Power, Virtual networks and Privacy

Danah Boyd’s paper was specifically engaging for me because she focuses on the all important distinction between privacy and publicity. This issue is complex and is starting to become an extremely important one, as surveillance and monitoring technologies are fast beginning to develop in line with the expansiveness of the internet (thanks in no little part to the industrial surveillance complex). 

However, I’ll begin with the more subtle notions of privacy she raises first. She cites Helen Nissenbaum, who coined the term ‘contextual integrity’ as a way in which people effectively manage privacy. The networks that a person maintains in one context, doesn’t mean they wish to maintain the same networks in a different context. Dismantling contextual integrity (or rather, establishing links between the contacts of a person who don’t know each other) without permission is experienced as a violation of privacy.

Boyd also contests the traditional notion of ‘public’ and ‘private’ as a binary. To do away with this notion, she introduces the concept of trust in relation to privacy. She argues that it isn’t just people we hold accountable with the information we impart to them, we also hold the architecture of our networks accountable (the idea that there may be others listening in). This is where the serious issue of online privacy comes into play, because unlike a cafe where someone may or may not be listening in to your conversation, the internet is characterised by the persistence, searchability, replicability and scalability of the information you disseminate. Her argument is essentially one of security through obscurity – a very powerful argument indeed. 

Boyd argues that privacy is fundamentally about having control over how information flows. It is however, a very problematic area. Civil and digital rights group will champion the privacy rights of citizens in the country, yet are always (rather paradoxically) simultaneously arguing for freedom of speech rights and transparency as well. Why is it that the abstract notion of ‘citizens’ have a right to privacy, but the famous, or institutions and governmental organisations do not? Furthermore, doesn’t controlling the flow of information constitute censorship? How do the two (privacy and censorship) differ?

These questions became particularly salient to me after Alan Jones’ remarks (made privately at a public liberal party convention) about Julia Gillard’s father ‘dying of shame’ was leaked to a national newspaper. Alan Jones consequently received a significant backlash, particularly from an online Facebook group which successfully campaigned to stop advertising on 2GB. In this context, is it not hypocritical to argue that ‘Alan Jones had it coming’ but at the same time champion the rights of abstract citizens (of whom Alan Jones [despite the fact that I don’t think he’d pass the citizenship tests migrants are forced to take] would be considered one)?

Boyd in this situation would seemingly have a problem with Alan Jones’ comments being publicised as it constitutes a clear breach of privacy. As she states: “Just because something is publicly accessible does not mean that people want it to be publicised”. I’d like to contest this by making my own statement: Just because people don’t want something to be publicized, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be publicized.

Boyd seems to be assuming here that the main perpetrator of publicisation are technology companies, she seems to miss the fact, that publicisation is occurring because people want to know – and publicity on the internet occurs as a direct result of online public interaction. Is this not precisely what we mean by ‘the public interest’ (as opposed to the paparazzi (which Boyd refers to a lot in her article) who dictate public interest)?

The very fact that some people are more public than others endows them in a position of privilege and power – it seems to me that publicisation is a convenient and emergent balancing mechanism to counteract the hierarchical structure that publicity entails. I would go so far as to argue that it is a fundamental property of the internet as a communicative medium. To try and limit the publicisation of information in this sense, would amount to the precise definition of censorship (and all its associated negative connotations). It is either a matter of censoring the information of precisely those within the network who are gaining positions of power, or allowing everyone to adjust to increased publicity (which Boyd concedes is what happens when people are faced with such changes).

Protecting the privacy of figures like Alan Jones, or Miley Cyrus (whom Boyd uses as an example in the article) seems to me to be precisely what we shouldn’t be doing. Holding such central positions within a network where such figures can be incredibly influential (like inciting racial hatred for the Jones, or setting a bad role model for young female children for Cyrus ) entails the responsibility to be scrutinized publicly at such a high level. It’s interesting to note here that both these figures have used traditional media to establish their fame, and both have suffered as a result of new media technologies. Arguably, public figures of the future will be much better informed about how they carry themselves privately, and the internet will be a place (given the absence of strict privacy/censorship laws that protect the privileged) where there will be many more pseudo-famous people who haven’t forged their positions of power through autocratic and asymmetrical communication mediums as today’s superstars have done.

Boyd asks a very important question however. She asks whose voice counts in a world where information is increasingly publicised. I can’t help but feel Boyd takes a terrible approach here. She argues that marginalized people (she cites stories of immigrants and Domestic Abuse victims) shouldn’t be expected to fight for their right to speak. She argues that most marginalised people aren’t comfortable speaking up in public nor are they likely to be heard. Yet isn’t this precisely the problem? Boyd seems to insinuate that censoring the stories and discourses of marginalised people will help insulate them from the consequences of public scrutiny, yet isn’t this the same exclusionary approach that causes these people to be marginalised in the first place? The solution to making marginalised people feel more comfortable in the public sphere is to propel them into to the public where they have to engage in discourse, not the opposite. Remaining comfortably marginalised only serves to reinforce the privilege of those in power.

