TED is a cult, and now Rebecca MacKinnon is spreading her ideas in concert with the TED cult.
This popular video (by geek standards -- it has 91,000 views already) seems deceptively appealing. Who isn't for Internet freedom? Who isn't for stumping for citizens' movements fighting authoritarians in oppressed places like Egypt or Yemen or Belarus or China? Say, who isn't booing at those Western corporations that sell technology to those totalitarians? Boo, hiss!
But as I often find with Rebecca, who shares some of the same causes and colleagues and ideals that I have, there are some very, very significant and troubling differences in this form of the agenda that I have to call out.
Mainly, what this is about is the prescriptive role assigned to the Internet and social media that she and her supporters favour, and it's about insufficient respect for freedom of association -- which is also at the heart of freedom of expression -- and lack of faith in free markets, which engenders a call for state planning and intervention.
DON'T IMPOSE CONTENT ON CARRIERS
MacKinnon illustrates her talk with the famous 1984 Apple ad, smashing Big Brother's screen. Then -- as if this was morally equivalent to Orwell (Apple was silly enough making it seem like a gadget would free you as much as a moral struggle against communism) she mentions the "censorship" of aps on Apple's smart phones.
Yet "censorship" is not what non-state actors -- corporations -- engage in, as that is something only governments can do. A freely-formed association with freely-made membership and use of its services can set rules like guidelines for content to ensure the maximum number of customers and minimal legal problems. That's okay to do. So if Apple doesn't want to sponsor the intifada ap, that's fine. That's a good thing! Why shouldn't it be concerned about inciting hatred of Jews and Israel and abetting a violent movement?! (MacKinnon's curious tone-deafness to that problem of incitement of violence is of course one of the urgent moral issues of the professional human rights industry today.) If Apple does this after pressure from influential community leaders, that's ok. That's what good corporate citizens do.
If some other comic strip ad seemed it might be offensive; if there was content that was too adult on some other ap, why can't the company do what it wants?! You can't have a government imposing the porting of content a company doesn't want, and most customers don't want in the name of some vague do-gooder's notion of civil society. That just doesn't apply here. These are classic cases of the sort of prescription of morality that usually leftists blame the morality brigade on the right for indulging in.
Because there's a simple solution. Don't like Apple's blocking of the intifada ap? Rather than devising blanket-wide content-imposition policies for all carriers, go over to CREDO, a lefty "progressive" cell phone company that pays you to switch from your evil capitalist oppressive cell company to their service, and is no doubt welcoming the intifada ap with open arms. If they aren't, maybe Al Jazeera is in the ap business. Or some other Arab League-sponsored cell company. You're in a free market -- Apple is not required to serve every customer or verge on breaking the law. Let CREDO take the heat if that's the kind of customer it wants and needs.
And that is the solution to MacKinnon's urgent agitation about the "unfree" Internet (that is, the shallow part of the unfreedom that is nothing like the unfreedom in China or Syria). In fact, it's what the Internet is in fact doing very well, without her ministrations. Go elsewhere. If that "elsewhere" doesn't exist, maybe there isn't a market demand for it. Maybe philanthropists can't even support it! But don't make the imposition of content on private corporations your goal -- it's wrong, and it's unfree.
AMAZON IS NOT A VICTIM
MacKinnon, like several other human rights groups, wrongfully raise the notion of Amazon "having" to host WikiLeaks as well. That's also in fact an oppressive interference in the right of association. Amazon's a big boy and doesn't have to host anarchists inciting theft of government documents if it doesn't want to. This recurring raising of Joe Lieberman as a bogey man here is silly -- he's an elected official, he gets to question corporations about their conduct. Is MacKinnon not for congress people questioning corporations about their conduct?! She'd want that to be done on environmental causes and other trendy causes the left supports. Same principle! Lieberman called Amazon to account on their TOS compliance. Their system works with abuse reports. He made a high profile abuse report. Good! Because Amazon shouldn't risk the livelihoods of its authors and used book and other sellers, and shouldn't risk its own business, on hosting the dox of a bunch of anarchists bent on bringing the US to its knees.
