[Nettime-bold] A report of "Computers, Freedom and Privacy 2000"

[aviseu@oise.utoronto.ca (Ana Viseu)]

A report of "Computers, Freedom and Privacy 2000"

“Challenging the assumptions” was the theme of this year’s ‘Computers,
Freedom and Privacy’ conference (April 4-7). The tenth edition of CFP was
held in Toronto and, as usual, it brought together professionals from a
broad range of fields: computer scientists, lawyers, business,
journalists, academics, NGOs and students. 

Reversing the chronological order of things I start my review with the
last session entitled “Ten Years of CFP: Looking back, looking forward”,
because it condensed and made visible two themes that underlied the
feeling of this conference. The first has to do with a shift from ‘whether
the Net will be regulated’ —a concern which prevailed in the first
editions of CFP— to a concern with ‘who will regulate it’ —that dominated
this year’s conference. Adding to this point, Simon Davies (Privacy
International) spoke of a struggle between ‘us’ (computer scientists,
privacy advocates, etc) and ‘them’ (business and government). The second,
has to do with the delicate balance between concepts such as freedom and
privacy. How can we make them work together, and if they don’t which
should prevail? 

These issues were dealt with in a variety of contexts that ranged from the
‘domain name system’, to children’s rights, intellectual property,
surveillance and technological determinism, amongst others [1]. 

Although the ‘domain name system’ and its regulation was a hot topic,
after debating it for almost two mornings the only conclusion that one can
arrive to is that it is a dead topic. On one hand, nobody seems to applaud
the ICANN initiative for it resembles too much a political instrument; on
the other, nobody can provide feasible alternatives [2]. Jerry Berman
(Center for Democracy and Technology) summarized this position well when
saying that ICANN should be concerned only with issues of management of
the domain names. The rest, he said, should be in the hands of the
government and the different organizations that lobby there. It goes
without saying that the above mentioned government is the American one,
and that the ‘lobby groups’ are also American. 

Another hot topic, and the one that created the most heated discussion,
was that of ‘net filters’ and children’s rights. With two defendants and
two opponents the panel on “Views of the Bertelsmann Foundation’s
self-regulation of internet content proposal” was the best place to see
the inextricabilities of the concepts of freedom and privacy. The
proposal’s supporters argued for the need to ‘protect our children’, for
the self-regulating aspect of the proposal, and for the innocuous
character of labeling devices. The opponents replied with the real danger
of institutional use of these filtering systems as mechanisms of control
(what happens when a website falsely self-rates itself?…), and with the
global homogeneity of the filtering systems themselves because, in fact,
there is no filtering system that, for example, has a category for media
monopolies… Christopher Hunter (Annenberg School of Communication) brought
up the danger of pushing idiosyncratic speech to the ‘no-man’s land’ of
the web and the subsequ
ent homogenization of content. As it is, he said, 80% of the traffic goes
to 5% of the sites. 

An issue that the panelists did not question, but that is of the greatest
importance, is that of giving unlimited power to parents to decide for
their children. In countries such as the U.S. and Canada, where a ‘zero
tolerance’ policy is already in place in schools it is urgent to consider
if implementing filtering systems at home will not lead to the creation of
children that are unable to deal with any situation that falls beyond the
lines delineated by others and that lack a capacity for self-critical
thinking. Besides, why assume that the Net is more powerful than any other
media in perverting our children and that, therefore, there is a need for
strict regulation?

On the theme of surveillance Duncan Campbell gave an excellent report on
ECHELON. Campbell started off with a bit of history and argued that
despite widespread belief ECHELON was not born out of the cold war. In
fact, he said, the USSR never had a system like this or the ability to
create it. The fact of the matter is that ECHELON is a product of our own
Western society, it is designed to monitor global satellite communication
(140 centers around the world) and it does so automatically. That is, 80%
of what is intercepted is sent directly to the U.S. It’s enemies are not
single individual users that write ‘dangerous’ keywords in their email
messages, rather, its enemies are hackers, NGOs, single lobby groups, et
cetera. Campbell argued that currents movements in favour of stronger
security laws—such as the banning of anonymous web hosting in France—are
used to increase surveillance. 

