xlink:href='#ch3fn31'>[31] The system of ownership encourages groups to put special interests above general interests. Sharing information is undoubtedly the most efficient way to allocate productive resources. The less there is to gain from credit for ideas, the more likely people are to share ideas rather than worry about who deserves credit for them.
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For most book publishers, publishing an argument against intellectual property raises a dilemma. If the work is copyrighted as usual, this clashes with the argument against copyright. On the other hand, if the work is not copyrighted, then unrestrained copying might undermine sales. It’s worth reflecting on this dilemma as it applies to this book.
It is important to keep in mind the wider goal of challenging the corruptions of information power. Governments and large corporations are particularly susceptible to these corruptions. They should be the first targets in developing a strategy against intellectual property.
Freedom Press is not a typical publisher. It has been publishing anarchist writings since 1886, including books, magazines, pamphlets and leaflets. Remarkably, neither authors nor editors have ever been paid for their work. Freedom Press is concerned with social issues and social change, not with material returns to anyone involved in the enterprise.
Because it is a small publisher, Freedom Press would be hard pressed to enforce its claims to copyright even if it wanted to. Those who sympathise with the aims of Freedom Press and who would like to reproduce some of its publications therefore should consider practical rather than legal issues. Would the copying be on such a scale as to undermine Freedom Press’s limited sales? Does the copying give sufficient credit to Freedom Press so as to encourage further sales? Is the copying for commercial or noncommercial purposes?
In answering such questions, it makes sense to ask Freedom Press. This applies whether the work is copyright or not. If asking is not feasible, or the copying is of limited scale, then good judgement should be used. In my opinion, using one chapter — especially this chapter! — for nonprofit purposes should normally be okay.
So in the case of Freedom Press, the approach should be to negotiate in good faith and to use good judgement in minor or urgent cases. Negotiation and good judgement of this sort will be necessary in any society that moves beyond intellectual property.
4. Antisurveillance
Surveillance, a serious and growing issue, is basically a problem of unequal power. The usual reform solutions, such as codes of professional ethics, laws and regulations, give only an illusion of protection. Another approach is to promote grassroots challenges to surveillance either through disruption or by replacing social institutions that create a demand for surveillance. A long-term programme for institutional change helps in choosing directions for antisurveillance campaigns.
Today, information about citizens is collected by dozens of corporations and government bureaucracies, including police, taxation departments, marketing firms and banks. Cameras and listening devices are commonplace. Technologies to automatically recognise people’s faces or hands are being refined.
So central is surveillance that countries such as Sweden, Germany and the United States have been called “surveillance societies.” Yet few people are enthusiastic about the increased capacity of large organisations to collect information about themselves. Opinion surveys regularly show that most people attach great value to their own privacy — though not always to other people’s privacy. However, concern about invasions of privacy has not led to a mass movement against surveillance. Privacy campaigner Simon Davies notes that activist privacy groups are folding up or losing energy, though citizen action is desperately needed.
So far, the main responses to the threat of surveillance — codes of professional ethics, laws and regulations — have given only an illusion of protection. These responses may be adequate in some circumstances, but they don’t address the driving forces behind surveillance: power, profit and control. Codes of ethics seem to have made little impact, while laws and regulations are regularly flouted or made obsolete by technological change.
There is another approach, which has received relatively little attention: to challenge and replace the social structures that promote surveillance. My aim in this chapter is to outline a radical antisurveillance agenda. It is an exercise in thinking about massive changes in the organisation of society and especially in the distribution of power. Of course, this can be considered “unrealistic” in the sense that such changes will be opposed by powerful groups and thus be difficult to achieve. But envisioning alternatives has the advantage of indicating directions for today’s campaigns that will make some contribution to long-term change. What is actually unrealistic is to imagine that the problem of surveillance can be addressed by band-aid methods.
First, I give an overview of the problem and discuss surveillance as a problem of unequal power. Next, I describe the failure of reform solutions — that is, solutions implemented by powerful groups — and the limitations of technical fixes. Then I describe two grassroots programmes against surveillance, a “disruption programme” and an “institutional change programme.” The disruption programme is one designed to disrupt the process of surveillance, for example by corrupting databases. The institutional change programme is built around challenging and replacing social institutions that create a demand for surveillance. In conclusion, I argue that the institutional change programme provides help in choosing directions for present-day antisurveillance campaigns.
The problem
Surveillance is not a new problem[1]. The lack of privacy in small, intimate communities is notorious. What is new are invasions of privacy by large, remote organisations. There are two main factors here. First is the rise of large-scale bureaucratic organisations, both corporations and government bodies, in the past few hundred years. Second is the development of technologies for communicating at a distance and for collecting and processing large quantities of information. Computers and telecommunications are central here.
The capacities for collecting data about individuals are epitomised by the computerised database. There are thousands of such databases, including police files, military records, welfare files, marketing lists, taxation files, medical records and credit listings. Most of these are compiled when we fill out forms, such as a census form, an application for a loan, a registration for a hospital visit, enrolment at a school, an application for an automobile licence or a subscription to a magazine. Further information is added by banks (every deposit or withdrawal), doctors (each visit to a hospital), teachers (grades for all courses), and many others.
The capacity to manipulate databases on a computer allows invasions of privacy never imagined in earlier
