whatever is actually interested in what you do? Of course not, they want to get to the people who actually do real things, not the latest kernel patch to an OS of no interest to them.

Finally, someone with some clout and experience has dared to come out and say this, but I'm sure the hysterical /. privacy crowd will post their knee-jerk responses claiming otherwise. Grow up, people. You're just not worth the time it would take them to monitor you.

Re:Finally, some sense

[Mr. Slippery]

Do you really think that the NSA or whatever is actually interested in what you do? Of course not, they want to get to the people who actually do real things, not the latest kernel patch to an OS of no interest to them.

Maybe, maybe not. To produce a chilling effect on freedom, it's not necessary that Big Brother actually be watching all the time, only that citizens have the impression that he might be - its the idea behind the panopticon.

Why Big Brother might be watching me:

• I've had family, friends, and co-workers apply for high-level security clearances; it's conceivable that I've been investigated as part of that process.
• I've worked on ARPA and NSA funded contracts, which may have brought my name up for attention.
• I know that my name is flagged for special attention in the national database used for criminal background checks of firearms owners - when I purchased a rifle last year, the check took days, instead of minutes. My paranoid side had great fun with that, while my reasonable side figures it's because my brother (who has the same last name and similar SSN) had a little trouble with the law.
• I've been spouting my mouth off on the net for years, taking state-unfriendly positions (such as that police ought to be disarmed and citizens armed), spreading information about currently illegal drugs, arguing pro-animal rights and pro-environmental positions (which in some peoples' eyes makes me a terrorist sympathizer, if you can beleive it) and generally stirring up trouble; it's certainly conceivable that some domestic surveillance guy put my name on a list for "special attention" after reading a post where I said, for example, that shooting cops who break into your house executing "no-knock" search warrants might be justified.

All it really takes is the suspicion of surveillance.

(And I know "Little Brother" is watching me - my credit card purchases, my long-distance calling patterens, my web surfing habits, et cetera, are all of great interest to marketers and salesmen.)

Re:Finally, some sense

[B'Trey]

I'm not worried about Big Brother watching me all the time. I'm worried about an infrastructure where Big Brother doesn't have to watch me. Why? Because if, for whatever reason, Big Brother does become interested in me, all he has to do is run a quick query and he knows everything there is to know about me.

It takes a lot of time, money, and manpower to watch one person. The average joe certainly isn't worth it. Something like Echelon, however, is relatively inexpensive, particularly when you're talking a shared expense among nation sized budgets.

Re:Wrong

[Alex Belits]

you haven't seen the real deal until you go through communist propaganda given out in territory that they control.

I am Russian and I lived there until 1993, so I am in the right position to say that anti-American propaganda of the Communist era pales compared to anti-Communism in US -- both then and now. I have no idea how bad was/is Romania, but I've heard that it had one of the dumbest governments in the world, Communist or otherwise.

Re:Maybe!

[Alex Belits]

The Nazis were evil from the start.
The Communists were evil from the start.

Great example of the consequences of decades of anti-commnist propaganda in US, thrown at simple-minded american people. Dehumanize the enemies, and all crimes of your government will look justified.

Yes!

[Millennium]

You see the problem. The problem with most governments is that they become far too idealistic to hold to their ideals, if that makes any sense.

It's like the U.S. The FBI seems to be more and more a lunatic fringe in and of itself. The goal is admirable: to prevent all crime. But first, that's not their job (the job is to catch criminals, not prevent crime), and second it's impossible. The only sure-fire way a governing body can stop crime is to have total control over the population, and the only people over which one can have total control are slaves. The cure is far, far worse than the disease.

That's always been the problem. There are very few dictators who rule over their countries for the sake of evil, at least as first. But as they stay in power, one of two things happen: either they become so corrupt that they go bad, or they become such zealots that in the cause of their ideals, they throw those ideals away. Look at, for example, the Soviet Union. The Bolshevik Revolution had good intentions; they truly believed in Marx's ideals. And their first leader tried to hold to them. Then Stalin came along, and in the cause of freeing the proletariat he enslaved them (if you look at the numbers, he actually killed more of his own people than Hitler did). In Cuba, Castro overthrew the previous government in an attempt to end his people's suffering. But decades later his people still suffer, as much as if not more than ever before, and the ideals to which he clung as a revolutionary have been cast away; he clings to his power now.

Even the Framers of the Constitution had extremely high ideals. Second to none, really, and before you go spouting off about the ideals of some other nation, note that I said "second to none"; this does allow for ties. But look at the mess were's in now; somewhere in the nation, almost every amendment to the Constitution is violated on a daily basis. The dreams of the Framers are still dreams; we may be closer to them than many, but we still have so far to go, and we've only lost ground over the decades.

