ClicKhole
Negative
**1NC Neolib
The aff’s merely accommodates the expansion of neoliberalism—instead debates
should resolve why we allow ourselves to be tracked instead of can the internet be
free
Morozov 2013 (Evgeny; The Snowden saga heralds a radical shift in capitalism; Dec 26;
www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d2af6426-696d-11e3-aba3-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3gMjZTjV8; kdf)
Technical infrastructure and geopolitical power; rampant consumerism and ubiquitous surveillance; the
lofty rhetoric of “internet freedom” and the sober reality of the ever-increasing internet control – all
these are interconnected in ways most of us would rather not acknowledge or think about. Instead, we
have focused on just one element in this long chain – state spying – but have mostly ignored all others. But the
spying debate has quickly turned narrow and unbearably technical; issues such as the soundness of US foreign policy,
the ambivalent future of digital capitalism, the relocation of power from Washington and Brussels to Silicon Valley have not received due
attention. But it
is not just the NSA that is broken: the way we do – and pay for – our communicating today is
broken as well. And it is broken for political and economic reasons, not just legal and technological ones: too many
governments, strapped for cash and low on infrastructural imagination, have surrendered their communications
networks to technology companies a tad too soon. Mr Snowden created an opening for a much-needed global debate that
could have highlighted many of these issues. Alas, it has never arrived. The revelations of the US’s surveillance addiction
were met with a rather lacklustre, one-dimensional response. Much of this overheated rhetoric – tinged with antiAmericanism and channelled into unproductive forms of reform – has been useless. Many foreign leaders still cling to the fantasy that, if only
the US would promise them a no-spy agreement, or at least stop monitoring their gadgets, the perversions revealed by Mr Snowden would
disappear. Here the politicians are making the same mistake as Mr Snowden himself, who, in his rare but thoughtful public remarks, attributes
those misdeeds to the over-reach of the intelligence agencies. Ironically, even he might not be fully aware of what he has uncovered. These are
not isolated instances of power abuse that can be corrected by updating laws, introducing tighter
checks on spying, building
more privacy tools, or making state demands to tech companies more transparent. Of course, all those things
must be done: they are the low-hanging policy fruit that we know how to reach and harvest. At the very least, such measures can create
the impression that something is being done. But what good are these steps to counter the much more
disturbing trend whereby our personal information – rather than money – becomes the chief way in which we
pay for services – and soon, perhaps, everyday objects – that we use? No laws and tools will protect citizens who, inspired by the
empowerment fairy tales of Silicon Valley, are rushing to become data entrepreneurs, always on the lookout for new, quicker, more profitable
ways to monetise their own data – be it information about their shopping or copies of their genome. These citizens
want tools for
disclosing their data, not guarding it. Now that every piece of data, no matter how trivial, is also an asset in disguise, they just
need to find the right buyer. Or the buyer might find them, offering to create a convenient service paid for by their data – which seems to be
Google’s model with Gmail, its email service. What eludes Mr Snowden – along with most of his detractors and supporters – is that we
might be living through a transformation in how capitalism works, with personal data emerging as an
alternative payment regime. The benefits to consumers are already obvious; the potential costs to
citizens are not. As markets in personal information proliferate, so do the externalities – with democracy
the main victim. This ongoing transition from money to data is unlikely to weaken the clout of the NSA;
on the contrary, it might create more and stronger intermediaries that can indulge its data obsession.
So to remain relevant and have some political teeth, the surveillance debate must be linked to debates about
capitalism – or risk obscurity in the highly legalistic ghetto of the privacy debate. Other overlooked dimensions
are as crucial. Should we not be more critical of the rationale, advanced by the NSA and other agencies, that they need this data to engage in
pre-emptive problem-solving? We
should not allow the falling costs of pre-emption to crowd out more systemic
attempts to pinpoint the origins of the problems that we are trying to solve. Just because US intelligence
agencies hope to one day rank all Yemeni kids based on their propensity to blow up aircraft does not
obviate the need to address the sources of their discontent – one of which might be the excessive use of
drones to target their fathers. Unfortunately, these issues are not on today’s agenda, in part because many
of us have bought into the simplistic narrative – convenient to both Washington and Silicon Valley – that we just need
more laws, more tools, more transparency. What Mr Snowden has revealed is the new tension at the very
foundations of modern-day capitalism and democratic life. A bit more imagination is needed to resolve
it.
Neoliberalism guarantees the dystopian impacts of the 1ac and worse—only a refusal
solves
Harvey 2014 (David [Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate Center
of the City University of New York]; Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism; Oxford
University Press; p. 264-7; kdf)
It is not entirely beyond the realms of possibility that capital could survive all the contradictions hitherto
examined at a certain cost. It could do so, for example, by a capitalist oligarchic elite supervising the mass genocidal
elimination of much of the world's surplus and disposable population while enslaving the rest and
building vast artificial gated environments to protect against the ravages of an external nature run toxic,
barren and ruinously wild. Dystopian tales abound depicting a grand variety of such worlds and it would be wrong to rule them out as
impossible blueprints for the future of a less-than-human humanity. Indeed, there is something frighteningly close about some dystopian tales,
such as the social order depicted in the teenage hit trilogy The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins or the futuristic anti-humanist sequences of
David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Clearly, any
such social order could only exist on the basis of fascistic mind control
and the continuous exercise of daily police surveillance and violence accompanied by periodic
militarised repressions. Anyone who does not see elements of such a dystopian world already in place around us is deceiving herself or
himself most cruelly. The issue is not, therefore, that capital cannot survive its contradictions but that the cost of
it so doing becomes unacceptable to the mass of the population. The hope is that long before dystopian
trends turn from a trickle of drone strikes here and occasional uses of poison gas against their own
people by crazed rulers there, of murderous and incoherent policies towards all forms of opposition in
one place to environmental collapses and mass starvation elsewhere, into a veritable flood of
catastrophic unequally armed struggles everywhere that pit the rich against the poor and the privileged
capitalists and their craven acolytes against the rest ... the hope is that social and political movements
will arise and shout, 'fa! Basta!' or 'Enough is enough', and change the way we live and love, survive and reproduce.
That this means replacing the economic engine and its associated irrational economic rationalities should by now be obvious. But how this
should be done is by no means clear and what kind of economic engine can replace that of capital is an
even murkier proposition given the current state of thought and the lamentable paucity of imaginative public debate devoted to the
question. In the analysis of this, an understanding of capital's contradictions is more than a little helpful, for, as the German playwright Bertolt
Brecht once put it, 'hope is latent in contradictions'. In excavating this zone of latent hope, there are some basic propositions that must first be
accepted. In The Enigma of Capital, I concluded: 'Capitalism
will never fall on its own. It will have to be pushed. The
accumulation of capital will never cease. It will have to be stopped. The capitalist class will never
willingly surrender its power. It will have to be dispossessed:1 I still hold to this view and think it vital that others do too. It will
obviously need a strong political movement and a lot of individual commitment to undertake such a task. Such a movement cannot
function without a broad and compelling vision of an alternative around which a collective political
subjectivity can coalesce. What sort of vision can animate such a political movement? We can seek to change the world
gradually and piecemeal by favouring one side of a contradiction (such as use value) rather than the other
(such as exchange value) or by working to undermine and eventually dissolve particular contradictions (such as
that which allows the use of money for the private appropriation of social wealth). We can seek to change the trajectories
defined by the moving contradictions (towards non-militaristic technologies and towards greater equality in a world of
democratic freedoms). Understanding capital's contradictions helps, as I have tried to indicate throughout this book, in developing a long-term
vision of the overall direction in which we should be moving. In much the same way that the rise of neoliberal capitalism from the 1970s
onwards changed the direction of capital's development towards increasing privatisation and commercialisation, the more emphatic
dominance of exchange value and an allconsuming fetishistic passion for money power, so an anti-neoliberal movement can point us in an
entirely different strategic direction for the coming decades. There
are signs in the literature as well as in the social
movements of at least a willingness to try to redesign a capitalism based in more ecologically sensitive
relations and far higher levels of social justice and democratic governance.2 There are virtues in this
piecemeal approach. It proposes a peaceful and non-violent move towards social change of the sort initially witnessed in the early
stages ofTahrir, Syntagma and Taksim Squares, although in all these instances the state and police authorities soon responded with astonishing
brutality and violence, presumably because these movements had the timerity to go beyond the boundaries of repressive tolerance. It seeks to
bring people together strategically around common but limited themes. It can have, also, wide-ranging impacts if and when contagious effects
cascade from one kind of contradiction to another. Imagine what the world would be like if the domination of exchange value and the alienated
behaviours that attach to the pursuit of money power as Keynes described them were simultaneously reduced and the powers of private
persons to profit from social wealth were radically curbed. Imagine, further, if the alienations of the contemporary work experience, of a
compensatory consumption that can never satisfy, of untold levels of economic inequality and discordance in the relation to nature, were all
diminished by a rising wave of popular discontent with capital's current excesses. We would then be living in a more humane world with muchreduced levels of social inequality and conflict and muchdiminished political corruption and oppression. This
does not tell us how
highly fragmented though numerous oppositional movements might converge and coalesce into a more
unified solidarious movement against capital's dominance. The piecemeal approach fails to register and
confront how all the contradictions of capital relate to and through each other to form an organic
whole. There is a crying need for some more catalytic conception to ground and animate political action. A collective political
subjectivity has to coalesce around some foundational concepts as to how to constitute an alternative
economic engine if the powers of capital are to be confronted and overcome. Without that, capital can
neither be dispossessed nor displaced. The concept I here find most appropriate is that of alienation.
**1NC Internet Centrism K
The aff’s merely accommodates the expansion of neoliberalism—instead debates
should resolve why we allow ourselves to be tracked instead of can the internet be
free
Morozov 2013 (Evgeny; The Snowden saga heralds a radical shift in capitalism; Dec 26;
www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d2af6426-696d-11e3-aba3-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3gMjZTjV8; kdf)
Technical infrastructure and geopolitical power; rampant consumerism and ubiquitous surveillance; the
lofty rhetoric of “internet freedom” and the sober reality of the ever-increasing internet control – all
these are interconnected in ways most of us would rather not acknowledge or think about. Instead, we
have focused on just one element in this long chain – state spying – but have mostly ignored all others. But the
spying debate has quickly turned narrow and unbearably technical; issues such as the soundness of US foreign policy,
the ambivalent future of digital capitalism, the relocation of power from Washington and Brussels to Silicon Valley have not received due
attention. But it
is not just the NSA that is broken: the way we do – and pay for – our communicating today is
broken as well. And it is broken for political and economic reasons, not just legal and technological ones: too many
governments, strapped for cash and low on infrastructural imagination, have surrendered their communications
networks to technology companies a tad too soon. Mr Snowden created an opening for a much-needed global debate that
could have highlighted many of these issues. Alas, it has never arrived. The revelations of the US’s surveillance addiction
were met with a rather lacklustre, one-dimensional response. Much of this overheated rhetoric – tinged with antiAmericanism and channelled into unproductive forms of reform – has been useless. Many foreign leaders still cling to the fantasy that, if only
the US would promise them a no-spy agreement, or at least stop monitoring their gadgets, the perversions revealed by Mr Snowden would
disappear. Here the politicians are making the same mistake as Mr Snowden himself, who, in his rare but thoughtful public remarks, attributes
those misdeeds to the over-reach of the intelligence agencies. Ironically, even he might not be fully aware of what he has uncovered. These are
not isolated instances of power abuse that can be corrected by updating laws, introducing tighter
checks on spying, building
more privacy tools, or making state demands to tech companies more transparent. Of course, all those things
must be done: they are the low-hanging policy fruit that we know how to reach and harvest. At the very least, such measures can create
the impression that something is being done. But what good are these steps to counter the much more
disturbing trend whereby our personal information – rather than money – becomes the chief way in which we
pay for services – and soon, perhaps, everyday objects – that we use? No laws and tools will protect citizens who, inspired by the
empowerment fairy tales of Silicon Valley, are rushing to become data entrepreneurs, always on the lookout for new, quicker, more profitable
ways to monetise their own data – be it information about their shopping or copies of their genome. These citizens
want tools for
disclosing their data, not guarding it. Now that every piece of data, no matter how trivial, is also an asset in disguise, they just
need to find the right buyer. Or the buyer might find them, offering to create a convenient service paid for by their data – which seems to be
Google’s model with Gmail, its email service. What eludes Mr Snowden – along with most of his detractors and supporters – is that we
might be living through a transformation in how capitalism works, with personal data emerging as an
alternative payment regime. The benefits to consumers are already obvious; the potential costs to
citizens are not. As markets in personal information proliferate, so do the externalities – with democracy
the main victim. This ongoing transition from money to data is unlikely to weaken the clout of the NSA;
on the contrary, it might create more and stronger intermediaries that can indulge its data obsession.
So to remain relevant and have some political teeth, the surveillance debate must be linked to debates about
capitalism – or risk obscurity in the highly legalistic ghetto of the privacy debate. Other overlooked dimensions
are as crucial. Should we not be more critical of the rationale, advanced by the NSA and other agencies, that they need this data to engage in
pre-emptive problem-solving? We
should not allow the falling costs of pre-emption to crowd out more systemic
attempts to pinpoint the origins of the problems that we are trying to solve. Just because US intelligence
agencies hope to one day rank all Yemeni kids based on their propensity to blow up aircraft does not
obviate the need to address the sources of their discontent – one of which might be the excessive use of
drones to target their fathers. Unfortunately, these issues are not on today’s agenda, in part because many
of us have bought into the simplistic narrative – convenient to both Washington and Silicon Valley – that we just need
more laws, more tools, more transparency. What Mr Snowden has revealed is the new tension at the very
foundations of modern-day capitalism and democratic life. A bit more imagination is needed to resolve
it.
Their epistemology is bankrupt – vote neg on presumption
Morozov 2013 (Evgeny [former fellow @ Stanford & Georgetown]; To Save Everything, Click Here:
The Folly of Technological Solutionism; p. post-script; Pro-quest; kdf)
On the odd chance that this book succeeds, its greatest contribution to the public debate might lie in
redrawing the front lines of the intellectual battles about digital technologies. Those front lines will
separate a host of Internet thinkers who are convinced that “the Internet” is a useful analytical category
that tells us something important about how the world really works from a group of post-Internet
thinkers who see “the Internet,” despite its undeniable physicality, as a socially constructed concept that could perhaps
be studied by sociologists, historians, and anthropologists—much as they study the public life of ideas such as “science,” “class” or
“Darwinism”—but that tells us nothing about how the world works and even less about how it should work. The
former group thinks
that “the Internet” is the key to solving some of the greatest policy puzzles of the day; the latter thinks
that “the Internet” is only confusing policymakers more and that the sooner digital activists learn how to
make their arguments without appealing to “the Internet,” the better. Since my own theoretical sympathies should be
quite clear by now—I’m with the second camp, in case you fell asleep at the wheel—I won’t bore you with the details of how I think the first
camp will come down in flames. Instead, I’d rather use this opportunity to articulate a very broad outline of what this second, post-Internet
approach to technology might look like and what its preoccupations might be. First, it
would abstain from the highly emotional
and polemical discussions over what “the Net” or even “social media” do to our brains, freedom, and
dictators. This post-Internet approach is much more interested in the world of trash bins and parking
meters in our mundane everyday lives than in the role of Twitter in the Arab Spring—and not because it’s
parochial in outlook but because it doesn’t believe in the power of such ambitious and ambiguous questions. The role of Twitter’s algorithms in
highlighting the #Jan25 hash tag, which brought some global attention to the cause of the protesters in Tahrir Square, on the other hand, is fair
game. Will a viral TED talk emerge out of this second approach? Probably not; its
findings won’t be very sexy, and it won’t
default to some banal abstract truth about “democracy” or the “Middle East.” On the whole, though, this highly
empirical but small-scale approach will probably tell us more about the opportunities and limitations of digital technologies than the entire
“Does social media cause revolutions?” debate that wasted so much of everyone’s time—including mine—in
early 2011. Those pursuing this post-Internet approach will be extremely cautious—even skeptical—about any causality claims made with
respect to digital technologies. They will recognize that, more often than not, these technologies are not the causes of the world we live in but
rather its consequences. The
post-Internet approach will not treat these digital technologies as if they fell from
the sky and we should therefore not—God forbid—question their origins and only study their impact. Instead,
those relying on a post-Internet approach will trace how these technologies are produced, what voices and ideologies are silenced in their
production and dissemination, and how the marketing literature surrounding these technologies taps into the zeitgeist to make them look
inevitable. Internet theorists looking at, say, MP3 technology will think “Napster”—that quintessential “Internet technology”—and start their
account from the mid-1990s; post-Internet theorists looking at MP3 technology will think of the history of sound compression and start their
account in the 1910s (as Jonathan Sterne has done in his recent MP3: The Meaning of a Format). Internet theorists studying search engines will
begin with Stanford and Google perhaps, with a cursory mention of Vannevar Bush’s memex; post-Internet theorists will look much further
back than that, unearthing such obscure figures as Albert Kahn (and his effort to create “The Archives of the Planet” through photographs), as
well as Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine with their Mundaneum, an attempt to gather all the world’s knowledge. This list can go on indefinitely,
but the trend is clear: one unexpected benefit of a post-Internet approach is that it deflates the shallow and historically illiterate accounts that
dominate so much of our technology debate and opens them to much more varied, rich, and historically important experiences. Once we
realize that for the last hundred years or so virtually every generation has felt like it was on the edge of a technological revolution—be it the
telegraph age, the radio age, the plastic age, the nuclear age, or the television age—maintaining the myth that our own period is unique and
exceptional will hopefully become much harder. Perhaps, this will make it all but impossible for solutionists to mobilize revolutionary rhetoric
to justify their radical plans to the public. Once
we move to a post-Internet world, there is a small chance that our
technology pundits (and perhaps even some academics) will no longer get away with proclaiming something a
revolution and then walking away without supplying good, empirical evidence—as if that revolution were so selfevident and no further proof was needed. I too used to be one of those people—albeit very briefly—sometime between 2005 and 2007. I
remember perfectly the thrill that comes from thinking that the lessons of Wikipedia or peer-to-peer networking or Friendster or Skype could
and should be applied absolutely everywhere. It’s a very powerful set of hammers, and plenty of people—many of them in Silicon Valley—are
dying to hear you cry, “Nail!” regardless of what you are looking at. Thinking that you are living through a revolution and hold the key to how it
will unfold is, I confess, rather intoxicating. So I can relate to those Internet thinkers who feel extremely comfortable with the current state of
debate, even though I can probably not forgive them. This book, I hope, has shown that most Internet theorists venerate an imaginary god of
their own creation and live in denial. Secularizing our technology debate and cleansing it of the pernicious influence of Internet-centrism is by
far the most important task that technology intellectuals face today. Everything else—especially particular policies—hinges on how such
secularization proceeds, if it does so at all. Consider one example from what used to be my own favorite field: what
exactly is the point
of operating with a term like “Internet freedom” if the very idea of “the Internet” is contested and full of
ambiguity? Discussing the particulars of the “Internet freedom agenda” without resolving the many
contradictions in its initial formulation seems counterproductive to me, as it might only legitimize that
concept further. Once our debate moves into post-Internet territory, many of the technophobic,
ahistorical accounts will hopefully become harder to pull off as well. If “the Internet” is no longer seen as
a unified force that acts on our brains or our culture, any account of what digital technologies do to our neurons or books
will need to get empirical and start talking about individual technologies and individual practices, perhaps with a nod to how such practices
evolved and coped in the past. So far, we
get none of that: we are told that “the Net” is rewiring our brains, which
is not at all a good starting point for debate. After all, so what if it’s rewiring our brains? And what should
we do about “the Net” anyway? It stirs fears alright, but we quickly get mired in cheap populism. If technophobic accounts do
become harder to produce, then there’s also a small chance we will be able to have a meaningful debate about not just the appropriateness of
technological fixes to a given problem but also about the desirability of particular technological fixes. Once we can’t reject technology outright,
we’ll need to explain why some fixes are better than others. If it makes us think and ask questions, it is a worthy enterprise all by itself.
Technology is not the enemy; our enemy is the romantic and revolutionary problem solver who resides
within. We can do nothing to tame that little creature, but we can do a lot to tame its favorite weapon:
“the Internet.” Let’s do that while we can—it would be deeply ironic if humanity were to die in the crossfire as its problem solvers
attempted to transport that very humanity to a trouble-free world.
Link: Balkanization
Use of the term “Balkanization” should be rejected – vote neg
Maurer and Morgus 2014 (Tim and Robert; Stop Calling Decentralization of the Internet
"Balkanization"; Feb 19;
www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/02/19/stop_calling_decentralization_of_the_internet_balkani
zation.html; kdf)
It’s the end of the Internet. That was the headline of the prominent Swiss newspaper NZZ on Feb. 9. And Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the
World Wide Web, recently called for a re-decentralization, declaring, “I want a Web that’s open, works internationally, works as well as
possible, and is not nation-based.” These are the latest voices in the growing chorus over the “balkanization” of the Internet and the emergence
of “splinternets”—networks that are walled off from the rest of the Web. This is an important debate, one that will affect the future of the
Internet. And with a major global conference on this topic taking place in Brazil in April and the World Summit on the Information Society +10
scheduled for 2015, it is high time to bring more clarity and nuance to it. Unfortunately,
the term balkanization itself creates
problems. Depending on whom you ask, balkanization can be a positive or negative process. For some,
the term represents a move toward freedom from oppression. For others, it is a reminder of centuries of
bloody struggle to hold together a region that ultimately ended in violent fragmentation, which makes
use of the word offensive to some. Fragmentation of the Internet is the term we’ll use, but maybe a creative
mind somewhere will find a better, more evocative way to describe it. The question is: What does fragmentation mean, exactly?
Is it the end of the Internet if domain names can no longer only be written using the Roman alphabet? If
so, the Internet ended in 2009, when ICANN approved alternative alphabet domain names. Is it
fragmentation if people around the world using Weibo and Yandex in lieu of Google and Twitter? Or is it data
localization and national routing – subjecting data transfers to national boundaries? This debate is a lot
more complex than most headlines suggest. The Internet is more than Facebook and it is more than the Web itself—more than the
content people access every day. However, popular discussion tends to lump these various dimensions together. It obscures the
fragmentation efforts that truly undermine the openness and interoperability of the network.
Link: Internet Freedom
Internet freedom is a rouse to expand the power of western corporations
Power and Jablonski 2015 (Shawn M [Assistant Professor of Communication at Georgia State
University] and Michael [attorney and presidential fellow in communication at Georgia State University];
The Real Cyber War; University of Illinois Press; p. 203-4; kdf)
Few dispute the centrality of information to modern economies and governance. What is contested, however, is
the legitimacy of institutions governing global information flows and the appropriate scope of state authority in managing information within its
sovereign borders.
The real cyber war is thus a competition among different political economies of the
information society. Discourses of “internet freedom,” most prominently articulated by former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, serve to legitimize a particular political economy of globalism. America’s “free flow” doctrine is a
strategic vision to legitimize a specific geopolitical agenda of networking the world in ways that
disproportionally benefit Western governments and economies. Similarly, the increasingly vocal call for information
sovereignty serves a legitimating function for state efforts to govern highly complex societies in a world wired for globally instantaneous
information and data are the new oil (chapter 3), research on comparative and competing information
neither economics, political
science, law, nor environmental studies were sufficient to understand and explain the powerful role
natural resources played in twentieth-century geopolitics. Similarly, a more historical and holistic account is
required to place the current battle for control over the world’s information flows into focus. By
emphasizing four lines of conceptual inquiry—history, social totality, moral philosophy, and praxis—a political-economy
framework places the internet-freedom movement in the broader geopolitical and economic context
within which strategic actors are competing for resources and power. It joins case studies that may otherwise not be
communications. If
policies requires a method of inquiry that spans beyond a particular disciplinary focus. Taken alone,
seen as connected, draws on historical comparison, and goes beyond documenting what is by emphasizing what ought be.
Assuming that the internet is free or that American policy can make it that way is
cyber-utopian- it overlooks global oppression that affects the internet
Morozov 11 (Evgeny Morozov. Writer and researcher who studies political and social implications of
technology. Senior writer at New Republic. “The Net Delusion.” 2011. P. 25.)//EMerz
American diplomats have been wrong to treat the Internet, revolutionary as it might seem to them, as a
space free of national prejudices. Cyberspace is far less susceptible to policy amnesia than they believe;
earlier policy blunders and a long-running history of mutual animosity between the West and the rest
won’t be forgotten so easily. Even in the digital age, the foreign policy of a country is still constrained by
the same set of rather unpleasant barriers that limited it in the analog past. As Joseph Nye and Robert
Keohane, two leading scholars of international relations, pointed out more than a decade ago,
“information does not flow in a vacuum but in a political space that is already occupied.” Until the
events in Iran, America’s technology giants may have, indeed, functioned in a mostly apolitical vacuum
and have been spared any bias that comes with the label “American.” Such days, however, are clearly
over. In the long run, refusing to recognize this new reality will only complicate the job of promoting
democracy.
Link: Internet Freedom->Democracy
Attempts to spread Western democracy via the internet and capitalism are doomed to
fail- ideological problems and empirics prove
Morozov 11 (Evgeny Morozov. Writer and researcher who studies political and social implications of
technology. Senior writer at New Republic. “The Net Delusion.” 2011. P. ix-xi.)//EMerz
*We do not endorse the ableist language in this card*
For anyone who wants to see democracy prevail in the most hostile and unlikely environments, the first decade of the new millennium was
marked by a sense of bitter disappointment, if not utter disillusionment. The seemingly inexorable march of freedom that began in the late
1980s has not only come to a halt but may have reversed its course. Expressions like “freedom recession” have begun to break out of the thinktank circuit and enter the public conversation. In a state of quiet desperation, a growing number of Western policymakers began to concede
that the Washington Consensus—that set of dubious policies that once promised a neoliberal paradise at deep discounts—has been
superseded by the Beijing Consensus, which boasts of delivering quick and- dirty prosperity without having to bother with those pesky
The West has been slow to discover that the fight for democracy wasn’t won back in
1989. For two decades it has been resting on its laurels, expecting that Starbucks, MTV, and Google will do the rest just fine. Such a
laissez-faire approach to democratization has proved rather toothless against resurgent
authoritarianism, which has masterfully adapted to this new, highly globalized world. Today’s authoritarianism
institutions of democracy.
is of the hedonism- and consumerism-friendly variety, with Steve Jobs and Ashton Kutcher commanding far more respect than Mao or Che
Guevara. No wonder the West appears at a loss. While the Soviets could be liberated by waving the magic wand of blue jeans, exquisite coffee
machines, and cheap bubble gum, one can’t pull the same trick on China. After all, this is where all those Western goods come from. Many
of the signs that promised further democratization just a few years ago never quite materialized. The socalled color revolutions that swept the former Soviet Union in the last decade produced rather
ambiguous results. Ironically, it’s the most authoritarian of the former Soviet republics—Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan—that found
those revolutions most useful, having discovered and patched their own vulnerabilities. My own birthplace, Belarus, once singled out by
Condoleezza Rice as the last outpost of tyranny in Europe, is perhaps the shrewdest of the lot; it continues its slide into a weird form of
authoritarianism, where the glorification of the Soviet past by its despotic ruler is fused with a growing appreciation of fast cars, expensive
holidays, and exotic cocktails by its largely carefree populace. The
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were started, if
anything, to spread the gospel of freedom and democracy, have lost much of their initial emancipatory
potential as well, further blurring the line between “regime change” and “democracy promotion.”
Coupled with Washington’s unnecessary abuses of human rights and rather frivolous interpretations of
international law, these two wars gave democracy promotion such a bad name that anyone eager to
defend it is considered a Dick Cheney acolyte, an insane idealist, or both. It is thus easy to forget, if only for therapeutic purposes,
that the West still has an obligation to stand up for democratic values, speak up about violations of human rights, and reprimand those who
abuse their office and their citizens. Luckily, by the twenty-first century the case for promoting democracy no longer needs to be made; even
the hardest skeptics agree that a world where Russia, China, and Iran adhere to democratic norms is a safer world. That said, there is still very
little agreement on the kind of methods and policies the West needs to pursue to be most effective in promoting democracy. As the last few
decades have so aptly illustrated, good intentions are hardly enough. Even the most noble
attempts may easily backfire,
entrenching authoritarianism as a result. The images of horrific prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib were the result, if only indirectly, of
one particular approach to promoting democracy. It did not exactly work as advertised. Unfortunately, as the neoconservative vision
for democratizing the world got discredited, nothing viable has come to fill the vacuum. While George Bush
certainly overdid it with his excessive freedomworshiping rhetoric, his successor seems to have abandoned the rhetoric, the spirit, as well as
any desire to articulate what a post-Bush “freedom agenda” might look like. But there is more to Obama’s silence than just his reasonable
attempt to present himself as anti-Bush. Most likely his silence is a sign of an extremely troubling bipartisan malaise: the growing Western
fatigue with the project of promoting democracy. The
project suffers not just from bad publicity but also from a
deeply rooted intellectual crisis. The resilience of authoritarianism in places like Belarus, China, and Iran
is not for lack of trying by their Western “partners” to stir things up with an expectation of a democratic
revolution. Alas, most such Western initiatives flop, boosting the appeal of many existing dictators, who excel
at playing up the threat of foreign mingling in their own affairs. To say that there is no good blueprint for dealing with modern authoritarianism
would be a severe understatement. Lost in their own strategizing, Western leaders are pining for something that has guaranteed effectiveness.
Their representations of the internet as the savior of democracy are rooted in western
ideology- it’s a utopian mindset that fails to recognize reality
Morozov 11 (Evgeny Morozov. Writer and researcher who studies political and social implications of
technology. Senior writer at New Republic. “The Net Delusion.” 2011. P. ix-xi.)//EMerz
Given that it’s the only ray of light in an otherwise dark intellectual tunnel of democracy promotion, the
Internet’s prominence in future policy planning is assured. And at first sight it seems like a brilliant idea.
It’s like Radio Free Europe on steroids. And it’s cheap, too: no need to pay for expensive programming,
broadcasting, and, if everything else fails, propaganda. After all, Internet users can discover the truth
about the horrors of their regimes, about the secret charms of democracy, and about the irresistible
appeal of universal human rights on their own, by turning to search engines like Google and by following
their more politically savvy friends on social networking sites like Facebook. In other words, let them
tweet, and they will tweet their way to freedom. By this logic, authoritarianism becomes unsustainable
once the barriers to the free flow of information are removed. If the Soviet Union couldn’t survive a
platoon of pamphleteers, how can China survive an army of bloggers? It’s hardly surprising, then, that
the only place where the West (especially the United States) is still unabashedly eager to promote
democracy is in cyberspace. The Freedom Agenda is out; the Twitter Agenda is in. It’s deeply symbolic
that the only major speech about freedom given by a senior member of the Obama administration was
Hillary Clinton’s speech on Internet freedom in January 2010. It looks like a safe bet: Even if the Internet
won’t bring democracy to China or Iran, it can still make the Obama administration appear to have the
most technologically savvy foreign policy team in history. The best and the brightest are now also the
geekiest. The Google Doctrine—the enthusiastic belief in the liberating power of technology
accompanied by the irresistible urge to enlist Silicon Valley start-ups in the global fight for freedom—is
of growing appeal to many policymakers. In fact, many of them are as upbeat about the revolutionary
potential of the Internet as their colleagues in the corporate sector were in the late 1990s. What could
possibly go wrong here? As it turns out, quite a lot. Once burst, stock bubbles have few lethal
consequences; democracy bubbles, on the other hand, could easily lead to carnage. The idea that the
Internet favors the oppressed rather than the oppressor is marred by what I call cyber-utopianism: a
naïve belief in the emancipatory nature of online communication that rests on a stubborn refusal to
acknowledge its downside. It stems from the starryeyed digital fervor of the 1990s, when former
hippies, by this time ensconced in some of the most prestigious universities in the world, went on an
argumentative spree to prove that the Internet could deliver what the 1960s couldn’t: boost democratic
participation, trigger a renaissance of moribund communities, strengthen associational life, and serve as
a bridge from bowling alone to blogging together. And if it works in Seattle, it must also work in
Shanghai. Cyber-utopians ambitiously set out to build a new and improved United Nations, only to end
up with a digital Cirque du Soleil. Even if true—and that’s a gigantic “if ”—their theories proved difficult
to adapt to non-Western and particularly nondemocratic contexts. Democratically elected governments
in North America and Western Europe may, indeed, see an Internet-driven revitalization of their public
spheres as a good thing; logically, they would prefer to keep out of the digital sandbox—at least as long
as nothing illegal takes place.
