by Muskingum University Library

A considerable number of today’s copyfight discussions revolve around the usage of DRM to prevent transformative uses of works, to prevent the sharing of works, and to generally limit how individuals engage with the cultural artefacts around them. This post takes a step back from that, thinking through the significance of transforming ‘classic’ works of the English literary canon instead of looking at how new technologies butt heads against free speech. Specifically, I want to argue that NewSouth, Inc.’s decision to publish Huckleberry Finn without the word “nigger” – replacing it with “slave” – demonstrates the importance of works entering the public domain. I restrain from providing a normative framework to evaluate NewSouth’s actual decision – whether changing the particular word is good – and instead use their decision to articulate the conditions constituting ‘bad’ transformations versus ‘good’ transformations of public domain works. I will argue that uniform, uncontested, and totalizing modifications of public domains works is ‘bad’, whereas localized, particular, and discrete transformations should be encouraged given their existence as free expressions capable of (re)generating discussions around topics of social import.

Copyright is intended to operate as an engine to generating expressive content. In theory, by providing a limited monopoly over expressions (not the ideas that are expressed) authors can receive some kind of restitution for the fixed costs that they invest in creating works. While true (especially in the digital era) that marginal costs trend towards zero, pricing based on marginal cost alone fails to adequately account for the sunk costs of actual writing. Admittedly, some do write for free (blogs and academic articles in journals might stand as examples) but many people still write with the hope earning their riches through publications. There isn’t anything wrong with profit motivating an author’s desire to create.

Problems do arise, however, when copyright strays from its original purpose of generating speech. When copyright functions as a kind of ‘property’ right that unduly distorts or undermines subsequent expression because of its duration there is a problem. If individuals cannot transform poignant cultural artefacts in making their own statements, with the effect that their expressions lose credibility and communicative force, then the law of copyright threatens to weaken expression. In short, copyright that significantly limits creative possibilities for extended periods of time has the capacity to weaken, or muffle, the impact of speech (Netanel, p. 30).

In the case of Huck Finn, we see a publisher transforming a public domain work and then releasing it to the market. To be clear: NewSouth isn’t forcing all old copies of the text to be burned, they’re not requiring that everyone buy the new version, nor are they forcing all publishers to adopt the same kinds of changes. They are not the sole publishers of the text. In changing the words “nigger” to “slave”, however, they are (potentially, at least) transforming the character of the book’s text. This may lead to new narratives, new questions, new insights….or it might just lead to narrative confusion and worsen the strength of the text. These are open questions, ones that should be examined prior to the book being used as a pedagogical tool. Much as changes in the musical and film genre of mash up provoke new ways of engaging with music and video, NewSouth’s transformations promise new kinds of engagements with the text, as well as with the publishing and authorial responsibilities involved in producing a text. While the quality of the transformation can (and should) be subject to cultural and aesthetic evaluation, the fact that transformation is itself permissible should be subject to divergent standards: is the transformation illegal? is the transformation an expression? Assuming the former response is negative and the latter positive, then the transformation itself should be permitted and encouraged.

Readers might be asking what right NewSouth has to go and modify the works of Twain; doesn’t he have moral rights that should preclude transformations of the work that are in contravention of his initial intentions? Perhaps, but his work has been in the public domain for a considerable period of time – he no longer has a copyright interest in the work as he did whilst the work was under copyright. Netanel nicely articulates most of my position on this matter of authorial rights, stating that

Authors do have a speech interest in presenting their work to the public in the precise formulation, context, and media that they believe will best convey their message and aesthetic sensitivities…However, an author’s speech interest in presenting his work in unadulterated form and context does not extend per se to an exclusive right to control each and every instantiation of his work. (Netanel, p. 49)

Ethically, perhaps, a publisher might feel obligated or be expected to identify their transformations but such a position is a comparatively new development in the ethics of publishing. The ‘great texts’ that we teach our students – Plato, Aristotle, and the like – have underwent considerable transformations that were rarely credited. Such modifications were not ‘illegal’, nor were they ethically bankrupt. Instead, they were reflections of a literary culture’s engagement from their cultural artefacts. I’m not advocating for a return to pre-Gutenburg ethics of publication, but simply reminding readers that ‘ethics’ are contingent to the cultural/social/political framework(s) of the day: ethics are not morals, and we shouldn’t hold them up as such.

Arguably, the contest around the ‘appropriateness’ of the transformation by NewSouth underscores the ongoing tension around notions of copyright itself. As Lessig has noted, we are at a point in history where we are so concerned about protecting copyright that we have lost sight of it’s actual purpose (Lessig, p.19). Patry nicely builds on this point, writing

Copyright owners also ignore that what they regard as a right is instead a government grant specifically for the benefit of society, not authors … The benefits to the public are, therefore, of greater importance than the benefits to authors. (Patry p. 123)

In this case, copyright served its purposes (in theory, it was part of the reason why Twain wrote) and the monopoly right has since lapsed. The work is now being transformed, enabling subsequent speech acts and expressions that are made more resonant because of the cultural import of Twain’s work. Copyright served its purposes, and now we enter discussions of the present public value of new expressions based on public domain sources. The public domain is working.

So, what does public domain work ‘do’? In a significant way, it lets creators appropriate, modify, and reframe what has gone before. Ideally, the appropriation of the past is done in such a way to improve the subsequent cultural artefact that is created. Failures to approximate the ideal, however, need not be ‘abolished’ or pre-censored – a standard of excellence for playing with one’s culture need not be developed and adhered to as a precursor to appropriating work in the public domain. Many audio and video mash ups are horrific, and the same is the case with written mash ups and transformative instantiations of texts. Does this mean that any and all transformations are permissible, that anything goes? Only to a certain extent.

First: We have hate speech laws, and various other laws that constrain the range of expression that can be articulated. Such laws will continue to frame the kinds of speech that can be made with public domain works. State-backed speech laws thus act as one boundary that limit how public domain works can and should be appropriated for transformative purposes. In some cases such laws may be inherently censorial, in which case they need to be challenged. Regardless, the law will shape some speech and thus uses of the public domain.

Second: We need to make a distinction between what NewSouth is doing and a uniform, forced, and totalizing censoring of a text. The latter instance of censorship is best exemplified by publishers forcing authors to modify texts pre-publication for purely political reasons, or e-versions of texts being modified and the modifications forced upon all e-readers. Uniform and forced censorship would also be evidenced if a state exerted its power and attempted to ban or modify public domain works without any semblance of legitimate debate. As engaged modern citizens we arguably need to resist instances where the uniform and incontestable modification of a public domain work that both transforms the work and makes the ‘original’ iteration of the text effectively unavailable.

In the case of NewSouth, however, we’re dealing with a localized, particular, non-uniform transformation. There is a change to the words of the text but this doesn’t have the same qualitative impact as an all-out uniform and unquestionable modification. NewSouth should be encouraged for doing something daring with a public domain work. This said, encouraging transformative uses doesn’t mean that we accept changes without question; we need to seriously and critically interrogate the modifications. What is important, however, is that we not prevent those changes: part of authorship and being an engaged citizenry is critically engaging with the way cultural artefacts are produced and disseminated. The ire raised by NewSouth indicates that we’re dealing with a transformation that is inciting members of society to talk about issues of truth, culture, history, racism, and so forth. These are incredibly important issues, and it’s a good thing to have discussions about them as members of a (hyper)literate society. Transformation of works is to be encouraged, and it’s something that’s often discouraged by contemporary instantiations of copyright – this is one of the key ways that copyright works to stiffle and muffle free speech.