There's a market. They can go elsewhere. And so they did, to wikileaks.ch, which is the neutral domain of Switzerland, so to speak. The solution is not for governments or activists to impose certain content or activities in support of certain "progressive" goals (ill-defined) on corporations; the analogy here is not the sweatshop or the toxic waste campaigns that had visible and tangible and concrete goals. The goal is to ensure there is a free market and that the government enforces the law.
PRETTY THREADBARE STORY
Indeed, the Lieberman story is getting pretty tired. This "big threat" to Amazon doesn't really stand up to prolonged scrutiny. Lieberman didn't run again, and Amazon never complained about "pressure" from "the government" in this form. They didn't want to host stolen documents -- you must warrant that the content is your own when you rent Amazon servers. Really, the charge here of government interference has gotten rather threadbare, when the WikiLeaks have been published all over the world, and are now mostly a bore to everybody except people interested in regional affairs -- I'm one of the few people actually left writing about actual cables in actual countries, and remain continually concerned about the individuals exposed and vulnerable to harm in these cables.
MacKinnon might have dusted off the anecdote of the State Department official who called SIPA grads in a panic and warned them they wouldn't get jobs in the government if they accessed WikiLeaks -- but since she moves in those circles she would likely concede that that story isn't a very good example of evil government oppression either -- it's just a one-off, from some guy who thought he'd tell a few friends not to harm their careers.
In fact, the virtual absence of any statements, let alone legal action, since Harold Koh's Cease & Desist letter from the government, and some impounding of Twitter account data, there's been precious little in the way of "oppressive actions" from our government. To say that there is some sort of "chill" over WikiLeakers and their friends is preposterous.
GO WHERE THE REAL ABSENCE OF FREEDOM IS
And that's what really clinches it for me, and so separates me from what might seem a common cause with Rebecca MacKinnon. When I fight for Internet Freedom, I don't want to be "fighting" for "freedom" from giant corporations like Amazon that can indeed decide not to host what are clearly stolen documents even before a trial of law (she seems to think that it has to wait until a jury verdict before complying with its TOS -- it doesn't.)
I want to save it for the struggle against the jailing of my friends in Charter97.org, whose arms and legs are broken or brused who are languishing in prison, their computers confiscated. I'd rather save it for exposing the issue of half a country's cell phone users losing service on a government whim, as happened in Turkmenistan. I'd rather have it raising with officials the plight of Syrians trying to get out the news via Youtube and Twitter. I'm sorry, but the fight against...Joe Lieberman asking a...big corporation if they could follow their own legitimate TOS doesn't strike me as on the same moral or philosophical plane, and I won't confuse them in fake equivalencies.
Joe Lieberman didn't run for election again. New senators get elected. Problem solved, Rebecca? It's a democracy. Vote as you wish for the policies you favour rather than having NGO lobbyists coupled with one set of companies (Google, Electronic Freedom Foundation) gang up on another set (Facebook).
RUSSIA DOESN'T NEED TO BLOCK THE INTERNET, IT BAKED IN THE KGB
There's other sections of her TED talk that don't work for me -- the perpetually reiterated notion (courtesy of Evgeny Morozov) that Russia "doesn't block the Internet." But of course it does. Live Journal was down for days -- deliberately -- in pre-election flexing of muscles in Russia by forces with those muscles. Sites are blocked all the time. Friends lose their privileges on ZhZh all the time for content on specious grounds.
More importantly, those security services that "somehow" obtained the data on the users of RosPil aren't a one-off; the reason the KGB's successors don't have to crudely shut down the Internet is because they already control it; the domain name process, various licensing processes, etc. Most importantly, they don't have to resort to crude blockages like Turkmenistan because they are monitoring the Russian Internet intensively, and interfering with state sock puppets in discussions everywhere, and they can and do prevail. They win, over and over again because they are baked into the Internet's tools. The entire "managed democracy" concept is a Kremlin inspiration. The anti-corruption movement; the bar camps; Skolkovo and "innovation"; Ushahidi; all of these things aren't "blocked" because...they're already soaking in it, and the boundaries are already circumscribed.