Cyber utopianism increases the power of authoritarian regimes-undermines the very
efforts of the movement
Morozov 11 (Evgeny Morozov. Writer and researcher who studies political and social implications of
technology. Senior writer at New Republic. “The Net Delusion.” 2011. P. xiii-xiv.)//EMerz
Authoritarian governments, on the other hand, have invested so much effort into suppressing any form
of free expression and free assembly that they would never behave in such a civilized fashion. The early
theorists of the Internet’s influence on politics failed to make any space for the state, let alone a brutal
authoritarian state with no tolerance for the rule of law or dissenting opinions. Whatever book lay on
the cyber-utopian bedside table in the early 1990s, it was surely not Hobbes’s Leviathan. Failing to
anticipate how authoritarian governments would respond to the Internet, cyber-utopians did not
predict how useful it would prove for propaganda purposes, how masterfully dictators would learn to
use it for surveillance, and how sophisticated modern systems of Internet censorship would become.
Instead most cyber-utopians stuck to a populist account of how technology empowers the people, who,
oppressed by years of authoritarian rule, will inevitably rebel, mobilizing themselves through text
messages, Facebook, Twitter, and whatever new tool comes along next year. (The people, it must be
noted, really liked to hear such theories.) Paradoxically, in their refusal to see the downside of the new
digital environment, cyber-utopians ended up belittling the role of the Internet, refusing to see that it
penetrates and reshapes all walks of political life, not just the ones conducive to democratization. 2
Link: Internet Governance
Internet governance is a meme to expand the power of neoliberalism
Power and Jablonski 2015 (Shawn M [Assistant Professor of Communication at Georgia State
University] and Michael [attorney and presidential fellow in communication at Georgia State University];
The Real Cyber War; University of Illinois Press; p. 23-4; kdf)
Connecting commodification and structuration, chapter 4 focuses on the economics of internet connectivity and the fight over
which international institutions are responsible for the regulation of digital information flows. We suggest that, at a basic level, U.S.
internet policy can be boiled down to getting as many people using the network of networks as possible,
while protecting the status quo legal, institutional, and economic arrangements governing connectivity
and exchanges online. From the global infrastructure facilitating exchanges of data to the creation of unique content and services
online, American companies are dominant, extraordinarily profitable, and, in most cases, well ahead of foreign
competition. Building on chapters 2 and 3, chapter 4 traces how economic logic continues to drive U.S. policy as well as
U.S. negotiating strategy in the international arena. From this perspective the real cyber war is not over offensive
capabilities or cybersecurity but rather about legitimizing existing institutions and norms governing internet
industries in order to assure their continued market dominance and profitability. By outlining the economic
significance of the issue—how economies of scale favor established, dominant actors, and how the current deregulated system
enables a handful of Western corporations to profit handsomely from expanded internet connectivity—
we attempt to deviate from the modernization and information-sovereignty paradigms that too often
dominate discussions of internet governance. While heavy-handed government controls over the internet should be resisted,
so should a system whereby internet connectivity requires the systematic transfer of wealth from the developing world to the developed. By
focusing on the uneven empirics of the internet’s economic significance, combined with a discussion of positive economic externalities and the
network effect, this chapter offers an alternative
hopefully a more reasonable path forward.
framing of an ongoing debate over internet governance—and
Link: Localization
The discourse of localization is a rouse for the expansion of neoliberalism
Schiller 2014 (Dan [professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science and the
Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign]; Digital Depression;
University of Illinois Press; p. 209-10; kdf)
It was a remarkably fluid moment, wherein the direction of change remained both vital and indefinite—perhaps even a historic turning point.
The multipronged
U.S. internet policy offensive in support of a transnational digital capitalism had been
widely discredited, at home and especially abroad: the U.S. was compelled to regroup.149 It was not yet evident, however,
who else would, or who could, step in to recharge or adapt this existing policy program. Brazil, interestingly, stepped forward to announce that
it would host a “Global Multi-stakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance” in April 2014. Was this a bid for autonomy from the
U.S.-centric system—or a feint? Might a coalition of nations and corporations emerge that was sufficient to assemble a formally different,
though substantially similar, policy for global internet governance? Where might this leave the United States? Bureaucrats, strategists, and
independent analysts pondered whether Brazil’s initiative might further some kind of accommodation and help rebuild legitimacy for a version
of the status quo—or move beyond it.150 In
the predominant U.S. discourse, the question of whether different
states might fracture the interoperable internet as they imposed greater national jurisdictional controls
still continued to be a touchstone; but other questions were now intervening, more far-reaching and portentous ones. Would U.S.
corporate and state power over the extraterritorial internet finally be reduced? If so, this would constitute a sea change, the profound
ramifications of which would give rise at once to other questions: What would replace U.S. unilateral globalism? Would ICANN’s corporatist
“multi-stakeholder” model be elevated, to transpose into a full-fledged global regime? Or, far less likely, would a multilateral model of internet
governance be instituted? Or,
instead, would the previous unstable stalemate find a new lease on life as U.S.centric internet governance and its erstwhile allies continued to vie against dissatisfied stakeholders
such as China and Russia? How would the U.S. leadership respond to the varied reform proposals? What
roles would be played in forthcoming initiatives by other power groupings: the European Union, Mercosur, the BRICS, the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization? Only after this book goes to press will we learn whether the U.S.–centric internet may be modified and, if so, how.
Surprises, assuredly, remain in store. But the
essential questions have to do not with “balkanization,” as Eric Schmidt
with whose political-economic interests may predominate in
any restructuring and, above all, with how—and how far—democratic principles of representation and
accountability might be imagined and established. A neglected aspect of these profound questions
brings us back once more to the U.S. state—which was not bound necessarily to act in a single, unitary way. The NSA
spying scandal revealed that the seeming fusion of interests between the U.S. Executive Branch and U.S.
networking and internet companies was actually far from stable. Not only had the spiraling business threat posed to
U.S. internet companies caused them to look for means of appearing to distance themselves politically
from the U.S. state, so that they vowed to “harden” their systems and pressed publicly for tighter laws against backdoor surveillance
programs by their own government’s spy services152—indeed, Microsoft even boasted that it would allow foreign users
of its systems to store their personal data on servers located outside the United States.153 And not only had
referred to the specter of a fractured internet,151 but
President Obama reciprocated, ignoring U.S. public opinion (which opposed NSA data collection policies) in his attempts to shore up NSA
surveillance programs and to shift the blame by declaring, “The challenges to our privacy do not come from government alone.”154 Amid this
fractiousness between U.S. internet capital and the U.S. administration, other powerful U.S. state actors also expressed alarm at what they had
long perceived as the internet’s strategic vulnerabilities. The
longstanding U.S. approach to global internet governance
in turn faced additional challenges not only from without but also from within.
Link: Oversight/Transparency
Oversight/Transparency is a sacred cow of internet centrism
Morozov 2013 (Evgeny [former fellow @ Stanford & Georgetown]; To Save Everything, Click Here:
The Folly of Technological Solutionism; p. So open it hurts; Pro-quest; kdf)
Ironically, this is the position that Lessig the academic has made a career out of opposing. But Lessig the activist and public intellectual has no
problem embracing such a position whenever it suits his own activist agenda. As someone who shares many of the ends of Lessig’s agenda, I
take little pleasure in criticizing his means, but I do think they are intellectually unsustainable and probably misleading to the technologically
unsavvy.
Internet-centrism, like all religions, might have its productive uses, but it makes for a truly awful guide
to solving complex problems, be they the future of journalism or the unwanted effects of transparency.
It’s time we abandon the chief tenet of Internet-centrism and stop conflating physical networks with the
ideologies that run through them. We should not be presenting those ideologies as inevitable and
natural products of these physical networks when we know that these ideologies are contingent and
perishable and probably influenced by the deep coffers of Silicon Valley. Instead of answering each and every digital
challenge by measuring just how well it responds to the needs of the “network,” we need to learn how to engage in narrow, empirically
grounded arguments about the individual technologies and platforms that compose “the Internet.” If, in some cases, this
would mean
going after the sacred cows of transparency or openness, so be it. Before the idea of “the Internet”
hijacked our imaginations, we made such trade-offs all the time. No serious philosopher would ever
proclaim that either transparency or openness is an unquestionable good or absolute value to which
human societies should aspire. There is no good reason why we should suddenly accept the totalizing philosophy of “the
Internet” and embrace the supremacy of its associated values just because its cheerleaders believe that
“the network is not going away.” Digital technologies contain no ready-made answers to the social and
political dilemmas they create, even if “the Internet” convinces us otherwise.
Link – policy making/ debate
Policy debates about the internet are used to obfuscate the underlying flaws of the
internet
Morozov 2013 (Evgeny [former fellow @ Stanford & Georgetown]; To Save Everything, Click Here:
The Folly of Technological Solutionism; p.The Nonsense of “the Internet”—and How to Stop It; Proquest; kdf)
Today, “the
Internet” is regularly invoked to thwart critical thinking and exclude nongeeks from the
discussion. Here is how one prominent technology blogger argued that Congress should not regulate facial-recognition technology: “All too
many U.S. lawmakers are barely beyond the stage of thinking that the Internet is a collection of tubes; do we really want these guys to tell
Facebook or any other social media company how to run its business?” You see, it’s all so complex—much more complex than health care or
climate change—that only geeks should be allowed to tinker with the magic tubes. “The
Internet” is holy—so holy that it lies
beyond the means of democratic representation. That facial-recognition technology developed independently of “the
Internet” and has its roots in the 1960s research funded by various defense agencies means little in this context. Once part of “the
Internet,” any technology loses its history and intellectual autonomy. It simply becomes part of the
grand narrative of “the Internet,” which, despite what postmodernists say about the death of metanarratives, is one metanarrative
that is doing all right. Today, virtually every story is bound to have an “Internet” angle—and it’s the job of our Internet
apostles to turn those little anecdotes into fairy tales about the march of Internet progress, just a tiny chapter in their cyber-Whig theory of
history. “The Internet”: an idea that effortlessly fills minds, pockets, coffers, and even the most glaring narrative gaps. Whenever you hear
someone tell you, “This is not how the Internet works”—as technology bloggers are wont to inform everyone who cares to read their
scribblings—you should know that your interlocutor believes your views to be reactionary and antimodern. But where is the missing manual to
“the Internet”—the one that explains how this giant series of tubes actually works—that the geeks claim to know by heart? Why are they so
reluctant to acknowledge that perhaps there’s nothing inevitable about how various parts of this giant “Internet” work and fit together? Is it
really true that Google can’t be made to work differently? Tacitly, of course, the
geeks do acknowledge that there is nothing
permanent about “the Internet”; that’s why they lined up to oppose the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA), which—oh,
the irony—threatened to completely alter “how the Internet works.” So, no interventions will work “on the
Internet”—except for those that will. SOPA was a bad piece of legislation, but there’s something odd
about how the geeks can simultaneously claim that the Internet is fixed and permanent and work
extremely hard in the background to keep it that way. Their theory stands in stark contrast to their practice—a common
modern dissonance that they prefer not to dwell on. “The Internet” is also a way to shift the debate away from more
concrete and specific issues, essentially burying it in obscure and unproductive McLuhanism that seeks
to discover some nonexistent inner truths about each and every medium under the sun. Consider how
Nicholas Carr, one of today’s most vocal Internet skeptics, frames the discussion about the impact that digital technologies have on our ability
to think deep thoughts and concentrate. In his best-selling book The Shallows, Carr worries that “the Internet” is making his brain demand “to
be fed the way the Net fed it—and the more it was fed, the hungrier it became.” He complains that “the Net . . . provides a high-speed system
for delivering responses and rewards . . . which encourage the repetition of both physical and mental actions.” The book is full of similar
complaints. For Carr, the brain is 100 percent plastic, but “the Internet” is 100 percent fixed.
Link: Social Networks
Social networks are not inherently good as the affirmative assumes—they sweep the
ill effects under the rug
Morozov 2011 (Evgeny [visiting scholar at Stanford University and a Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation]; The Net
Delusion; p 254-6; kdf)
But are social networks really goods to be treasured in themselves? After all, the mafia, prostitution and
gambling rings, and youth gangs are social networks, too, but no one would claim that their existence
the physical world is a net good or that it shouldn't be regulated. Ever since Mitch Kapor, one of the founding fathers of
cyber-utopianism proclaimed that "life in cyberspace seems to be shaping up exactly like Thomas Jefferson would have wanted: founded on the
primacy of individual liberty and a commitment to pluralism, diversity, and community" in 1993, many policymakers have been under the
impression that the only networks to find homes online would be those promoting peace and prosperity. But Kapor hasn't read his Jefferson
close!~ enough, for the latter was well aware of the antidemocratic spirit many civil associations, writing that "the mobs of the great cities add
just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body." Jefferson, apparently, was not persuaded by
the absolute goodness of the "smart mobs;' a fancy term to describe social groups that have been organized spontaneously, usually with the
help of technology. As Luke Allnut, an editor with Radio Free Europe, points out " w
h ere the techno-utopianists are limited in
their vision is that in this great mass of internet users all capable of great things in the name of
democracy, they see only a mirror image of themselves: progressive, philanthropic, cosmopolitan. They
don't see the neo-Nazis, pedophiles, or genocidal maniacs who have networked, grown, and prospered
on the Internet:' The problem of treating all networks as good in themselves is that it allows
policymakers to ignore their political and social effects, delaying effective response to their otherwise
harmful activities. "Cooperation;' which seems to be the ultimate objective of Clinton's network building, is too ambiguous of a term to
build meaningful policy around. A brieflook at history-for example, at the politics of Weimar Germany, where increased civic engagement
helped to delegitimize parliamentary democracy-would reveal that an increase in civic activity does not necessarily deepen democracy.
American history in the post Tocqueville era offers plenty of similar cues as well. The
Ku Klux Klan was also a social network,
after all. As Ariel Armony, a political scientist at Colby College in Maine, puts it, "civic involvement may ... be linked to undemocratic
outcomes in state and society, the presence of a 'vital society' may fail to prevent outcomes inimical to democracy, or it may contribute to such
results:' It's political and economic factors, rather than the ease of forming associations, that primarily set the tone and the vector in which
social networks contribute to democratization; one would be naive to believe that such factors would always favor democracy. For example, if
online social networking tools end up over-empowering various nationalist elements within China, it is quite obvious that the latter's influence
on the direction of China's foreign policy will increase as well. Given the rather peculiar relationship between nationalism, foreign policy, and
government legitimacy in China, such developments may not necessarily be particularly conducive to democratization, especially if they lead to
more confrontations with Taiwan or Japan. Even Manuel Castells, a prominent Spanish sociologist and one of the most enthusiastic promoters
of the information society, has not been sold on the idea of just "letting a thousand networks bloom:' "The Internet is indeed a technology of
freedom;' writes Castells, "but it can make the powerful free to oppress the uninformed" and "lead to the exclusion of the devalued by the
conquerors of value:' Robert Putnam, the famed American political theorist who lamented the sad state of social capital in America in his bestselling Bowling Alone, also cautioned against the "kumbaja interpretation of social capital:' "Networks and associated norms of reciprocity are
generally good for those inside the network;' he wrote, "but the external effects of social capital are by no means always positive:' From the
perspective of American foreign policy, social networks may, indeed, be net goods, but only as long as they don't include anyone hiding in the
caves of Waziristan. When senator after senator deplores the fact that YouTube has become a second home to Islamic terrorists, they hardly
sound like absolute believers in the inherent democratic nature of the networked world. One
can't just limit the freedom to
connect to the pro-Western nodes of the Web, and everyone-including plenty of anti-Western nodes
stands to profit from the complex nature of the Internet. When it comes to democracy promotion, one
major problem with a networked society is that it has also suddenly overempowered those who oppose
the very process of democratization, be they the church, former communists, . or fringe political
movements. As a result, it has become difficult to focus on getting things done, for it's not immediately obvious if the new, networked
threats to democracy are more ominous than the ones the West originally thought to fight. Have the non-state enemies of democracy been
empowered to a greater degree than the previous enemy (i.e., the monolith authoritarian state) has been disempowered? It certainly seems
like a plausible scenario, at least in some cases; to assume anything otherwise is to cling to an outdated conception of power that is
incompatible with the networked nature of the modern world "People routinely praise the Internet for its decentralizing tendencies.
Decentralization and diffusion of power, however, is not the same thing as less power exercised over human beings. Nor is it the same thing as
democracy .... The
fact that no one is in charge does not mean that everyone is free," writes Jack Balkin of Yale Law
School. The authoritarian lion may be dead, but now there are hundreds of hungry hyenas swirling around
the body.
Link: Surveillance
The aff’s rhetoric merely accommodates the expansion of the system —instead
debates should resolve why we allow ourselves to be tracked instead of can the
internet be free
House 2013 (Chatham; NSA is not the enemy, it is Silicon Valley; Dec 16;
www.scienceguide.nl/201312/nsa-is-not-the-enemy,-it-is-silicon-valley.aspx; kdf)
“We are trapped in the vocabulary of Silicon Valley.” Harvard-scholar Evgeny Morozov never shies away from a provocative
standpoint. If we really want to talk privacy, we should start with the fundamentals of democracy. “The
guys from NSA are not the main evil.” Morozov was invited to speak in Amsterdam at the Privacy & Identity LAB conference
about privacy. After scientific director Ronald Leenes gave a worrying illustration of the current privacy debate in the wake of the Snowdentapes, it was Morozov providing the audience with a somewhat opposing view. “We
want to be tracked. Before talking
privacy, we have to find out why we accept to be tracked.” In illustrating his point Morozov gives the example of the ereader. “Kindle is offering a cheaper model in exchange for extra advertisements based on what we read.
It appeals to customers because it’s cheaper or free.” For many companies data has become a goal in itself, and we are
willing to give it to them, Morozov shows. Omnipresent Google Most striking examples are Google and Facebook, both
being omnipresent in our daily life. “If you are not on Facebook and you don’t own a mobile device, you are likely to be on the NSA
list, as you are probably hiding something.” What Morozov wants to say is that we might be worried about privacy issues, but in the meantime
we do not analyze the issue on the terms that it deserves. What happens now, according to Morozov, is that companies
address
customers in a way it becomes profitable to make use of existing data. “Our data is our asset.” Morozov has
been studying the rhetoric with which companies that use of genomic data have addressed customers. This convinced him that we are heading
towards a society in which data can, and will be used to ‘nudge’ people towards good behavior. “These
applications exist because
citizens are stupid.” According to Morozov we are reaching a situation in which policymakers depend on big data and the
use of that data to push citizens towards a desired direction. “But it’s the companies that run the
devices. It sounds like they are innovating. Consumers love it, because they have been convinced this will
help them.” Deliberate ‘citizenship’ The ‘Quantified Self-movement’ is one of the most striking examples of this trend. Applications are
used that measure how much we exercise, and refrigerators that sensor our food patterns. The fundamental underlying question is, according
to Morozov:
“What problem do we want to be tackled by the government and what do we want to do
ourselves.” We have to ask ourselves this question before a totally new market of information exchange
has been established, which is currently under progress. “We should be actively deliberating citizenship,”
Morozov argues thereby criticizing current social movements like the Pirate Party. “The problem with current social movements is that they are
already trapped in the vocabulary of Silicon Valley. The guys from NSA, they are not the main evil.” It
is this rhetoric, in which
citizens are directed to do the ‘good’ thing within the system, without deliberating other systems. “They
say they are just empowering you, but in the meantime, genomic data, social graphs, music data, it’s being presented as being all the same, but
it’s not.” An example of this rhetoric is the use of the word ‘hacking’. Even governments are now organizing so-called hackatons, to get the help
of individuals in streamlining and overcoming current problems. Books have been written like ‘Hack your education’. “Everything can be hacked
nowadays.
It is all about how to better accommodate at the system without thinking about changing the
system, while that might be what we should be worried about.”
Link: Psychoanalysis
The aff’s desire for internet freedom to solve democracy is a fantasy rooted in desire
to solve authoritarianism
Morozov 11 (Evgeny Morozov. Writer and researcher who studies political and social implications of
technology. Senior writer at New Republic. “The Net Delusion.” 2011. P. 5-6.)//EMerz
Iran’s seemed like a revolution that the whole world was not just watching but also blogging, tweeting,
Googling, and YouTubing. It only took a few clicks to get bombarded by links that seemed to shed more
light on events in Iran—quantitatively, if not qualitatively—than anything carried by what technologists
like to condescendingly call “legacy media.” While the latter, at least in their rare punditry-free
moments of serenity, were still trying to provide some minimal context to the Iranian protests, many
Internet users preferred to simply get the raw deal on Twitter, gorging on as many videos, photos, and
tweets as they could stomach. Such virtual proximity to events in Tehran, abetted by access to the highly
emotional photos and videos shot by protesters themselves, led to unprecedented levels of global
empathy with the cause of the Green Movement. But in doing so, such networked intimacy may have
also greatly inflated popular expectations of what it could actually achieve. As the Green Movement lost
much of its momentum in the months following the election, it became clear that the Twitter Revolution
so many in the West were quick to inaugurate was nothing more than a wild fantasy. And yet it still can
boast of at least one unambiguous accomplishment: If anything, Iran’s Twitter Revolution revealed the
intense Western longing for a world where information technology is the liberator rather than the
oppressor, a world where technology could be harvested to spread democracy around the globe rather
than entrench existing autocracies. The irrational exuberance that marked the Western interpretation of
what was happening in Iran suggests that the green-clad youngsters tweeting in the name of freedom
nicely fit into some preexisting mental schema that left little room for nuanced interpretation, let alone
skepticism about the actual role the Internet played at the time. The fervent conviction that given
enough gadgets, connectivity, and foreign funding, dictatorships are doomed, which so powerfully
manifested itself during the Iranian protests, reveals the pervasive influence of the Google Doctrine. But
while the manic surrounding Iran’s Twitter Revolution helped to crystallize the main tenets of the
doctrine, it did not beget those tenets.
AT: Link turn – Aff step in right direction
In the instance of internet policy, the perfect is the enemy of the good – their solution
will ultimately fail
Morozov 2013 (Evgeny [former fellow @ Stanford & Georgetown]; To Save Everything, Click Here:
The Folly of Technological Solutionism; p. post-script; Pro-quest; kdf)
I concluded my previous book, The Net Delusion, with a lengthy discussion of so-called “wicked problems” that don’t have neat and precise
solutions. (Just how bad are “wicked” problems? We don’t even know how to define them; forget about recognizing when they have been
solved.) It
seemed to me that modern authoritarianism—the target of so many “Internet freedom” campaigns—
was one such genuinely hard and barely tractable problem. To expect that a vague concept like “Internet
freedom” could help unseat highly sophisticated authoritarian regimes seemed extremely naïve, if not
outright dangerous. Back when I was finishing that first book in 2010, I was awed both by the immensity of the challenge of unseating
dictators—it probably helped that I hail from Belarus, that oasis of tolerance in the middle of Europe—and the sheer callousness and
utopianism with which this project was pursued in Washington and some European capitals. In retrospect, I realize just how lucky I was to
address a problem that no one—not even Eastern European curmudgeons like me—would dare deny; left, right, or center, we all seem to agree
that there are plenty of awful dictators out there, and the world would surely be better off without them.
How we get to recognize
all these truths is subject for debate—of course, it would be nice if it’s 99 percent blogs and 1 percent bombs, not vice versa—
but few disagree with the basic premise of that project: authoritarianism is real and not particularly
enjoyable for anyone involved. I don’t have the luxury of tackling a clear-cut issue in the current book in that I argue that many
circumstances that solutionists and Internet-centrists see as problems may not be problems at all; gone is the moral simplicity of fighting
authoritarianism. In this book, what’s
truly wicked are not the problems—those may not even exist—but the solutions
proposed to address them. That so much of our cultural life is inefficient or that our politicians are hypocrites or that bipartisanship
slows down the political process or that crime rates are not yet zero—all of these issues might be problematic in some
limited sense, but they do not necessarily add up to a problem worth solving—any more than having a soccer
match that lasts for ninety minutes rather than an eternity and features twenty-two people instead of everyone at the stadium is a problem to
be solved.
We see them as problems, I have argued, more because of the sheer awesomeness of our digital tools than due to the
genuine need to rid our public life of these incoherencies and imperfections. At its most simple, this book argues that perfect is
the enemy of good, that sometimes good is good enough, and that no matter what tool we are holding in our hands, both these
statements still hold. I have little doubt that the solutionist impulse, in its various mutations, will survive the current
excitement over “the Internet” and latch on to some later ideology or political project. As confident as I am in
my ability to take down unworthy ideas, I don’t think I can do much about solutionism—at least, no more than I can
do something about utopianism or romanticism. Occasionally, they might have their uses, but all three also have a long history of
abuse. While we can’t rid the world of people who want to “fix” politics, we can at least ridicule those who
want to do so by subjecting politics to “lessons learned” from Wikipedia or even “the Internet” as a
whole. While we can’t rid ourselves of solutionism, we can try to rid ourselves of Internet-centrism, thereby making
certain solutionist schemes harder to advocate and, hopefully, impossible to implement.
AT: Link Turn – Aff mobilizes dissent
Their politics undermines what it means to be human – this has blunted the ability for
dissent to be possible
Morozov 2013 (Evgeny [former fellow @ Stanford & Georgetown]; To Save Everything, Click Here:
The Folly of Technological Solutionism; p. Introduction; Pro-quest; kdf)
So perhaps we should seriously entertain the possibility that Silicon Valley will have the means to accomplish some of its craziest plans.
Perhaps it won’t overthrow the North Korean regime with tweets, but it could still accomplish a lot. This
is where the debate ought to shift to a different register: instead of ridiculing the efficacy of their
means, we also need to question the adequacy of the innovators’ ends. My previous book, The Net Delusion, shows
the surprising resilience of authoritarian regimes, which have discovered their own ways to profit from digital technologies. While I was—and
remain—critical of many Western efforts to promote “Internet freedom” in those regimes, most
of my criticisms have to do with
the means, not the ends, of the “Internet freedom agenda,” presuming that the ends entail a better
climate for freedom of expression and more respect for human rights. In this book, I have no such luxury, and I
question both the means and the ends of Silicon Valley’s latest quest to “solve problems.” I contend here that
Silicon Valley’s promise of eternal amelioration has blunted our ability to do this questioning. Who today
is mad enough to challenge the virtues of eliminating hypocrisy from politics? Or of providing more information—the direct result of selftracking—to facilitate decision making? Or of finding new incentives to get people interested in saving humanity, fighting climate change, or
participating in politics? Or of decreasing crime? To question the appropriateness of such interventions, it seems, is to question the
Enlightenment itself. And yet I feel that such questioning is necessary. Hence the premise of this book: Silicon Valley’s quest to fit
us all into a digital straightjacket by promoting efficiency, transparency, certitude, and perfection—and, by extension, eliminating their evil
twins of friction, opacity, ambiguity, and imperfection—will prove to be prohibitively expensive in the long run. For various ideological reasons
to be explained later in these pages, this
high cost remains hidden from public view and will remain so as long as
we, in our mindless pursuit of this silicon Eden, fail to radically question our infatuation with a set of
technologies that are often lumped together under the deceptive label of “the Internet.” This book, then,
attempts to factor in the true costs of this highly awaited paradise and to explain why they have been so hard to account for. Imperfection,
ambiguity, opacity, disorder, and the opportunity to err, to sin, to do the wrong thing: all of these are
constitutive of human freedom, and any concentrated attempt to root them out will root out that freedom as well. If we don’t
find the strength and the courage to escape the silicon mentality that fuels much of the current quest
for technological perfection, we risk finding ourselves with a politics devoid of everything that makes
politics desirable, with humans who have lost their basic capacity for moral reasoning, with lackluster (if
not moribund) cultural institutions that don’t take risks and only care about their financial bottom lines, and,
most terrifyingly, with a perfectly controlled social environment that would make dissent not just impossible
but possibly even unthinkable. The structure of this book is as follows. The next two chapters provide an outline and a critique of
two dominant ideologies—what I call “solutionism” and “Internet-centrism”—that have sanctioned Silicon Valley’s great ameliorative
experiment. In the seven ensuing chapters, I trace how both ideologies interact in the context of a particular practice or reform effort:
promoting transparency, reforming the political system, improving efficiency in the cultural sector, reducing crime through smart environments
and data, quantifying the world around us with the help of self-tracking and lifelogging, and, finally, introducing game incentives—what’s
known as gamification—into the civic realm. The last chapter offers a more forward-looking perspective on how we can transcend the
limitations of both solutionism and Internet-centrism and design and employ technology to satisfy human and civic needs. Now, why oppose
such striving for perfection? Well, I believe that not everything that could be fixed should be fixed—even if the latest technologies make the
fixes easier, cheaper, and harder to resist. Sometimes, imperfect is good enough; sometimes, it’s much better than perfect. What worries me
most is that, nowadays, the very availability of cheap and diverse digital fixes tells us what needs fixing. It’s quite simple: the more fixes we
have, the more problems we see. And yet, in our political, personal, and public lives—much like in our computer systems—not all bugs are
bugs; some bugs are features. Ignorance can be dangerous, but so can omniscience: there is a reason why some colleges stick to need-blind
admissions processes. Ambivalence can be counterproductive, but so can certitude: if all your friends really told you what they thought, you
might never talk to them again. Efficiency can be useful, but so can inefficiency: if everything were efficient, why would anyone bother to
innovate? The ultimate goal of this book, then, is to uncover the attitudes, dispositions, and urges that comprise the solutionist mind-set, to
show how they manifest themselves in specific projects to ameliorate the human condition, and to hint at how and why some of these
attitudes, dispositions, and urges can and should be resisted, circumvented, and unlearned. For only
by unlearning solutionism—
that is, by
transcending the limits it imposes on our imaginations and by rebelling against its value
system—will we understand why attaining technological perfection, without attending to the intricacies
of the human condition and accounting for the complex world of practices and traditions, might not be
worth the price.
AT: Aff = Democracy
Empirically wrong
Bailard 2014 (Catie [Assist Prof of Media and Pubic Affairs @ George Washington; Catie received her
doctorate in political science from UCLA with concentrations in American Politics, Formal and
Quantitative Methods, and International Relations]; The other Facebook Revolution;
www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/142351/catie-bailard/the-other-facebook-revolution?cid=rss-rss_xmlthe_other_facebook_revolution-000000; kdf)
Empirical testing confirms that the Internet has clear and consistent influence on how citizens feel about their governments. As one might
expect, the mirror-holding and window-opening mechanisms boost public satisfaction with government in advanced democracies and public
dissatisfaction in nations with weak democratic practices. However, research also demonstrates that the
Internet’s effect is
neither automatic nor uniform—one democratic gain, such as more critical evaluations of poor-performing governments, does
not automatically set off a domino effect of entirely pro-democratic gains in citizens’ attitudes and
behaviors. Take Tanzania, for example, where I conducted a randomized field experiment to test the effect of Internet use on
evaluations of the 2010 general election. Although the Internet offered plentiful information about the
questionable integrity of a then-upcoming national election, the results of the experiment revealed that
Tanzanians with access to that information also became less likely to vote. After all, the belief that an election
would not be fair can produce two very divergent responses—although some people may feel inclined to respond by taking to the streets,
others may simply throw up their hands and stay home. Meanwhile, another
randomized field experiment that I conducted
in Bosnia and Herzegovina revealed that Internet users there who became more dissatisfied with the
quality of democratic practices in their country also became more likely to consider alternative forms of
government as preferable for their country. Taken as a whole, then, this research reveals that the Internet’s influence is
complex, and that in some instances it will have ambiguous effects for democracy and democratization. The effects of Internet use
on political evaluations tend to be particularly profound in hybrid regimes—governments that, despite being firmly
authoritarian, allow some form of so-called elections for various offices. In many cases, such elections are exercises in futility, the outcome
already determined by the ruling party regardless of what the ballots say. Although
outsiders may take for granted that
these elections are largely shams, however, citizens living in these countries often invest significant value in
them. This was demonstrated in the build-up to the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, during which a segment of the public that
was originally angered by police brutality became further incensed by ostensibly rigged parliamentary elections, eyewitness accounts of which
were amplified by videos uploaded and distributed online. It wasn't long before citizens began expressing their discontent by protesting in the
streets and demanding a change in the regime. Moreover, even in instances that do not result in tangible political activity, the effects of
Internet use on political evaluations and satisfaction have important implications for the day-to-day business of governance. Quite simply,
governments—democratic, democratizing, and nondemocratic alike—are aware that they have lost some degree of control over information
compared to what they enjoyed in the era of traditional media. As a result, they know that there is greater potential for their decisions and
actions to be broadcast on the national, and even international, stage, a venue and context that they have diminished control over. Thus,
leaders are forced, to varying degrees, to consider the potential activation of latent public opinion when making political decisions in ways that
they never had to previously. It is regrettable, if not entirely surprising, that, aside from a handful of notable exceptions, scholars
and
other political observers mostly failed to anticipate the Arab Spring. Many tried to make up for it by
focusing renewed effort on the role played by the Internet in the wave of political upheaval that
subsequently swept across the Middle East and North Africa. But they would be wise to focus on what
has largely remained a blind spot in scholarly research: the effects of Internet use on the very political
evaluations that can, and sometimes do, precipitate political action and organization.
