Of course, as with all changes, there are tensions that arise, and those tensions, especially this year, have been especially pronounced. One of the biggest recent stories regarding the internet has, of course, been Edward Snowden's revelations regarding the massive data collection by the National Security Agency. Whether Snowden did the right thing is beyond the scope of this blog, but there are some interesting stories of reactions to change going on in this situation.
The first major story of change is with regards to the NSA. As we previously mentioned, the nature of telecommunications changed significantly with the internet, and simultaneously, the world changed significantly with the September 11th attacks and the advent of the war on terror. In response, the government did what many would expect and consider fully rational: attempt to take back control of what they had lost. They wanted to stop the war on terror and reverse the changes against them, so over time, they began developing surveillance methods to better control their world and attempt to cope with the changes that the internet and the war on terror had brought. Unfortunately, this response to a change, like the ones we saw in the post on free trade and globalization, while perfectly rational for the government, was seen as detrimental to society as a whole, as it was construed as infringing on rights to privacy.
And there we see the second story of change, and it follows almost the exact reverse of the previous pattern. Rather than trying to take back control after a change forced them to realize they had lost it, many people are defending a change that reduced the control of ideas and freedom. To many, the changes of the internet were liberating. Now, people were able to communicate more freely, access more information, and in general, be more secure against the possibility of intrusion. In many ways, the internet was and is the "wild west." The problem, for many people, is that now, that order is being threatened, and there is a significant backlash against the NSA programs in the name of privacy and human rights. Ironically, to protect the liberating change, many people are choosing to be reactionaries and fight changes against the changes.
Those two views are ones that we have examined fairly regularly in this blog, but there is a third view that I find most interesting of all. It's the who-cares view. These are the people who accept that there is now no such thing as privacy and that the world has changed multiple times and continues to change. These people, in essence, take the pragmatic view and say that while they don't believe the increased government intrusion is right, the work necessary to respond substantially to the change is too great, and so, their response to the change is to essentially remain unreactive.
I really like this post, especially the way it shows that there is no one war for change. People end up on different sides of different changes in society, no matter how progressive or reactionary they say they are. However, I would like to add a fourth option. Personally, I think that privacy is not an all or nothing phenomena. There is a huge difference between my personal information being shared with someone who I will ever meet, and who does not know me or care about me, versus the same information being shared with say the other kids at school. In the same way, security is not an all or nothing choice. We can never be 100% secure. Some rights, like the right to a fair trial and the freedom of speech, are not worth the extra reduction in risk. Some, like the right to complete and absolute privacy, may well be. Security and privacy are two opposing needs which must be balanced. A line must be drawn somewhere, of course, but in this case I think the NSA was on the right side of it.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting stuff. The story behind how everything today came to be as it is is fascinating. Many of these changes you describe occur seemingly without any previous foundation on which to guide the legal devices that implicate internet use. I find it somewhat surprising that perhaps the textbook on technological law is still the Privacy Act of 1974, which first establishes the necessity for technological regulation after Watergate (ha - it's old! http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-88/pdf/STATUTE-88-Pg1896.pdf). Is litigation and regulation in this field such that a crisis has to occur to galvanize legal change? I hope not. Snowden messed with a few National Security documents. I hope the next regulatory change doesn't come after civilian hackers haven't disabled our power grids or accidentally launched a slew of nuclear weapons.
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