Net Control is Thought Control
On CSPAN Friday morning a gentlemen who is, I take it, a lobbyist for TPC or the Competitive Long Distance Coalition (TPCs) said that the Internet could be regulated just like magazines, tv, or anything else. I have long doubted statements like this particularly since they come from people without apparent experience on the Net. I have long suggested that net control=thought control and will prove as difficult in the modern world as the more conventional thought control itself. But why is net control just a form of thought control? It is difficult for others to control our thoughts because they are insubstantial, hidden, and under our control. Small groups (family, village, etc) have a better chance of influencing what we think but even they are not totally successful. Governments who wanted to engage in thought control have usually set up government schools for this purpose with mixed results. Liberal societies (broadly defined) have loosened many of the traditional controls on our thoughts exercised by our families and neighbors. They have tried to replace these controls with bureaucratic thought control systems with limited success. Only the totalitarian states have done much of a job in this area but not enough (obviously) to save themselves from destruction. There has been a general decline in the effectiveness of thought control since the Industrial Revolution made (atomistic) individualism possible and books cheap. The Nets are the next step in this process. Since they allow our thoughts to easily, rapidly, and cheaply leap from our minds to a world-wide communications medium, our minds are in some sense extended worldwide. It becomes cheap and easy for anyone to publish their thoughts. The dramatic changes occasioned by the mechanical production of cheap pulp paper and steam-driven printing presses in the 19th century will be as nothing compared to effects of the speed and reach of Net "publishing." In addition to expanding the scope of our thoughts, the Nets also give us new powers of secret communication. Modern encryption and anonymity technology lets us both keep our thoughts secret and communicate them to anyone else who is interested. Quite an expansion of the capabilities of "the thought in the brain." Also, the Nets allow us to find others of our ilk (however small and deviate that may be) who offer support to us in our thoughts. This further reduces the power of traditional thought controls exercised by our immediate communities. Since my immediate community has included Cypherpunks since February 1993, I am less likely to be influenced "locally" on topics of Cypherpunk interest. The normal primate tendency to look to the "troop" for guidance in what to think and do is sabotaged by our ability to find our own reinforcing communities where ever we like. So even less thought control is possible. As we users know and non-users will find out, the Nets are not "just another medium" like books, magazines, and TV (just as those were not "just another medium" in their day). Control of the Nets will prove as difficult as the control of thoughts themselves. DCF
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Control of the Nets will prove as difficult as the control of thoughts themselves.
I agree with everything you said. It seems to me that the simplest way to describe crypto anarchy is to say that it's the observation that technological change is going to make certain kinds of rules -- like our current tax and censorship laws -- nearly impossible to enforce. The analysis makes sense to me, and I'm inclined to believe that the crypto anarchy predictions will be borne out. Censorship is rapidly becoming technically infeasible. That doesn't mean that attempts to censor the net won't be mounted, that they won't be damaging, and that people won't go to jail. It just means that all of that ugliness will go down for nothing. That's why it's important to try to educate people about the dynamics of the net, and to try to persuade them that our analysis is accurate. If our government would simply look at things as they are with respect to crypto, they would see that along with the inevitable loss of control there are a lot of opportunities and benefits, both politically and economically, to the new dynamic. We ought to be trying to open up speech in countries like North Korea and Iraq with crypto tools. We ought to make sure that American companies reap the benefits of the new financial tools that are coming down the pike. And we ought to make sure that the software industry doesn't move overseas because our people aren't allowed to give their customers the crypto the market demands. Our government's inability to accept reality on these issues is alreacy costing business tens of billions of dollars each year, shipping jobs overseas, and having a chilling effect on computer security resarch at home and abroad (thereby exposing computer users to risks and damages they might otherwise avoid). Our own rights as citizens are being compromised, and the arrival of free speech in other countries is being postponed needlessly. For what? So Sen. Exon and the NSA can tilt at windmills? I wish the NSA would participate in these discussions publicly. It wouldn't even be necessary for them to do it as an institution. Let's get some individuals from the NSA who agree with the agency's position out here to defend it. Engage us in debate on the net. Here's a challenge for the NSA: Let's find a neutral third party, an academic or a journalist perhaps (someone from CSPAN?), to moderate a newsgroup or a mail list so that things won't degenerate into a shouting match. We'll make a rule that even posts that don't pass moderation will be published in a different list, so that charges of biased moderation can be evaluated. Tell us what you're trying to accomplish, why your goals are in the nation's interest, and how your policy will accomplish those goals. Then let us challenge your arguments. Let us explain what we're trying to accomplish, why our goals are beneficial, and how our proposed policies will accomplish those goals. Then you guys can take your best shots at us. Of course it's unthinkable that the NSA would accept such a challenge. But if you think about it, it shouldn't be. These are important issues -- they affect our civil liberties and our wallets. This is a democracy. And if the NSA believes in the strength of its position, it ought to have enough confidence to defend it in public.
DCF makes some excellent points about the difficulty of *overt* thought control in a information society. however I would like to suggest that in our own democratic culture, *overt* thought control is not really that important and is not necessarily the major means of thought control. the most insidious, and effective, form of thought control is that which manipulates subject's thinking without their being aware of it. there are a variety of ways to accomplish this, many of them outlined in a book called "Coercive Persuasion" loaned to me be an acquaintance. one way is to try to infiltrate groups with particular individuals who are loyal to the "thought control" agenda, who then attempt to gain the trust of members, but then also try to subtly manipulate their thinking. the problem that "covert thought control" becomes more possible with an information age that does not handle identity in any "permanent" or "enduring" way. agent provocateurs etc. may be more difficult to identify and easier to create and maintain. in fact a single "government thought control agent" might be able to create and maintain dozens of convincing identities, all of them working to subtly manipulate the population's thinking without detection. in the real world, once a "person" is discredited, all that they do is tainted, but when a "tentacle" is "tainted" in cyberspace, the "operator" need only create a new "tentacle"-- an operation that is becoming increasingly cheap. so in other words I would say that cyberspace raises some problems while solving others, and that its full implications are not yet apparent. I suspect we are simply going to run into new, more sophisticated forms of thought control, not the total dissolution of its capability, in cyberspace. old forms of trying to kill thoughts based on the physical medium, such as bashing printing presses, will dissolve, but other forms of "meme damage" such as "flooding attacks" etc. may arise instead.
participants (3)
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Alex Strasheim -
Duncan Frissell -
Vladimir Z. Nuri