On the freedom to speak

http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/54268127504/on-the-freedom-to-speak

by espeed • 13 years ago

141 64 13 years ago

lessig.tumblr.com

javajosh2• 13 years ago

What a remarkable response. Lessig reacts to the substance, rather than the emotion of the criticism, making distinctions that need to be made, and answers the criticisms in language that's easy to understand.

He'd make a great lawyer.

espeed6• 13 years ago

Well, he is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law (http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10519/Lessig, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig :-).

javajosh2• 13 years ago

Yes, I know. I was making a funny!

Derander• 13 years ago

For those who are unaware, Lessig is a professor of law and ethics at Harvard, and has been a professor of law at Stanford and the University of Chicago in the past.

hkmurakami• 13 years ago

Now if only our lawmakers could follow suit.

Just one example of the namecalling and emotional backlashing. The ironic thing is that 6 months ago Harry Reid was called an "idiot", and afaik Reid has returned the favor to House Republicans recently.

http://dailycaller.com/2013/01/07/louisiana-sen-david-vitter...

larrys2• 13 years ago

"rather than the emotion of the criticism"

If one of his goals though is to gather support for what he did among regular people though he does have to deal with emotion as well. Think of people sitting on juries and the care that goes into selecting those people.

jaekwon11• 13 years ago

No, he's reacting to allegations about direct ties to Palintir, and failing to respond to the criticism of such a surveillance program.

icebraining• 13 years ago

He's making the point that he has no reason to respond to such criticism, since he's neither involved nor advocates it.

jtchang• 13 years ago

What type of technology would allow us to be absolutely certain that a piece of information was only used for an explicit purpose?

My first thought was a chain of custody with public/private key encryption for viewing the information. Perhaps file systems that record access?

espeed6• 13 years ago

Not specifically for general data tracking, but when I read this the first technology that sprang to mind was Ben Adida's (http://ben.adida.net/) Helios Voiting system (http://heliosvoting.org/):

"When you cast a vote with Helios, you get a smart tracker to track your vote all the way to the tally. No one knows how you voted, but you can track your vote and everyone can check the tally. "

jbert2• 13 years ago

It's analagous to media DRM. Nothing "works" if the user has admin access on the viewing device. And the only way to ensure that is a "trusted computing" chain all the way from processor boot.

Which is possible, but you have to lock out any viewers who can't demonstrate a secure chain from boot to viewing app (so you can trust the viewing app is "yours" rather than the device owners).

And there's always the analog hole. Unless you can rely on a 'Eurion' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation)-like mark to stop recording, people can always capture data at the point of display-to-retina.

The only other approach is the after-the-fact blamethrower, where you tag each copy steganographically so that you know who was the original source of any leaked or circulated copies. That wouldn't stop a Snowden though.

jaekwon11• 13 years ago

Yes, and probably the biggest hole is simply mod'ing the surveillance software with backdoor unauditable access to the data, such that higher ups with "special secret privileges" can bypass the logs.

Who audits the software? etc.

whatusername• 13 years ago

Isn't the display-to-retina capture handled by physical security? Ie -- aren't most top-secret (not sure the exact classification but you know what I mean) facilities controlled in regards to what electronic equipment you can take inside?

SilasX• 13 years ago

You can't. It's not a technical problem, because you can always log access. The problem is trusting the logger to be configured properly and to correctly report results.

I pointed this out on the original HN discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5964763

mlinksva• 13 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5964721

kevinpet• 13 years ago

This is a good example of why I don't have the enthusiasm most of this community has for Lessig. His single issue lately is money in politics, to the extent that he seems to be blind to anything else.

The criticism which he linked to primarily pointed out that he was speaking well of a company that exists primarily to enable the surveillance state. My reading of the mention of contributions to politicians in the last paragraph was to point out that this company is contributing to people who Lessig almost certainly does not agree with politically.

But Lessig's response is entirely focussed on not being tainted by any contributions.

He seems to get it what the root of the criticism is: " The essence of the criticism is that Palantir is a bad company, or that it has done bad things, or that it has been funded by bad people."

But his response is "I am completely in favor of questions being raised of anyone like me (meaning people trying to push a particular public policy) about whether mentioning a company or their product is done in exchange for money."

No one ever raised this question. It's not a suspicion. I think what we'd like to know from Lessig is:

1. Do you think it's okay to engage in wholesale spying on Americans, as long as it's subject to what you consider the appropriate oversight?

2. If you don't like spying, are you speaking well of Palantir because you don't think they are involved in it, or are you just interested in the one aspect of their technology and not trying to promote the company as a whole?

InAnEmergency• 13 years ago

Isn't this his response to #2?

In both cases above, I was pointing to a type of technology. The truth or falsity of what I was saying doesn’t depend upon whether Palantir is a good or bad company. About that question, I am not, and don’t purport to be an expert.

npsimons• 13 years ago

Not that I'm defending Lessig or Palantir (I'm definitely not a fan of Palantir), but I think the point Lessig was making is that of all the options, having one that is accountable and traceable is probably the least bad. That is to say, agencies (both public and private) are going to (and have!) use data gathering technologies; we may not be able to prevent it. The best we may be able to do is ensure that the chain of custody is unbroken, and evidence isn't manufactured, manipulated or otherwise called into doubt. That and start enforcing warrant requirements again.

grey-area4• 13 years ago

That and start enforcing warrant requirements again.

I think enforcing the law (or creating new laws) and revoking the Patriot act would be far more effective than any technical measures after collection. The restrictions of the Palantir system sound about as effective as Snapchat (that is, not at all effective for a determined user). If you can read it and see it, you can spread information and use it in an uncontrolled way. That's not even considering other attacks like photographs, duplicates of the memory, hacks etc. - once the information has escaped the system into the brain of one user, there is no way to control access.

The best solution is for that information to be collected only when strictly necessary and deleted after use, not stored. That's inconvenient and less effective for spy agencies, but more effective for the privacy of everyone else. If you want to stop universal surveillance, we have to control the collection of the data - anything else is too late in the process to make any meaningful difference and will be subverted over time, as the NSA abuse of their mandate has demonstrated.

jaekwon11• 13 years ago

You cannot ensure such a thing.

rosser• 13 years ago

...are you speaking well of Palantir because...

He is not speaking well of Palantir. He speaks well of two people in Palantir's employ, whom he knows personally, and he cites a piece of Palantir's technology as the kind of thing that the world needs more of — irrespective of whether or not the rest of their oeuvre is good, bad, or indifferent. That's it. Full stop.

He specifically says he's not touching the discussion of whether or not Palantir are good guys or bad guys. He specifically says he's not endorsing them, for compensation or otherwise. He specifically says he thinks that technology that audits every access of a piece of information is a valuable thing to have in the presence of a panopticon. And. Nothing. Else.

Any deeper reading than that is projection or fantasy. Lessig has earned being taken at his word, IMO.

mpyne9• 13 years ago

Any deeper reading than that is projection or fantasy.

Indeed, and it's concerning that Lessig is able to reply to those types of points in very clear and direct language and still have it fly over the heads of people because "PALANTIR".

Even completing ignoring the very concept of the NSA it is clear that the government will be adopting technology to handle the governance of people.

So decide, tech peoples: Should this technology build in audit trails or not? Should this technology record what interface a government employee was using to extract this data, or not?

There are practically no government databases which can be completely innocuous in the face of a determined government insider. Don't throw the baby of technology controls on misuse of data out with the bathwater of... something(?), especially with accusations as specious as "their board member knows a guy who was on the board of... BAE! (oooooh ahhhhhhh)"

neurotech1• 13 years ago

It would be interesting to see his response to points 1 & 2, but I think we already got some idea of his answer.

IHMO I interpreted his original reference to Palantir to be "systems used for scanning databases, and datamining, should have an audit trail built into the core of that system"

Edit: Clarified that its my opinion, not a direct quote.

zallarak• 13 years ago

I totally disagree with you. You first question embodies a very non pragmatic mindset - the first question has no "right" answer. However, rejecting corporate funding for research/etc is something that in principle makes very strong sense and transcends the sort of questions you are asking.

