[liberationtech] IGP Blog :: Technology as symbol: Is resistance to surveillance technology being misdirected?

[Andre Rebentisch]

Am 26.12.2011 15:39, schrieb Evgeny Morozov:
> He's now published Part 2 - even more provocative
> 
> http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2011/12/26/4966131.html

"The key rhetorical and political ploy used by these forces is to equate
the diffusion and ubiquity of information technologies with weapons
proliferation, and thus to equate an open and free information
infrastructure with national weakness."

He uses an orthodoxy of a 1990ths discourse. The current discourse
comprises an assymmetrie. Our governments and their governments are not
on the same level.

The fight for a Free Information Infrastructure is mostly about patents.
I don't want to infringe a software patent and I do not want to obtain a
patent. We want to preserve the freedom to code.

"The implication is that empowering civil society with access to
information technology is dangerous, and needs to be checked and
regulated by the state. Such an approach is routinely used by
cyber-nationalists to limit and block access, and to justify
surveillance and interception of communications. Indeed, if the metaphor
is accepted it can only lead in that direction."

I don't want to own an assault rifle and thugs in the neighbourhood
owning assault rifles put me at risk. But sure in the United States
opinions may differ for historical reasons, and citizens pay a price for
that documented in gun-incident statistics. Libertarian pro-gun
arguments were also used in the 1990ths to prevent control of encryption
technology.

Surveillance technology sold to a dictatorial regime is on a different
level than mass deployment of encryption capabilities among citizens.

Characteristic for the current incidents is naive use of simple
technology by average persons who were not expected.

--- A