Assange believes too late for any pervasive privacy

[Steve Kinney]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 12/11/2015 03:38 AM, Zenaan Harkness wrote:

> Game for privacy is gone, mass surveillance is here to stay –
> Assange on #RT10 panel

[ ... ]

> while some experts can achieve practical privacy for themselves
> for limited number of operations… it’s gone for the rest of
> the populations,” the WikiLeaks founder stressed.

[ ... ]

> The WikiLeaks founder reminded the panel of the historic
> examples of East Germany and other societies, in which people
> adapted to living under the scrutiny of the authorities.

[ etc. ]

Well yeah, he's only stating the obvious:  Pervasive networked
computing is here, it's growing, and historical concepts of
'privacy' are just that, historical.  But in the context of the
show, his comments focus on the archaic paradigm of "privacy" as
something that exists naturally and is violated when State actors
pry into the private affairs of individuals.  That's a narrow
viewpoint, distorted by an increasingly irrelevant context.
Today, State actors are only one group of "privacy violators,"
alongside commercial interests and the general public itself.  The
disadvantages of a world with little or no privacy are
counterbalanced by significant advantages that are inherent in a
world of "networked everything."

The Panopticon is a prison where the guards can watch the inmates
but the inmates can not watch the guards.  The Internet is a
prison where the inmates can watch each other, and the guards:
The guards do have a better view, but their powers of observation
are no longer exclusive.

Secrets that could once be kept until after their exposure could
make no difference are now breaking open before the protected
operations are completed:

http://peterswire.net/wp-content/uploads/SHB.cambridge.061014.pptx

CPunks will recall Cryptome's ongoing Eyeball series, and of
course, the Total Poindexter Awareness project:  Early examples of
open source intelligence collection /and/ reporting directed
against the wardens of our modern Panopticon.  Today, projects
like CopWatch are "watching the watchers" and reporting to an
audience large enough to inconvenience our Panopticon's owners.
In the last few days we have seen random nobodies manage to save
and re-publish multiple eyewitness accounts of a staged
'terrorist' attack, directly contradicting the propaganda
narrative the event was staged to support.

The availability of more and better political intelligence
formerly concealed from the public is growing exponentially.  This
is one of several drivers of fundamental change in large scale
power relationships that is causing a panic among our present
rulers.  The United States is preparing to put down major civil
uprisings inside its own borders, again in full view of interested
members of the general public.

I sometimes compare paranoid reactions to the "loss of privacy" in
the networked world to mental telepathy:  The prospect of someone
reading your mind is frightening, until it turns out that your own
deeply held secrets are not special or unusual to a telepath who
has already "seen it all" and has /far/ worse examples to compare
your most heinous and embarrassing inner thoughts and motivations
to.

Old Farts have major problems wrapping their heads around the
concept that a world where privacy is shrinking fast and expected
to nearly disappear is a Good Thing.  People who grew up with the
Interet, not so much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c-RbGZBnBI

:o)






-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1
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=40o9
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----