[PiN-diskusjon] [Doctorow] Nerd fatalism, determinism: the problem with nerd erdpolitics (fwd)

Thomas Gramstad thomas at ifi.uio.no
Man 14. Mai 2012 18:22:44 CEST


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 14 May 2012 16:49:11 +0100
From: Cory Doctorow <doctorow at craphound.com>
Subject: [Doctorow] Nerd fatalism,
    nerd determinism: the problem with nerd politics

My latest *Guardian* column is "The problem with nerd politics," and
it discusses the twin evils of "nerd determinism" and "nerd fatalism"
- -- both convenient excuses for people who care about technology policy
to avoid politics.

> In "nerd determinism," technologists dismiss dangerous and stupid
> political, legal and regulatory proposals on the grounds that they
> are technologically infeasible. Geeks who care about privacy
> dismiss broad wiretapping laws, easy lawful interception standards,
> and other networked surveillance on the grounds that they
> themselves can evade this surveillance. For example, US and EU
> police agencies demand that network carriers include backdoors for
> criminal investigations, and geeks snort derisively and say that
> none of that will work on smart people who use good cryptography in
> their email and web sessions.
> 
> But, while it's true that geeks can get around this sort of thing ?
> and other bad network policies, such as network-level censorship,
> or vendor locks on our tablets, phones, consoles, and computers ?
> this isn't enough to protect us, let alone the world. It doesn't
> matter how good your email provider is, or how secure your messages
> are, if 95% of the people you correspond with use a free webmail
> service with a lawful interception backdoor, and if none of those
> people can figure out how to use crypto, then nearly all your email
> will be within reach of spooks and control-freaks and cops on
> fishing expeditions.
> 
> What's more, things that aren't legal don't attract monetary
> investment. In the UK, where it's legal to unlock your mobile
> phone, you can just walk into shops all over town and get your
> handset unlocked while you wait. When this was illegal in the US
> (it's marginally legal at the moment), only people who could
> navigate difficult-to-follow online instructions could unlock their
> phones. No merchant would pay to staff a phone-unlocking role at
> the corner shop (my dry-cleaner has someone sitting behind a
> card-table who'll unlock any phone you bring him for a fiver).
> Without customers, the people who make phone-unlocking tools will
> only polish them to the point where they're functional for their
> creators. The kind of polish that marks the difference between a
> tool and a product is often driven by investment, markets and
> commercialism.



The problem with nerd politics:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/14/problem-nerd-politics

- -- 
Cory Doctorow
doctorow at craphound.com

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