The NSA Views Privacy As Damage And Routes Around It

[unhappycamper]

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140107/12495925791/nsa-views-privacy-as-damage-routes-around-it.shtml

The NSA Views Privacy As Damage And Routes Around It
from the solutions-are-needed-and-time-is-of-the-essence dept
by Tim Cushing
Wed, Jan 8th 2014 9:36am

Bruce Sterling, sci-fi author and wearer of assorted other hats (public speaker, design theorist, journalist) recently got together (so to speak -- the conversation was a messaging give-and-take facilitated by seminal internet entity The WELL) with Jon Lebkowsky (a "future-focused social polymath&quot to discuss 2013 and gaze into the upcoming year.

No discussion of the year's events would be complete without including Ed Snowden's NSA document leaks. Sterling's opening salvo addressed the NSA, pointing out how its ethos directly contradicts the utopian internet ideal.

Is it any wonder that the NSA took a page from Google, and started throwing money in the direction of anything that even LOOKED like it might be surveillance? The NSA interpreted privacy as damage and routed around it. Why not give that a try? The NSA has no effective civilian oversight. Whoever does?

Contrast the NSA's goals with the internet in general, which has always perceived censorship as damage and routed around it. The openness that has been fostered is now threatened by an agency that views this ideal as a gift. The internet does most of its work for it, circumventing censors and providing a platform for unlimited and unfettered sharing of information. The people behind the sharing are not interested in giving up their privacy, which may seem at odds with the free flow of information.