Slashdot Mirror
Cognitive Dissident: Interview with John Perry Barlow
Bob Hellbringer writes "Mother Jones Magazine has an online interview with John Perry Barlow of the EFF, on the things that all slashdotters love: 'the Total Information Awareness project, online activism, file sharing, and the prospect of a digital counterculture.'"
the prospect of a digital counterculture.
Last time I checked, all coutercultures were mandated by the RIAA. Perhaps this is the real reason they are so uppity about computers?
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
I suspect it's both as it's been a few minutes now and still nearly nothing, even in troll land.
I can spare the Karma and only posted FP because I couldn't believe it was staring me in the face.
Wow. Maybe I'll become a troll. It is somehow, perversely gratifying to get first post.
Not really dead, just asleep. Hence why I forgot the closing italics on my post below. "at 2:00 am" Because, you know, all the important people in the world live on the east coast of the US.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
Really - I know there are a lot of people named Jones in North America, and a lot of them are probably mothers, but this sort of specificity in magazines is becoming ridiculous. It was bad enough with Spy magazine. And I can only assume The Onion has a sentient readership of zero.
on the things that all slashdotters love: 'the Total Information Awareness project, online activism, file sharing, and the prospect of a digital counterculture.'
Speak for yourself. I for one am utterly bored with the political direction Slashdot has taken in the past couple of years. And it's not even good politics! When the issues of the day are domestic and international terrorism, the war in Afghanistan, the prospect of war in Iraq and elsewhere, the economy, or even the space shuttle, the prevailing topics of discussion on Slashdot still center around that same list of drivel: the RIAA, Microsoft, and stories about "chilling effects" that are just barely more than "we hate the government but we don't know why" flamefests.
If Slashdot wants to get political, at least get political in ways that people give a damn about. Otherwise, let's stick to the stuff that made Slashdot a fun place to hang out in the beginning: news for nerds.
I write in my journal
Does the government want to track and record all communications sent by me?
Short answer: yes, with a but.
The government does want to track and record all communications sent by you. This is called, in military parlance, SIGINT, for "signals intelligence," and it's a doctrine that's as old as the hills. Basically SIGINT means to keep your ear to the ground and listen for signs that the bad guys are doing something that you'll wish you could have prevented. But nobody really cares about you, personally, so as long as you're not planning to hide weapons of mass destruction in your garage or anything, you're fine.
I write in my journal
I can think of no organization that is more active in protecting the base rights that most people in the tech community relish than the EFF, of which Barlow is a founder. Every member of Slashdot should also be a member of this organization. Among other things, the EFF is defending Fair Use Doctrine especially as it applies to digital content (an area where there seems to be lots of double standards), Internet Censorship, Government/Corporate surveillance and a lot more.
Oh, so that's OK then?
Not to mention the violation of privacy and civil liberties of those 250,000 innocent individuals...
I don't mean to niggle, but I was under the impression that it was William Gibson who popularized this phrase. Do I just need to cut down on my crack habit or something?
Score:-1,Idiot
could the songwriter for the Grateful Dead become the voice of reason. And a good one at that. Meanwhile "elected" officals are trigger happy, right wing, christian capitalists zeolots.
JPB:
There are a million virtual streetcorners with a million lonely pamphleteers on them, all of them decrying the war and not actually coming together in any organized fashion to oppose it. It strikes me that existing political institutions -- whether it's the administration or Congress or large corporations -- only respond to other institutions.
I hear a lot of complaints about slashdot being too political lately, not enough cool techy stuff. I disagree, if we have the resource of a forum like this one, we need to keep it going. We need to share this infomration, it affects a lot of us and it affects a lot of things to come. The information shared on this site has led to a lot of individual's political awakening, and those that awaken are starting to realize that they can make a difference, either by writing to an elected official, or making a donation to an organization like the EFF.
Keep it up slashdot. Cool toys and gadgets are great, but I like freedom more.
Yes. That's okay. Big secret now: we've been living with domestic and international signals intelligence gathering since the 1940's. Exactly how much has it abridged your freedom of speech, movement, or assembly? The correct answer here is zero.
I write in my journal
Sure, intelligence about the enemy in any situation gives you power over them. In this case, you (any random citizen) are in the position of enemy.
Sure, we all know that nobody like J. Edgar Hoover ever really existed, right? And people in power deserve all the power we can give them, because, after all, they're only in power to help us. Right? [/sarcasm]
The problem with your perspective is that, even if people are doing nothing wrong, they are not "fine." Not if someone with access to the information has a reason -- political, financial, or personal -- to use that information against the surveilled.