AT: Aff -> Transparency/Oversight
Neoliberalism guarantees that internet freedom will not expand internet liberties
Power and Jablonski 2015 (Shawn M [Assistant Professor of Communication at Georgia State
University] and Michael [attorney and presidential fellow in communication at Georgia State University];
The Real Cyber War; University of Illinois Press; p. 201; kdf)
So, where did the principle of secrecy of correspondence go? Codified in international and domestic laws, how was the norm not considered
parallel to, if not more important than, protections for free speech online? Looking back, Clinton’s
articulation of the internetfreedom paradigm—which inculcated the internet as a shared, public space—wasn’t simply lofty neoliberal rhetoric. It
was, as is alluded to in the beginning of this chapter, a deliberate framing of human rights online that protects free
speech but not the anonymity of that speech or the secrecy of one’s communications. According to Western
legal doctrine, once one enters a shared, public space, their individual rights are curtailed in order to
preserve the security and integrity of that space. For example, in a public park, it is perfectly legitimate for a government to
monitor your behavior and listen to your conversations. Mail, on the other hand, is considered a specific transmission of information between
two or more people, and is afforded robust protections from government intrusions on the content of the messages. The content of telephone
calls, too, is typically considered private, unless they take place in a public place. International treaties and organizations were founded and
continue to provide oversight to ensure the secrecy of correspondence, as long as that correspondence takes place via traditional, twentiethcentury means of communicating. So why wouldn’t analogous attempts to communicate, when taking place via the internet, be afforded
similar types of protections? The answer, as is outlined in careful detail in the preceding chapters, comes down to economics and geopolitics.
By exempting information exchanged online from the privacy protections afforded to other types of
communication, the modern internet economy was born. Targeted advertising accounts for the vast
majority of internet revenue. It is a technique incompatible with the principle of secrecy of
correspondence. If correspondence (and browsing) remained secret, internet companies couldn’t promise
advertisers that their ads will be effective. Advertisers would thus revert to traditional mass communication platforms to reach
their potential consumers. The modern internet economy is dependent on gathering and analyzing individual
user behavior and benefits a handful of Western countries and companies (chapter 4)
AT: Perm –Internet Centrism
Permutation carries the baggage of internet centrism – only rejection solves
Morozov 2013 (Evgeny [former fellow @ Stanford & Georgetown]; To Save Everything, Click Here:
The Folly of Technological Solutionism; p. With Models like this…; Pro-quest; kdf)
To quote Green and Shapiro again, rational-choice theory turns “a dispassionate search for the causes of political outcomes into brief-writing
on behalf of one’s preferred theory. If one is committed—in advance of empirical research—to a certain theory of politics, then apparent
empirical anomalies will seem threatening to it and stand in need of explaining away.” This is perhaps the best summary of what’s so wrong
with much of contemporary Internet-biased theorizing about politics. The models that Shirky and his disciples rely on, while nominally about
“the Internet,” do smuggle in a “certain theory of politics”—a theory of citizens responding to incentives and clinging together if they get the
right signals and have the right tools—which is awfully simplistic to account for political developments in much of the world. Nowhere does
Shirky allude to the heavy intellectual baggage that comes with his methods; in fact, he just recasts Lohmann as a historian, so a theory of
information cascades becomes something of a legitimate historical narrative rather than a reductionist model of human behavior. Any
anomalies that do turn up—the findings that dictators are extremely smart in using the same technologies, or that people don’t always respond
to incentives, or that forces like nationalism and religion are exerting a profound and unpredictable influence on how people behave and are
themselves transformed by technology—are simply dismissed as technophobic pessimism. In a true Hegelian dialectic spirit, Internet-centrism
sustains itself through the binary poles of Internet pessimism and Internet optimism, presenting (and eventually consuming) any critique of
itself as yet another manifestation of these two extremes. To
challenge this ideology and this way of talking and thinking
is to be immediately dismissed as too pessimistic or optimistic, as if no other type of critique were even
conceivable. It’s one of the hallmarks of Internet-centrism—at least as it manifests itself in the popular debate—that it
brooks no debates about methodology, for it presumes that there’s only one way to talk about “the
Internet” and its effects. Shirky’s veneration of Ronald Coase’s theory of the firm—and its accompanying discourse on transaction
costs—may seem harder to dismiss, not least because Coase is a Nobel Prize–winning economist. References to Coase pop up regularly in the
work of our Internet theorists; in addition to Clay Shirky, Yochai Benkler also draws heavily on Coase to discuss the open-source movement.
There is nothing wrong with Coase’s theories per se; in the business context, they offer remarkably useful explanations and have even helped
spawn a new branch of economics. But here is the problem: thinking of a Californian start-up in terms of transaction costs is much easier than
pulling the same trick for, say, the Iranian society. While it seems noncontroversial to conclude that cheaper digital technologies might indeed
lower most so-called transaction costs in Iran, that insight doesn’t really say much, for unless we know something about Iran’s culture, history,
and politics, we know nothing about the contexts in which all these costs have supposedly fallen. Who are the relevant actors? What are the
relevant transactions? In the absence of such knowledge about Iran, the
natural reflex is to opt for the simplest possible
model: imagine a two-way split between the government and the dissidents and then think through
how their own transaction costs may have fallen thanks to “the Internet.” This seems like a rather perfunctory way
of talking about a rather complex subject. Cue Don Tapscott, a popular Internet pundit, proclaiming that “the Internet not only drops
transaction and collaboration costs in business—it also drops the cost of collaboration in dissent,
rebellion and even in insurrection.” Okay—but is no one else in these countries collaborating or engaging in transactions? Is it just
the dissidents? Are the dissidents united? Or do they all have different agendas? Internet-centric explanations, at least in their
current form, greatly impoverish and infantilize our public debate. We ought to steer away from them as
much as possible. If doing so requires imposing a moratorium on using the very term “Internet” and
instead going for more precise terminology, like “peer-to-peer networks” or “social networks” or “search engines,” so be it.
It’s the very possibility that the whole—that is, “the Internet”—is somehow spiritually and politically greater
than the sum of these specific terms that exerts such a corrosive influence on how we think about the
world.
AT: Perm—Neolib
The left must withdraw from capitalist politics in order to avoid the inevitable
destruction of the biosphere by capitalism—the permutation merely furthers a
contradiction of capitalism, damning the alternative
Harvey 2014 (David [the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York]; Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism; Oxford
University Press; p. 110-111; kdf)
The political problem posed by the question of technology for anti-capitalist struggle is perhaps the most difficult to confront. On the one hand
we know all too well that the evolution of technologies, marked as it is by a good deal of autonomous 'combinatorial' logic of the sort that
Arthur describes, is a form of big business in which class struggle and inter-capitalist and interstate competition have played leading roles for
capital's
actions are steering closer and closer to the abyss of the loss of social labour as an underlying regulatory
principle that prevents the descent of capital into lawlessness. On the other hand we also know that any
struggle to combat worldwide. environmental degradation, social inequalities and impoverishment,
perverse population dynamics, deficits in global health, education and nutrition, and military and
geopolitical tensions will entail the mobilisation of many of our currently available technologies to
achieve non-capitalistic social, ecological and political ends. The existing bundle of technologies, saturated as they are in
the 'human purpose' of sustaining military dominance, class power and perpetual accumulation of capital. We also see that
the mentalities and practices of capital's search for class domination, contains emancipatory potentialities that somehow have to be mobilised
in anti-capitalist struggle. In
the short term, of course, the left is bound to defend jobs and skills under threat. But, as
the miserable history of the noble rearguard action fought against deindustrialisation in the 1970s and 198os demonstrates, this will likely
be a losing battle against a newly emerging technological configuration from the very beginning. An anticapitalist movement has in the current conjuncture to reorganise its thinking around the idea that social
labour is becoming less and less significant to how the economic engine of capitalism functions. Many of
the service, administrative and professional jobs the left currently seeks to defend are on the way out. Most of the world's
population is becoming disposable and irrelevant from the standpoint of capital, which will increasingly rely upon
the circulation of Technology, Work and Human Disposability fictitious forms of capital and fetishistic constructs of value centred on the money
form and within the credit system. As is to be expected, some populations are held to be more disposable than others, with the result that
women and people of colour bear most of the current burden and will probably do so even more in the foreseeable future. 13 Martin Ford
correctly poses the question: how will the resultant disposable and redundant population live (let alone provide a market) under such
conditions? A viable long-term and imaginative answer to this question has to be devised by any anti-capitalist movement. Commensurate
organised action and planning to meet the new eventualities and the provision of sufficient use values must be thought through and gradually
implemented. This has to be done at the same time as the
left has also to mount a rearguard action against the
technologies of increasingly predatory practices of accumulation by dispossession, further bouts of
deskilling, the advent of permanent joblessness, ever-increasing social inequality and accelerating
environmental degradation. The contradiction that faces capital morphs into a contradiction that
necessarily gets internalised within anti-capitalist politics.
Alt - Secularize the internet
Only secularization of the internet can solve
Morozov 2013 (Evgeny [former fellow @ Stanford & Georgetown]; To Save Everything, Click Here:
The Folly of Technological Solutionism; p. Recycle the Cycle; Pro-quest; kdf)
So our
survey of Internet-centrism paints a rather depressing picture. The very idea of “the Internet” has
not merely become an obstacle to a more informed and thorough debate about digital technologies. It has also
sanctioned many a social and political experiment that tries to put the lessons of “the Internet” to good
use. It has become the chief enabler of solutionism, supplying the tools, ideologies, and metaphors for its
efficiency crusades. Internet-centrism has rendered many of us oblivious to the fact that a number of these efforts are driven by old and
rather sinister logics that have nothing to do with digital technologies. Internet-centrism has also mangled how we think
about the past, the present, and the future of technology regulation. It has erroneously convinced us that
there are no other ways to talk about these issues without downplaying their importance. Internet-centrism
has been tremendously helpful for activist purposes—it has rekindled (and occasionally created) geek religious movements that have been
crucial to opposing government regulation of digital technologies. But what
has been gained in activist efficacy has been
lost in analytical clarity and precision. Internet-centrism’s totality of vision, its false universalism, and its
reductionism prevent us from a more robust debate about digital technologies. Internet-centrism has
become something of a religion. To move on, we need, as French media scholar Philippe Breton put it, “a ‘secularization’
of communication.” Such secularization can no longer be postponed. We need to find a way to
temporarily forget everything we know about “the Internet”—we take too many things for granted these days—roll
up our sleeves, and work to ensure that technologies do not just constrain human flourishing but also
enable it. The chapters that follow apply this secularized approach to contexts as different as politics and crime prevention not just to
illustrate what happens once solutionism meets Internet-centrism but also to think through a more productive civic use of technologies so
beloved by solutionists.
Alt – Social Construct Args
Their epistemology is bankrupt – vote neg on presumption
Morozov 2013 (Evgeny [former fellow @ Stanford & Georgetown]; To Save Everything, Click Here:
The Folly of Technological Solutionism; p. post-script; Pro-quest; kdf)
On the odd chance that this book succeeds, its greatest contribution to the public debate might lie in
redrawing the front lines of the intellectual battles about digital technologies. Those front lines will
separate a host of Internet thinkers who are convinced that “the Internet” is a useful analytical category
that tells us something important about how the world really works from a group of post-Internet
thinkers who see “the Internet,” despite its undeniable physicality, as a socially constructed concept that could perhaps
be studied by sociologists, historians, and anthropologists—much as they study the public life of ideas such as “science,” “class” or
“Darwinism”—but that tells us nothing about how the world works and even less about how it should work. The
former group thinks
that “the Internet” is the key to solving some of the greatest policy puzzles of the day; the latter thinks
that “the Internet” is only confusing policymakers more and that the sooner digital activists learn how to
make their arguments without appealing to “the Internet,” the better. Since my own theoretical sympathies should be
quite clear by now—I’m with the second camp, in case you fell asleep at the wheel—I won’t bore you with the details of how I think the first
camp will come down in flames. Instead, I’d rather use this opportunity to articulate a very broad outline of what this second, post-Internet
approach to technology might look like and what its preoccupations might be. First, it
would abstain from the highly emotional
and polemical discussions over what “the Net” or even “social media” do to our brains, freedom, and
dictators. This post-Internet approach is much more interested in the world of trash bins and parking
meters in our mundane everyday lives than in the role of Twitter in the Arab Spring—and not because it’s
parochial in outlook but because it doesn’t believe in the power of such ambitious and ambiguous questions. The role of Twitter’s algorithms in
highlighting the #Jan25 hash tag, which brought some global attention to the cause of the protesters in Tahrir Square, on the other hand, is fair
game. Will a viral TED talk emerge out of this second approach? Probably not; its
findings won’t be very sexy, and it won’t
default to some banal abstract truth about “democracy” or the “Middle East.” On the whole, though, this highly
empirical but small-scale approach will probably tell us more about the opportunities and limitations of digital technologies than the entire
“Does social media cause revolutions?” debate that wasted so much of everyone’s time—including mine—in
early 2011. Those pursuing this post-Internet approach will be extremely cautious—even skeptical—about any causality claims made with
respect to digital technologies. They will recognize that, more often than not, these technologies are not the causes of the world we live in but
rather its consequences. The
post-Internet approach will not treat these digital technologies as if they fell from
the sky and we should therefore not—God forbid—question their origins and only study their impact. Instead,
those relying on a post-Internet approach will trace how these technologies are produced, what voices and ideologies are silenced in their
production and dissemination, and how the marketing literature surrounding these technologies taps into the zeitgeist to make them look
inevitable. Internet theorists looking at, say, MP3 technology will think “Napster”—that quintessential “Internet technology”—and start their
account from the mid-1990s; post-Internet theorists looking at MP3 technology will think of the history of sound compression and start their
account in the 1910s (as Jonathan Sterne has done in his recent MP3: The Meaning of a Format). Internet theorists studying search engines will
begin with Stanford and Google perhaps, with a cursory mention of Vannevar Bush’s memex; post-Internet theorists will look much further
back than that, unearthing such obscure figures as Albert Kahn (and his effort to create “The Archives of the Planet” through photographs), as
well as Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine with their Mundaneum, an attempt to gather all the world’s knowledge. This list can go on indefinitely,
but the trend is clear: one unexpected benefit of a post-Internet approach is that it deflates the shallow and historically illiterate accounts that
dominate so much of our technology debate and opens them to much more varied, rich, and historically important experiences. Once we
realize that for the last hundred years or so virtually every generation has felt like it was on the edge of a technological revolution—be it the
telegraph age, the radio age, the plastic age, the nuclear age, or the television age—maintaining the myth that our own period is unique and
exceptional will hopefully become much harder. Perhaps, this will make it all but impossible for solutionists to mobilize revolutionary rhetoric
to justify their radical plans to the public. Once
we move to a post-Internet world, there is a small chance that our
no longer get away with proclaiming something a
revolution and then walking away without supplying good, empirical evidence—as if that revolution were so selftechnology pundits (and perhaps even some academics) will
evident and no further proof was needed. I too used to be one of those people—albeit very briefly—sometime between 2005 and 2007. I
remember perfectly the thrill that comes from thinking that the lessons of Wikipedia or peer-to-peer networking or Friendster or Skype could
and should be applied absolutely everywhere. It’s a very powerful set of hammers, and plenty of people—many of them in Silicon Valley—are
dying to hear you cry, “Nail!” regardless of what you are looking at. Thinking that you are living through a revolution and hold the key to how it
will unfold is, I confess, rather intoxicating. So I can relate to those Internet thinkers who feel extremely comfortable with the current state of
debate, even though I can probably not forgive them. This book, I hope, has shown that most Internet theorists venerate an imaginary god of
their own creation and live in denial. Secularizing our technology debate and cleansing it of the pernicious influence of Internet-centrism is by
far the most important task that technology intellectuals face today. Everything else—especially particular policies—hinges on how such
secularization proceeds, if it does so at all. Consider one example from what used to be my own favorite field: what
exactly is the point
of operating with a term like “Internet freedom” if the very idea of “the Internet” is contested and full of
ambiguity? Discussing the particulars of the “Internet freedom agenda” without resolving the many
contradictions in its initial formulation seems counterproductive to me, as it might only legitimize that
concept further. Once our debate moves into post-Internet territory, many of the technophobic,
ahistorical accounts will hopefully become harder to pull off as well. If “the Internet” is no longer seen as
a unified force that acts on our brains or our culture, any account of what digital technologies do to our neurons or books
will need to get empirical and start talking about individual technologies and individual practices, perhaps with a nod to how such practices
evolved and coped in the past. So far, we
get none of that: we are told that “the Net” is rewiring our brains, which
is not at all a good starting point for debate. After all, so what if it’s rewiring our brains? And what should
we do about “the Net” anyway? It stirs fears alright, but we quickly get mired in cheap populism. If technophobic accounts do
become harder to produce, then there’s also a small chance we will be able to have a meaningful debate about not just the appropriateness of
technological fixes to a given problem but also about the desirability of particular technological fixes. Once we can’t reject technology outright,
we’ll need to explain why some fixes are better than others. If it makes us think and ask questions, it is a worthy enterprise all by itself.
Technology is not the enemy; our enemy is the romantic and revolutionary problem solver who resides
within. We can do nothing to tame that little creature, but we can do a lot to tame its favorite weapon:
“the Internet.” Let’s do that while we can—it would be deeply ironic if humanity were to die in the crossfire as its problem solvers
attempted to transport that very humanity to a trouble-free world.
Alt – Discourse First
The discourse of internet freedom is used to legitimate the expansion of the state and
corporations into the internet
Power and Jablonski 2015 (Shawn M [Assistant Professor of Communication at Georgia State
University] and Michael [attorney and presidential fellow in communication at Georgia State University];
The Real Cyber War; University of Illinois Press; p. 206-7; kdf)
Turning to civil society, activists and academics alike need
to be much more cautious in their use and defense of
internet-freedom discourse. This is not to suggest that they should abandon the idea of internet freedom altogether; quite the
contrary. Instead, this analysis shows how the internet-freedom narrative is used to legitimize a particular geostrategic vision of the Web that has little to do with the foundational principles of internet freedom,
including freedom of expression and net neutrality. Activists and defenders of the original vision of the Web as a “fair and
humane” cyber-civilization need to avoid lofty “internet freedom” declarations and instead champion
specific reforms required to protect the values and practices they hold dear. Additional research is also needed to
identify how specific corporate policies undermine freedom online, and which institutional arrangements
allow for governments and companies to weaken the integrity of the Web. Civil-society groups need to be much
more critical of the consensus-building processes upon which multistakeholder institutions base their legitimacy (chapter 5). While this book
examined just three case studies—ICANN, IETF, and ISOC—the findings were especially troubling for civil-society groups aiming to influence
policy change. Multistakeholder processes may actually be worse than the alternative from the perspective of certain aspects of civil society.
Not only is legitimate dissent stifled, but discourses of inclusion and openness lend legitimacy to
institutions that protect the interests of powerful corporations and governments. At the same time, the promise
of multistakeholderism need not be abandoned in total. Clearer demarcations between commercial and political interests and internet
governance decision-making bodies would be a first step in ensuring these institutions are not simply legitimizing the actions of powerful
strategic actors. The combination of these four lines of conceptual inquiry—history, social totality, moral philosophy, and praxis—offers clear
insight into what we describe as the “real cyber war.” At
the center of debates over internet freedom, information
sovereignty, global surveillance, and digital protectionism is a single question that, despite its
significance, is too often overlooked: What authority (or responsibility) do states have to manage the flow of
information into and within their sovereign borders? The ongoing competition of narratives offering visions for how global
information flows should be governed is central to any discussion of cyber war, as its result will shape the use and scale of cyber weapons,
espionage, piracy, and rights in the twenty-first century. The outcome of this “war” is far from clear. Despite numerous international
conventions guaranteeing citizens everywhere “the right to freedom of opinion and expression . . . regardless of frontiers,”4 the multitude of
perspectives, ranging from the absolute free flow of information to an absolute sovereignty approach, with many variations in between,
indicate how far we remain from a establishing a consensus.
Alt – Solves/AT: Cap Inev
We should not give into the temptation to act within the confines of the aff- instead
we should seize the opportunity to alienate capital and develop an anti-capitalist
project
-AT: Cap inev: “capital can probably continue to function indefinitely but in a manner that will provoke
progressive degradation on the land and mass impoverishment, dramatically increasing social class
inequality, along with dehumanisation of most of humanity, which will be held down by an increasingly
repressive and autocratic denial of the potential for individual human flourishing”
Harvey 2014 (David [Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate Center
of the City University of New York]; Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism; Oxford
University Press; p. 218-221; kdf)
The moving contradictions evolve differentially and provide much of the dynamicforce behind capital's historical and geographical evolution. In
some instances their movement tends to be progressive (though never without reverses here and setbacks there). Technological change has by
and large been cumulative, as has the geographical production of space, though in both instances there are strong countercurrents and
reversals. Viable technologies get left behind and fade away, spaces
and places that were once vigorous centres of
capitalist activity become ghost towns or shrinking cities. In other instances the movement is more like a pendulum, as
between monopoly and competition or the balance between poverty and wealth. And elsewhere, as in the case of freedom and domination,
the movement is more chaotic and random, depending upon the ebb and flow of political forces in struggle with one another, while in still
other instances, such as the complex field of social reproduction, the intersections between the historical evolution of capitalism and the
specific requirements of capital are so indeterminate and intermingled as to make the direction and strength of movement episodic and rarely
consistent. The
advances (for such they are) in the rights of women, of the handicapped, of sexual minorities
(the LGBT social group), as well as of religious groupings that have strict codes on various facets of social
reproduction (such as marriage, family, childrearing practices and the like), make it hard to calculate exactly how capital
and capitalism are or are not working with or against each other in terms of foundational contradictions.
And if this is true of the contradictions of social reproduction, it is even more so in the complex case of
domination and freedom. The patterning of the moving contradictions provides much of the energy and
much of the innovative zest in the co-evolution of both capital and capitalism and opens a wealth (and I
use that word advisedly as meaning a potential flourishing of human capabilities rather than of mere possessions) of possibilities for
new initiatives. These are the contradictions and spaces in which hope for a better society is latent and from which alternative
architectures and constructions might emerge. As in the case of foundational contradictions, the moving contradictions intersect, interact and
run interference with each other in intriguing ways within the totality of what capital is about. The production of space and the dynamics of
uneven geographical development have been strongly impacted by technological changes in both organisational forms (for example, of state
apparatuses and territorial forms of organisation) and technologies of transportation and the production of space. It is within the field of
uneven geographical development that differentiations in social reproduction and in the balance between freedom and domination flourish to
the point where they in themselves become part of the production of space and of uneven development. The
creation of heterotopic
spaces, where radically different forms of production, social organisation and political power might
flourish for a while, implies a terrain of anti-capitalist possibility that is perpetually opening and shutting
down. It is here too that questions of monopoly and centralisation of power versus decentralisation and competition play out to influence
technological and organisational dynamism and to animate geopolitical competition for economic advantage. And it goes without saying that
the balance between poverty and wealth is constantly being modified by interterritorial competition, migratory streams and competitive
innovations regarding labour productivities and the creation of new product lines. It
is within the framework of these
interactive and dynamic contradictions that multiple alternative political projects are to be found. Many of
these are constituted as distinctive responses of capital to its own contradictions and are therefore primarily directed to facilitate the
reproduction of capital under conditions of perpetual risk and uncertainty if not outright crises. But even
in these instances there lie
innumerable possibilities for the insertion of initiatives that so modify the functioning of capital as to
open perspectives on what an anti-capitalist alternative might look like. I believe, as did Marx, that the future is
already largely present in the world around us and that political innovation (like technological innovation) is a
matter of putting existing but hitherto isolated and separated political possibilities together in a
different way. Uneven geographical developments cannot but generate 'spaces of hope' and heterotopic situations where new
modes of cooperation might flourish, at least for a while, before they get reabsorbed into the dominant practices of capital.
New technologies (like the internet) open up new spaces of potential freedom from domination that can advance the cause of democratic
governance. Initiatives
in the field of social reproduction can produce new political subjects desirous of
revolutionising and humanising social relations more generally and cultivating a more aesthetically
satisfying and sensitive approach to our metabolic relation to nature. To point to all these possibilities is not to say
they will all bear fruit, but it does suggest that any anti-capitalist politics has to be assiduous in hunting
through the contradictions and ferreting out its own path towards the construction of an alternative
universe using the resources and ideas already to hand. This then brings us to the dangerous, if not potentially fatal,
contradictions. Marx is famously supposed to have said that capital would ultimately collapse under the weight of its own internal contradictions.
I cannot actually find where Marx said this, and from my own reading of him I think it extremely unlikely that he would ever have said such a
thing. It presupposes a mechanical breakdown of the economic engine of capitalism that will occur without any human agent throwing sand in
the machine or militantly setting about halting its progress and replacing it. Marx's position, and I broadly follow him in this (against certain
currents in the Marxist/communist tradition, as well as against the grain of the views his many critics typically attribute to him), is that capital
can probably continue to function indefinitely but in a manner that will provoke progressive degradation
on the land and mass impoverishment, dramatically increasing social class inequality, along with
dehumanisation of most of humanity, which will be held down by an increasingly repressive and
autocratic denial of the potential for individual human flourishing (in other words, an intensification of the totalitarian
police-state surveillance and militarised control system and the totalitarian democracy we are now largely experiencing). The resultant
unbearable denial of the free development of human creative capacities and powers amounts to throwing away the cornucopia of possibilities
that capital had bequeathed us and squandering the real wealth of human possibilities in the name of perpetual augmentation of monetary wealth
and the satiation of narrow economic class interests. Faced with such a prospect, the only sensible
politics is to seek to
transcend capital and the restraints of an increasingly autocratic and oligarchical structure of capitalist
class power and to rebuild the economy's imaginative possibilities into a new and far more egalitarian
and democratic configuration. The Marx I favour is, in short, a revolutionary humanist and not a teleological determinist. Statements
can be found in his works that support the latter position, but I believe the bulk of his writings, both historical and political-economic, support the
is for this reason that I reject the idea of 'fatal' in favour of 'dangerous' contradictions,
for to call them fatal would convey a false air of inevitability and cancerous decay, if not of apocalyptic
mechanical endings. Certain contradictions are, however, more dangerous both to capital and to humanity than others. These vary from
former interpretation. It
place to place and from time to time. Were we writing about the future of capital and humanity fifty or a hundred years ago, we would very likely
have focused on different contradictions from those which I focus on here. The environmental issue and the challenge of maintaining compound
growth would not have called for that much attention in 1945, when settling the geopolitical rivalries and rationalising processes of uneven
geographical development, all the while rebalancing (through state interventions) the contradictory unity between production and realisation,
were far more salient questions. The three contradictions I focus on here are most dangerous in the immediate present, not only for the ability of
the economic engine of capitalism to continue to function but also for the reproduction of human life under even minimally reasonable
conditions. One of them, but just one of them, is potentially fatal. But it will turn out so only if a revolutionary movement arises to change the
evolutionary path that the endless accumulation of capital dictates. Whether or not such a revolutionary spirit crystallises out to force radical
changes in the way in which we live is not given in the stars. It depends entirely on human volition. A first
step towards exercising
that volition is to become conscious and fully aware of the nature of the present dangers and the
choices we face.
. The argument that we cannot overcome capitalism saps the critical energy from the
alternative – the system is only strong because we think it is—this locks the aff into
the politics of melancholy
Zizek in 8 (Slavoj, [writes a lot of books], Defense of Lost Causes, Verso, p. 391-4, kdf)
Progressive liberals today often complain that they would like to join a "revolution" (a more
radical emancipatory political movement), but no matter how desperately they search for it, they
just "do not see it" (they do not see anywhere in the social space a political agent with the will and strength to
seriously engage in such activity). While there is a moment OF truth here, one should nonetheless also add that the
very attitude of these liberals is in itself part of the problem: if one just w aits to
"see" a revolutionary movement, it will, of course, never arise, and one will never see it.
What Hegel says about the curtain that separates appearances from true reality (behind the veil of appearance t here
is nothing, only what the subject who is searching has put there), holds also for a revolutionary proc ess:
"s e ei n g" a n d " d esi re" a re here i n e xt ric a bl y li nk ed, in ot her wo r d s , r e v o l u t i o n a r y p o t e n t i a l i s n o t t h e r e t o
b e d i s c o v e r e d a s a n objective social fact, one "sees it" only insofar as one "desires" it (engages oneself in
the movement). No wonder the Mensheviks and those who opposed Lenin's call for a revolutionary takeover in the summer of
1917 "did not see" the conditions for it as " ripe" and opposed it as "premature" simply did not want the revolution.
Another version of this skeptical argument about "seeing" is that liberals claim that
capitalism is today so global and all-encompassing that they cannot "see" any serious
alternative to it, that they cannot imagine a feasible "outside" to it . The reply to this is that, insofar as
this is true, they do not see tout court: the task is not to see the outside, but to see in the first
place ( to grasp the nature of contemporary capitalism) —the Marxist wager is that, when we "see" this, we see enough,
including how to go beyond it . . . So our reply to the worried progressive liberals, eager to join the revolution,
and just not seeing it having a chance anywhere, should be like the answer to the proverbial ecologist worried about the
prospect of catastrophe: do not worry, the catastrophe will arrive .. . To complicate the image further, we
often have an Event which succeeds through the self-erasure of its evental dimension, as was the case with the
Jacobins in the French Revolution: once their (necessary) Job was done, they were not only overthrown and liquidated,
they were even retroactively deprived of their evental status, reduced to a historical accident, to a freakish abomination, to an
(avoidable) excess of h i s t o r i c a l development. 10 This theme was often evoked by Marx and Engels--how, once
"normal" pragmatic-utilitarian bourgeois daily life was consoli dated, its own violent heroic origins were
disavowed. This possibi l i t y — n o t o n l y t h e ( o b v i o u s ) p os s i b i l i t y ' of a n e v e n t al s e q u en c e reaching its end, but
a much more unsettling possibility of an Event disavowing itself, erasing its own traces, as the ultimate indication o f
its triumph, is not taken into account by Badiou: the possibility and raimifications of there being radical breaks
and discontnuties that might, in part due to their own reverberations unfolding off into the future,
become invisible to those living in realities founded on such eclipsed points of origin. Such a
self-erasure of the Event opens up the space for what , in the Benjaminian mode, one is
tempted to call the leftist politics of melancholy. In a first approach, this term cannot but appear as an
oxymoron: is not a revolutionary orientation towards the future the very opposite of melancholic attachment to the past? What
if, however, the future one should be faithful to is the future of the past itself, in other words, the emancipatory potential
that was not realized due to the failure of the past attempts and that for this reason continues
to haunt us? In his ironic comments on the French Revolution, Marx opposes the revolutionary enthusiasm to the sobering
effect of the "morning after": the actual result of the sublime revolutionary explosion, of the Event of freedom, equality, and
brotherhood, is the miserable utilitarian/egotistic universe of market calculation. (And, incidentally, is not this -gap even wider in the
case of In his October Revolution?) However, one should not simplify Marx: his point is not the rather commonsensical insight into how
the vulgar reality of commerce is the "truth" of the theater of revolutionary enthu siasm, "what it all really came down to." In
the revolutionary explosion as an Event, another utopian dimension shines through, the
dimension of' universal emancipation which, precisely, is the excess betrayed by the market
reality which takes over "the day after"—as such, this excess is not simply abolished, dismissed as
irrelevant, but, as it were, transposed into a virtual state, continuing to haunt the emancipatory
imaginary like a dream waiting to be realized. The excess of revolutionary enthusiasm over its
own "actual social base" or substance is thus literally that of the future of/'In the past, a spectral
Event waiting for its embodiment.
