NPR on Net Neutrality

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."

-- Louis D. Brandeis

Listening to the radio today I heard a very disturbing story on NPR regarding Net Neutrality and the fact that the American people had broken a new record by filing over 1 million open comments to the FCC. In fact, the New York Times hints that the vast majority of comments are in favor of Net Neutrality.

OK, but you wont find any mention of that in the NPR story.

To the contrary, NPR takes great pains to "soften" the message. For example, having an academic weigh in with: "The vast majority of the comments are utterly worthless.", and an FCC rep. add: "A lot of these comments are one paragraph, two paragraphs, they don't have much substance beyond, 'we want strong net neutrality." This is some solid reporting...

What if instead the policy in question regarded the death penalty and a majority of people weighed in with the simplistic message: "I'm against it."? Would that still have no value? Is the point of the FCC rep. that, well, Net Neutrality is a complex subject. You couldn't possibly express any worthwhile opinion in just a paragraph or two. In any case, you probably don't really get it, and that's why we listen to experts. I'm not really sure why we put this up in the first place (OK, I do, but it has something to do with mollifying the public into believing they have a voice... as if...!)

Maybe that's too cynical. But really, would it be asking too much for the folks at NPR to throw in some discussion of how the level of enthusiasm demonstrated by the American public through the sheer numbers alone may be indicative of strong popular support, and that, well, something about representative government, etc., etc.?

Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row

-- Bob Dylan

The Moral Justification of Leaking Government Secrets

In a recent review, David Cole considers Snowden, Manning and Assange, and the moral justification of leaking government secrets. He considers the criteria Rahul Sagar has put forward in his recent book, "Secrets and Leaks:  The Dilemma of State Secrecy":

... Sagar argues that disclosure of secrets by private leakers is morally justified when it (1) is based on clear and convincing evidence of abuse of public authority, (2) does not pose a disproportionate threat to public safety, and (3) is as limited in scope and scale as possible.

Cole (along with Sagar) then goes along considering recent leaks under these guidelines.

I believe this entire approach is flawed. Moral justification can't rest on taking some kind of "measured approach". The recent acts by Snowden, Manning and Assange directly address what may be the most serious threat to our Democracy in our time: the erosion or our fundamental liberties. Where all other "checks and balances" from Congressional oversight to Judicial review have consistently failed us in bringing these government overreaches into check, the leaking of government secrets can fairly be viewed as a last ditch effort to curb this dangerous trend.

What's more, in the face of our current political climate, these acts are a brave self-sacrifice. While the rest of us sit back and watch the slow moving train wreck of our failing political system and throw our arms up, these are the people that are taking action. To sit by after the fact and hem and haw over how "limited in scope" the disclosures were seems to me no more than an act of cowardice.

At What Cost?

Today we learned that Edward Snowden was the whistleblower behind the recent revelations concerning domestic spying being done by the National Security Agency.

A number of things about this story are striking.  Here are a few that struck me.

First, in his statement to The Guardian, Snowden calls out President Obama in particular for advancing the policies that concerned him and drove him to the decision to disclose NSA activities.  Here is the quote from the article:

He left the CIA in 2009 in order to take his first job working for a private contractor that assigned him to a functioning NSA facility, stationed on a military base in Japan. It was then, he said, that he "watched as Obama advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in", and as a result, "I got hardened."

Second, in an article in Forbes this weekend, Andy Greenberg points out that the operation exposed by Snowden (in particular the collection of domestic voice data records) explicitly contradicts the Congressional testimony in March of 2012 of NSA Director Keith Alexander.

Today Bruce Schneier posted a short article on this matter, discussing the need to protect whistleblowers and the significant cost to our Democracy of our failing to do so.

We are at a pivotal point in the future of our rights to privacy and quite possibly the long term efficacy of our Republic.

This may sound like hyperbole, but I don't think so.

As Obama ironically pointed out in a memo to his staff early in his Presidency:

"A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency."
  - Barack Obama

So where is the disconnect here?  Is this some kind of cognitive dissonance?  Some kind of conspiracy?  What gives?

