Surveillance, Censorship, and Open Source Software
Once again digging into my thesis in bite-size chunks!
Critical Data Politics and Surveillance
It is important to look at the potential for blockchain technology to be co-opted as a surveillant technology. It is suggested in Blockchain Revolution (2016) that governments and large corporations are going to do everything they can to maintain control and build in surveillance technologies into applications of blockchain, and that the NSA must already be analyzing data coming through the blockchain, which was later confirmed and detailed in the Intercept (D. Tapscott and A. Tapscott 2016:274; Biddle 2018). Certainly large companies and institutions are becoming involved with and developing applications based on blockchain technology. Seeing large players like IBM and Microsoft entering the field, it becomes apparent that they are not likely to be motivated by anonymity factors or even some of the security benefits associated with users controlling their own data, depending on the application. It is for precisely this reason that it is important to get a feel of where the initial leanings and benefits of Bitcoin and other blockchain technology are before larger players start to adopt and co-opt the technology into further solidifying the status quo in terms of economic factors and surveillance.
Regardless of the actions that a user takes, some information will be recorded as transactions that occur on the blockchain simply as a result of its function. Some conceptualization of the interface is required here, and can be provided through a number of theorists. Blockchains can typically interacted with through a variety of interfaces, which can define the possibilities of interaction with the blockchain in ways that may or may not be obvious to the user, before the user is even involved (Bratton 2015). “… an interface necessarily limits the full range of possible interaction in a specific and arbitrary way. Any interface, because it is a specific summary, must eliminate or make invisible a whole range of other equally valid possible interactions.” (Bratton 2015: 221). Gane and Beer talk about three different ways to conceptualize interfaces: “they are cultural devices; they mediate everyday experiences in social and physical spaces; and they enable different forms of power and/or surveillance” (Gane and Beer cited in Silva and Frith 2012:3). While the first two conceptualizations may not hold immediate obvious relevance to the study of blockchain, the aspect of different forms of power and surveillance is certainly relevant. Nonetheless, the aspects of blockchain interfaces as cultural devices and mediators of experiences are both highly relevant to analysis of the blockchain space. Also, these conceptualizations and perspectives allow us to move beyond a man versus machine binary, and look at each aspect of the interaction as an important part of the interaction as a whole, and having a role in its definition. It takes into account the importance of the interface in defining or limiting the user in particular ways, while also understanding that users themselves also play a role. Again, even though alternative theoretical models can be used to contribute to conceptualization and definitions to understand the implications and importance of blockchain, users, and source code, Actor-Network Theory (ANT) can be used in conjunction with these as an analytical tool to ensure that the approach to analysis does not become too technologically deterministic or symbolic interactionist in direction. Though interfaces have an important role within the blockchain system, they are simply one actant within the system of association, and implications of user interaction cannot be ignored in favor of an argument that removes all agency from the user.
Data politics in the blockchain space is closely related to previously discussed ideological aspects of the hacker ethic, and what might be characterized as general interest in preservation of personal liberty and autonomy. This perspective often becomes associated with arguments for the preservation of privacy, but there is some differentiation required here as well. While associations with privacy concerns are not without warrant, and in cases of technological utilization as privacy protests wholly justified, in many cases what is actually being discussed is the concept of liberty. This differentiation is teased out by Menand (2018) by examining several court cases in the U.S. that were presumed and sometimes argued on the case of privacy, when what was really at stake was some form of liberty. This is the same motivating factor for Amir Taaki’s development of Dark Wallet software for Bitcoin while living in a European anarchist commune — he was interested in raising the cost of blanket surveillance of populations to a level where it simply is no longer feasible again, even using advanced technology (Bartlett 2014; Lough 2017). It is an attempt at reclamation of liberty that has been removed, either real or perceived. The distinction between privacy arguments and those that focus on preservation of liberty are important, as recent research has shown that in many cases as arguments are simply rolled into a wholesale privacy argument, the end results tend to lead to more clandestine partnerships between states and private technology firms in order to retain surveillance features while remaining outside of some regulatory or oversight typically required of the state (Rider 2017).
The concept of layers of the stack from Bratton (2014, 2015) is particularly relevant in the context of this conversation. For one, blockchains do require some form of communication between each other to create their network, and this is currently done over the open web for many if not all of the major blockchains. In this way, the entire blockchain space is another layer on top of the internet, and could potentially be conceptualized as a web 3.0, given some of the new functions that blockchains enables on top of the social aspects of web 2.0. Bratton is also theoretically important given that his meticulous conceptualization of society as a computational stack of layers that each interact with each other.
In a shorter piece that preceded his larger book The Stack, Bratton also expanded on the concept of the black stack, and of other stacks to come in The Black Stack (2014). In this piece, Bratton seems to mesh concepts of multiplicity and risk theory in order to discuss a number of different future stacks that could come to be. Already in 2014, Bratton talks about platforms beginning to displace some state function, a trend that seems to have continued apace, or even accelerated since publication. These functions may not be officially recognized by the state as legitimate forms of identification and services, but are adopted by individuals and groups because they are simply more functional in everyday life for them.
Bratton talks about current digital surveillance culture as “exhibitionism in bad faith” (2014), in terms of a reverse panoptic effect. It seems logical, particularly post-Cambridge Analytica, and the ensuing faux outrage over data privacy as well as the consequent onslaught of privacy policy revisions after the European Union passed their new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Even after the public revelations of how the data from Facebook was obtained and used, almost no one that I spoke to about this was surprised in any way by the data that Facebook or other companies’ had on them, nor that it could or would be used in the ways in which it was shown to have been used. By this, and by continuing to embody this reverse panoptic, bad faith exhibitionism, the black stack that Bratton theorizes becomes closer to reality. Bratton’s discussion on the black stack, or more importantly, the possible future existence of different stacks, is also reminiscent of both multiplicity and risk theory. Multiplicity implies that there exists at any given time, more than a single reality, based on social interactions, enactments, experience, and other factors. At the same time, risk theory assumes also that there will be multiple outcomes in the future, but that they are not known yet — however, we evaluate choices and potential outcomes based on best guesses about what those future outcomes might be in the context of the decision or decisions to be made. Each of these perspectives add novel but interesting conversations about the future, as well as the implications that each of us have on creating future outcomes, stack or otherwise.
One last small but important aspect to consider in the evaluation of blockchain technology is the power of algorithms. Blockchain uses the concept of algorithms in a way that is relatively distinct from the ways algorithms typically function, as it is intended to generate consensus across network nodes and distribute power horizontally through the system as opposed to applications like algorithmic surveillance, sorting, or predictions. At the same time, there are certainly power dynamics related to the use of algorithms within a blockchain system, and may contribute to certain tensions within network decentralization-centralization. In any case, we need to be aware of the existence of algorithms as an actant that has traceable associations and that produce effects through its situatedness within the system in relation to other actants, and not necessarily simply by its existence as an algorithm (Neyland and Möllers 2017).
Free and Open Source Software Development
In blockchain systems, these realities are partially enacted and created through social aspects of hackers and programmers attempting to achieve something novel and interesting through code, and partially through the code itself running as an autonomous piece of software or contract. Both aspects often embody a prefigurative political aspect as well. While the idea of software and platform development has been mentioned, it is important at this point to consider aspects of free and open source software (F/OSS) development more theoretically, particularly through Gabriella Coleman’s ethnographic account of one such community, Coding Freedom (2013). In her work, it is evident that there are strong ideological and politically motivated reasons for individuals to participate in development of F/OSS coding projects as well as for individuals or groups to release software for free, many of which were tied to ideas of free speech, accessibility, and general individual freedoms.
The aspects of ideological engagement with F/OSS development works well together with ideas of enactment and multiplicity, particularly when you have ideologically motivated coders creating digital rules or programs with technology specific language (code). This is one social area in which the concept of enactment is embodied through the development and proliferation of technology, shaped by conversations throughout development, and continued improvement through individuals engaged in the open source and code improvement aspects of the area — something that I refer to as both “hacker culture” and a “hacker ethic” (Coleman 2010, 2013, 2015; Levy 1984; Wark 2004).
References from this section:
Bartlett, Jamie. 2014. The Dark Net. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House.
Biddle, Sam. 2018. “The NSA Worked To ‘Track Down’ Bitcoin Users, Snowden Documents Reveal.” The Intercept, March 20. Retrieved March 22 2018 (https://theintercept.com/2018/03/20/the-nsa-worked-to-track-down-bitcoin-users-snowden-documents-reveal).
Bratton, Benjamin. 2014. “The Black Stack”. e-flux, March 2014. Retrieved August 12 2017 (https://www.e-flux.com/journal/53/59883/the-black-stack).
Bratton, Benjamin. 2015. The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
Coleman, E. Gabriella. 2013. Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Levy, Steven. [1984] 1996. “Chapter 1: The Tech Model Railroad Club” and “Chapter 2: The Hacker Ethic” Pp. 1–93 in Hackers, Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Urbana, IL: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved June 15 2018 (www.gutenberg.org).
Lough, Adam B. [Director]. 2017. The New Radical [Film/Documentary]. The Orchard.
Menand, Louis. 2018. “Nowhere to Hide: Why do we care about privacy?” The New Yorker, June 18, pp. 24.
Neyland, Daniel and Norma Möllers. 2017. “Algorithmic If … THEN rulels and the conditions and consequences of power.” Information, Communication & Society 20(1): 45–62.
Rider, Karina. 2017. “The privacy paradox: how market privacy facilitates government surveillance. Information, Communication & Society 21(10): 1–17.
Silva, Adriana de Souza e, and Jordan Frith. 2012. Mobile Interfaces in Public Spaces: Locational Privacy, Control, and Urban Sociability. New York, NY: Routledge.
Tapscott Don and Alex Tapscott. 2016. Blockchain Revolution. New York, NY: Portfolio/Penguin.
Wark, McKenzie. 2004. A Hacker Manifesto. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
My thesis in its entirety, of which this is a snippet, is available in full at: https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/handle/1974/24924