Alt -- Movements Solve/Coming
Movements are coming, the question is what method is best for them to combine
under
-AT: Movements are violent: movements may be violent, but no more violent than cap
Harvey 2014 (David [the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York]; Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism; Oxford
University Press; p. 162-3; kdf)
Capital survives not only through a series of spatio-temporal fixes that absorb the capital surpluses in
productive and constructive ways, but also through the devaluation and destruction administered as
corrective medicine to those who fail to keep up and who fail to pay off their debts. The very idea that those who
irresponsibly lend should also be at risk is, of course, dismissed out of hand. That would require calling the wealthy property-owning classes everywhere to account
and insisting that they look to their responsibilities rather than to their inalienable rights to private property and accumulation without limit. The
sinister
and destructive side of spatia-temporal fixes (just look at how Greece is being pillaged and devastated) becomes just as
crucial to capital as its creative counterpart in building a new landscape to facilitate the endless
accumulation of capital and the endless accumulation of political power. So what, then, should an anti-capitalist
movement make of all this? It is first vital to recognise that capital is always a moving target for opposition
because of its uneven geographical development. Any anti-capitalist movement has to learn to cope with this. Oppositional
movements in one space have often been defanged because capital moved to another. Anti-capitalist
movements must abandon all thoughts of regional equality and convergence around some theory of
socialist harmony. These are recipes for an unacceptable and unachievable global monotony. Anti-capitalist movements have to
liberate and coordinate their own dynamics of uneven geographical development, the production of
emancipatory spaces of difference, in order to reinvent and explore creative regional alternatives to
capital. Different social movements and resistances are emerging from within the framework of capital's
uneven geographical development, from Stockholm and Cairo to Sao Paulo, Shanghai, Paris and London. These constitute a mosaic of different
but loosely interconnected seedbeds for transformations of capitalism towards an anticapitalist future. How they might be put together is the
question. We live in chaotic and volatile times, particularly with respect to uneven geographical developments. It is not unreasonable to
expect that resistances and oppositions will be equally chaotic, volatile and geographically specific.
Alt -- Ethics First
Must question ethics first anything less leads to violent frameworks
Critchley in 7 (Simon [Prof of Philosophy @ New School]; Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of
Commitment, Politics of Resistance; Verso, p.8-9, kdf)
How does a self bind itself to whatever it determines as its good? In my view, this is the fundamental
question of ethics. To answer it we require a description and explanation of the subjective commitment
to ethical action. My claim will be that all questions of normative justification, whether with reference to
theories of justice, rights, duties, obligations or whatever, should be referred to what I call 'ethical
experience'. Ethical experience elicits the core structure of moral selfhood, what we might think of as
the existential matrix of ethics. As such, and this is what really interests me, ethical experience furnishes
an account of the motivational force to act morally, of that by virtue of which a self decides to pledge
itself to some conception of the good. My polemical contention is that without a plausible account of
motivational force, that is, without a conception of the ethical subject, moral reflection is reduced to the
empty manipulation of the standard justificatory frameworks: deontology, utilitarianism and virtue
ethics.
AT: Alt = Cede political/ Inaction
Inaction in the instance of the plan is unique, we don’t foreclose solutionism in other
instances
Morozov 2013 (Evgeny [former fellow @ Stanford & Georgetown]; To Save Everything, Click Here:
The Folly of Technological Solutionism; p. The Will to Improve (Just About Everything!); Pro-quest; kdf)
It may seem that a critique of solutionism would, by its very antireformist bias, be the prerogative of the
conservative. In fact,many of the antisolutionist jibes throughout this book fit into the tripartite
taxonomy of reactionary responses to social change so skillfully outlined by the social theorist Albert
Hirschman. In his influential book The Rhetoric of Reaction, Hirschman argued that all progressive
reforms usually attract conservative criticisms that build on one of the following three themes:
perversity (whereby the proposed intervention only worsens the problem at hand), futility (whereby the
intervention yields no results whatsoever), and jeopardy (where the intervention threatens to
undermine some previous, hard-earned accomplishment).
Although I resort to all three of these critiques in the pages that follow, my overall project does differ
from the conservative resistance studied by Hirschman. I do not advocate inaction or deny that many
(though not all) of the problems tackled by solutionists—from climate change to obesity to declining
levels of trust in the political system—are important and demand immediate action (how exactly those
problems are composed is, of course, a different matter; there is more than one way to describe each).
But the urgency of the problems in question does not automatically confer legitimacy upon a panoply of
new, clean, and efficient technological solutions so in vogue these days. My preferred solutions—or,
rather, responses—are of a very different kind.
It’s also not a coincidence that my critique of solutionism bears some resemblance to several critiques of
the numerous earlier efforts to put humanity into too tight a straitjacket. Today’s straitjacket might be
of the digital variety, but it’s hardly the first or the tightest. While the word “solutionism” may not have
been used, many important thinkers have addressed its shortcomings, even if using different terms and
contexts. I’m thinking, in particular, of Ivan Illich’s protestations against the highly efficient but
dehumanizing systems of professional schooling and medicine, Jane Jacobs’s attacks on the arrogance of
urban planners, Michael Oakeshott’s rebellion against rationalists in all walks of human existence, Hans
Jonas’s impatience with the cold comfort of cybernetics; and, more recently, James Scott’s concern with
how states have forced what he calls “legibility” on their subjects. Some might add Friedrich Hayek’s
opposition to central planners, with their inherent knowledge deficiency, to this list.
These thinkers have been anything but homogenous in their political beliefs; Ivan Illich, Friedrich Hayek,
Jane Jacobs, and Michael Oakeshott would make a rather rowdy dinner party. But these highly original
thinkers, regardless of political persuasion, have shown that their own least favorite brand of
solutionist—be it Jacobs’s urban planners or Illich’s professional educators—have a very poor grasp not
just of human nature but also of the complex practices that this nature begets and thrives on. It’s as if
the solutionists have never lived a life of their own but learned everything they know from books—and
those books weren’t novels but manuals for refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and washing machines.
Thomas Molnar, a conservative philosopher who, for his smart and vehement critique of technological
utopianism written in the early 1960s, also deserves a place on the antisolutionist pantheon, put it really
well when he complained that “when the utopian writers deal with work, health, leisure, life
expectancy, war, crimes, culture, administration, finance, judges and so on, it is as if their words were
uttered by an automaton with no conception of real life. The reader has the uncomfortable feeling of
walking in a dreamland of abstractions, surrounded by lifeless objects; he manages to identify them in a
vague way, but, on closer inspection, he sees that they do not really conform to anything familiar in
shape, color, volume, or sound.” Dreamlands of abstractions are a dime a dozen these days; what works
in Palo Alto is assumed to work in Penang.
It’s not that solutions proposed are unlikely to work but that, in solving the “problem,” solutionists twist
it in such an ugly and unfamiliar way that, by the time it is “solved,” the problem becomes something
else entirely. Everyone is quick to celebrate victory, only no one remembers what the original solution
sought to achieve.
The ballyhoo over the potential of new technologies to disrupt education—especially now that several
start-ups offer online courses to hundreds of thousands of students, who grade each other’s work and
get no face time with instructors—is a case in point. Digital technologies might be a perfect solution to
some problems, but those problems don’t include education—not if by education we mean the
development of the skills to think critically about any given issue. Online resources might help students
learn plenty of new facts (or “facts,” in case they don’t cross-check what they learn on Wikipedia), but
such fact cramming is a far cry from what universities aspire to teach their students.
AT: Cap good
They simply point to instances of capitalism that have yet to go awry—this is
epistemologically flawed and in no way proves capitalism is good
Harvey 2014 (David [the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York]; Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism; Oxford
University Press; p. 153-7; kdf)
Since it may take many years for capitalism to mature in these new territories (if it ever does) to the point where they too begin to produce
surpluses of capital, the originating country can hope to benefit from this process for a not inconsiderable period of time. This is particularly the
case with investments in railways, roads, ports, dams and other infrastructures that mature slowly. But the rate of return on these investments
eventually depends upon the evolution of a strong dynamic of accumulation in the receiving region. Britain lent to the United States in this way
during the nineteenth century. Much later, the United States, via the Marshall Plan for Europe (West Germany in particular) and Japan, clearly
saw that its own economic security (leaving aside the military aspect of the Cold War) rested on the active revival of capitalist activity in these
other spaces. Contradictions arise because these
new dynamic spaces of capital accumulation ultimately generate
surpluses and need to find ways to absorb them through further geographical expansions. This can spark
geopolitical conflicts and tensions. In recent times we have witnessed cascading and proliferating spatia-temporal fixes primarily
throughout East and South-East Asia. Surplus capital from Japan started to course around the world in the 1970s in search of profitable outlets,
followed shortly thereafter by surplus capital from South Korea and then Taiwan in the mid-198os. While these
cascading spatiatemporal fixes are recorded as relationships between territories, they are in fact material and social
relations between regions within territories. The formal territorial difficulties between Taiwan and mainland China appear
anachronistic beside the growing integration of the industrial regions of Taipei and Shanghai. Capital flows from time to time get
redirected from one space to another. The capitalist system remains relatively stable as a whole, even
though the parts experience periodic difficulties (such as deindustrialisation here or partial devaluations there). The overall
effect of such interregional volatility is to temporarily reduce the aggregate dangers of overaccumulation and devaluation even though localized
distress may be acute. The regional volatility experienced since 198 or so seems to have largely been of this type. At each step, of course, the
issue arises as to which will be the next space into which capital can profitably flow and why and which will be the next space to be abandoned
and devalued. The general effect can be misleading: since
capital is always doing well somewhere, the illusion arises
that all will be well everywhere if we only readjust the form of capital to that predominant in Japan and West Germany
(the 198os), the United States (the 1990s) or China (after 2ooo). Capital never has to address its systemic failings because
it moves them around geographically. A second possible outcome, however, is increasingly fierce
international competition within the international division of labour as multiple dynamic centres of capital accumulation compete on
the world stage in the midst of strong currents of overaccumulation (lack of markets for realisation) or under conditions of
competing scarcities for raw materials and other key means of production. Since they cannot all succeed, either the weakest
succumb and fall into serious crises of localised devaluation or geopolitical struggles arise between
regions and states. The latter take the form of trade wars, currency and resource wars, with the everpresent danger of military confrontations (of the sort that gave us two world wars between capitalist powers in the twentieth
century). In this case, the spatiatemporal fix takes on a much more sinister meaning as it transmutes into the export of localised and regional
devaluations and destruction of capital (of the sort that occurred on a massive scale in East and South-East Asia and in Russia in 1997-8). How
and when this occurs will depend, however, just as much upon the explicit forms of political action on the part of state powers as it does upon the
molecular processes of capital accumulation in space and time. The dialectic between the territorial logic and the capitalistic logic is then fully
engaged. So how does the relative spatial fixity and distinctive logic of territorial power (as manifest in the state) fit with the fluid dynamics of
capital accumulation in space and time? Is this not the locus of an acute and abiding contradiction for capital, perhaps the apogee of the
contradiction between fixity (the state) and motion (capital)? Recall: 'In order for capital to circulate freely in space and time, physical
infrastructures and built environments must be created that are fixed in space: The mass of all this fixed capital increases over time relative to the
capital that is continuously flowing. Capital has periodically to break out of the constraints imposed by the world it has constructed. It is in mortal
danger of becoming sclerotic. The building of a geographical landscape favourable to capital accumulation in one era becomes, in short, a fetter
upon accumulation in the next. Capital has therefore to devalue much of the fixed capital in the existing geographical landscape in order to build
a wholly new landscape in a different image. This sparks intense and destructive localised crises. The most obvious contemporary example of
such devaluation in the USA is Detroit. But many older industrial cities in all the advanced capitalist countries and beyond (even north China and
Mumbai) have had to remake themselves as their economic bases have been eroded by competition from elsewhere. The principle here is this:
capital creates a geographical landscape that meets its needs at one point in time only to have to
destroy it at a later point in time to facilitate capital's further expansion and qualitative transformation.
Capital unleashes the powers of 'creative destruction' upon the land. Some factions benefit from the creativity, while others suffer the brunt of the
destruction. Invariably, this involves a class disparity. So where is state power in all of this and by what distinctive logic does it intervene in
processes oflandscape formation? The state is a bounded territorial entity formed under conditions that had little to do with capital but which is a
fundamental feature of the geographicallandscape. Within its territory it has a monopoly of the legitimate use of violence, sovereignty over the
law and the currency, and regulatory authority over institutions (including private property), and it is blessed with the power to tax and
redistribute incomes and assets. It organises structures of administration and governance that at the very minimum address the collective needs
ofboth capital and, more diffusely, the state's citizens. Among its sovereign powers perhaps the most important is defining and conferring rights
of citizenship under the law upon its inhabitants and thereby introducing the category of illegal alien or 'sans-papiers' into the equation. This
creates a separate population vulnerable to unthinkable and unrestricted exploitation by capital. As a bounded entity, the question of how the
state's borders were established and how they are patrolled in relation to the movements of people, commodities and money becomes paramount.
The two spatialities of state and capital sit awkwardly with and frequently contradict each other. This is very clear in the case, for example, of
migration policies. The interests of the capitalist state are not the same as those of capital. The state is not a simple thing and its various branches
do not always cohere, although key institutions within the state do typically play a directly supportive role in the management of capital's
economy (with treasury departments usually in alliance with central banks to constitute the state-finance nexus). The governance of the state
depends upon the nature of its political system, which sometimes pretends to be democratic and is often influenced by the dynamics of class and
other social struggles. The practices that constitute the exercise of state powers are far from monolithic or even coherent, which means that the
state cannot be construed as a solid 'thing' exercising distinctive powers. It is a bundle of practices and processes assembled together in
unbounded ways since the distinction between the state and civil society (for example, in a field like education, health care or housing) is highly
porous. Capital is not the only interest to which the state must respond and the pressures upon it come from a variety of interests. Furthermore,
the ruling ideology behind state interventions (usually expressed as an economic and policy orthodoxy) can vary considerably. There is, also, an
interstate system. Relations among states can be hostile or collaborative as the case may be, but there are always geo-economic and geopolitical
relations and conflicts that reflect the state's distinctive interests and lead state practices into forms of action that may or may not be consistent
with capital's interests. The logic that attaches to the territoriality of state power is very different from the logic of capital. The state is, among
other things, interested in the accumulation of wealth and power on a territorial basis and it was Adam Smith's genius to advise and generally
persuade statesmen that the best way to do this was to unleash and rationalise the forces of capital and the free market within its territory and
open its doors to free trade with others. The capitalist state is one that broadly follows pro-business policies, albeit tempered by ruling ideologies
and the innumerable and divergent social pressures mobilised through theorganisation of its citizens. But it also seeks to rationalise and use the
forces of capital to support its own powers of governmentality over potentially restive populations, all the while enhancing its own wealth, power
and standing within a highly competitive interstate system. This rationality contrasts with that of capital, which is primarily concerned with the
private appropriation and accumulation of social wealth. The constructed loyalty of citizens to their states conflicts in principle with capital's
singular loyalty to making money and nothing else. The kind of rationality the state typically imposes is illustrated by its urban and regional
planning practices. These state interventions and investments attempt to contain the otherwise chaotic consequences of unregulated market
development. The state imposes Cartesian structures of administration, law, taxation and individual identification. The technocratic and
bureaucratic production of space in the name of a supposedly capitalist modernity has been, however, the focus of virulent critiques (most notably
that of Henri Lefebvre3). What tends to be produced is a soulless, rationalised geographical landscape against which populations periodically
revolt. But the application of state powers to these purposes never did run smooth. They are all too easily subverted, co-opted and corrupted by
moneyed interests. Conversely, the foundational interests of the
state in, for example, the case of national
security can be subverted by capital and turned into a permanent feeding trough for capitalist ambitions
- hence the historical role of the infamous 'military-industrial complex' in the development of capital.
Capitalism guarantees the destruction of the biosphere on the backs of the working
class- any claim to the contrary is epistemologically suspect
Harvey 2014 (David [the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York]; Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism; Oxford
University Press; p. 56-8; kdf)
Of all writers it was, perhaps, Karl Polanyi, an emigre Hungarian socialist economic historian and anthropologist who ended up working and
writing in the United States at the height of the McCarthyite scourge, who most clearly saw the nature of this phenomenon and 'the perils to
society' which it posed. His influential work on The Great Transformation was first published in 1944 and remains a landmark text to this day.
The markets for labour, land and money are, he pointed out, essential for the functioning of capital and the production of value. But labor, land,
and money are obviously not commodities ... Labor is only another name for a human activity which goes with life itself, which in its turn is not
produced for sale but for entirely different reasons, nor can that activity be detached from the rest of life, be stored or mobilized; land is only
another name for nature, which is not produced by man; actual money, finally, is merely a token of purchasing power which, as a rule, is not
produced at all, but comes into being through the mechanism of banking or state finance. None of them is produced for sale. The commodity
description of labor, land, and money is entirely fictitious? To allow the fictions that land, labour and money are commodities to flourish
without restraint would, in Polanyi's view, 'result in the demolition of society'. In 'disposing of a man's labor power the system would,
incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral entity "man'' attached to that tag. Robbed of the protective covering of cultural
institutions, human beings would perish from the effects of social exposure; they would die as the victims of acute social dislocation through
vice, perversion, crime and starvation. Nature
would be reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and landscapes
defiled, rivers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials
destroyed'; and, finally, 'shortages and surfeits of money would prove as disastrous to business as floods
and droughts in primitive society'. No society, Polanyi concluded, 'could stand the effects of such a system of crude fictions even
for the shortest stretch of time unless its human and natural substance as well as its business organization was protected against the ravages of
this satanic mill'.3 To the degree that neoliberal
politics and policies these last few decades have dismantled many of the
protections that had been so painstakingly created through earlier decades of struggle, so we now find
ourselves increasingly exposed to some of the worst traits of that 'satanic mill' which capital, left to itself,
inevitably creates. Not only do we see around us abundant evidence of so many of the collapses that Polanyi feared, but a
heightened sense of universal alienation looms ever more threatening, as more and more of humanity
turns away in disgust from the barbarism the underpins the civilisation it has itself constructed. This
constitutes, as I shall argue by way of conclusion, one of the three most dangerous, perhaps even fatal, contradictions for
the perpetuation of both capital and capitalism. How the commodification of labour, land and money was historically
accomplished is in itself a long and painful story, as Marx's brief history of so-called 'primitive accumulation' in Capital outlines. The
transformation of labour, land and money into commodities rested on violence, cheating, robbery, swindling and the like. The common lands
were enclosed, divided up and put up for sale as private property. The gold and silver that formed the initial money commodities were stolen
from the Americas. The labour was forced off the land into the status of a 'free' wage labourer who could be freely exploited by capital when
not outright enslaved or indentured. Such forms of dispossession were foundational to the creation of capital. But even more importantly, they
never disappeared. Not
only were they central to the more dastardly aspects of colonialism, but to this very
day the politics and policies of dispossession ( administered for the most part by an unholy alliance of corporate and state
power) of access to land, water and natural resources are underpinning massive movements of global
unrest. The so-called 'land grabs' throughout Africa, Latin America and much of Asia (including the massive dispossessions occurring currently
in China) are just the most obvious symptom of a politics of accumulation by dispossession run riot in ways that even Polanyi could not have
imagined. In the United States, tactics of eminent domain, along with the brutal foreclosure wave that led to massive losses not only of use
values (millions rendered homeless) but also of hard-won savings and asset values embedded in housing markets, to say nothing of the loss of
pension, health care and educational rights and benefits, all indicate that the political economy of outright dispossession is alive and well in the
very heart of the capitalist world. The irony of course is that these
forms of dispossession are now increasingly
administered under the virtuous disguise of a politics of the austerity required to bring an ailing
capitalism back into a supposedly healthy state.
AT: Gibson-Graham/ K of Capitalocentric
Arguments that call of the rejection of capitalocentric critiques are dangerous:
A) we are a critique of capital, not capitalism taking out the internal link to their
argument—and—
B) only a focus on the system of capital can create solutions the aff outlines—rejecting
the alt is a reason to vote neg on presumption
Harvey 2014 (David [the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York]; Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism; Oxford
University Press; p. 10-11; kdf)
In certain circles it is fashionable to derogatorily dismiss studies such as this as 'capitalo-centric: Not only
do I see nothing wrong with such studies, provided, of course, that the interpretive claims that arise from them are not pressed too
far and in the wrong direction, but I also think it imperative that we have much more sophisticated and profound
capitalo-centric studies to hand to facilitate a better understanding of the recent problems that capital
accumulation has encountered. How else can we interpret the persistent contemporary problems of
mass unemployment, the downward spiral of economic development in Europe and Japan, the unstable
lurches forward of China, India and the other so-called BRIC countries? Without a ready guide to the contradictions underpinning
such phenomena we will be lost. It is surely myopic, if not dangerous and ridiculous, to dismiss as 'capitalo-centric'
interpretations and theories of how the economic engine of capital accumulation works in relation to
the present conjuncture. Without such studies we will likely misread and misinterpret the events that are occurring around us.
Erroneous interpretations will almost certainly lead to erroneous politics whose likely outcome will be to
deepen rather than to alleviate crises of accumulation and the social misery that derives from them. This
is, I believe, a serious problem throughout much of the contemporary capitalist world: erroneous policies based in erroneous theorising are
compounding the economic difficulties and exacerbating the social disruption and misery that result. For the
putative 'anti-capitalist'
movement now in formation it is even more crucial not only to better understand what exactly it is that
it might be opposed to, but also to articulate a clear argument as to why an anti-capitalist movement
makes sense in our times and why such a movement is so imperative if the mass of humanity is to live a
decent life in the difficult years to come. So what I am seeking here is a better understanding of the
contradictions of capital, not of capitalism. I want to know how the economic engine of capitalism works
the way it does, and why it might stutter and stall and sometimes appear to be on the verge of collapse. I also want to show why
this economic engine should be replaced and with what.
AT: Framework
The affirmative doesn’t have its hands on the levers of power—but the alternative
does, each chance to refuse neoliberalism is unique
Harvey 2007 (David [Distinguished Professor in the Graduate Center of the City University of New
York]; Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction; The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science 2007 610: 21; kdf)
Analysis also points up exploitable contradictions within the neoliberal agenda. The
gap between rhetoric (for the benefit of all) and
realization (for the benefit of a small ruling class) increases over space and time, and social movements have done
much to focus on that gap. The idea that the market is about fair competition is increasingly negated by the facts of extraordinary
monopoly, centralization, and internationalization on the part of corporate and financial powers. The startling increase in class and regional
inequalities both within states (such as China, Russia, India, Mexico, and in Southern Africa) as well as internationally poses a serious political
problem that can no longer be swept under the rug as something transitional on the way to a perfected neoliberal world. The
neoliberal
emphasis upon individual rights and the increasingly authoritarian use of state power to sustain the
system become a flashpoint of contentiousness. The more neoliberalism is recognized as a failed if not
disingenuous and utopian project masking the restoration of class power, the more it lays the basis for
a resurgence of mass movements voicing egalitarian political demands, seeking economic justice, fair
trade, and greater economic security and democratization. But it is the profoundly antidemocratic nature
of neoliberalism that should surely be the main focus of political struggle. Institutions with enormous leverage,
like the Federal Reserve, are outside any democratic control. Internationally, the lack of elementary accountability let alone democratic control
over institutions such as the IMF, the WTO, and the World Bank, to say nothing of the great private power of financial institutions, makes a
mockery of any credible concern about democratization. To bring back demands for democratic governance and for economic, political, and
cultural equality and justice is not to suggest some return to a golden past since the meanings in each instance have to be reinvented to deal
with contemporary conditions and potentialities. The meaning of democracy in ancient Athens has little to do with the meanings we must
invest it with today in circumstances as diverse as Sao Paulo, Johannesburg, Shanghai, Manila, San Francisco, Leeds, Stockholm, and Lagos. But
right across the globe, from China, Brazil, Argentina, Taiwan, and Korea to South Africa, Iran, India, and Egypt, and beyond the struggling
nations of Eastern Europe into the heartlands of contemporary capitalism, groups and social movements are rallying to reforms expressive of
democratic values. That is a key point of many of the struggles now emerging. The more clearly
oppositional movements
recognize that their central objective must be to confront the class power that has been so effectively
restored under neoliberalization, the more they will be likely to cohere. Tearing aside the neoliberal
mask and exposing its seductive rhetoric, used so aptly to justify and legitimate the restoration of that power, has a
significant role to play in contemporary struggles. It took neoliberals many years to set up and accomplish their march
through the institutions of contemporary capitalism. We can expect no less of a struggle when pushing in the opposite direction.
AT: Util
The focus of ends justifying the means is a bankrupt methodology justifying the
systemic elimination of entire populations
Zizek in 2008
(Slavoj, [Senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, has been
visiting prof @ Columbia, Princeton, and The New School], Violence: Big Ideas// small books. Picador,
pg(s) 100-1, kdf)
Of course, we do not openly admit these motive From time to time they nevertheless pop up in our public
space in censored form, in the guise of de-negation. evoked as an option and then immediately discarded
Recall what William Bennett, the gambling, neo-con author of The Book of Virtues, said on 28 September 2005
on his call-in programme Morning in America: But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime,
you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime
rate would go down. That would be an impossibly ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but our
crime rate would go down." The White House reacted immediately: "The president believes the comments
were not appropriate." Two days later, Bennett qualified his statement: "I was putting a hypothetical
7roposition ... and then said about it, it was morally reprehensible to recommend abortion of an entire group of
people. But this is what happens when you argue that ends can justify the means." This is exactly what Freud
meant when he wrote that the unconscious knows no negation: the official (Christian, democratic ... ) discourse is accompanied and sustained by a whole nest of obscene, brutal, racist, sexist fantasies, which can
only -)e admitted in a censored form.
AT: Framework – Education
The plan is the death of education
Morozov 2013 (Evgeny [former fellow @ Stanford & Georgetown]; To Save Everything, Click Here:
The Folly of Technological Solutionism; p. The Will to Improve (Just About Everything!); Pro-quest; kdf)
The ballyhoo over the potential of new technologies to disrupt education—especially now that several start-ups offer online courses to
hundreds of thousands of students, who grade each other’s work and get no face time with instructors—is a case in point. Digital
technologies might be a perfect solution to some problems, but those problems don’t include
education—not if by education we mean the development of the skills to think critically about any given
issue. Online resources might help students learn plenty of new facts (or “facts,” in case they don’t cross-check what they learn on
Wikipedia), but such fact cramming is a far cry from what universities aspire to teach their students. As Pamela Hieronymi, a professor of
philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), points out in an important essay on the myths of online learning, “Education
is not the transmission of information or ideas. Education is the training needed to make use of
information and ideas. As information breaks loose from bookstores and libraries and floods onto
computers and mobile devices, that training becomes more important, not less.” Of course, there are plenty of
tools for increasing one’s digital literacy, but those tools go only so far; they might help you to detect erroneous
information, but they won’t organize your thoughts into a coherent argument. Adam Falk, president of Williams
College, delivers an even more powerful blow against solutionism in higher education when he argues that it would be erroneous to
pretend that the solutions it peddles are somehow compatible with the spirit and goals of the university.
Falk notes that, based on the research done at Williams, the best predictor of students’ intellectual success in
college is not their major or GPA but the amount of personal, face-to-face contact they have with
professors. According to Falk, averaging letter grades assigned by five random peers—as at least one much-lauded start-up in this space,
Coursera, does—is not the “educational equivalent of a highly trained professor providing thoughtful evaluation and detailed response.” To
pretend that this is the case, insists Falk, “is to deny the most significant purposes of education, and to forfeit its true value.” Here
we have
a rather explicit mismatch between the idea of education embedded in the proposed set of
technological solutions and the time-honored idea of education still cherished at least by some colleges.
In an ideal world, of course, both visions can coexist and prosper simultaneously. However, in the world we inhabit, where the
administrators are as cost-conscious as ever, the approach that produces the most graduates per dollar
spent is far more likely to prevail, the poverty of its intellectual vision notwithstanding. Herein lies one
hidden danger of solutionism: the quick fixes it peddles do not exist in a political vacuum. In promising almost
immediate and much cheaper results, they can easily undermine support for more ambitious, more intellectually
stimulating, but also more demanding reform projects.
AT: Framework – Policy Failure
Cyber-utopian ideology results in poor policy decisions that worsen democracy- the
alternative is to counter authoritarian regime’s exploitative use of the internet
Morozov 11 (Evgeny Morozov. Writer and researcher who studies political and social implications of
technology. Senior writer at New Republic. “The Net Delusion.” 2011. P. 27-28.)//EMerz
Unbridled cyber-utopianism is an expensive ideology to maintain because authoritarian governments
don’t stand still and there are absolutely no guarantees they won’t find a way to turn the Internet into a
powerful tool of oppression. If, on closer examination, it turns out that the Internet has also empowered
the secret police, the censors, and the propaganda offices of a modern authoritarian regime, it’s quite
likely that the process of democratization will become harder, not easier. Similarly, if the Internet has
dampened the level of antigovernment sentiment—because yet another source of legitimacy. If the
Internet is reshaping the very nature and culture of antigovernment resistance and dissent, shifting it
away from real-world practices and toward anonymous virtual spaces, it will also have significant
consequences for the scale and tempo of the protest movement, not all of them positive. That’s an
insight that has been lost on most observers of the political power of the Internet. Refusing to
acknowledge that the Web can actually strengthen rather than undermine authoritarian regimes is
extremely irresponsible and ultimately results in bad policy, if only because it gives policymakers false
confidence that the only things they need to be doing are proactive—rather than reactive—in nature.
But if, on careful examination, it turns out that certain types of authoritarian regimes can benefit from
the Internet in disproportionally more ways than their opponents, the focus of Western democracy
promotion work should shift from empowering the activists to topple their regimes to countering the
governments’ own exploitation of the Web lest they become even more authoritarian. There is no
point in making a revolution more effective, quick, and anonymous if the odds of the revolution’s
success are worsening in the meantime.
AT: Framework – policy making/decision making
The naïve belief in the power of internet freedom turns decision making- policy
makers are oblivious to reality
Morozov 11 (Evgeny Morozov. Writer and researcher who studies political and social implications of
technology. Senior writer at New Republic. “The Net Delusion.” 2011. P. 21-22.)//EMerz
Whatever one calls it, this belief in the democratizing power of the Web ruins the public’s ability to
assess future and existing policies, not least because it overstates the positive role that corporations
play in democratizing the world without subjecting them to the scrutiny they so justly deserve. Such
cyber-utopian propensity to only see the bright side was on full display in early 2010, as Google
announced it was pulling out of China, fed up with the growing censorship demands of the Chinese
government and mysterious cyber-attacks on its intellectual property. But what should have been
treated as a purely rational business decision was lauded as a bold move to support “human rights”; that
Google did not mind operating in China for more than four years prior to the pullout was lost on most
commentators. Writing in Newsweek, Jacob Weisberg, a prominent American journalist and publisher,
called Google’s decision “heroic,” while Senator John Kerry said that “Google is gutsily taking real risk in
standing up for principle.”
Addressing the impact of cyber utopianism on policies is a prior question to making
those policies- conviction in the internet’s power makes rationally dealing with policy
questions impossible
Morozov 11 (Evgeny Morozov. Writer and researcher who studies political and social implications of
technology. Senior writer at New Republic. “The Net Delusion.” 2011. P. 27.)//EMerz
Furthermore, giving in to cyber-utopianism may preclude policymakers from considering a whole
range of other important questions. Should they applaud or bash technology companies who choose to
operate in authoritarian regimes, bending their standard procedures as a result? Are they harbingers of
democracy, as they claim to be, or just digital equivalents of Halliburton and United Fruit Company,
cynically exploiting local business opportunities while also strengthening the governments that let them
in? How should the West balance its sudden urge to promote democracy via the Internet with its
existing commitments to other nondigital strategies for achieving the same objective, from the fostering
of independent political parties to the development of civil society organizations? What are the best
ways of empowering digital activists without putting them at risk? If the Internet is really a revolutionary
force that could nudge all authoritarian regimes toward democracy, should the West go quiet on many
of its other concerns about the Internet—remember all those fears about cyberwar, cybercrime, online
child pornography, Internet piracy—and strike while the iron is still hot? These are immensely difficult
questions; they are also remarkably easy to answer incorrectly. While the Internet has helped to
decrease costs for nearly everything, human folly is a commodity that still bears a relatively high price.
The oft-repeated mantra of the open source movement—“fail often, fail early”—produces excellent
software, but it is not applicable to situations where human lives are at stake. Western policymakers,
unlike pundits and academics, simply don’t have the luxury of getting it wrong and dealing with the
consequences later.