Essentially, I think Boyd’s concept of privacy through obscurity is an excellent one, because it ensures a system where those who are most marginalised in a network are also the ones who are least scrutinized. In fact, I would go so far as to argue for a Right to Obscurity. The more isolated a person is within a network, the greater their right to remain private should be. This is why the rise of surveillance technologies and their adoption by secret services around the world post an extremely serious threat to those who are most vulnerable in society. It allows powerful, opaque and closed networks to reverse this process of privacy through obscurity and create a mechanism of public self-censorship (Foucault’s Panotopicism). Relevantly, networks like ASIO are already proposing large scale surveillance powers be handed to them. Senator Ludlam raises an inquiry as to why ASIO require such powers:

Heretofore (with possibly the exception of Castells), the social networking literature I have come across predominately analyses how networks form and function effectively. Christakis and Fowler in particular see social networks in a very positive light, and focus on the importance of becoming ‘connected’.

What I’d like to do here is to visit the views of a thinker who analyses how networks actively exclude and come undone. He takes a very different approach to understanding networks. I’ll allow my favourite rapper Robert Foster to lead us in before I take a deeper look into the theories of our guest thinker:

Julian Assange’s views borrow from recent work on network theory, emergent systems and work on self-synchronizing systems. He, however, for the purposes of his role, characterises networks – specifically closed networks that hold a certain level of power, as conspiracies.

He argues that individuals within a network are acting in concert, whether by plan or not, and the secrecy ensures that the benefits of the network accrue to those inside the network and not outside it. Here, we can see individual actors who exercise trust in their contacts with information that is valuable when it is withheld from the public. Assange ascribes the concept of ‘weight’ to an information flow; the more valuable the information flow between a dyad, the more ‘weight’ it can be considered to have. Assange explains:

“The ‘importance’ of communication passing through a link is difficult to evaluate apriori, since its true value depends on the outcome of the conspiracy. ...The weight of a link is proportional to the amount of important communication flowing across it.”

Furthermore, Assange characterises these closed networks as being able to outthink the same group of individuals acting alone – he characterises conspiracies as an entity with emergent properties (an argument which is also made by Christakis and Fowler).

In a certain sense closed networks are ubiquitous. The problem occurs when they become extremely powerful, because whatever the intentions of the individuals within the network, the network itself is optimized for its own success, and not for the benefit of those outside of the network. Given a networks position of power and privilege, it functions to the detriment of much more marginalised closed networks by virtue of its exclusionary nature. I alluded to the idea that people in Castells ‘fourth world’ could be characterised as a part of small, individuated social networks in an earlier post. These small isolated networks are disconnected from powerful conspiracies which work to exclude and keep such individuated social networks at bay, only interacting with them in a way that reinforces the network’s power and privilege.

Actors that don’t benefit their network partners in the network will eventually be expelled from the system as their network partners will minimize contact. Those collaborating with conspirators will form stronger ties and will benefit from the information that participation in the network delivers. This holds even at the edges of the network. Reporters with sources or contacts within a conspiracy (thus conspirators themselves) that violate the trust of their network partners will be cut off from the network and will thus not receive vital scoops to report on.

Assange outlines several ways of dismantling a conspiracy. 

·         Separating Weighted Conspiracies - Assange makes the rather intriguing point, that targeting the most influential conspirators (the most central) is ineffective. Rather, targeting the bridges of such conspiracies (a topological feature of a network where a few connections connect larger more centralised sections of a network) is much more effective as such a division significantly undermines the emergent cognitive faculties of a conspiracy.

·         Throttling Weighted Conspiracies – Throttling involves constricting the information flow high weight links bridging centralises parts of a conspiracy together.

·         Attacking Conspiratorial Cognitive Ability – this approach involves deceiving or blinding a conspiracy through distortion or restricting the information fed to it.

Assange in fact uses the connected graph models of mathematicians hired by the U.S. to look at terrorist conspiracies to inform a lot of his theory about how existing conspiracies are used to maintain authoritarian power structures. Of course, unlike targeted suicide bombings, or CIA drone strikes, Assange uses leaks as a means to dismantle dominant conspiracies. Interestingly, Wikileak’s means to attaining information from its source is done though an anonymous electronic drop box system, no doubt an important technical mechanism specifically designed to keep Wikileaks apart from the conspiracies with whose information they deal with. This is specifically why in terms of Journalism, the arrival of Wikileaks has been so revolutionary – Wikileaks as an editorial organisation can publish materials according to their own criteria with complete impartiality – a liberty that other journalistic organisations (who often conspire with powerful conspiracies for their sources) do not have.

I thought Assange was a particularly noteworthy thinker for analysing privacy/secrecy and its relation to power, not only because of the appropriateness of his theories, but also because his work with Wikileaks really does attest to the role that social networks have in instigating changes that ripple throughout the world and cause societal change.

I’d like to finish off this post with an additional video that examines the role of the internet in analysing the political agency of youth and how autocratic regimes are making use of the internet to serve their own ends. It is critical of the optimism commonly portrayed by technocratic internet activists:

 

References

Boyd, D. 2010, 'Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity', paper presented to the SXSW, Austin, Texas, March 13, 2010. http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/2010/SXSW2010.html

Assange, J. 2006, ‘Conspiracy as Governance’, Cryptome, 3 December, viewed 18 October 2012, <http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf>