In March, exactly twenty-five years after he first outlined his proposal for a world-wide web, Tim Berners-Lee called for a global constitution - a bill of rights to protect the neutral, open internet. This appeal for a Magna Carta, a single document that enshrines certain fundamental rights and protections for citizens in the digital age, comes after a series of revelations about the extent of state surveillance online. And this state surveillance dovetails the business models of Facebook, Google and the other tech giants. Their profits derive from the ability to hoover up data from users of their free services and sell it to other businesses. They can charge a premium for a vision of the world where the wasteful banging on a swill bucket that is mass media advertising has been replaced with millions of moments of bespoke manipulation. We are living through the enclosure of subjectivity, one voluntary disclosure at a time. What internet freedom? This combination of state and corporate insinuation in the daily lives of citizens poses a serious threat to the liberty of the individual. But it is important to understand what we mean by liberty in this context. In mainstream liberalism, liberty is the absence of interference. As long as we are free to go about our lawful business without running into arbitrary restrictions we are free. It is this notion of freedom that politicians draw on when they assure us that intelligence agencies operate in a framework of regulation and oversight and that the law-abiding citizen has nothing to fear from the NSA or GCHQ. ....
Posted on: Sun, 13 Apr 2014 11:55:36 +0000
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