Beside the limited, biased material I have read and heard from the major news sources, I've never had a quality conversation with another individual discussing the actions of Edward Snowden largely due either party not knowing enough to draw an real conclusions. I watched the Conversation on Privacy over the live stream posted on the Web and was pretty surprised by how broad a concept privacy is. The following blog discusses some of the material that I took away from the discussion. This post is not intended to fully recap the discussion only to bring up the topics that I found most interesting.
Nuala O'Connor brought up a very interesting point when she said that the word "privacy" was not outlined in the U.S. Constitution. She started questioning what is privacy. Is it a contractual bond between the people and its' government? Is it an inherent right of the individual? Glenn Greenwald had the best response to Nuala in my opinion. Greenwald stated that even though the word privacy isn't written down in the Constitution, the concept of what privacy is defined conceptually in the Constitution. What Glenn is referring to is a section of the Constitution that states the illegality of a public entity entering and searching an individuals home without proper justification and consent from the judicial branch. The next assumption is that individual's activity on their personal device is an extension of themselves. The Center for Democracy and Technology defines this assumption as the Digital Self. I think Greenwald's argument for why privacy exists even though it isn't directly defined in the Constitution is reasonable and I agree with the CDT's Digital Self, that a individual's data generated from their use of technology is an extension of their privacy just as any activity performed within a home is private.
A few other interesting topics that were presented during the Conversation on Privacy are the development and contention between Self-Creation and the Domination of State. Noam Chomsky brought up this point early in the presentation. He points out that the Internet was developed in a Pentagon sponsored lab at MIT, so it was largely developed in the State sector and has been commercializing over the past 25 years. So what is the Internet? The government created it and undoubtedly released it to the public with some motive in mind (economic, power hungry, who knows, I certainly don't). I'm not quite sure what the answer to that might be because it is many things to many different people, just like how Edward Snowden said that privacy in a modern context is always different between individuals. My opinion on the conflict between Self-Creation and the Domination of State is that at this point in time Self-Creation is fairly dependent upon the Domination of State. For example, without the government developing the Internet who knows when such a technology would have entered the private market. So is it all a game for Big Brother, in which we, the individuals, are provided the illusion of self-creation and development, definitely not. How dependent is the State on its' people? In my opinion not a whole lot. How dependent are the people upon the State? More so than the State is upon us. These are a few questions I found myself asking while watching the video of the discussion.
At the end of the discussion Noam Chomsky is asked about his view of the actions taken by Snowden and journalists like Greenwald and MacAskill. Chomsky responded in an exuberant manner; he stated how happy and proud he was of these individuals and their contribution to society. I have to agree with him. I don't believe that Snowden did anything to hurt the people of the U.S., since Snowden and Greenwald spoke to the U.S. Gov't about every document they planned on releasing! The only group Snowden hurt and scared was the Gov't. From my view point it is very interesting that an individual is a major enemy to the State, but far from an enemy of the people. Hope you've enjoyed my rant!
https://web.sbs.arizona.edu/privacy
There is a long history to the Internet, and what it was intended to do as an academic exercise in sharing documents and (eventually) messages with the data. Then it became available to most of the public through universities, then ftp, then html and browsers as a way to tunnel through the networks with URLs. But when companies took over (the State), the tables turned away from an open sharing Internet to a closely watched one. That is mostly what Chomsky means when he says that have the "illusion of self-creation and development." We are really controlled by others. The State benefits by keeping on eye on what happens on the Internet, and by doing so, it changes our behavior. And so it goes...
ReplyDeleteNice discussion.