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Ex-NSA boss says FBI director is wrong on encryption

encryption

Encryption protects everyone’s communications, including terrorists. The FBI director wants to undermine that. The ex-NSA director says that’s a terrible idea.

The FBI director wants the keys to your private conversations on your smartphone to keep terrorists from plotting secret attacks.

But on Tuesday, the former head of the U.S. National Security Agency…

Read the full article at CNN Money
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/13/technology/nsa-michael-hayden-encryption/

Via @ClubOfINFO.
Julian Assange’s 2014 book When Google Met WikiLeaks consists of essays authored by Assange and, more significantly, the transcript of a discussion between Assange and Google’s Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen.
As should be of greatest interest to technology enthusiasts, we revisit some of the uplifting ideas from Assange’s philosophy that I picked out from among the otherwise dystopian high-tech future predicted in Cypherpunks (2012). Assange sees the Internet as “transitioning from an apathetic communications medium into a demos – a people” defined by shared culture, values and aspirations (p. 10). This idea, in particular, I can identify with.
Assange’s description of how digital communication is “non-linear” and compromises traditional power relations is excellent. He notes that relations defined by physical resources and technology (unlike information), however, continue to be static (p. 67). I highlight this as important for the following reason. It profoundly strengthens the hypothesis that state power will also eventually recede and collapse in the physical world, with the spread of personal factories and personal enhancement technologies (analogous to personal computers) like 3-d printers and synthetic life-forms, as explained in my own techno-liberation thesis and in the work of theorists like Yannick Rumpala.
When Google Met Wikileaks tells, better than any other text, the story of the clash of philosophies between Google and WikiLeaks – despite Google’s Eric Schmidt assuring Assange that he is “sympathetic to you, obviously”. Specifically, Assange draws our attention to the worryingly close relationship between Google and the militarized US police state in the post-9/11 era. Fittingly, large portions of the book (p. 10–16, 205–220) are devoted to giving Assange’s account of the now exposed world-molesting US regime’s war on WikiLeaks and its cowardly attempts to stifle transparency and accountability.
The publication of When Google Met WikiLeaks is really a reaction to Google chairman Eric Schmidt’s 2013 book The New Digital Age (2013), co-authored with Google Ideas director Jared Cohen. Unfortunately, I have not studied that book, although I intend to pen a fitting enough review for it in due course to follow on from this review. It is safe to say that Assange’s own review in the New York Times in 2013 was quite crushing enough. However, nothing could be more devastating to its pro-US thesis than the revelations of widespread illegal domestic spying exposed by Edward Snowden, which shook the US and the entire world shortly after The New Digital Age’s very release.
Assange’s review of The New Digital Age is reprinted in his book (p. 53–60). In it, he describes how Schmidt and Cohen are in fact little better than State Department cronies (p. 22–25, 32, 37–42), who first met in Iraq and were “excited that consumer technology was transforming a society flattened by United States military occupation”. In turn, Assange’s review flattens both of these apologists and their feeble pretense to be liberating the world, tearing their book apart as a “love song” to a regime, which deliberately ignores the regime’s own disgraceful record of human rights abuses and tries to conflate US aggression with free market forces (p. 201–203).
Cohen and Schmidt, Assange tells us, are hypocrites, feigning concerns about authoritarian abuses that they secretly knew to be happening in their own country with Google’s full knowledge and collaboration, yet did nothing about (p. 58, 203). Assange describes the book, authored by Google’s best, as a shoddily researched, sycophantic dance of affection for US foreign policy, mocking the parade of praise it received from some of the greatest villains and war criminals still at large today, from Madeleine Albright to Tony Blair. The authors, Assange claims, are hardly sympathetic to the democratic internet, as they “insinuate that politically motivated direct action on the internet lies on the terrorist spectrum” (p. 200).
As with Cypherpunks, most of Assange’s book consists of a transcript based on a recording that can be found at WikiLeaks, and in drafting this review I listened to the recording rather than reading the transcript in the book. The conversation moves in what I thought to be three stages, the first addressing how WikiLeaks operates and the kind of politically beneficial journalism promoted by WikiLeaks. The second stage of the conversation addresses the good that WikiLeaks believes it has achieved politically, with Assange claiming credit for a series of events that led to the Arab Spring and key government resignations.
When we get to the third stage of the conversation, something of a clash becomes evident between the Google chairman and WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, as Schmidt and Cohen begin to posit hypothetical scenarios in which WikiLeaks could potentially cause harm. The disagreement evident in this part of the discussion is apparently shown in Schmidt and Cohen’s book: they alleged that “Assange, specifically” (or any other editor) lacks sufficient moral authority to decide what to publish. Instead, we find special pleading from Schmidt and Cohen for the state: while regime control over information in other countries is bad, US regime control over information is good (p. 196).
According to the special pleading of Google’s top executives, only one regime – the US government and its secret military courts – has sufficient moral authority to make decisions about whether a disclosure is harmful or not. Assange points out that Google’s brightest seem eager to avoid explaining why this one regime should have such privilege, and others should not. He writes that Schmidt and Cohen “will tell you that open-mindedness is a virtue, but all perspectives that challenge the exceptionalist drive at the heart of American foreign policy will remain invisible to them” (p. 35).
Assange makes a compelling argument that Google is not immune to the coercive power of the state in which it operates. We need to stop mindlessly chanting “Google is different. Google is visionary. Google is the future. Google is more than just a company. Google gives back to the community. Google is a force for good” (p. 36). It’s time to tell it how it is, and Assange knows just how to say it.
Google is becoming a force for bad, and is little different from any other massive corporation led by ageing cronies of the narrow-minded state that has perpetrated the worst outrages against the open and democratic internet. Google “Ideas” are myopic, close-minded, and nationalist (p. 26), and the corporate-state cronies who think them up have no intention to reduce the number of murdered journalists, torture chambers and rape rooms in the world or criticize the regime under which they live. Google’s politics are about keeping things exactly as they are, and there is nothing progressive about that vision.
To conclude with what was perhaps the strongest point in the book, Assange quotes NYT columnist Tom Friedman. We are warned by Friedman as early as 1999 that Silicon Valley is led less now by the mercurial “hidden hand” of the market than the “hidden fist” of the US state. Assange argues, further, that the close relations between Silicon Valley and the regime in Washington indicate Silicon Valley is now like a “velvet glove” on the “hidden fist” of the regime (p. 43). Similarly, Assange warns those of us of a libertarian persuasion that the danger posed by the state has two horns – one government, the other corporate – and that limiting our attacks to one of them means getting gored on the other. Despite its positive public image, Google’s (and possibly also Facebook’s) ties with the US state for the purpose of monitoring the US pubic deserve a strong public backlash.
By Harry J. Bentham – More articles by Harry J. Bentham
Originally published at h+ Magazine on 18 September 2014

