Xanthippa's Chamberpot

Over the weekend, this video, purported to be from ‘Anonymous’, was released.  It demands that the Canadian Minister, Vic Toews, remove bill C-30 (which would permit civil servants unlimited snooping powers on the citizens via the internet without judicial oversight) and that he step down immediately.

The following video also purports to be from ‘Anonymous’.  As I have no connection to that group, I have no idea if it is authentic.  However, I do think it is worth posting because it raises several issues worth further discussion:

This video raises the connection between the desire by various governments to regulate arms and to regulate the internet.

This is a deeper connection that one may think, at first glance.  But, deep down, both are attempts to take away the citizen’s ability to protect themselves – including, if necessary, to resist their government.  Both are ways in which governments make their citizens less secure, more isolated, and more afraid of their government.

Even if you are not as libertarian in your views as I am (I think that monopoly control over infrastructure – even, or perhaps especially, information infrastructure – is perilous to civil liberties), it is easy to see how governments are threatened by citizenry that is difficult to control and willing and able to oppose them.

Firearms are a means of physical self-defense and an equalizer between the strong and the weak.  Even a small woman can protect herself from a rapist with the use of a gun:  her physical safety is no longer dependant solely on the timely response of the state to come to her aid.  This threatens the government monopoly on the enforcement of laws:  as every monopoly’s natural reaction would be, the government’s reaction is to restrict this competition.

Let’s be clear about this:  government ‘regulation’ of firearms is not about increasing public safety by having many well trained, well armed citizens available in public spaces who would be able to stop law-breakers and thus increase public safety.  To the contrary:  it is always specifically designed to restrict gun ownership, use, and the very presence of privately owned guns in public spaces.  This intolerance on the part of government of guns in private hands – even though this increases public safety – is indicative of the government’s disrespect for its citizenry, with the goal to increase government coercive powers at the root of all ‘arms regulations’.

Information is a weapon and a powerful one.

So is anonymous speech.

The internet enables both.

As a matter of principle, anonymous speech is necessary for the preservation of the very freedom of speech.  For example, The Federalist Papers could never have been published had their authors not had absolute anonymity at the time of publication!  The bigger the government is, the more dangerous it is to speak up against it openly.  Without anonymous speech, governments do indeed become more totalitarian and more tyrannical in nature:  this cycle has been repeated so often, it is blatant.

Yet, the ever-growing governments in the formerly-free world now wish to have complete and unfettered access to the information which would identify each and every internet user:  to be able to attach a name to every sentence uttered on the internet, from seeking sensitive advice at an online support group to dissenting political speech!

Of course, the governments are also increasing citizen surveillance on so many fronts…  There will soon be no arena where we do have ‘presumption to privacy’, not even in our homes and certainly not anywhere else.  So, the whole ‘getting a warrant’ might be a mute issue…

Technology is beautiful – but it is a tool, to be used for good or evil.  It is necessary that we understand these tools because our society will need to evolve along with them.  What am I talking about?

For example, drone-based aerial surveillance…

Or this totally awesome ‘bug thech’!  (Do watch the video, it is art and technology combined!)

What is my point?

As new technologies arise, we will need to develop laws to govern their use.  However, these laws (all laws, really) ought to be focused on protecting the civil libeties of individual citizens – not legitimizing the ways that governments and big business can circumvent them!