Archive for the ‘china’ tag
Privacy = Freedom, on the Internet and IRL.
Last week it was announced that Google might be enlisting the help of the NSA to review data gained about cyber attacks, believed to have been instigated by China. Although some critics raised the issue of privacy, it seems a far more interesting question might be “what does a Google-NSA partnership tell us about Obama and Clinton’s new plans for the internet?” In order to answer that, we should look at Clinton’s recent speech on internet freedom, and what that tells us about the administrations’ stance on internet privacy as an element of internet freedom.
A few weeks ago Secretary of State Clinton gave a much publicized address on internet freedom. Unfortunately, selecting from choice quotes, it becomes clear that she is primarily talking about “Freedom” of economic gain and beyond that extending the idea of “Freedom” only in so much as it does not interfere with the interest of the United States government, and our allies. Outlining her speech she mentioned Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech:
Franklin Roosevelt built on these ideas when he delivered his Four Freedoms speech in 1941. Now, at the time, Americans faced a cavalcade of crises and a crisis of confidence. But the vision of a world in which all people enjoyed freedom of expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear transcended the troubles of his day. And years later, one of my heroes, Eleanor Roosevelt, worked to have these principles adopted as a cornerstone of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They have provided a lodestar to every succeeding generation, guiding us, galvanizing us, and enabling us to move forward in the face of uncertainty.
These “Freedoms” miss a very key point, all of these freedoms stem from one key freedom, the freedom of privacy. The degree to which an individual, any individual, has privacy is perhaps the greatest single indicator of the degree to which that individual is free. Without privacy an individual cannot partake of the freedoms guaranteed to him or her. Without privacy it is impossible to engage in religious freedom within your community. Without privacy it is impossible for an interracial or same sex couple to engage in freedom of expression. The ability to partake fully of your rights is the very definition of being free, without privacy, the full extent of one’s rights cannot be realized.
The necessity of access to privacy extends across all people and all economic groups. A woman’s ability to be free is directly related to the degree to which she has private space in her home, or in public. A Chinese activist’s ability to be free is directly related to his access to private space to organize peaceful demonstrations against his government. Although privacy is not directly and individually outlined in the US Constitution or Bill of Rights, without privacy we cannot truly access the various rights which are outlined.
The freedom of religion, the freedom against self-incrimination, freedom against unreasonable search, can all be seen as elements of freedom based on a right to privacy. Privacy has, thus far, primarily been protected under a wide interpretation of the 9th amendment. The failure to define an amendment specifically guaranteeing a right to privacy for Americans also hinders our ability to engage in fair and even-handed foreign policy abroad.
Although Secretary Clinton very actively sets up strawmen in the form of nameless terrorists and states limiting freedom of speech and/or communicating messages of hate. If we can all agree that terrorism and violence should not be tolerated, nor should the peddling of anything which exploits another individual without his/her consent, or an individual such as a child who does not have the legal right to consent, why should we not ratify a freedom of privacy for consenting adults to do as they please in private?
Unfortunately our allies in South Korea and India are not being pressed by the United States to permit internet freedom. Although South Korea’s ban appears to be of a primarily social nature, India’s has been more focused on terrorism/hate speech, and more recently looking issues of cyber piracy to the degree of even suggesting a ban on uploading or downloading video via web or mobiles anywhere in India.
Despite strawmen suggesting anonymity is only for criminal elements, anonymity has many faces and many uses. In 2008 I was in China for the Beijing Olympics, where I was working as an “embedded reporter” of sorts, helping ensure that video and photo images of protest actions committed by Students for a Free Tibet evaded Chinese censorship and reached the world. Without technology such as email encryption and encrypted mobiles, it would have been impossible for us broadcast the content that showed the world another face of the Olympics.
Nathan Freitas, who helped organize the global communications network for SFT during the Olympics is now developing an anonymous, secure, and private mobile phone based on Android. Such a device will greatly increase the capabilities of movements for human rights and social justice all over the world.
Given comments from the Secretary of State such as this:
Now, all societies recognize that free expression has its limits. We do not tolerate those who incite others to violence, such as the agents of al-Qaida who are, at this moment, using the internet to promote the mass murder of innocent people across the world. And hate speech that targets individuals on the basis of their race, religion, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation is reprehensible. It is an unfortunate fact that these issues are both growing challenges that the international community must confront together. And we must also grapple with the issue of anonymous speech. Those who use the internet to recruit terrorists or distribute stolen intellectual property cannot divorce their online actions from their real world identities. But these challenges must not become an excuse for governments to systematically violate the rights and privacy of those who use the internet for peaceful political purposes.
It’s difficult to see how Nathan’s project might gain funding under these new State Department initiatives. On the other hand, its equally difficult to see how East German activists praised by Clinton would have been successful with their samizdat had the Stasi and others been successful at entirely limiting their access to privacy and private space.
In the repressive environment of East Germany in the 80s, samizdat pamphlets provided a portal to private space from underneath the curtain placed over public space. Today the guarantee of anonymity online, the guarantee of privacy, is the only way we can protect the internet as a truly free, truly open space for all to gather.
There will be some who raise strawman arguments to criticize my points here, so let me be clear, guaranteeing privacy, or declaring privacy as a human right, does not mean privacy to organize terror, hate speech, or exploitation. Clearly those things are wrong and cannot be protected under the veil of human rights. On the other hand, sometimes legality is relative, it was certainly illegal for me to be in China helping to produce images of activities prohibited by the Chinese State.
The difficulty then is to ask how we might pioneer a future for the internet that guarantees access to the space as well as the right to be anonymous, to obtain privacy, if desired, and how to keep this a safe space for all, safe from the hegemony of one or more States, as well as the interference of terrorists, violent criminals, and others who might wish ill on human society.
The burgeoning accessibility and connectivity of the internet can be a testing ground for a new dedication toward privacy as a human right. Once we make it work online, it only makes sense that we should endeavor to pioneer a guaranteed right to privacy IRL. (In Real Life)