Naturally, spy agencies do not like it. The United States National Security Agency has pushed for keys designed by the NSA itself. Others suspect that the NSA will design the key so that it can break the code and be able to read all telecommunications. Individual users, by contrast, want a system to guarantee the integrity of their messages.[6]
Many government and corporate elites won’t be attracted to public key encryption either. They prefer encryption systems which ensure that they can find out what their employees or clients are communicating.
One lesson from this debate is that technical solutions are not automatically implemented, however logical they may appear. Technical approaches to collecting and processing information are the product of the exercise of power. In the case of public key encryption, the power struggle is visible. Usually such struggles are not.
Technical choices pervade privacy issues. They are involved in designing questionnaires and standard forms. (Why, for example, should I have to provide my social security number when assigning copyright of an article to a publisher?). They are involved in setting up computer databases. They are involved in establishing standards for telecommunication systems. These and other technical choices involve the exercise of power. A technical fix is not an easy solution to the problem of surveillance, but simply another arena for the same basic debates.
Disrupting surveillance
Surprising as it may seem, much surveillance depends on cooperation or acquiescence by the person about whom information is collected, such as when we fill out forms. As well, the cooperation or acquiescence of various workers is required for surveillance to be successful. These dependencies suggest a number of measures to corrupt databases. I will comment afterwards on the disadvantages of this approach.
Disrupters can fill out forms with small mistakes in their names, addresses, and other details. This will create multiple entries in databases and make it more difficult for database matches to be successful.
Disrupters can fill out forms with imaginary information, or with information about famous people (or about database managers). This will swamp the database with incorrect information.
Workers who key in data from forms can introduce mistakes.
Computer programmers can corrupt files. A subtle approach is to make changes that reduce the value of files, for example replacing the occasional number “0” by “1” or replacing the occasional letter “a” by “e.” (Just imagine how this would affect a record of personal data about yourself.)
Computer programmers can take more drastic action against files, for example totally erasing databases (and backup copies). There are a number of destructive techniques, such as logic bombs, Trojan horses and computer viruses.
One needn’t be a computer specialist to be disruptive. A magnet can be quite sufficient to damage computer tapes and discs, and pulling out a few circuit boards can disable a computer.
In the face of direct surveillance by bugs or observation, a range of devious techniques can be imagined, such as disguises and misleading taped messages.
These sorts of antisurveillance tactics are in the great tradition of the Luddites, the British workers of the early 1800s who are remembered for smashing the machines that put them out of work but who had a much more developed political programme than is usually recognised. In assessing the disruption programme for antisurveillance, it is worthwhile to mention some contemporary sabotage activities. A considerable amount of workplace sabotage occurs, almost entirely on an individual basis.[7] There is little in the way of an organised movement to use such disruptive tactics. There is, though, some advocacy. The magazine Processed World has given sympathetic treatment to office workers who subvert business-as-usual through workplace sabotage. David Noble has written the most sophisticated argument for such techniques as a way for workers to challenge the power of management and capitalism.[8]
Methods of sabotage have been adopted openly by radical environmentalists under the banner of Earth First!, with the goal of protecting wilderness from governments and corporations. Their practical manuals describe techniques for pulling out survey stakes, defacing billboards, spiking trees and incapacitating bulldozers, among others. They advocate only those techniques that avoid any risk of injury to others. Their first priority is not to be caught. It should be noted that Earth First!ers also use a range of open and nondestructive methods, such as rallies and sitting in trees.[9]
Corrupting databases and other ways of disrupting surveillance challenge the encroachments of the surveillance society, but they have a number of limitations. Introducing errors into databases sounds effective, but databases are full of errors already. How much difference would more errors make? The impact would need to be financially significant (even more wrong names on mailing lists!) or politically potent (names of powerful people on embarrassing lists).
More importantly, disrupting surveillance in this fashion is, by necessity, mostly an individual activity. It provides a poor basis for mobilising a social movement; instead, it tends to breed secrecy and vanguards. Such secret activities are ideal for the duels of spy versus counterspy. When it comes to spying and infiltration, social movements are likely to come off second best to state agencies.
This was certainly the case with Earth First!, which was infiltrated by the FBI. Some Earth First!ers have renounced sabotage and secret tactics and, as a result, been able to forge links with workers in a way impossible using individualist, secretive methods.
Instead of disrupting the surveillance that is carried out by powerful organisations, another approach is to undertake “countersurveillance”: surveillance of powerful organisations. Today, large organisations and powerful individuals have as much privacy as money will buy, and most surveillance is carried out against the weak, disorganised and defenceless. The builders of weapons of mass destruction use every available means to ensure secrecy while spying on their enemies (foreign powers and peace movements). Can this pattern be challenged and reversed by promoting surveillance of the rich, powerful and dangerous?
The challenge is enormous, but some courageous individuals and groups have made efforts in this direction. A few investigators have probed the corridors of power.[10] Their exposés are incredibly threatening to organisational elites simply because they reveal what is actually happening on the inside. Such information undoubtedly contributes to better strategies by social movements. Many more exposés are needed. Even more daring is spying on spies and publicising the results, such as the efforts of the magazine Counterspy to expose CIA agents. This was so threatening to the spy agency that special legislation was passed to stop such revelations.
Much more could be said of the potential for disrupting surveillance. The techniques to do this deserve much more study and experimentation. It does seem, though, that they offer at most one part of a solution: they interfere with surveillance but do not offer an alternative to the systems that generate and thrive on it. Furthermore, as the experience of Earth First! has shown, disruption sometimes triggers increased surveillance and repression. To achieve a society with less surveillance, disruption is far from an ideal approach.
6
Lance J. Hoffman (ed.),
7
Martin Sprouse with Lydia Ely (ed.),
8
David F. Noble,
9
Dave Foreman and Bill Haywood (eds.),
10
See for example articles in