If there is one thing that's clear here, it is that there there
is no consensus about what those "real problems" are here, much
less how to mitigate them. Indeed, it is unlikely such a
consensus could exist. You have different people and communities
advancing their own views and agendas, and occasionally showing up
and humming their way at physical gatherings to express the
sentiment of the moment. And, the IETF is only one among hundreds
of venues engaged in these activities.
Zuboff's surveillance capitalism construct is by definition, political-economic rather than technical. And its control is clearly proceeding on a significant scale at the EU almost every day.
--tony
We should not use the term 'surveillance capitalism' it really isn't a useful way to think about the real problems the IETF has to face.
A lot of work here in the 1990s was tainted by the assumption that the only adversary we had to be worried about was our own government. Then people belatedly started to realize that private companies can collect data and hand it over to our government.
A lot of folk still haven't realized that it is not just our governments that are threat actors and they are not even the most serious threats. The threats I spend most time worrying about are the ones that go round infiltrating groups like Anonymous with offers of 'cocaine and threesomes'. The ones that start fake transparency organizations headed by people who go on the run to avoid a rape charge. The ones where the dictator's electoral opponents end up being shot to death and where members of the elite are falling out of open windows at a rate reminiscent of Rome in the time of Caligula.
Framing the problem as 'surveillance capitalism' immediately skews the focus and omits the most serious actors. It also cuts us off politically from the policy community allies we need to get these issues fixed.
The US isn't going to start taking personal privacy seriously until they see the national security dimensions of the issue. The folk we need to reach are not going to respond well to the language of Zuboff and Monboit.
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