The US was founded on the idea of government by the people, of the peole, and for the people. To some extent we've held to this. But the people forgot to watch their government, and so it's been able to sneak around behind our backs and do things the people wouldn't want (sometimes truly horrid things). Who watches the watchmen? We're supposed to. But we didn't, and now they've set up systems in which we can't watch them now (NSA, anyone?). This has to change somehow. Or the downward slide of the government can only become worse over time. We still have some freedom left; law enforcement would distract us from guarding that, as it hinders the zealots who think their job is to prevent crime rather than enforce the law, but we can't allow this.

Re:Yes!

[crush]

But as they stay in power, one of two things happen: either they become so corrupt that they go bad,

This certainly does seem to happen. In the words of the old adage, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". It seems that it is very hard to fight against the psychological effects of having power over others. There have been interesting psychological studies where volunteers have been put into the trappings of power (guards in a mock prison with other volunteers as mock prisoners) and have developed all sorts of unpleasant characteristics that seem to be independent of prior classification of personality - in other words the situation makes the man.

or they become such zealots that in the cause of their ideals, they throw those ideals away. Look at, for example, the Soviet Union. The Bolshevik Revolution had good intentions; they truly believed in Marx's ideals. And their first leader tried to hold to them.

This may be true, but you neglect the fact that at the time there was a huge amount of debate within the socialist community as to how to acheive those ideals. The Bolsheviks implemented Marx's ideas in a particularly authoritarian way. They very early on initiated purges against socialists that seemed not to be under the control of the Party. These people included members of the party that were active in the earliest Soviets(democratically directly controlled factories that elected their own management committees which were recallable upon general ballot). Some of these Soviets were organised in the army and navy and there was a strong anti-authoritarian basis to them with many anarchists being involved. Famously this led to the massacre at Kronstadt when the "well intentioned" Bolsheviks attacked the workers and sailors who were protesting that democracy was being taken away (the Party insisted that Soviets were controlled by their bureaucracy rather than by the representatives that the workers had elected who were doing a fine, efficient job) and also the fact that party bureaucrats were getting larger food allowances than the very hungry workers and sailors. This massacre was supported by both Lenin _and_ Trotsky among many others. The moral is, if you start off with authoritarian ideals you get an authoritarian system. That is what anarchists had argued against Marxists from the very beginning. Marxism did not trust people or believe in democracy and its supporters believed that they had to impose it on people. I find it heart-wrenching to look at how close Russia came to democratic socialism at that time and the squandering of the opportunity because of an authoritarian philosophy.

" Then Stalin came along, and in the cause of freeing the proletariat he enslaved them (if you look at the numbers, he actually killed more of his own people than Hitler did).

As you can guess from the spiel above I find Stalin an unsurprising development given the co-option of the revolution by the Bolsheviks.

In Cuba, Castro overthrew the previous government in an attempt to end his people's suffering. But decades later his people still suffer, as much as if not more than ever before, and the ideals to which he clung as a revolutionary have been cast away; he clings to his power now.

Now there, I cannot agree with you and I think that the statistics will bear me out both historically and contemporaneously: The health and well being of the population under Batista was much lower than under Castro. Further if you compare the health and education of the Cuban population to that of other Latin American countries today it is infintely higher. And all this in the face of crippling sanctions imposed by the US. The US is starving these people of food and medicine, unilaterally trying to force other countries in the world not to trade with them (good for Canada that they are starting to). What would the fate of these people be if there were no revolution? There were would be a small number of very wealthy people who staid in power by means of a US financed military which operated paramilitary death-squads to suppress union activity among the poor who produce McDonalds toys and other consumer crap for the poor in this country. While I wish that Castro had made more of the opportunity to be democratic I can only say Viva Cuba - I hope the people there are smart enough to realize that they chances are greater under socialism. Probably though a sufficient number are prey to the gambling mentality that sees Bill Gates and say "Hey that could be me! It could be anyone!" and thus they will be willing to throw over universal health care and education.

Re:Global Neighborhood Watch

[acb]

Some 97% of all public space in London (the city with the most surveillance cameras in the world) is covered by video cameras.

The cameras can read number plates automatically. They were also experimenting with software that could automatically identify faces from a list (of known criminals/terrorist suspects/fugitives/missing persons presumably) a while ago. Not sure how far that has gotten.

The Panopticon is a reality in London.

Re:Employers - The Real Enemy

[Dr. Evil]

A small minded office manager and owner at the company my girlfriend works for demands that all mail coming through the door may be read upon her whim. Even letters addressed to individuals marked "Private and Confidential."

Federal offense yes. 1. Proove it. 2. Keep your job, 3. Keep your references.