Importantly, because Twain’s work is public domain NewSouth can transform the text and provoke questions around authorship, race, and cultural origins. We can ask whether the change is ‘appropriate’ or not. We can evaluate what normative frameworks should be used to adjudicate the ‘correctness’ of transformations of cultural artefacts. We can debate, publicly, the values built into notions of modern copyright and publication monopolies. NewSouth’s expression is an expression of free speech, as are the strident (and often disapproving) discourses being struck up around the company’s speech act. The cost of free speech, as it were, is that sometimes things are said or expressed that we don’t like. When we dislike speech (as may be in the case of NewSouth’s particular transformation) we can publicly engage with one another – their own speech act stands within a broader matrix of public discourse; NewSouth’s act does not stand as a uniform, fixed, and separate expression that stands outside the public sphere.

Further, we need to consider what kind of discussion we would be having if Twain’s works were still copywritten. If it were, then our present discussion would be more abstract and use hypotheticals; to use Netanel’s language it would be ‘stiffled’ or ‘muffled’ because NewSouth would have been unable to transform such a poignant text in making their expression. Much of the potency and vigour of the present discourse arises because Twain’s works are themselves significant to the English canon. As a consequence, the discussions online, in homes, and in schools resonate that much more loudly. The public domain enables key modes of discussion that draw on cultural prizes, and the debate around Huck Finn serves to show us just how important it is for texts to be subject to transformation: once in the public domain entirely new, unexpected, unpredictable, and exciting discussions can arise within the public sphere. The public domain fuels many of our expressive possibilities; more works need to enter it so that the public can be enriched by creative works in manners impossible (or, at least illegal) when authors/publishers retain and exercise their fully copyright monopoly over works.

Print Sources

L. Lessig. (2004). Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity. New York: Penguin Books.

N. W. Netanel. (2008). Copyright’s Paradox. New York: Oxford University Press.

W. Patry. (2009). Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars. New York: Oxford University Press.

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Copyfraud, the Corporation, and College Publishing
2. Public and Private Digital Space
3. Public Databases and Massive Aggregation of Data

Photo credit: Honou

Countries around the globe have been threatening Research in Motion (RIM) for months now, publicly stating that they would ban BlackBerry services if RIM refuses to provide decryption keys to various governments. The tech press has generally focused on ‘governments just don’t get how encryption works’ rather than ‘this is how BlackBerry security works, and how government demands affect consumers and businesses alike.’ This post is an effort to more completely respond to the second focus in something approximating comprehensive detail.

I begin by writing openly and (hopefully!) clearly about the nature and deficiencies of BlackBerry security and RIM’s rhetoric around consumer security in particular. After sketching how the BlackBerry ecosystem secures communications data, I pivot to identify many of the countries demanding greater access to BlackBerry-linked data communications. Finally, I suggest RIM might overcome these kinds of governmental demands by transitioning from a 20th to 21st century information company. The BlackBerry server infrastructure, combined with the vertical integration of the rest of their product lines, limits RIM to being a ‘places’ company. I suggest that shifting to a 21st century ‘spaces’ company might limit RIM’s exposure to presently ‘enjoyed’ governmental excesses by forcing governments to rearticulate notions of sovereignty in the face of networked governance.

Before I get any further, I need to add a pair of caveats. First: I don’t professionally manage BlackBerry devices or presently administrate an Enterprise Server. I do, however, have a decent high-level understanding of how the BlackBerry ecosystem is set up and how it functions as a cohesive system. Second, and perhaps more importantly, while I have family and friends who work at RIM absolutely nothing written here has been taken from conversations with them nor ‘cleared’ or edited by them. Everything written here has been taken exclusively from the following sources: conference presentations given by RIM Security, my own personal familiarity with the BlackBerry product lines, discussions with information technology staff who deploy BlackBerry products, academics who attend to mobile security issues, and personally performed online research. I have not communicated with anyone inside RIM – that I know personally or otherwise – about the specifics of what I have written here.

The Origins of the Blackberry

The first Blackberry was a glorified Pager that was released in 1999. RIM’s innovation was to combine corporate and wireless mailboxes by setting up a service that relied on their own Network Operations Center  and Blackberry Enterprise Software. Together, this infrastructure collected pager messages into a single mailbox and then pushed them to Blackberry devices. Messages were encrypted using triple DES encryption, with encryption keys supplied by the enterprise instead of RIM. This separation of data transit responsibilities and key provision meant that RIM could not decrypt messages while they rested on RIM’s servers. This basic infrastructure, now ingrained in the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), is a lasting legacy that provides the real security that enterprise customers have come to expect from RIM products. In the absence of this infrastructure (as in the case of consumer BlackBerry use) the security of BlackBerry communications remains largely rhetorical; if governments strongly pressure RIM and wireless companies for consumer data they can usually (eventually) force RIM to turn over demanded information.

BlackBerry Internet Service

RIM’s BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) is central to the provision of consumer BlackBerry offerings. Assuming that a customer purchases their device from a wireless phone carrier and use that carrier’s services exclusively (i.e. assuming that their phone isn’t hooked up to a BlackBerry Enterprise Server) then the BIS lets customers enjoy many of the corporate features of the BlackBerry without any of the security that is often associated with the BlackBerry. The following image displays the general structure of the BIS ecosystem:

Photo credit: Blackberryrocks.com

There are several benefits to using a BIS, including access to email, data compression and BlackBerry Messenger. In the case of email, it is as secured as the wireless provider makes it. This means that customers would enjoy levels of security equivalent to or exceeding that of enterprise customers if the provider deployed an asynchronous key infrastructure designed to prevent the provider from accessing their customers’ email in transit and at rest. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to find a single wireless network that provides this level of encryption for the transit of email. Instead, while the communication between the mobile device and the wireless networks’ server is likely encrypted – if using a GSM-based device, the A5 algorithm protects the customer’s data over the air – the rest of the data’s transit is likely unencrypted.[1] Since carriers are often obligated by national law to design networks to facilitate lawful access (e.g. CALEA in the US) government can gain access to carrier-mediated data communications. RIM is (somewhat) explicit about this in their BIS “Security Feature Overview” .pdf document, where they write that “Email messages and instant messages that are sent between the BlackBerry Internet Service and your BlackBerry device use the security features of the wireless network.” Effectively, consumers are prisoners to their wireless providers’ (often quite low) security standards.

Internet access is similarly passed through both the wireless provider’s networks and the BIS. Data is secured for the air using A5 in the case of GSM devices and then passed through the carrier’s servers and RIM’s own network. Where data is encrypted using SSL or some other form of encryption the data experiences two layers of encryption: it is encrypted over the air, and further encrypted using the web-based encryption standards. When the data passes through RIM’s servers it experiences data compression to reduce delays in accessing content. Compression is oftentimes significant; according to Rogers (.pdf) the same email message would be roughly 23KB if read on an iPhone 3G as compared to around 2KB when read on a BlackBerry Bold. Assuming both devices use similar 500MB data buckets this would mean that the iPhone could receive around 22,000 messages before exceeding the bandwidth allotment versus over 250,000 received on the BlackBerry. Significant compression is also noticed when browsing websites and sending/receiving pictures on a BlackBerry versus other mobile devices.

The third ‘key component’ of the consumer BlackBerry experience is the BlackBerry messaging service. Incredibly popular, this service is encrypted using a global key. This means that messages sent from a BlackBerry device are encrypted on the device, transmitted to the other device(s) the message is intended for, and decrypted upon arrival at recipient devices. Specifically, RIM has written that:

The BlackBerry device scrambles PIN messages using the PIN encryption key. By default, each BlackBerry device uses a global PIN encryption key, which allows the BlackBerry device to decrypt every PIN message that the BlackBerry device receives.

It is possible for RIM to decrypt messages that are encrypted with the global key, making them available to third parties if those parties come looking for them. As we will read shortly, RIM has capitulated to various governments by giving up keys enabling decryption of consumer BlackBerry messenger traffic. Importantly, the wireless provider cannot make this information available because they never have access to the global keys – your PIN to PIN messages are secure from your carrier’s surveillance mechanisms but vulnerable to RIM’s own actions.

What is the BlackBerry Enterprise Server

The BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) is typically deployed by corporations to secure their communications from public and private scrutiny. Below is a graphic demonstrating the BlackBerry communications architecture that includes a BES.

