Wired’s Noah Schachtman is rightly concerned with the Bush administration’s proposal to create a Total Information Awareness System (TIA) and can’t help to draw the conclusion that recent attempts of the US administration
“… to peer into the lives of Americans were more than a little similar to the exploits of Middle Earth’s would-be rulers.”
Hmm, maybe the world should pay more attention to W’s wedding ring or the gold on Condi’s fingers…
Last year, I sent a protest mail to Guido Westerwelle, the chairman of the German Liberal Party (FDP) after he supported a proposition to implement finger prints in the national IDs. A staffer replied that “fingerprints on IDs are not in opposition to a liberal worldview”, as I had stipulated in my email. I had also jokingly proposed to use DNA as a far superior means of tracking people. This, the staff member explained to me, would be far too costly to be implemented. She had taken the proposition seriously (probably a consequence of having to reply to 300 letters a day ;-)).
But there will be people who won’t be joking about implementing DNA scans. And there will be more soon, if this article is somewhat close to reality.This world is becoming an increasingly scary place. Just wait for someone to present a “pre-crime” system in the mall down the street.
Can I please leave this planet before it gets worse?
Is this world still a place worth living in? Will there be a time in which people will regard novels and films like “1984“, “Blade Runner“, or “Gattaca” as prophecies and praise their creators for their vision and their content for historical accuracy? I sure hope there won’t.
But let’s face it – digital and biological technology is not always a friend of someone already worried about the state and future of civil liberties on this planet. Today, wired news reports that a signal emitting implantable chip is now on sale in the US – as a security device.
We’re still living in a (sort of) free world. But the prospects of digital totalitarianism are getting better – vigilance is clearly needed these days.
After watching two hours of CIA action on the silver screen I found this interesting collection of right-restricting measures introduced throghout Western world in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 on Economist.com.
When Paul Krugman stated in his NY Times op-ed column back in February that, in his opinion, in ten years people will regard the Enron induced confidence crisis in American capitalism as a much bigger problem than September 11, 2001 and the ensuing war on terror, the public outrage was immediate. I am not sure Krugman is right with his statement – we’ll have to wait for future generations of historians to rank the events – but he’s making an crucial point. Important things are going on in this world and most people, including those professionally involved with selling opinion, the media, somehow don’t get it.
What I am referring to is the war about who is allowed to benefit from a copyright on Mickey Mouse for how long after its creation. In short, the war about intellectual property rights, the fundamental distributive conflict of the digital age. Another episode in this war is going to take place in the U.S. constitutional court. I am not going to outline the Eldred vs. Ashcroft lawsuit which will be decided soon. Click on the big “e” and find out for yourself. But mark my words: The decision will affect the future of public life in Western societies deeply and possibly lastingly.
As I have argued before, current copyright holders are about to exploit the existing socially institutionalised notion of property rights in order to perpetuate legal institutions for a future in which they will likely be entirely inadequate. The problem with such institutionalised myths of rationality is that people take them for granted. And with a deeply engrained (important!) institution as property, most people will never ask any questions.
Thus, I am grateful that the list of supporters of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit (those in favour of moderate copyright extensions) includes some sort of who-is-who of famous and inflential economists, quite a few of which have been awarded the Nobel Price in Economics: George A. Akerlof, Kenneth J. Arrow, Timothy F. Bresnahan, James M. Buchanan, Ronald H. Coase, Linda R. Cohen, Milton Friedman, Jerry R. Green, Robert W. Hahn, Thomas W. Hazlett, C. Scott Hemphill, Robert E. Litan, Roger G. Noll, Richard Schmalensee, Steven Shavell, Hal R. Varian, and Richard J. Zeckhauser. One of their lawyers is Harvard’s William Fisher whose thoughts on the challenges of digital reproduction and distribution for copyright law I have already recommended.
Hopefully they will be able to have a calming influence on the panel of judges.
Again: The copyright war is a secret war. But – in my opinion – will have more important consequences for our societies than the one currently fought on the screens. So check the lawsuit’s website and help out Mickey!
This is a comment made by “JDA” on Brad DeLong’s website. I find it rather insightful, now that more and more people begin to realise the consequences of the post 9-11 abrogations of civil liberties throughout the Western world.
Here is William Butler Yeats, addressing the Irish Senate on a bill that would give new powers to the Minister of Justice: The Government does not intend these things to happen, the Commission on whose report the Bill was founded did not intend these things to happen, but in legislation intention is nothing, and the letter of the law everything, and no government has the right, whether to flatter fanatics or in mere vagueness of mind, to forge an instrument of tyranny and say that it will never be used. (Quoted in Robert Conquest, Reflections on a Ravaged Century at 204 (2000))
I might post an email exchange I had with the office of the leader of the FDP shortly after 9-11 on that topic later.
