Re: <nettime> Pascal Zachary: Rules for the Digital Panopticon (IEEE)

[Bodà BalÃzs <bodo@mokk.bme.hu>]

>In our current notion of the social contract we surrender a certain  
>level of freedom to authority in order to benefit from the order     
>that ensues. So we agree to be subjected to the authority of         
>government, judiciary, or police.                                    

>Ultimately it comes down to the question of what kind of law we      
>should have. A quest for a moral society implies a law that not only 
>defines fundamental rights that are intrinsic and inalienable to the 
>human condition but also provides for the inclusive protection of    
>such rights in day to day life.                                      


Do we need laws (which, apparently will be tossed aside under the veil
of secrecy), or do we need technologies? The US State Dept, somewhat
schizophrenically, poured billions of dollars to the development of
TOR, and other privacy enhancing technologies. It had to. It had to
create those white spaces on the map from where political dissidents
could operate. (TOR (and Wikileaks) are panoptic technologies
themselves: they hide the guards of misbehaving governments). The US
was slow to realize (or did they know this from the beginning?), that
many will join these technological safe havens: pedophiles, pirates,
drug dealers, terrorists, you name it. Their vibrant existence forces
us to reconsider the social contract: we may have to surrender a
certain level of order in order to benefit from the freedom that
ensues.

b.-


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