Photo credit: RIM UK

In this framework, communications are encrypted on the device according to the key management system used by the BES-owning organization. By encrypting communications before to exiting the device, intercepting the data at the wireless network is useless unless engaging in traffic analysis. When the data is passed into the Internet more generally it remains encrypted. The data is only decrypted when it gets behind the corporate firewall. Separate policies will manage encryption at-rest in the internal mail and messaging infrastructure that the organization maintains.

The result of this encryption policy is that email is not subject to access by government at the carrier level; government has to go to the group running the BES and demand the group hand over the data in question. This significantly changes the dynamics of the data request because carriers generally don’t care about the actual privacy of individuals on their network; so long as law enforcement is willing to pay for the effort of collecting and providing customer data the carrier is (generally) happy to help. This attitude changes when authorities come to a particular business or small group of users that are securing their communications using a BES; these groups are motivated to secure their communications (as demonstrated by setting up and running a BES in the first place) and have personal stakes in maintaining communicative security. As a result they are likely less happy than a carrier to cooperate with government agents.

What is key here, is that when running a BES neither RIM nor the wireless carrier can assist law enforcement in accessing email, Internet browsing (which can be encrypted by default) or BlackBerry messenger contents (assuming that the organization isn’t using the same global encryption key consumer messenger traffic relies on). If the BES and surrounding corporate IT infrastructure is outside a country’s legal reach then secured communications can be provided without worrying about government actually going after the mail or messaging servers themselves. Further, if a corporation’s legal assets and identity are also outside the nation, the government may be unable to legally compel the company to turn over the contents of BlackBerry communications. Needless to say, the full encryption of communications prevents the nation’s wireless carriers from effectively tapping BlackBerry device communications. Of course, this degree of security does depend on the device itself being protected from side-attacks, and protecting against these may limit the device’s full functionality.

Retrofitting Communicative Privacy and Security?

Over the past 24 months or so, various governments have decided that accessing secured BlackBerry communications is a national security priority. The actions taken by the Mumbai terrorists, who used BlackBerry devices to securely communicate with one another, have fuelled governmental demands to access privately secured data communications. What exactly has being demanded of RIM, why is it problematic to comply with these demands, and what is the next step from this point forward?

First, let’s showcase some of the countries demanding access to BlackBerry communications. The UAE has argued that BlackBerry devices pose ‘security risks’ on the basis that:

BlackBerry operates beyond the jurisdiction of national legislation, since it is the only device operating in the UAE that immediately exports its data offshore and is managed by a foreign, commercial organisation … As a result of how BlackBerry data is managed and stored, in their current form, certain BlackBerry applications allow people to misuse the service, causing serious social, judicial and national security repercussions.

Similarly, India remains ‘concern’ about their inability to decrypt secured BlackBerry communications. On the basis that encryption prevents rapid content penetration by government code-breakers, the Indian government sees BlackBerry communications as a national security issue. As noted by ZDnet, the general argument is that “India’s intelligence services need to be able to access encrypted data to prevent attacks in a ‘constant setting’: where attacks are likely and have occurred regularly.”

Other countries that have, or are presently, evaluating whether or not to let their businesses and citizens enjoy high levels of communicative security and privacy include:

• Kuwait. RIM has reportedly agreed to block thousands of pornographic websites after the government raise concerns about the cultural impact of these websites.
• Bahrain’s government successfully forced RIM to disable the messaging services for BlackBerry messaging chat groups on the basis that such groups could generate “chaos and confusion” as news was distributed via them. In effect, the BlackBerry limited the government’s ability to censor news that it didn’t want spread amongst its citizenry.
• Indonesia is concerned about BlackBerry encryption on the basis that the government is uncertain whether “data being sent through BlackBerrys can be intercepted or read by third parties outside the country.”
• Algeria, paralleling concerns raised by India, worries that the devices might be a “danger for our economy and our security.
• Lebanon is studying the security concerns around the BlackBerry.
• Tunisia has previously suspended email on the basis of security concerns.

Needless to say, this abbreviated list has a lot of nations citing ‘security concerns’ as driving the impairment of BlackBerry services. Also needless, but important, to note is that many of these same nations are well known for their efforts at censoring communications, oppressing their citizens, and regularly violating human rights.

What has RIM’s response been? In addition to blocking thousands of websites for the Kuwaiti government, RIM has provided decryption keys for the BlackBerry messenger service to India and believed to have provided them to Saudi Arabia as well. In the case of India, this apparently means that RIM is providing some kind of live access to BIS infrastructure that carries Indian messaging data. It’s important to carefully read and parse RIM’s official position regarding Saudi Arabia. Specifically, “RIM cannot accommodate any request for a copy of a customer’s encryption key, since at no time does RIM, or any wireless network operator or any third party, ever possess a copy of the key.” This seems deliberately nebulous, designed to confuse customers of the consumer line of BlackBerry services. While the company cannot crack Enterprise customers’ security on the basis that the BES architecture lacks back doors, the same cannot be said about wireless providers’ customers. Wireless providers’ customers use RIM’s BIS but are (arguably) not RIM customers themselves; RIM lacks a significant business relationship with them, save to potentially assist with hardware problems (and these are often dealt with at the provider level). Wireless customers using BlackBerry devices can almost certainly have their security and private infringed upon – RIM has effectively admitted as much by stating that they use a common global mode of encrypting messenger traffic (that they will disclose if forced) and that email data is subject to wireless companies’ own security policies (meaning it is subject to lawful access requests).

RIM has not yet capitulated to governments by redesigning their BES systems to provide governments access to BES-secured data. RIM repeatedly maintains in public that they cannot provide access to communications that are privately secured using the BES infrastructure, and that the company cannot monitor the content of BES-secured communications despite their flowing through RIM-based infrastructure. This stance may change, with evidence coming from the ongoing negotiations between RIM and the Indian government. The two parties are reportedly working towards some kind of an agreement that will give  the Indian government live access to data flows along BES environments. Presumably, this kind of ‘sneak peek’ would involve letting government officials look at data flows before they were encrypted going out of the enterprise, or after they had entered the corporate network. Alternately, all encryption keys might ‘just’ have to be registered with the national government. Save for in the last case, these ‘solutions’ would likely take the form of some kind of required plugin or module for Indian BES customers. Regardless, any agreement on any three of these lines will present BES customers and IT administrators with a myriad of security and confidentiality issues. It will only be a matter of time until some government official is bought out by a competing organization to perform corporate espionage or the government otherwise inappropriately uses their surveillance powers.

RIM and Single Points of Privacy Failure

Countries advocating for access to encrypted communications are demonstrating the danger of dependence on third-parties to route your communications: if the third-party is compromised then your communication may also be compromised. Many of the countries pressing RIM have already compromised their wireless carriers/ISPs, but RIM poses a somewhat unique danger insofar as it is a trusted and often extra-territorial third-party. RIM’s status alleviates some challenges of implementing and maintaining secure communications for some (typically business) individuals within the nation, but heightens problems for governments seeking access to all facets of their citizens’ communications. Countries are taking advantage of the fact that they can effectively shut down BlackBerry communications within their nations by placing pressure on regional wireless providers; such pressures threaten to deny RIM access to revenues and effectively force the company to the negotiating table. RIM is behaving as any ‘good’ profit-maximizing corporation would in light of threats its profits: it is negotiating deals that maximally enhance its balance sheet, principles and the privacy of wireless carriers’ customers be damned.

The Internet has demonstrated that it is an incredibly robust communications network, but one that does have weak links. Wherever there is a single, necessary, node that traffic must pass through there is a point of attack for government, a point where sovereign powers can be exercised to capture and interrogate citizens’ data traffic. The application of sovereign power demonstrates Goldsmith’s and Wu’s general thesis in Who Controls the Internet?, that the ‘net is becoming bordered as various powers mediate what kinds of data and data repositories are available to citizens. Of course, the general thesis must be nuanced: in each case where the BlackBerry network has come under fire from government we see governments at odds with other governments, governments trying to come to terms with private international data networks, and private corporations struggling to maintain product uniformity while accommodating regional law. In essence, we see governments struggling to adjust to a novel mode of network distributions, see them struggle to realize new approaches to govern communications traffic. Given the transformative nature of Internet governance generally, we would be well advised to take seriously Cowhey’s and Mueller’s (2009) conclusion that network governance has changed how the state system and communications networks interface. Specifically, they write that

…the Internet has not escaped governments, but the governance systems have changed. Changes in the rules of decision making and the forms of stakeholder participation will drive outcomes in novel directions even if the parameters of choice still remain under the control of governments (193).

Should facets of the BlackBerry system become more significantly decentralized we could see additional complications around the governance regime of mobile data communications. Such complications will contribute to additional anxieties around the range of actions available to the state in its self-expression of sovereignty. Whereas states have historically worked on places – a locale whose form, function, and meaning are self-contained within the boundaries of a physical contiguity – they are increasing being forced to work on spaces – instances of crystallized time that operate as a site of flows, and thus lack an international bounding of form, function and meaning associated with places (Castells 2001). The decentralization of BlackBerry services, a shift to a P2P-like infrastructure for their BIS and BES services, would limit states’ abilities to attend to places, undermining law’s ability to address BlackBerry security in a manner paralleling law’s limited capacity to end widespread P2P-enabled copyright infringement. Place has become a space of weakness, a point where time remains closely associated with matter and thus receptive to the “hard geophysical reality of places.” To achieve the advantages of decentralized virtualization places must give way to temporal structures associated with light-time and the manifestation of spaces that challenge geophysical locatedness (Virilio 2005: 117).

Even with the shift from places to spaces, the decentralization of BlackBerry security, and the modulation of state governance models, the switches of information transfers will remain privileged instruments of power. Thus, so long as RIM maintains vertical integration of their product lines the company will acts as a central point of power that is receptive to organized state power. Vertical integration is a problem; the company must shift from a single to pluralistic set of interrelated corporate nodes to transition from a places to spaces company. Disaggregating the vertical integration of the company would see it adopt a layered approach to its business, and manifest by the company spinning itself into a series of unique corporate bodies that maintain integration with other RIM-based corporate bodies without any particular body directly informing or integrating with one another in a centrally planned manner. Open protocols and APIs, instead of centralized corporate design, would be responsible for maintaining BlackBerry device and service integration. Under this framework a hardware, operating system, and network security corporation could emerge from the present whole that is Research in Motion.

Under this model the various corporations would contribute to a cohesive BlackBerry device, though no one party would own the entire stack. Google has demonstrated the viability of this approach, showing what a 21st century information company looks like and how it behaves (for much more on this, see Wu 2010). Exploring how RIM might implement a Google-like approach to corporate design and product architecture could simultaneously help confound sovereign authority and promote modular adjustments to facets of the BlackBerry infrastructure in ways that promote module innovation by giving developers free(r) rein over various ‘hidden components’ (those components that aren’t depended upon by other layers of the BlackBerry device stack). Such innovation and decentralization could continue to fulfill market demands of chasing after profits if open protocols and APIs are appropriately developed and propagated. Adopting this disaggregated approach, where RIM shifts from a places to a spaces company, would have the ultimate effect of challenging and undermining current structures of state sovereignty and accelerate the modulation of state power. By forcing states to engage with a better-entrenched networked governance structure that facilitates secured mobile communications the state might learn new modes of enacting governance requiring cooperation and compliance instead of blunt force. Without the tools of sovereignty the state typically wields, and the requirements to achieve cooperation and consensus, BlackBerry devices would enjoy enhanced security and their users superior communicative privacy. Importantly (for the RIM-spinoffs), the transition from a places to spaces corporation might be implemented whilst improving the conditions for modular innovation and enhancements to existing corporate profit logics.

Notes:

[1]  A5 encryption has serious deficiencies, which have been helpfully summarized by Harald Welte. In effect, A5 has long depended on security by obscurity to an extend and is quickly compromised in the face of a sufficiently motivated attacker.

Book Sources:

Cowhey, Peter and Mueller, Milton. (2009). “Delegation, Networks, and Internet Governance,” in M. Kahler (ed). Networked Politics: Agency, Power, and Governance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Castells, Manuel. (2000). The Rise of the Network Society (Second Edition). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Goldsmith, Jack and Wu, Tim. (2006). Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World. Toronto: Oxford University Press.

Virilio, Paul. (2005). The Information Bomb. New York: Verso.

Wu, Tim. (2010). The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Mobile Security and the Economics of Ignorance
2. IPv6 and the Future of Privacy
3. Review: Surveillance or Security?

As always, I welcome positive, negative, and ambivalent comments on the draft. Elements of it will be adopted for a paper that I’ll be presenting at a Critical Digital Studies workshop in a month or two – this is your chance to get me to reform positions to align with your own! *grin*

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Draft: What’s Driving Deep Packet Inspection in Canada?
2. Draft – Deep Packet Inspection: Privacy, Mash-ups, and Dignities
3. Draft – Who Gives a ‘Tweet’ About Privacy?

I’ll be presenting my paper “The Ontological Crisis of Melancholia: Searching for foundations in the ether of cyberspace” tomorrow at the (inter)disciplinarities: theory & crisis conference tomorrow. If you have any thoughts or comments on the paper, feel free to drop me a line – I’m hoping to polish it over the next few months and then start shopping it around to a few journals. The abstract is below:

Abstract

In The Psychic Life of Power, Judith Butler argues that the power structures ordering individuals and states alike are predicated on a mourning that cannot be mourned; melancholia permeates the primary ordering structures of the individual and the state. Butler takes up this absence, and alerts us to the state’s reliance on citizens’ melancholia to support its continued being. The state, constituted by the melancholic, reasserts and normalizes the melancholia responsible for plunging the modern subject into its ontological crisis of Being; it perpetuates the subjects’ inability to authentically ground their selfhood.

In this paper, I ask whether digital environments are spaces that can facilitate the resolution of modern subjects’ ontological crisis, and thus might provoke the reconstitution of modern politics. In responding to this inquiry, I take up Butler’s analysis of mourning and melancholia and situate her politics of identity in the context of Cyberspace. Specifically, I investigate whether the modern subject can work through their crisis within the plasticity of digital spaces, or if these spaces only superficially present possibilities for working through crisis. In interrogating these possibilities, I consider how psychosocial norms of embodied life are (being) embedded throughout digital spaces, and reflect on the implications of state-held norms being reaffirmed in these new media environments. I conclude by adopting the stance that Cyberspace may enable some individuals to acknowledge their experience of melancholia, but stop short of claiming that the possibilities afforded by this space’s plasticity can or will provoke a widespread reconstitution of modern politics.

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. The Birthing of a Conference
2. Thoughts on COUNTER: Counterfeiting and Piracy Research Conference

The Boundaries of Citizenship

Western nation-states have developed around liberal conceptions of citizenship. As a consequence, citizenship is associated with a particular legal status that requires members to fulfill a set of legally enforceable requirements. These requirements can include holding a certain amount of money, it may involve active participation as a citizen (i.e. remaining active in communities that one is being naturalised by volunteering, being active in local politics, etc), or being born in a geographic area.

As a citizen with certain rights and obligations you are separated from others who lack the particular distinctive character of your citizenship. While this is, at first, a fairly clear matter that seems uncontroversial, it becomes slightly more complicated should you approach constitutional rights, and the possibility of citizenship, from the framework of critical theory (in particular critical constitutional theory that finds its roots in Habermasian political theory). Omid A. Payrow Shabani has opened a line of dialogue surrounding this issue in his recently published article “Cosmopolitan Justice and Immigration: A Critical Theory Perspective” (Link; leave a comment if you don’t have access to the journal and are interested in the article).

In his article Payrow Shabani argues that immigration law and constitutional law have been kept separate and operate in tension with one another. Liberal democratic constitutions have been developed so to be inclusive – where citizenship is offered on legal, rather than ethnic, grounds it is theoretically possible for anyone to become a citizen. This was essential to overcoming the problem of legitimization, insofar as without an inclusive metric foreign aliens could not participate in lawmaking and thus could not perceive themselves as the authors and addressees of law.

When approaching immigration and citizenship from statist lines, when we evaluate whether the alien accords with legal definitions that have already been established rather than by evaluating their prospects of membership according to tenants of the constitution, we ‘moralise the border’. This involves affirming that “a democratic polity has a one-to-one relationship with a specific geographical territory” (Payrow Shabani, 93). This one-to-one relationship between membership and geography can be overcome by reevaluating constitutional preambles, where instead of asserting ‘We, the people’ as a reference to the present members of a geographic space a universalised (and legally open) signatory is asserted as the document’s author. This openess at the constitutional level would necessitate shifting immigration and citizenship issues to a constitutional level, to the highest level of the nation-state. This legally provides non-citizens with voices, letting them participate in the country they are seeking entry into, and establishes an essential dialogue between present full– and potential-members of the nation-state without denigrating the latter group.

Presently, the boundaries of citizenship are established around geographic territories, divorced from constitutional openness, and resistant to dialogue with foreigners. Let’s turn to the EU to elucidate on why the present method is unappetising and, ultimately, morally reprehensible.

Fortress Europe and British Citizenship Tests

The European Union is often referred to as ‘Fortress Europe’ because of the incredible borders that it is trying to establish to prevent influxes of immigrants. The Medlilla border fence, Ceuta border fence, Lampedusa permanent immigrant camp, not to mention mine fields along the Greek border with Turkey, inhospitable climates of the Sahara, and dangers accompanied with travelling through Chad, Libya, Niger, and Sudan are all aspects of Europe physical fortifications. They are buttressed with harsh illegal immigration laws and increasingly hardened immigration and naturalisation processes.

An element of that hardening can be seen in Britain, where the following proposals are being made:

• Raising visa fees for a special “transitional impact” fund
• More English language testing ahead of nationality
• Requirements to prove integration into communities
• Increasing how long it takes to become British

These modifications will lead to a clearer delimitation of rights, but strong obligations at each stage of the citizenship process to receive those ‘clearer’ rights Moreover, those with children or elderly relatives will be expected to pay higher application fees. (Source)

Closing the Lines of Constitutional Dialogue

What is missing from the British proposals is an openness to the needs of those who have been, or are presently being, exploited by British and EU forces. There is a moral obligation on the part of the West to assist those who are least well off – those worst off are, at the very least in part, in their present socio-economic situations because of the ravages the West has, and continues to, inflict on them. From bi-lateral trade negotiations between the EU towards African nations that effectively undercut a African nations from assuming collective bargaining positions to refusing to purchase foreign commodities unless foreign farmers significantly alter their modes of production, it is clear that the EU and Britain especially have a hand in the global pot. (And this doesn’t even touch on the legacy of colonisation, or a general Rawlsian (i.e. liberal) moral imperative for those best off to assist those who are worst off.)

However, because members of foreign nations cannot participate in dialogue with citizens of Britain on an equal footing when it comes to immigration they are forced to accept changes of UK immigration law without having been heard from. How can they be genuinely expected to integrate into communities when it is evident that the ethnic-political discourse is already working to prevent them from entering the dialogue? How is penalising those who are the worst off supposed to facilitate legal citizenship, where all are seen as equal participants in the legal process, where all have an equal right to voice their concerns? How are the UK’s constitutional conventions expected to prevent the issues of integration and legitimization if their core function of openness to difference is banished?

We live in a world that is becoming more interconnected and the attempts of to fortify and militarize Europe in order to compete in the global economy while simultaneously to accept the responsibilities that accompany the centralisation of global capital within EU borders, threaten to doom the EU. It may not mean an economic failure – it is plausible that EU actions will create a strong enough wall that it will be near impossible for most immigrants to enter the EU while enabling the EU to successfully accumulate global capital. It may ‘thrive’ culturally insofar as it can constantly experience the births of nouveau cultures. What it will find itself without, however, is the moral credibility to enforce the charter of human rights that that has (arguably) guided some of the most substantial and progressive advances in EU law. Substantively enacting that charter requires more than lip service concerning the rights of EU citizens and the injustices that occur past fortress walls – it requires a comprehensive re-evaluation of immigration law and the divorcement of citizenship from strict geographical boundaries.

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. The Digital Workshop and Analogue Drill Presses

It’s been a while since I’ve been updating this blog regularly – since I last wrote, I’ve completed my

Setting the Stage

We are increasingly living in a hybrid world, one where our lives are being digitized. We eat food (analogue) but order it online (digital); we use our voices to talk with one another (analogue) using cell phones (digital); we read cooking recipes (analogue) from recipe websites (digital). In addition to what we actually do, what happens around us, and shapes how we are capable of interacting, often occurs within digital spaces – banking institutions are networked, government documents are send across departments by email, and major corporate executives that make (oftentimes) global decisions seem to have Blackberries surgically attached to themselves.

The transition to new technological systems isn’t an inherently bad thing, nor is it inherently good – I’m unwilling to go so far as to engage with the ontology of communication technologies without a much deeper understanding of human psychology, moral and ethical theory, and a better understanding of systems of ethico-existential theory. So, rather than focus on the technology as it is, I want to turn to the effects of that technology if adequate privacy regulations not be deployed to stymie potential negative effects of digital systems towards political action. In particular, I’m interested in how digital system relate to political action that depends on a functioning discursively generated political environment.

The All Seeing Digital Eye

In a previous post, entitled ‘Public and Private Digital Space’ I noted the risks associated with Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) hardware. This technology has the effect of looking past packet header information and actually looking into the payload of packets. I noted at the time that DPI threatened to alter the structure of public and private spaces. Presently, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) tend to examine packet header information and based on the header’s contents allow or prevent the packet from passing along their network. Thus (in theory) ‘private’ actions can be recognized by looking at header information and then passed along. Now, in light of the ability to encrypt and/or mask the accuracy of packet information, I wrote that ISPs might shift their behaviour and begin examining and regulating the data traffic moving across their networks.

In my previous post, I wrote about what would happen if corporations began using DPI to shape or manipulate data traffic. I tried (in my own head) to remain optimistic that telecommunications giants would avoid using these technologies because it could implicate them for copyright violation, electronic fraud, and other offenses. Classically these giants have insisted that they cannot be held responsible for what passed along their networks but, were they to institute DPI, they would quickly become the targets of litigation.

Unfortunately, in the past few weeks, it’s become desperately clear that at least one giant may be in the process of shifting its position on this core issue. At CES major content creators and providers discussed whether we were at a time when content should be inspected at a network level, and only after that inspection be allowed (were it deemed legitimate) to continue across the ISPs network. AT&T, the same ISP that has been identified as collaborating with American government agencies to access and store all data movement through AT&T data hubs, was the major content provider involved in those discussions. AT&T has previously been identified to be using Narus STA 6400 Equipment, which is capable of massively surveying data streams (there are claims that it can analyze over 10 billion bits of data per second). Moreover, as the below image from NSAwatch.org demonstrates, these data collection centers weren’t located deep within the US – it was located along the central points of entry into and out of the US. Based on expenses in deploying sophisticated and expensive telecommunications equipment, in addition to the decentralized nature of network traffic transmissions, a massive proportion of world communications were being routed through AT&T data centres. This should indicate the challenges that are present to anyone who wants to dodge DPI technologies – were they deployed at central network hubs, it would be practically impossible for data to move across networks without being inspected during delivery.

