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Presentation to Oxford evolutionary neuroscience group 21 May 2014
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PRIVACY THROUGH THE CENTURIES
Chris Marsden, Oxford 21 May 2014
QUINN NORTON: EVERYTHING IS BROKEN
“Facebook and Google seem very powerful, but they live about a
week from total ruin all the time. They know the cost of leaving social
networks individually is high, but en masse, becomes next to nothing.
Windows could be replaced with something better written. The US
government would fall to a general revolt in a matter of days.
It wouldn’t take a total defection or a general revolt to change
everything, because corporations and governments would rather bend
to demands than die. These entities do everything they can get away
with — but we’ve forgotten that we’re the ones that are letting them
get away with things.”• https://medium.com/message/81e5f33a24e1
REGULATING PRIVACY
Much of what I am going to say is taken from
my book with Oxford’s Ian Brown: (2013)
Regulating Code, MIT Press
See Ian Brown (2012) Privacy attitudes,
incentives and behaviours • https://www.slideshare.net/blogzilla/privacy-
attitudes-incentives-and-behaviours"
IS PRIVACY A RICH MAN’S FOLLY?
Did privacy not exist in primitive villages?
Is privacy a feature of shame?
Is the walled garden the physical
manifestation of privacy?
Is privacy an Oriental construct based on
patriarchy?
PRIVACY IN PRE-DIGITAL TIMES
BUT PRIVAC Y HAS W ESTERN ENLIGHTENMENT HIST ORY
Not least through its inverse:
the Panopticon
Bentham claimed privacy
was surrendered by illegality
ENTICK V. CARRINGTON KBD 1765
Every American law student learns this in the first
week:
Lord Camden: ‘We can safely say there is no law in
this country to justify the [police] in what they have
done;
if there was, it would destroy all the comforts of
society,
for papers are often the dearest property any man
can have.’
Still referred to in US privacy cases
PRIVACY V. FREEDOM 1773
“Benjamin Franklin colonial Postmaster GeneralLeaked letters by Massachusetts Lt. Governor Thomas Hutchinson to Thomas Whatley, Prime Minister’s assistantFor colonists to enjoy the same rights as English subjects “an abridgement of what are called English liberties” might be temporarily necessary.Franklin dismissed & censured by Solicitor General
WE HAVE MODERN EQUIVALENTS
W E A R E A L L N O W F O O T B A L L H O O L I G A N S, M E M B E R S O F D E V I A N T T R I B E S
VICTORIAN INTERNET AND
EDWARDIAN SNOWDEN?
TELEGRAPH AS VICTORIAN INTERNET
“The shift from sailing ships to telegraph was far more radical than that from telephone to email!” - Noam Chomsky “The American father is never seen in London. He passes his life entirely in Wall Street and communicates with his family once a month by means of a telegram in cipher” – Oscar Wilde
THERE BE PIRATES!
‘Golden (sic) Age[s] of Piracy’ • Francis Drake to Daniel Defoe –
1580s/1720sNastiest age was post-Napoleonic Wars
• Industrial piracy in Atlantic/MediterraneanSupressed by British Naval power
• Serving Abolition of Slavery Act 1807Secured trade routes
• India, West Indies, Cape Colony, Australia, Hong Kong
SOCIAL NETWORKING & PIRATES
We used to call our
undergrads the ‘Napster
generation’
36,000,000 broadband in
2000
Precursor to
YouTube/Facebook/
MySpace/Torrent label
ZEMBLANITY AND EMPIRE
Global digital communications: the telegraph
ZEMBLANITY?• Opposite of paradisiacal Serendib - a barren, icebound,
northern land: Nova Zembla, nuclear testing archipelago
• Latinisation of the Russian novaya zemlya, which means
‘new land’.
SERENDIPITY’S ANTONYM: ZEMBLANITY BOYD (1998)
ARMADILLO
Making unhappy, unlucky and expected
discoveries by designIncompatible but essential indispensable part of serendipity?
• “So what is the opposite of Serendip, a southern land of spice and warmth, lush greenery and hummingbirds, seawashed, sunbasted? Think of another world in the far north, barren, icebound, cold, a world of flint and stone. Call it Zembla.”
• discussed in Hertnon From Afterwit to Zemblanity: 100 Endangered Words
PRISM? NOTHING TO SEE HERE?
NSA/GCHQ WAR ON ENCRYPTION
#EdgeHill #Bullrun (Generals with memories of
US Civil War) & #Cheesy Name (no memory at all)
NSA $250 million per year buys:
1. Tampering with national standards (NIST) 1. to promote weak, or otherwise vulnerable
cryptography.
2. Influencing standards committees to weaken
protocols.
3. Working with hardware and software vendors 1. weaken encryption and random number generators.
5 MORE TECHNIQUES
1. Attacking encryption used by 4G phones'
2. Obtaining cleartext access to 'a major internet peer-to-
peer voice and text communications system' (Skype)
3. Identifying and cracking vulnerable keys (CheesyName).
4. Human Intelligence division to infiltrate the global
telecommunications industry – essentially bribing
employees
5. Decrypting HTTPS/SSL connections 1. Yahoo, Google, Hotmail/Outlook
OR….
SURVEILLANCE EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO SOCIAL
NETWORKS?
Not so much…ironically required by https
encryption default
Who do they target? Those using encryption esp.
TOR
‘If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to
fear’
‘Metadata isn’t real data’
Be quiet, peasants!
BOUNDLESS SURVEILLANCE
SO WE ARE SILK WORMS
COCOONS BOILED & EMPTIED
Personal data is NOT metaphorical oil in digital economy
• unless bodies have seeped into the sediment. Personal data accumulate with our treks into cyberspace
Better metaphor is silk, • woven into tapestry of online personality.
Potential to move beyond a caterpillar-like role as a producer of raw silk Ability to regenerate into a butterfly or moth?
SILKWORMS THAT TURNED
Weaving of a web by billions of prosumer-created sites. Silk created tapestries Wikipedia, Facebook and MySpace Arguably loss of ownership led MySpace decline. Prosumer boycott led by those preferring control of own data
• cocooned in their own personal form: chrysalis or pupae
Such boycotts rapidly create a landscape of zombie users: • ancient Hotmail and MySpace accounts that are undead,
unchecked, unmourned, useless to advertisers, and • antithetical to positive network effects that feed a successful
business.
CONCLUSION: MORE PRIVACY REGULATION
Widespread move towards regulation of social networking
• Including in US – Federal Trade CommissionEuropean Court cases – both data retention and deletionEuropean Parliament pressure on PRISM post-SnowdenNational regulator decisions on cloud, Streetview and othersEuropean Data Protection Supervisor pressure on merger cases – competition law – conference 2 JuneNew European Data Protection Regulation – first since 1995
• See http://internetsussex.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/towards-web-30-impact-of-google-spain.html
THE $100BILLION RESEARCH QUESTION
Why do social networks decline? MySpace/Bebo/Orkut/Friends
Reunited
Is the visceral nature of offline social networking responsible for
success online • dating sites approximate strong human contact better: Grindr, Tindr
– Twitter?
or bad coding, European data protection and a more aspirational
demographic • Facebook v. MySpace/Bebo
But ASmallWorld was Eurotrash Facebook and failed?• Weinstein’s brush with social networking and its failure:
http://gawker.com/5381040/harvey-weinstein-finally-sells-myspace-for-millionaires
MORE INFORMATION
@ChrisTMarsden
www.regulatingcode.blogspot.com
http://internetsussex.blogspot.co.uk/
http://www.internet-science.eu/