I can't speak for the President, but I do believe that it is the American people that are ultimately responsible for this dramatic erosion of personal liberty that is happening before our eyes.  From time to time those in power will attempt to usurp the rights of the people, that is human nature.  In a functioning Democracy, it is ultimately the job of the citizenry to keep these abuses in check.

It would be too simple to say that, well, this all rests on complex technologies, advances in data mining, etc, and the average citizen can't be expected to pass judgement on something like this.  Worse, I have seen recent comments to the effect that well, is it really spying?  There is so much data, it can't all possibly be read by an analyst, I mean, if a tree falls in the forest...  Or, well, our government needs to access this data to keep us safe, I mean, we need this data to catch the terrorists, right?  I mean they tell us so, and who am I to contradict all of this, I'm no expert.

In truth, it is not at all that complicated.

It is simply this:  does the government have the right to monitor all of your digital communications?  Do they have the right to do this secretively without telling you about it?

Even if (and this is a pretty big "if") such a thing was in fact necessary to combat the terrorist threat, it should certainly be something discussed publicly.  Does our Democracy deserve anything less?

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty."
  - Benjamin Franklin

Republic, Lost

Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It by Lawrence Lessig
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Lessig lays out in unequivocal detail how the U.S. Congress has become soaked in corruption. Not the standard quid pro quo type (which is illegal), but rather something he refers to as "dependence corruption", where the dependency is on money, the money that drives campaigns and legislative behavior. Lessig uses the analogy of a "gift economy" to get at the concept of how this type of corruption differs from direct deal making, but leaves no stone unturned in detailing how it is just as real, and just as destructive.

Lessig goes further, describing how eradicating this corruption is fundamental to making any significant problems in the larger problems facing our nation (such as health care and education).

Lessig is a would-be Messiah. He concludes the book with four strategies for how we might address this important problem, the last calling for a constitutional convention to adopt a citizen-led Constitutional Amendment.

I have to say, I am inspired. Before reading this, I of course knew there were problems in Washington, but after reading this, I have a solid foundation on which to understand these problems, some hope that a solution is possible, and a reason to get behind a national movement for election reform.

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Frictionless Sharing and Curation

There is a lot of hubbub recently over Facebook's introduction of what is being called "frictionless sharing". Frictionless sharing is really a redefining of how people will share interests digitally. The FB "I Like" feature, along with related services, have accustomed people to actively sharing interests with friends. Frictionless sharing ushers in a new era where sharing can be done passively. That is, my activity can be monitored passively, and events are forwarded to friends without my direct involvement.

I think it's pretty clear why people may have concerns...

From a privacy perspective, in a way FB has done people a service. They have made blatant and obvious, and in a manner people can understand, the true power and danger of digital communication. Namely, every thing we do, at the finest level of detail, can in principal be monitored. Activity details can be stored indefinitely, processed, data mined, aggregated and sold. It's a good thing that people are being made aware of this fact.

There are also concerns about data overload, and how activity streams will eventually (and may already) hit a signal-to-noise ratio so low as to be useless. I have to disagree. Or at least I have to say that it is way too early to make this kind of conclusion. In fact, if managed correctly, such an advancement could have beneficial effects not only for the usefulness of sharing online but also benefits for user privacy. Of course the crucial phrase here is "managed correctly."

Taken to its logical conclusion, Facebook is in a position to own two valuable assets: 1. the social graph (that is, identity and association), and 2. user activity streams. At this point users MAY (depending on the pleasure and behest of M. Zuckerberg) be given two types of "curation" tools: a. the ability to manage data streams produced by their on-line activity, and b. the ability to manage data streams of others that they consume. It is also quite possible that FB simply expose these two types of assets to 3rd party developers, which can in turn provide tools for managing these data streams (aka "activity streams".) Of course FB will maintain control, and if there is some risk to their business, can and will rollback access as they see fit.

If nothing else, this presents non-trivial problems in balancing flexibility with simplicity. No doubt users will have to be exposed gradually to these types of services. It's quite possible that FB moved too quickly here, but they have shown every ability to correct and adjust as necessary.

