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.

Comments

Translation:

[Pseudonymous Powers]

"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!"

Re:Translation:

[epyT-R]

Oh wow, this article reads like a pravda piece might have during the height of the cold war. Lets do a sanity check. We have two 'trigger' words in this summary: 'colonialism' and 'imperialism', in newspeak contexts. Lets click on the link and see... Ah, the slogan is "Technology, culture and diversity media." We have another newspeak term: 'diversity', as any individual daring to identify as an individual or, worse, act in his own interest, is obviously a racist, sexist 'imperialist' pig dead set on world domination. Care to guess the politics of the submitter and/or the source?

However, despite being invited, Zuckerberg, Marissa Mayer, and Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, perhaps feeling their own imperial bona fides, decided to skip the president’s speech.

Like, how DARE they skip out on Dear Leader??! They need to check their privilege!

I'm all for protecting personal identity, rights, and liberty from predatory people and organizations (private AND public!), but this source is just a tad biased, folks. Too biased for its analysis to be much use. This article spends too much time bitching about the corp-rats, and no time dealing with the big elephants in the room, the ones issuing mandatory surveillance law and gag orders to silence criticism and dissent from those who would rather opt out. If the political culture in western countries still respected individual rights over groupthink knee jerking, we wouldn't have half the privacy concerns we do.

Acting like != being

[gurps_npc]

Look, my 6 year old niece acts like a queen, that doesn't make her one.

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.

Re:Acting like != being

[mrchaotica]

Corporations don't publicly arrest, imprison, or kill people

In Missouri, they do now!

Re:Acting like != being

[mrchaotica]

To make my previous post more clear: the letter I linked to was the governor explaining why he vetoed the bill that would give private security officers the same powers as commissioned police. As of two days ago, his veto was overridden and that bill is now law.

Re:Acting like != being

[halivar]

Corporations care about money above all else - countries care about many things.

But most of those things boil down to money, either in cash or resources. Almost every war, even wars purportedly of religion, begin because someone has something someone else wants.

I have seen no corporation coming anywhere close to claiming to have the powers of a country. It simply does not exist.

The RIAA and the MPAA use to send out "swat" teams with their jackets emblazoned with their cartel acronym (in the style of the FBI or ATF) to shakedown street bootleggers. Orin Hatch suggested in a senate hearing on piracy that the RIAA should be allowed to remotely destroy computers hosting songs. The idea is not lunacy.

Re:Acting like != being

[penguinoid]

I have seen no corporation coming anywhere close to claiming to have the powers of a country.

Dutch East India Company
"It was a powerful company, possessing quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts,[5] negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies.[6]"

"By 1669, the VOC was the richest private company the world had ever seen, with over 150 merchant ships, 40 warships, 50,000 employees, a private army of 10,000 soldiers, and a dividend payment of 40% on the original investment.[28]"

Facebook delenda est

[mrchaotica]

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?

Voluntary colonialism

[bhagwad]

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.

Re:Voluntary colonialism

[mrchaotica]

American colonists famously bought Manhattan island from the natives for proverbial beads and trinkets. You may call that "voluntary," but it's still abusive.

Re:Voluntary colonialism

[bhagwad]

Buying Manhattan by itself couldn't be called colonialism. The real problem with colonialism is the eventual suppression of human rights, murder etc. Without human rights violations, there would be no problem with colonialism.

Let me put in this way. I'm an Indian (as in India - the east. Not native American). The British were a problem only because there were human rights violations. Let's say the British instead had democratic elections and people freely chose a British national to govern instead of an Indian, I would have absolutely no problems with that. That would not be called colonialism.

As long as there are no human rights violations, there's no complaint. And tech companies are not engaging in that kind of thing.

China in the NYT

[Tokolosh]

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".

Re:Why invent a new word?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why invent a new word?

[jenningsthecat]

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.