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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">I enjoyed reading Byron Tau's "Means of
Control." In it a WSJ</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">journalist discusses tech, data, and
surveillance. He had</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">a lot of things I was not totally aware
of. I would say his</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">big point is that the US government
realized that you do</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">not need a warrant to buy data from
data brokers, which</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">lead to lots of companies competing to
be as invasive as</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">possible.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Hard to be optimistic, when the
Western vendors seem to</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">be intent on being more Orwellian than
the authoritarians.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">I also got the impression that the
market will sell to anyone.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">The idea of China using TikTok to spy
on Americans always <br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">seemed kind of irrelevant. Why would
they invest money</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">in an app, when they can buy the data
already?<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 4/28/24 22:33, Kate Krauss wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAMJrQuYX3MaBp3LOun0ov+ToGF=bwvoz+uWf=yP9nQHoLUiCSQ@mail.gmail.com">
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<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Are we too
techno-pessimistic?</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">I pulled out
this message from the introductions thread because it didn't
get a lot of attention when first posted, but it's fascinating
--thanks, Kaiser! <br>
<br>
I feel ill-equipped to discuss this but I'll get the ball
rolling. <b>Folks on this list? I'd love to hear what you
think about Kaiser's post (which is pasted below mine). <br>
</b><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">By 2013 and
the Snowden revelations, tech activists were realizing how
much both the US government, and as we already knew, platforms
like Facebook were surveilling our lives. (Snowden also
revealed how hard the NSA and GCHQ were going after Tor. And
they didn't get it, ha.)<br>
<br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">I had also
seen, previously, pervasive, all-encompassing surveillance in
China of my activist friends. (They've stopped monitoring your
phone calls and they're sitting in your kitchen--not good). So
for me it was all of a piece, and I didn't have to imagine
what could go wrong if governments conducted unchecked
surveillance. And it motivated me to work on these issues.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Meanwhile, in
the wider US, in late 2015 Trump launched his presidential
campaign by demonizing immigrants, then loudly criticized and
sanctioned China's trade practices, and later he blamed COVID
on China. And by the middle of the pandemic, Asian people in
Philly were afraid to walk down the street. So a lot of racist
Americans who didn't know much about technology, IP, or China,
were mad at China. And there are always China hawks that
sincerely or exploitatively go after China in DC. But those
are different groups, obviously, than are on this list. </div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">The people I
know who care about online privacy and digital rights believe
(and feel free to speak for yourselves) that if you want
privacy and human rights, you have to defend them, whether by
building online privacy tools, censorship circumvention tools,
or decentralized communications platforms, or educating people
in avoiding surveillance, or blurring out your house on Google
maps. You have to take action. </div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">I myself also
think it's important to change laws and regulations, but you
still need the technology. I remember that Griffin Boyce and
others developed <a
href="http://I remember reading an essay by an internet pioneer that talked about the implications of online surveillance; that was the first time I saw that things could go bad on the internet."
moz-do-not-send="true">tools</a> that made the Stop Online
Privacy Act impossible to enforce. Another lesson from SOPA:
Collective action can get the goods. (Thank you, Aaron
Swartz.)</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">So maybe we
are techno-optimists and techno-realists at the same time? </div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br>
Mainstream Americans are still inured to a lack of privacy,
and that is very dangerous. However, they are now suspicious
of Facebook--and maybe that's a good thing.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">This doesn't
mean that Chinese companies are always A+ and never steal IP.
I went to a lecture in 2018 or 2019 where a Chinese scholar
presented her research studying Chinese companies--and some of
them lacked research departments because they were "borrowing"
IP. Several things can be true at once.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Other people
on the list: What do you think?</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">----------
Forwarded message ----------<br>
From: kaiser kuo <<a href="mailto:kaiser.kuo@gmail.com"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">kaiser.kuo@gmail.com</a>><br>
LT <<a href="mailto:lt@lists.liberationtech.org"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">lt@lists.liberationtech.org</a>><br>
<br>
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2024 13:20:43 -0400<br>
Subject: Re: [liberationtech] Liberation Tech would like a
word.<br>
<div dir="ltr">Thanks, Kate, for stepping up to revive this
effort — and for the low-key shout-out!
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I've written and spoken quite a bit on the seemingly
sudden swing from the politically techno-utopian idea
still present in this listserv's name to the
techno-pessimism that seems so pervasive in discourse on
the relationship between technology and authoritarian
politics. We've gone, as I've often said, from believing
that the spread of digital technology sounded the death
knell for authoritarian governments to believing instead
that tech is the loyal handmaiden of authoritarians,
who've become adept at using them to suppress dissent and
other nefarious ends. To an extent, I get why this has
happened — the failure of the later color revolutions and
the Arab Spring, when we too-eagerly appended the names of
various American social media products to these
revolutions (the "Twitter Revolution," the "YouTube
Revolution," the "Facebook Revolution"); the Snowden
revelations about Prism; Russian meddling and Macedonian
troll farms; Cambridge Analytica, etc). I suppose some
humility about it was needed, but have we (i.e. the
national or "Western" conversation) overcorrected? I'd be
curious to hear from list members with experience in
different geographies to get their sense of how things
have played out in the last decade. I put the inflection
point at roughly 2016: that's when I started sensing the
dramatic narrative shift. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>And I'm curious whether people think that's related to,
or completely independent from, another narrative shift
that seems to have been simultaneous when it comes,
specifically, to China: At about that same moment, the
narrative went from this disparagement of China's ability
to innovate (blaming, in most cases, the lack of free
information flows and academic freedom, and positing a
relationship between innovation and political freedom) to
a pervasive sense that China was out-innovating the U.S.
and was an unstoppable juggernaut ready to eat our lunch.
Obviously this latter narrative continues and has been
made worse in recent years.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Thanks! Once again, Kate, thanks for your efforts!!</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>- Kaiser </div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<fieldset class="moz-mime-attachment-header"></fieldset>
</blockquote>
<p><br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
R. R. Brooks
Professor
(He/Him/His)
College of Engineering Computing and Applied Science
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.clemson.edu/cecas">https://www.clemson.edu/cecas</a>
Clemson University
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PO Box 340915
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voicemail: 864-986-0813
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</pre>
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