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Allocating Power and Assigning Responsibility in the Internet Society

-- By CeliaDiederichs - 11 Oct 2019

Introduction

The original purpose of the Internet was to empower the individual by giving decentralized groups an immense ability of self-education through obtaining and sharing information. Today the source of power in the digital era is data that is produced by us. Yet we claim to be powerless in regaining freedom in the digital era. This paper analyzes how effective power in the Internet is allocated between the people, the private sector and governmental institutions and how this power may be measured and utilized.

Empowering and Exploiting the People

There is no evidence to believe the individual is no longer empowered but mainly exploited by the Internet. Convinced of end-user responsibility, Eyal argues that users owe themselves protection by changing their Internet habits (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/06/technology/phone-screen-addiction-tech-nir-eyal.html). With this I agree, acknowledging that there is an unhealthy sense of carelessness in how we allow the Internet dictate our lives. We cannot allow ourselves to dwell in the illusion that infringements upon our individual privacy rights are without consequence or outweighed by the convenience of technological tools. Cambridge Analytica proves that this is pure pretense.

The explanation for our passivity may lie within our fondness of the precise tools that threaten our dignity. Our readiness to surrender privacy rights in exchange for comfort is discomforting to say the least. Whilst the Bystander Effect may offer an explanation, it does not exculpate us from enslaving ourselves to technology by accepting default configuration, arbitrary terms of service or unknown backdoors. Most citizens will reason their innocence with a lack of the necessary tools to lead change within the Internet. Abstinence is supposedly the only but socially unacceptable mean of self-protection. In light of the many ways in which the Internet has empowered citizens, this reasoning seems circular. However leveraging the power of technology requires IT expertise that most don’t have and in battling for our data we face gigantic monopolies.

The Rise of Big Tech

The dominant players of Big Tech have created a net that is not designed to be unraveled its ordinary user. The business model of capitalizing our data would crumble if we and not the private sector actually remain in control of our data. Measured by the volume of data within the private sector and the value of human resource within Big Tech, this area beholds the most power over the Internet society. The rise of power of the private sector is also demonstrated by the various ways in which private companies begin to resemble sovereign nations. Mark Zuckerberg has become the creator of his own version of what he names a "Supreme Court" for content moderation on Facebook (https://verfassungsblog.de/difficult-times-ahead-for-the-facebook-supreme-court/). Just one month before that, Germany's chancellor saw national sovereignty over monetary policy threatened by the release of Facebook's digital currency libra (https://cointelegraph.com/news/german-govt-approves-new-plan-to-block-private-parallel-currencies). The appointment of a unique ambassador to the technology industry by Denmark welcomes Big Tech on the stage of global diplomacy (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/03/technology/denmark-tech-ambassador.html).

No matter how closely private institutions mirror governmental bodies in name or function, there remains one essential difference: private bodies are not bound but protected by the constitution. Whilst profiting from certain laws, private organs will circumvent regulatory schemes by tactically maneuvering through the cyber-sphere. Nor are they bound by any ethical code. Despite their immense power and capability to cause change, we must be careful in allowing multinational for-profit corporation enter the stage of global politics.

Governmental Institutions and Surveillance

Traditionally a fundamental tool for an increase of power through technology attributed pre-dominantly to the government is mass surveillance. In Western democratic societies, characterized by a strong sense of individual freedom, this is often regarded as the biggest threat to our freedom. However, the idea that we shall limit surveillance to regain power from the government is not shared universally. A glance at more authoritarian regimes that enjoy wide-spread and unquestioned support proves that power obtained through surveillance, even if as far-reaching as China's social credit system, is power not everyone wants to take from the government (https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-24/why-china-s-social-credit-systems-are-surprisingly-popular). Whilst governments may strongly compete for power with the private sector, they have the most consequential means to exercise their power due to their police power. However, governmental action is often hindered by bureaucracy, regulations and rigorous procedure as well as exposed to scrutiny. This rigorous framework and the slow pace of institutional power might be most detrimental to its utilization. The disruptive character of technology allocates most power to those who have the highest adoption rate to technological development (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/the-battle-for-power-on-the-internet/280824/). Although the Internet was intended to liberate us from authoritarian regimes, we have no serious advantage over the government through the Internet. This is because Internet tools accessible to the vast majority of the citizens are also instruments of the government. As an example, instead of using airborne leaflet propaganda, the Chinese 50c army now uses social meda to fabricate approximately 448 million propaganda posts every year (https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/50c.pdf?m=1463587807).

Interaction and Isolation

There is an unequal access to sources of power in and over the Internet society and an imbalanced array of means to employ power amongst the people, private entities and the government. The most powerful figure is one arising from interactive pairing of cross-sectoral tools. So far we observe the power of such partnership between the private and public sector for instance in Xinjiang, where the government employs face-recognition algorithms from A.I. companies to suppress minority groups (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/technology/china-surveillance-artificial-intelligence-racial-profiling.html). We also but less frequently encounter an immense power for social change where two sectors unite in one person such as Snowden, who utilized governmental knowledge to act in his capacity as a member of a democratic society.

The above examples show that two-party collaboration will leave the third in dangerous isolation. We need alliances. Our biggest bargaining power in finding one will come from the threat, if serious, of abandoning precisely those machines through which we empower the other sectors.

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