Re:Employers - The Real Enemy

[Kris_J]

Any letter you send from work belongs to the company - so don't send personal stuff from there. Any letter you receive to you work address belongs to work - something to me arrived opened the other day. Wiretapping is different, because it might infringe on a non-employee's privacy. You shouldn't make personal calls on company time, or with company resources (mobiles are so damn cheap anyway).

Computers supplied by the company belong to the company. You might walk in one day and find you've been given a new one - don't put personal stuff on it. The network belongs to the company from the patch panel to the back of the PC - don't surf personal stuff through it. The nature of PC networking means that copies of stuff can be found all over the place - for speed and/or security.

Recent Australian laws fource employers to disclose when/if monitoring of web/e-mail stuff occurs, but quite rightly doesn't put any limits on it, because when you send an e-mail from a company account it's like sending a letter on company letterhead, if it contains something offensive, the company can get it's arse sued. Similarly, if you download porn and another staff memeber is offended, that's a "hostile workplace" and another law suit. Blocking an employer's ability to monitor employee behaviour leaves them blind to potentially very nasty legal stuff.

Anyway, it's simple - slack of at work, however you do it, and you're not going to be welcome.

Re:The solution is - ban firearms

[Mike Buddha]

An "assault rifle" (any rifle that's unusually scary-looking or has a usably large magazine) would be scarcely more effective than a pistol against a standing army, and much harder to conceal or hold secretly, or find ammunition for.

Question: if they are so useless, why do we arm our armies with them?

It's easy to get 7.62mm and 5.56mm ammo in America. And if we are keeping these weapons to fight a war with (as I have posited), why do we need to conceal them?

We aren't getting them to commit crimes with, what do we have to fear? We can carry an assault rifle down the street and the police can do nothing if we don't attack or threaten anyone (caveat: there may be local laws against brandishing arms in public).

Your sig, and a diatribe to boot. :)

[jabber]

Interesting comment. But, more interesting is that your sig suggests a completely opposite view.

You say in the comment that with which most of use agree. That government needs to be heavily scrutinized, lest it flex it's muscles too much and control the lives of the populace. Fair enough, and Nazi Germany is a great example of this. A better one is Stallinist Soviet Union, where the world just didn't KNOW until much later.

The sig, OTOH, says that individuals can not be trusted to play nicely, and so their resources, means and very lives (eating) should be controlled by someone with the 'foresight' to take care of the needs of society as a whole. Sounds despotic and dictatorial.

Now, I realize that the sig is there for humoric effect, and that it's as much a comment on resource responsibility as it is on anything else, but...

There's a very fine line between the rights of the individual and the rights of the society. Nietsche claims, via "will to power", that a person will seek to exert as much control over his surroundings as he possibly can. We're all control freaks, and need to be held in check by a superlative force, such as a government.

Few people have the capacity to be 'enlightened despots', so society as a whole makes rules for all to abide by. Most people don't care enough, and are too wrapped up in their daily lives, to notice that those who have time, have an agenda - until the restrictive laws are made, and it's too late.

Same with the business sector. If everyone was left to their own recognizance, few people would do their job. The rules are there to force compliance - right or wrong.

The corporate rules DO NOT impinge on anyone's freedom, BTW. We're all free to quit and take up farming, or any other profession. Same with the government. In the US, you're free to leave. In some other countries, you have to fight hard to get out - and many of us leave oppressive (politically, economically, religiously) governments to come to the US. Here, Big Brother is just too busy beating up the kid down the street (Yugoslavia, Iraq, whatever) to read our private diaries.

Oh, crap, was that out-loud? Am I NOT WORKING? Again? Oops.

Re:Employers - The Real Enemy

[Kaa]

Selling one's time does not mean selling one's right to privacy, nor does the corporation's ownership of computer equipment permit surveillance that would be illegal via phone or mail.

The first one is correct, the second is not.

Basically, everything on the office computer is not mine. Just because you think of the computer in front of you as 'yours' does not mean it belongs to you. Same for a work email account -- it belongs to your employer who lets you use it.

If you want to be private, bring your own laptop or PDA to work. Use a wireless modem to access your ISP. If your employer wants to check what's in there you can tell him to go fuck himself and you'll be completely within your rights. Your stuff is private, yes, but "your" office computer and email address are not yours.

Kaa

Re:Employers - The Real Enemy

[Kaa]

Monitoring of voice mail, email, and websites browsed is commonplace in many corporations today.

Don't see much problem here. You are using somebody else's equipment during the time that you yourself sold to your employer. Not to mention that the employer is liable for much of what you do. Courts have construed porn-browsing employees as sexual-harassment environment (not that I agree with that, but reality is reality).

In other words, deal with it and if you find your employer too intrusive, move. It's not like you are an indentured servant there. (on the other hand, if you have options that did not vest yet...)

Kaa

Am I missing something here?