What This Means

When most people are told that their communications may be being monitored (at least amongst my generation) are remarkably cavalier. Sure, they seem to get upset when Facebook releases an application that invasively monitors and publicizes their online purchases. Moveon.org put together a petition that was intended to force Facebook to ‘reconsider’ their Beacon application. As of this writing, almost 80,000 people have joined a Facebook group that Moveon has created to protest Facebook’s reasonably regular invasions of privacy. (And yes, you can certainly detect a moderate degree of irony in protesting in the system that is tracking your actions, to protest against that system’s tracing on one’s actions. At least you’d know they knew you were a member of the group.)

What was unique about Beacon, however, was that it clearly showed how discrete users were being monitored, and people didn’t like the idea that their information was being made public. Even though it wasn’t necessarily incriminating, even though they didn’t have anything to hide, even though they weren’t afraid it would result in some measure of state-sanctioned coercion, they were upset – they strongly believed that Facebook was infringing on their privacy. In response, they got together and communicated with one another about what was going on, and discussed the issue. Living in a digital era, this means that their mass communications took place using digital systems – the same systems that are susceptible to DPI technologies and other systems of data oversight and discrimination. While it is possible to learn that your data is being shaped, it requires a certain level of expertise, a certain level of persistence, and an awareness that it is occurring. Most people who I have spoken to assume that, after the Beacon debacle, that they were no long participating in the program – what has actually happened is that users became able to opt-out of it. Now that most of the news has died down about the topic, and it isn’t such an evident privacy invasion, most users have forgotten about it and moved on. The same individuals who were up in arms about Beacon assumed the issue was settled, that the message had been sent, and have returned to their regular digital movements.

What happens in a case where individuals can never be certain what will, and won’t, be passed along a network (which is really the case now, save that individuals aren’t necessarily aware of how comprehensive their digital portfolios are)? As someone who works with digital networks, I can realize the incredible value of data discrimination and oversight from an administrative standpoint – if users don’t know what will be blocked, then they tend to be conservative in their usage. Moreover, with your block/shaping list remaining secretive you don’t have to worry about privacy concerns insofar as you don’t have to concern yourself with user outrage, and you and you don’t have publicly to justify what you’ve chosen to shape/control. It makes life more pleasant, and unless you happen to have an incredibly vocal individual who has genuine leadership skills, it’s unlikely that you will encounter a situation where such shaping causes a problem. (As a note: neither I, nor my present employer, are presently using data shaping technologies to the best of my knowledge.) As long as shaping is reasonably innocuous, as long as it doesn’t pick on powerful people, as long as it is only inconvenient (rather than genuinely problematic), as long as it remains moderately mysterious, then the system can remain in place without enough user outrage that the policies must be abandoned.

In a discursive democracy, the capacity for citizens to publicly communicate with one another is a central element of retaining the democracy’s health. People send private messages from their email accounts at work, from work accounts, they IM using cell phones, they develop mashups of copy written material, they (generally) participate in political society on the backbones of digital networks. When citizens constituted their nations they (theoretically) came to a consensus about the basic laws of their state, laws that they had to uniformly consent to. (Note: in consenting to basic law, this does not mean that citizens whole heartedly endorse each law – rather, it symbolizes a validation of a particular constitutional culture, within which disagreements should be expected. That said, such disagreements do not inherently endanger the constitution itself, or necessitate a repudiation of it during its inception.) Moreover, for citizens to be able to accept a law, they must be able to recognize themselves as its authors and addressees. This meant that they had to be able to communicate to one another about their particular situations, both to their political figures and amongst themselves, so that the laws that are created can be seen to have included the considerations of those who will be affected by the law. Where individuals are unable to communicate privately, they are less likely to experiment with political ideas, less likely to raise controversial issues, and less likely to substantively experience the creative safety that is often found in informal or private communicative spaces. Moreover, given the prevalence of digital oversights, accompanied by the diminishment of what can be considered private time and private spaces, citizens are rapidly losing the spheres of discourse that they have relied upon.

Now, does this means that as a result of these technologies as they are presently being deployed that individuals will necessarily experience data discrimination and illegitimate accumulation, and consequently limit their digital communications? No, not necessarily – but it isn’t absurd to think that they will become more conservative in what they say, where they say it, and who they say it to. And, depending on the kinds of packet monitoring/reporting systems that are deployed, it may not matter what they say – their messages might just not be sent or they may be censored and, when they demand answers to why such actions are occurring, receive an answer that is something along the lines of ‘you communication was deemed to be in violation of the Terms of Service that you agreed to when you signed the contract to receive this service’.

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Technology – Questions of Digitizing Identity
2. Technology: CBC’s Search Engine and Traffic Shaping
3. Deep Packet Inspection and the Confluence of Privacy Regimes

Piracy or ‘Avast Me Mateys!’

I don’t spend a lot of time talking about software or music piracy, largely because I think that there are alternate sources that more effectively aggregate and deliver news about it. That said, I couldn’t resist commenting on Jennifer Pariser’s (head of litigation for Sony BMG) statements surrounding digital technologies. When under oath, Pariser responded to Richard Gabriel’s (the lead counsel for record labels) question of whether it was wrong for consumers to make copies of music they have purchased, stating,

When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.” Making “a copy” of a purchased song is just “a nice way of saying ‘steals just one copy’ (source).

Her comments directly point to why fair use is under such duress. More importantly, however, even when we apply the principle of charity to her general position, her comments seem to defy the public’s position on the matter. I don’t want to suggest that because people generally believe something that the law should reflect their beliefs – if that was the case then racial segregation would be more prominent than it is – but that when extensive public discourse has been undertaken and a common position is held by the deliberative participants, that their shared consensus should operate as the basis for developing legitimated law. I think that this discourse has, and continues to, occur in North America.

While there are some consumers that rabidly resist the notion of ‘paying the man’, I think that most are willing to pay a price that is in close relation to a product’s value. It’s possible that the decreased desire to pay for music has to do with its perceived value – not simply financial, but cultural, as well. The 50s-70s saw music that literally influenced the shape of the world; is this still the case with contemporary music? If it was perhaps more true, would people be willing to pay for the music they were interested in? Perhaps more to the heart of Pariser’s comments, should culture be relatively accessible without being unfair to the production teams that provide the mechanics that facilitate cultural development, or should musical culture be entirely privatized, kept away from the members of the public who lack sufficient market agency?

Privacy, eh? Let’s Talk Price…

Let’s say you’re applying for a job. Moreover, let’s say that you don’t think your boss and the rest of the world should be able to gather a quick digital profile on you – you think that your constitutional right to privacy should be recognized, even if it means that you have to do something to substantively realize that right. In light of your strong views, you look to the private sector companies that will work to keep you from the public eye as much as is possible.

These kinds of ‘privacy services’ exist, but what’s interesting is that even though people are ‘concerned’ about their privacy they’re generally unwilling to pay a private body to protect their privacy. I want to briefly suggest a few reasons why this might be the case:

1. Implicitly, citizens feel as though they shouldn’t have to pay a private company to perform an action that allows citizens to substantively realize their rights to privacy. It’s the role of government, not corporate America, to protect people’s rights.
2. Without apparent and persistent threats to their privacy people are unwilling to take out the equivalent of privacy insurance plans. If breeches are taken to include the unwanted and unwarranted collection of personal information to develop digital dossiers, then individuals experience dozens of breeches every day without ever being made aware of them – secrecy is central in preserving the value of these databases. Thus, their unwillingness to adopt these services is because they don’t realize the value of adopting them
3. People just don’t know about these services.

Those are the first reasons that hop into my head – feel free to add others.

Orwell, aka The United Kingdom

Given the genuine possibilities/likelihoods of having one’s personal information disclosed to others, it has become a (relatively) common practise to encrypt personal communications. As the practise of data encryption has become more commonly known about and used, government bodies have experienced difficulties when trying to extract particular information about individuals without the individuals becoming aware of the surveillance – in the case of terrorists especially it is important that the surveillance be secretive.

