[governance] [New post] In an Internetworked World No One Is “Foreign”

Fri Jun 21 14:45:39 EDT 2013

Intersting piece, thanks for sharing

On 21/06/2013, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:
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> New post on Gurstein's Community Informatics
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> <http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/in-an-internetworked-world-no-one-is-foreign/>
> In an Internetworked World No One Is “Foreign”
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> by  <http://gurstein.wordpress.com/author/gurstein/> Michael Gurstein
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> As everyone knows there have been some startling and shocking revelations
> concerning the surveillance activities of the USA's NSA.  This has
> occasioned considerable to-ing and fro-ing from the US Executive Office,
> from the major Internet corporations implicated in these revelations, and
> from various elements of civil society.
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> To an equally astonishing and disturbing degree much of this to-ing and
> fro-ing has centred around whether the rights of Americans have been
> assaulted.  Watching these discussions unfold including from US colleagues
> in civil society, it has been interesting how a fine bright line has been
> drawn between the rights of citizens and residents of the USA and everyone
> else.  The argument appears to be that while the rights of Americans are
> somehow sacrosanct--protected by among other things the US constitution and
> duly constituted legislation, foreigners i.e. everyone else in the world
> have no rights--are "fair game" for whatever actions the NSA or whoever
> chooses to invoke.
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> As a non-USAian watching all of this unfold I've been equally astonished and
> horrified that otherwise perfectly sane and reasonable people who pop up in
> all the right places often saying useful things internationally could be so
> tone deaf when dealing with a real issue with global ramifications.
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> As I've been thinking about this I haven't been quite sure why the
> terminology of Americans "good"--"foreigners" "suspicious" should grate so
> much.
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> We (being those of the non-USAian persuasion) are so used to listening to
> cultural messages coming from the US including via movies, television, music
> and so on that at some unconscious cultural level "we are all Americans
> now".  So when the divide between those placing themselves under the shading
> protection of the US constitution and everyone else is so actively and
> frequently expressed, the real divide is made even clearer and more
> explicit.
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> However, as we all know as well, the Internet as a communications and
> expressive platform knows few if any boundaries. While on the Internet of
> course, some are more equal than others the specific nationality as framed
> by boundaries and constitutions and legislation is left somewhere in the
> background only to be invoked at times of crisis or system failure.
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>  And that is why the language and conceptualization of the US vs. foreigners
> seems so odd and unsettling since on the Internet no one is a "foreigner"
> (and no one is a "national" except possibly of the nation of the Internet
> and its netizens/"citizens"...
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>  This isn't to idealize the Internet as a place without boundaries but
> rather to state the obvious, I'm able to and am frequently active in being
> in my home in Canada or with my friends in Brazil or with business
> colleagues in India instantaneously and seamlessly from anywhere I happen to
> be able to connect--no passports, no jurisdictional entanglements, in many
> cases no authorities evidently hovering in the background. So when something
> like Ed Snowden's revelations re-arrange again the Internet world around
> boundaries--around "us" and "them", "citizens" and "foreigners" it feels,
> well, so 20th century.
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> And to go on a wee bit--what is equally unsettling is the knowledge again
> that we (foreigners) have gleaned from Ed Snowden's revelations that the
> marginal and largely notional "protections" that distance and boundaries
> have up to now offered to us from the over-weaning and often absurdist
> actions by US authorities can now be seen as having been finally and
> irrevocably "disappeared"; and while we may be "foreigners" from the
> perspective of "rights", we are very much not foreigners from the
> perspective of being somehow subject to the actions of US authorities
> wherever we may or whatever we may be doing anywhere in the world.
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> And of course, this is the case not simply for the usual ("legitimate")
> suspects but also for ordinary citizens, businesses, governments,
> whatever--since the power of the Internet and the facility with which its
> depth of penetration has been projected almost universally has meant that
> the power wielded by those authorities is now global in scope and reach and
> essentially unrestricted in its actions. Thus in the sense of being subjects
> to US authority (or the authority of anyone with the wealth and facility to
> effectively use these tools--recent days have seen reports of similar
> actions by spooks in India and Brazil) no one is now a "foreigner"--in that
> area we are all equal and equally powerless.
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> So, if we are all -- USAians and everyone else now subjects of the
> omnipresent eyes, ears and capacities for actions at a distance of the
> Internet and ICTs in general; where are the structures and rules,
> procedures, legislative mechanisms that would allow all of us--citizens of
> an Internet-enabled world to hold those wielding this authority to some
> measure of accountability and transparency.
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> Without those mechanisms and those rules and procedures--we all and in this
> we must include all of us USAians and the like--will be the objects of
> control and subject of the authority of a future SurveillanceState without
> recourse or appeal. The time to recognize that we are all equally citizens
> of the Internet world (and equally foreigners in the boundary burdened world
> where you need a passport to be on the Internet) and to get about the job of
> building the governance institutions for the world that we are all living in
> and put paid to those institutions that govern the world that we are in the
> process of out-growing.
>
>  <http://gurstein.wordpress.com/author/gurstein/> Michael Gurstein | June
> 21, 2013 at 09:38 | Tags:
> <http://gurstein.wordpress.com/?tag=internet-governance> Internet Governance
> | Categories:  <http://gurstein.wordpress.com/?cat=38502503> Canadian ICT
> policy,  <http://gurstein.wordpress.com/?cat=40821> Civil Society,
> <http://gurstein.wordpress.com/?cat=771367> Community Informatics,
> <http://gurstein.wordpress.com/?cat=1> Uncategorized | URL:
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Mwendwa Kivuva
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kenya.or.ke | The Kenya we know

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