Insubordination and the surveillance state

There’s an interesting lead piece on this in Die Zeit this morning: roughly paraphrased, of course the USA isn’t a Super-Stasi-State, constantly monitoring and investigating all its citizens – it’s something much subtler. The apparatus of surveillance is directed against minorities that are for whatever reason considered to be suspicions, but can be expanded or redirected at a moment’s notice, against anyone.

Given what we know about the historical practices of western security agencies in identifying potential threats and subversives, it’s not hard to see that is is liable to be used against any sort of non-conformist social or political movement.

Yeah, Andrew F. is harmless in comparison. Josh Marshall is arguing himself into authoritarianism through easy steps, as he modifies his assumptions to fit his new status. In another decade, he’ll be Broder.

Josh Marshall, from linked article: “The fact that what he’s doing is against the law speaks for itself. I don’t think anyone doubts that narrow point. But he’s not just opening the thing up for debate. He’s taking it upon himself to make certain things no longer possible, or much harder to do. To me that’s a betrayal. I think it’s easy to exaggerate how much damage these disclosures cause. But I don’t buy that there are no consequences. And it goes to the point I was making in an earlier post. Who gets to decide? The totality of the officeholders who’ve been elected democratically – for better or worse – to make these decisions? Or Edward Snowden, some young guy I’ve never heard of before who espouses a political philosophy I don’t agree with and is now seeking refuge abroad for breaking the law?”

What if journalism was illegal? Marshall can write with a straight face that it’s OK for journalists to pursue leaks even though it’s not OK for leakers to leak them — it’s because he’s a journalist. There really isn’t any distinction that he makes other than that. Who gets to decide? The totality of officeholders who’ve been elected democratically? Or one guy with a Web site who espouses a political philosophy I don’t agree with? But Josh is the guy with a Web site, so of course his own rules don’t apply to him. And from that he justifies the whole “It’s a really important part of this to figure out whether Snowden is a good person or not, because naturally that affects everything that we think about this” position that he takes. He’s a celebrity journalist, so of course celebrity is important!

” Marshall can write with a straight face that it’s OK for journalists to pursue leaks even though it’s not OK for leakers to leak them ” Every so often the face of ‘the Establishment’ shows clearly through the noise and haze of day-to-day life; this is one of them. We see a widespread outcry about the Evils of Leaking, from people who don’t have a problem with leaks approved by one of the elite factions in government.

“To make a long story short, we don’t have the Stasi yet, but we have far better tools than the Stasi did, and little sign of a conscience in our elected and unelected officials which would ultimately prohibit their use on anyone who proves troublesome. Let’s hope we don’t have to follow this thread all the way to its obvious end.”

People forget that a secret police is first and foremost a bureaucracy. For example, East Germany employed some ridiculous percentage of the labor force in full-time Stasi jobs (*not* counting informers). We have now a potential analogous to industrialization and mass production.

“Foreign Secretary William Hague told us than “law-abiding citizens” have nothing to fear”

That sort of statement, like the dreadful “if you have nothing to hide…” reverses the centuries old principle of Presumed Innocent Unless Proven Guilty.

What Hague and all those like him are saying is that the State has the right to check up on *everyone* to make sure that they are good little “law abiding citizens” and that we should not object to the security services etc nosing our private affairs, monitoring our communications and peeping in through our windows since “we should have nothing to hide”.

Mr Hague, if you think that taking a leaf out of the books of the Stasi, KGB and every other organ of state repression is the way to make us all “safer” and protect our liberties from the terrorists who want to take them away, you’ve already done their job for them!

At least Assad doesn’t have the ability to monitor global e-mail traffic … killing 90k+ citizens is bad enough.

Walt 06.13.13 at 1:54 pm

” I don’t agree with Andrew F’s argument, but at least I understand it. I don’t even understand what Marshall is trying to say.”

‘I’m a good journalist; I don’t support the Evul Leakers; I can be trusted by the Establishment’.

“So here’s the worry. Just as the FBI tried to discredit Martin Luther King, so government agencies, equipped with all the latest surveillance techniques, will attempt to damage lawbreakers in pursuit of social justice. There’s nothing new about this, just the tools to do so are far more powerful.”

Will Potter has done much coverage of the intensified targetting of enviromental and animal rights activists: http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/ . Since animal rights is often completely left out of much progressive academic political thought and discussion (cough *crooked timber* cough) those developments have not received the attention they deserve. First they came for the vegans…

This potential disabling of insubordination strikes me as the real worry here

It’s probably worth noting that traditionalist insubordination has been disabled without even much surveillance. I agree that surveillance can disable insubordination evven more, but hostile environment harassment law, tax benefits that are only available to groups who act in politically-approved ways(the Bob Jones/Hillsdale family of cases), and so on have crippled the traditionalist Right’s ability to have any institutions.

“On the other hand… Now, in practice, there are a million shades of grey… But it comes down to this… Let me put my cards on the table… At the end of the day… Speaking for myself… ”

After the torrent of throat-clearing cliches Mr. Marshall employs, it would be a wonder if he has any phlegm left. Such is not the voice of someone taking a principled stand. It is the equivocation of a toad-swallower trying to have it both ways. It the “herd of independent minds” pose of a brown-nosing sycophant wanting to be regarded for his high principles.

JM: “The fact that what he’s doing is against the law speaks for itself. I don’t think anyone doubts that narrow point.”

I doubt it.

The law can be written as a double-bind, and often is, since the purpose is domination, as well as arbitration. When riot police come to beat up the protestors, some of the protestors are surprised. Did they think this is a democracy and the police work for the people? Then, why were they protesting?

There’s a lot to Rich’s interpretation of JM, as role-play: what you think depends on where you sit. But, I think there may be a deeper, broader foundation, of wanting to believe in the nation-state as good parent.

