Original to: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/public-indifference-nsa-snowden...

John Naughton The Observer, Sunday 20 October 2013

Edward Snowden: public indifference is the real enemy in the NSA affair

Most people don't seem to worry that government agencies are collecting their personal data. Is it ignorance or apathy?

... Interesting article. Thanks for posting. Is there a real reason to be more worried that the government agencies are collecting personal data when equally or more powerful institutions such as Google, Apple, and Facebook (who are lacking almost completely in any publicly democratic structure or input) are the main arbiters of this kind of actuarial surveillance? Not really, I think. Is there a real technical reason to have the kind of private centralized electronic communication spaces on the WWW that have been carved out of the decentralized and public internet by 'industry'. No, not really, I think. But, do we see the 'professional peers' or academics (who previously built the internet up and until the web) stepping up? Not really. What's more is, the people who really need to keep their data or conversations a secret from the US government - I don't know say Angela Merkel, drug dealers, paedophiles, journalists, activists, etc - should learn to use the existing tools to do so. The smart ones do already. But, do we see normal users turning to the existing alternative communication spaces and tools (that are often less-convenient or require more of users)? No, not really. Even so, I don't think it is really important that individuals are targeted or perhaps even marketed. That would be a policy issue. The collection of the data _by private parties_ is itself is the danger - turning data into private property into information into power. I really see a long road ahead. Unless users decide, as some have suggested, that they can cope ( they don't care, or decide that knowing what's going on is good enough to set them free?), the only way forward that I see is to build a public infrastructure (like public schools, public highways, public parks etc). That is, if I am not mistaken, the exact challenge that the internet engineering task force met when they circumvented the closed gardens of the old telcos. The current challenge, however, is first cultural, economic and political, then technical. Unless we can set aside some institutional support to build public electronic infrastructures that cater to users without the data surveillance and without major pressure from industry (again, like the internet), then we won't even get a chance to meet the technical challenge. Under current cultural momentum, this is unlikely to happen at the government or the University level (like it did with the Internet). Nor is it likely in the so-called free-market. This is not to say that the technical challenge is not great. It is. The WWW, where the vast majority of online communication happens and where these centralized vortexes have been established, is _worlds_ more complex than the internet that provides its transport. I'm not talking about the protocols and standards - which now that 2 of the 3 major browser vendors are free software - is mostly irrelevant. I'm talking about the entire space of the WWW: the software, data stores, API's, etc. Getting user data out of these private centralized networks is not just an engineering problem. -august. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org