RE: Big Brother doesn't exist. whatch out for the mob of littlebrothers.

[jesse hirsh <jesse@tao.ca>]

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On Mon, 20 Sep 1999, Mark Jeftovic wrote:

> I'm running a serious temprature here and I feel like crap

i wonder if there's a flu hitting the city? i know a few people who are
under the weather. do you know others fighting sickness in our city?

> Today there really is freedom of opportunity. That's not to say life
> is fair, but at last it isn't all etched in stone from the word go.

but all is etched in the network of networks and the databases of our
individual and communal identities. freedom of opportunity is thereby a
projection on the wall, a flip between channels, but not an opportunity to
either engage the social structure (society) or work towards an
alternative model, which would be what i (and i think the ancient greeks)
would refer to as freedom of opportunity. i guess i'm trying to infer that
the opportunity that we want is to live, not just survive, but to live!
you know, the good life, the here and now. the way we feel we should be
living. whatever that may be. given social and democratic constraints.

> I guess the point I was trying to get across there was that the level of
> surveillance will eventually be ubiquitous to the point of being Orwellian
> (in fact many argue that it already is)

i (be)live it is.

> but that it won't (or hasn't) come about from a conspiracy at the top,
> it's the result of many little surveillance operations coagulating
> into a state of constant scrutiny.

i believe it is both. many little surveillance operations capitulate for
the power and money of the state. there is no conspiracy. there are few at
the top, and the bottom is so deep and expansive that it is as gravity.

> Well, that's up to people like us to make sure it goes two ways. Sure,
> your typical law enforcement official might be nodding and smiling 
> at the prospect of everything I said coming to pass, until they get
> to the part where they're under the same magnifying glass as everyone
> else.

yes! active and distributed copwatch network facilities would certainly be
a spectacular public intervention that agitates for democracy. but it
requires a lot of work, by a lot of people, in many roles, all of whom,
need to have mechanisms of self-defence, that shield them from the
inevitable (insecure) reaction that the state (or top) always enacts when
the bottom organize and get their eyes minds and bodies together.

> We're supposed to be hactivists, right? I'm not *condoning* the
> surveillance society, I'm guessing it's unavoidable, but possible
> to be effected into something a little more tolerable. It could go
> both ways if people take measures to make sure that any new surveillance
> technology introduced to scrutinize the public gets turned back on
> their wielders as fast as possible.

a worthwhile strategy to pursue, a process towards an open society
perhaps, which like mr. torvalds, puts mr. soros in a peculiar yet clear
and distinctive position of power. at present my approach to hacktivism is
public education, not always counter-attack, but much more community
support. the gift economy when it comes to relevant surveillance
activities to engage in. giving up the eyes, the knowledge, and the
presence when it counts. getting it to many people, somewhat like a flood,
while also creating levels of literacy that allow individuals and
associations to protect themselves wherein they are democratically
allowed. whew. ramble jambles. flip-mode.





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