For so many people, the whole “foreigners” thing is a tip-off. The Constitution respects the rights of persons, all the attempts to interpret those protections for autonomy as privileges of “citizens” or “white Americans” notwithstanding. I’m with Timberman on this: the time is not far off, when all but a tiny minority floating at the top, will say together, “we are all foreigners now”.

Yes (#18)

“Are the people here better? Well, have they ever been tempted to be worse? They’re mostly academics and so on, and have their own occupational deformities of thought, in which the highest value is the ability to discuss civilly in the public sphere, and they just can’t understand anything different. ” (Rich Puchalsky, #16)

Most likely both. What I find most disconcerting about “civil discussion in the public sphere,” and CT threads serve as an example par excellence, is the absence of moral outrage.

But perhaps this comes part & parcel with being an academic, and a liberal to boot. Which also explains the next-to nonexistent impact of our intelligentsia on the affairs of the state.

“the absence of moral outrage”

!!?! Sometimes, there’s little else on the political threads. And, to me, that helps a bit to explain the “next-to nonexistent impact of our intelligentsia on the affairs of the state.”

re:we’re all foreigners now, presumably other countries will eventually catch up with our surveillance capabilities, and to them, of course, Americans will be foreigners.

You can’t be serious, Bruce.

Is that what our conservative leadership is doing by way of mass appeal — using a reasoned argument? You seem to be forgetting that the average interlocutor on these threads is hardly a representative of the population at large.

Although I agree with lupita that the U.S. is currently the world’s most obnoxious, and more irritatingly for its concerned citizens, the most self-righteous vampire squid, I also think that Bruce Wilder is correct in locating the center of the associated evils in institutions, not in individuals. I also believe that such institutions, and the technologies which support them, are the manifestations of a human nature which precedes both. For that reason, if world hegemony, which is now in a more fluid state than either Lindsey Graham or Barack Obama are capable of understanding, eventually comes to rest on the Chinese, the Indians, or anyone else, I wouldn’t expect that change alone to banish the evils at issue.

Fortunately, those institutionalized impulses which otherize, demonize and attempt to eradicate all who aren’t members of the tribal council of elders are not the whole of human nature. If our thrice-damned power-prostheses could just be shorted out for a period of time, we might be able to figure out where we’ve gone wrong, and devote some energy to healing ourselves. Brautigan’s machines of loving grace, are not only possible, they’re closer at hand, and always will be, than well-tutored idiots like James Clapper have any idea.

Yes, William Timberman, “the center of the associated evils [does rest] in institutions,” institutions which are, one hastens to say, Eurocentric, anchored in racism and white man’s supremacy.

And so, are you going to argue now that these characteristics are buried deep down in “human nature”?

And so, are you going to argue now that these characteristics are buried deep down in “human nature”?

1. Yes. 2. No. (I don’t think any new argument is necessary.) 3. Deep down is a red herring. This part of our nature is very close to the surface. 4. Tibet. Kashmir. Eurocentric? Only by a carefully-leveraged bit of sophistry could you stretch the concept that far, I think.

“While I strongly agree with this, I think that the argument that the state should be prevented from persecuting those who break the laws, because the laws themselves (or the state) could be and often are evil, is quite convoluted, since the essence of the state is that it represents and enforces law.”

I think the idea is that there’s a difference between prosecuting someone for violating the law, and smearing every other aspect of their character by digging through their past and revealing anything else they ever did that was bad or unpopular.

The issue is not that the state should be prevented from punishing violations of the law. It’s that, rather than say “we punished someone for doing X”, the state can say “we punished this nasty person–the kind of scum who does filthy things W, Y and Z–for doing X”. Meanwhile, everyone is doing W, Y and Z, but they can keep that secret because they aren’t also doing X.

That makes it really easy for the state to avoid having to discuss whether X is something that should be punished in the first place.

roger nowosielski: “. . . institutions which are, one hastens to say, Eurocentric, anchored in racism and white man’s supremacy . . .”

There is the whole Rights of Man thing, which has been in the fray a bit.

@ 33, William Timberman

2 &3 — used it as a rhetorical device, to flesh out your meaning. And since, by your own admission, these are but “surface traits,” and therefore not “deep and buried,” they shouldn’t be to difficult to eradicate or at least to supplant by something better.

4 — irrelevant in that it has no bearing on the essentially racist, Eurocentric character of the dominant institutions — which point, btw, you do not address.

I agree with much of this post, though after reading Marshall’s article I think he was a bit more nuanced than as portrayed (or more inconsistent, on a less forgiving interpretation).

I’d like to distinguish between legal capability and technological capability, since the post begins with the premise that government possesses the capability to conduct pervasive surveillance of communications, and then describes the harmful actions that be committed with such a capability.

Government has the technological capability to perpetrate enormous harm. It can search dwellings on whim, force or deceive companies into turning over records, threaten physical harm to silence peaceful dissent, maim to punish those who speak against it, and kill anyone deemed undesirable. Let’s say for the sake of argument that it can also conduct pervasive surveillance of our communications.

But the legal capability of the government is not identical to its technological capability. Legally, the government cannot search dwellings on a whim, deceive companies into turning over records, much less maim someone for peaceful dissent – or conduct pervasive surveillance of our communications. The legal capability of the government to surveil dissidents for the purpose of gathering blackmail material no longer exists; the legal capabilities of the government to investigate generally are much more limited than they were during most of the 20th century, when the harmful practices you describe occurred.

The most important question is whether the institutions that compose the government are constituted and configured in such a way as to lower the probability that the legal capabilities are exceeded while at the same time allowing those legal capabilities to be exercised in a way that accomplishes their purpose. If one focuses only on the technological capabilities of government, deciding that constraints and legal capabilities are irrelevant, one ends with concern about black helicopters and secret armies of domestic oppression. If one focuses only on the constraints ensuring lack of abuse, one ends with proposals that would result in a completely ineffective government, albeit one unable to exceed its legit remit.

The possibility that classified information will be leaked – the ever present chance of exposure – is an important constraint. It can operate as a failsafe, if other constraints break down. And that’s likely the way that most Americans perceive the legitimate function of leaks, given that a plurality don’t yet know what to make of Snowden; that he leaked wasn’t enough to decide the issue. However, there’s no clear indication here that those other constraints did break down, and I’m increasingly doubtful of the proposition that they did.

As to the idea that a world in which China has more power will “free” the West… wow. That is not a country that is going to move us towards less state control of communications. Far from it.

“The possibility that classified information will be leaked – the ever present chance of exposure – is an important constraint. It can operate as a failsafe, if other constraints break down. And that’s likely the way that most Americans perceive the legitimate function of leaks, given that a plurality don’t yet know what to make of Snowden; that he leaked wasn’t enough to decide the issue. However, there’s no clear indication here that those other constraints did break down, and I’m increasingly doubtful of the proposition that they did.”

Note that so far it’s not been demonstrably constraining. I’ll take as an example the last administration – it became clear that they faked the reasons for invading Iraq, but that didn’t matter. F*cking it up mattered, and only to the extent that it impinged on Americans (if they had installed a couple of Saddam’s generals, who massacred as neccessary, and gotten US ground forces out by 2004, it’d have been a rip-roaring success).

Bruce Wilder@40

in a world in which overpopulation makes the masses more of a burden, on net, than a resource, there may be a certain logic, favoring a governance regime that universalizes oppression

The name of that certain logic is capitalism.

Do not get me wrong, I am not overly optimistic that the logic of post-capitalism will prevail anytime soon, but I am more optimistic than Obama that global capitalism will reign unimpeded from now on. He and Clapper and Cameron and Hague are sounding desperate.

Bruce – I’m missing why you think I’m missing something. I interpret the post as discussing the function that some illegal actions have in spurring political progress and in constraining political injustice; and the danger that the capability of pervasive surveillance poses to that function. The extent to which the technological capability of pervasive surveillance is a danger of the kind Chris describes depends on, in large part, the legal capability of government to conduct that surveillance and the constraints in place that limit the actual actions of government to its legal capabilities.

It is only technological constraints, not legal constraints, that prevent foreign actors or criminals from using our databases and wiretapping systems against us–China isn’t going to be deterred by any law against hacking.

Embracing the strongest technological constraints–for example, requiring all communication systems to be encrypted and wiretapping-proof–would make democratic government more, rather than less, effective. What the state would lose in surveillance capability, we (both the state and the people) would gain in security from foreign surveillance and hacking. We would gain even more as other countries started to follow our example–if the rest of the democratic world adopted these systems, authoritarian regimes would be forced to decide between adopting the same surveillance proof communication systems the rest of us use, or isolating themselves.

Instead, we are moving in the opposite direction. Our laws (CALEA) require equipment manufacturers and communications service providers to have wiretapping capabilities The FBI wants to push that law even further, to require that communications software on all of our computers includes backdoors. (I haven’t heard much about that proposal since all of this NSA stuff started. Possibly because it’s hard to reassure me that you don’t have a direct link into Google’s computers when you’re demanding what is essentially a direct link to my computer.)

That is my problem with Marshall’s take on this, nationalistically equating the people with the secret surveillance state that spies on the people. I cheer on anyone in China who successfully evades their surveillance state just as some Chinese cheer for Americans evading our surveillance state. It is that cosmopolitanism that gives me hope–that freedom loving people of different countries might see themselves as allies rather than letting the various national elites of the world play us against each other.

The real impetus for our opposition to privacy-intruding metadata collection for purposes of law enforcement (…breath…) comes from our critique of the national security state.

If such powers of data collection were used by a left-wing SEC to enforce laws pertaining to insider trading and other forms of financial collusion, or if they were used by a left-wing EPA to enforce laws pertaining to heavy-metal pollution etc…, we’d be cheering them on. And that’s not a “gotcha” attempt to establish hypocrisy: it’s a forthright declaration of our actual agenda.

We are acutely aware that “foreign policy” and “national defense” are realms of governance in which domestic politics plays a central animating role. Obviously, a governing body whose members support drone strikes, indefinite detentions, arming violent factions, and state aggression certainly doesn’t fight “terrorism” or have any unique concern for welfare. The various institutions involved in “national security” are engaged in a domestic fight for institutional strength and power.

The police power and national security mandate given to modern governments are, from the point of view of a civil libertarian, dangerous tools ripe for corruption. But to an egalitarian, anti-capitalist, environmentalist left, the institutions that have these powers and this mandate are also a branch of the reactionary, authoritarian right. That is to say, PRISM isn’t only a danger to civil liberties generally, it is a danger to left-wing politics specifically And so we oppose almost every development within these institutions both as civil libertarians and and left-wingers.

There is no “state”, no “government”. These terms are mystifying in the abstract. There are institutions that have a culture of relative independence from today’s Elite and thus may actually act as a countervailing power to that Elite, and there are institutions that serve the Elite (0r rather, the Elite serves them for strategic reasons). The NSA is of the latter group.

Terrorism is a minor problem. The major problems (global warming, poverty, wars, oppression) can only be addressed once the institutions that advertise themselves as correcting the minor problem are captured and placed in the service of a radical left agenda. PRISM is only one of a myriad of symptoms created by the disease of Elite rule.

Consumatopia @ 49:

It is that cosmopolitanism that gives me hope–that freedom loving people of different countries might see themselves as allies rather than letting the various national elites of the world play us against each other.

But freedom for what? The freedom to be private and autonomous within the state’s borders? But then that must be balanced by the security to enjoy the privacy and autonomy afforded by the state. Now we are having the mainstream debate about security vs. freedom.

But what if you say…”the freedom to fight the plutocracy” and “the freedom to act in the general welfare”. Now we are being more honest, I think, and being more effective in our rhetoric as well. Now we are pointing out that the NSA does not provide us security but is more likely than not threaten it (as you argue).

We don’t want to safeguard freedoms that are already enjoyed so much as we want to create freedoms that don’t yet exist. And keeping this forefront is a way to go beyond a hegemonic discourse in which we lose (that’s going to happen anyway) and aren’t heard (that’s much more of a problem).

If such powers of data collection were used by a left-wing SEC to enforce laws pertaining to insider trading and other forms of financial collusion, or if they were used by a left-wing EPA to enforce laws pertaining to heavy-metal pollution etc…, we’d be cheering them on. And that’s not a “gotcha” attempt to establish hypocrisy: it’s a forthright declaration of our actual agenda.

Is it CT consensus that unlimited spy powers are great as long as they are used mainly to look for rogue corporate executives? I would like to see the EPA and SEC prosecute crimes more aggressively. I would not like to see the recently revealed secret surveillance programs maintained under EPA-and-SEC control. I would like these secret programs dismantled, or better yet, rendered ineffective by technical changes, so that they cannot be resurrected under new names or with new justifications.

Other nations have better enforced financial and environmental laws without, to my knowledge, having anything like the scope of the NSA’s spy powers. How do you find facilities that are illegally polluting? By testing air, water, and soil samples near the facilities, not by recording everyone’s telephone metadata and feeding it to supercomputers!

roger @ 54:

I’d say the EPA has relative independence. There’s a meaningful difference between an institution enforcing the Clean Water Act and one that enforces various “national security” laws. The institutions are not equally the expression of Elite politics.

This kind of puts the relationship, as it’s normally understood, on its head. Any reason for your doing so?

I don’t think the Elite gained directly from troops being in Afghanistan or Algeria ro Iraq. There’s no obvious way, beyond via military contractors, that the Elite are served by the national security state. But generally, the absence of international conflict really does lead mass politics to focus on domestic problems in ways that will frustrate Elite goals. So the Elite serves these agencies: funding is generous and not subject to democratic scrutiny, the diversionary violence is legitimized, etc… The Empire is a form of conspicuous consumption for the plutocracy and much of what is produced is popular apathy and distraction.

@56

Not to mention the increasing loss of legitimacy in South America, due to, say, the Bolivarian Revolution.

The following citation from Frantz Fanon comes to mind:

“We have better things to do … than follow in that Europe’s footsteps … Come, comrades, the European game is finally over, we must find something else. We can do anything today provided we do not ape [singer] Europe, provided we are not obsessed with catching up with
Europe.”

See this pdf text, p. 36

@Matt: “But if there’s good old fashioned probable cause marking a dangerous criminal, there’s always enough unpatched software bugs around to deliver surveillance software to the target. Also hurray!”

I’m not sure we can assume this would always be true. Software development is a mess, but it’s getting better–this laptop certainly crashes a lot less often than my Windows 98 desktop used to. I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that development could be drastically improved–for example, if formal verification methods became easier to use, or computers started programming themselves. (It’s even possible that the distinction between “technological capabilities” and “legal capabilities” Andrew F described could disappear–that law could be understood and enforced by machines). Maybe even the old-fashioned kind of surveillance–human beings physically planting bugs in sensitive locations–could be made obsolete. Our homes could be cyber-physical hybrid systems, that could formally prove the absence of surveillance bugs inside their walls.

Beyond that, while I agree that given the existence of those security holes the police should make use of them (if they have probable cause), I would still rather see those holes become very rare. I think the bad guys–criminals and tyrants–make at least as much use of security holes as the good guys do.

“Is it CT consensus that unlimited spy powers are great as long as they are used mainly to look for rogue corporate executives?”

I don’t think this is the sort of issue on which you can expect a consensus from the left (or the right). Surveillance is useful for all sorts of leftist aims. The EPA is a bad example–the whole point of the EPA is to regulate externalities, which, being external, should be discoverable. The SEC isn’t much better–the purpose of the SEC is to protect investors, which isn’t really a core left-wing goal. The IRS is probably a better example–encryption and digital currency could make tax evasion easier. And that’s probably the least of it–generally speaking, privacy makes conspiracies easier. That includes both small conspiracies–everything from street gangs to employer blacklists–to multinational corporations collaborating illegally.

But the same surveillance that could prevent those conspiracies can also be used against protest movements and union drives–or to locate and silence whistleblowers. Surveillance both constrains and enables conspiracies. So there’s going to be some on the left with b9n10nt’s position (which seems to be a left-wing variant of Andrew F’s position, though I’m not sure I fully understand either of them). Others, like me, would be willing to give up on good surveillance if it meant we could get rid of bad surveillance.

@b9n10nt

We don’t want to safeguard freedoms that are already enjoyed so much as we want to create freedoms that don’t yet exist. And keeping this forefront is a way to go beyond a hegemonic discourse in which we lose (that’s going to happen anyway) and aren’t heard (that’s much more of a problem).

I’m not entirely sure I understand, but I think I might agree–it makes more sense for outsiders focus on creation than preservation. Some people arguing against state tyranny or plutocracy tend to emphasize the dangers of oppression (‘what if the government arrests you?’, ‘what if you have a preexisting condition and you lose your job?’), rather than the potential benefits of freedom. I made fun of Hayek just like everyone else weeks ago, but he did have a good point on freedom–that freedom is more, not less valuable because it is unpredictable. What would happen if everyone in the world could communicate with anyone without fear of surveillance? Well, I don’t know. That’s why I want it to happen. Somehow we’ve been convinced that progress comes from huge, disciplined organizations–governments and multinational corporations–while just a decade ago we were talking about garage inventors and bloggers disrupting everything. (Now when we talk about small actors causing disruptions it’s usually in the negative light Lee A. Arnold refers to.) Those exaggerations in the past were often silly and sometimes pernicious, but they at least reflected an optimism about unpredictable processes that I think is necessary for liberalism and freedom to win the day. I’m not sure what it would take to restore that optimism, or if that’s even a good idea, but ultimately if you can’t take a risk on the unpredictable, you depend on the authorities to keep everything predictable–to keep the rich rich, the middle class comfortable, the poor down and the foreigners out.

