I’ll repeat, first, a quote from yesterday’s blog post, wherein he sums up his reasons for working with the likes of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and others:
All my buddying up with spooks in suits and playing computer cop came from my appreciation for creative anarchy. To have the networks as our playground, we have to preserve our sense of trust; to do that, we have to take it seriously when people break that trust.
I’m saddened to find talented programmers devoting their time to breaking into computers. Instead of developing new ways to help each other, vandals make viruses and logic bombs. The result? People blame every software quirk on viruses, public-domain software lies underused, and our networks become sources of paranoia.
Fears for security really do louse up the free flow of information. Science and social progress only take place in the open. The paranoia that hackers leave in their wake only stifles our work . . . forcing administrators to disconnect our links to networked communities.
I admit I’m curious to know if Stoll’s attitude has changed in the intervening years, what with revelations now that the spooks he worked with worked for entities which have been spying on Americans as well as those they’re supposed to be spying on – and that things like, you know, Guantanamo Bay and waterboarding and such have happened.
But what I do think is that the paranoia he feared, in a great sense, has come to pass. And that paranoia has led to the acceptance of things such as Guantanamo Bay – because the only thing paranoia produces is more paranoia. It’s hard to be rational and to step back and see how close one is to the abyss when paranoia is pushing you from behind, demanding swift action.
Trust me, I know a lot about paranoia. It’s kind of a family hobby, likely born in the pogroms in Russia and reproduced generations later after traveling across three continents.
Here’s a peek at what the paranoia looks like. (Warning, language.) And it’s not limited to one school of thought or one political party. It’s everywhere.
And it might be true that the paranoia’s always been there – but that the Internet is making it easy to broadcast, find, assimilate, commingle, and FREAK ALL THE WAY OUT about. And some of it is worth freaking all the way out about it, because we’re not only aware of the NSA peeking at our every communication, but corporations and advertisers and politicians and everyone else who thinks there’s an advantage to doing so is doing so, echoing the mantra “Well, since X is doing it, so can we.”
And we let them. For the most part. Oh, we get wound up. But we don’t quit.
Fixing things is tricky. We have presidential candidates urging Big Tech to “do something” to stem the flow of disinformation. But do we want to give that power to Big Tech? There’s the distinct possibility that “disinformation” could be defined so broadly by Big Tech or by government urging Big Tech to act that free speech gets trampled, or only certain disinformation is disallowed. We have on one hand people complaining that social media knows too much about us – and it seems these same hands want to hand social media censorious powers at the same time they complain. And remember, censoring others is just fine – it’s just when they censor *you* that things have gone awry.
Then try answering the question “Quis custodiet Ipsos custodes?” With the few minor brushes with social media censors that I’ve experienced, there is no recourse. No chance to explain a misunderstood joke, or a joke or phrase taken out of context. You’re at the mercy of censors who don’t have to answer to you. Or pretty much anyone.
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