[Sebbo]

"...and more on the very real pattern of injustice brought to bear on people through employers and other institutions. Stephenson said he was less worried these days about broad, theoretical privacy issues than about a recent incident in which a stray bullet crashed through a window at a friend's house and narrowly missed a sleeping child."

Now, admittedly, almmost getting shot in your bedroom is unjust(for most people), and arguably even an invasion of privacy. But unless the guy's boss was in the habit of reminding him to come to work by firing shells through the front window, I have trouble seeing how this is an example of injustices perpetrated by employers & c. What's the connection here?

Re:Am I missing something here?

[Fas Attarac]

What's the connection here?

There is no connection. He was trying to say that people are too frequently obsessed with unfounded paranoia than they are with founded issues that actually affect them.

A shooting in your neighborhood is a concrete crime, and a wakeup-call in itself that something might potentially need to be done in your area. The "Big Brother" scare routinely touted on Slashdot is largely paranoid conspiracy theories, frequently with zero basis for fact, and always based on the theoretical.

Re:Governments and corporations

[0xdeadbeef]

You are intentionally confusing the context, comparing what a benign corporation can do legally with what dictatorial government can get away with.

Governments *and* corporations are made up of individuals. Accountability always comes down to individuals making decisions. That's the catch, because individuals acting alone do not have the resources or the know-how to pull off gross acts of tyranny and get away with it. The individuals running governments *and* corporations do.

No, a corporation can't legally murder. But neither can the government. If things get so far gone that a government can and does get away with assasination, well you can surely bet that every big corporation's got a friend in the secret police that can do it for them too.

Tracing cash does not appear to be either technologically or politically feasible in the foreseeable future.

It's no difficult feat to scan serial numbers in a counting machine. I wouldn't be suprised if banks already track bills internally.

Re:Employers - The Real Enemy

[Wah]

maybe it's time for you to stop running from problems and face them; serve for jury duty when you are called.

Oooh, ooh, root of the problem.

A while back in a meeting the CEO of our company rationalized paying off a previous employee rather than going to court saying (paraphrased) "I'm not gonna trust some dumbass jury to do the right thing."

Cut to about a month later. Offhand comment about an employee taking off to go to jury duty- "Jury duty is for people too stupid to get out of it."

!!!

--

Re:Pardon me...

[remande]

It's nice to know what people think of each other.

It's also nice to know of the availability of Kevlar drywall.

Re:difference between corporations and governments

[remande]

The other difference is, at least in the US, the government is at least nominally out to serve us. The corporation is out to serve the stockholders, period. The fact that it is hard to do that without customers makes customers a secondary concern. And if you're not a customer, they don't even have to be nice to you.

Re:He's half right.

[Steve B]

While both governments and megacorps have their faults, the best result IMO would be a balance of power between them. That could do for economic liberty what the balance of power between crown and church did for intellectual liberty in the High Middle Ages-Renaissance period.

In each case, both sides would be pretty obnoxious if allowed their way, but the compromises they were forced to accept in battling each other opened cracks for less powerful people not particularly aligned with either.
/.

Re:He's half right.

[Steve B]

Yes, however, corporations and government don't have opposing views here.

Neither did the kings and the popes, really. As Holy Roman Emperor Charles V put it, "My cousin Francis [I of France] and I are in complete agreement: he wants Vienna, and so do I."

The power struggles between the two still had a lot of useful fallout. Similarly, the power struggles between (for example) government trying to collect more taxes and megacorps moving offshore to keep the money themselves have great useful-fallout potential for people trying to keep their taxes low and their financial dealings private.
/.

Not 1984, not Brazil -- Tank Girl & Snow Crash

[goliard]

Kaa, I don't think what Stephenson was saying (I could be wrong, we got so little from the article) was that invasions of privacy are not a problem, but that the invasions of privacy will be conducted by corporations.

This is Stephenson, author of Snow Crash. Remember how he depicted a world in which governments were irrelevant appendages, and corporations ran everything?

I suspect what he's saying is that we should be more concerned with Big Babysitters not Big Brother: that the abuses of which we suspect governments could just as well be done by companies.

Historically, where government has found itself constrained by law or public pressure, it has often enough found ways to impose its will through the corporate sector.

Someone pointed out the latest example in the Outcast thread. Because the British govm't can't directly censor, all they have to do is make a law which allows "any nut with a lawyer" to sue an ISP into oblivion -- which has precisely the desired effect, since ISPs react by self-censoring (or more properly, client-censoring) for self-preservation.

Meanwhile, consider the history of the United Fruit Company in Latin America. Much easier than declaring war.

Someone (again, in the Outcast thread) said:

The term "Censorship" is over-used these days, especially in Slashdot type forums. Censorship is something that governments do.

