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SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL OPTIONS ASSESSMENT
STOA
DEVELOPMENT OF SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY AND RISK OF ABUSE OF ECONOMIC INFORMATION
Vol 5/5
The perception of economic risks arising from the potential vulnerability of electronic commercial media to interception
Working document for the STOA Panel
Luxembourg, October 1999 PE 168.184/Vol 5/5
From 1994 onwards, Washington began to woo private companies to develop an encryption system that would provide access to keys by government agencies. Under the proposals - variously known as `key escrow', `key recovery' or `trusted third parties' - the keys would be held by a corporation, not a government agency, and would be designed by the private sector, not the NSA. The systems, however, still entailed the assumption of guaranteed access to the intelligence community and so proved as controversial as the Clipper Chip. The government used export incentives to encourage companies to adopt key escrow products: they could export stronger encryption, but only if they ensured that intelligence agencies had access to the keys.
Under US law, computer software and hardware cannot be exported if it contains encryption that the NSA cannot break. The regulations stymie the availability of encryption in the USA because companies are reluctant to develop two separate product lines - one, with strong encryption, for domestic use and another, with weak encryption, for the international market. Several cases are pending in the US courts on the constitutionality of export controls; a federal court recently ruled that they violate free speech rights under the First Amendment.
The FBI has not let up on efforts to ban products on which it cannot eavesdrop. In mid-1997, it introduced legislation to mandate that key-recovery systems be built into all computer systems. The amendment was adopted by several congressional Committees but the Senate preferred a weaker variant. A concerted campaign by computer, telephone and privacy groups finally stopped the proposal; it now appears that no legislation will be enacted in the current Congress.
While the key escrow approach was being pushed in the USA, Washington had approached foreign organisations and states. The lynchpin for the campaign was David Aaron, US ambassador to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), who visited dozens of countries in what one analyst derided as a programme of `laundering failed US policy through international bodies to give it greater acceptance'.
STOA
DEVELOPMENT OF SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY AND RISK OF ABUSE OF ECONOMIC INFORMATION
Vol 5/5
The perception of economic risks arising from the potential vulnerability of electronic commercial media to interception
Working document for the STOA Panel
Luxembourg, October 1999 PE 168.184/Vol 5/5
From 1994 onwards, Washington began to woo private companies to develop an encryption system that would provide access to keys by government agencies. Under the proposals - variously known as `key escrow', `key recovery' or `trusted third parties' - the keys would be held by a corporation, not a government agency, and would be designed by the private sector, not the NSA. The systems, however, still entailed the assumption of guaranteed access to the intelligence community and so proved as controversial as the Clipper Chip. The government used export incentives to encourage companies to adopt key escrow products: they could export stronger encryption, but only if they ensured that intelligence agencies had access to the keys.
Under US law, computer software and hardware cannot be exported if it contains encryption that the NSA cannot break. The regulations stymie the availability of encryption in the USA because companies are reluctant to develop two separate product lines - one, with strong encryption, for domestic use and another, with weak encryption, for the international market. Several cases are pending in the US courts on the constitutionality of export controls; a federal court recently ruled that they violate free speech rights under the First Amendment.
The FBI has not let up on efforts to ban products on which it cannot eavesdrop. In mid-1997, it introduced legislation to mandate that key-recovery systems be built into all computer systems. The amendment was adopted by several congressional Committees but the Senate preferred a weaker variant. A concerted campaign by computer, telephone and privacy groups finally stopped the proposal; it now appears that no legislation will be enacted in the current Congress.
While the key escrow approach was being pushed in the USA, Washington had approached foreign organisations and states. The lynchpin for the campaign was David Aaron, US ambassador to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), who visited dozens of countries in what one analyst derided as a programme of `laundering failed US policy through international bodies to give it greater acceptance'.
Add this to current things like the TPP, and I shudder to think of what their plans are.
Totalitarianism is a system where technologically advanced instruments of political power are wielded without restraint by centralized leadership of an elite movement, for the purpose of effecting a total social revolution, including the conditioning of man, on the basis of certain arbitrary ideological assumptions proclaimed by the leadership, in an atmosphere of coerced unanimity of the entire population (p. 754).