Could you provide some examples for those of us who've always known /. as you described? Respectfully, I don't get the same flamefest impression you do, but maybe that's because I came from Usenet and IRC.
/. also seems to act as a vocal focal point to educate people. These two topics, IMHO, should be continually returned to, as a way of keeping peoples' eyes open.
Also, I can understand why these same topics (MS & the RIAA) would be repeatedly covered. Although you maye be understandably tired of hearing about their latest shenanigans,
For every dozen posters, I'll bet there's fifty important, influential people monitoring these boards or assigning people to monitor them. These people may have good or bad intentions. There's astroturfing, sure. But (maybe I'm being idealistic here) I'd like to think that, every once in a while, an influential person with good intentions finds an illuminating discussion that causes them to act in a way that makes life a little bit better for Some People, Somewhere.
Anyway, whatever, nevermind.
In this case, you (any random citizen) are in the position of enemy.
Only if you put yourself there.
The problem with your perspective is that, even if people are doing nothing wrong, they are not "fine." Not if someone with access to the information has a reason -- political, financial, or personal -- to use that information against the surveilled.
That's why we have laws and unbelievably strong security systems in place to prevent the inappropriate use of intelligence data. First, even to get access to the data in the abstract sense, you have to be a trusted individual. Then, in order to get access to any particular piece of data, you have to convince a bunch of highly trusted individuals that you have a compelling need for that access. And then, if you make illegal use of that data, you can be found guilty of treason and sent to prison for the rest of your life, or even executed.
If somebody had a personal bone to pick with you, there would be a lot of safer and easier ways to get to you than by subverting our government's intelligence networks. You should be more afraid of giving the gas station attendant your credit card number than of somebody getting access to the NSA's database.
But you're really missing the larger point here. We have been living with signals intelligence, foreign and domestic, since the late 1940's. Were you even aware of the fact? Initiatives like TIA are more about analysis and synthesis, and getting the right data to the right agencies in a timely manner, than about new information gathering methods. If we'd had a TIA-like system in 2000, there's a reasonable chance the various government agencies might have been able to stop the 9/11 hijackers. See, we had the data, but we didn't have systems in place for getting that data into the right hands at the right time and in the right context. The data just kind of fell onto the floor. TIA is about being able to make appropriate use of the data we're already gathering.
If you feel threatened by this... well, I think that just might say more about you than it does about the government.
I write in my journal
Really. Quite entertaining. Wish /.'s interviews were like this.
Anyhow. His view on the current laws on cyberterrorism is exactly my view (i'm contributing to BoF (Bits of Freedom) a dutch "EFF" if you want).
It frightens me that the US government is taking these steps and stands. The country which used to be known for his freedom is slowly turning into a country like Irak itself. Controlling it's own people. It would not surprise me if even the American press is being controlled. I used to dream of leavin my own country and live in the USA. That dream has been destroyed over the last couple of years when it became clear that what constitutes freedom in my mind did not have the same meaning in the USA.
I'm so disappointed in my countrymen.
This is a pretty harsh remark but i guess it's right on the mark for most of the people i know who live in the US. They all share the feeling that their countrymen look deliberately the other way because they are afraid that if they speak up they would be branded anti-patriotic. The worst part of it is that they too look the other way. They refuse too admit it but whenever i want to discuss the TIA they just response with the phrase "It's for the protection of us all" and that's it.
I hope that the EFF can create enough momentum to turn the tide. Otherwise we are facing a grim future.
For now, the threat on peoples lives comes from both terrorists and the reckless United States Governement with their wars against defensless countries like Iraq, like you said. But these days the theme of slashdot is quite detached from real world suffering and distruction. Slashdot is news for nerds, a suppliment to the regular news to bring us things of particualar importance for net-dwellers. And for this special esoteric news the villins are not terrorists, not uncle sam, not faulty heat sheilds but those who want to change our environment (the net and our own computers) forever. People like Microsoft, the RIAA and legislators that want to turn information into something that is tightly monitored and unacessable even on ones own computers are what the slashdot community (the bulk of them) are most threatened by.
People come to slashdot. They insult it on the forums they created. They insult the bulk of the community by calling them repetitive. They use words like karma-burn to discribe their posts to make moderators feel guilty to give them the -1s they deserve and they dare to try and change it to fit them!
