Subscribethe Internet is as much about tracking as it is transmission, and the whole Web 2.0 meme reveals, plainly I think, that current and future technological advances and killer apps will come about through collective interactions that dispense with privacy as a prerequisite, either because the application depends upon coalescing and managing the data streams that mark the moment of interaction, and because more and more normatively, people seem content to divulge private information for the sake of private and public gain. Besides, most of the data that is being used to assess our lifestyle and consumption habits, our hobbies and our family life, our educational and laboring successes and failures, is data that we ourselves provided. This wasn't our fault necessarily; the discussions of what was being lost in the wake of this collective archivization of personal data came late to the table, and to be honest, rarely ever got plated along with our happy consumer meals. And while I find myself saddened at the subsequent dissolution of basic, private information and the rise of the so-called datasphere, I also know that the data genie is already out of the bottle, so to speak, and I'm not sure there's a way to conveniently shuttle him back inside, at least not without juridical methods that I find objectionable.
For now at least, I want to put any discussion of policy implications into abeyance, and instead think a bit about privacy and media. As a blogger watching the whole tired Ivan Tribble affair, as someone who routinely publishes online by signing his own name rather than a pseudonym, I am acutely aware of the dangers that exist in publishing online. I have provided information to credit companies, have listed books I own and music I like, have disclosed personal information, (for example: my forthcoming daughter), and so on and so fourth, ad absurdum, all online. But whatever the novelty of the Internet, whatever the uniqueness of blogging, this ability to self-confess has been around a very, very long time. The ability to self-confess in a way that moves beyond the transitory, ephemeral conversation-and-memory combo has been around since the acculturation to literacy. Even blogging, for all its celebrated newness, can be understood as the completion and perfection of the typewriter, the first technology to fuse the act of composition with the act of publishing for an audience.
Blogging is at this point a somewhat battered and banal example of what many see as a more pernicious confession and collection of information that removes from the individual the power to resist authoritarian impulses (be they governmental or corporate), which at least theoretically rely upon information control and knowledge over and interpellation of their targetted subjects. And the many who see this aren't wrong, necessarily. But it occurs to me that the concern might well be alleviated if we followed Lanier's suggestion or parallel loss: that nullifying some of the force of any "right to privacy" means also nullifying that force for all sorts of actors that claim a privilege via it, from the individual citizen to the corporation to the government. If we had as much information and (and this is a hugely crucial component) information-processing as did these larger and more complex organizations, it may be that privacy would turn out to no longer be a necessary check on the authoritarian principle.
Look. We have a President here who is making a claim of unlimited power, for the duration of a war that may never end. Oh, he says it’s limited by the country’s laws, but they’ve got a crack legal team that reliably interprets the laws to say that the President gets to do whatever he wants. It amounts to the same thing.
I am not exaggerating. I am really and truly not.
September 11 started the war. When will it end? Maybe never. Where is the battlefield? The entire world, including the United States. Who is an enemy combatant? Anyone the President says is an enemy combatant, including a U.S. citizen–no need for a charge, no need for a trial, no need for access to a lawyer. What if they’re found not to be an enemy combatant? We can keep them in prison anyway, and we don’t have to tell their families they’re alive or their lawyers that they were cleared. What can you do to an enemy combatant? Anything you want. Detain him forever, for the rest of his life, because this is a war like any other and we have always been able to detain POWs for the duration of the war. But you don’t need to follow the Geneva Conventions, because this is a war like no other in our history. And oh yes–if the President decides that we need to torture a prisoner for the war effort, it’s unconstitutional for Congress to stop him. They took that position in an official memo, and they have not backed down from it. They have said it was “unnecessary” but they have never backed down from it.
They are not only entitled to do these things to people; they are entitled to do them in secret. When Congress asks for information about them, they can just ignore it. And they are entitled to actively deceive the public about all this.
That’s the power they claim. At what point are we going to take that claim seriously?
Most people have been slow to realize just how awesome a sea change has taken place in the domestic political scene....The public still has little sense of how radical our leading politicians really are....Just before putting this book to bed, I discovered a volume that describes the situation almost perfectly....an old book by, of all people, Henry Kissinger....
In the first few pages, Kissinger describes the problems confronting a heretofore stable diplomatic system when it is faced with a "revolutionary power" — a power that does not accept that system's legitimacy....It seems clear to me that one should regard America's right-wing movement...as a revolutionary power in Kissinger's sense....
In fact, there's ample evidence that key elements of the coalition that now runs the country believe that some long-established American political and social institutions should not, in principle, exist....Consider, for example....New Deal programs like Social Security and unemployment insurance, Great Society programs like Medicare....Or consider foreign policy....separation of church and state....The goal would seem to be something like this: a country that basically has no social safety net at home, which relies mainly on military force to enforce its will abroad, in which schools don't teach evolution but do teach religion and — possibly — in which elections are only a formality....
Surely, says the conventional wisdom, we should discount this rhetoric: the goals of the right are more limited than this picture suggests. Or are they?
Back to Kissinger. His description of the baffled response of established powers in the face of a revolutionary challenge works equally well as an account of how the American political and media establishment has responded to the radicalism of the Bush administration over the past two years:...."they find it nearly impossible to take at face value the assertions of the revolutionary power that it means to smash the existing framework"....this passage sent chills down my spine....
There's a pattern...within the Bush admin-istration....which should suggest that the administration itself has radical goals. But in each case the administration has reassured moderates by pretending otherwise — by offering rationales for its policy that don't seem all that radical. And in each case moderates have followed a strategy of appeasement....this is hard for journalists to deal with: they don't want to sound like crazy conspiracy theorists. But there's nothing crazy about ferreting out the real goals of the right wing; on the contrary, it's unrealistic to pretend that there isn't a sort of conspiracy here, albeit one whose organization and goals are pretty much out in the open....
Here's a bit more from Kissinger: "The distinguishing feature of a revolutionary power is not that it feels threatened...but that absolutely nothing can reassure it (Kissinger's emphasis). Only absolute security — the neutralization of the opponent — is considered a sufficient guarantee"....I don't know where the right's agenda stops, but I have learned never to assume that it can be appeased through limited concessions. Pundits who predict moderation on the part of the Bush administration, on any issue, have been consistently wrong....
Who cares about whether the Patriot Act gets renewed? Want to abuse our civil liberties? Just do it.
Who cares about the Geneva Conventions. Want to torture prisoners? Just do it.
Who cares about rules concerning the identity of CIA agents. Want to reveal the name of a covert operative? Just do it.
Who cares about whether the intelligence concerning WMDS is accurate. Want to invade Iraq? Just do it.
Who cares about qualifications to serve on the nation's highest court. Want to nominate a personal friend with no qualifications? Just do it.
And the latest outrage, which I read about in "The New York Times" this morning, who cares about needing a court order to eavesdrop on American citizens. Want to wiretap their phone conversations? Just do it.
What a joke. A very cruel, very sad joke.
posted by orthogonality at 1:28 PM on December 21, 2005