By Harry J. Bentham

Originally published at h+ Magazine

Who is more “luddite”: the individual or the state?

In a recent TED talk, an individual – the robot body of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden speaking in Vancouver – said he beat the state. He argued that, while the internet enabled states with unprecedented powers to spy, it has also provided individuals with the ability to singlehandedly “win” against the state by exposing such abuse to the public. Snowden’s statement highlights the way in which the internet, along with other emerging technologies that promise similar decentralization and power to the individual, could be called a double-edged sword.

The capacity of democratized technology to either free people or control them often seems balanced in such a way that new technologies can be validly heralded as liberators or as enslavers, depending on one’s own personal experience with them. However, in spite of this duality, the overwhelming direction does seem to go towards empowering the individual rather than the state. After all, as Snowden so succinctly put it, he did “win”. We know the era of powerful states and monolithic corporations dictating the capabilities of the individual is coming to an end, as what could be called a libertarian or DIY culture is taking hold instead. As Kevin Kelly has put it, technology possesses its own will, and a specific preference for greater freedom.

The fear that advanced technology plays only into the hands of elites to the disadvantage of most of the world is quite common among progressives, as has been described by the IEET’s James Hughes. In reality, the alarmists who signal dangers and negative political outcomes from emerging technologies are missing a big piece of the puzzle. This piece is already forcing itself on us increasingly in the headlines, showing that our era’s defining technologies actually have far more potential to empower and liberate the masses of people now than ever before in history.

Further, the liberation is much more likely to ensue if technologies can advance in a maximally unregulated and un-policed manner. A democratic explosion of liberating technology is possible in the lives of the voiceless and worst-off people in the world, and several emerging technologies could feature significantly in that explosion.

To understand this possibility, it is important to direct our attention to two different kinds of disparity in the world. The first is the inequality that makes the citizens of a country voiceless and powerless in the face of the power of a strong state and massive corporations. The second is the inequality between the weak states or regions and the strong states or regions of the world-economy.

Both of the two arenas suggested above appear to be related. Strong states and corporations benefit exclusively from the system, and find the justification for their power in a global division of labor that says a cherished few can produce things of more value than the other countries. This division of labor exploits the weaker peripheral majority of the world as unrewarded instruments in the global production process, while the high-tech sophisticated work that is maximally profitable remains in the rich minority spaces of strong states and firms. With the club of powerful states and firms essential to the functioning of the world-system, trends that weaken the traditional power of the nation-state or cause rewards to be more equitably distributed are direct threats to the survival of the current global mode of production.

