I often find that I have to do less work to uphold the standards of freedom and democracy on the Internet because Nancy Scola makes it easier by exposing the unfreedoms -- unconsciously.
Scola used to be an associate editor at the left-leaning Tech President and Personal Democracy Forum, which styles itself as "bi-partisan" discussion about the technology and politics. Now she's a tech/politics correspondent at The Atlantic, in yet another sign (after Alex Madrigal) of how the old guys there are welding in the new tech set out of fear of falling behind in the death throes of the newspaper industry.
But Tech Prez helps to amplify her by recycling her at her old alma mater.
Here's a story about the exit interview she did of Aneesh Chopra.
It's actually a good, shining example of how President Obama's sudden pre-emptive veto of the Stop Online Piracy Act isn't really about democracy (as some have claimed in vehement arguments with me about this), but about personal democracy of the insider connection kind. Sure, there were lots of geeks petitioning against SOPA, ginned up by Google and tech blogs (which work symbiotically).
But the issue had a lot of help jumping the synapse because the geeks with this Silicon Valley-tropic position were already posted right in the Administration, right next to the president, and the cyber-utopians like Alex Ross, in charge of "21st Century Statecraft" on Twitter and G+ hangouts and Facebook, pushed it as well, citing "the masses".
Congress did not get to even debate this law, however. It was deluged with highly-strategic orchestrated pressure from Google and other lobbyists with lots of noise in the tech blogosphere. Rationality did not prevail; this was tribalism and emotionalism. That may be politics as usual in Washington, but as I said, this had a lot of help in ways other issues don't.
Chopra spoke of what he felt was one of his main accomplishments, a site called We the People, which is at whitehouse.gov/petitions which is the usual Web 2.0 nonsense -- zillions of petitions on just about anything (when I visited yesterday, there was a plea for the President never to appear in pictures with hotdogs, as this was junk food he shouldn't be endorsing) -- but buried under the avalanche of what the techs call the "long tail" -- i.e. thousands and thousands of single issues and niche issues. That gives the illusion of "participation" and "freedom" although it's merely the right to make a petition about something that will be immediately buried by the next thing.
Then, there's the usual developers' skew to any such "freedom" platform: a select list of issues that the president has deigned to comment on -- not even do. This is not Workingonit Linden. This is not Statement of Policy, even (although some claim it is). It's just a kind of feel-good. "I've heard you, now let me pat you on the head while you go right back to producing content that will be buried in the long tail." Gov 2.0 idiocy at its height.
Why? Because this sort of fake "we the people" stuff isn't really about "we the people" -- if it were, there would be forums for discussion where people could debate issues -- and they would not be censored. There would be ways for people using the platform to easily link their issues and link their votes, with voter notification and consent. There'd be lots more stuff that would not be the MMORPG-like idiocy of this site, run by game-gods.
But it's not really about democracy or empowerment. It's about letting this particular president use his "administrative resources" to campaign and push his issues, without any sense of consensus.
How has Chopra circumvented democracy, when all he did was just let the president do the modern equivalent of a fire-side chat, you say? Well, here's how:
SOPA/PIPA is exactly what We the People was meant to do. Traditionally, Congress formally requests a Statement of Administration Policy, called a "SAP." Requests for SAPs come in all the time from Congress. We respond based on the dynamics of Washington, priorities and timelines. One would argue that a Washington-centric approach would have have been to await the request for a SAP and publish it, oftentimes when a major vote is happening. If you contrast that were SOPA/PIPA was, still in committee or just getting out of committee, and not yet on the floor, traditionally a White House would not issue a SAP that early. So the train we were on, the routine Washington line of business, we would have awaited the right time to issue a SAP, and done it at congressional request. It just wasn't time yet. The We the People process flipped upside-down to whom we are responsible for providing input.
In gathering over a hundred thousand signatures, on SOPA/PIPA, the American people effectively demanded a SAP.
No, the American people didn't, just the people driven to that site by tech blogs aware of the issue. And it wasn't a SAP and they didn't get a SAP.
Traditionally, a White House wouldn't issue a SAP that early because it was still being debated, and that's ok. You know, different opinions? Pluralism? Demand to martial facts? Not bullshit about "breaking the Internet" and "censorship" with hysterical hypotheticals.
Note the expression "flipped upside-down". This is a Van Jones phrase, and the right-wing blogs seize on it as code for socialist revolution. They aren't wrong. It's about one group of people, Bolshevik-style, seizing power without due process and without democratic procedure.
But if you don't want to hear it from me, listen to what Nick Judd, covering the story, found:
When I asked Jim Gilliam, the co-founder of NationBuilder, former Brave New Films organizer and all-around Internet-powered-people-power enthusiast, about We the People, he described it to me as a way for President Barack Obama to use "the will of the American people as a cudgel in the fight against Congress."
Let's repeat that again: We the People is to be used to turn the will of the American people as a "cudgel in the fight against Congress". Let's see, who does that remind us of? Why, Beth Noveck, assistant director of the White House Office on Science and Technology who said she wanted to "blow up" Congress. Yes.
Mr. People-Power Enthusiast Jim Gilliam could say such a starkly outrageous Bolshevik sort of thing himself because like most geeks in this business, he believes Congress to be stupid, non-technical and even irrelevant. Who needs Congress when you can get insider geeks to get the president to pre-emptively veto a bill without even issuing a SAP?! Like other geek lobbyists, he thinks that Congress people are "bought and paid for" by all these terrible Koch-brother-funded lobbyists or evil telecoms or arms dealers or something and therefore should be "stopped". Congress is "broken" to someone who doesn't share the views of the majority Republican Congress.
That the anti-SOPA congress people had their own funding doesn't perturb him. That funding is part of freedom of expression and has to stand if we are to have a meaningful First Amendment doesn't persuade him. That most of his fellow Americans just aren't persuaded by his radical views doesn't faze hims. He wants an express-train to public policy, and this is how he got it.
So We the People is circumvention software. It's about circumventing Congress -- even though it is elected and believes it has every right to call itself "we the people". Circumvention software is often needed to get around authoritarian governments. But the United States doesn't have an authoritarian government (at least not yet, as the Wired State gang like Chopra aren't in total power yet). So what is being circumvented is your neighbour's electoral will that you simply disagree with.
So what is the task with something sinister like this, that is actually undermining elected, representative democracy in the guise of being "more" democratic? Well, it may sink of its own weight, especially if Obama doesn't get re-elected, and especially if the petitions which he will be too politic to comment on start to pile up (like banning drones or legalizing drugs, neither of which are positions he will be taking, certainly in the next six months).
One could try to jam the machine with more authentic petitions to show up the geek machine politics -- but the machine is already jammed by the irrelevancy of a zillion long-tale petitions. One could try to get a petition about process, demanding a full First-Amendment-compliance town hall style forums without the usual fussy "civility" moderation" and try to get authenticity there, but druggies and birthers and such might overrun it (I'm for doing it anyway).
But is it worth it? Whitehouse.gov ranks at...1,223 on Alexa. Whitehouse.gov/petitions will be that much less. Is it really a place to bother with?
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