In light of these difficulties, the UK recently saw laws imposed that made it illegal to refuse to provide authorities with the keys to encrypted data. It is important to note that this law only affects data that is held on UK servers, and does not pertain to encrypted data that transmitted “on the Internet via the UK” and cannot be used to coerce foreign citizens to decrypt their communications under the auspice of jail time.

The fact that the data would be decrypted is not the real source of the problem – what is a problem is the power of the UK government to gain access to keys that are (potentially) involved in global telecommunications. Consider this: if you’re a banker in London, and your bank is a transnational body that uses the same underlying encryption system, this would allow the UK government access to the entirety of the bank’s communications and records. That’s genuinely a frightening issue. Whereas historically having to relinquish an analogue (i.e. physical) key required the authorities to arrive at each locked door to open it, in today’s digital era authorities can access the entirety of a corporate or private database without an agent ever leaving their chair.

Because of the global expansiveness of modern corporations and (oftentimes) private databases, this law highlights one of the challenges to nation-states in asserting their laws and expecting that they will remain constrained to the nation-state. Without developing some kind of a federated or supranational body, it is questionable whether nation-states will be able to continue the practise of legislating laws that affect constituents in other areas of the world, regardless of whether they consent to the imposition or not. The EU was born out of the need to develop a relatively harmonized capital and juridical block capable of meeting the advances of capitalism and intensification of globalization – one has to wonder if it will be enough.

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Thoughts on COUNTER: Counterfeiting and Piracy Research Conference

Techno-magnates – Bill and Nicholas – and their projects

The two most prominent individuals that have turned their attention to the third world have been Bill Gates, who is spending billions through the Melissa and Bill Gate’s Foundation to try and raise standards of living by improving literacy and fighting disease. The foundation is best known for its in work fighting disease – it has targeted Acute Diarrhoeal Illness, Acute Lower Respiratory Infections, HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and Tuberculosis (to name a few) as their primary targets.

Nicholas Negroponte, the magnate and visionary behind the One Laptop Per Child Program, want to bring the digital revolution to poor children and let them enjoy the ensuing benefits of the digital revolution. The theory is that, by distributing textbooks electronically, by giving children a way of learning to program, by giving them rugged pieces of technology that can be powered by a bicycle or foot loom, children can receive top-rate education despite living in Less Economically Developed Countries (LECDs).

Why magnate-projects are oftentimes destructive

The magnates receive a lot of press. Usually the emphasis is placed on the amount of money being spent, the commitment involved, the numbers of people that will be positively affected, and questions about what kinds of legacies will be left behind by some of today’s ‘great people’. I’ve talked about the OLPC program before on this blog, and don’t feel like I want to get too into it right now. Suffice it to say that I’ve become a fan of the program, and I think highly of the Mr. and Mrs. Gates for their efforts.

That said, I’m concerned by the these world spanning projects. While I think that (by and large) their respective goals are altruistic, the effects of targeted projects are not necessarily entirely positive. I was listening to a CBC broadcast a few weeks ago, and the CBC interviewer was talking to front-line medical workers in LECDs. The workers were noting that, while it is good to see the first world starting to genuinely give a damn about the third world, that; (a) foreign aid rarely arrives in the quantities announced (usually for bureaucratic reasons, and because foreign aid is commonly used as a slush fund to assist struggling national companies produce goods that Western consumers won’t buy at the prices these companies sell their products) and; (b) that techno-magnates, and other wealthy individuals, who are providing money to countries to fight off particular illnesses often lead to degradations in those countries’ abilities to fend off other diseases. For example, as soon as the Gates’ foundation give X millions to Ghana, and requires the country to immunize Y thousands of children for Z disease, the physical resources (i.e. doctors and nurses) are unable to provide other, perhaps more immediately necessary, services because health centre directors don’t want to lose the money that is flowing to the centre. This means that doctors and nurses aren’t as free as they were previously to assist the ill and dying.

In addition to this, when was the last time that Bill and Nicholas sat down and talked about common resource allocation? When was that last time that LEDCs have had all of the magnates, not just Bill and Nicholas, in a room and they worked with magnates to develop a comprehensive strategy that was sensitive to each locality? Until these kinds of meetings take place, where a global allocation strategy that is inherently sensitive to the groups that are receiving assistance is developed, I have to question the underlying principles of social justice lying below these programs. Until these programs are legitimized and authorized by those receiving the assistance – until they can recognize themselves as principle agents of their own recovery – any assistance is, in a sense, tyrannical. Strategic decisions get made by private individuals, decisions that affect millions. This isn’t to say that some degree of cooperation doesn’t take place between these foundations and localities, nor that these charitable foundations aren’t performing independent research so that they can work with localities and remain sensitive to their differences. What it is to say, is that unless the affected people are given a dominant hand in shaping how NGOs operate in their localities it is (essentially) a form of semi-polite colonialism.

Colonizing language, and local cultures by extension

Colonialism revolved around the belief that underdeveloped nations were less rational, less culturally advanced, and generally more barbaric. It happened at a time where the underlying political associations of Europe were constitutionally recognized, which mean that there was an inclusion/exclusion tension built into colonization, and which acted as a central theoretical weakness in the colonial project. While magnates are now (presumably) more sensitive to LEDCs, there is the belief that Western tools are the tools that can elevate LEDCs from their suffering.

Why not instead of focusing on how to draw these groups into a Westernized way of doing things, investigate how individuals in LEDCs would prefer to resolve particular problems, resolutions that may draw on the cultural and medicinal histories of their people, and which stretch backwards for centuries or longer? Why not work with them to develop technologies that are sensitive to their needs – i.e. many cultures have rich oral traditions that thrive on the difference that each person brings to a narrative when they tell it; the idea of data archives that are static are entirely foreign (and not necessarily appreciated) by them. When we impose hierarchical learning, when we take away from verbal traditions, when we replace the content rich systems of discourse and speech with logically precise languages of .NET, C++, and other programming languages, aren’t we running the risk of molding the shape of foreign cultures so that they ‘fit’ the normative criteria for what culture is, as assumed in the technologies that we are providing them?

I don’t think that the potential undermining of native cultures is an intentional objective – techno-magnates generally see technologies they are deploying as something that should be massively positive – nor do I think that any culture can (in today’s global environment) exist in a vacuum. As cultural minorities increasingly struggle to identify their own histories and reassert their own ethical-political narratives their native governments are turning to the oldest democracies to learn how to overcome the challenges of integration and legitimacy. The West must critically evaluate its own normative democratic stances and policy initiatives so that it can provide the best models possible – without adequate models, these burgeoning democracies can emerge (effectively) still-born, leaving citizens without a political voice over how their past is read, the present is defined, or the future is written.

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Techno-Trinkets: Firefox Bookmarks, Flash Books, and Redundent Data Storage
2. Three Strikes and Goodbye World
3. Privacy Norms in the Bio-Digital World

The computers are incredibly simple, providing basic computing. What’s important is that they are almost entirely open-source; kids can take them apart and learn about every element of the computers through trial and error. They’re rugged enough (both physically and code-wise) that kids can put them through hell and they’ll keep on going. While the laptops can be charged by plugging the computers into electrical outlets, they can also be powered by converting physical action to electricity – ride a bike attached to the thing and you’ll be able to charge it. The initial roll-out doesn’t have this, but it’s in the overall specs of the project.

I’ve been looking at using online tools for teaching and guiding students, and in the process I wondered about whether the tools that are often talked about now (i.e. forums, online document collaboration, sharing calendars, wikis, blogs, and social networking sites) can really fulfill some of the learning opportunities that kids getting these laptops have before them. Are blogs and wiki’s a suitable replacement for technology, or just as something to integrate with regular technologies (i.e. books and blackboards).