He seems to be wise enough to not take a black and white stance on Palantir as a company - really, no one has the right to call a company good or evil and we are ignorant of their intentions. However, his point is regardless of his perception of Palantir, corporate funding biases research and in principle thus should be rejected.

rayiner3• 13 years ago

The whole Lessig/Palantir issue is so illustrative of the tech community's bizarre insistence on ideological purity on political issues, and consequently illustrative of why tech as an industry has so little political influence despite having money and people.

larrys2• 13 years ago

Agree. Some people (perhaps tech people are more so in this direction? [1]) see things as black and white and not shades of gray. God forbid you identify yourself as a fanboy of [insert idol] and go against or issue criticism of that idol. You almost certainly, in any forum, will have a hard time doing that. And lose favor.

With respect to all this snowdengate more people seem to have just decided that whatever the government is doing it's wrong, has no benefit and that's that. End of discussion right there. No devil in the details at all.

[1] Simplistically tech people, programmers, math people and the like are binary and deal in exact 1's and 0's. Tech people would be more likely to jump on this particular comment that I made if it didn't fit with their particular world view.

jivatmanx2• 13 years ago

I love Lessig, and completely it's stupid to attack him over this, or believe he's part of some conspiracy. He was primarily trying to bring up the incredibly fascinating, and important issue of: "Can, in the long run, purely technological means protect privacy?"

It is, however, entirely reasonable to question if a corporation that took part in "Team Themis" could/would actually develop such technology.

jaekwon11• 13 years ago

No, purely technological means cannot protect privacy!

jaekwon11• 13 years ago

Nevertheless, it is the very idea that you can strike a "balance" between privacy and law, that allows for the existence of the Utah data center. The existence of this architecture of surveillance poses a real existential threat to your privacy. It's a technological atomic bomb in the making. The more powerful the center becomes, the more likely it is to attract the unscrupulous.

The "bizarre insistence" is not on purity of political issues, but it's on the purity of information security. The surveillance state is a rather binary thing... the architecture exists, or it doesn't. No amount of internal audits can make it any safer.

Also, you should hear Russ Tice's (first NSA whistleblower) recent interview with the boiling frog where he claims to believe that politicians are being blackmailed after being spied on.

espeed6• 13 years ago

This view held by those in power that "idealists are weak" is an idea ripe for disruption.

The view was stated in a post yesterday "Freedom: The Big American Lie" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5962459):

To snub and even to wound your most zealous supporters, as Obama has done, is regarded as a mark of maturity in Washington. This is not because snubbing or wounding them is a brave thing to do, but exactly the opposite: Because the righteous attitude of the idealist is repugnant to the men of power, who know that idealists are, in fact, men of weakness, entitled to neither courtesy nor respect.

Maybe the culture of power could be disrupted if a world dominated by bankers and takers was usurped by these makers whom learned to thrive in a culture of openness and sharing. Maybe this change in culture could usher in a New Camelot. Idealistic? -- yes. Possible? -- absolutely, if leading founders make solving this problem their next challenge.

The US was founded on a set of ideals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream). This country was started by founders. It can be restored by founders.

rayiner3• 13 years ago

Idealists are weak in a democracy because their devotion to ideological purity makes them unable to form the coalitions, which are necessary to have any political impact in a majoritarian system.

Its silly to claim that "makers" are idealists by nature. Most of the "makers" I know are engineers, and if anything engineering as a profession has a distinctly conservative, "don't rock the boat" mentality. E.g. I wouldn't call any of the civil engineers I know high-minded idealists, but rather intensely pragmatic and carefully conservative (which is kind of what you want in your bridge-builders...).

The "American Dream" bears little resemblance to the founding principles of the republic. Much of what he perceive as the "American Dream" is populist rhetoric added to the American narrative by Andrew Jackson and FDR, along with nationalist rhetoric added during the Cold War.

The country was founded by lawyers, another profession not exactly known for its idealism. The American "revolution" was a deeply conservative one, mostly seeking a return to the status quo as it was before the British, drained by wars with France, started hitting up the colonies for money. Indeed, much of the American polity viewed the radicalism of the French Revolution with skepticism and distaste (at one point Thomas Paine was arrested in France and scheduled to be executed).

lawnchair_larry• 13 years ago

What is "bizarre" about opposing big data surveillance exactly? We know you believe in "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear", since you've said as much in previous comments, but it seems unfair to claim that the opposing view is bizarre.

mpyne9• 13 years ago

The only "bizarre" thing is the insistence on purity (or if you rather, binary logic instead of fuzzy logic), not the position itself.

Any decent politician can exploit this to derail the entire point of the ideologue, by tying the ideologue into supporting things that the majority oppose. Try to imagine an interview given to a Senate subcommittee where a hacktivist claims with a straight face that '...more people die in car accidents each day than in 9/11, so what's the big deal?'

Sometimes compromise is actually better for the people overall. Sometimes strategic retreat allows a political party to be in an advantageous position when the other side inevitably makes a misstep. On the other hand, stubbornly digging a line in the sand risks trapping the party position in a salient, only to later be "overcome by events".

It can be OK to say "Your idea is stupid, and I don't support it. But if it's implemented it should contain at least X, Y, Z to minimize the damage your stupid idea would cause". But tech activists don't generally ever get to that point, and should their objections be overcome the final result ends up being more damaging than it otherwise might have been.

dram• 13 years ago

Sounds like great news for Glenn Greenwald. Can we see the audit trail for Team Themis and understand more about how Palantir was contracted to be paid $3.6MM for malicious datamining to attack a US journalist?

aortega• 13 years ago

I have the sensation that palantir and prism must be related in some way.

wmf• 13 years ago

Given that "Palantir Intelligence integrates disparate data from disconnected data silos at massive scale for low-friction interaction with intelligence officers." I think it's very likely that government analysts are using Palantir to analyze data gathered with PRISM. But whether they use Palantir or a corkboard, I don't see how that makes much difference about the legality of PRISM itself.

gregors• 13 years ago

It's because the CIA is a major backer of Palantir. Palantir put out the site https://analyzethe.us/ Tracking and analyzing is what they do.

The CIA is also a major backer of mongodb and they aren't getting called out. http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/18/mongodb-maker-10gen-closes-...

mpyne9• 13 years ago

"Next in the WUO news: Department of Defense a major backer in corn foodstuff development programs. Corn farmers remain suspiciously silent about the whole thing. Do the corn farmers realize how their corn is being used???"

jaekwon11• 13 years ago

Lessig (or something) is deleting my comment on Disqus. Here it is:

----

The the government's claims of transparency and audibility of the NSA's PRISM program is analogous (if not directly related) to the claims of Palantir's. Search for "immutable auditing" below:

http://www.palantir.com/wp-content/static/pg-analysis-blog/2...

But even with such an audit trail to the core, it is known that it isn't sufficient:

http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~accorsi/papers/imf09....

I wager that for any given system that touts immutable audibility, there is a way to hack around it. Privacy through automated means is impossible. At best it is a kind of DRM that the NSA can easily work around secretly if it wanted it. What we should be advocating instead is Perfect Forward Secrecy in our internet architecture, and the dismantling of PRISM and related data centers.

Prof Lessig, in your book "Code", you are using the issue of copyright to condone the current direction of the surveillance state and offering red herrings as "balancing" compromises. Such a balance is impossible in the face of concentrated storage of (even encrypted) storage data by intelligence agencies. As long as the NSA can tap the wires and record information in vast databases for cold storage, we are absolutely in risk.

More technical discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5966942

P.S., FTFY: "I have not, AND would not ever, accept money from Palantir..."

espeed6• 13 years ago

Jeff Jonas (https://twitter.com/JeffJonas) has been working on a similar immutable audit system at IBM. It's part of his G2 Sensemaking system that started as a skunk works project in 2011...

Sensemaking on Streams – My G2 Skunk Works Project: Privacy by Design (PbD) (2011) http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2011/02/sensemaking-...

Found: An Immutable Audit Log (2007) http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/11/found-an-imm...

Immutable Audit Logs (IAL’s) (2006) http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/02/immutable_au...

Yesterday’s Technology Review Story: Blinding Big Brother, Sort of (2006) http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/01/yesterdays_t...

Also see...

G2 | Sensemaking Two Years Old Today (2013) http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2013/01/g2-sensemaki...

G2 | Sensemaking – One Year Birthday Today. Cognitive Basics Emerging (2012) http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2012/01/g2-sensemaki...

On the freedom to speak

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