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Re: The dilemma of the dark web: protecting neo-Nazis and dissidents alike
From: "Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2017 17:20:38 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Re: The dilemma of the dark web: protecting neo-Nazis and dissidents alike Date: August 26, 2017 at 10:58:05 AM EDT To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com [Note: This comment comes from friend David Reed. DLH] From: dpreed () reed com Subject: RE: The dilemma of the dark web: protecting neo-Nazis and dissidents alike Date: August 24, 2017 at 9:31:37 AM EDT To: dewayne () warpspeed com I'm going to have to stick my neck out here. I'm not sure why anyone would think that the Connectivity functions of the world should be expected, or even asked, to deal with either neo-Nazis or dissidents. It's kind of absurd. Like expecting the air to defend us against nuclear missiles. Now at this point someone usually pipes up and says, "but wait, if the Internet can't be made to defend us against <your problem here> the Internet is *broken*". And someone will jump in and say, "if you let me redesigh the Internet the way it should have been done, I will make the Internet *completely secure* and *completely safe*!" Well, no. The sad truth is that the messaging infrastructure can't do its function and also protect you against all things you believe to be bad, evil, ... What troubles me a little more is to see companies that specialize in being open markets for content "stepping up" to block content that is considered "bad" by a large majority of most people in a country or market or whatever ... That can be a slippery slope, setting precedents that lead to granting those with large (monopoly-scale) market share lending their power to majoritarian movements who want to exclude any dissenting views. But both of these focus in the wrong place, distracting us from the fundamental issue. The fundamental issue is that the carriers of content are not in a position to define criminal behavior, or to judge it. Nor in most cases is control of the ability to speak the appropriate remedy for serious criminal acti0ns, carried out by people, not the carriers. We have perfectly adequate laws about what behaviors people are allowed to do in our society, and mechanisms for establishing, challenging, and amending those laws, for the most part (if you include civil disobedience as a final way to challenge unjust laws, I should add, but that's another story) What's really great about the universality and openness of the Internet is that it can help enable law making and law enforcement to communicate better, in order to do its proper job. THe US first amendment includes Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Assemble and Freedom of the Press. Freedom of the Press is acknowledged to be crucial to law making and just law enforcement (no secret laws, no secret tribunals). The other two freedoms empower individuals to discuss and debate everyday actions, either privately or publicly. The rest of the US constitution (and other country's constititutions) carefully limits the powers of government, institutions, and citizens. But the government is free to communicate to do its legitimate job. Its ability to communicate is NOT suppressed. It is required to be *open*, not secret, for the most part, because it answers to the people. THat's not true for communications among people. THey are not required to be open in their communications. That's what "privacy" includes. So there are some very basic ideas here. One: actions are different from communicating. Two: the government and its laws are to be focused on actions of people, not communications among people. This leaves us with a good frame for discussion. Under these constraints, how best to discover criminal actions, and how best to police them. It seems quite obvious that the Internet's connectivity function (the ability to address messages anywhere, and the general interconnection that will deliver those messages) is unrelated to all these areas where policing of just laws is important. There are lots of ways the Internet's connectivity can help police the world. Sharing information widely is one of them. Given the resources of the governments of the world, that information sharing is far more powerful than even the most "Internet enabled" small movements. Focus on using it. Not on disconnecting everyone.The dilemma of the dark web: protecting neo-Nazis and dissidents alike Anonymity network Tor has become a safe-space for white supremacists and paedophiles. Yet in nations where access to the net is curtailed, it’s a lifeline By Alex Hern Aug 23 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/23/dark-web-neo-nazis-tor-dissidents-white-supremacists-criminals-paedophile-ringsDewayne-Net RSS Feed: http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp
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- Re: The dilemma of the dark web: protecting neo-Nazis and dissidents alike Dave Farber (Aug 26)