At the moment, I’d definitely hesitate to say that webtools, or any digital tools for that matter, they are a replacement for analogue technolgies – we’re usually looking at 2.0 apps to focus on how to improve the teaching to particular students in Western nations, and aren’t really considering the need to focus on students outside of our locality. I’m not criticizing this – I think that education often operates best when it’s targeted to particular individuals in particular situations – but I do wonder if, rather than focusing on the current stream of tools that facilitate communication across a particular group, we might be better off in the long-term to focus on how developing infrastructure that allows indiviudals across the world to understandabily and actually communicate with one another.

I’m not suggesting that we just use global social networking systems, but am wondering if our current iterations of social networking sites (a) adequately account for diversity and (b) enable individuals to communicate across linguistic chasms. I think that we can work on (a) reasonably easily, but only after we figure out a way of overcoming (b).

Now, why is this important? Why not just focus on local applications that work well for particular students in particular situations? I have to wonder whether or not some kind of disservice is done when we dominantly focus on the local – we live in global environments, where my actions have the potential to affect dozens of others across the globe. In light of this, should online apps focus on localities, continuing to emphasize the local with a bit of foreign tossed into the mix when it’s a handy teaching tool, or should these applications be developed to enable at least rudimentary discussions across different cultures and languages.

As more and more children who live in poverty get their hands on the laptops the OLPC program provides there is the possibility for more and more voices to be heard online, but how many of these voices will be understandable by Western citizens? If we have tools that let students talk to one another, right through K-12 and into university, isn’t it likely that they’ll grow up with a deeper understanding of themselves, their subject matter, and the challenges and opportunities present across the globe?

Imagine if students in Canada, when learning about northern Brasil, could talk to and teleconference with other students in Brasil; imagine the texture that would provide, and how all aspects of social studies would change. Instead of reading about northern Brasil, students would be talking to residents of that area of the globe, giving the students the ability to critically evaluate the analogue texts and Westernized history they were provided with.

Unfortunately, before we can add that kind of texture, we need to be able to speak with one another – aren’t these interlinguistic discussions the real possibility of the ‘net, not particularly targetted services and content that appeal to native speakers?

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Webcams and Teleconferencing in Education
2. Brief Thoughts on Blogging and Education
3. Web 2.0 and Education

1. To improve their services. Specifically, he writes “Search companies like Google are constantly trying to improve the quality of their search services. Analyzing logs data is an important tool to help our engineers refine search quality and build helpful new services . . . The ability of a search company to continue to improve its services is essential, and represents a normal and expected use of such data.”
2. To maintain security and prevent fraud and abuse. “Data protection laws around the world require Internet companies to maintain adequate security measures to protect the personal data of their users. Immediate deletion of IP addresses from our logs would make our systems more vulnerable to security attacks, putting the personal data of our users at greater risk. Historical logs information can also be a useful tool to help us detect and prevent phishing, scripting attacks, and spam, including query click spam and ads click spam.”
3. To comply with legal obligations to retrieve data. “Search companies like Google are also subject to laws that sometimes conflict with data protection regulations, like data retention for law enforcement purposes.” (Source)

Since posting on this topic Fleischer’s positions have come under fire – why can’t Google use anonymized data to determine the accuracy of search results? Why must events that limit corporate profits be included as a reason to override personal data privacy? Why is Google subjecting themselves to laws that are not yet in place, and will not be applied retroactively?

Google has since attempted to clarify their position in their public policy blog by reflecting on the balance between privacy (they are specifically referring to digital privacy, though they don’t explicitly distinguish between digital and analogue privacy) and security. The corporate blog is particularly concerned with the European Union’s data retention directive, which imposes retention obligations to accessible data that is processed or generated using communication services. Fleishcher indulges in a bit of Euro-bashing in his analysis of the data retention directive that may appeal to some people but that ultimately displays his insensitivity to the complicated process of EU politics.

He begins by calling the directive, which calls for harmonization of data retention policies by the member states, an oxymoronic document on the basis that any harmonization between member-states must remain sensitive to the plurality of value structures embedded throughout the EU’s members. He notes that;

On a practical level, the likelihood of seeing a consistent implementation of the rules across the EU is effectively zero. The timing of the implementation – due by September 15, 2007 – will certainly vary. 16 of the 27 EU Member States have already declared that they will delay the implementation of data retention of Internet traffic data for an additional period of 18 months, as permitted by the directive. The compulsory retention period for each type of data will also vary from country to county (e.g. Germany has proposed 6 months, the UK 12 months, and the Netherlands 18 months). The interpretation of other key elements, such as “serious crime,” “competent national authorities,” or “electronic communications services” will be different across jurisdictions too. (Source)

The EU is a newfound political body – nothing of its scale and competencies have been successfully established since Rome and, with the dramatic intensification of global processes and demands for respecting cultural, legal, linguistic, and religious dignities (to name a few), the EU must meet challenges that never faced Rome. Each of the member nations have long-seated legal traditions that are born from their unique constitutions. Constitutions establish the basic law of nations. These basic laws were created in light of particular citizenry’s values and needs. As such, when reflecting on the actions of a supranational it is important to realize that it must operate in a fashion that does not intentionally or unintentionally discriminate against its members and their constitutional traditions. The EU itself lacks a fully legitimized constitution, leaving Europe without a legal citizenship – until these factors change all legal proceedings and directives must proceed cautiously to respect the dignity of its various members.

Fleischer continues to raise a series of rhetorical and hypothetical questions that are intended to cause the reader to amusedly snort at the ineptitude and disarray of the EU’s position. He writes,

Is a country more democratic than its neighbour because of its shorter retention period? Or do the citizens of that country face a greater security risk for the same reason? If there is something about the data retention directive that can be called into question is its proportionality – not necessarily in terms of financial cost to service providers, but in terms of privacy and anonymity loss. And what will Internet companies do in practice, especially if they operate one data architecture that cannot vary from one country to another: apply the longest retention period, or the shortest, or some “average”? (Source)

Rather than just breezing past these statements and questions, let’s examine them. Is a country more or less democratic based on its retention periods? This is supposing that democracy is wholly based on anonymity, which is not the case. Democratic environments persist because individuals experience a reasonable expectation of privacy, which allows them a space to informally communicate and associate with members of society without fearing illegitimate governmental oversight and supervision. Retention periods alone do not identify whether or not individuals’ privacy is being invaded; it is retaining and analyzing archived data without clear purposes or citizen consent that threatens free speech in democratic states.

Fleischer follows on this threat to democracy by asking whether democracies might be undermined if different terrorist threat valuations in different nations lead to divergent heterogeneous retention policies. While I can appreciate that this is a possible side-effect, by clearly asserting national laws that accord with the EU data retention policy this particular ‘threat’ can be avoided. Moreover, in the case where citizens feels that their national retention policy violates their basic rights they can appeal to their national court system to try and overturn the law and if that fails they can turn to the European Court of Justice. While it’s ‘nice’ for Fleischer to look out for EU member nations, they do have a reasonably sophisticated system for dealing with inconsistencies between EU and member-nation laws.

His last comment is perhaps the most confusing. Google, Yahoo!, and other major search companies routinely provide data to some localities and not to others based on geographic filtering technologies. I fail to see why an ISP cannot similarly filter their retention policies, only making retained French information available to French authorities, retained German information available to the Germans, et cetera. Perhaps I’m missing a key element of this argument, but it certainly isn’t a simple problem that can be tossed out in a single sentence. For it to hold weight more time and consideration must be given to it.

I can certainly appreciate the risks that are involved in retaining and distributing digitized data – the potential for harms for democratic participation motivate my thesis project that is entitled Technology, Communication, and Western Pluralistic Democracies: Realigning Digital Privacy to Facilitate Citizen-Solidarity. Unfortunately it appears as though Google’s defense of privacy is a thinly concealed attempt to justify their own retention policies, and not to provide a genuine defense of constitutional rights or the value of privacy to democratic nations.

Other posts you might be interested in:

1. Google Dashboard – Does It Need Another Name?
2. Google Analytics, Privacy, and Legalese
3. The Book Industry Needs to Change! Why (most) authors and publishers need not fear online piracy