AT: Internet Inevitable
Reject their inevitability calculus
Morozov 2013 (Evgeny [former fellow @ Stanford & Georgetown]; To Save Everything, Click Here:
The Folly of Technological Solutionism; p. So open it hurts; Pro-quest; kdf)
Ironically, this is the position that Lessig the academic has made a career out of opposing. But Lessig the activist and public intellectual has no
problem embracing such a position whenever it suits his own activist agenda. As someone who shares many of the ends of Lessig’s agenda, I
take little pleasure in criticizing his means, but I do think they are intellectually unsustainable and probably misleading to the technologically
unsavvy.
Internet-centrism, like all religions, might have its productive uses, but it makes for a truly awful guide
to solving complex problems, be they the future of journalism or the unwanted effects of transparency.
It’s time we abandon the chief tenet of Internet-centrism and stop conflating physical networks with the
ideologies that run through them. We should not be presenting those ideologies as inevitable and
natural products of these physical networks when we know that these ideologies are contingent and
perishable and probably influenced by the deep coffers of Silicon Valley. Instead of answering each and every digital
challenge by measuring just how well it responds to the needs of the “network,” we need to learn how to engage in narrow, empirically
grounded arguments about the individual technologies and platforms that compose “the Internet.” If, in some cases, this
would mean
going after the sacred cows of transparency or openness, so be it. Before the idea of “the Internet”
hijacked our imaginations, we made such trade-offs all the time. No serious philosopher would ever
proclaim that either transparency or openness is an unquestionable good or absolute value to which
human societies should aspire. There is no good reason why we should suddenly accept the totalizing philosophy of “the
Internet” and embrace the supremacy of its associated values just because its cheerleaders believe that
“the network is not going away.” Digital technologies contain no ready-made answers to the social and
political dilemmas they create, even if “the Internet” convinces us otherwise.
If the internet is inevitable, it takes out their advantage – still not a justification of
internet-centrism
Morozov 2013 (Evgeny [former fellow @ Stanford & Georgetown]; To Save Everything, Click Here:
The Folly of Technological Solutionism; p.What if Internet Theorists were Bouncers; Pro-quest; kdf)
Zittrain’s thought is a manifestation of a broader paradox that has become ubiquitous in our Internet debates. Rare is a reader of technology
blogs or an attendee of technology conferences who has not heard the admonition that some dark, evil force—Hollywood, the National
Security Agency, China, Apple—is about to “break the Internet.” Technologists and geeks—the
group that spends the greatest
amount of time philosophizing about “the Internet” and its future—constantly remind us that “the
Internet” is unstable and might fall apart. Save for the occasional proclamation that the world will stay as it is minus all the fun
and convenience, no one seems to know what awaits us once “the Internet” does break. But break it will—unless
some drastic change is taken to maintain its current state. Hence the greatest irony of all: one day we are told that “the
Internet” is here to stay, and we should reshape our institutions to match its demands; another day, we
are told that it’s so fragile that almost anyone or anything could deal it a lethal blow. It would be tempting to
write this paradox off as a mere contradiction in geek logic. Or, as in Lessig’s case, it might be just a rhetorical trick, a clever ruse that
bolsters some important activist cause—say, copyright reform, net neutrality, or opposition to surveillance and censorship—
while also nudging our seemingly obsolete political and legal institutions to experiment with technology
and innovation. Such an interpretation certainly seems plausible. But it’s also plausible that we have become utterly
confused about “the Internet” and its presumed nature, that we are dead wrong about its finality, that
the very idea of “the Internet” has impoverished our thinking about the world, and that we are
worshiping false gods and ideologies. So, which is it?
Morozov 2013 (Evgeny [former fellow @ Stanford & Georgetown]; To Save Everything, Click Here:
The Folly of Technological Solutionism; p.What if Internet Theorists were Bouncers; Pro-quest; kdf)
But the theory of generativity doesn’t preoccupy itself with the thorny subject of how “the Internet”
itself will die—not least because Zittrain, under the sway of Internet-centrism, badly wants “the
Internet” to be eternal. His theory is a recipe for how “the Internet” can live forever. This, of course, is
never expressed directly, for Zittrain assumes—quite correctly—that his geeky audience shares his
desire to make its fetish object immortal. However, we shouldn’t mistake our infatuation with “the
Internet” for a genuine theory of innovation. Any robust theory, instead of treating “the Internet” like a
permanent gift to civilization, would find a way to compare the innovation potentials of many different
platforms and technologies, including those that might eventually threaten to supplant “the Internet.”
Of course, there may be other strong social, political, and even aesthetic concerns about the challenge
that the rise of apps presents to digital “forms of life.” However, to claim that Apple—one of Zittrain’s
culprits—is bad for innovation because it’s bad for “the Internet” is like claiming that “the Internet” is
bad for innovation because it’s bad for the telephone. Well, it might have been bad for the telephone—
but when did the preservation of the telephone become a lofty social goal? Such teleological Internetcentrism should have no place in our regulatory thinking. But, alas, the preservation of “the Internet”
seems to have become an end in itself, to the great detriment of our ability even to imagine what might
come to supplant it and how our Internet fetish might be blocking that something from emerging. To
choose “the Internet” over the starkly uncertain future of the post-Internet world is to tacitly
acknowledge that either “the Internet” has satisfied all our secret plans, longings, and desires—that is, it
is indeed Silicon Valley’s own “end of history”—or that we simply can’t imagine what else innovation
could unleash.
The irony is that Zittrain’s theory of generativity, while very critical of gatekeepers like Apple, is itself a
gatekeeper. While generativity green-lights good, reliable, and predictable innovation, the kind that
promises to stay within the confines of “the Internet” and leave things as they are, it frowns upon—and
possibly even blocks—the unruly and disruptive kind that might start within “the Internet” but
eventually transcend, supplant, and perhaps even eliminate it. Zittrain attempts to universalize what he
takes to be the operating principles of “the Internet” and present them as objective, eternal, and
uncontroversial foundations on which innovation theory itself could run from now on. Thus, if openness
has supposedly been one of the defining features of “the Internet,” it gets magically transformed into an
objective benchmark for the future of innovation. Aggressive expansion into other domains is one of the
hallmarks of Internet-centrism; it colonizes entire theories and domains, imposing its own values—
openness, transparency, disruption—on whatever it touches. However, if we put the well-being of “the
Internet” aside, absolutely nothing about Apple’s hands-on approach to running its app store or
controlling its gadgets suggests that it’s bad for innovation. Its approach may not be “open”; it may not
even be “Internet compatible.” But these criteria only make sense in a world where the well-being of
“the Internet itself” is the alpha and omega of everything, the summum bonum. This may even be a
world in which Jonathan Zittrain and many other geeks would actually want to live; ideologies do have a
tendency to present other worldviews as irrelevant or impossible. In reality, though, control and
centralization are not inherently antithetical to innovation; if we have come to believe the opposite,
then “the Internet” is partly to blame.
Impact turns aff
The impact turns the aff
Packer 2013 (George; Change the world; May 27;
www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/05/27/change-the-world?currentPage=5; kdf)
Technology can be an answer to incompetence and inefficiency. But it has little to say about larger
issues of justice and fairness, unless you think that political problems are bugs that can be fixed by
engineering rather than fundamental conflicts of interest and value. Evgeny Morozov, in his new book “To Save
Everything, Click Here,” calls this belief “solutionism.” Morozov, who is twenty-nine and grew up in a mining town in Belarus, is the
fiercest critic of technological optimism in America, tirelessly dismantling the language of its followers.
“They want to be ‘open,’ they want to be ‘disruptive,’ they want to ‘innovate,’ ” Morozov told me. “The
open agenda is, in many ways, the opposite of equality and justice. They think anything that helps you to
bypass institutions is, by default, empowering or liberating. You might not be able to pay for health care
or your insurance, but if you have an app on your phone that alerts you to the fact that you need to exercise more, or you
aren’t eating healthily enough, they think they are solving the problem.”
Impact—Authoritarianism
Internet freedom re-entrenches authoritarian regimes’ power and spills over globallyIran proves- results in net more surveillance
Morozov 11 (Evgeny Morozov. Writer and researcher who studies political and social implications of
technology. Senior writer at New Republic. “The Net Delusion.” 2011. P.10-14.)//EMerz
In just a few months, the Iranian government formed a high-level twelve-member cybercrime team and
tasked it with finding any false information—or, as they put it, “insults and lies”—on Iranian websites.
Those spreading false information were to be identified and arrested. The Iranian police began hunting the Internet for
photos and videos that showed faces of the protesters—numerous, thanks to the ubiquity of social
media—to publish them on Iranian news media websites and ask the public for help in identifying the individuals. In December 2009 the
pro-Ahmadinejad Raja News website published a batch of thirty-eight photos with sixty-five faces circled in red and a batch of forty-seven
photos with about a hundred faces circled in red. According
to the Iranian police, public tip-offs helped to identify and
arrest at least forty people. Ahmadinejad’s supporters may have also produced a few videos of their own, including a clip—which
many in the opposition believed to be a montage—that depicted a group of protesters burning a portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini. If people had
believed that the footage was genuine, it could have created a major split in the opposition, alienating vast swathes of the Iranian population.
The police or someone acting on their behalf also went searching for personal details—mostly Facebook profiles and email addresses— of
Iranians living abroad, sending them threatening messages and urging them not to support the Green Movement unless they wanted to hurt
the authorities were equally tough on Iranians in the country, warning
them to stay away from social networking sites used by the opposition. The country’s police chief Gen. Ismail Ahmadi
their relatives back in Iran. In the meantime,
Moghaddam warned that those who incited others to protest or issued appeals “have committed a worse crime than those who come to the
streets.” Passport control officers at Tehran’s airport asked Iranians living abroad if they had Facebook accounts; they would often doublecheck online, regardless of the answer, and proceed to write down any suspicious-looking online friends a traveler might have.
The
authorities, however, did not dismiss technology outright. They, too, were more than happy to harvest its benefits. They
turned to text messaging—on a rather massive scale—to warn Iranians to stay away from street protests in the future. One such message, sent
by the intelligence ministry, was anything but friendly: “Dear citizen, according to received information, you have been influenced by the
destabilizing propaganda which the media affiliated with foreign countries have been disseminating. In case of any illegal action and contact
with the foreign media, you will be charged as a criminal consistent with the Islamic Punishment Act and dealt with by the Judiciary.” In
the
eyes of the Iranian government, the Western media was guilty of more than spreading propaganda; they
accused CNN of “training hackers” after the channel reported on various cyber-attacks that
Ahmadinejad’s opponents were launching on websites deemed loyal to his campaign. Recognizing that the
enemy was winning the battle in the virtual world, one ayatollah eventually allowed pious Iranians to use any tool, even if it contravened
Shari’a law, in their online fight. “In a war, anti-Shari’a [moves] are permissible; the same applies to a cyberwar. The conditions are such that
you should fight the enemy in any way you can. You don’t need to be considerate of anyone. If you don’t hit them, the enemy will hit you,”
proclaimed Ayatollah Alam Ahdi during a Friday Prayer sermon in 2010. But the campaign against CNN was a drop in the sea compared to the
accusations launched against Twitter, which the pro-Ahmadinejad Iranian media immediately took to be the real source of unrest in the
country. An editorial in Javan, a hard-line
Iranian newspaper, accused the U.S. State Department of trying to
foment a revolution via the Internet by helping Twitter stay online, stressing its “effective role in the continuation of
riots.” Given the previous history of American interference in the country’s affairs—most Iranians still fret about the 1953 coup masterminded
by the CIA—such accusations are likely to stick, painting all Twitter users as a secret American revolutionary vanguard. In contrast to the
tumultuous events of 1953, the Twitter Revolution did not seem to have its Kermit Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt’s grandson and the
coordinator of CIA’s Operation Ajax, which resulted in the overthrow of the nationalist government of Mohammad Mosaddegh. But in the eyes
of the Iranian authorities the fact that today’s digital vanguards have no obvious charismatic coordinators only made them seem more
dangerous. (The Iranian propaganda officials could not contain their glee when they discovered that Kermit Roosevelt was a close relative of
John Palfrey, the faculty codirector of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a think tank that the U.S. State Department had
Other governments also took notice, perhaps out of fear that they, too,
might soon have a Twitter Revolution on their hands. Chinese authorities interpreted Washington’s
involvement in Iran as a warning sign that digital revolutions facilitated by American technology
companies are not spontaneous but carefully staged affairs. “How did the unrest after the Iranian elections come about?”
funded to study the Iranian blogosphere.)
pondered an editorial in the People’s Daily, the chief mouthpiece of the Communist Party. “It was because online warfare launched by America,
via YouTube video and Twitter microblogging, spread rumors, created splits, stirred up, and sowed discord between the followers of
conservative reformist factions.” Another major outlet of government propaganda, Xinhua News Agency, took a more philosophical view,
announcing that “information technology that has brought mankind all kinds of benefits has this time become a tool for interfering in the
internal affairs of other countries.” A few months after the Iranian protests, China National Defense, an official outlet of the Chinese military,
ran a similar editorial, lumping April 2010 youth protests in Moldova with those of Iran and treating both as prime examples of Internetenabled foreign intervention. The editorial, singling out the United States as the “keenest Western power to add the internet to its diplomatic
arsenal,” also linked those two protests to an ethnic uprising in China’s own Xinjiang province in July 2009, concluding that more Internet
the irresponsible Iranrelated punditry in Washington allowed leaders in Beijing to build a credible case for more Internet
censorship in China. (The online blockade of the Xinjiang region only ended in early 2010.) Media in the former Soviet Union
took notice as well. “The Demonstrations in Iran Followed the Moldovan Scenario: The U.S. Got Burnt” proclaimed a headline on a
control was in order, if only “to avoid the internet becoming a new poisoned arrow for hostile forces.” Bizarrely,
Russian nationalist portal. A prime-time news program on the popular Russian TV channel NTV announced that the “Iranian protesters were
enjoying the support of the U.S. State Department, which interfered in the internal activities of Twitter, a trendy Internet service.” A newspaper
in Moldova reported that the U.S. government even supplied Twitter with cutting-edge anticensorship technology. This
was
globalization at its worst: A simple email based on the premise that Twitter mattered in Iran, sent by an
American diplomat in Washington to an American company in San Francisco, triggered a worldwide
Internet panic and politicized all online activity, painting it in bright revolutionary colors and
threatening to tighten online spaces and opportunities that were previously unregulated. Instead of
finding ways to establish long-term relationships with Iranian bloggers and use their work to quietly
push for social, cultural, and—at some distant point in the future—maybe even political change, the
American foreign policy establishment went on the record and pronounced them to be more dangerous
than Lenin and Che Guevara combined. As a result, many of these “dangerous revolutionaries” were
jailed, many more were put under secret surveillance, and those poor Iranian activists who happened
to be attending Internet trainings funded by the U.S. State Department during the election could not
return home and had to apply for asylum. (At least five such individuals got trapped in Europe.) The pundits were right: Iran’s
Twitter Revolution did have global repercussions. Those were, however, extremely ambiguous, and they often strengthened rather than
undermined the authoritarian rule.
Impact: No Solvency
The aff operates under half-baked predictions—sweeping future social and political
problems under the rug
Morozov 2011 (Evgeny [visiting scholar at Stanford University and a Schwartz fellow at the New
America Foundation]; The Net Delusion; p 314-5; kdf)
Hannah Arendt, one of America's most treasured public intellectuals, was aware of this problem back in the 1960s, when the "scientifically
minded brain trusters" -Alvin Weinberg was just one of many; another whiz kid with a penchant for computer modeling, Robert McNamara,
was put in charge of the Vietnam War-were beginning to penetrate the corridors of power and influence government policy. "The trouble [with
such advisers] is not that they are cold-blooded enough to 'think the unthinkable,"' cautioned Arendt in "On Violence," "but that they do not
'think:" "Instead of indulging in such an old-fashioned, uncomputerizable activity," she wrote, "they reckon with the consequences of certain
hypothetically assumed constellations without, however, being able to test their hypothesis against actual occurrences:' A
cursory
glimpse at the overblown and completely unsubstantiated rhetoric that followed Iran's Twitter
Revolution is enough to assure us that not much has changed. It was more than just the constant
glorification of technical, largely quantitative expertise at the expense of erudition that bothered
Arendt. She feared that increased reliance on half-baked predictions uttered by self-interested
technological visionaries and the futuristic theories they churn out on an hourly basis would prevent
policymakers from facing the highly political nature of the choices in front of them. Arendt worried that
"because of their inner consistency ... [such theories J have a hypnotic effect; they put to sleep our common sense:' The ultimate irony of
the modern world, which is more dependent on technology than ever, is that, as technology becomes
ever more integrated into political and social life, less and less attention is paid to the social and political
dimensions of technology itself. Policymakers should resist any effort to take politics out of technology;
they simply cannot afford to surrender to the kind of apolitical hypnosis that Arendt feared. The Internet is too
important a force to be treated lightly or to be outsourced to know-all consultants. One may not be able to predict its impact on a particular
country or social situation, but it would be foolish to deny that some impact is inevitable. Understanding how exactly various stakeholderscitizens, policymakers, foundations, journalists-can influence the way in which technology's political future unfolds is a quintessential question
facing any democracy. More than just politics lies beyond the scope of technological analysis; human nature is also outside its grasp.
Proclaiming that societies have entered a new age and embraced a new economy does not
automatically make human nature any more malleable, nor does it necessarily lead to universal respect
for humanist values. People still lust for power and recognition, regardless of whether they accumulate it by running for office or
collecting Facebook friends. As James Carey, the Columbia University media scholar, put it: "The 'new' man and woman of the 'new age' strikes
one as the same mixture of greed, pride, arrogance and hostility that we encounter in both history and experience:' Technology changes all the
time; human nature hardly ever. The fact that do-gooders usually mean well does not mitigate the disastrous consequences that follow from
their inability (or just sheer lack of ambition) to engage with broader social and political dimensions of technology. As the German psychologist
Dietrich Dorner observed in The Logic of Failure, his masterful account of how decision-makers' ingrained psychological biases could aggravate
existing problems and blind them to the far more detrimental consequences of proposed solutions, "it's far from clear whether 'good intentions
plus stupidity' or 'evil intentions plus intelligence' have wrought more harm in the world:' In reality, the fact that we mean well should only give
us extra reasons for scrupulous self-retrospection, for, according to Dorner, "incompetent people with good intentions rarely suffer the qualms
of conscience that sometimes inhibit the doings of competent people with bad intentions:'
Morozov Prodicts
Morozov is qualified af – he’s had a firsthand experience of both authoritarianism
and social media’s explosive rise as well as a Standford scholar
Pilkington 11, (Ed, chief reporter for Guardian US. He is a former national and foreign
editor of the Guardian, “Evgeny Morozov: How democracy slipped through the net”,
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jan/13/evgeny-morozov-the-netdelusion)
On 15 June 2009, while thousands of Iranians were streaming on to the streets of Tehran to protest
against the disputed results of the presidential election, Jared Cohen, an official in the US state
department, quietly sent an email to Twitter. Despite coming from the youngest member of America's
foreign policy arm – Cohen was just 27 at the time – it was surprisingly serious. Cohen wrote that, in the
view of the Obama administration, Twitter was playing a crucial role in Iran as a way for protesters to
communicate. He implored the social networking site to delay routine maintenance work it had planned
for the following day that would have brought down all its feeds in Iran and possibly disrupted the
organisation of the protests. Twitter complied, putting off the maintenance for 24 hours, thus allowing
the flow of tweets to continue uninterrputed. The demonstrations grew and grew.∂ At face value the
exchange was harmless – an example of government and business working together to forward
America's interests abroad. But in the eyes of one scholar, this apparently benign interaction was to
have powerfu, unforeseen consequences. In Evgeny Morozov's analysis, Cohen's email set a dangerous
precedent, convincing the Iranian leadership, and many other authoritarian regimes around the world,
that the US government was in cahoots with Silicon Valley and that the internet was being turned into
an extension of politics by other means.∂ chief reporter for Guardian US. He is a former national and
foreign editor of the paper,The email was taken as evidence that the US government was behind the
protests, and that in turn was used to portray all Twitter users in Iran as agents of the west. People who
were blogging about cappuccinos found themselves transformed into Lech Walesa."∂ Digital retribution
was swift. The jails began to fill.∂ Morozov is fast becoming a leading voice of what might be called the
cyber-sceptic school of internet studies, at a time when such views are becoming more fashionable.
After so many grand predictions have been made about the world-changing potential of Twitter and
Facebook, the backlash has set in, with pundits now questioning whether the web is all it's cracked up to
be. Take Zadie Smith, for example, who recently wondered aloud in the New York Review of Books
whether social networking is creating a generation of People 2.0, or Malcolm Gladwell who cited
Morozov in a New Yorker article in October that cast doubt on Twitter and Facebook as instruments of
genuine change.∂ Morozov's status in this burgeoning camp of sceptics can only be enhanced by his new
book, The Net Delusion, which chronicles what he sees as the inflated hopes invested by the west in the
internet and the damage that has been caused as a result. Yet he cuts an unlikely figure for someone
playing a central role in an increasingly vital debate about the place of social media around the globe.∂
For a start, there's his age. At 26, he's even younger than Cohen was when he fired off that fateful email.
And then there's his background. Far from the twin Meccas of new technology – northern California and
New York – Morozov hails from a small potassium-mining town in Belarus. His parents worked for the
mining company, as did everybody else in Soligorsk (which translates as "mountains of salt"). "I know
more about potassium than I like to admit," he says.∂ But it's precisely his decidedly old world, highly
ungeeky, roots that make Morozov a credible observer of the west's uses, and abuses, of the internet.
They give him an affinity with those who live under authoritarian regimes, having grown up in Belarus,
which Condoleezza Rice once described as the last outpost of tyranny in Europe.∂ As we sit and talk in a
cafe near Capitol Hill in Washington, Morozov admits rather sheepishly that in the beginning he was
himself a passionate believer in the democratising potential of the web. After school, he moved to
Bulgaria with the benefit of a grant from George Soros's Open Society Institute and then worked for an
NGO in Berlin. He even become one of the first to use the term "Twitter revolution" at the time of the
protests in Moldova in April 2009.∂ "It was hard not to be infected by a sense of optimism and
excitement about the freedom agenda that was around at that time. I genuinely thought it was making a
difference. Democracy appeared to be advancing and marching, and the web 2.0 seemed to be part of
it, bringing people on to the streets."∂ The doubts set in, tentatively at first, with Moldova. After the
protests ended, it transpired that there hadn't been that many Twitter users in the country, and that
other forms of communication – including the good old telephone – had been just as important.∂ Then
when Tehran erupted, Morozov had a deepening sense that the claims being made for the internet as a
pro-democracy force were being wildly exaggerated. In his book, he points his finger at those he accuses
of hype, or as he puts it "cyber-utopianism" such as New York University's Clay Shirky – "this is it, the big
one, the first revolution transformed by social media" – Mark Pfeifle, a former George Bush adviser who
tried to get Twitter nominated for the Nobel peace prize, and our friend Cohen again, who called
Facebook "one of the most organic tools for democracy the world has ever seen". The Guardian also
gets a name-check, with Morozov referring to an op-ed that proposed to "bomb Iran with broadband".∂
The more he looked into it, the more he came to the conclusion that western views of social networking
were hopelessly naive and out of kilter with the realities on the ground. "Because of cyber-utopian
ideas, for the past 10 years the west has failed to think about how to use the internet to its best
advantage," he says. "Instead of really thinking about how to address these issues, we have spent too
much time extolling the power of Silicon Valley to conquer authoritarianism simply by opening offices in
Vietnam or China."
Morozov cites a litany of empirics and has a rigorous analysis of history – human
nature is not to utilize the internet for activism but leads to complacency.
Prston 11, (John, critic for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, “The Net Delusion by
Evgeny Morozov: review”, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/8241377/TheNet-Delusion-by-Evgeny-Morozov-review.html)
It is only recently that the clouds of guff have parted and people have begun to recognise this for the
nonsense it is. What’s become all too plain is that the internet can just as easily be used to control
people as it can to educate them. After the failed uprising in Iran, the government hunted down
dissidents online, tracking them through their emails and using face-recognition technology to identify
people from pictures taken on mobile phones.∂ But it’s not just the Iranians: they’re all at it. AlQaeda has proved to be as proficient in using the internet as its Western opponents, while the Chinese
government recently devised a program called Green Dam that analyses people’s internet habits and
shuts off access to sites it disapproves of. Hearteningly, the program has proved to have a number of
insoluble glitches. To try to stop people accessing pornography, Green Dam shut down any site featuring
unusual amounts of the colour pink – denoting skin tones. However, to the government’s fury, naked
dark-skinned people continued to sail unscathed through the censorship portals.∂ And herein lies one of
the key arrows that has pierced the heart of all this cyber-idealism. People, given access to unfettered
information, don’t necessarily strive for freedom. All too often, they’ve got less elevated things on
their minds.∂ In 2007, a group of wealthy geeks in the West volunteered to lend their computer
bandwidth to people in countries with repressive regimes in the hope – the confident hope – they’d
soon educate themselves about the horrors of their various regimes. Instead, they promptly went in
search of pictures of Gwen Stefani in her underwear and Britney Spears out of it.∂ If only these idealists
had paid more attention to the lessons of recent history. The notion that more information inevitably
leads to a greater desire for freedom took a battering in the Seventies and Eighties in East Germany –
the only communist country with ready access to the Western media. Far from fanning the flames of
liberation, a diet of television programmes from the United States dampened them down to a
conveniently quiescent level. Paying no attention to the latest news from Nato, East Germans lay supine
and glassy-eyed in front of endless repeats of Dallas and Dynasty.∂ An American academic who taught in
East Berlin in the late Eighties remembers that when he brought in a map of the US for his students,
they showed little interest in anything other than the precise locations of Denver and Dallas. This,
Morozov argues, doesn’t mean there’s no correlation between greater information and a striving for
freedom; just that it’s a far more complex issue than most people have chosen to recognise.∂ The
Net Delusion injects a welcome dose of common sense into an issue that’s been absurdly lacking in it.
At his best, Morozov is lively and combative, as well as dauntingly well-informed – his bibliography alone
runs to 70 pages.
tech bubble da
notes:
unicorns are in reference to tech start-ups that are worth at least $1 billion, like uber
and snapchat (they’re called unicorns bc their horns are close to bursting the bubble
and bc it was rare for tech startups to be worth that much)
here’s a visual representation:
1NC
Tech bubble collapse is inevitable, letting it happen now ensures a soft-landing
Mahmood 6/26 (Tallot; The Tech Industry Is In Denial, But The Bubble Is About To Burst; Jun 26 2015;
techcrunch.com/2015/06/26/the-tech-industry-is-in-denial-but-the-bubble-is-about-to-burst/; kdf)
In the face of these trends, a small group
of well-respected and influential individuals are voicing their concern.
They are reflecting on what happened in the last dot-com bust and identifying fallacies in the current unsustainable
modus operandi. These relatively lonely voices are difficult to ignore. They include established successful entrepreneurs, respected VC and
hedge fund investors, economists and CEOs who are riding their very own unicorns. Mark Cuban is scathing in his personal blog, arguing that
this tech bubble is worse than that of 2000, because, he states, that unlike in 2000, this time the
“bubble comes from private
investors,” including angel investors and crowd funders. The problem for these investors is there is no liquidity in their
investments, and we’re currently in a market with “no valuations and no liquidity.” He was one of the fortunate ones who exited his company,
Broadcast.com, just before the 2000 boom, netting $5 billion. But he saw others around him not so lucky then, and fears the same this time
around. A number of high-profile investors have come out and said what their peers all secretly must know. Responding to concerns raised by
Bill Gurley (Benchmark) and Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures), Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz expressed his thoughts in an 18tweet tirade. Andreessen agrees with Gurley and Wilson in that high cash burn in startups is the cause of spiralling valuations and
underperformance; the availability of capital is hampering common sense. The
tech startup space at the moment resembles
the story of the emperor with no clothes. As Wilson emphasizes, “At some point you have to build a real business, generate real
profits, sustain the company without the largess of investor’s capital, and start producing value the old fashioned way.” Gurley, a stalwart
investor, puts the discussion into context by saying “We’re in a risk bubble … we’re taking on … a level of risk that we’ve never taken on before
in the history of Silicon Valley startups.” The
tech bubble has resulted in unconventional investors, such as hedge funds,
in privately owned startups. David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital Inc. stated that although he is bullish on the tech sector, he
believes he has identified a number of momentum technology stocks that have reached prices beyond
any normal sense of valuation, and that they have shorted many of them in what they call the “bubble
basket.” Meanwhile, Noble Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller, who previously warned about both the dot-com and
housing bubbles, suspects the recent equity valuation increases are more because of fear than exuberance. Shiller believes that
“compared with history, US stocks are overvalued.” He says, “one way to assess this is by looking at the CAPE (cyclically
adjusted P/E) ratio … defined as the real stock price (using the S&P Composite Stock Price Index deflated by CPI) divided by the ten-year
average of real earnings per share.” Shiller says this has been a “good predictor of subsequent stock market returns, especially over the long
run. The CAPE ratio has recently been around 27, which is quite high by US historical standards. The only other times it is has been that high or
higher were in 1929, 2000, and 2007 — all moments before market crashes.” Perhaps the most surprising contributor to the debate on a
looming tech bubble is Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snapchat. Founded in 2011, Spiegel’s company is a certified “unicorn,” with a valuation in excess of
$15 billion. Spiegel
believes that years of near-zero interest rates have created an asset bubble that has led
people to make “riskier investments” than they otherwise would. He added that a correction was inevitable.
Governmental attempts to reflate the bubble will fail – letting it burst now is the only
way to insure economic regrowth
Schiff and Downes 15 [Schiff, Peter D., and Downes, John. Crash Proof 2.0 : How to Profit from the
Economic Collapse (2nd Edition). Hoboken, NJ, USA: John Wiley & Sons, 2011. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 19
July 2015.]//kmc
I fear that government spending on the scale being contemplated will change the character of our
economy by moving us in the direction of central planning. That is the opposite of free-market
capitalism. Our economy needs to be restructured from the foundation up to regain the viability it had
when profit-minded people were making the important decisions and the United States was becoming
the world’s leading industrial power.∂ Yet what the government is about to do is spend massive
amounts of taxpayer money to reflate a consumer-driven bubble economy. Its objective is to get consumers
using credit again, to go back to the malls, to buy more cars, to carry more credit cards, and to take out more student loans. But buying
stuff we couldn’t afford with money we didn’t have was what got us into this fix. We’ve consumed too
much and have more than we need, and until we stop consuming and start saving and producing, our
economy will never enjoy a real recovery.∂ Get credit flowing again? There’s nothing to flow. The banks blew their money on
bad loans. That money is gone. The only way we can restore our banking system is with savings. To get from here to there,
we have to allow a lot of banks to fail. We can’t just print money and tell banks to lend it out. There is
no productivity associated with that. ∂ It also appears that first on the agenda of Treasury Timothy Geithner is to revitalize the
market for assetbacked securities. He wants to help Wall Street securitize more consumer debt (mortgages, credit cards, and auto and student
loans) and sell it to leveraged hedge funds and overseas investors. In other words, he wants to re-create the very conditions that brought our
economy to the brink. Rather then encouraging American borrowers to once again tap the savings of foreigners, we should allow our domestic
pool of savings to be replenished. The main reason securitization flourished in the first place was that after we depleted our own savings,
securitization was the best way to gain access to everyone else’s. But since the money financed consumption, we simply lack the productive
capacity to pay it back. President
Obama says if we don’t act quickly on a rescue plan, we’re in for a
catastrophe. I say if we do intervene we’re in for a bigger catastrophe, which, in a worst-case scenario,
means a repeat of the Great Depression, this time with hyperinflation instead of deflation. In short,
the government is about to pour gasoline on the wildfire it set.
Uniqueness
Tech bubble on the brink of burst – but it’s not as bad as you’d think
Mims 6/28 [Christopher, 2015. Why This Tech Bubble Is Less Scary. http://www.wsj.com/articles/whythis-tech-bubble-is-less-scary-1435532398 7/17]//kmc
Is tech in a bubble? I think so. The signs are all around us. The good news is, it’s nothing like the last one. Plus, for
reasons that go beyond the usual impossibilities of economic prognostication, no one can say for sure
what’s going on. Many people seem to find this reassuring, but we would be wise to heed the lesson that a lack of transparency about the
mechanics of a market rarely leads anywhere good.∂ But first, let’s define what kind of a bubble tech might be in. It isn’t like the bubble of
1997-2000, the Kraken of legend that came from the depths to wreak havoc on the whole of the U.S. economy. That was a genuine, oldfashioned stock market bubble, with money pouring into publicly held tech companies that couldn’t justify the investment.∂ If I’m right, and
what we’re experiencing now is a kind of Bubble Jr., any correction will be less widespread.∂ In 2015’s less-terrifying sequel to 1999, everyone is
to be commended for avoiding the worst excesses of the past, the empty vehicles for irrational exuberance like Pets.com.∂ Companies like
Postmates and Shyp are hardly equivalent to infamous delivery service flameout Kozmo. Ideas that didn’t work the last time around have been
reinvented as leaner business models, in which no one owns anything, such as inventory or has any relationship with the bulk of their
workforce other than as independent contractors.∂ Better software, two-sided marketplaces and the gig economy make plenty of startups at
least plausible, which isn’t to say they will all work out in the end.∂ This
bubble, if it is one, is being inflated by what are
relatively tiny amounts of money. That might seem like a strange way to describe the billions in latestage valuations that make headlines daily. However, consider the funding sources: mutual funds,
sovereign-wealth funds, hedge funds, and somewhat haphazard agglomerations of other big investors
with a particular interest in a startup, like the group putting money into Internet-from-space startup
OneWeb, which just got $500 million from, among others, Coca-Cola Co.∂ Startups are staying private
longer than ever, and the key to this phenomenon is that these big investors are willing to hand them
money despite the fact their having not yet gone through the baptism by fire that is an initial public
offering, which includes scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission, sell-side analysts and the financial press.∂ “There’s no
longer a bright line where a company moves from being a venture-backed startup to, ‘We’re only a
public company,’” says Andrew Boyd, head of global equity capital markets at Fidelity. He adds that Fidelity’s own team of 135 analysts
subject all their private investments to quarterly earnings calls and tough questions, just as they would a public company. ∂ That said, the
bottom line is that for good and for ill, growing numbers of everyday investors are exposed to late-stage private tech companies.∂ One of
Fidelity’s largest funds, Fidelity Contrafund, has only about 1% of its assets in venture-backed startups, says Mr. Boyd. But Contra is a $110
billion fund, which means that what’s a rounding error to a bank with trillions in assets buys a hell of a lot of coders and prime San Francisco
office space.∂ This pattern is typical across investors, says Mike Stiller, a technology analyst at Nasdaq advisory services. All the funds he is
looking at are putting just 1% or 2% of their assets into private deals, if that.∂ But the thing about investments that are made in the margins of a
fund is that they can disappear just as quickly as they appeared. Which means the boom and bust cycles that typify the tech world can be
inflated or deflated practically overnight.∂ When it comes to investing in late-stage rounds of financing for startups, “we don’t have a mandate
to do this,” says Mr. Boyd. “If we do zero of this in a year, it’s fine,” he adds.∂ If we allow that the euphemisms investors use to describe the
current climate in the tech sector—the most popular one is “frothy”—make it at least plausible that tech is in a bubble, the next question is, so
what?∂ Bubbles
pop, or if you prefer, markets correct. And when they do, a whole lot of companies will
lose a lot of value on paper, leading them to eventually go public for less than they were only recently
valued by private investors.∂ “There’s one thing that’s crystal clear, which is that as soon as the market has a downturn,
private unicorns will almost certainly disappear,” says Jason Lemkin, managing director of venture-capital firm Storm
Ventures. “We’ll have a tenth as many as we have today.”∂ If Mr. Lemkin is right, globally that would mean the demotion of
about 90 startups. This could affect some financiers’ bonuses, but it would hardly affect the wider
economy—which in this scenario is probably reeling from some other macroeconomic shock, anyway.
--xt Bubble will collapse
Bubble will collapse
Mahmood 2015 (Tallot; The Tech Industry Is In Denial, But The Bubble Is About To Burst; Jun 26;
techcrunch.com/2015/06/26/the-tech-industry-is-in-denial-but-the-bubble-is-about-to-burst/; kdf)
The fact that we are in a tech bubble is in no doubt. The fact that the bubble is about to burst, however,
is not something the sector wants to wake up to. The good times the sector is enjoying are becoming
increasingly artificial. The tech startup space at the moment resembles the story of the emperor with no
clothes. It remains for a few established, reasoned voices to persist with their concerns so the majority
will finally listen.
link – economy
The aff’s attempt to repair the economy delays the tech bubble – insures burst will
ruin the economy – a natural burst is key
Blodget 08 [Henry, December. Henry Blodget is CEO and Editor-In Chief of Business Insider. Why Wall
Street Always Blows It. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/12/why-wall-street-alwaysblows-it/307147/ 7/19]//kmc
AS WE WORK our way through the wreckage of this latest colossal bust, our government—at our
urging—will go to great lengths to try to make sure such a bust never happens again. We will “fix” the
“problems” that we decide caused the debacle; we will create new regulatory requirements and systems; we will throw a lot
of people in jail. We will do whatever we must to assure ourselves that it will be different next time. And as
long as the searing memory of this disaster is fresh in the public mind, it will be different. But as the bust
recedes into the past, our priorities will slowly change, and we will begin to set ourselves up for the next
great boom.∂ A few decades hence, when the Great Crash of 2008 is a distant memory and the economy is humming along again, our
government—at our urging—will begin to weaken many of the regulatory requirements and systems we
put in place now. Why? To make our economy more competitive and to unleash the power of our freemarket system. We will tell ourselves it’s different, and in many ways, it will be. But the cycle will start
all over again.∂ So what can we learn from all this? In the words of the great investor Jeremy Grantham, who saw this collapse coming and
has seen just about everything else in his four-decade career: “We will learn an enormous amount in a very short time, quite a bit in the
medium term, and absolutely nothing in the long term.” Of course, to paraphrase Keynes, in the long term, you and I will be dead. Until that
time comes, here are three thoughts I hope we all can keep in mind.∂ First, bubbles
are to free-market capitalism as
hurricanes are to weather: regular, natural, and unavoidable. They have happened since the dawn of
economic history, and they’ll keep happening for as long as humans walk the Earth, no matter how we
try to stop them. We can’t legislate away the business cycle, just as we can’t eliminate the self-interest that makes the whole capitalist
system work. We would do ourselves a favor if we stopped pretending we can.∂ Second, bubbles and their aftermaths aren’t all
bad: the tech and Internet bubble, for example, helped fund the development of a global medium
that will eventually be as central to society as electricity. Likewise, the latest bust will almost certainly lead to a
smaller, poorer financial industry, meaning that many talented workers will go instead into other careers—that’s probably a healthy
rebalancing for the economy as a whole. The current bust will also lead to at least some regulatory improvements that endure;
the carnage of 1933, for example, gave rise to many of our securities laws and to the SEC, without which this bust would have been worse.∂
Lastly, we who have had the misfortune of learning firsthand from this experience—and in a bust this big, that group includes just about
everyone—can take pains to make sure that we, personally, never make similar mistakes again. Specifically, we can save more, spend less,
diversify our investments, and avoid buying things we can’t afford. Most of all, a few decades down the road, we can raise an eyebrow when
our children explain that we really should get in on the new new new thing because, yes, it’s different this time.
Link – internet
Bubbles become worse when inflated – the aff’s attempt to boost the internet creates
increasing values and decreasing demands, making the burst worse
Janeway 5/28 [William J, 2015. Unicorns: Why This Bubble Is Different.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/valleyvoices/2015/05/28/unicorns-why-this-bubble-is-different/
7/19]//kmc
Bubbles are banal; bubbles are necessary. Bubbles are banal: wherever markets in assets exist, there
will be found the persistent recurrence of momentum investing, herding behavior, and prices decoupled
from any concern with past, present or prospective cash flows. Bubbles are necessary: they mobilize capital to
fund the deployment of transformational technologies and the exploration of their use on a scale far
beyond what would be generated if investment were strictly a function of observable financial returns
and economic value.∂ Over the past year or so, a phenomenon has emerged at the frontier of the digital economy: a wave of ventures
delivering “disruptive” web services: Uber, Airbnb and their kin, generically known as “unicorns,” that share the double distinction of being
valued at more than $1 billion while remaining private companies. How can we know whether these unprecedented valuations, some 107 of
them at latest count, represent a bubble…and, if so, why this bubble is different?∂ Financial
bubbles can be distinguished and
categorized along two dimensions. The first dimension is the object of speculation. Charles Kindleberger, in his
masterful work Manias, Panics and Crashes, laid out the extraordinary spectrum of assets that have been the foci of bubbles:∂ Investors
have speculated in commodity exports, commodity imports, agricultural land at home and abroad, urban building sites,
railroads, new banks, discount houses, stocks, bonds (both foreign and domestic), glamour stocks, conglomerates, condominiums, shopping
centers and office buildings.∂ Occasionally, as in the case of railroads and some glamour stocks – for example, those
representing the
companies that commercialized electricity, radio, aviation, computing, the internet – the economic assets on which
financial speculators focus have the potential to deliver step-function changes in productivity and, indeed, in
the very scope of economic possibilities. Today’s unicorns appear to embody precisely that promise.∂ The second
dimension is the locus of speculation: is the bubble expressed in the prices of traded securities in the
liquid capital markets or is it driving the valuation of assets held (or serving as collateral for assets held) by the
institutions of the credit system? The distinction has enormous consequences when, inevitably, the bubble bursts. The markets of
the real economy can shrug off a collapse in prices in the relatively unleveraged financial markets for equites and junk bonds. But a collapse in
the value of the assets held by highly leveraged banks freezes the provision of working capital across the entire economic system. The contrast
between the economic consequences of the implosion of the dotcom/telecom/internet bubble of 1998-2000 versus the Global Financial Crisis
of 2008-9 is definitive.∂ Wherever they arise,
bubbles share a common signature. Whether speculation is limited to the liquid
capital markets or whether it infects the core credit system, the signature of a bubble is this: as prices rise, demand
increases. Against the conventional pattern of “negative feedback” that associates higher prices with
lower demand (and greater supply) – a response that is essential to the establishment and maintenance
of market equilibrium – the demand curve inverts in a bubble.∂ Bubbles in stock prices “are associated with increases in
trading volumes…a well- established stylized fact.” Bubbles in the credit system have a similar profile: higher prices of
the assets held by leveraged financial institutions feed through to increase the value of their equity with
a multiplier effect on their lending capacity: “When the price of a risky assets rises, the leveraged
financial institution purchases more of the risky asset….But then, the additional purchases of risky
assets…fuel the asset price boom further.”∂ It is along this second dimension that speculation on the future economic value of
the unicorns is different. For its venue is neither the credit system nor the public, liquid capital market. The venue of this bubble is the market
for private placement of equity securities with institutional investors – hedge funds, mutual funds, even sovereign wealth funds – whose
portfolios overwhelmingly consist of public, freely trade-able shares.
impact - solves the economy
Letting the bubble burst now is best for the economy – reconstruction to avoid the
bubble economy creates uneven patterns of economic decline and a rise in global
inequality in the future
Tabb 04 [Tabb, William K.. Economic Governance in the Age of Globalization. New York, NY, USA:
Columbia University Press, 2004. ProQuest eLibrary. Web. 19 July 2015.]//kmc
The operation of the globalization process takes place within, and is mediated by, a set of governance frameworks stretching from the global to
the local. It is the nature of these institutions, their operation, and the ways they could be reformed which are of interest. Accepting
the
free market outcome is not really a possibility because markets are always embedded in a larger
societal framework. Markets need rules for contracting, standards for judging what is permissible behavior by participants, and
enforcement of contracts. When market outcomes are experienced as favoring a smaller minority and seriously
discommode majorities there are political ramifications, resistance, and organizational efforts which
eventually change the rules. This has historically been the case. One presumes it will continue to be so.∂ It is well to remember that
capitalism is always a process of redistributive growth. Its innovations are normally efficiency
enhancing as this term is used by economists. They raise living standards on average and over time. But they do
so in ways which typically sacrifice the interests of much of a generation of workers who are made obsolete and
to whom little or no compensation is offered. While other workers get jobs in the emergent industries, it is rare that displaced workers,
especially older ones, do as well in the new conjuncture. A generation of such workers and whole communities which depend on their custom
for livelihood may wither. It is not enough to say that the general gain to society would be enough to offer adequate compensation. Such
compensation may be possible in theory but is rarely paid in practice. Indeed, if such compensation were mandatory, the pace and form of
change would be very different.∂ As global neoliberalism has gained momentum, the growth of real output has slowed. In the so-called Golden
Age (1950 through 1973) real world GDP growth averaged 4.9 percent. It was only 3.3 percent a year in the 1980s and 2.3 percent for the 1990s
leading some economists to ask whether the structures and practices of neoliberalism generated dilatory global growth. The
pressure to
cut costs and increase profit, while always present in our economic system, was mediated in the
postwar period by policies protecting national economies through tripartite agreements and fiscal
stimulus. The former has gone by the boards as corporations have raised their sights to global horizons. The latter is ineffective, or surely
less effective given the leakages created by the greater mobility of capital. Simultaneous expansions by competing transnationals seeking to
position themselves to seize global markets have produced overinvestment relative to demand.
Demand itself is repressed by the
redistributions, fiscal priorities, and labor market policies of national governments designed to attract
investment. The rise of inequality globally is linked both to GSEGI disciplinary measures and the restructuring of
economies in ways which have produced uneven patterns of economic development and periodic
crises resulting from cycles of too rapid capital inflows, speculative excesses, and collapse of bubble
economies.
AT: Internet Advantages
Censorship Good – ISIS
1NC
Censorship is key to block ISIS
Bradshaw 2015 (Tom [Senior lecturer in Journalism at U of Gloucestershire]; Why 2015 is gearing up
to be the year of censorship; theconversation.com/why-2015-is-gearing-up-to-be-the-year-ofcensorship-35693; kdf)
India’s government has displeased many internet users by blocking access to some major websites at
the start of the new year. A total of 32 sites were blocked, although sanctions have been lifted from the
three most famous sites on the list: software development platform GitHub and video sites Vimeo and
Dailymotion. The decision to block the sites was reportedly over concerns that they were hosting
content by terrorist groups. For many Westerners, democracy and free speech are inextricably
connected, so the idea of curtailing freedom of expression in the interests of political stability seems
illiberal and even totalitarian. But India is not alone in feeling the need to take some action. Some initial
battles took place last year, but it looks as if 2015 will really be the year in which internet censorship will
become a war. British prime minister, David Cameron, and other Western leaders have been forced to
confront a difficult issue in 2014, as Islamic State showed how deftly it could appropriate social media
networks to spread its jihadi manifesto. What happens when terrorists commandeer global media
networks and use them to disseminate propaganda aimed at undermining democratic, secular
governance? The response from politicians has been to lean heavily on internet service providers,
making them do more to remove jihadi material. This approach is regarded as unjustifiable censorship
by critics, including the Index on Censorship, which has argued for the right of people to decide for
themselves whether they view such content. Corporate censorship For their part, social media
companies such as Twitter have been taking down accounts linked to IS, even though employees have
been threatened with death for doing so. And YouTube has been working hard to remove jihadi material
that glorifies violence. But if you’re determined to find a video of an IS beheading, you will find one. One
student casually remarked to me during a recent lecture that he’d watched a beheading video only a
few nights earlier, in rather the same way as if he might have mentioned that he’d caught up on an
episode of The Simpsons. There are some who passionately believe that such videos should remain
accessible. The Index on Censorship argues that allowing governments or media corporations to decide
who watches what is the start of a process that leads, ultimately, to the muzzling of dissent and
difference. Those who believe this content shouldn’t be viewed can urge others not to watch it, as
Twitter users did in August with the #ISISmediablackout hashtag. Still, while one or more people can
choose not to look, the content will still be available unless politicians take action. And as Cameron
ponders just how he should do that in 2015 without triggering accusations of censorship, he could
consider a lesson in recent British history. The oxygen of publicity The British government formally
ended a high-profile dalliance with censorship 20 years ago when it lifted restrictions on how the media
could report the Troubles in Northern Ireland. From 1988 to 1994, broadcasters were banned from
airing the words spoken directly by the Irish Republican party, Sinn Fein, and by specified paramilitary
organisations. As it turned out, broadcasters could use actors and reported speech to convey the
content of such organisations. Interviews with Sinn Fein’s leader Gerry Adams were televised and his
exact words broadcast, just with the voice of an actor dubbed over the top. This all prompted questions
about just how the law was depriving Sinn Fein and other organisations of what Margaret Thatcher
termed the “oxygen of publicity”. Since then, the digital revolution has transformed the media, enabling
terrorists to reach new audiences. By setting up a social media account, jihadis can immediately give
themselves a voice with a reach that is potentially global. As a result the UK government is now engaged
in a similar battle to that which took place during the Troubles, but the goalposts have been significantly
widened. Last month, Cameron announced he wants companies to be more proactive in taking down
“harmful material”. He also called for stronger filters and an on-screen button to report jihadi material.
Talk of filters induces queasiness in the anti-censorship lobby – and for good reason. Censorship of the
web is regularly used by repressive regimes to retain control over what is said online. But the trouble for
those who oppose such restrictions is that a traditional argument against censorship has been
undermined – arguably by Twitter more than any other organisation. Social media often means that
debate is conducted via short statements that contain emotional responses. Abbreviated words, images
and hashtags often replace reasoned discourse. Almost by design, Twitter is not conducive to the sort of
patient argument needed to express a controversial opinion and justify it to your critics. So world
leaders have started running out of options. The indicators are that they won’t leave it to chance this
year and that censorship will continue to be deployed through a combination of government and
corporate activity. What started in a panic in 2014, will become something altogether more structured
and powerful in the 12 months to come.
ISIS uses the internet as a means of recruiting and financial support
Ajnaili 2014 (Mustapha; How ISIS conquered social media; June 24;
english.alarabiya.net/en/media/digital/2014/06/24/How-has-ISIS-conquered-social-media-.html; kdf)
After seizing swathes of land in Iraq and Syria, the Al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is
expanding its presence on social media, using sophisticated techniques to recruit fighters, spread its
propaganda and garner financial support. One of these techniques is a Twitter application called “Fajr alBashaer,” or “Dawn of Good Tidings” (@Fajr991). The application - flagged by Twitter as “potentially
harmful” - requests user data and personal information. After downloading it, the app sends news and
updates on ISIS fighting in Syria and Iraq. A recent report estimates that hundreds of users have
subscribed to the application on the internet or their Android smart phones using the Google Play store.
ISIS spurs CBW terrorism
Budowsky 14 (LL.M. degree in international financial law from the London School of Economics, aide
to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and Bill Alexander - chief deputy majority whip of the House Brent
Budowsky, Budowsky: ISIS poses nuclear 9/11 threat, http://thehill.com/opinion/brentbudowsky/215603-brent-budowsky-isis-poses-9-11-scope-threat)
I vehemently opposed the misguided Iraq War from the moment it was proposed by former President George W. Bush and have never been a
ISIS has stated its intention to
attack the United States and Europe to advance its evil, messianic and genocidal ideology and ambitions. ISIS
has the money to purchase the most deadly weapons in the world, and has recruited American and
European traitors with above-average capability to execute an attack. The odds that ISIS can obtain
nuclear, chemical, biological or other forms of mass destruction weapons are impossible to ascertain
but in a world of vast illegal arms trafficking, with so many corrupt officials in nations possessing arsenals of destruction, the danger is
real. The fact that WMD scares prior to the Iraq War ranged from mistaken to deceitful does not mean
that the WMD danger does not exist today. It does. I applaud the recent actions taken by President Obama. Obama’s
neoconservative, warmonger or super-hawk. But aggressive action against ISIS is urgently needed.
airstrikes saved tens of thousands of Yazidis from genocide, took back the Mosul Dam from ISIS and saved countless Iraqis, Kurds and Syrians
from slaughter. The airstrikes inflicted material damage to ISIS. The diplomacy of Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry contributed mightily
to the replacement of a disastrous Iraqi government by a government can unite Iraqi Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. The Obama-Kerry initiatives will
lead to the creation of a stable Afghan government and avoid the collapse that was possible after the recent controversial Afghan elections.
These are real successes. In the current political climate, Obama seems to get credit for nothing, but he deserves great credit for some
important successes in recent weeks. And yet the
danger of ISIS pulling off a nuclear, chemical, biological or other
mass death 9/11-style attack in a major American or European city is real. Even with dirty or primitive WMD
weapons, the casualty totals could be catastrophic. ISIS must be defeated and destroyed. This will not be
achieved with “boots on the ground” proxies from Iraqi or Kurd forces alone, though Kurdish forces should immediately receive strong military
assistance.
Extinction
Mhyrvold 13 (Nathan, Began college at age 14, BS and Masters from UCLA, Masters and PhD,
Princeton "Strategic Terrorism: A Call to Action," Working Draft, The Lawfare Research Paper Series
Research paper NO . 2 – 2013, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2290382)
A technologically sophisticated terrorist group could develop such a virus and kill a large part of humanity
with it. Indeed, terrorists may not have to develop it themselves: some scientist may do so first and publish the details. Given
the rate at which biologists are making discoveries about viruses and the immune system, at some point in the near future, someone may
create artificial pathogens that could drive the human race to extinction. Indeed, a detailed specieselimination plan of this nature was openly proposed in a scientific journal. The ostensible purpose of that particular
research was to suggest a way to extirpate the malaria mosquito, but similar techniques could be directed toward humans.16 When I’ve talked
to molecular biologists about this method, they are
quick to point out that it is slow and easily detectable and
could be fought with biotech remedies. If you challenge them to come up with improvements to the
suggested attack plan, however, they have plenty of ideas. Modern biotechnology will soon be capable,
if it is not already, of bringing about the demise of the human race— or at least of killing a sufficient
number of people to end high-tech civilization and set humanity back 1,000 years or more. That terrorist
groups could achieve this level of technological sophistication may seem far-fetched, but keep in mind that it takes only a handful of
individuals to accomplish these tasks. Never has lethal power of this potency been accessible to so few,
so easily. Even more dramatically than nuclear proliferation, modern biological science has frighteningly undermined the correlation
between the lethality of a weapon and its cost, a fundamentally stabilizing mechanism throughout history. Access to extremely lethal
agents—lethal enough to exterminate Homo sapiens—will be available to anybody with a solid
background in biology, terrorists included.
xt – Yes ISIS uses Internet
FBI Director Comey – crackdown on the internet needed
Hudson 2015 (John; FBI Director: For Would-Be Terrorists, Twitter is the ‘Devil on Their Shoulder’; Jul
8; foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/08/fbi-director-for-would-be-terrorists-twitter-is-the-devil-on-theirshoulder/; kdf)
FBI Director James Comey accused Twitter of being the main conduit for Islamic State recruitment on
Wednesday and said the social media site amounted to the “devil on their shoulder” for extremist sympathizers around
the world. “ISIL is reaching out, primarily through Twitter, to about 21,000 English-language followers,” Comey told the
Senate Judiciary Committee, using an acronym for the extremist group. “It buzzes in their pocket … a device, almost a devil
on their shoulder, all day long saying, ‘kill, kill, kill, kill.’” Comey noted that the Islamic State’s recruitment techniques
differ from al Qaeda’s, which invests more heavily in spectacular attacks against Western landmarks. The ISIS message is “two pronged: come
to the so-called Caliphate … and if you can’t come, kill somebody where you are.” “I cannot see we stopping these indefinitely [sic],” he added.
The FBI chief’s unusually pointed warning about one of the most successful American social media companies came during congressional
testimony about the dangers of encryption technologies that prevent law enforcement from accessing data on Americans’ smartphones. In
recent months, Silicon
Valley and U.S. law enforcement agencies have been at loggerheads over new
versions of smartphone operating systems from Google, Apple, and other firms that offer default
encryption that the companies themselves can’t break. Privacy advocates have championed the
software as an important bulwark against government surveillance and cyber crime, but law
enforcement officials such as Comey worry that forensic data needed to solve crimes or thwart terrorist
attacks will “go dark.”
ISIS uses the internet as a recruitment
Ryan 2014 (Laura; Al-Qaida and ISIS use Twitter differently. Here's How and Why; Oct 9;
www.nationaljournal.com/tech/al-qaida-and-isis-use-twitter-differently-here-s-how-and-why20141009; kdf)
Al-Qaida has an Internet presence nearly two decades old, using various platforms and—more
recently—social media to push its message. But it is ISIS, the relative newcomer, that has escalated its
Internet efforts to the point that governments are beginning to see winning the Internet as central to
the fight against terrorism. European government officials reportedly met Thursday in Luxembourg with
heads of tech companies—including Twitter, Facebook, and Google—to discuss how to combat online
extremism. And the U.S. State Department launched its own Center for Strategic Counterterrorism
Communications in 2011. Much of ISIS's online strategy stems from lessons learned while its members
were still in al-Qaida's fold. But when the groups split apart, their online strategies diverged as well—
especially in how they use social media. From 9/11 to the executions of James Foley and Scott Sotloff,
there seem to be no limits to the violence the two terrorist groups are willing to carry out. Now both
groups use social media to wage their own brand of jihad, but they use it very differently. And their
separate techniques not only reveal key divisions between the two terrorist groups, but also illustrate
the depths of extremism that ISIS will plumb—and that al-Qaida won't. Here are a few key distinctions:
1. ISIS more successfully uses social media to recruit members. Both groups use social media to target
and recruit foreigners, but ISIS is much better at it. The number of Westerners fighting alongside ISIS in
Syria and Iraq could number in the thousands, thanks in large part to Twitter and Facebook, and this
spooks the West. Social media's public and instantaneous nature is ideal for reaching ISIS's target
audience—young, disillusioned Westerners who are ripe for radicalization—and it gives them a sense of
community. ISIS showcases its recruiting success via Twitter and Facebook, where foreign recruits
themselves become propaganda tools of the group's digital war, according to Gabriel Weimann, a
professor of communication at Haifa University, Israel, who has been tracking terrorists' use of the
Internet for nearly 15 years. The Facebook profiles and Twitter handles of Western recruits are distinct
because their nationality is usually noted after their new, traditional Muslim names. The American
public is most familiar with ISIS's graphic images, but recruits also share messages and images of daily
life in Syria as peaceful, purposeful, and orderly. "Even if they recruited them, radicalized them, changed
their names, made them legal muslims, they keep calling them by the name of the country they came
from," Weimann said. 2. Al-Qaida relies on 'older' Web platforms. Al-Qaida never managed to find this
kind of success, according to Weimann. Even though al-Qaida paved the way for ISIS on the Internet, the
group has quickly outpaced al-Qaida at exploiting social media to its fullest potential. Al-Qaida certainly
has a presence on social media, but the group still relies heavily on "older" platforms, like websites and
forums, according to Weimann. And while ISIS focuses on fighting a nearby enemy to defend the Islamic
State, al-Qaida focuses on fighting an external enemy, i.e. the United States., and is therefore more
focused on stirring "lone-wolf" terrorists to carry out acts of terror on their own.
Internet freedom allows for online terrorist recruitment
UNODC 12 (http://www.unodc.org/documents/frontpage/Use_of_Internet_for_Terrorist_Purposes.pdf,
pg. 5) JKS
The Internet may be used not only as a means to publish extremist rhetoric and videos, but also a way to
develop relationships with, and solicit support from, those most responsive to targeted propaganda.
Terrorist organizations increasingly use propaganda distributed via platforms such as passwordprotected websites and restricted access Internet chat groups as a means of clandestine recruitment.5
The reach of the Internet provides terrorist organizations and sympathizers with a global pool of
potential recruits. Restricted access cyber forums offer a venue for recruits to learn about, and provide
support to, terrorist organizations and to engage in direct actions in the furtherance of terrorist
objectives.6 The use of technological barriers to entry to recruitment platforms also increases the
complexity of tracking terrorism-related activity by intelligence and law enforcement personnel. 8.
Terrorist propaganda is often tailored to appeal to vulnerable and marginalized groups in society. The
process of recruitment and radicalization commonly capitalizes on an individual’s sentiments of
injustice, exclusion or humiliation.7 Propaganda may be adapted to account for demographic factors,
such as age or gender, as well as social or economic circumstances. 9. The Internet may be a particularly
effective medium for the recruitment of minors, who comprise a high proportion of users. Propaganda
disseminated via the Internet with the aim of recruiting minors may take the form of cartoons, popular
music videos or computer games. Tactics employed by websites maintained by terrorist organizations or
their affiliates to target minors have included mixing cartoons and children’s stories with messages
promoting and glorifying acts of terrorism, such as suicide attacks. Similarly, some terrorist organizations
have designed online video games intended to be used as recruitment and training tools. Such games
may promote the use of violence against a State or prominent political figure, rewarding virtual
successes, and may be offered in multiple languages to appeal to a broad audience.8
ISIS recruits online now – gives them more power
Hopping 7-8 (http://www.itpro.co.uk/security/24943/fbi-encryption-helps-isis-recruit-new-members)
JKS
Universal encryption will help terrorists spread their creeds through secure messaging services,
according to the FBI. James Comey, director of the agency, claimed in a blog post that worldwide
encryption will help groups like ISIS ahead of his appearance at the Senate Intelligence Committee. He
wrote that secure messaging services and social media will help ISIS recruit new members online. "When
the government's ability—with appropriate predication and court oversight—to see an individual's stuff
goes away, it will affect public safety," he wrote on pro surveillance website Lawfare. "That tension is
vividly illustrated by the current ISIL threat, which involves ISIL operators in Syria recruiting and tasking
dozens of troubled Americans to kill people, a process that increasingly takes part through mobile
messaging apps that are end-to-end encrypted, communications that may not be intercepted, despite
judicial orders under the Fourth Amendment." While he recognised the personal privacy benefits of
secure encryption, he added: "My job is to try to keep people safe. In universal strong encryption, I see
something that is with us already and growing every day that will inexorably affect my ability to do that
job. "It may be that, as a people, we decide the benefits here outweigh the costs and that there is no
sensible, technically feasible way to optimize privacy and safety in this particular context, or that public
safety folks will be able to do their job well enough in the world of universal strong encryption." His
comments come after Prime Minister David Cameron denounced encrypted messaging services like
Whatsapp earlier this year.
xt – Censorship Key
ISIS is recruiting through the internet at unprecedented ways- an uncensored internet
lets them use media as a form of control and persuasion.
Shroder, 7/14- (Landon Shroder staff writer, VICE Magazine)”The Islamic State's Propaganda War: Advertisers and Marketers Weigh in on
the World's Angriest Ad Campaign” 7/14/15, https://news.vice.com/article/the-islamic-states-propaganda-war-advertisers-and-marketersweigh-in-on-the-worlds-angriest-ad-campaign //droneofark
Healing the Chests of the Believing People is a July 4th summer blockbuster offering by the Islamic State (IS). The 10 minute video chronicles the
fate of 25 Syrian soldiers as they are led from Tadmur Prison to the ancient Palmyra Amphitheater where, in front of the black flag of IS, they
are executed by what appears to be a group of teen-age soldiers. IS
knows that this video, along with other recent death
cult recruiting video classics like: Punish Them Severely to Disperse Those Who Are Behind Them, A
Message Signed with Blood To the Nation of the Cross, and Healing the Souls with the Slaughtering of
the Spy (Part 2, no less) will inspire people to join their cause of revolutionary social change (of the bloody jihad
variety) — just like thousands of other Westerners already have. Videos like these represent just one piece
of IS's global marketing campaign, which also consists of monthly magazines, documentaries, and
nasheeds [audio messages], as well as online forums, blogs, postings on the ever-ubiquitous social media
platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and even their own short-lived Arab-language app, The
Dawn of Glad Tidings, that, once downloaded, automatically posted tweets by IS to a user's personal
Twitter account. Welcome to the propaganda war with IS — a war that is central to their defeat, and a
war that the US isn't winning. But how does IS sell their message? How does it get people from comfortable
backgrounds in the US and Europe to give up everything and join a movement so infused with violence and brutality? The answer
ultimately resides with the kinds of marketing strategies used by advertising agencies all over the world.
In the most basic terms, IS is selling an idea the very same way a company would sell a product. According to
the last National Counterterrorism Center estimate released in February, almost 3,400 Westerners have
traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight alongside IS. While some of these people would have found their way
to the fight no matter what, it would be incorrect to assume that most have joined IS simply to satiate
some kind of religious blood lust. "Today people buy based on social conversation," Brett Landry, creative director for DarkHorse
Marketing, told VICE News. "Brands find success by placing themselves within the social conversation in meaningful or fun or shocking ways."