A lot of people believe that -- I used to. But if we persist in tha delusion that it's only censorship if a government does it, even while corporations start taking over the prerogatives and powers of governments, we're idiots.

I think maybe that's what Stephenson was talking about.

----------------------------------------------

Conspiracy

[Hard_Code]

My god people, don't you all realize by now that Neal is OBVIOUSLY part of a privacy invasion conspiracy by Big Brother? He is feeding us LIES. Big Brother IS out to get us. Scrutinize your friends and close ones, because THEY might be the next ones, waiting in a dark corner to stab you in the back!

Security vs Freedom

[redelm]

"Those who would trade freedom for security will soon have neither" (John Adams?)

Equating crypto with drive-by shootings is utterly wrong. It is the plea of incompetant authorities who ask for more power so they can do their job easier. They might also actively resent freedom.

To solve the drive-by-shooting issues, freedoms have to be increased, not decreased. This is very controversial. Freedom to use drugs, so the underworld is deprived of their astronomical profits. Economic freedoms so underclass members can rise.

Re:Employers - The Real Enemy

[MillMan]

So basically you're saying "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about, and we need to monitor you anyway, because you might be doing naughty things."

Come on Kaa, this is what Hitler said back when he was in power. In fact, thats an element of any police state.

Re:Employers - The Real Enemy

[frankie]

trying to quit your government will get you shot.

Last time I checked, US citizens (other than convicts) can quit any time they like. It's called emigration. Of course, if you quit then you usually have to vacate the premises, since it's not your country any more.

Or are you saying you want to quit the government but still get all the benefits of living here? You can do that too, just be a survivalist fuckwad and move to Montana.

Re:Say it ain't so?!?!?!

[Rantage]

Oh My God, a science fiction writer with nutty political opinions? Whatever next?

How about a science fiction writer with nutty religious opinions?

Oh wait...that's already been done.

Online gaming for motivated, sportsmanlike players: www.steelmaelstrom.org.

Re:Employers - The Real Enemy

[the Epopt]

The difference -- as is obvious to anyone over the age of nineteen -- is that you chose your employer. If you don't like the fact that you are expected to use company equipment for company purposes, quit. Your employer doesn't give you a paycheck and workstation because they pity your lack of broadband access to Napster.

On the other tentacle, trying to quit your government will get you shot. You may think that not being allowed to download pr0n is worse than being shot, but I disagree.

--

Who is Big Brother?

[Andy_R]

I'm not worried about my privacy because of escalon, the FBI, MI5 etc.

I'm hiding from direct marketing, targeted banner ads and spam spam spam spam, a very real 'big brother' industry who clearly are actively interested in profiling me as accurately as possible.

Oh, drifting a little off topic, It's good to see one of my favourite authors awarded the ultimate accolade of being recognisable by just half his name.

- Andy R.

Complexity sucks...

[jjsaul]

We've got two contradictory values going in the recent conversations - The Bill Joy, et-al warnings about knowledge-enabled weapons a la "White Plague", PERHAPS controllable only by a draconian loss of privacy, and the habit of the government to use that intrusion to decide what we read, who we diddle, what we smoke, and all kinds of other bs.

I am starting to be convinced that 1) we can't control the unibomer's viral-pathologist copycats without giving the government powers that 2) the Ned Flanders/Pat Robertsons/George Bushs will use to crush the freedom that makes life worthwhile, totally convinced that they are doing it "for the children."

Too many shades of grey for my pea-brain on a slothful Friday afternoon. Maybe a solution to all these issues will occur to a slashdoter late tonight, after enough free beer.

Censorship not by government?

[www.sorehands.com]

The term "Censorship" is over-used these days, especially in Slashdot typeforums. Censorship is something that governments do.

Corporations have been enlisting the government to censor.

In the CPHack case, Microsystems / Mattel got the government to issue a restraining order. In the DeCSS case, TROs were issued, and the police kicked down one person's door. In my case Mattel just used to cost and threat of lititgation to try to shut me up.

It's not just the actual acts that are the censorship. The more insidios part is that others watching will see this and self-censor themselfs.

If you read the libel / SLAPP / first amendment cases, the courts discuss the issue of self censorship.

Re:Send him to Singapore

[Fas Attarac]

What does Singapore have to do with the United States? Sure there are other countries out there that have little in the way of civil rights or privacy, but why does that automatically mean the United States is the same way, or in imminent danger of becoming so?

Re:Stable democracies

[Fas Attarac]

The Internet and strong crypto. make such efforts to hide murders more difficult

That's funny.. I've always figured it was the other way around.

This is like the ultimate conspiracy theory here -- not only is big brother out to get you, but unless you use strong crypto, they'll KILL you!

