Re: <nettime> What should GCHQ do?

[Rob Myers <rob@robmyers.org>]

On 24/05/15 07:09 PM, t byfield wrote:
> 
> I'm skeptical about crypto absolutism because one of its first effects
> would be, in effect, to *privatize* everything. 'Public' would be
> reduced to whatever was cracked or leaked, as if Wikileaks and Snowden
> were the norm rather than the harrowing exception. And that would apply
> not just to social or communicative records but also -- as anyone who's
> lost a key or a password knows -- to one's own records.

This is true to the same extent that it's true that paper can burn or
get wet. Or be eaten by termites.

Imagine if you had to read about whatever is 'public' on paper rather
than hear it in the town square. Or if the government could destroy
historical records with furnaces. Or if written information could be
sent around the world secretly in diplomatic cases without the public
ever hearing it.

Literary absolutism is just clerical determinism. It destroyed the
public realm millennia ago.


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