Slashdot is getting political in a way people give a damn about. It gets political in a way as its readers and community gives a damn about with the exception of those who consider it some matter of their vain pride that they attend it to mock their opinions in a medium created for them. If you want to see war, turn on the TV, there is death, poverty, flaming astronaughts, germ bombs, guncrazy preasidents threatening to use nukes. Then you can discuss them, with friends and family over dinner. You could join a political party, join some demonstration, write a letter to the newspaper or member of parlement, write an alegorical novel, take up sculpture and express yourself that way, become a vidgilante and linch someone, join a terrorist organisation, or you could even go as far as posting your conserns at a different website... there are plenty out there that would love to hear you opinions about "real" political issues. Even post to slashdot when they post their numorous stories about your beloved reality (the space shuttle was mentioned twice). Get political about something that people give a damn about, but don't stop us from getting political about things that people don't.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
The only thing that gives me much hope for our private futures is that all of this can change iin a few years with a new administration. It might not, but it could. The only law in the United States that lets me sleep at night is the 22nd Ammendment (no more than two four year presidential terms). When someone tries to change that I'll get my gun.
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If the government would just legalize weed, I'd put up with a lot more TIA type stuff.
He painted a unicorn in outer space. I'm askin' ya, what's it breathin'?
You have to be a trusted individual. Trusted by whom?
I agree, they are more about analysis and synthesis. These initiatives strive to identify patterns that may indicate dangerous activity. The only problem is: before a crime has been committed, no crime has been committed. It's a problem that is firmly rooted in the nature of the universe.
These initiatives attempt to bypass the problem. They will try to do so by creating a large, steady stream of suspects, many of whom will spend long periods of time in detention for no real reason. If you doubt that this will happen, I suggest you look around. It is already happening, primarily to people of Middle Eastern descent.
You say, "We had the data." Who exactly had the data? Some people in government may have had suspicions or scattered facts, but there is a large leap between these and the knowledge of a plot. A system like TIA would not have connected those facts.
TIA was not proposed to assemble pre-determined government agency suspicions into a final, central bundle of crime knowledge. If it were, and if such a thing were possible (which I doubt without the aid of artificial intelligence), then it might have helped. But this is not the case. TIA was proposed to gather together all available commercial data on all people in order to perform blanket filtering and pattern-matching queries.
You have to be the biggest idiot on /...
It's pathetic "my government right or wrong" morons like you that allowed the state to control the human race and will eventually destroy the species...
And as a Transhuman I can't wait to see you get wasted by "your" state...
You're going to die for your stupid belief system - I won't. Have a nice day, asshole...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
JPB is formerly of Grateful Dead fame...he knows of what he speaks. From the article, for those w/o time to read...
A self-described "classic boomer," Barlow is still best known for his first career, songsmithing for the Grateful Dead, with classics like "Cassidy," "Estimated Prophet," and "A Little Light" to his credit. After a go as a back-to-the-land cattle rancher, Barlow, 55, is now starring in a digital third act, one that may well fulfill his ultimate aspiration: "To be a good ancestor."
my privacy? Does the government want to track and record all communications sent by me? Yep, and they probably already are doing so (Echelon/Carnivore/etc.), they're just trying to make it look all legal-like and proper on paper right now. If the government can know everything about our communications, why shouldn't we have the same right to know everything about the government's communications? ;) See, they only like it when they make all the rules but don't have to play by them.
So far left, I'm right.
Meanwhile, sites such as www.antiwar.com provide hundreds of thousands of people with information about what the Bush administration is doing, what's happening in Europe and in the Arab world. That kind of easy access to relevant news and excellent commentary simply didn't exist during any other war or buildup to war. True, today the guy who checks out antiwar.com every morning might not be doing anything else. But next month maybe he will be marching in streets in protest, and he will have absorbed a great deal of background information that will make a difference in subsequent "yeah, I was there" conversations.
That kind of talk directly adresses a fundamental weakness of the Bush people -- the mass consent, such as it is, they have engineered is based primarily on the shallow propaganda technique of constant repetition. Saying "Saddam has got to disarm!" and "weapons of mass destruction!" over and over again creates in the minds of many people the notion that Iraq is just as dangerous as, say, North Korea. BUT, quite often, really, conversation with more knowledgable fellow citizens can disabuse people from such impressions.
As to the "phamphleteers," if there really are a million of them, that's wonderful! Getting intellectualy involved with issues, formulating one's thoughts, putting them in words, putting them up, almost literally, before the whole world -- those things are often precursors to more active forms of involvement. And I bet some of them have some worthy ideas, too.
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Manifesto for the Peoples of the Third Millennium
>>drive yet another wedge between them and humanity
I'd be interested to know about this humanity you talk of, care to elucidate?