I fail to see how strong crypto or any of the "privacy movement"'s efforts would do anything at all to save the starving Iraqi children you point out. I say "privacy movement" in quotes because I do not consider the bulk of Slashdot YRO posts (which are largely what makes up this article as well) to be representative of the real thing. You'll rarely see so many conspiracy theories among real privacy advocates. They're smarter than that.

Global Neighborhood Watch

[jamiemccarthy]

According to the article... He illustrated his point by talking about, among other things, the spread of cheap video cameras hooked up to the Internet: An era of widespread surveillance, he said, was on its way. But instead of automatically condemning that Orwellian notion, he suggested that the assembled engineers and coders might work to make the brave new video world work for us all, to enhance safety and security though a kind of global neighborhood watch. The era of widespread surveillance is already here - and it has nothing to do with a "global neighborhood watch." Or the internet, for that matter. If you live or work in a major city, private interests are already capturing you on tape almost anytime you're in public. In this Atlantic Monthly article from July of 1998, researchers describe looking for closed-circuit cameras in a three-square-block area of midtown Manhattan. They found over 70 cameras which covered almost every public place. And that was two years ago. Whenever I try to imagine a science-fiction world where every public moment is taped, I keep coming up with nightmarish dystopias. Maybe Stephenson knows something I don't.

Jamie McCarthy

Re:The solution is - ban firearms

[Mike Buddha]

Well then, ban firearms. IMHO it's a step that America should take since we are the country with the highest murder rate in the Western world, which is related to our Constitional "rights" to own guns and kill people.

Unfortunately for Americans, illegalizing guns plays right into yet another paranoid fantasy tht many Americans have: If guns are illegal, then the new World Order(ie Big Brother) will take over.

Personally, I don't think handguns should be legal. Handguns are for killing unarmored civilians. Assault rifles are for killing invaders, government troops, and Cops. Everyone should have an Assault rifle. It's the final check and balance in the Constitution: At any point the American people can take control of their country from the federal government. No unpopular governing power could survive here.

NSA droid detected.

[arcade]

OK NSA? How much did you pay for that droid, to imitate him ? Its obvious that you've hidden the body somewhere, but .. that was a damn good hack.


--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - arcade@kvine-nospam.sdal.com - arcade@efnet

Re:Governments and corporations

[Kaa]

Corporations can quite easily kill you, just like the mafia, and just like the CIA. All it takes is money and access to the right people.

Remember, we are talking in a context of what corporations special. An individual can kill you just as easily.

It's not a question of what can be done to you. It's a question of what only a government can do, and what only corporations can do. Jail and executions fall into the first category, but murders do not fall into the second -- not only corporations can murder.

They can do that now, if you use a check card. They can probably do it with cash too, if it were worth the cost of scanning the money.

I said "ATM cash withdrawal" -- I am using cash. Tracing cash does not appear to be either technologically or politically feasible in the foreseeable future.

Of course if you pay for everything with a card (credit or debit), your bank has a very good idea of what you are doing.

Kaa

Governments and corporations

[Kaa]

This is Stephenson, author of Snow Crash. Remember how he depicted a world in which governments were irrelevant appendages, and corporations ran everything?

IIRC the Snow Crash world was a pretty freewheeling one. The governments were a joke, sure, but the corporations weren't all that powerful either. Most likely you are thinking about Gibson's works (Neuromancer -> Count Zero -> Mona Lisa Overdrive, etc)

Because the British govm't can't directly censor, all they have to do is make a law which allows "any nut with a lawyer" to sue an ISP into oblivion

That's a good point, but a "nut with a lawyer" is not a corporation. This is a good example of a government using roundabout routes to get to it's goals, but it's a very poor example of corporate power: Godfrey, after all, is an individual.

Historically, where government has found itself constrained by law or public pressure, it has often enough found ways to impose its will through the corporate sector.

I am not sure that's true. You'll have to come up with some arguments and examples (specific to corporations, not random people).

while corporations start taking over the prerogatives and powers of governments

That too you'll have to be more convincing about. I assume we are not speaking about lobbying which was a popular activity since at least the Roman times. Can you list some prerogatives and powers that nobody but governments used to have and now corporations (but not individuals) have?

the invasions of privacy will be conducted by corporations.

Sure. They were, are, and will be conducted. The difference is in consequences.

First of all, there are many corporations and one government. It's much easier for government agencies to cooperate and share data about me, than it is for corporations to do so. Yes, I know about consolidation of data into huge databases, but I figure it's going to be quite a while before my ATM cash withdrawals could be cross-referenced against my grocery shopping.

Second, the threat level is very different. The government can make your life very miserable and, in exterme circumstances, can kill you. The absolute worst that a corporation can do to me is to sue me into bankrupcy. That is quite unlikely, anyway, so the usual worst is that it will deny me service. Well, big deal. My life could become somewhat less convenient for me, but I'll survive.

