Month: January 2015

I spoke yesterday evening at a Data Protection Day event in Trinity College Dublin. The theme was “What does the Internet say about you?”. It was organized by the Information Compliance Office and the Science Gallery in Trinity. Jessica Kelly of Newstalk introduced and chaired the event. You can download audio of my talk here (via SoundCloud), and you can download slides for my talk here (via SlideShare).

I was full of my usual caffeine-deprived doom about the challenges which technology pose for privacy. Jeanne Kelly, a partner in Dublin solicitors firm of Mason Hayes & Curran, spoke about the still-pending EU Data Protection Regulation. Conor Flynn, principal of Information Security Assurance Services, spoke about our digital footprints. And Sinéad McSweeney, Director of Public Policy for Europe, the Middle East and Aisa, at Twitter, talked about Twitter’s foundational commitments to freedom of expression and individual privacy. The evening was recorded for podcast, and I’ll blog about those presentations when the podcast is available.

In this post, I want to mention one point which I made near the end of my talk. I coined a new word – the last word in the title to this blogpost. In his speech on leaving the US Presidency in January 1961, Eisenhower warned against the growing power of the military-industrial complex. In modern surveillance terms, we might term this the security-corporate complex. And we already have a word for when the military/security state goes bad, as illustrated in George Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451, and Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange. That word is “dystopia”.

However, we don’t have a word for when the industrial/corporate society goes bad, as illustrated in Dave Eggers’ The Circle (cover pictured top left). I think it’s beyond time we had one, and the derivation of “dystopia” provides a guide. It was coined as a counterpoint to “utopia”, devised by Thomas More, initially to describe “nowhere”, from the Greek “ou” = “not” and “topos” = “place”, and now to describe the “perfect state”, from “eu” meaning “good”, and “topos” meaning “place”. Reflecting this derivation, John Stuart Mill devised “dystopia” as “frightening state”, from the Greek “dys” meaning “bad”, and (again) “topos” meaning “place”.

I suggest that we need a word for “frightening company”, and that we can devise one by following the lead provided by More and Mill. Let’s keep “dys” as the prefix, and look for a suitable word to which to add it. Greek provides “aguris”, which means “crowd” or “group” (or “gathering”, “assembly” or “marketplace”, and which has already lent other words to modern English). Hence, from “dys” meaning “bad”, and “aguris” meaning “crowd” or “group”, I suggest “dysaguria”, as a noun meaning “frightening company”, and “dysagurian” as the adjective to describe that company.

Indeed, “dysaguria” is the perfect noun and “dysagurian” is the perfect adjective to describe the eponymous company in Dave Eggers’ The Circle. It’s not in the same league as Orwell, or Huxley, or Bradbury, or Burgess. But it does raise very important questions about what could possibly go wrong if one company controlled all the world’s information. In the novel, the company operates according to the motto “all that happens must be known”; and one of its bosses, Eamon Bailey, encourages everywoman employee Mae Holland to live an always-on (clear, transparent) life according the maxims “secrets are lies”, “sharing is caring”, and “privacy is theft”. Eggers’s debts to dystopian fiction are apparent. But, whereas writers like Orwell, Huxley, Bradbury, and Burgess were concerned with totalitarian states, Eggers is concerned with a totalitarian company. However, the noun “dystopia” and the adjective “dystopian” – perfect though they are for the terror of military/security authoritarianism in 1984, or Brave new World, or Farenheit 451, or A Clockwork Orange – do not to my mind encapsulate the nightmare of industrial/corporate tyranny in The Circle. On the other hand, “dysaguria” as a noun and “dysagurian” as an adjective, in my view really do capture the essence of that “frightening company”.

And now, finally armed with an appropriate word, I can sum up the theme of my talk yesterday evening. In much the same way that we must be vigilant against a military/security dystopian future, we must also be on our guard against an industrial/corporate dysagurian one.

To mark Data Protection Day on Wednesday 28 January 2015, the Information Compliance Office in Trinity College Dublin have teamed up with the Science Gallery to find out: What does the Internet say about you? They have organised a Panel Discussion hosted by Newstalk‘s Jessica Kelly, where Ireland’s leading voices on data protection will discuss

Online Privacy – What does the Internet say about you

It will be held on Wednesday 28 Jan 2015 at 6:00pm in the JM Synge Lecture Theatre, Room 2039, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin (map here). The speakers include:

Sinéad McSweeney, Director of Public Policy, Twitter;
Jeanne Kelly, Partner, Mason Hayes & Curran Solicitors;
Conor Flynn, ISAS Ltd; and
Eoin O’Dell, School of Law, Trinity College Dublin. My provisional working title is:

What the Internet knows about you, and do you have the right to make it forget?