As far as I was aware, the overriding theme of humanity throughout the development of society has been of increasing and ever more complex technology, which has aided us in our everyday lives, and tended to reduce the amount of labour we have to do to acheive a similar level of fulfillment. Clearly it's debateable quite how fulfilling modern life is, but that's an argument for another time. But It still seems to stand that humanity is almost defined by a technological and communicative drive. 'tis what seperates man from beast etc etc
>> It's not too far fetched to see chip implants
>> and "Neuromancer" type gadgets imbedded within
>>our flesh
Possibly not that far off. :)
There's no need for these to suck our conciousness or individuality away either. The point of the things was an enhanced conciousness so you could do more/access more data. Clearly of course the potential for monitoring technology and other such abuse is enormous (care to have the Total Information Awareness guys data mining america's thought patterns anyone?) but this sort of thing does not have to happen. Just had a bizarre thought....some sort of Seti@home variant that takes up people's spare brain capaccity whilst they sleep
>> The chip is coming. Beware the mark.
Always thought that mark was the credit card? Or the .Net passport? or any of a myriad of other things that doomsayers seem to get off on making into "The Mark of The Beast"
If you have the Total Information Awareness project working, it might be relatively easy to find everyone who had bought more than a ton of fertilizer and 500 gallons of diesel in the last year, which would be a great way of spotting potential Tim McVeighs -- but it would also spot half the farmers and ranchers in America. But having spotted them, it couldn't toss them out until it'd exposed them to the next layer of search. .... which includes what I consider to be cultural crimes, like say marijuana smoking.
And there, in a nutshell, you have failure to predict and prevent. Who said Tim McVeigh smoked dope? Each "layer" of search is based on someone's idea of what a terroist is, not what one actually will be. What you end up with is a shit list, which may or may not contain a suspect. Before the event you don't know what to look for. Before September 11th, the purchase of a dozen box cutters had no predictive value.
God, things are screwed up. I'm reading Mother Jones and it makes sense while traditional media is clueless or conspiratory.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
They stole my name! Can I sue?
He said that institutions like the government, corporations, etc. only tend to react to other institutions - I think that I agree with that.
As a new years resolution, I started doing my political rants on my blog, and I am cooling it a bit with my family and friends. I find that just expressing my discomfort with things like the oil war, etc. has a mellowing effect on me - but, as JPB implied, does it do any good?
I know that the best thing that can be done is to support organizations like EFF, etc. that can get the attention (hopefully!) of congress.
-Mark
When have you ever know the "traditional media" to have a clue? Whether or not any specific counter-cultural source of news is in line with your politics and philosophy, they are much more likely to expose a kernel of the truth. The talking heads of the networks and cable news vendors pretend to be unbiased and neutral, all the while they are spouting the corporate angle of their owners and sponsors.
In many cases, knowledge is a primary source of bias, and if the knowledge is valid, then the bias is a good thing. Yes, there are times when the only way to find the answer is to empty your head of preconceptions, but more often they claim to be "unbiased" is just a cover for willful ignorance.
AFAIK, Gibson is the originator of this term. His use of it in his books and stories is probably not the first example. Anyone know of earlier citations?
Basically what you are saying is that it is ok to make the powerful more powerful and make the weak, weaker. The USA was founded on a system of checks-and-balances. Without those, we have nothing to prevent the government from getting out of control. IMHO, the government is already out of control. Laws are made by politicians that are allowed to receive "Funding" from "Interested Parties". Basically it means they can legally take a bribe for a vote. Do you REALLY think a law like the DMCA would fly with a panel of average Americans? No way. The DMCA only benefits the RIAA by making the average American a criminal before a crime has been committed. Last I checked, entrapment was against the law.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
(Other files in that directory might not be safe to look at while at work. So browse with care.)
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
If you look at the last century, I think it is pretty clear that market capitalism is very effective at efficiently allocating scarce resources. It can break down in the limits (monopolies are only effiecient for the monopoly, and bad policies can cause things to break down as in the '30s), but for most mainstream economic activities, it is hard to beat. I would even go so far as to claim that it is an essential part of any fair and efficient economic system, as long as there is regulation from abuse, and it is only applied where it makes sense.
On the other hand, it can be terribly innefficient when applied to some situations. Can anyone point to a situation where "information markets" are a good thing? To the extent that companies are able to commercially exploit an idea through exclusive ownership, they have also set up the situation where both the customer and the competition are thinking about how to re-create the technology as their own. Everyone decries the NIH syndrom, but it is inevitable where information is traded as property.
