Howard Reed | Balancing private communication with public interest

Although I confess to being an early internet fanboy with delusions that it would solve all the world’s problems, it is now easy to observe that deploying a technology that allows everyone to connect immediately to everyone else in not necessarily an unalloyed good.

The proliferation of hardware and software that allows surveillance on a scale never before seen – Edward Snowden’s “turnkey tyranny” – is no doubt a threat to liberalism. Naturally, Silicon Valley has sought technical solutions to this problem (rather than pursue political or legal routes) and in doing so have prompted the wide-scale deployment of end-to-end encryption (E2E) technologies designed to ameliorate people’s concerns over said surveillance.

Never in the history of telecommunications has it been technically impossible to eavesdrop on the electronic communication of the public. This combined with the ability to essentially broadcast messages to possibly hundreds of people with great ease is creating some interesting side-effects – some of which the creators of this technology are beginning to acknowledge.

As our use of this technology becomes more sophisticated my principal fear is that as it stands E2E services provides the ability for a group of people – geographically separated – to co-ordinate their activity completely in secret. This is already well recognised by intelligence agencies and militaries the world over when it comes to terrorist groups (for the military a loss of advantage in the monopoly they once held on this technology).

Terrorism aside, any form of organised criminal activity becomes a lot easier using these technologies. Any form of political organising – particularly that not palatable to the majority and requiring secrecy to protect it from scrutiny – becomes significantly easier. Any form of corrupt conduct that requires co-ordination becomes significantly easier. Any bizarre craze that would quickly be hosed down if it were known about builds critical mass.

How then to balance the desire for private communication with these unwanted effects? I would propose a legal solution rather than a technical one. Instead of demanding ‘backdoors’ being programmed as some countries have (which leaves devices vulnerable), it could be legislated that the communications programs only permit end-to-end encryption between two people. Group chats would not be protected by encryption.

There is a very definite place for secure remote communication between people – in the case of the journalist communicating confidentially with a source for example – but the ability to broadcast secret messages to multiple people in an instant I believe will create more problems than it solves. If a message is critical enough that it needs to be sent in secret, then one would take the time to ‘laboriously’ send it to multiple people.

An obsession with frictionless communication combined with a valid concern about the interest of the government in the average person’s affairs has led us to this point. I fear that a continued technological arms race between governments and their citizens will lead inevitably to a government victory. A compromise must be reached though it may be one that neither party will be entirely comfortable with.

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Some it seems are waiting for government to raise the white flag…

E2E would have had far less popularity if [expletive deleted] governments hadn’t abused surveillance power to hoover up all the internet and communication. Stop that and I’ll stop using it.

Yes, this is a pie in the sky put the genie back in the bottle argument.

And Narcissus strikes a more hopeful note…

If ‘corrupt conduct that requires coordination becomes significantly easier’ then surely non-corrupt conduct should also become significantly easier? And therefore it follows that governments should be able to sufficiently operate and organise in the current environment in a manner that successfully maintains the same balance of control that has always existed?

And perhaps one could argue, from a social Darwinian perspective, that if modern governments indeed can not maintain this balance, then their extinction is nigh, and new forms of social organisation will emerge. Attempts by governments to use traditional approaches (threats of violence and incarceration) to contain, restrain, control their subjects (be it justified or otherwise) will not survive the information age. 

The age of control through bullying and force is sun-setting. In a digital world without borders, only those leaders that demonstrate leadership merits will be followed. Politicians holding anachronistic Machiavellian playbooks and attempting to ‘lead’ by a show of alpha-male strength and power will only attract those followers who would happily follow the path of the dinosaur.

(‘The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia’: there may be constituencies and politicians that did not pass maths at school, but inevitably their influence on the world will be diminished to the point of non-existence).