@lupita

I see it the other way around: core countries are becoming isolated and need to follow the lead of subordinate countries and stop blocking change towards multipolar global institutions. The core has lost all legitimacy in presiding over global security (Iraq, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib), global finances (debt, privatizations, financial crashes all over the place) and, now, global communications (massive global surveillance).

To be clear, when I was talking about the United States leading the world to a technologically surveillance proof world, I was speaking counterfactually–I don’t think the U.S. will do this, but I think it would serve the interests of U.S. citizens, and that puts the lie to the claim that U.S. government surveillance is on behalf of, rather than against, U.S. citizens.

I don’t think it’s helpful to describe actual existing countries as “leaders” or “followers”. Every country has some people trying to lock things down and other people trying to be free.

the distinction between, say, the West (or the “fully-developed” countries) and those that aren’t yet “fully-developed” and which are bent on following our lead.

Wait, that’s not clear at all–I thought lupita’s point was that non-core countries were going to start leading the core.

Anyway, my point is that we shouldn’t be thinking in terms of nation-states having overall policies. Google and the NSA and Edward Snowden all have different interests and policies, even if they’re all American. When Erdogan calls Twitter a menace to society, he isn’t speaking for all Turks. I fear a “multi-polar” world in which the elites of all countries collaborate to control everyone else.

Yes, I think that describes her preferred scenario, and that part I really don’t understand, especially since she comes across as a critic of government by the Western elites (and I don’t make any distinction here between elites).

A “multi-polar” world, a globally-administered world, is indeed to be feared, but it’s already here (IMF, the World Bank and centralized financial system), excepts for pockets of resistance here and there. Which is what I thought was Lupita’s main point, or should have been.

Perhaps China is not yet part of it, but I think the economic interests will trump the political ones.

Consumatopia @ 61:

But imagine what an EPA could be if given Dept of Justice like powers in which corporate crime were treated like urban crime. Like drug gangs & the wmob, we know that informal markets in negative corporate externalities are economically over-determined (and therefore likely to occur) and social-institutional (and therefore amenable to surveillance of social networks to establish conspiracy).

I recognize the core utility of high-tech surveillance to various law enforcement institutions. There are two criteria that make broad social network surveillance legitimate:

1) after a clear violation of law has been established

2) after a suspect individual or social network has been established

Of course, the uber-criterion is a state captured by popular democratic socialistic interests. That’s utopian but notice how well so many countervailing institutions work given the society they have operated in over the last 3 decades. The strength of popular institutions attests to the hope that we need not fear surveilling institutions that meet our two criteria.

The problem w PRISM is that we can’t see the criteria being met and know that it isn’t. & terrorism isn’t nearly important enough anyway. But for the Dept of J to more-fully support regulatory agencies: that’s a form of progress, I’d say.

Anyway, if any of this sounds good to you, you’ll notice there’s no space for such left-talk while we are “balancing security with liberty” (which implies that we are looking to a capitalist state to suport these social realities).

Fuck the NSA way before PRISM, in other words. They are practically institutionally incapable of furthering the well-established ability to flourish in our communities. At best, the institution is an expensive irrelevancy and a gold mine of smart people and cool gadgets.

Lupita

If you haven’t read it already, you might be interested in Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin’s new book ‘The Making of global Capitalism’

Thanks, Ronan and Bob.

Making a system really secure is very hard. For example, OpenBSD is probably secure (nobody’s entirely certain, that’s impossible – and it may have been compromised by the NSA), but has (deliberately) restricted functionality and is not suitable for consumers. And to keep it secure requires vigilance and work from the Sysadmin. You could automate that, but then that becomes a possible security hole…

Today OpenBSD is no harder to use than Linux was 10 years ago (how’s that for faint praise?) but even if you use it, you probably want a web browser, PDF reader, mail client, etc. Those applications aren’t built by people as security-minded as the core OS development team. OS security without user application security is of limited value when we’re talking about preserving user privacy:

https://www.xkcd.com/1200/

I’m reminded of Gertrude Stein’s I am I because my little dog knows me. This is clearly too subtle for our very modern surveillance state, so now we have: I am I because some functionary at the end of a fibre optic cable has decided to make me the sum of all my electronically-recorded transactions. What would happen, I wonder, if these morons ever read anything but their own operations manuals….

What Matt said in #73.

Your system is as secure as your weakest link. Well that’s not quite true, but it’s true enough for your average user.

That’s one of the most important fundamental losses from the Obama years. Do I trust any of those people “on the left” to defend anyone for any reason other than partisan interest? No.

That’s true of partisans anywhere. There’s your tribe and you defend it. Believers are a problem.

It pretty much comes down to asking people to take risks and make sacrifices, eventually. People don’t do that without belief. No belief, no mass movement.

I’m here just meaning “believers” as “unthinking followers”. I don’t think that’s the same thing as thinking your candidate has a shot at doing good things.

That’s pretty much the “I’d like to have a beer with him” stage of belief.

Yeah, that’s all I meant.

My mother, for instance, is a die-hard Tory voter. When you ask her about policy, however, she’s clearly not one and should be a natural voter for another party (though not in agreement with my views). You can line up the little check marks in front of her, one candidate compared to another, and say “Look, this person believes what you believe. Why not vote for her?” And then she’ll go vote Tory and tell me so. That’s her tribe and she sticks with it.

@81:
The rationalizations produced routinely by believers in Obama (he wasn’t called the messiah for nothing) require a good deal of thought. It takes considerable mental energy to explain things away.

Lupita, Consumatopia @61, 62. 63, 65. and 68

Sorry for belated response. More than one thing on the burner.

Now as I string all these comments together, I see that our disagreement has been mostly verbal, the Tower of Babel syndrome.

First, by “multi-polar” I mean different (competing) spheres/centers of influence. And by this definition, and contrary to Lupita’s articulation, “representation of subordinate countries” in global institutions ( World Bank, IMF, et cetera) “would [not] have been a step in the direction of multipolarity” but precisely the opposite – resulting in a more homogeneous, one-polar world, globally-administered by those very authoritarian, global in scope, and financial institutions – certainly the least of all desirable scenarios, imho. And I see now that, taking the lead from Consumatopia, I misspoke in #65 when I said that a multi-polar word is to be feared. It’s certainly preferable to one-polar word, again by the definition. So in this context, I fail to see why Lupita would consider it “Plan B,” which is to say, a less desirable scenario. It’s precisely what the “subordinate countries” ought to do – carve out their own area or sphere of influence that, relatively speaking, would be independent of the ever-globalizing influence of the West, featuring and promoting capitalism as an all-round cure.

[Which explains my remark concerning China. She’d always have the option to either join the Western bloc or to form an alternative power center, whatever would be deemed to serve her best economic and political interests.]

You’re no doubt familiar with the following texts, but just in case:

1) Notes Toward a Critique of Anarchist Imperialism,” by George Ciccariello-Maher;

2) Geopolitics of the Amazon by Álvaro García Linera (the text readily downloadable in a pdf form).

The first is on a theoretical side (Fanon, Sorel, Foucault, Rancière), eventually connecting to the Venezuela situation, but the following appeal by Fanon bears repeating. [“Come comrades, we have better things to do . . . than follow in that Europe’s footsteps . . . the European game is finally over, we must find something else. We can do anything today provided we do not ape [singer] Europe, provided we are not obsessed with catching up with Europe.”7o (page 36)] The second is a detailed account of the kind of difficulties faced by the state of Bolivia, both from within (on a/c of the conservative elements) and without – and here we cannot help but single out our well-meaning liberals and “imperial anarchists.” Both text make a powerful argument on behalf the Bolivarian Revolution, in progress, according to Lupita’s “Plan B” – one effective way of preventing the globalizing influence of capitalism from spreading concentrically (so as to consume all and all alike) by establishing alternative centers of power.

Of course, even this “multi-polar” world, by my definition, is only a remedial, stopgap measure, not the ultimate one; and here I’m citing from the second-mentioned text:

“In contrast to a naïve ultraleftism that thinks a society can escape world domination by itself, Lenin and Marx remind us that capitalism operates on a world scale, and can only be overcome on a world scale. 93 So struggles and efforts for the socialization of production in a single country are simply that: efforts, battles and dispersed skirmishes that convey an historical intent but can triumph only if they expand to become struggles on a world scale. Communism either is world-wide or it will never be. And while there is a general predominance of capitalism, within it there are glimmers and tendencies of struggles of a potential new mode of production that cannot exist locally, and can only be present as just that: a tendency, a struggle, a possibility, for its existence is conceivable only on a worldwide geopolitical scale. The illusion of “communism in a single country” was just that: an illusion that brought disastrous consequences for the workers of that country and for the expectations of revolution in the 20th century.

Socialism is not a new mode of production that would coexist alongside capitalism, territorially contesting the world or one country. Socialism is a battlefield between capitalism in crisis and the tendencies, potentialities and efforts to bring production under community ownership and control. 94 In other words, it is the historical period of struggle between the dominant established capitalist mode of production and another potentially new mode of production. The only mode of production that will overcome capitalism is communism, the assumption of community ownership and control of production of the material life of society. And that mode of production does not exist piecemeal, it can only exist on a world scale. But until that happens the only thing that is left is the struggle.”

BTW, would it be OK by either of you to re-post parts of this thread in a comments space dedicated to my own article, ”The Anarchist’s Dilemma, an Interlude: One Size Doesn’t Fit All”? I feel it would help advance the discussion, so I’d appreciate your consent.

Please let me know.

You certainly have my consent, but this topic is probably something I should stop talking and start reading about (starting with those links–this and this might work better?)

Yes, of course you may re-post whatever you wish and thanks for the reading material. I do want to point out that by “plan B” I meant that the steps taken by South American countries to promote greater regional integration and autonomy came after unsuccessfully trying to gain more representation in global institutions, not that I found plan B less desirable. In any case, both plans A and B have the same intent: to keep the US from ransacking the region.

@89

Thanks, lupita. And yes, I know exactly what you mean.

In exchange for the linkdump or for whatever, if anyone could offer one or more timely “here’s what we learned in our years of opposition to the Iraq War that will enable us to more effectively oppose the imminent Syria War” articles, I would be very grateful. I will buy you lunch, or something. There seems to be a distressing lack of guidance and insight about how to do things differently for people who would be very open to doing things differently. Three months from now we will have missed our change to get out in front of this…

Reinstating the draft might work. Fat chance of that, however, passing through both Houses.

Yes, Rich, but think, on the other hand, of the combination of anti-Establishment factors which, when put together, did lead to a counter-culture revolution of the sixties; and the anti-war protest (certainly much more vocal and widespread then what we’ve experienced ever since), was one of the elements.

But of course this does not apply to today’s technologically-driven, drone-utilizing methods of warfare (like in our recent intervention in Libya), with no boots on the ground.

Or maybe just Bloom

Images of images, simulacra, there is no here there anymore, the center doesn’t hold, metaphor/metonymy is all we got.

Virag in Dublin? Exploded onion?

I like the algae. Excess of nutrients cause micro-organisms to float to the top depriving the eco-system of oxygen. Bright-green basking in the sun, limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower.

Rich Puchalsky 06.15.13 at 4:46 pm

But we do know what worked. Electing those horrible compromised neoliberal tools of bloodstained capitalism ended the US war in Iraq and prevented (delayed) the war in Iran.

And casting protest votes for Green candidates or sitting out the boring work of registering voters and running candidates _caused_ the war in Iraq.

It turns out that the political line of “voting is a fraud” is effective in helping the far right wing and maintain political power.

100: “And to name the chord is important to some.
So they give a word, and the word is OHM.”

Resistors cost more energy than they give, and usually produces more heat than light.

Capitalism has won. Neoliberalism has won the core, and is mopping up the periphery. Imperialism has won. There is nothing outside. Since capitalism is a stage, a totality of social relations, it mean accumulation has completely merged with social reproduction. Argument, antagonism, confrontation, opposition, organizing, resistance, voting, withdrawal, desertion, watching or creating the horrible spectacle, love, hate, kindness, cruelty…everything accumulates and reproduces capitalism. Full spectrum dominance.

Defeatism? Nope, triumph. There is still nothing left to do. Sit down in the Way.

@103

Looks like you’ve internalized the language of tiquun

In the post, Chris Bertram laments the likely efforts of Governments and their allies to discredit “lawbreakers in pursuit of social justice”. Yes, but the greater threat to the sort of civil disobedience he is talking about isn’t the discrediting of the leadership by exposing their little weaknesses; it’s straightforward, old-fashioned repression by armed force. Rich Puchalsky says (at 94) “protests don’t work”. They surely don’t work if the protest is going to be kettled and then assaulted by armed police.

I find it especially surprising that Chris Bertram doesn’t mention this because he isn’t an American. It is America which has brought discrediting to an art form, and I think uses it much more than do the Europeans (including the British), but armed repression is used freely on both sides of the Atlantic. Surely it should be an American who worries more about discrediting, and a Britisher who worries more about force.

“I am a Marxist, of the Groucho sort.” — protester in Paris, 1968.

Andrew F. #104 — Please explain why anyone who is not a complete dunce would believe what any government says about any national security issue.

@107, gordon

Why should an American worry less about use of brute force than a Britisher, especially since, as you say, we elevated it to an “art-form”?

Somehow, your logic escapes me.

LAA @108 & 110. …it is important to understand how much protest should be enjoyable and entertaining theatre.

Yes, a thousand times. Becoming essentially humorless is a huge vulnerability – perspective, people! Being beaten/killed by the cops et. al. is just one way to make no progress. Being feckless can also result from you and your movement just being boring (including to yourselves).

@115 — What is the issue, and what is the protest plan? In the case of anti-nuclear, Three Mile Island obviated further protest. In the case of Occupy, it was not boring but there was no tactical end game, so it looked like a failure. However, that story isn’t over: the rest of the population has not forgotten the outrageous behavior and favorite treatment of the financial system, and inequality is not abating. If inequality continues, there will be bigger protests in the future, but they may not be so peaceful. In the case of Istanbul, it sounds like Erdogan was willing to take the development of the park to a court decision, but the crowds grew spontaneously due to other grievances (they don’t like the encroachment of Islamism), then the police used agent provocateurs to disrupt the peaceful assembly, then sent in uniformed police. (I read a report that several police have committed suicide rather than comply. If true, that could be a sign that the disaster has only begun.)

105: Looks like you’ve internalized the language of tiquun

A little, mostly because they agree with me, so they’re really smart and current.

Part of why I like tiqqun is my interest in post-Deleuze analysis, admitting that I don’t know my Althusser from a hole in the ground.

Oh no, not Rogoff* Deleuze, Deleuze thinks the rhizome surfs on top of the Real. There ain’t no Real. Ain’t no base and superstructure, all those dualities derive from mind-body split. Which, not coincidentally, at least in the West, can be dated to the beginning of liberalism and capitalism. Long story.

Anyway, the “proletarian consciousness” is one that recognizes that consumer-producer, worker-capitalist, subject-other, individual-community etc are delusions of capitalism. What else would socialism feel like? Long story. Spinoza not Descartes.

*Shocked and disappointed that nobody made that joke.

120: Links aren’t posting

Thomas Lamarre

“And the distributive layering of the anime image affords a multiplex
interface with other media. Oddly, however, while the otaku is always
in touch (with the computer), he or she is always out of touch (with the
actual world). What does detachment mean in what looks more and
more like a regime of all-connectedness? Paradoxically, the otaku lays
bare the non-relation at the heart of the all-relatedness of information.
Potentially then, being otaku means to assert the right to non-communication
at the very centre of the communications revolution, to inscribe refusal in
the heart of work—which may involve a different sense of how one’s labour pays off.”

Or Just Google Naught Thought

” In effect, the parallel processes of actual and virtual maintain a destabilization of the procession of actualities, of the productivity of materiality which requires a middle ground between virtual and actual than is non-reductive but also non-magical, that is not too quick to jump into panpsychism or radical emergence. The only wide spread middle ground has been transcendental disjunction. It might be time to turn back to the cyborg and the hybrid. A self-critical, negativity embracing, cyborg. The it that thinks is an it that participates in actualization that is not the result of unbound thought nor already thinking materiality but trapped in ontological disjunctions/resistances that curb the dispositional nature of thought that is not different in kind from other powers and processes. The cyborg is the walking slide between grounds of powers.”

Walking slide = animetic, surfaces that negate depth. Haraway, Anno, Butler, Oshii, Azuma, Osawa

But I think you are just messing with me

@121

No, I’m not. And thanks.

Andrew F. 06.17.13 at 11:56 am

” Lee, how about government economics statistics? Lies too? ”

Andrew, please stop being such a bullsh*tter, for once. Most government statistics are far, far, far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far,far, far more auditable than secret government programs.

Barry, you’re a bad, bad boy!

Congressional oversight of the intelligence community is so terrific that we’re not allowed to know how it works. At least there’s some hope that Josh Marshall will learn something from this. Andrew F I’m not so sure.