Without doing a research paper on the subject, I can point to several examples of the ineffectiveness of "information markets" as a concept. Why do you thing RAMBUS failed and is now resorting to legal tactics for profitability? You just can't sell and idea without revealing it, and once it is out, it is really difficult to keep others from exploiting it. Note that you don't (can't) patent or copyright an idea itself, just particular expressions of it. In general, I don't see many companies with a workable business model selling the intellectual property rights to system components or technologies. They can and do sell complete products and services, but the idea that you could build a SOC (system on chip) composed from sub-chip units bought from different vendors has never developed.
Take a look at the system software market as well. Either you build an OS to support the hardware systems you want to sell, or you attempt to build a monopoly. Nothing else seems to work very well. One other thing works, Open/Free source development is the one workable model because it allows a community to develop around shared IP, and customers and system designers benefit. You no longer have to have a huge organization that is vertically integrated so they can control everything.
Which enemy is more important, the one inside the fence or the one outside?
Read more history books. The concept of continious progress is very new. Maybe 500 years old. For the bulk of "western" (European) history the exact opposite has been true. Throughout the Dark Ages there was almost no technological (or cultural) progress at all. The Romans and Ancient Greeks both beleived that the world was in active decay, falling from the Golden Age of past glory. The idea of "progress" as we understand it came about in The Renaissance.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
from the article:"It strikes me that existing political institutions -- whether it's the administration or Congress or large corporations -- only respond to other institutions. I don't care how many individuals you have marching in the streets, they're not going to pay attention until there's a leader for those individuals who can come forward and say I represent the organization of those individuals and we're going to amass the necessary money and votes to kick you the hell out of office."
Well, I can't find the article, but I read an opposing viewpoint that promoted a leaderless movement. The biggest advantage was that "they can't stop your movement with one bullet." When I look at history and see how the deaths of MLK, the Kennedys, and more recently Rabin, destroyed a movement, it gives me pause. I don't know how a leaderless movement works, but it is an idea worthy of discussion.
Then again, maybe a leaderless movement can still have institutions.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
EFF used to have an office in Washington. Given the relatively small pot of honey (around $1 million) they have to work with on an annual basis, however, eventually they found it more productive to legislate through litigation rather than lobbying.
e companies are located within 50 miles of EFF's offices down in the Mission.
It makes perfect sense when you think about who they go up against. Big media, big industry, big government, big money. Swift, underpaid non-profit lawyers have a far better chance in the courtroom than swift, underpaid lobbyists would have in Gucci Gulch.
In addition, being in San Francisco allows EFF to connect to that freaky activist hippy vibe community. Also helps that some of the world's largest/wealthiest/most-sympathetic-to-their-caus
Makes pretty goddamned good sense to be in San Francisco rather than Washington, if you ask me. They used to have a one-person-show liasing in DC for them after they moved to SF, but as far as I know, that "office" of the EFF is now gone. And as far as volunteers go, the EFF usually has more in-house than it knows what to do with. It'd be far better to give/raise money for the organization than volunteer your webmastering or Linux skizznils to the cause.
Things have gotten worse as the number of corporate owners has dwindled. They don't tell on each other as much when there are fewer of them. The New York Times used to have people everywhere and though their North East US centric views would color things, the fact that something happened would emerge. Today, their pages are filled with AP crap, which looks nothing like reality and is written by people who go nowhere. The Wall Street Journal still puts people out into the world and gives them reasonable freedom to write. Time ruined CNN with sentimental nonsense. What's worse, however, is the lack of independent news services with the resources to put people where things are hapening. It's up to you and me to tell what's going on now.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I believe what you meant to say is "Cultural Dissident"; oh well, what do I know anyway...
An effective movement is driven by solid principles that make sense to everyone involved. The purpose of leaders is to get those principles into the minds of the public. If the principles don't take on a life of their own aside from how they're hyped by the leaders, the value of said principles is limited in movement-building.
I think you're getting the underlying motivations for a movement confused with the tactical execution of actions that involve it.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
JPB: The thing that spooks me about the Total Information Awareness program is that that it's inside DARPA [the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency]. And unlike the CIA or the NSA, DARPA has a great track record of actually going out and making big technology happen -- because they're small, they're light, they're anti-bureaucratic, they're engineering minded. And Poindexter may be a convicted felon but he's a very, very smart guy. So where while I'd like to say there's no way that this is going to happen under any other circumstances, I'm less assured of that at the moment.
That DARPA is involved is the thing that reassures me about the IAO in general. DARPA is an institution mainly involved in powerpoint engineering. DARPA is the US's investment in what some of you may remember from Spaceward Ho! as "Radical Tech". It doesn't come to fruition very often, and you almost never get what you wanted.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey