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

[Rufus Pollock]

Hi Will,

I'm don't plan to dig in here as I know there has been a separate thread
but just wanted to say thanks for the long and thoughtful follow-up here -
and, generally, appreciate the passion and thought behind this :-)

Rufus


On 7 June 2014 14:20, William Waites <ww at eris.okfn.org> wrote:

> 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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