I think that the argument "corporations are a worse threat than the government" kind of assumes that being disliked by a Big Brother government leads to approximately the same level of problems as being bombarded by spam. I can assure everybody that is definitely not so.

Kaa

Re:Governments and corporations

[0xdeadbeef]

The governments were a joke, sure, but the corporations weren't all that powerful either.

Nope, they were pretty much subserviant to the mafia and a that nut with the aircraft carrier. :-)

The government can make your life very miserable and, in exterme circumstances, can kill you.

Corporations can quite easily kill you, just like the mafia, and just like the CIA. All it takes is money and access to the right people. The only thing that stops them is they have a much harder time keeping secrets. Do you really think a corporation is any more moral than a government? At least with government, I have a *right* to citizen oversight. Whether I can exercise that right is another matter....

quite a while before my ATM cash withdrawals could be cross-referenced against my grocery shopping

They can do that now, if you use a check card. They can probably do it with cash too, if it were worth the cost of scanning the money.

the reason we tend to be concerned about privacy

[dlc]

While I definitely understand Stephenson's point, and agree to a certain extent, the reason that I (for example) tend to be more focused on security and privacy issues is because that is something over which I have some control. There is only so much that I can do about stray bullets, sad to say, but I can definitely help people to understand why they need to use encryption software to protect themselves and their privacy. I can definitely help people install and configure PGP, and create key pairs and distribute them. Yeah, maybe it's not as noble a cause as some others, but it's what I can do. I'm a programmer, not a politician, or a police officer, or a lawyer. The same or similar probably goes for most of the readers on slashdot and most of the CFP attendees. People I know trust my judgement about computers and the Internet, so that's where I try to help.

Too often people try to get involved in what they don't adequately understand (such as politicians and lawyers trying to regulate the Internet), and this is the source of many many problems. I don't know how to help prevent random violence, or shootings, or kidnappings, or most of the other attrocities that take place in the modern world, so I do what I can. I try to help prevent things like privacy violations, to the best of my abilities.

It's not about hiding things from Big Brother, it's about personal privacy and personal freedom. This is how I can help, so this is what I do.

darren

Cthulhu for President!

Say it ain't so?!?!?!

[streetlawyer]

Oh My God, a science fiction writer with nutty political opinions? Whatever next? We certainly didn't get those back in the good old days of Asimov and Heinlein, did we?

He's half right.

[Erich]

I don't think that the government is the large totalitarian threat nowdays.

It's large corporations.

In 1984, the key to the regime was that the government controlled the information. The Ministry of Truth controlled exactly what everyone saw and heard about events, past and present.

For the most part, we don't have our government controlling what we see and hear, or what we can read. We do, however, have AOL/TimeWarner, MS/NBC, and a handfull of others controlling what we see and hear about current events. How badly does MSNBC want to talk about the ways in which it has used its monopolistic powers? How badly does AOL/TimeWarner's CNN want to talk about how badly AOL sucks?

And true, privacy concerns are largely a government thing right now, but we also see private companies Scanning Hard Drives and sending information back to the corporate HQ. I have no doubt that private companies will continue to be a privacy threat.

So, is the Government really your threat, or is it corporations who control the media?

People are different

[Kaa]

People find themselves in different situations and have different needs. I understand why Scott McNealy said there is no privacy -- he doesn't have any and it is impossible for a man in his position to be private. So? There are millions of people whose circumstances are different -- and their values are different, too.

So Neal Stephenson doesn't think the Big Brother threat is something to worry about. That's fine -- he is well-off guy, upper-middle-class at least, leading a pampered, comfortable life well insulated from the rougher edges of the world. If the government takes a dislike to him, he can hire lawyers and raise all kinds of ruckus. But he may want to think about other people not as lucky as he is.

I lived (with my kids) in a neighborhood where a rare night passed without a gunshot somewhere around. I also lived in countries where the government is very interested in the details of your private life. Neal Stephenson may have his opinions, but I also have mine: the Big Brother threat is more serious than stray gunfire. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't pay attention to all the other problems of the world, but discounting the dangers of an intrusive, high-on-its-power government is not a good position.

Kaa

He is right

[Shotgun]

My wife had a mix up involving a bank and a credit card company a few years back. She ended up with an overdrawn bank account that got cancelled and it took us a few months to clear the debt. The mix up was not her fault. There was not trial, and no finding of fault. No formal procedure whatsoever.

Today, she can not get a checking account. All the banks share information through credit agencies and if they find that you had problems previously they will deny you a checking account. Do you realize how hard it is to live without a checking account? A lot of companies use out-of-state banks, so you can't just cash your paycheck. Direct-deposit? To what?

