Slashdot Mirror
Technology Colonialism
jrepin sends an editorial from Anjuan Simmons on how tech companies are behaving more and more in a manner that evokes colonialism. Quoting:
Technology companies are increasingly being treated like sovereign nations. A nation with sovereignty has a right to conduct its internal affairs without interference from other nations. ... When technology companies are feted by foreign ministers and also refuse an invitation from the leader of their own country of origin, they exhibit the characteristics of a group that wants to be treated as a peer to heads of state. Technology companies understand the power they wield in the global economy. ... If Silicon Valley is allowed to become the central repository of information about people around the world, then there is a danger of setting up a form of imperialism based on personal data. Just as the royal powers of old reached far into the lives of distant colonized people, technology companies gain immense control with every terabyte of personal data they store and analyze.
"I want everyone to hate what I hate as much as I hate it, so here's some extremely shaky logic that attempts to conflate what I hate to something that most people already hate, because what I hate most of all is coming up with real, cogent arguments. Hate!"
the same ones who have been sued and being sued by government around the world? how about when GE tried to buy Allied in 2000 and the Europeans said no and killed the deal? what about when reagan told japanese car makers to make their cars in the USA and they complied? The president is not a king and no one has to run and see him. some of you kids need to realize we live in a nation of laws and private companies can tell the government to fcuk off if they wanted to. happens all the time. the reason why we have paid warranties on everything now is that around 2000 UPS won a big case against the IRS concerning writing off the risk of selling insurance even when you minimize your risk to almost nothing.
Their are significant differences between corporations and countries.
Corporations care about money above all else - countries care about many things.
Corporations don't publicly arrest, imprison, or kill people, all countries do this, all the time, publicly, etc.
Corporations don't care about location, countries build it into their system
Some corporations agree to subordination, while all countries insist on superiority/equality (Countries always claim that they are in charge, not the corporations - even if in reality is the other way around).
I have seen no corporation coming anywhere close to claiming to have the powers of a country. It simply does not exist.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
This illustrates why the Free Software movement is so incredibly important. But it isn't just Free "Software" that we need; it's Free Protocols, standards and systems. It is intolerable to allow the Internet to be carved into centralized, single-company-controlled silos like Facebook, Twitter, and Google's various services because they abuse that control for their own ends, and will only expand the degree of that abuse in the future. It is inevitable that they will eventually use their privileged position to unduly control world events, if they aren't doing so already.
It is not enough to simply avoid using those things; they are already actively working to rape us of our privacy (through third parties) whether we participate or not. We have a moral imperative to both actively resist having anyone use them and to build decentralized, privacy-respecting replacements.
Of course, that's easy to say. With all the money and power vested in asserting totalitarian control over the world's information against us, how do we win?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
You will give me $100 Billion dollars or I will reveal, via social media, who among you are Bronies!
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
I initially assumed that this was written by Bennet Haselton. When I didn't see his name attached to it, I immediately wondered if he's testing Slashdot to see if his brilliant ideas invoke eye-rolls because they are associated with him, or well, they just are not that brilliant or insightful.
Sweet Jesus. Will you get on with THE POINT?
If people give up their data willingly, that is not colonialism. Colonialism dealt with the forcible removal of people's rights. When it's voluntary, no one has any business complaining. It's not hard to understand.
I'm guessing it's related to a report:
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China is asking some U.S. technology firms to directly pledge their commitment to contentious policies that could require them to turn user data and intellectual property over to the government, The New York Times reported.
Citing unidentified sources, the report said Beijing had distributed a document to some U.S. firms earlier this summer asking them to promise they would not harm China’s national security and would store Chinese user data within the country.
The NYT report, which comes just ahead of President Xi Jinping's first state visit to the United States, did not identify which companies had been asked to make the pledge.
The document also asked the companies that their products be "secure and controllable", a phrase that industry groups said could be used to force companies to build so-called back doors that would allow third-party access to systems, it said.
Officials at the Cyberspace Administration of China did not respond to a faxed request seeking comment.
Sources told Reuters last month that China had resumed work on a set of banking cyber security regulations it suspended earlier this year.
The previous regulations - containing provisions that required Chinese banks to buy more domestic IT equipment and Western tech vendors to disclose secret source code if they sell to lenders - drew strong protests from foreign business lobbies, the U.S. and European governments.
China regulators suspended the plan in April, saying they would consider feedback from domestic banks. The suspension was seen as a diplomatic victory for the Obama administration, coming shortly after visits to Beijing by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker.
In July, China's legislature adopted a sweeping national security law that said all key network infrastructure and information systems must be "secure and controllable".
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
influence != power, at this nuanced resolution.
As it is, their factories and contacts aren't quite equipped to assemble physical force. I'd be more nervous (like TFS wants) if they did.