Questions related to intellectual property (IP) and the adjacent legal
systems were very prominent in this conference. Apart from the usual legal
discussions there were two ways of approaching this issue that I believe
are helpful to understand the broader social aspects of the enforcement of
IP laws. The first was brought up by Jessica Litman, a Professor at the
Wayne State University. Litman highlighted the dangers of applying the
traditional IP model to the new digital context. Discussing specifically
the issue of piracy, Litman stated that the current IP model establishes a
direct correlation between strong copyright models and the amount of works
produced, that is, it implies that the more ‘protection’ the more
‘production’. Using this kind of metaphor its proponents have managed to
convince people that anything that has the same effect as piracy is indeed
piracy, and that if the results of any practice are the same as piracy
then it is also piracy. Litman argued that in order to change this
situation w
e need to start using new metaphors that reflect a new reality. In order
to do this we have to come up with a new vocabulary to replace the current
one. Thus, rather than using words such as piracy or cybersquatting—which
are heavily loaded words—we should use terms that are neutral in the eyes
(and hears) of the majority of people. 

The second point, which I think is important to mention, was brought up by
Randall Davis (MIT). Davis affirmed that new technologies change our
relation to information. To exemplify these changes Davis mentioned what
happens to libraries when their contract to an online journal finishes.
The library no longer possesses the previous issues, these were only there
while there was a bond between both institutions. Thus, Davis argues,
information becomes more an experience than an artifact. 

It is then possible to take this argument a step beyond the immateriality
of information, and note that the experience of information is based on a
relationship: Information no longer resides in you or in me but in our
connection, and this, I believe is crucial to the understanding of the
so-called ‘new digital society’. 

The last point that I want to mention is that of the discussion regarding
the non-neutrality of technology. Although many speakers addressed this
issue, I will focus exclusively on Steve Talbott. Talbott, the publisher
of the NetFuture newsletter, argued for the need to look beyond the
immediate technological use, that is, to start by thinking about our
(human) needs and concerns and then think of the technology. If you don’t
understand how the things are connected, he argued, then the cause of
problems are solutions. Talbott argued that throughout our struggle for
progress we seem to have lost track of our initial goals and purposes, and
technological advancement became, in itself, a goal or even the goal. For
example, we first wire up all the schools in the nation and only then
think about how to use this technology. Or, we introduce notions of
efficiency in realms—such as workplace—that traditionally had much less
numerical and statistical traits. Our freedom, says Talbott, resides in
the capacity to thin
k in larger terms, to leave behind the immediate and think about the
future while keeping in mind our humanity.

Much more could be said about this conference, but as I finish I just want
to mention one last problematic issue: diversity. This issue is double
sided for, on one hand, this conference has the great merit of being
diverse both in the range of issues dealt with, but also in the spectrum
of fields. The presence of specialists both from the private and
governmental areas, the presence of theorists and pragmaticians, of
lawyers and journalists, et cetera is definitely a characteristic that
makes many other conferences envious. But, by the same coin, this
conference lacks diversity in attendees and realities. Most of the
sessions dealt exclusively in a very North-American (if not American)
reality which does not apply to most of the world. As an attendee from
Spain put it, “in Spain we deal with much more basic and profound problems
than the ones dealt with here”. Also, the attendees were almost
exclusively white and largely male. 

But, personally, what bothered me the most was the widespread tendency to
say ‘consumers’ or ‘little guys’ when referring to people. In a conference
whose aim is to deal with privacy and freedom issues, and try to make
these concepts part of the public awareness it strikes me that confining
it to the realm of ‘consumers’ is not the solution. Rather, we should see
these concepts as part of that which makes us human, as a right that
everyone should and must have. 

[1] Wired News published yesterday a summary of many of the panels of the
conference <http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,35519,00.html>. See
also USAToday <http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cth671.htm>

[2] A good, if impractical, solution was advanced by Simson Garfinkel, who
proposed that we take all the meaning out of the domain name making it
similar to a telephone number. 
 



_______________________________________________
Nettime-bold mailing list
Nettime-bold@nettime.org
http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold