If we look
at economic and social risks of new technologies, outsiders will often
immediately fall into the trap of considering this to be about the illegal use
of peer-2-peer networks, applications such as bitcoin etc, for socially
unwanted activities or even criminal activities. From there on it is a small
step to forbid such activity, regulate it, overregulate it. But we should take
a wider perspective here.
For me,
Phil Zimmerman was the person who made a lasting impact, when he explained,
somewhere in the late 1990s, during a speech at a digital money conference his
considerations behind developing Pretty Good Privacy (see also his explainer himself: Why I Wrote PGP). His argument was mainly
that the new digital society has to be built in such a way that it guarantees a
situation in which a people are still able to communicate and act in way which
is not invaded or controlled by government tools/techniques. Whereas the old analogue
world would allow the people smart analogue ways of creating their own spaces
for communicating and fooling government with fake analogue id's and such, it
would be much harder to do this in a digital world. Hence the need for a
peer-2-peer simple mechanism as Pretty Good Privacy.
Zimmerman
outlined one very significant theme during his speech. He noted that the
assumption of a continuous benevolent government is not realistic. Governments
come and go, some may be more democratic than others and even strong
democracies may turn into dictatorships, depending on the circumstances. It is
therefore important to design society, governments and the technologies that we
use to manage society, guarantee that a balance exists between the powers of
government and those of the public. The public, the people should always be
allowed to remain digitally out of sight of government. Such a robust structure
would be important to ensure a fair treatment of the people over a long period
of time.
It is clear
that this requirement: to allow for and to actually create areas where the
government cannot see what happens means that those areas are scary for
regulators. Will they facilitate crime by doing so? Perhaps. Will they allow
for huge pockets of creativity? Certainly ! But it will be the strong
governments that are able to allow this. They will act from a position of
strength and not be afraid. The weak governments, or the scary governments, or
the ill-intending governments will seek to monitor everything and control all
digital activities. This will certainly fail. But while doing so, they may instil
tools that are very dangerous tools in the hand of governments when they turn
from benevolent to evil. It will tilt the balance towards a situation that
ill-intending governments can no longer be overturned by a social revolution.
There is no
need for governments to be afraid of technological progress in the hands of the
people. It is a good thing, to be cherished and to be allowed. The simple labelling
of such activity as possibly criminal is the wrong frame. The reverse is also
wrong: regulators with good intentions are not by definition tools in the hands
of dictators. The right frame is: dictators exist just as criminals. Society
should ensure that neither of these can become too powerful due to
technological of legal measures and it is for this reason that we need to
balance our human rights to privacy with the goal to prevent criminality.
Finding
this balance is not easy but over the last weeks we have witnessed too many occasions
where governments seem to go to far. German police wanting access to home devices. The FATF-ruleon surveillance for virtual assets. Ghost accounts into Whatsapp. Giving your social media handles when entering the US. We should not let ourselves be
caught in this wrong direction over intrusive government behaviour.
There is a
very legitimate reason to develop and create new technologies that safeguard
the public and it is a pity that many policy makers in the world may not have
been hearing the clear message that Phil Zimmerman sent them. They really could
do with open their minds more. So for them I’m embedding this video. Just to be
able to learn from history.
