The Internet is Not a ‘Surveillance State’

In The Internet is a surveillance state, CNN’s Bruce Schneier give us a view of the vast information gathering prowess of internet companies, claiming:

The Internet is a surveillance state. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we're being tracked all the time. Google tracks us, both on its pages and on other pages it has access to. Facebook does the same; it even tracks non-Facebook users. Apple tracks us on our iPhones and iPads. One reporter used a tool called Collusion to track who was tracking him; 105 companies tracked his Internet use during one 36-hour period.

Notice the hideous inversion--equating private business with the state--i.e., the government. The basic nature of government is a monopoly on the legal use of physical force. The basic nature of private citizen is voluntarism. A government alone, through its power to make law, can compel obedience to its edicts. A private individual, whether operating independently or as a business--even a giant corporation--cannot.

When someone tries to pin the label “state” on a private company—i.e., surveillance state—he is engaging in intellectual subversion. He wants to create the illusion that a Facebook is a threat in the same way as a Castro or a Kim Jong-un regime. Such an equivocation sets the sage for calls for some form of government regulation or “oversight” over the private companies, in the name of “protecting” us. The result is to handover control of a company (and the information it gathers) that is not a threat to our freedom, in order to hand over more power to control intellectual discourse and content to the government. But a goivernment, not a private company, is the main threat.

Schneier inadvertently points to this threat. Referring to the case of Hector Monsegur, the hacker who was identified and arrested last year by the FBI, Schneier wrote:

Maintaining privacy on the Internet is nearly impossible. If you forget even once to enable your protections, or click on the wrong link, or type the wrong thing, and you've permanently attached your name to whatever anonymous service you're using. Monsegur slipped up once, and the FBI got him. If the director of the CIA can't maintain his privacy on the Internet, we've got no hope.

In today's world, governments and corporations are working together to keep things that way. Governments are happy to use the data corporations collect -- occasionally demanding that they collect more and save it longer -- to spy on us. And corporations are happy to buy data from governments. Together the powerful spy on the powerless, and they're not going to give up their positions of power, despite what the people want.

My emphasis highlights the difference between private business and government. Only government can arrest people. Only government can impose its data-collection edicts on a company.

A private company, or collection of private companies contracting with each other, cannot force you. If it misuses your data in violation of its user agreement or stated company policy, the law can and should be there for you. But the private data collection, or surveillance if you want to use that term, is not a threat unless government manages to get its hands on it inappropriately or without a warrant. There is a vast difference between “surveillance” for private commercial purposes and surveillance for law enforcement purposes. We need to understand the difference. The internet is not a state, because it does not have coercive law-making powers. A government is a state, because it does. I wouldn’t worry about the first. I’d worry about the second, including the collaboration between governments and corporations, which may be coerced “partners”.

We must keep the crucial distinction between government and private business in mind whenever we hear someone call for regulation of the internet or internet companies like Google and Facebook. Schneier states that “Fixing this requires strong government will, but they're just as punch-drunk on data as the corporations. Slap-on-the-wrist fines notwithstanding, no one is agitating for better privacy laws.” True, there are legitimate privacy issues. And the law may play a role in protecting us against the use of our data in a way that violates the users implicit or explicit agreement. That is a contractual issue. Government does have a role in mediating contract disputes or breaches. But we’d better be careful just how far we want the government to go in enforcing its “will.” It can be a protector of our privacy rights, or it can use the privacy issue to extend its control over our lives.

Related Reading:

Facebook/Cambridge Analytica Data Breach Should Not Be a Pretext for Government Controls

NJ Star-Ledger Repudiates the First Amendment, Calls for Censorship

Roger McNamee’s Attack on Intellectual Freedom

The Dollar and the Gun--Harry Binswanger