Already, the state is threatened by its inability to control the world of information, which German Chancellor Angela Merkel was mocked for calling “neuland” or “virgin territory.” As idiosyncratic as her choice of words may have seemed, it reflects the attitude of many heads of state. Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy had already used almost exactly the same meaning when describing the internet. The ongoing digitization of politics may appear to be unrelated to the world-economy, but it is relevant, because it betrays the worsening ability of powerful states to stay in control of decisive technologies in the long term, as we shall see.

Many progressives and critics of modern society see advanced and emerging technologies as inherently benefiting only powerful and elitist goals. However, as James Hughes argues in Citizen Cyborg, much of this view is simply not rational and leans towards a primitivist stance on modern industrial developments. It also adheres to an old-fashioned way of thinking that was true in a time when all the decisive technologies were unwieldy and had to be rigidly controlled or sanctioned by governments and powerful monopolistic firms to even be operated with any efficacy.

In attempting to rein in technology now, states and corporations will increasingly find themselves having to appeal to emotional or outright fabricated security concerns to maintain their profits. As patents and other forms of protection are increasingly circumvented by the geeks, pirates, cyber-idealists, Assanges and Snowdens being created by the internet culture, the only defense for statist and corporate interests will be to call these troublesome individuals security threats. By saying a radical new technology could become a threat, e.g. it could be used by terrorists, it could be hacked, there could be an accident, etc. powerful regimes and firms give themselves a convenient mandate to keep their technologies in their own hands, behind their walls, and prevent them from getting out to empower the public or weaker regimes such as those in the Global South. Regimes in the Global South must be weak for the present world-economy to function, so painting an empowered Global South as a deadly and irresponsible threat is probably going to be increasingly necessary for the Global North to maintain its privileges. By appealing to this narrative, the dominant states and firms will become true “luddites”: they are going to smash (discredit) the technologies they don’t like, so they get to keep their job (dominating the profitable production processes).

Increased numbers of progressives do overwhelmingly recognize the powerful potential of the internet to empower the public and traditionally weaker sections of global society. In fact, the internet has made a huge impact on the history of protest and the history of dissent, making it indispensable to progressive causes and the alternate media endorsed by progressives. However, progressive support for other areas of the democratization of technology and freedom of world-liberating technologies from regulation and authoritarian policing is very thin (just consider their responses to GM technology).

Reservations held by progressives about emerging technologies are not very consistent with the view of the internet as a useful political instrument. Many lack the understanding that the internet is not a fluke in technology, but part of a larger trend. Progressives would do best to learn the trend set by the internet, and adopt an anarchic view of technology as something that is becoming overwhelmingly liberating and increasingly easy for the common people to conquer and use for themselves.

A number of emerging technologies have high democratic value, being set to liberate and empower people more rapidly than ever in history. From personal computers to 3D printers, nanotechnologyand perhaps the salient breakthroughs of synthetic biology, the one thing all the big advancements in emerging technologies today have in common is that they do not have any great need to be monopolized by governments and corporations. Possibly the most important observation of their democratic potential is that these devices all seem to have the potential to copy themselves. Synthetic organisms may be the first man-made products to have this ability, while other man-made things do not. They may not need to be supplied or replaced by any authority or special provider. In theory, such devices could be leaked once and become rapidly available everywhere, just as information can be rapidly pirated and circulated on the internet every day.

The global division of labor, and by extension the massive inequality in terms of rewards in the present world-system, would face an existential threat from the leaking of decisive emerging technologies. World inequality, if it is a product of a large division of labor, would not survive the leaking and decentralization of a generation of advanced self-replicating, redundant manufacturing technologies into the poorer parts of the world-economy.

The last line of defense available to states and massive corporations, to protect against their privileged economic and political positions being damaged by the circulation of self-sustaining technologies, would be for them to rant about security and try to whip up paranoia. If they do so, then the security concerns about emerging technologies will come to be seen by many as the discourse to create authoritarian controls over who can and who can’t have something. At that time, there would be no doubt that the true luddites interfering in the inevitable course of technology are the rich and powerful – not the poor and disenfranchised.

To sum up, there is a trend of techno-liberation set to break a number of emerging technologies free. Many remain the apparent trademarks of powerful companies at present, but still they carry powerful democratic potential even as they remain locked in the Pandora’s Box of security arguments and fears. People who care about subverting global inequality should not be deterred by such rhetoric.

They should covet emerging technologies, such as synthetic organisms, as a gift and a perfect means of liberation for the poorer parts of the world-economy. This should be pursued without hesitation, in the hope that yet more democratic opportunities like the internet will surface and become available to the world’s marginal and oppressed people.