~snip~
Conceivably totalitarianism may become, because of the factors suggested and in spite of the Nazi experience, rationalistic and hence less unpredictable, arbitrary and openly terroristic. But there is no evidence to suggest that this in itself is incompatible with totalitarianism, which need not be interpreted, as H. Arendt seems inclined to do, in terms of irrational terror almost for the sake of terror. Such a rationalist system, arising in the context of one-party domination (not to mention international pressures), could be nothing less than a rationalist dictatorship, just as total in control as its less predictable and more violent antecedent of the thirties.
{T}o be less totalitarian such operations would have to involve some degree of withdrawal on the part of those in charge from their commitment to total social and economic engineering, thus granting to those living under the system the opportunity to make important choices not in keeping with the goal.
But such a politically meaningful development would in turn involve a further condition, which at the present appears highly unlikely, namely the decline of ideology and a basic reconsideration of the firmly instituted schemes of economic development. Barring that, the totalitarian economic system would continue to exert pressures for the maintenance of a dictatorship capable of enforcing the kind of discipline that such total plans demand. It is doubtful that as long as the party remains in power the tendency of the regime to stress unattainable goals will vanish. Indeed, it is these goals, inherent in the current ideology, which justify to the population the sacrifices which the party's domination involves. Thus, as long as the party continues to hold its successful grip on the instruments of power, we can expect it to continue stressing first the long-range goals of an ultimate utopia, and then the consequent sacrifices to achieve them, even though possibly at a diminishing rate of effort.
Brzezinski, Z. (1956). Totalitarianism and rationality. The American Political Science Review, 50(3), 751-763.
~snip~
Conceivably totalitarianism may become, because of the factors suggested and in spite of the Nazi experience, rationalistic and hence less unpredictable, arbitrary and openly terroristic. But there is no evidence to suggest that this in itself is incompatible with totalitarianism, which need not be interpreted, as H. Arendt seems inclined to do, in terms of irrational terror almost for the sake of terror. Such a rationalist system, arising in the context of one-party domination (not to mention international pressures), could be nothing less than a rationalist dictatorship, just as total in control as its less predictable and more violent antecedent of the thirties.
{T}o be less totalitarian such operations would have to involve some degree of withdrawal on the part of those in charge from their commitment to total social and economic engineering, thus granting to those living under the system the opportunity to make important choices not in keeping with the goal.
But such a politically meaningful development would in turn involve a further condition, which at the present appears highly unlikely, namely the decline of ideology and a basic reconsideration of the firmly instituted schemes of economic development. Barring that, the totalitarian economic system would continue to exert pressures for the maintenance of a dictatorship capable of enforcing the kind of discipline that such total plans demand. It is doubtful that as long as the party remains in power the tendency of the regime to stress unattainable goals will vanish. Indeed, it is these goals, inherent in the current ideology, which justify to the population the sacrifices which the party's domination involves. Thus, as long as the party continues to hold its successful grip on the instruments of power, we can expect it to continue stressing first the long-range goals of an ultimate utopia, and then the consequent sacrifices to achieve them, even though possibly at a diminishing rate of effort.
Brzezinski, Z. (1956). Totalitarianism and rationality. The American Political Science Review, 50(3), 751-763.
Review Articles TOTALITARIANISM The Revised Standard Version By ROBERT BURROWES*
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 3rd edition, New York, Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1966, 526 pp. $8.75.
Arendt's explication moves logically from the non-essential to the essential: from the ascendant totalitarian movement in a nontotalitarian society, to "imperfect" totalitarianism in power, and finally to the "perfected terror" of the concentration camp. The consuming drive for "total domination and global rule" is explained by the fact that totalitarianism remains imperfect and vulnerable as long as the "concentration-camp society" is not coextensive with the entire world.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 3rd edition, New York, Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1966, 526 pp. $8.75.
Arendt's explication moves logically from the non-essential to the essential: from the ascendant totalitarian movement in a nontotalitarian society, to "imperfect" totalitarianism in power, and finally to the "perfected terror" of the concentration camp. The consuming drive for "total domination and global rule" is explained by the fact that totalitarianism remains imperfect and vulnerable as long as the "concentration-camp society" is not coextensive with the entire world.