[ba-unrev-talk] [Fwd: [WDN co-learners] Don't get mad, get political]
FYI Forwarded from the Co-learners list, the approach is summarized in this short article's conclusion: (01)
>'Government Information Awareness' . . . is based on a simple proposition: if governments
>now feel entitled to keep us under cyber-surveillance, why not use software
>tools to keep them under surveillance too? The MIT folks are building a
>system which will collate all publicly available information about all
>public officials in the US.
>
>We could do the same for the UK. Imagine a site that would automatically
>collate information about MPs' financial interests, voting behaviour,
>Commons attendance, speeches, publications, campaign literature, friends,
>attentiveness to constituents etc and make it available on the web? Later we
>could extend it to cover corporate bosses and the quangocracy.
>
>Our rulers might then begin to realise that accountability is a two-way
>street. (02)
Don't get mad, get political (03)
John Naughton
Sunday July 13, 2003
The Observer (04)
Here's the unpalatable truth: software has become political. It's
unpalatable because most engineers detest politics as the epitome of the
hypocrisy and muddle they sought to escape by choosing a trade that values
consistency and logic. But it was inevitable that the two worlds would
intersect as soon as the web became a mass medium. Control of information
has always been a tool of regimes, and anything that threatens to loosen
that grip will be resisted.
Note that this isn't just about content. Some of the content published on
the web - whether in the form of subversive information, political discourse
or entertainment - does attract condemnation, prosecution, suppression or
worse. Content certainly has a political dimension. (05)
But content isn't software, so why is that political? Answer: because
software determines the architecture of cyberspace, and thus determines what
you can do with and in the space. For example, the software facilitates
anonymity and free innovation. The first gives us unparalleled freedom of
expression - and spam; the second enables disruptive innovations such as
instant messaging, streaming media, file-swapping and internet telephony -
all of which threaten the established order. (06)
The establishment responds by running to the courts, which is why there are
three Bills about spam doing the rounds of the US Congress - and why there
exists a statute that grossly restricts freedoms to write certain kinds of
software. This is politics with both small and large Ps. (07)
Because geeks don't like politics, they tend to avoid it. Big mistake. The
lesson of recent history is that if you don't want the established order to
nobble legislators and enact daft, repressive or biased laws, then you have
to mix it with the politicos. The software community needs to start thinking
like the environmental movement, and develop some of the same political
adroitness. (08)
It also needs to start using its technical skills. Two heartening examples
have just come to light. The first is Ed Felten's response to the US Supreme
Court ruling that publicly-funded libraries must use filtering software to
control users' access to the net. The problem is that commercial filtering
software is opaque and unaccountable - the implicit values which determine
what's blocked are secret and the companies are very aggressive about not
disclosing them. Why not then, says Ed, write some open-source software that
librarians can use? That way, they can comply with the law, but in a way
that enables them to make professional judgements about the filtering to be
applied. (09)
The other initiative comes from the MIT Media Lab. It's called 'Government
Information Awareness' and is based on a simple proposition: if governments
now feel entitled to keep us under cyber-surveillance, why not use software
tools to keep them under surveillance too? The MIT folks are building a
system which will collate all publicly available information about all
public officials in the US. (010)
We could do the same for the UK. Imagine a site that would automatically
collate information about MPs' financial interests, voting behaviour,
Commons attendance, speeches, publications, campaign literature, friends,
attentiveness to constituents etc and make it available on the web? Later we
could extend it to cover corporate bosses and the quangocracy. (011)
Our rulers might then begin to realise that accountability is a two-way
street. (012)
john.naughton@observer.co.uk
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,997037,00.html (013)