If a company is doing something utterly out of line, the governments still have the power to demand compliance. If TFS is talking about "influence", control, laws passed, well I have a newsflash pal that shit has been in lobbyist pockets for ages. Industrial tobacco (which isn't very tobacco) burns the country what, billions in healthcare alone? Losses in GDP from inferior workforce, from reduced achievement. And yet the system ticks on, because the money circulates towards those who sustain it.
Sure, we should fear corporates getting out of control and holding back our/your country, but not because of "sovereign nation behavior". They're plenty happy to fuck us up while shoulder to shoulder with their mother nation.
That's called fascism, folks.
No, it's not. It's also not called Colonialism.
When technology companies are feted by foreign ministers and also refuse an invitation from the leader of their own country of origin, they exhibit the characteristics of a group that wants to be treated as a peer to heads of state
So? Every Citizen in a Free Society ought to be treated as a Peer to Heads of State.
Corporations and Individuals should not have to "answer" to the Head of State, only to the Law. Quite the opposite in fact- it is the Heads of State who should be held accountable to the Citizens, and the Laws should hold only as much power as the Population grants them.
nt
I think the difference is the rate at which abuse can explode based on the adoption of the technology.
==> I hate tech and you should too.
Seriously, this is one of the worst editorial ever. Some real gems:
-- "It is unclear how much pressure these government bodies can impose on companies like Microsoft when they are so dependent on the company’s products." .... are not regulated either.
By this logic, Boeing, GE,
-- "In December, Lei Wu, the top internet minister in China, met with Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, and Jeff Bezos at their corporate offices."
Should Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg tell them not to meet them? What does the author expect here from tech CEOs?
-- "There is a clear desire by many technology companies to create products that consumers can use regardless of the type of platform they have chosen."
Is there a problem here?
-- "These emails showed that attempts to hire an employee away from another company in the collective would be a career-ending move by the person responsible." ... I can go on an on....
Are these illegal activities limited to tech companies only? What about the whole financial industry? Tech or no tech, almost all giants corporations have paid heavy fines. Just yesterday, GM accepted guilt for ignition switch and paid 900 million fine (this is in addition to billions paid for civil lawsuits).
This is not a feature of the technology industry. This is exactly the behaviour of every industry that becomes arrogant, such as the automotive industry in the twentieth century, the railroad industry before then, monopoly trading companies like the East India Company, and banking as far back as the Middle Ages if not earlier.
If the "sovereigns" have any problem, then can anytime put an end to jurisdiction shopping and tax evasion but they won't.
Corporations and Individuals should not have to "answer" to the Head of State, only to the Law. Quite the opposite in fact- it is the Heads of State who should be held accountable to the Citizens, and the Laws should hold only as much power as the Population grants them.
I would agree with you if you didn't equate corporations with citizens. Perhaps corporations shouldn't have to answer to heads of state, but they bloody well ought to answer to government. The hierarchy should have citizens at the top, followed by the government in the middle, with corporations on the bottom. We've allowed that order to be reversed, and we're paying the price.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
/. Monday: Microsoft and Apple are refusing to go along with government demands for data based on a court order. Conclusion: the government is repressive (or at least reactionary), those laws are unjust, and the companies resisting them are brave and noble. They have every right to challenge and resist those governments.
Make up your damned minds people.
I agree with pretty much everything you say.
The problem here is that they should answer to the Law, but increasingly are picking and choosing which laws they feel like answering to. If the best reason you can give for Uber to be allowed to ignore the law is "because I don't like that particular law", well... there there are a lot of laws that aren't liked by a lot of different people, and you're bound to find someone using the same justification to ignore a law that you like. I've met people who openly believe that fraud shouldn't be a crime: if you trick a person into giving you money, it should be rightfully yours. I've seen one person (maybe a troll, maybe serious) say that if you don't realize that you've been robbed, you haven't been robbed. I wouldn't invite that person to my house without comprehensively cataloging every last item of value, in the event that they try to steal something in the hopes that I wouldn't notice. I wouldn't be surprised if that person's grandmothers have "misplaced" a lot of jewelry over the years.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Pretty good writeup of all the similarities... the one glaring flaw being that he got hugely distracted by "white male." Racism exists, but tech companies don't use it to justify their hegemony -- instead they use the idea that they are always trying to improve things for you. Their way is the best way (whether you consent to it or not) and not by coincidence, this "best way" always involves more technology. Their technology.
Every empire needs some principle by which it overtly justifies all the inevitable atrocities. For the European empires of centuries past, yes, that principle was racism, along with Christianity and a couple other things. Anyone doing it now has to pretend they're not doing it, i.e. make it covert. But "making the world a better place," you can say right out loud.