Nowhere has this strategy been more successfully executed than in the horrifying media campaign run by IS's publicity wing, al-Hayat Media
Center. The videos and images of beheadings, burnings, crucifixions, and mass executions have simultaneously revolted and enticed viewers,
becoming a core component of their marketing strategy. Those
who are attracted to these kinds of graphic media are
initially drawn in by the production value, which is extraordinarily high compared to Al-Qaeda and other
jihadist-produced propaganda of the past. In contrast to al Qaeda's videos, which were shot on shaky handheld cameras, IS uses
sound design, special effects, rehearsed sequences, and multiple-angle scenes, as well as high-tech 5D cameras and professional editing teams.
The sensational videos take the viewer directly inside the war being waged by IS, much in the same way
a video game or action movie would. This has allowed IS to situate themselves at the center of a
worldwide conversation on religion, politics, and war, in a way that is entirely unencumbered by
traditional communication strategies — particularly those that would rely exclusively on mainstream
media to spread their message. "The burnings, beheadings, and torture are really hard to look at, but we're not the [target]
audience," Jason Smith, creative director for Magnetry, an advertising agency in Phoenix, told VICE News. "The brutality works in their favor
because it proves their effectiveness. The darker the images, the more obvious the void or lack of someone preventing them." "The
brutality works in their favor because it proves their effectiveness. The darker the images, the more
obvious the void or lack of someone preventing them." Marketing these atrocities has a two-fold propaganda value: IS is
not only defining exactly who they are, but who they are not, as well, which resonates with a select group of people who equate extreme
violence with power. More importantly, the brutality automatically narrows down the viewing audience, allowing the message to specifically
target those who might be susceptible to radicalization. Additionally,
IS propaganda is produced in a way that allows it
to be packaged for broadcast media and online video forums like YouTube, LiveLeak, and Vimeo. This
ensures that at least some of the content will be replayed on mainstream news outlets, regardless of the
subject matter. Because of this, IS has developed a very effective and low-cost type of advertising campaign reliant on something called
"earned media." Earned media is about generating buzz — getting other people to talk about and push your agenda and story. This kind of
marketing strategy fundamentally relies on the viral tendencies surrounding online "word of mouth" and comes in the form of mentions,
shares, reposts, views, and third-party broadcasts, and acts as a force multiplier for any IS media project. "The sole focus of an earned media
campaign is to reach the maximum amount of viewers with the minimum amount of effort," Landry told VICE News. "The US and world media
are feeding on the content, and that's huge earned media for ISIS…The more it's talked about, the more free advertising they get." Using social
media sites like Twitter contributes to the earned media campaign of IS by providing platforms to spread videos, documentaries, audio
messages, and other propaganda products, and allowing users to interact and engage with those products instantly and continuously. While
there are no exact numbers available with regard to internet penetration by IS, according to the ISIS
Twitter Census, released by the Brookings Institution in March 2015, at any one time, there are between
46,000 and 90,000 active IS Twitter accounts, each having an average of 1,004 followers who produce approximately 2,219
tweets during the account's lifetime. These accounts not only further disseminate IS propaganda, but allows
recruiters to connect with potential volunteers in near real time, which has helped the IS brand reach a
diverse global audience. "There are units of specialized recruiters operating around the clock from internet cafes in Iraq and Syria,
interacting on an individual level with prospective recruits," Henry Tuck, program coordinator for Extreme Dialogue at the Institute for Strategic
Dialogue, told VICE News. "Content
is expertly tailored to specific audiences in multiple languages, with
propaganda aimed at women, converts to Islam, and even certain professions." The US and world media
are feeding on the content, and that's huge earned media for ISIS…The more it's talked about, the more
free advertising they get. IS's marketing success, however, is based on more than just the creation and distribution of propaganda.
Their flags, balaclavas, and black-clad execution teams have made them instantly recognizable as the face of global jihad and modern terror.
This branding is consistent, visceral, and appeals to those who process images and symbols on an emotional, as opposed to rational, level.
"There's clearly
a visual identity associated with ISIS," Anna Bedineishvili, a strategic planner at Pereira &
O'Dell, a marketing agency in New York City, told VICE News. "They use dramatic scenes of beheadings and
bloodbaths that are shocking, yet very memorable." The signature violence gives potential volunteers a
sense of agency within a movement that appears unstoppable — invincible, even. For those who might
feel marginalized in a world that appears constantly adversarial, this kind of symbolism remains a potent
source of publicity for IS. "To many young men who feel like their current life is purposeless, this tells them that they can do
something," Bedineishvili said. "They can be someone and play a meaningful role in a glamorized apocalyptic battle." IS more than delivers on
these opportunities, which establishes legitimacy for potential volunteers and is essential to their brand loyalty. IS propaganda sources can then
leverage these experiences by developing their own news and editorial content, some of which is as polished as anything one might find on
BBC, CNN, or al-Jazeera. "When you put a 'real' news story from, say, the BBC next to one from ISN (Islamic State News), they feel remarkably
similar," Magnetry's Smith said. "Not only does that lift their legitimacy in some way, but it also robs legitimacy from the BBC…Who is to say
which content is legitimate?" IS's monthly online magazine, Dabiq, a term that refers to the coming Islamic apocalypse, might look completely
benign sitting on a magazine rack, and its publication in English is clearly an attempt to target a western audience. For a time, copies were even
sold on Amazon, though the listings were eventually removed. "[Dabiq] conveys some credibility and hints that ISIS might be a civilized place,"
Jeff Vitkun, a freelance copywriter for some of the world's largest advertising agencies, told VICE News. "Their design is better than the average
small-town American newspaper." Within its pages are news items, interviews, and feature articles that cover everything from modern-day
slavery to battlefield communiqués to living sincerely as a Muslim. A reader might just as easily find an editorial supporting the beheading of a
journalist as a religious discourse on how to take care of your weapons according to Islamic law. This creates a robust conversation through
various narratives, which can connect to compelling content that draws attention to living and fighting under IS. Advertisers call this a "brand
ecosystem," and as more content gets generated across multiple media channels, the product eventually compels its own influence. IS
has
used this kind of strategy to brand itself as the one truly incorruptible force that can avenge the
grievances of Muslims everywhere. This has tremendous marketing value when you take into account
the political and military failures that have beleaguered the Middle East in recent years. Another theme that is
central to IS's brand but that is often overlooked, especially in the West, is the idea of camaraderie. While most people will typically fixate on
the violence and brutality, potential volunteers are finding a different message, one that appeals to a community of like-minded individuals
looking to be a part of something greater than themselves. "[Look] at images of ISIS members smiling, hugging, hands up in the air with glee,
and general camaraderie," Brooke-Luat, strategy director for 72andSunny, a marketing agency in Los Angeles, said in an interview. "ISIS is trying
to combat any notion that it is a group of barbarians out in the desert by positioning itself as sophisticated, well-funded, organized, and even
charitable." Littered
throughout their propaganda materials are the pictures and testimony of young men
and women who have arrived in IS territory from all over the world. Eventually, this softer side of IS
makes the brutality and violence seem secondary to the idea of creating a new and revolutionary
society. This effectively undermines any counter narrative that can only portray IS as a group of bloodthirsty religious zealots. To combat the
messages coming from IS, Major Geneva David, a spokesperson for CENTCOM, said that the truth is one of the best weapons. "Amplifying
factual information regarding these areas is an important aspect of establishing a counter narrative to ISIL's propaganda and disinformation
campaign," David told VICE News. But how the US hopes to gain legitimacy with this message remains to be seen.
The US would be
wise to understand the strategies used by IS and reacquaint itself with the art of modern propaganda.
Far from being isolated occurrences, western citizens will continue to be recruited with greater
frequency. Terrorists now inhabit a world where all the tools of contemporary marketing and advertising are at their disposal. This allows
for an intoxicating call-to-arms aimed at those who believe that volunteering for IS is a once-in-a-lifetime experience — moreso since those
targeted are being attracted to a cause that has only two possible outcomes: victory or death.
ISIS is sending a strong signal through the means of the internet now—persuasion and
intimidation tactics.
Farwell, 14- (holds a B.A. from Tulane University, a J.D. in Law from Tulane University, and a D.C.L.S. in Comparative Law from the
University of Cambridge (Trinity College). In addition, he is a Senior Research Scholar in Strategic Studies at the Canada Centre for Global
Security Studies, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto) “The Media Strategy of ISIS” From “Survival: Global Politics and
Strategy”, Routledge Publishing vol. 56 no. 6 | December 2014–January 2015 | pp. 49–55, pdf, //droneofark
In June, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) made a dramatic entrance onto the global stage,
aiming to establish its religious authority across the planet under a caliphate led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The group’s principal tool
for expanding its influence has been brute force, but as it has attempted to build credibility and
establish legitimacy, it has shown a deftness for propaganda, using social media and cyber technology to
recruit fighters and intimidate enemies.1 ISIS is not the first set of violent extremists to use such means to drive home its
messages or carry out operations. Al-Shabaab used Twitter during its September 2013 attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi to intimidate,
mock and brag.2 Lashkar-e-Taiba made effective use of cyber technologies such as Google Earth and mobile phones to gather intelligence and
for command and control during its November 2008 assault on Mumbai.3 Four years ago, I explored jihadists’ use of video in the ‘war of ideas’
in the pages of Survival.4 Yet
ISIS stands apart for its sophisticated use and understanding of social media to
achieve its goals. Its communication strategy aims to persuade all Muslims that battling to restore a
caliphate is a religious duty. The group’s narrative portrays ISIS as an agent of change, the true apostle of
a sovereign faith, a champion of its own perverse notions of social justice, and a collec tion of avengers
bent on settling accounts for the perceived sufferings of others.5 This narrative stresses that ISIS is gaining strength and
amassing power, and that victory is inevitable. The use of cellular technology, along with the exploitation of the
mainstream media (ISIS videos have appeared on Western broadcast outlets as well as extremist websites), means that these
messages have reached audiences around the world.6 The group has employed Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to
influence adversaries, friends and journalists alike. These methods have allowed the group to distribute powerful,
emotional images. Some of these, consistent with its message of inevitable victory, depict group members as fearsome warriors. Such
images can be used to build support among fellow travellers and recruit new members. Images of gore,
beheadings and executions are intended to intimidate opponents. And yet the group has also released images showing foot soldiers eating
Snickers bars and nurturing kittens, a historical reference, as Danish strategic communication expert Thomas Elkjer Nissen has pointed out, to
Abu Huraira, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad known for being fond of cats.7 These warmer
images aim to communicate
the message that, while strictly Islamic, ISIS stands for promoting the welfare of people, not murdering
them.8 Foreign Policy Research Institute expert Clint Watts reports that while ISIS social media provides a means for outsiders to track what is
going on in Syria and Iraq – places where there can be little coverage by journalists – the militants themselves largely regard this as a good
thing. According
participating’.9
to Watts, they ‘want to communicate back to their communities that they’re
xt – Internet recruitment Key
Recruitment via the Internet is critical to ISIS’s success
Ajnaili 2014 (Mustapha; How ISIS conquered social media; June 24;
english.alarabiya.net/en/media/digital/2014/06/24/How-has-ISIS-conquered-social-media-.html; kdf)
Western Muslims Western Muslims are an important target of ISIS’s social media propaganda. The
group ensures most of its media productions are translated into as many Western languages as possible.
This is done through sophisticated media arms such as Al-Furqan Media, Fursan Al-Balagh Media,
Asawirti Media, Al-Ghuraba Media - which appears to be operated in Germany - and Al-Hayat Media
Center (http://justpaste.it/ma_asabak). The last one provides the translation of a recent speech by ISIS
spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani al-Shami into English, Turkish, Dutch, French, German,
Indonesian and Russian. J.M. Berger, editor of INTELWIRE.com and author of “Jihad Joe: Americans Who
Go to War in the Name of Islam,” wrote: “ISIS does have legitimate support online - but less than it
might seem. And it owes a lot of that support to a calculated campaign that would put American socialmedia-marketing gurus to shame.” Peter W. Singer - director of the Center for 21st Century Security and
Intelligence, and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program - told Al Arabiya News that ISIS’s
increased activity on social media “in many ways reflects the new nature of media technology’s cross
with warfare.” Singer added: “Just as the Crimea War was the first war reported by telegraph and
Vietnam the first TV war, we are now seeing wars in places like Syria and Iraq, just like the broader use
of media technology, playing out online.”
xt – Yes CBWs: Ebola
ISIS will infect recruits with Ebola, creating a new bubonic plague
Dorminey October 5, 2014 (Ebola as ISIS BioWeapon?;
www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2014/10/05/ebola-as-isis-bio-weapon/; kdf)
ISIS may already be thinking of using Ebola as a low-tech weapon of bio-terror, says a national security
expert, who notes that the “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” and terror groups like it wouldn’t even have
to weaponize the virus to attempt to wreak strategic global infection. Such groups could simply use
human carriers to intentionally infect themselves in West Africa, then disseminate the deadly virus via
the world’s air transportation system. Or so says Capt. Al Shimkus, Ret., a Professor of National Security
Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. “The individual exposed to the Ebola Virus would be the carrier,”
Shimkus told Forbes. “In the context of terrorist activity, it doesn’t take much sophistication to go to
that next step to use a human being as a carrier.” And with a significant portion of West Africa now in an
open epidemic, it arguably wouldn’t be difficult for a terrorist group to simply waltz in and make off with
some infected bodily fluids for use elsewhere at another time. They wouldn’t even have to “isolate” it,
says Shimkus, who teaches a course in chemical and biological warfare. He says that if ISIS wanted to
send half a dozen of its operatives into an Ebola outbreak region and intentionally expose themselves to
the virus, they very well could. The idea is then once they had intentionally infected themselves, they
would try to interact with as many people in their target city or country of choice. The average fatality
rate from Ebola, classified as a hemorrhagic fever, is 50 percent; but without medical treatment, that
figure can range as high as 90 percent, reports the U.N. World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO
also notes that although there are two potential vaccines undergoing “evaluation,” at present none are
licensed. The virus was first documented in humans in 1976 during two simultaneous outbreaks, one in
Sudan and the other in the Congo, in a village near the Ebola River. The WHO reports that a type of fruit
bat is thought to act as the virus’ natural host. The virus apparently spreads into the human population
via direct contact with infected animals — ranging from chimpanzees, gorillas, monkeys, forest antelope
and porcupines; as well as the fruit bat itself — be they found ill or dead in the rain forest. According to
the WHO, Ebola can then be spread via contact with the infected’s bodily fluids; even bedding and
clothing “contaminated” with such fluids. The idea of using human carriers to intentionally spread
deadly pathogens has been around for centuries. As Shimkus points out, in the Middle Ages, adversaries
threw infected corpses over their enemy’s city walls in order to spread the deadly Bubonic Plague.
xt – Yes CBW Extinction
CBW attacks are the most probable existential threat
Burt 2013 (Alistar [member of parliament and parliamentary under-secretary of state at the UK
Foreign and Commonwealth Office]; We must wake up to the threats of new chemical weapons; Apr 15;
www.newscientist.com/article/mg21829125.900-we-must-wake-up-to-the-threats-of-new-chemicalweapons.html#.VMUUlP7F-AU; kdf)
Most governments now regard such weapons as militarily redundant, as demonstrated by their
membership of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which prohibits the production and use of
chemical weapons, commits them to destroying all existing stocks, and prevents reacquisition. Yet
advances in a range of scientific fields – such as neuroscience and nanotechnology – and the growing
convergence of chemistry and biology, while offering the hope of benefits to medicine and civil society,
also bring the potential for a new era in chemical warfare. There is an intrinsic connection between the
military and civilian scientific communities; the military's need for innovation has long been a driving
force in research. But the potential for the adaptation and exploitation of scientific discovery for military
advantage has rarely been greater. Pursuing legitimate research while minimising the risk of misuse is a
challenge for all. In 2011, I wrote in this magazine that the world needed to do more to guard against
the growing threat of biological weapons. Now, I want to make the same case with regard to chemical
weapons. These issues are being discussed this month at the Third Review Conference of the CWC at
The Hague in the Netherlands. The UK was a key player in negotiating agreement for the convention,
which came into force in 1997, and although the threats we now face are very different from those that
preoccupied the original negotiators, our commitment to it is undiminished. It remains a fundamental
part of the international legal framework to tackle the threat of chemical weapons and has resulted in
the destruction of four-fifths of the world's declared stockpiles. This is welcome, but we cannot afford to
be complacent. The international community must ensure it is equipped to meet new challenges and
prevent the re-emergence of chemical weapons. The latest threat comes on several fronts. Consider the
rapidly advancing field of neuroscience, in particular neuropharmacology. The potential benefits for
treating neurological impairment, disease and psychiatric illness are immense; but so too are potentially
harmful applications – specifically the development of a new range of lethal, as well as incapacitating,
chemical warfare agents. Nanotech also has the potential to transform medical care, but could be used
to bolster chemical weapon capabilities. We should not allow threats to hinder scientific progress. But
we should do all we can to minimise the misuse of knowledge, materials, expertise and equipment for
hostile purposes. The scientific community must play its part. These issues should be a fundamental
element of educational and professional training for scientists and engineers, along with clear guidance
on the obligations imposed by the CWC to not develop, produce, acquire, stockpile or retain chemical
weapons. Organisations such as the UK's Royal Society are spearheading this work. Significant
challenges to the convention are also being addressed. For instance, it focuses on the types and
quantities of toxins that armies, not terrorist cells, would need. The components of chemical weapons
are readily available: industrial chemicals are sold in bulk, yet unlike their nuclear equivalent, only
limited scientific and engineering knowledge is needed to turn them against us. Recent history shows us
that extremists entertain no qualms about the acquisition and use of such weapons; and they are willing
to use primitive delivery systems. In 1995, terrorists from the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo released a
nerve agent on the Tokyo subway which led to 13 deaths and left hundreds more suffering ill effects.
Preventing and prohibiting misuse without impeding the beneficial development of science and
technology is a delicate balancing act but a necessary one. All nations must face up to these challenges
and consider the implications for the CWC's verification regime in the short, near and long term. For
instance, will the declaration and inspection provisions that apply to the chemical industry still be
relevant? We cannot afford to be reactive. If unchecked, this threat has the potential to cause
devastation on a vast scale. This is a watershed moment for the convention and for the international
community. We must summon the political will to strengthen regulation and ensure relevance in the
modern world. The duty to prevent chemical development for weapons must be enforced in all nations,
and states must be prepared to take steps nationally to prevent the misuse of toxic chemicals. As the
current situation in Syria demonstrates, the danger posed by these weapons is not an abstract issue. The
existence of that country's chemical arsenal is a reminder of the threats we face. Any use of such
weapons is abhorrent. Preventing this and holding to account those who use them must remain a
priority for the international and scientific communities alike.
AT: ISIS Not a Threat
ISIS is more of a threat than ever
Botelho January 24, 2015 (Greg; What's happening in the Middle East and why it matters;
edition.cnn.com/2015/01/23/middleeast/middle-east-country-breakdown/; kdf)
Already, ISIS has beheaded a number of U.S. and British hostages -- all of them civilians -- and
threatened more. There's also the real threat that the group may take its campaign out of the Middle
East to strike in the West. That may have happened this month in France. One of the three terrorists
there, Amedy Coulibaly, proclaimed his allegiance to ISIS in a video, and investigators discovered ISIS
flags along with automatic weapons, detonators and cash in an apartment he rented, France's RTL Radio
reported Sunday, citing authorities. The West and some of its Middle Eastern allies are striking back with
targeted airstrikes not only in Iraq, where the coalition has a willing partner, but in Syria, where it is not
working with al-Assad. (In fact, Obama and others have said they want the Syrian President out of
power.) U.S. diplomatic officials said Thursday that estimates are that this coalition has killed more than
6,000 ISIS fighters. Yet their work is far from done. The group boasts upwards of 31,000 fighters, not to
mention fresh recruits seemingly coming in regularly.
AT: Plan doesn’t get modeled
Facebook censors posts to appease China, plan reverses that
Techdirt 2015 (Is Facebook Censoring posts to please China?; Jan 9; abovethelaw.com/2015/01/isfacebook-censoring-posts-to-please-china/; kdf)
Techdirt has reported before,
one troubling consequence of China’s widespread online censorship is that users of some
services outside that country are also affected. A recent incident suggests that as China’s soft power increases, so does its ability to
influence even the most powerful of Western online companies. It concerns Tsering Woeser, perhaps the leading Tibetan activist, and certainly the most Net-savvy.
As she explains in an article on China Change (NB — post contains some disturbing images of self-immolation): On December 26, 2014, I reposted on my Facebook
page a video of Tibetan Buddhist monk Kalsang Yeshe’s self-immolation that occurred on December 23 [in Tawu county, Kardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture,
Sichuan province, China], accompanied by an excerpted report explaining that self-immolation is a tragic, ultimate protest against repression. A
few hours
later, my post was deleted by the Facebook administrator. I was rather shocked when a Facebook notice of deletion leapt out on
screen, which I tweeted right away with the thought, “It’s been more than six years since I joined Facebook in 2008, and this is the first time my post was deleted!
Does FB also have ‘little secretaries?’ “ “Little secretaries” refers to the censors hired by Chinese online
services to remove politically sensitive material. Her article includes Facebook’s explanation for its move: Facebook has long been a place
where people share things and experiences. Sometimes, those experiences involve violence and graphic videos. We work hard to balance expression and safety.
However, since some people object to graphic videos, we are working to give people additional control over the content they see. This may include warning them in
advance that the image they are about to see contains graphic content. We do not currently have these tools available and as a result we have removed this
content. To which Woeser replies that there seems to be some double standards here: Western
democracies have recently resolved to
strike ISIS, and the public support for this is largely the result of the Jihadist videos of beheading hostages that have been disseminated online. Facebook
defended its inclusion of these beheading videos which it claims do not show the graphic moment of beheading. But I, for one, saw videos of the beheading
moment on Facebook. I even saw footage of the executioners putting the severed head on the torso of the dead. Even with a video without the moment of
beheading, does it not “involve violence” and is it therefore not “graphic?” Moreover, she points out that there is a key difference between the videos of hostages
being beheaded, and the images of self-immolation that she posted: Tibetans who burn themselves to death are not seeking death for their own sake but to call
attention to the plight of the Tibetan people. They die so that the Tibetans as a people may live in dignity. Those who took tremendous risk to videotape the selfimmolation and to upload it online know perfectly that such videos will not be able to spread on Chinese websites, and they must be posted on websites in free
societies such as Facebook for the world to see. When Facebook decides to delete the video to get rid of “graphic content,” it renders the sacrifice of the selfimmolator and the risk taken by the videographer as nothing. Is that what Facebook wants to accomplish? She concludes by posing an important question about
Facebook’s true motives here: On Facebook, videos of Tibetan self-immolations have not been censored before, and my friends argued that we have reason to
worry that Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is compromising on defending users’ freedom of expression as he seeks China’s permission to allow
Facebook in China, given that he visited Beijing two months ago and met with high-ranking Chinese officials, and that a couple of weeks ago, Mr. Zuckerberg
received Lu Wei, China’s Internet czar in Facebook’s headquarters where he ingratiated himself to his guest by showing that he and his employees were reading
[China’s President] Xi Jinping’s writings to learn about China. The view that Facebook is selling-out in order to ingratiate itself with the Chinese authorities is lent
support by another story involving a Facebook post by a Chinese dissident, reported here by The New York Times: Amid
growing censorship
pressures around the world, Facebook suspended the account of one of China’s most prominent exiled
writers after he posted pictures of a streaking anti-government demonstrator. On Tuesday, the exiled writer, Liao Yiwu,
said that he had received a notice from Facebook stating that his account had been temporarily suspended, and that it would be blocked permanently if he
continued to violate the site’s rules against nudity. Once again, the excuse for censorship is that it violated Facebook’s rules. But that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny:
Mr. Liao said the case was not that simple. In an interview at his home in Berlin, the 56-year-old writer said he had covered up the genitalia of the streaker in the
photo after people pointed out that it might violate Facebook rules. He cut out a picture of the former Chinese leader Mao Zedong and pasted it over the man’s
groin in the photo. His account was suspended several days after doing so. Taken together, these two cases certainly seem to indicate a
new desire by
Facebook to stay on the right side of the Chinese government by removing politically sensitive content,
perhaps in the hope that it may be allowed to launch in China at some point. That’s bad enough, but the situation is
made worse by the company’s feeble attempts to pretend otherwise.
China censors ISIS—Aff ends that censorship
Schrock January 21, 2015 (John Richard [Prof at Emporia State University]; Danger, dignity and
decent; www.hayspost.com/2015/01/21/danger-dignity-and-decency/; kdf)
Within these last months in the U.S., we
have seen Islamic State (ISIS) rebels recruit online. Hundreds of teenagers have
left their homes to join the war in Iraq and Syria. The wimpy U.S. response was to produce counter
online advertisements. Blocking those recruitment websites was not considered legitimate because it was “free speech.” But other
countries are willing to take action. Article 19 of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognized in the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights asserts that “…everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression…” in speech, print, art or other media. However,
Article 19 also explains that exercise of these rights may be “…subject to certain restrictions.” Those limitations include respecting “…the rights
or reputation of others” and “…the protection of national security or of public order, or of public health or morals.” Foreign
countries
recognize the gray areas of free-speech. For instance, some European countries restrict libel of living persons on the Internet.
And China has no qualms using their great firewall to block those Internet ISIS calls to come-and-kill. Why
do we consider it a crime to threaten to kill another person in the U.S., but not a crime to recruit
youngsters to kill people elsewhere?
Plan independently ends censorship
Plan sends a signal for internet freedom—causes a li
Gardner, 10
(Staff Editor & Reporter-Casino Gambling Web, 9/23, Gambling Regulations Will Help Obama's World
Internet Freedom Mandate, http://www.casinogamblingweb.com/gambling-news/gamblinglaw/gambling_regulations_will_help_obama_s_world_internet_freedom_mandate_55752.html)
Gambling Regulations Will Help Obama's World Internet Freedom Mandate President Obama gave a
speech today in front of the United Nations General Assembly, and his message was largely one of
individual freedom. During the speech, Obama touched on many issues, perhaps the most aggressive of
which was having a Palestinian state separate from Israel. Obama spoke of allowing the Palestinians
their own state with the hope that Israelis and Palestinians could live side by side in peace. Obama
acknowledged that this could take a long time, but that the goal could become a reality. During the
speech, Obama spoke about how the Internet should remain free from government interference
everywhere in the world. The freedom to surf the Internet would allow people all across the globe to
research issues and learn from the wide array of news that is currently found on the Internet. "We will
support a free and open Internet, so individuals have the information to make up their own minds," said
Obama. "And it is time to embrace and effectively monitor norms that advance the rights of civil society
and guarantee its expansion within and across borders." That statement may have been much better
received had the US not had their own blocks on Internet freedom. The Internet gambling industry
currently is operating as a black market in the US due to the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling
Enforcement Act. The law is a form of Internet censorship that Representative Barney Frank and other
lawmakers have been trying to repeal. In the quest for Internet freedom, the US proclaims themselves
as leaders, however, the country must be careful with their plea. If the US can place Internet bans on
certain industries, then little could be done to stop other countries from banning different industries
or websites because of their beliefs. For instance, in countries where religion is unified, there could be
bans on any material that the country finds outside the rules of their particular religion. In other
countries, bans could be placed on industries that are run largely by foreign operators. President Obama
took a strong first step today by promoting Internet freedom. The next step will be making sure the US
leads by example, and one area to start would be by lifting the ban on Internet gambling. The
president has laid down the gauntlet, and now it is time for him to follow his own lead.
AT: Internet—Competition
1nc Internet/Bandwidth
If the thesis of their advantage is true – that demand is already too high – companies
would be upgrading now. All the aff does is spike a bandwidth crunch in the short
term because broadband investments are long term.
No Internet collapse
Dvorak 2007 (John; Will the Internet Collapse?; May 1;
www.pcmag.com/article2/0%2c2817%2c2124376%2c00.asp; kdf)
When is the Internet going to collapse? The answer is NEVER. The Internet is amazing for no other reason than that it
hasn't simply collapsed, never to be rebooted. Over a decade ago, many pundits were predicting an all-out catastrophic
failure, and back then the load was nothing compared with what it is today. So how much more can this network take? Let's look at the basic
changes that have occurred since the Net became chat-worthy around 1990. First of all, only a few people were on the Net back in 1990, since
it was essentially a carrier for e-mail (spam free!), newsgroups, gopher, and FTP. These capabilities remain. But the e-mail load has grown to
phenomenal proportions and become burdened with megatons of spam. In one year, the amount of spam can exceed a decade's worth, say
1990 to 2000, of all Internet traffic. It's actually the astonishing overall growth of the Internet that is amazing. In 1990, the total U.S. backbone
throughput of the Internet was 1 terabyte, and in 1991 it doubled to 2TB. Throughput continued to double until 1996, when it jumped to
1,500TB. After that huge jump, it returned to doubling, reaching 80,000 to 140,000TB in 2002. This ridiculous growth rate has continued as
more and more services are added to the burden. The jump in 1996 is attributable to the one-two punch of the universal popularization of the
Web and the introduction of the MP3 standard and subsequent music file sharing. More recently, the emergence of inane video clips (YouTube
and the rest) as universal entertainment has continued to slam the Net with overhead, as has large video file sharing via BitTorrent and other
systems. Then VoIP came along, and IPTV is next. All the while, e-mail numbers are in the trillions of messages, and spam has never been more
plentiful and bloated. Add blogging, vlogging, and twittering and it just gets worse. According to some expensive studies, the growth rate has
begun to slow down to something like 50 percent per year. But that's growth on top of huge numbers. Petabytes. To date, we have to admit
that the structure of the Net is robust, to say the least. This is impressive, considering the fact that experts were predicting a collapse in the
1990s. Robust or not, this Internet is a transportation system. It transports data. All transportation systems eventually need upgrading, repair,
basic changes, or reinvention. But what needs to be done here? This, to me, has come to be the big question. Does anything at all need to be
done, or do we run it into the ground and then fix it later? Is this like a jalopy leaking oil and water about to blow, or an organic perpetualmotion machine that fixes itself somehow? Many
believe that the Net has never collapsed because it does tend to
fix itself. A decade ago we were going to run out of IP addresses—remember? It righted itself, with
rotating addresses and subnets. Many of the Net's improvements are self-improvements. Only spam,
viruses, and spyware represent incurable diseases that could kill the organism. I have to conclude that the
worst-case scenario for the Net is an outage here or there, if anywhere. After all, the phone system, a more
machine-intensive system, never really imploded after years and years of growth, did it? While it has
outages, it's actually more reliable than the power grid it sits on. Why should the Internet be any
different now that it is essentially run by phone companies who know how to keep networks up? And let's
be real here. The Net is being improved daily, with newer routers and better gear being constantly hotswapped all over the world. This is not the same Internet we had in 1990, nor is it what we had in 2000. While phone companies
seem to enjoy nickel-and-diming their customers to death with various petty scams and charges, they could easily charge one flat fee and
spend their efforts on quality-of-service issues and improving overall network speed and throughput. That will never happen, and phone
companies will forever be loathed. But when all is said and done, it's because of them that the Internet will never collapse.
That's the good news. The bad news is they now own the Internet—literally—and they'll continue to play the nickel-and-dime game with us.
Optoelectronics innovation is resilient
NRC 12
National Research Council, principal operating agency of the National Academies, Winter 2012, “Optics
and Photonics: Essential Technologies for Our Nation,” 7-155
Those firms
found that the lowest-cost option was to manufacture the discrete technologies in developing
countries and abandon U.S. production of monolithically integrated technologies.49 It is not clear, however, that the
apparent declines in monolithic-integration patenting in the firms that have moved production activities offshore will
necessarily lead to a decline in overall innovation by U.S. firms in monolithic integration. Several start-up firms
have emerged in the United States since 2000 that focus on monolithic-integration technologies. It is also possible that
established U.S. optoelectronic component manufacturers that have kept fabrication in the United
States will increase R&D and patenting in monolithic integration for optoelectronics. Finally, and perhaps most
important, firms outside telecommunications and data communications, such as computing firms, may
find it in their interest to develop monolithic-integration design and fabrication capabilities for
communications applications, as evidenced by Intel’s recent establishment of a silicon photonics design and fabrication facility at the
University of Washington.