A further complication involves content providers (such as media companies, music sharing sites, etc.) Over time users will develop (potentially complex) control and privacy relationships with a proliferation of content providers, creating a fractured privacy environment, which creates further risk for the user.

No doubt FB is struggling with these many issues as we speak. The recent media attention has almost certainly sent the signal that they may have over-stepped here or moved too quickly. It would be nice to imagine that this will signal a weakening of FB's dominance over these valuable assets, and that we may enter an era where consumers wake up to the value these assets present and the danger of one commercial interest obtaining a monopoly over them. And in turn the rise of more open alternatives...

The Patriot Act and American Civil Liberties

The first subject of tonight's Republican National Security Debate was the continuing and strengthening of the Patriot Act. It certainly was no great surprise that there would be nearly universal support (with the exception of Ron Paul and John Huntsman.) What I do think was interesting was the approach taken to mollify concerns about privacy and civil liberties.

In short, the nearly universal strategy (with the exception of some batshit-crazy comments from Bachmann about phones being wired into walls and Miranda rights for foreign citizens) was to characterize the Patriot Act as something that applies primarily to foreign citizens and in particular foreign terrorists. Here are a few examples (see full transcript):

Gingrich: I think it's desperately important that we preserve your right to be innocent until proven guilty, if it's a matter of criminal law. But if you're trying to find somebody who may have a nuclear weapon that they are trying to bring into an American city, I think you want to use every tool that you can possibly use to gather the intelligence.

Romney: And that is Congressman Paul talked about crime. Newt Gingrich was right. There are different categories here. There's crime and there are rights that are afforded to American citizens under our Constitution and those that are accused of crime. Then there's war. And the tool of war being used today in America and around the world is terror. There's a different body of law that relates to war... And that means, yes, we'll use the Constitution and criminal law for those people who commit crimes, but those who commit war and attack the United States and pursue treason of various kinds, we will use instead a very different form of law, which is the law afforded to those who are fighting America.

This is an effective strategy. It certainly plays perfectly into the fears Americans have of future terrorist attacks, but also directly addresses concerns about the erosion of personal liberties.

Unfortunately it is also extremely misleading, inaccurate and ultimately dangerous. The Patriot Act is in fact a direct assault on the privacy and 4th Amendment rights of American citizens. The details on this are really too numerous to present here, but for an overview of how the Patriot Act effects American citizens, see this recent overview from the ACLU. Here is one excerpt:

The Patriot Act applies the distinction between transactional and content-oriented wiretaps to the Internet. The problem is that it takes the weak standards for access to transactional data and applies them to communications that are far more than addresses. On an e-mail message, for example, law enforcement has interpreted the "header" of a message to be transactional information accessible with a PR/TT warrant. But in addition to routing information, e-mail headers include the subject line, which is part of the substance of a communication - on a letter, for example, it would clearly be inside the envelope.

In some cases, it is certainly possible that candidates taking this position actually believe what they are saying. But I really have a hard time believing that either Gingrich or Romney do not know any better. Of course they do, and at least in Gingrich's case, knew just how far they could go in finessing their response so that voters would hear what they wanted, but they would not veer too far from being technically correct. Still not sure how these guys sleep at night...

The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sarah: You know what's good for him?
Burt: To win.
Sarah: For whom and for what?
Burt: What makes the world go round? For money and for glory.
Sarah: For whom?
Burt: Today for me. Tomorrow for himself.
Sarah: You own all the tomorrows because you buy them today, and you buy cheap.
- The Hustler

"Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light."
- The Fountainhead

Rand is the champion of the prime mover. The Fountainhead drives a stake into the heart of collectivism. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", how beautifully egalitarian, what could possibly go wrong? But hidden beneath this would-be nirvana lies a dark underbelly. Nothing less than the systematic stripping away of our fundamental human nature. Our nature to think, to reason, to create and to move mankind forward. Rand shines a bright light onto this dark underbelly of collectivism.


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