BrainTech Conference - Article Analysis

Futurists: Feds to squash online freedom - In this report from the BrainstormTech Conference held this past summer, "futurist" Lawrence Lessig predicts that a terrorist attack on the stability of the Internet will prompt the U.S. government to clamp down on Internet freedoms in an online parallel to the Patriot Act. In making his prediction, Lessig related conversations he had with Richard Clarke, former federal counter-terrorism adviser about how the majority of provisions in the Patriot Act were written pre-911 and similarly, the federal government has proposed changes in the law regarding it's use of technology ready when a "9/11" event occurs. Lessig elaborates on this notion in his book on page 76 where he says that "a really devastatingly destructive work...will trigger the political resolve to do what so far governments have not done: push to complete the work of transforming the Net into a regulable space."

Two of the values in tension here are the rights of privacy compared to the value of national security. In other words, can or should government infringe on rights of privacy to "protect" the Internet and all that hinges on it from commerce to social networking to national secrets.

In this article, the suggestion is that the government will use the constraints of "Law" and "Architecture" to regulate the Internet. An alternative way to address this potential problem could be the use of "Market" to ensure redundancies are built into the network or create products that help identify and block potential threats.

My concern is that when an event takes place, it will generate sufficient political will among the masses to "do something" and the rights of privacy will again suffer. I believe our federal government has already drifted well across the line of individual freedoms and liberty envisioned by the framers of our Constitution. In so doing, we as a nation have become increasingly dependent upon the government to protect us from bad things. But that dependence and protection have come at a high price. And with dependence, comes an increasing inability to stand, act and think for ourselves. This to me, the value of freedom, liberty and privacy are far greater than the value of protection from "bad things" happening.