Re: [saag] Ten years after Snowden (2013 - 2023), is IETF keeping its promises?

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]>]

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.