She is being punished without a trial, without a chance to defend her actions, and without a chance to even speak to her accusers!! Some manager at a branch office just put her name on a list and -blam- she's guilty!!

Government is the group that governs, or controls. Government isn't necessarilly comprised of elected officials. If your neighborhood is controlled by gangs, then your neighborhood is governed by gangs. If your life (or a very large part of it) is controlled by corporations, you are governed by corporations.

We do need to worry more about the corps than about the Feds, because the Feds at least have judges sometimes telling them that they can't do as they damn well please. The corps are free wheeling right now.

Send him to Singapore

[Hobbex]

Neal Stephenson ought to spend six months living in Singapore, so that he can experience first hand how great it is to live in country where you can be sure the regime doesn't worry about silly abstract things like privacy and freedom, but where you never have to worry about stray bullets, pronography, or drug trading.

Everybody who talks about the importance of such things over freedom ought to go and live in what William Gibson called "Disneyland with the death penalty", so they can eat their words...


-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.

that stephenson article

[jswatz]

Stephenson's speech was a lot more subtle and textured than the discussion of it here would lead you to believe. In fact, he said that he greatly admired people like Phil who have brought encryption to the world, and believes in fighting oppression in all its forms. The underscored point, however, was the "in all its forms" part. He referred back to our hominid ancestors and showed a pie chart of what their threat model might have been. It was about 98 percent HYENAS and about 2 percent OTHER. Once early man developed some good spears, he said, the hyena problem was less pressing--but early man didn't move on to try to conquer threats like intestinal parisites. His point, then, was that we need to update our threat models more often, and more subtly, than humans usually do. He then showed another pie chart. 98 percent was BIG BROTHER. 2 percent was OTHER. It got a big laugh from the crowd, because a lot of people recognized themselves. Stephenson again said that it was important ot expose and fight the bad things that "domination systems" to, but said that we should open the pie chart up to include and focus on other threats as well. In fact, he conceded, his pie chart of the threat model with lots of slices still could have the largest slice devoted to worrying about Big Brother. I hope that this gives a more full description of what Stephenson said in his talk. I wrote the story for the Washington Post, and tried to get as much of that flavor into it as I could.

Employers - The Real Enemy

[Carnage4Life]

He is right about the employers being more of aproblem than big brother governments (at least in the U.S. and Europe). As at now even though stupid laws are either being passed or considered by government, the amount of cases of digital invasion of privacy pale in comparison to the routine rape of employee rights that the average employee now accepts as fact.

Monitoring of voice mail, email, and websites browsed is commonplace in many corporations today. DNA results are used in making hiring/promotion decisions. Non compete, non disclosure and Ip clauses abound in contracts everywhere.

It is rather interesting that we can get so riled up on the one hand by what we perceive as invasion of privacy by the government on one hand then close our eyes to the same actions by corporations.

Pardon me...

[benenglish]

...while I devolve into management consultant/workflow analysis mode.

This story reminds me of those four-place charts that we've all seen that prioritize tasks. Draw a square. Quarter it. Across the top, label the two columns "Urgent" and "Not Urgent." On the side, label the two rows "Important" and "Not Important." Now throw your tasks into those spaces. If a task winds up in the upper left corner, it's urgent and important. In the lower right, it's not urgent and not important.

It seems to me that all the speech was saying was (based, of course, on the extremely limited outline in the article that may or may not be accurate) that maybe the privacy-concerned members of our community were putting things in the wrong boxes. The threat of Big Brother knocking down your door is important, but it may not be as urgent as we like to think. On the other hand, keeping a kid from being shot is both urgent and pretty damn important.

Well, fine.

That attitude is important as far as it goes. Accusing privacy nuts of not seeing the forest for the trees can have a ring of truth. The problem, though, is that Big Brothers do eventually come to knock down doors. Neglecting important things (threats to privacy and, indeed, life and limb from government) because they aren't immediately urgent is a very dangerous thing, a veritable slippery slope of apathy that is mighty dangerous to ski on. Ignore the tasks in that "Important but Not Urgent" box and, sooner or later, as any experienced entrepeneur will tell you, you'll find those tasks jumping onto the "Urgent" side of the chart and you'll be ill-prepared to deal with them.

Stephenson is right in that we shouldn't argue principles to the exclusion of taking care of daily life. Unfortunately, though, we must adhere to principles, fret over them, agitate to protect them, and otherwise use our energy to make the world a better place for the great-great-grandchildren we will never see. If we don't, we ensure that those principles, those freedoms we took too much for granted will eventually be tested in ways no one desires. Neglect to fight the good fight in boardrooms, courts, and in politician's offices and someday you or your descendants will be forced to fight the good fight in the streets, by spilling real blood.

It's been said the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Well, that ain't just whistlin' Dixie. It's as true today as it ever was.