The world wide web is now more than 25 years old; it is transforming how we live and how we think about ourselves and our identities; and the law is struggling to catch up. Vint Cerf, a pioneer of the internet and now Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist, recently told a US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) hearing that “privacy may be an anomaly” (pdf) in the age of social media, and this poses profound challenges for our legal, philosophical and ethical conceptions of privacy. We are told that sharing is caring. But, in the age of social media, where we share every last detail of our lives, are we really caring for our right to privacy? Is the Internet an elephant that never forgets? Or does the right to be forgotten – recently recognised by the Court of Justice of the European Union in Case C-131/12 Google Spain – mean that you have the right to make it forget (pdf) (at least some of) what it knows about you.

All are welcome to attend; attendance is free; but registration is required.

On Sunday 10 January 2015, the Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) joined an array of world leaders and an estimated two million people at a rally in Paris against terrorism in the aftermath of the murderous attack on Charlie Hebdo. In Ireland, unfounded claims that the publication of Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed would amount to blasphemy at Irish law have led to several calls to repeal the blasphemy provisions in Article 40.6.1(i) of the Irish Constitution and section 36 of the Defamation Act, 2009.

However, despite his attendance at the Paris rally on Sunday 10 January 2015, not two days later on Tuesday 12 January 2015, the Taoiseach was insistent that a referendum on removing the offence of blasphemy from the Constitution will not be held during the lifetime of this Government. (more…)

Professor Hille Haker will deliver a public lecture on

The Ethics of Security and Surveillance Technologies

in the Trinity Long Room Hub, on Thursday 22 January 2015, at 18:30. In this public lecture, organised by the Confederal School of Religions, Peace Studies and Theology at Trinity College Dublin, and the Ethics and Privacy Working Group of the ADAPT centre at TCD, Prof Haker will outline her thoughts on the ethics of surveillance technologies. In particular, she will address the key questions:

Security and freedom: do we need both?
And can we enjoy both without the pursuit of one jeopardising the other?

Prof Haker is a member of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE), which advises the European Commission on ethical issues. On 20 May 2014, the EGE submitted to the Commission their Opinion no 28 on “Ethics of Information and Communication Technologies”. In an era where rapid advances in telecommunications and computing have enabled the data of billions of citizens around the globe to be tracked and scrutinized on an unprecedented scale, the Opinion aims to provide a reference point for the Commission regarding the ethics of security and surveillance measures.

Building upon the Opinion, in this lecture, Prof Haker considers the tensions between security and freedom. After broadening the concept of security to describe the general human needs and rights to secure their well-being (UN), ‘security’ has recently been narrowed down again, in light of terrorist and criminal activities. One area of concern is the expansion of surveillance technologies. The ‘re-turn’ to the narrow security concept has been framed as a necessary ‘trade off’ between security and freedom.

Prof Haker will consider whether this ‘framing’ appropriate, whether surveillance undermines trust as a condition for social cooperation, and whether surveillance technologies will affect us both in our personal relationships and in our presence in the public sphere. And she will argue that a new ‘social contract’ is needed that not only readjusts the political control of individuals but also critically examines the role of companies promoting security and surveillance technologies in comparison with other socio-economic efforts to create security for human beings.

Professor Hille Haker holds the Richard McCormick S.J. Chair of Ethics at Loyola University Chicago. She is a member of the EGE. From 2003-2005, she was Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA and from 2003 – 2009 Chair of Moral Theology and Social Ethics at the University of Frankfurt, Germany.

I wrote the following as an OpEd for the University Times:

The attack on Charlie Hebdo, and the murders of ten journalists and two policemen, are not only a tragedy for the victims, their families, and their colleagues, but also an assault upon freedom of expression and the fabric of western democracy. The only appropriate response is to refuse to give in to such an outrage, and instead to support and exercise the fundamental freedoms for which the victims gave their lives.

It is therefore troubling that Dr Ali Selim – admittedly in response to a line of leading questions from a radio journalist – should threaten legal action against any Irish media outlet which chooses to publish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed which had been published by Charlie Hebdo. I assume that he has in mind the offence of blasphemy contained in section 36 of the Defamation Act, 2009. It was included in that Act to give effect to the constitutional requirement that the publication of “blasphemous … matter” should be a criminal offence. However, section 36 is very narrowly drawn, and its terms would not be satisfied by the publication of a Charlie Hebdo cartoon to illustrate a story on the attack on the magazine.

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