[okfn-discuss] OKFN and Reset the Net (debrief)

[William Waites]

I'm probably the primary culprit for criticism of the tone of the
discussion. I apologise for this. It was driven as Rayna suspects by
the urgency of getting this sorted out on the day and in reaction to
Laura's uncertainty on the topic which I found very surprising.

I'm not particularly a pro-privacy campaigner -- though I am
sympathetic to those who are -- or indeed a campaigner of any kind. I'm
an engineer who has built some parts of the Internet, and indeed some
parts of OKFN's infrastructure. I've been helping artists and activists
and NGOs of various kinds have access to and make use of Internet
resources since the mid 1990s at the same time as creating these
same resources. In this context I tend rather to see myself more as an
enabler than a campaigner. For the most part I keep to the background
and the lower levels of the infrastructure that the users -- and by
users I primarily mean content producers more so than consumers. It is
relatively unusual that I feel compelled to intervene at a higher, more
publicly visible level. My role, like other network engineers and
system administrators has historically been not to have much to say
about how the infrastructure is used but to make sure it is a
fundamentally neutral platform on which people can do and say as they
see fit. The current situation is different and I'd like to explain why.

The ongoing pervasive monitoring is an attack at a very fundamental
level on the basic infrastructure that makes things like OKFN possible.
Where in the past it has made sense to tend to the infrastructure and
allow others to use it to address problems that they see in the world
the present situation affects our ability to do this. We, meaning
many engineers and admins around the world, have for many years acted in
mostly unseen solidarity with civil society including organisations
like OKFN, and now we need your help. We have found that the basic
ethical obligation of the sysadmin, to take privileged access to
systems very seriously, to only use it to ensure proper operation of
the infrastructure, and above all, to keep any information learned in
that process strictly confidential much like a lawyer or a doctor would
be expected to has been undermined. The basic relationship that all of
you have with the infrastructure through the network operations and
system administration communities has been altered without our
knowledge and consent and against our wishes.

We have long known or suspected that anyone sufficiently motivated and
with sufficient resources can look at what any particular person is
doing, just as the police can stake out somebody's house if they want
to. What we didn't know was that this is happening to everybody all the
time, although there have been suggestions at least as far back as the
early 2000s that this was planned. We, as a community, misjudged the
threat. Had we known, we would have put more emphasis on ensuring that
your relationship with the infrastructure was indeed on the basis that
it had been assumed to be. As it is, OKFN's whole way of operating is
built on shaky foundations, as indeed is every organisation that makes
significant use of the Internet and whose business is something other
than surveillance and advertising.

For OKFN in particular, as an organisation whose main activity has to
do with certain kinds of digital rights, with one thread tending
towards public sector accountability and another towards the right of
all humankind to share equally in our collective cultural and
scientific heritage, this is very important. In the UK this
organisation is fairly prominent and well respected. People look to
OKFN for advice. As an organisation whose roots and origins are in the
Free Software movement and whose success comes from applying ideas
from there to data and information generally, any radical departure
(such as "I'm not sure the Internet is within our remit") had better
be very soundly reasoned.

It was this departure that triggered my strong words. If the response
to RTN had been "we're not ready yet but we will prepare a statement on
the topic because we think it is important" that would have been a
little disappointing but would have made sense. But to not know if it
was important boggled my mind. It had to be corrected, and quickly.
Hence the public pressure. I'm not known for my diplomatic gifts, so
again, my apologies for the abrasiveness.

It will take a long time for the implications of this to be fully
understood. It will take an even longer time for the fundamental
architectural problems of the Internet to be repaired or replaced and
organisations like OKFN can once again be on sound footing.

Best,
-w
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