The package you sent, with its hopeful contents, is being rejected. As the song says,
"Return to sendah, address unknown, no such numbah, no such zone." It is worn and damaged,
bowed and beaten. Sorry but we couldn't make it work.
I would say more, about the death of freedom and democracy, but a site called
Groklaw has said it better. So I am quoting it for you, with sadness of heart:
What I do know is it's not possible to be fully human if you are being surveilled 24/7.
Harvard's Berkman Center had an online class on cybersecurity and internet privacy some years
ago, and the resources of the class are still online. It was about how to enhance privacy
in an online world, speaking of quaint, with titles of articles like, "Is Big Brother Listening?"
And how.
You'll find all the laws in the US related to privacy and surveillance there.
Not that anyone seems to follow any laws that get in their way these days. Or
if they find they need a law to make conduct lawful, they just write a new law
or reinterpret an old one and keep on going. That's not the rule of law as I understood the term.
Anyway, one resource was excerpts from a book by Janna Malamud Smith,"Private Matters:
In Defense of the Personal Life", and I encourage you to read it. I encourage the President
and the NSA to read it too. I know. They aren't listening to me. Not that way, anyhow. But
it's important, because the point of the book is that privacy is vital to being human,
which is why one of the worst punishments there is is total surveillance:
One way of beginning to understand privacy is by looking at what happens to people in
extreme situations where it is absent. Recalling his time in Auschwitz, Primo Levi
observed that "solitude in a Camp is more precious and rare than bread." Solitude
is one state of privacy, and even amidst the overwhelming death, starvation, and
horror of the camps, Levi knew he missed it.... Levi spent much of his life finding words
for his camp experience. How, he wonders aloud in Survival in Auschwitz, do you describe
"the demolition of a man," an offense for which "our language lacks words."...
One function of privacy is to provide a safe space away from terror or other assaultive
experiences. When you remove a person's ability to sequester herself, or intimate information
about herself, you make her extremely vulnerable....
The totalitarian state watches everyone, but keeps its own plans secret. Privacy is seen
as dangerous because it enhances resistance. Constantly spying and then confronting people
with what are often petty transgressions is a way of maintaining social control and
unnerving and disempowering opposition....
And even when one shakes real pursuers, it is often hard to rid oneself of the feeling
of being watched -- which is why surveillance is an extremely powerful way to control people.
The mind's tendency to still feel observed when alone... can be inhibiting. ... Feeling watched,
but not knowing for sure, nor knowing if, when, or how the hostile surveyor may strike, people
often become fearful, constricted, and distracted.
I've quoted from that book before, back when the CNET reporters' emails were read by HP.
We thought that was awful. And it was. HP ended up giving them money to try to make it up to them.
Little did we know.
Ms. Smith continues:
Safe privacy is an important component of autonomy, freedom, and thus psychological well-being,
in any society that values individuals. ... Summed up briefly, a statement of "how not to
dehumanize people" might read: Don't terrorize or humiliate. Don't starve, freeze, exhaust.
Don't demean or impose degrading submission. Don't force separation from loved ones. Don't
make demands in an incomprehensible language. Don't refuse to listen closely. Don't destroy
privacy. Terrorists of all sorts destroy privacy both by corrupting it into secrecy and by
using hostile surveillance to undo its useful sanctuary.
But if we describe a standard for treating people humanely, why does stripping privacy
violate it? And what is privacy? In his landmark book, Privacy and Freedom, Alan Westin
names four states of privacy: solitude, anonymity, reserve, and intimacy. The reasons
for valuing privacy become more apparent as we explore these states....
The essence of solitude, and all privacy, is a sense of choice and control.
You control who watches or learns about you. You choose to leave and return. ...
Intimacy is a private state because in it people relax their public front either
physically or emotionally or, occasionally, both. They tell personal stories, exchange
looks, or touch privately. They may ignore each other without offending. They may have sex.
They may speak frankly using words they would not use in front of others, expressing ideas
and feelings -- positive or negative -- that are unacceptable in public. (I don't think
I ever got over his death. She seems unable to stop lying to her mother. He looks flabby
in those running shorts. I feel horny. In spite of everything, I still long to see them.
I am so angry at you I could scream. That joke is disgusting, but it's really funny.)
Shielded from forced exposure, a person often feels more able to expose himself.
I hope that makes it clear why I can't continue. There is now no shield from forced exposure.
Nothing in that parenthetical thought list is terrorism-related, but no one can feel protected
enough from forced exposure any more to say anything the least bit like that to anyone in an
email, particularly from the US out or to the US in, but really anywhere. You don't expect a
stranger to read your private communications to a friend. And once you know they can, what is
there to say? Constricted and distracted. That's it exactly. That's how I feel.
So. There we are. The foundation of Groklaw is over. I can't do Groklaw without your input.
I was never exaggerating about that when we won awards. It really was a collaborative effort,
and there is now no private way, evidently, to collaborate.
I'm really sorry that it's so. I loved doing Groklaw, and I believe we really made a
significant contribution. But even that turns out to be less than we thought, or less than
I hoped for, anyway. My hope was always to show you that there is beauty and safety in the
rule of law, that civilization actually depends on it. How quaint.
If you have to stay on the Internet, my research indicates that the short term safety from
surveillance, to the degree that is even possible, is to use a service like Kolab for email,
which is located in Switzerland, and hence is under different laws than the US, laws which
attempt to afford more privacy to citizens. I have now gotten for myself an email there,
p.jones at mykolab.com in case anyone wishes to contact me over something really important
and feels squeamish about writing to an email address on a server in the US. But both emails
still work. It's your choice.
My personal decision is to get off of the Internet to the degree it's possible. I'm just an
ordinary person. But I really know, after all my research and some serious thinking things
through, that I can't stay online personally without losing my humanness, now that I know
that ensuring privacy online is impossible. I find myself unable to write. I've always been
a private person. That's why I never wanted to be a celebrity and why I fought hard to maintain
both my privacy and yours.
Oddly, if everyone did that, leap off the Internet, the world's economy would collapse,
I suppose. I can't really hope for that. But for me, the Internet is over.
So this is the last Groklaw article. I won't turn on comments. Thank you for all you've done.
I will never forget you and our work together. I hope you'll remember me too. I'm sorry I can't
overcome these feelings, but I yam what I yam, and I tried, but I can't.
Quotation source:http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175. The award-winning
site has now been shut down, but the Guardian has written about the issue. Chris
Hedges' comments about our loss of freedom are worth reading. The words of former Princeton
Professor Dick Falk add sound to the fury.
Finally, the ultimate in loss of privacy may well be epitomized in a new gadget that uses
your
heartbeat as an identifier.
c. Corinne Whitaker 2013