The recent resolution of the FBI’s case against Apple left the United States’ electronic rights in a kind of limbo.
The case centered around the FBI’s request for Apple to create an electronic back door to break into one of the Bernadino shooters’ phones, which was criticized by many for sacrificing privacy rights for national security. Currently, this question over individual privacy rights has been pushed to the background, but some, like activist and writer Cory Doctorow want to make it a priority.
Doctorow is a novelist and technology writer of works such as Little Brother, Homeland and Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age. He is currently working with nonprofit companies to lobby for governments to start ensuring public privacy. This most recent lecture, “Security, Privacy, and Surveillance: Damn Right You Have Something to Hide (And Everything to Fear),” was part of that work.
“The internet’s future is not our most important question,” Doctorow said. “You have to believe there are people alive today that are viewed with the same suspicion and the same social risk that people who were gay 50 years ago faced.”
Doctorow said this in conjunction with his claim that lots of what we do today was once criminalized and that those things were made normal in the space between the public and the private spheres where people could talk outside of the view of the public and create movements against injustice. According to him, that space is made possible through the internet and digital freedom, both of which are in constant danger.
“We don’t have a hope of winning those issues if we don’t have a free and open infrastructure to fight those battles on,” Doctorow said.
Despite the scary title, Doctorow presented a fun and entertaining lecture. While discussing the reasons everyone who uses the internet should be more careful and aware while online, he threw in jokes that kept the mood light.
But this light mood did not undermine the serious nature of the topic of the future of the digital world. He said while little that people do online remains a secret, people want to be able to determine who is seeing them do those things and that everyone should have the opportunity to make this decision, even if people don’t think they need to worry about this problem.
“If you think you have nothing to hide, you probably haven’t been paying attention,” he said.
Unfortunately, he added, in today’s day and age, the concept of privacy is under attack. A lot of the effects of past privacy lapses cannot be undone. The world of privacy is cloudy, dark and dangerous, but people can start fighting to limit privacy lapses in the future.
“We have a duty to reform the way that our governments work to require them to make our devices more secure,” Doctorow said.
Doctorow encouraged his listeners to donate to nonprofits devoted to the cause of privacy by lobbying against government attempts to limit internet freedom and for protection of this issue in all of its manifestations.
K-UTE Internet Radio interviewed Cory Doctorow prior to his presentation. Listen to it here.