Ronan @116, that article leaves out the full context of Nadler’s remarks. Nadler went on to express uncertainty about whether an analyst could listen to domestic phone calls without a warrant. Nadler later clarified that he believes that the NSA cannot listen without a warrant and does not listen without a warrant: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/305855-house-dem-nsa-cant-listen-to-calls-without-warrants

Walt, the procedures and powers of the committees that oversee intelligence are well specified in law and have been well described by those who sit on those committees. That a former staffer was not permitted to discuss specific events and documents as a result of her non-disclosure agreement doesn’t mean we don’t know how it works.

The most recent revelations from Snowden are that the NSA conducts intelligence operations against some Chinese computers – which he objects to because he believes the computers targeted are “not military targets” which is a bizarre misapplication of the laws restricting the military use of lethal force to ordinary intelligence work – and that the British and the US tried to spy on foreign diplomats and officials. He objects to the latter because “we’re not at war” with the countries we spied on.

It’s hard to take his objections at face value. They’re too ridiculous. A strong explanation is that they’re simply attempts to conceal a more pragmatic reason for the recent two leaks: to increase his value to countries such as Russia and China.

The story waiting to be written is how exactly Snowden, Greenwald and others at The Guardian, and Laura Poitras, an activist documentary film producer, have collaborated, and the degree to which the journalists are aware of what Snowden may be doing.

Andrew F: “Barry, yes the government is capable of auditing those statistics. ”

Comprehension isn’t your strong suite, is it? My point was the different branches of the government can audit them, people who aren’t working for the government can discuss the methods, and the results can be compared to private sector data, for many things.

The equivalent here would be (for example) if the existence of the Census Dept was known, but almost nothing was known about what surveys and studies were done, let alone how they were done. Employees who discussed the existence of surveys and studies would be harshly punished; the press might or might not publish such details. Only a few Senators would be briefed, after being cleared for Census access by the Census. They’d be verbally briefed, couldn’t tell their staff or even take notes. There would be zero judicial overview, except for a few secret Census Courts, whose judges had to have Census Clearance (which would be granted or denied by the Census, with no reason given).

Now, I know that not understanding things is your strong suite, but have a random person on the street explain it to you.

Barry, if you’re going to be rude, at least try to use the correct words. It’s “suit” not “suite”. A few notes:

1 – federal judges do not need to obtain clearance before viewing classified material. Neither do members of Congress.

2 – the purpose of the government stats example is to illustrate that establishing a motive to lie isn’t sufficient to establish a deception; we use context – including how well a given statement coheres with other knowledge (such as private estimates in the case of government economic stats) to determine whether a statement is credible. In the case of the recent releases about surveillance programs, that context includes continuing legislative and judicial oversight and (now) enormous public attention.

3 – you write that “there’d be zero judicial overview, except for a few secret…courts….” How many independent courts do you need before you think that there’s judicial review? Search warrants are reviewed by one judge, unless the evidence obtained is used at a criminal trial and the legitimacy of the warrant is challenged. And lots of things in court are reviewed in secret, whether that court be the FISC or a local state court.

4 – information regarding these programs has been made available to every member of Congress. The Senate Intelligence Committee can declassify and publish material as it sees fit.

5 – there have now been public hearings on various aspects of these programs.

At this point, we’re going in circles, so I’ll bow out of the thread. Given Snowden’s recent two disclosures, and what we’ve learned about him, I suspect that any other leaks from him will continue to involve legitimate operations by the NSA. That’s good news for any person, and any nation, adversarial to the United States and its allies. It’s bad news for everyone else.

This isn’t the Pentagon Papers, and this isn’t Watergate. This isn’t any kind of reasonable civil disobedience. This isn’t whistle-blowing. This seems now to be a very misguided enterprise of self-aggrandizement, possibly aided by questionable journalistic practices. My hope is that Snowden realizes that while the leak of the metadata court order is somewhat defensible, his recent two leaks are not – and that he returns to the US, returns the focus to the metadata program, and eases some of the pain he’s no doubt caused to his family and others who love him. He can likely have a very fulfilling life as an anti-surveillance activist, with an army of volunteer lawyers to defend him and crowds of ardent supporters. If he returns voluntarily, he stands the chance of some leniency at sentencing; indeed, if he’s smart, he may even be negotiating now for the conditions under which he would return. Certainly, the chance he has of that life is better than the grim emptiness that awaits him if he stays out in the cold.

Andrew F. 06.18.13 at 6:02 pm

” Barry, if you’re going to be rude, at least try to use the correct words. It’s “suit” not “suite”. A few notes:”

Thanks! I’ll skip a whole bunch of things where you assert that uncleared people have access to top secret/compartmented information (1), (4), your interesting ideas on judicial independence (3), your absolute refusal to comprehend the point (2) , and leap right into your climactic paragraph:

“This isn’t the Pentagon Papers, and this isn’t Watergate. This isn’t any kind of reasonable civil disobedience. This isn’t whistle-blowing. ”

Assertion without proof, although perhaps you could pull the current journalistic ‘ethic’ that leaks unauthorized by the powers that be are different from authorized, leaks. Or even better, since you’re almost there, pull the double spin of ‘Nothing new, everybody knew about it’ combined with ‘He’s a traitor for revealing classified information’.

“This seems now to be a very misguided enterprise of self-aggrandizement, possibly aided by questionable journalistic practices. ”

Unlike every other leaker and printer of leaks in history.

“My hope is that Snowden realizes that while the leak of the metadata court order is somewhat defensible, his recent two leaks are not – and that he returns to the US, returns the focus to the metadata program, and eases some of the pain he’s no doubt caused to his family and others who love him.”

You’ve got to be kidding.

“He can likely have a very fulfilling life as an anti-surveillance activist, with an army of volunteer lawyers to defend him and crowds of ardent supporters. If he returns voluntarily, he stands the chance of some leniency at sentencing; indeed, if he’s smart, he may even be negotiating now for the conditions under which he would return. Certainly, the chance he has of that life is better than the grim emptiness that awaits him if he stays out in the cold.”

This takes it from ‘you’ve got to be kidding’ to ‘do you think that everybody here is an idiot?’.