2016-12-16 neveragain.tech (Permalink: https://mumble.net/~campbell/2016/12/16/neveragain.tech) [Nothing in this post is novel. I am writing it as a personal addendum to the pledge to amplify the meaning of my signature.] After some deliberation, and with reservations, I signed the pledge at that has been circulating the internet[1], text quoted below in full, because it is a starting point. Why reservations? It is *only* a starting point. We have already built the apparatus that the signatories of this pledge refuse to build. I have long stated, quite seriously, that Mark Zuckerberg pulled off with Facebook the gigantic trove of dossiers on everyone that the NSA, the Stasi, the Gestapo, and countless other institutions of mass surveillance and coercion could only dream of creating. Ten years ago that sounded to my colleagues, friends, and family like a joke. It was not and is not a joke. And it's not just Facebook. I am optimistic that mass surveillance is not so intricately woven into the fabric of society that we can't meaningfully resist it. But it has embedded itself deeply -- not just in social media, but also in all your searches for information on the web at Google, all your commerce at Amazon, all your purchases with a credit card[2]. It is embedded into most of the press[3], our primary medium for criticism of institutions of power, who are consequently unable to contemplate rejecting mass surveillance[4]. Why reservations? Not everyone has the financial security to commit to resigning when they recognize the hints of what they are being asked to do -- which is no individual fault of their own if our society fails to support the interests of its people adequately against the interests of corporations. And with no consequences for transgression, a signature on this pledge may be only an intrinsically meaningless instrument of social capital to make its signatories feel morally superior and enhance their image to colleagues. Why reservations? It is not only about Muslims or immigrants -- mass surveillance is a general instrument of control on its own, whether or not it is used to target an ethnic group. Why reservations? The impetus for the pledge now is obviously Trump and the incoming administration. But a Clinton administration would doubtless only have expanded, like the Obama administration did, the powers that the moderate liberal tribe is afraid Trump might use, such as indefinite detention[5][6], mass immigrant family detention[7], general warrants[8], and assassination[9]. My signature of this pledge is emphatically nonpartisan. Prior to November 8th, I began to plan a visit D.C. on January 20th to protest whichever of the bad options on the ballot was chosen. Bruce Schneier wrote yesterday that his personal list of priorities for the next four years would have been the same under Trump and Clinton[10]. This is not because Trump and Clinton are equivalent (though they do share a common propensity for weighing the interests of multinational corporations over people, such as in their practically identical plans for an enormous corporate tax holiday[11]), but because the premise that the current qualified leader will use powers such as assassination responsibly has led all three branches of the US federal government to irresponsibly develop those powers, and those powers persist beyond the president under whom they were instated. I hope that by signing the pledge I will remind my future self to be vigilant, and perhaps I will in at least a small way embolden those who respect me to do the same -- by making it, if only a little bit, more socially acceptable to resist. [Update, 2016-12-16: Shortly after I wrote this, I became aware of Mike Perry's much better response written at the Tor Project blog: Mike Perry, `Technology in Hostile States: Ten Principles for User Protection', Tor Project Blog, December 16, 2016. https://blog.torproject.org/blog/technology-hostile-states-ten-principles-user-protection] Text of the pledge: We, the undersigned, are employees of tech organizations and companies based in the United States. We are engineers, designers, business executives, and others whose jobs include managing or processing data about people. We are choosing to stand in solidarity with Muslim Americans, immigrants, and all people whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by the incoming administration’s proposed data collection policies. We refuse to build a database of people based on their Constitutionally-protected religious beliefs. We refuse to facilitate mass deportations of people the government believes to be undesirable. We have educated ourselves on the history of threats like these, and on the roles that technology and technologists played in carrying them out. We see how IBM collaborated to digitize and streamline the Holocaust, contributing to the deaths of six million Jews and millions of others. We recall the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War. We recognize that mass deportations precipitated the very atrocity the word genocide was created to describe: the murder of 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey. We acknowledge that genocides are not merely a relic of the distant past—among others, Tutsi Rwandans and Bosnian Muslims have been victims in our lifetimes. Today we stand together to say: not on our watch, and never again. We commit to the following actions: - We refuse to participate in the creation of databases of identifying information for the United States government to target individuals based on race, religion, or national origin. - We will advocate within our organizations: . to minimize the collection and retention of data that would facilitate ethnic or religious targeting. . to scale back existing datasets with unnecessary racial, ethnic, and national origin data. . to responsibly destroy high-risk datasets and backups. . to implement security and privacy best practices, in particular, for end-to-end encryption to be the default wherever possible. . to demand appropriate legal process should the government request that we turn over user data collected by our organization, even in small amounts. - If we discover misuse of data that we consider illegal or unethical in our organizations: . We will work with our colleagues and leaders to correct it. . If we cannot stop these practices, we will exercise our rights and responsibilities to speak out publicly and engage in responsible whistleblowing without endangering users. . If we have the authority to do so, we will use all available legal defenses to stop these practices. . If we do not have such authority, and our organizations force us to engage in such misuse, we will resign from our positions rather than comply. . We will raise awareness and ask critical questions about the responsible and fair use of data and algorithms beyond our organization and our industry. Signed, among one thousand eight-hundred forty-two others as of this post, Taylor `Riastradh' Campbell, Research Engineer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology [1] I signed by email, so it may take some time for my signature to appear on the page. [2] You think it is the secrecy of your credit card number that keeps your credit card secure? No -- the security of the credit card system rests first and foremost on the profiles the credit card companies build of your activity to detect unusual behaviour. It is not merely possible for credit card companies to monitor your purchasing behaviour -- it is essential to the functioning of the credit card system that they continuously monitor and profile it. [3] Quinn Norton, `The Hypocrisy of the Internet Journalist', The Message at medium.com, May 29, 2015. https://medium.com/message/the-hypocrisy-of-the-internet-journalist-587d33f6279e [4] Editorial Board, `Boston police enter era of cyber community policing', Boston Globe, December 2, 2016. https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2016/12/02/boston-police-enter-era-cyber-community-policing/DtZRX7y7x6VsQFYYBE6yyO/story.html [5] D. Parvaz, `US lawmakers legalise indefinite detention', Al-Jazeera, December 16, 2011. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/12/201112773810926474.html [6] Chris McGreal, `Military given go-ahead to detain US terrorist suspects without trial', The Guardian, December 14, 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/15/americans-face-guantanamo-detention-obama [7] Claudia Morales, `Families crossing the border: ``We are not criminals'' ', CNN, November 2, 2016. http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/02/us/family-immigration-detention-centers/ [8] Jeff John Roberts, `FBI's New Hacking Powers Take Effect This Week', Fortune, November 30, 2016. https://fortune.com/2016/11/30/rule-41/ [9] Jeremy Scahill, `The Assassination Complex', The Drone Papers, The Intercept, October 15, 2015. https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-complex/ [10] Bruce Schneier, `My Priorities for the Next Four Years', Schneier on Security, December 15, 2016. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/12/my_priorities_f.html [11] David Dayen, `The Huge Corporate Tax Cut Hillary Clinton Doesn't Talk About', New Republic, October 21, 2016. https://newrepublic.com/article/138023/huge-corporate-tax-cut-hillary-clinton-doesnt-talk -- Copyright (c) 2006--2016, Taylor R. Campbell. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice, and the copyright notice, are preserved.