That's what happens when there isn't a free market, with a free and vibrant civil society, the state takes over the Internet even with the fiction of private companies still providing services, when really their portals are open to the secret police's SORM at any moment.
NO, NOT JUST A CITIZEN-CENTRIC INTERNET
MacKinnon may overdiagnose lack of Internet freedom or risk to the web in places I wouldn't (Amazon); she may situate the heat of blame on Western corporations for selling the technology more than on the Chinese Communist Party, as I would; but these aren't really the important debate to have.
Because what MacKinnon calls for a "citizen-centric Internet, a broader and more sustained Internet freedom movement."
This sounds absolutely lovely, and the sort of thing I'd click and join in a heartbeat. Yet, knowing how the concept of "citizenry" can end up in the hands of "progressives" -- cadre organizations, the stealth socialist techniques of moveon.org which are out in full force now -- I have to pause. Do we want a certain kind of Internet run by only some certain kind of thing like that? No.
The question here is obviously this: which citziens? Who gets to decide what those "citizen-centric" Internet policies are all about? GNI? No thanks.
It's also part of this international jet-set of the "civil society -- c'est moi" set who run the global organizations and conferences to call for "citizen" stuff that they know they can control. There's this glamourization of the role of the NGO, as if they are halo'd actors, never doing wrong, always pure in intent, never striving for power, always doing good. I'm not buying it.
PLURALISM ON THE INTERNET
The Internet is as free as it is now in its freest places because it is a combination of individuals, associations, and governments, as well as multilateral organizations, civic and state. It's that pluralism that ensures its viability and health and freedom. Citizen-run things can often be fake, especially in settings like the UN, where bad-minded states make GONGOs and call them civic groups. How do you set up that citizen-run Internet? I don't want to run the Internet as a citizen along with Gulnara Karimova, the Uzbek president's daughter who runs a GONGO that has accreditation at the UN now, for example. I don't want to fight for policies among cadre NGOS run essentially by the intelligence services of Cuba, Hamas, Iran, Pakistan, and so on. No thank you.
When people talk about "citizen-run" stuff, they imagine some merry round table of their friends on the conference jet-set meeting in, oh, Ljublana or something. But that's not what you get when citizens take power; when they do that, the powerful come rushing in as wolves in sheep's clothing. I really don't see a viable and true way to make "a citizen-centric Internet" other than just...to make one where you stand without this almost infantile demand that corporations and governments step aside. Believe in citizen-centric Internet branches? Make one. Fill it with content. Do it. Don't impose that methodology on the entire Internet. I'm happy to have Facebook and even Google manage things, even with their bad TOS that cripple user-generated content creator rights and so on, instead of having a People's Democracy kind of affair, or some ineffectual, large and baggy INGO that has various insufferably bossy personalities in it.
Why? Because MacKinnon wants to make a citizen-centric Internet that cannot respect Amazon's right of association; that can't respect the idea that companies should not be forced to hold stolen documents; that can't respect the idea that it's morally wrong and criminally liable to steal the classified documents of an elected government. That's where I want my citizen-centric-ness -- on my democratically-elected government that is entrusted to classify documents -- not in the hands of anarchists who decide without my involvement and against my will to steal documents. The idea that the government is doing wrong in my name is a powerful motivation for civil disobedience.
But WikiLeaks' Cablegate has not shown us that, has it Rebecca.
So, really, seriously, let's leave the Internet alone. Organic growth is a pretty good thing.
NO HUMAN RIGHT TO THE INTERNET REQUIRED
And here's where my major difference with MacKinnon rests. She calls for a Magna Carta of the Internet. Hell, no. I've been in many such discussions in the virtual world realm for seven years. Again -- hell, no. *Shudder*. The constituents for such an assembly aren't defined and can't be properly represented in the non-democracies of social media software platforms -- full stop. They are not suitable for a fair political fight. They are not transparent. They are not accountable. The anonymity that Rebecca demands becomes a huge problem in a voting and a debate system -- huge. They are not representatives. Countries are -- with legislatures.
Proof of the inevitable extremist and authoritarian impulses of the online "saviours" is what happened on like day 7 of Google+ -- Infinity Linden (Meadhbh) immediately started drafting a constitution and inviting her pals, the influentials of Silicon Valley, to start brainstorming with her. Let's have net neutrality! Let's have free Internet! And as I pointed out, these sorts of activities are always suspect. There are no committees of correspondence. No constituent assembly. No drafting committee that faces then ELECTED representatives. It's done backward, by the cadres. And as we know, from Stalin, "The cadres decide everything." Again, NO THANK YOU.
BETTERWORLDISM
The philosophy Rebecca MacKinnon brings to the table here is one rooted in a kind of cyber-utopian premise that is ultimately instrumental, and she articulates it well:
"The only legitimate purpose of government is to serve citizens," she says. Yes.
And one might add -- to protect citizens from each other. That's the most difficult part of governance, after you solve the problem of making the people safe from the state, and get the king to follow laws. Protecting people from each other. That's the part the social media platforms fail at in many ways.
Then MacKinnon continues:
"The only legitimate purpose of technology "to improve our lives, not manipulate or enslave us."
Well, no. This may seem like an inconsequential point, but it's actually quite subtle as we victims of the "Better World" movement in Second Life can tell you. Technology is just a tool. It can't improve our lives, by itself. And -- news flash -- human nature isn't capable of improving; it can only be restrained or ajudicated.
Technology isn't an animated, "bettering" force. Left to its own devices, technology often devastates our lives, with identity theft, cyberbullying, financial loss , industry and job loss. Netflix needed to sell that $2 DVD on top of the stream offer for $8 -- and four video parlours close in my neighbourhood and all the jobs and offerings in them disappear. Now Netflix raises its prices 60 percent. That was worth destroying the livelihoods of those companies just in my 20-block radius?
Tom Friedman tells us an awful social Darwinist truth in the Times: all these big huge billion dollar new media companies, taken together, have only 20,000 people working in them. That's it. They don't create jobs. They do not distribute value in the form of livelihoods for people and revenue for communities. They create wealth for a few people at the top. That's a reason to start an Internet freedom movement, yet the solution isn't to make the Internet then inhospitable to business and to restrain corporations so that there is no freedom.
WE DON'T NEED AN EXTRA INTERNET HUMAN RIGHT
Rebecca is consumed with "consent of the networked now" (and it's the title of a forthcoming book). But, you consent when you log on and sign the TOS. The task is surely to make better TOS. But you also have other options rather than to log on to a service that you don't like.
Amazon didn't wish to host WikiLeaks' stolen documents. The market in the world provided other options. Volunteers stepped forward and risked independently storing them; finally some hosting company in ch did. This happened spontaneously; the problem isn't Joe Lieberman doing his job for his constituents as he sees fit; the problem is not getting in the way of the Internet's diversity as it already exists.
I don't want a Magna Carter for the Internet. There isn't a human right to the Internet that has to be concocted and negotiated with the bad-minded at the UN. "The right to receive and impart information regardless of frontiers" is a concept already enshrined in International law. We never had a telegraph or telephone or fax or email Bill of Rights of special "human right". That's because they were only tools, tools that people made, and it is people who organically make policies, not machines that must be coded to automatically provide "freedom".
We don't have a right to drive cars. We have a right to freedom of movement. We don't have a right to a temple. We have a right to freedom of belief or non-belief. The means and mechanisms of delivery of rights have never been fetishized themselves before, and we don't need to start doing this with concocted "Internet rights".
MacKinnon even talks about "changes to software and code" that has to accompany her Magna Carta. No. No "code as law," please, we're already a free democracy. The real task for Internet Freedom isn't to pick up these "progressive" causes which are parochial political fights inside the US like "net neutrality" which are really resource-dividing fights, and instead focus on the places where the Internet really is blocked by bad actors, whether Sudan or Turkey or Belarus or any other country with restrictive laws.
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