The case of optoelectronics components illustrates a strong relationship between the location of production
activities by U.S. firms and the direction of these firms’ innovative efforts. But the evidence presented in this case
suggests that the movement of optoelectronics-component production to non-U.S. locations has thus far
not resulted in the “loss” by the U.S. economy of innovative capabilities in monolithic integration. Instead, we
observe that a different set of U.S. corporations (and universities) now have become active in this
technological field.50,51
Aff does nothing to industry structure—Comcast outweighs
Sasso 9/4/14 (Brendan; FCC Chief: Cable Companies Are Wrong About Internet Competition;
www.nationaljournal.com/tech/fcc-chief-comcast-is-wrong-about-internet-competition-20140904; kdf)
September 4, 2014 Most
Americans lack any real choice in accessing high-speed Internet, the chairman of the
Federal Communications Commission said Thursday. Comcast and other cable giants have argued that the industry is
already plenty competitive. Consumers in many areas can choose to access the Internet from a DSL provider or on their smartphones,
the cable companies argue. While FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler didn't mention Comcast by name, he said those other options don't deliver the
speeds that consumers need today. To reliably stream high-definition video, as consumers expect, providers must deliver speeds of at least 25
megabits per second, Wheeler said. In most areas, that means the only option is the local cable company. "At
25 Mbps, there is
simply no competitive choice for most Americans," the FCC chief said. "Stop and let that sink in. Three-quarters of
American homes have no competitive choice for the essential infrastructure for 21st century
economics and democracy. Included in that is almost 20 percent who have no service at all." The conclusion
doesn't bode well for Comcast's bid to buy Time Warner Cable. The deal would unite the top two cable providers, creating a new behemoth
controlling a large portion of the nation's high-speed Internet access. But Comcast frequently notes that its network doesn't overlap with Time
Warner Cable, meaning the merger would not actually create fewer choices for any consumers. Comcast didn't respond to a request to
comment. The speech could also have implications for the agency's net-neutrality regulations. Wheeler noted that, historically, the absence of
competition has "forced the imposition of strict government regulation in telecommunications." But he made it clear that he
would prefer
a competitive market with light regulation than heavy regulation of monopolies. One of the consequences
of past monopoly regulation was the "thwarting of the kind of innovation that competition stimulates,"
Wheeler said.
Fiber solves bandwidth
Forrest, 14 - Staff Writer for TechRepublic. (Conner, “Google's Fiber lottery: Predicting who's next and
how Google picks winners” Tech Republic, http://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-google-fiberlottery/)
Bandwidth is a serious issue for these kinds of small businesses, as well as entrepreneurs and highly-connected families. Mobile data,
streaming video, and advances in cloud services have put tremendous demands on bandwidth, and with internet service providers
experimenting with bandwidth throttling and bandwidth caps, it threatens to make internet usage a constrained resource.
Google, of course, wants people and companies to use the internet like it's a unlimited resource, because as the web's largest internet
advertising company, it makes more money the more everyone uses the internet.
Google Fiber is tackling this problem by putting a new face on a decades-old technology with the hopes
of using it to bring gigabit internet into businesses and homes -- that's over 10 times the capacity of
most of today's internet connections in US homes and small businesses. No new internet product has generated as much
excitement in the technology world as Google Fiber. It has piqued the interest of average consumers and left techies salivating.
When Google Fiber started in Kansas City, Kansas in 2012, it was difficult to determine how serious the search giant was about disrupting the
US internet. In 2013, it expanded the experiment to Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah, and the possibility began to emerge that this was going to
be a real thing. Google even released a checklist for potential Fiber cities. According to William Hahn, a principal analyst at Gartner, it's hard to
tell exactly what Google is up to.
"It's like those murder mysteries. The suspect would act exactly the same way, whatever their motive, up to this point," Hahn said. "If they were
trying to take a look at people's data and play in the sandbox, and were willing to subsidize for that reason, it would look a lot like them trying
to spur competitive response from the CSPs."
However, in
2014, Google suddenly looked a lot more serious about Fiber when it announced plans to
bring Fiber to 34 cities. That sounds a little more ambitious than it really is. It's actually only nine metro areas, but it's still a major
expansion of Google's Fiber plans.
The internet’s not key to any facet of the international order – their authors inflate
the threat
Ortagus ‘14
[Megan, Master’s in International Security from Johns Hopkins. May 2014,“The Internet’s Impacts on
Power Differentials in Security and Conflict”, master’s thesis submitted to Johns Hopkins University,
https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2/37255/ORTAGUS-THESIS2014.pdf?sequence=1]
It is quite remarkable how ICT has transformed commerce, global communications, and societal
interactions so dramatically in only twenty years since the modern Internet became widely accessible to
individuals. As a result, all states are presented with unprecedented security vulnerabilities, and their
response to shifting power differentials is paramount. This has led many analysts to proclaim that power
differentials have fundamentally changed and that cyberspace ultimately will render other forms of
warfare irrelevant. However, the Internet has neither fundamentally altered human nature nor the
desires and competitions that fuel conflict; it is transforming the experience of conflict, although not
necessarily the outcomes. This thesis has found no conclusive data to support the notion that ICT is
concurrently revolutionizing interstate, intrastate or extrastate conflict to the point whereby a weaker
adversary can achieve a desired political outcome through the unique use of cyberspace. If this were the
case, one would expect to see VNSAs, dissident movements, and fragile states solely using the Internet
to prevail against their more powerful adversaries. At present there are no such cases. To the contrary,
dominant nation states (especially authoritarians) have used ICT in concert with traditional security
forces to defeat those who challenge the normal order. The prediction that the fifth domain will make
other forms of warfare irrelevant, or that the Internet provides a competitive advantage for dissidents
and terrorists, has not yet come to fruition. While cyberspace adds a new virtual dimension to conflict,
much like airpower added a third dimension to military conflict after World War I, cyber weapons have
not yet developed to the point where they can replace weaponry in the physical domains. Some experts
argue that they never will. To extend the air power analogy further, aerial systems first provided
unparalleled reconnaissance capabilities before evolving into their more famous roles delivering deadly
payloads. Today, cyber weapons are significantly limited and cyber warfare has not proven to be an
adequate substitute for an air force, let alone an occupying force. Although as technology advances,
cyber weapons could transform from auxiliary to decisive in combat, much like airpower. Alternatively,
cyber warfare could be relegated to a category similar to chemical warfare: it inspires serious concerns,
but has not affected the global balance of power. The latter appears more likely because of the
Internet's inherent limitations in affecting the physical world.
--XT Squo Solves/Google Fiber
Telecom is answering demand now—fiber will go national no matter what the aff does
Canon, 14 (Scott, “AT&T might challenge Google Fiber with high-speed Internet service in KC” Kansas
City Star, 4/21,
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/article346078/ATT-might-challengeGoogle-Fiber-with-high-speed-Internet-service-in-KC.html#storylink=cpy)
AT&T Inc. took a swing at Google Inc. on Monday.
The telecommunications behemoth announced it may challenge the Internet search titan on turf that is
new to both — the sale of industrial-strength Internet hookups to the home.
Both might soon fight over bandwidth-hungry customers in Kansas City. AT&T said the market is one of
24 it is considering for expansion of broadband speeds reaching 1 gigabit per second. That would be
nearly 100 times faster than the national average for home consumers.
The two companies had already begun a low-stakes tussle over the fledgling market for high-speed
household Internet connections in Austin, Texas.
AT&T’s move Monday signaled a push to nationalize the market, possibly leapfrogging Google Fiber.
For years, the home Internet business has been the domain of phone and cable TV companies that
typically said they saw little evidence that ordinary consumers wanted so much broadband.
Google Fiber was seen as an attempt to goad those companies into offering swifter Internet
connections. If AT&T takes such a service nationwide, upgrading its U-verse into a service called
GigaPower, the rest of the industry could follow suit.
“The scope of this effort simply takes your breath away,” said technology industry analyst Jeff Kagan.
“This is the most ambitious plan we have seen to date.”
Cities that want AT&T, the company suggested, should consider cutting regulatory red tape the way
thatKansas City-area communities have for Google Fiber.
Google Fiber boosts innovation in every provider and it’s expanding rapidly
Conner, 14 - I am an entrepreneur and communications expert from Salt Lake City, and I am the founder
of Snapp Conner PR. I am also a frequent author and speaker on Business Communication (Cheryl
,”Google Fiber Plans Expansion To 34 New Cities (Including Salt Lake)” Forbes,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylsnappconner/2014/02/20/google-fiber-plans-expansion-to-34-newcities-including-salt-lake/)
The race for the Internet gigabit space took another leap forward this week with Google GOOG +0.85%
Fiber’s announcement that it has targeted 34 more cities in 9 metro areas for access to Google internet
services at the increasingly popular 1Gps speed.
Salt Lake City is one of the additional regions Google is considering for network expansion along with
additional cities in Arizona, California, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Oregon and Texas. (Google
Fiber’s blog announcement includes a comprehensive list of the 34 additional sites in all states.)
Google expects to give final selection decisions to the 34 new candidate locations by the end of the year.
Of particular note to cities vying for future expansion, much of Google’s choice for current candidates is
dependent on cities’ ability to conduct their own legwork. Cities with existing infrastructure that is
pervasive and documented can gain a leg up in getting their infrastructure maps in order and making it
faster and easier for Google to make permit requests, knowing the company can put its fiber on the
cities’ existing Internet poles.
By targeting cities with existing infrastructure, Google is not only able to move forward more quickly,
but is able to minimize the disruption to recipient cities that is caused by digging up streets to establish
new conduits, the company said.
Of the selections, Google representative Angie Welling told representatives of Salt Lake City, “Google
chose to work with Salt Lake City because of how tech-savvy the area is. Google would love to see what
local entrepreneurs would do with a high-speed gig connection.”
While Google has previously said that Google Fiber’s launch is meant to also spur the growth of
competitive platfoms from other providers, the company’s fast expansion is making Google itself a
bigger competitive force than before. As I have previously reported, Chattanooga Tenn., has built its
own ultra high speed fiber network, and AT&T T +1.12% has launched a similar offering in Austin, Texas,
after Google’s announcement of plans to provide services there.
It’s changing the entire industry
Barr, 14 – staff at WSJ (Alistair, “Google Fiber Is Fast, but Is It Fair?” Wall Street Journal,
http://online.wsj.com/articles/google-fuels-internet-access-plus-debate-1408731700)
Frustrated by the hammerlock of U.S. broadband providers, Google Inc. GOOGL +0.92% has searched
for ways around them to provide faster Internet speeds at lower cost, via everything from high-speed
fiber to satellites.
In the process, it is changing how next-generation broadband is rolled out.
Telecom and cable companies generally have been required to blanket entire cities, offering connections
to every home. By contrast, Google is building high-speed services as it finds demand, laying new fiber
neighborhood by neighborhood.
Others including AT&T Inc. T +1.12% and CenturyLink Inc. CTL +0.59% are copying Google's approach,
underscoring a deeper shift in U.S. telecommunications policy, from requiring universal service to letting
the marketplace decide.
--XT No Bandwidth Crisis
No total collapse – too decentralized
Jonathan Strickland, 10 February 2010 senior writer for Discovery’s How Stuff Works, "What would happen if the Internet collapsed?" .
HowStuffWorks.com. <http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/internet-collapse.htm>
Here's the good news -- a total collapse of the Internet would be almost impossible. The Internet isn't a
magic box with an on/off switch. It's not even a physical thing. It's a collection of physical things and it's
constantly changing. The Internet isn't the same entity from one moment to the next -- machines are
always joining or leaving the Internet. It's possible for parts of the Internet to go offline. In fact, this
happens all the time. Whether it's a particular server that crashes and needs to be rebooted or replaced
or a cable under the ocean gets snagged by an anchor, there are events that can disrupt Internet service.
But the effects tend to be isolated and temporary. While there is such a thing as the Internet backbone - a collection of cables and servers that carry the bulk of data across various networks -- it's not
centralized. There's no plug you could pull out from a socket or a cable you could cut that would cripple
the Internet. For the Internet to experience a global collapse, either the protocols that allow machines
to communicate would have to stop working for some reason or the infrastructure itself would have to
suffer massive damage. Since the protocols aren't likely to stop working spontaneously, we can rule out
that eventuality. As for the massive damage scenario -- that could happen. An asteroid or comet could
collide with the Earth with enough force to destroy a significant portion of the Internet's infrastructure.
Overwhelming gamma radiation or electromagnetic fluctuations coming from the sun might also do the
trick. But in those scenarios, the Earth itself would become a lifeless hulk. At that stage it hardly matters whether or
not you can log in to MySpace.
Demand not growing fast enough to cause collapse – consensus
Leslie Daigle et al 2010; Internet Society Chief Internet Technology Officer; Internet Society briefing paper, Growing Pains:
Bandwidth on the Internet http://www.isoc.org/isoc/conferences/bwpanel/docs/bp-growingp-201003-en.pdf
The Internet is continuously evolving. Some of the more profound recent changes have been caused by
the impact of broadband access networks. In the last decade, the number of broadband subscribers
worldwide has grown over one hundred times. Widespread broadband deployment has led to
tremendous innovation in Internet applications and huge increases in the average amount of bandwidth
consumed per user. The effects of these changes are now being felt around the globe. Stimulated by a
recent panel event organized by the Internet Society, we present the results of several recent studies,
which, when combined represent the most detailed and comprehensive picture of the contemporary
Internet available today. These studies show a consensus emerging about the gross amount of
bandwidth being used on the Internet, and the growth trends. The panel event hosted discussion of the
impacts of growth and application innovation on Internet service providers, and some of the actions that
the technical community is taking to address these ‘growing pains’. We draw a number of conclusions
from the data and the discussion: • The growth of Internet bandwidth globally is not about to cause
global problems. International and intercarrier links are not, in general, unable to cope with the
demands of growing bandwidth consumption.
Your impacts are consistently and hilariously empirically denied – prefer our evidence
Leslie Daigle et al 2010; Internet Society Chief Internet Technology Officer; Internet Society briefing paper, Growing Pains:
Bandwidth on the Internet http://www.isoc.org/isoc/conferences/bwpanel/docs/bp-growingp-201003-en.pdf
It is a truism that the Internet has grown tremendously since its inception, both in the scale of the
physical internetwork that underpins it and the scope of activity that it supports. The invention and
widespread dissemination of Internet technology marks an inflection point in human civilization
arguably as great as that wrought by Johannes Gutenberg. Unsurprisingly, given this sudden, striking,
and profound change, doom-laden predictions for the future of the Internet have never been hard to
find. In addition to concerns about the impact on human social norms and the implications for economic
activity, there have been regular forecasts of impending catastrophe based on fears that the technology
itself is simply unable to support the huge growth curve it has experienced and is experiencing.
ISP’s exaggerate massive data costs – internet traffic add tiny cost
Barry Collins (writer for PC Pro) October 2011 “ISPs "exaggerate the cost of data"”
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/broadband/370393/isps-exaggerate-the-cost-of-data
SPs are over-egging the costs of meeting the ever-increasing demand for data, according to a new report. Both
fixed and mobile providers have claimed that increased internet traffic has resulted in "ballooning" costs
for networks. Some ISPs have argued that content providers should pay them to help meet the cost of supplying bandwidth-intensive
services such as the BBC iPlayer. However, a new report commissioned by content providers - including the BBC,
Channel 4 and Skype - claims the costs of delivering additional internet traffic have been wildly
exaggerated by the ISPs. "Traffic-related costs are a small percentage of the total connectivity revenue,
and despite traffic growth, this percentage is expected to stay constant or decline," claims the report, written by
telecoms experts Plum Consulting. The report claims the cost of delivering additional gigabytes of data are mere
pennies. "Studies in Canada and in the UK... put the incremental cost of fixed network traffic at around €0.01-0.03 per GB." The report
concedes that the cost of adding capacity on mobile networks "are significantly higher than they are for fixed networks" because "the radioaccess network is shared by users". However, it claims forthcoming 4G technologies will significantly reduce those costs. "Forward-looking
estimates which take account of the transition to LTE [Long Term Evolution], additional spectrum and traffic subscriber growth... puts the cost
to the mobile network operators at under €1 per GB," Plum Consulting claims. As the report states, that cost is "well below existing
Describing claims of ballooning costs as a "myth", the report
concludes that "for fixed networks, traffic-related costs are low, falling on a unit basis and likely to fall
overall given declines in traffic growth and on-going cost-reducing technical progress".
smartphone data tariffs of around €10 per GB".
Telecoms solve bandwidth crunch now – status quo momentum sufficient
David Goldman (writer for CNN Money) February 2012 “4 ways to stave off the cell phone
apocalypse” http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/24/technology/spectrum_crunch_solutions/index.htm
It's easy to get frustrated about the effects of the spectrum crunch. Higher bills, fewer choices, and dismal service are enough to make even the
casual cell phone customer furious. Making things worse, none of the solutions for easing the spectrum shortage are inexpensive or easy.
There's no catch-all fix on the horizon. The
good news, though, is that options exist -- and carriers understand that
doing nothing would be disastrous. Here are the four primary ways they're going about staving off a spectrum crisis
and the resulting cell phone apocalypse. Reusing spectrum: One way to relieve capacity jams is "cell splitting,"
which involves either adding more cell sites or adding more radios to existing sites to increase the
number of connections that a network can handle. The problem is that it's expensive and tricky. "It would seem to some
people that you could infinitely reuse the spectrum you already have," says Dan Hays, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers' consultancy. "The
reality is a bit more complicated." As the number of bandwidth-hogging smartphones and tablets increases, carriers have to deploy more and
more towers. They face practical hurdles: no one wants a new antenna in their backyard. Interference is also a growing problem as more
towers get added. There
are, however, some innovative solutions being developed.
No short-term collapse – and your impacts are unsupported paranoia
Leslie Daigle et al 2010; Internet Society Chief Internet Technology Officer; Internet Society briefing
paper, Growing Pains: Bandwidth on the Internet
http://www.isoc.org/isoc/conferences/bwpanel/docs/bp-growingp-201003-en.pdf
At the macro level, bandwidth pressures at the international and intercarrier level would cause regional
problems. As described earlier, this does not appear to be on the horizon because gross traffic growth is
not going to exceed the anticipated growth in global network capacity anytime soon. While the
Internet did experience episodes of ‘congestion collapse’ more than 20 years ago, the mechanisms
implemented at that time to address the problem have largely stood the test of time. Despite this,
rumours of imminent network meltdown are never far away.
Growth scenarios are exaggerated by the IT industry – be skeptical
Peter Sevcik 2001; President of NetForecast in Andover, MA, and is a leading authority on Internet
traffic, performance and technology Internet Bandwidth: It’s Time for Accountability Net Forecasts –
Peter J. Sevcik BCR Volume 31, Number 1 January 2001
http://www.netforecast.com/Articles/bandwidth%20supply.pdf
The Internet has not been doubling every 3.5 months, despite what you might hear. Figure 1 shows how
far off that hyper-growth scenario is. But the myth continues because it’s useful -- it helps get money
out of investors and keep stock prices inflated. The realistic choices facing planners and investors is
reflected in Scenarios A and B in Figure 1. Looking at the evidence and evaluating the chances for those
scenarios, I think that Scenario A will prevail in 2001. The industry’s in for a tough year; we’re more likely
to see pessimism doubling every 3.5 months over the prospects for the Internet economy rather than
bandwidth doubling. However, long term, I think that Scenario B will emerge as the winning end game.
It’s ironic that one of the major benefits of the ‘Net - information transparency -- manifests itself in
many parts of the economy more than in the Internet business itself. The data in Figure 1 is very difficult
to gather and compile; it represents the best I could do from the sketchy data available. Most industry
players have an incentive to keep this data secret in order to bolster their market positions. Similarly,
the market research firms that continually issue glowing reports, seem to place a higher value on loyalty
to their clients than to realistic assessment of the situation. If we try to keep Internet planners and investors in the dark,
the New Economy will be adopting some of the worst characteristics of the Old Economy. It’s time for Internet service providers to supply data
about their capacity and demand to an impartial group that will compile and share it with the public. It is time for accountability.
--XT Innovation Inev
University research solves
NRC 12
National Research Council, principal operating agency of the National Academies, Winter 2012, “Optics
and Photonics: Essential Technologies for Our Nation,” 7-155
In contrast with the pattern of innovation, entry, and early-stage growth of many of these technologies in the 1950s and 1960s, the new
technological possibilities are being pursued by start-up firms, often in collaboration with U.S.
government laboratories or universities (see Figure 7.5, which shows the growing role of U.S. universities
in optoelectronics patenting). Moreover, the U.S. defense market often is a less central source of demand for innovative
technologies. The new approach to technology development that relies more heavily on universities and
small and medium-size firms for innovation, in which VC funding plays a more important role, may increase the importance of
mechanisms to support cross-industry and cross-institutional coordination in helping the United States to maintain leadership in photonics
innovation.
Innovation high and inevitable
Vivek Wadhwa 14, fellow at the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University,
director of research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke’s
engineering school and distinguished scholar at Singularity and Emory universities, “How the United
States is reinventing itself yet again”, 1/2/14,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/01/02/how-the-united-states-isreinventing-itself-yet-again/
And that’s not all the pessimists say. They also argue that while the United States continues to dominate in the emergence of new
technology powerhouses, the biggest IPO of the decade belongs to Facebook, a social network that is more media company than technology
innovator. Stifling red tape and regulations has driven costs of testing new medicines and medical devices so high that many drug
companies have shifted testing regimes and market focus to Europe and Asia. Despite mounting evidence that
skilled immigrant entrepreneurs have delivered a wildly disproportionate share of the country’s technology innovation and technology job
growth, the powers that be in Washington, D.C. have, even with broad bipartisan support, not mustered up the votes to reform the country’s
regressive and punitive immigration policies. Add to all of this an aging populace requiring more and more support from younger workers,
ballooning health costs and a tax structure that beggars the young to underwrite benefits for the aged, and
the United States looks
more and more like a historical footnote than a superpower.¶ Peel back the layers of the onion, and the
reality appears quite different. In fact, the United States stands on the cusp of a dramatic revival and
rejuvenation, propelled by an amazing wave of technological innovation. A slew of breakthroughs will
deliver the enormous productivity gains and the societal dramatic cost savings needed to sustain
economic growth and prosperity. These breakthroughs, mostly digital in nature, will complete the shift
begun by the Internet away to a new era where the precepts of Moore’s Law can be applied to virtually
any field.¶ Computer-assisted design and fabrication will reshape manufacturing forever. These technologies
will slash waste and replace nearly all conventional manufacturing with more environmentally friendly and cost-effective additive
manufacturing run with robots and computer programs. Complex systems resistant to modeling will succumb to advances in big data that allow
mankind to finally make sense and improve upon the most intricate multi-faceted interactions. Where big data fails, ubiquitous
crowd
sourcing will harness untapped brain cycles to train systems and solve problems, one small activity at a
time — on a global scale.¶ In this massively digital world, A/B testing or parallelization of R&D processes will become
commonplace for just about everything from airline design simulations to online advertising to artificial organ construction. This
will, in turn, allow for far more rigorous testing of products and processes. Dirt-cheap digital delivery platforms for
educational content and improvements in the understanding of the way the brain learns will yield a sea change
in how we gain knowledge. This will result in more open, flexible educational systems and structures — and a smarter,
more learned, constantly learning populace. While the world will benefit from these changes, the United States is
uniquely positioned to lead this sea change.
--XT Comcast Thumper
Comcast’s monopoly over the internet trumps
Lee 2014 (Timothy B [senior editor at Vox]; Comcast is destroying the principle that makes a
competitive internet possible; May 6; www.vox.com/2014/5/6/5678080/voxsplaining-telecom; kdf)
Conservatives love the internet. They don't just love using it, they also love to point to it as an example of the
power of free markets. And they're right. The internet has had a remarkable 20-year run of rapid innovation with minimal government
regulation. That was possible because the internet has a different structure than other communications networks.
Most networks, like the 20th century telephone market, are natural monopolies requiring close government supervision. But the internet
is organized in a way that allows markets, rather than monopolists or government regulators, to set prices. That
structure has been remarkably durable, but it's not indestructible. And unfortunately, it's now in danger. In recent years,
Comcast has waged a campaign to change the internet's structure to make it more like the monopolistic
telephone network that came before it, making Comcast more money in the process. Conservatives are naturally and properly
skeptical of government regulation. But this is a case where the question isn't whether to regulate, but what kind of
regulation is preferable. If federal regulators don't step in now to preserve the structures that make internet
competition possible, they will be forced to step in later to prevent the largest ISPs from abusing their
growing monopoly power.
Comcast is the biggest internal link to internet competition
Lee 2014 (Timothy B [senior editor at Vox]; Comcast is destroying the principle that makes a
competitive internet possible; May 6; www.vox.com/2014/5/6/5678080/voxsplaining-telecom; kdf)
The importance of market share Two factors tend to make the bill-and-keep model stable. One is competition in the consumer ISP market. If
customers can easily switch between broadband providers, then it would be foolish for a broadband
provider to allow network quality to degrade as a way to force content companies to the bargaining
table. The second factor is ISP size. When ISPs are relatively small, payments naturally flow from the edges of
the network to the middle because small edge networks need large transit networks to reach the rest of
the internet. Imagine, for example, if the Vermont Telephone Company, a tiny telecom company that recently started offering ultra-fast
internet services, tried to emulate Comcast. Suppose it began complaining that Netflix was sending it too much traffic and demanding that its
transit providers start paying it for the costs of delivering Netflix content to its subscribers. Netflix and the big transit companies that provide it
with connectivity would laugh at this kind of demand. It would be obvious to everyone that VTel needs transit service more than transit
providers need VTel. But when an ISP's market share gets large enough, the calculus changes. Comcast has 80 times as many subscribers as
Vermont has households. So
when Comcast demands payment to deliver content to its own customers, Netflix
and its transit suppliers can't afford to laugh it off. The potential costs to Netflix's bottom line are too large. This provides a
clear argument against allowing the Comcast/Time Warner merger. Defenders of the merger have argued that it won't reduce competition
because Comcast and Time Warner don't serve the same customers. That's true, but it ignores how the merger would affect the
interconnection market. A merged cable giant would have even more leverage to demand monopoly rents from companies across the internet.
A century ago, the Wilson administration decided not to press its antitrust case against AT&T, allowing the firm to continue the acquisition
spree that made it a monopoly. In retrospect, that decision looks like a mistake. Wilson's decision not to intervene in the market led to a
telephone monopoly, which in turn led to 70 years of regulation and a messy, 10-year antitrust case. Obviously, the combination of Comcast
and Time Warner would not dominate the internet the way AT&T dominated the telephone industry. But recent
events suggest that
Comcast is already large enough to threaten competition on the internet. Preventing the company
from getting even larger might avoid the need for a lot more regulation in the years ahead. Comcast declined
to comment for this story.
1nc Military Bandwidth
Either tech development in the squo solves because of demand for Netflix, Facebook,
etcetera OR the plan makes it worse because it rapidly increases demand on the
networks before capacity can be ramped up, turning the aff
New DOD initiatives solve
Slabodkin February 23, 2015 (Greg; JIE: How DOD is building a bigger network that's alos a smaller
target; defensesystems.com/Articles/2015/02/23/Joint-Information-Environment-JRSSsecurity.aspx?Page=4; kdf)
Dave Cotton, DOD’s acting deputy CIO for information enterprise, who is responsible for providing the leadership, strategy, and guidance for
JIE, said that the
JRSS foundational layer includes network standardization and optimization across DOD
networks, such as increasing bandwidth capabilities where necessary and switching upgrades through MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology. MPLS, which enables higher bandwidth/throughput and faster routing capabilities,
allows the department to “stop leasing circuits and get away from the legacy-based circuits to a more IPbased infrastructure,” he said. “That provides the foundation then to put the security component in place.” MPLS routers are an
industry-standard for speeding and managing network traffic flow. JRSS is prompting a massive effort to expand capacity and increase
throughput across Army and Air Force bases with MPLS upgrades to the network backbone that will increase the bandwidth to 100 gigabytes
per second. According to Cotton, MPLS also enables DOD to route and secure network traffic for a specific mission instead of just for a
particular location, resulting in more focused and coherent command and control for missions. Unlike
the one-size-fits-all
networks that DOD currently operates, he says the JIE will provide operational commanders more freedom
to take cybersecurity risks with the networks since the risks can be contained to the decision support
and systems specifically needed for that mission. This is a significant change from today's DOD
networks which impose more operational constraints on commanders. The risk containment zones the SSA defines in the server computing
and the network will enable joint commanders to better contain cyber risks assumed by a particular mission from spilling over into other
missions, while sharing as broadly with external partners as a mission requires, Cotton said. In addition, users and systems will be able to trust
their connection with the assurance that the information and systems involved in a mission are correct and working even during a cyberattack.
Based on a single DOD-wide IT architecture and key enabling enterprise services, JIE is “a more secure, defendable, responsible, and more
command and controllable, integrated network for the Department of Defense information exchange environment,” Cotton said. The
idea
is to bring together all the capabilities that will enable “a more coherent, more secure, interoperable and less
costly capability”—efficiencies that will be achieved through economies of scale and eliminating
duplication. A big part of that is cloud computing, which is a critical component of the JIE and DOD’s IT modernization efforts.
New suitcase internet set up solves
McCaney June 5, 2014 (Kevin; Army boosts bandwidth with new suitcase-sized satellite terminals;
defensesystems.com/articles/2014/06/05/army-t2c2-high-bandwidth-satellite-terminals.aspx; kdf)
Portable network access for soldiers in the field is about to get a lot faster with the Army’s latest
satellite kit in a suitcase. The Transportable Tactical Command Communications, or T2C2, boosts the
bandwidth for small detachments and teams connecting to the Army’s battlefield network, thus
increasing the situational awareness and functionality of early-entry teams and helping to improve
communications throughout the tactical edge, the Army said in a release. T2T2 comes in two flavors: a
larger transportable dish that serves company-level operations and the smaller T2C2 Lite, which the
Army said is about the size of carry-on luggage and which can be set up and working in about 10
minutes. The small model is similar to the Global Rapid Response Information Package, or GRRIP, which
soldiers have been using in Afghanistan, for example, as network infrastructure leaves with the
drawdown. But GRIPP uses only the L Band in the satellite communications spectrum, limiting
transmission to kilobits per second. T2C2 Lite adds the Ka and X bands, boosting performance to
megabits per second and allowing soldiers to use advanced applications. Last month, T2C2 was
designated a program of record (GRRIP is not), enabling the Army to institutionalize training on the
system. The equipment connects to the Army’s battlefield network, the Warfighter Information
Network-Tactical, via the military’s Wideband Global SATCOM constellation, and will work as a
companion to the Enroute Mission Command Capability, a WIN-T program that gives rapid-response
forces a view of their drop zones and allows for mission planning while in flight. For the Army, the bigger
bandwidth, combined with T2C2’s portability, advances the cause of seamless, mobile battlefield
communications.
New antennas solve
Hamilton 2015 (Alex; US Army's new high bandwidth inflatable antenna; Jan 11;
www.governmentfishbowl.com/2015/01/11/us-armys-new-high-bandwidth-inflatable-antenna/; kdf)
The US Army deployed an inflatable ground satellite antenna that comes in a small package for simple
deployment. CHECK OUT: U.S. Naval Ships Now Shoot Lasers The theater of war has shifted from massive armies confronting each other over
vast tracts of land to more isolated “surgical” engagements. As much
a battleground as land, sea and air, control of the
digital spectrum is vital to military dominance. To assist in anywhere access to key networks, enter Project Manager
Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T), home of the inflatable satellite antenna used by Special Operations, airborne and
conventional forces. Blown Into Proportion The communications device is known as Ground Antenna Transmit & Receive (GATR). The
inflatable antenna can adjust in size, weight and power, conforming to the needs of military personnel.
Leonard Newman, the Army product manager for Satellite Communications said, “The GATR allows you to deploy high-bandwidth
communications anywhere in the smallest possible package.” It weighs just 25 pounds and inflates into a sphere for resistance of wind up to 60
mph (97 kph). It also boasts a 6 hour backup battery. The setup takes just 30 minutes.
AT: Internet Freedom
1NC AT: Internet Freedom – terminally impossible
Private companies and algorithms ensure Internet freedom is literally impossible
Maus 2015 (Gregory; Eye in the Skynet; Jul 1; https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2015-0701/eye-skynet; kdf)
Dictators constantly face a dilemma: crushing dissent to terrify (but anger) the populace or tolerating protests and offering reforms to keep the
public at bay (but embolden dissidents in the process). Instead of relying on gut instinct, experience, or historical precedent, autocrats
now have advances in data analytics and ubiquitous passive data to thank for letting them develop new,
scientifically validated methods of repression. By analyzing the dynamics of resistance with a depth
previously impossible, autocrats can preemptively crush dissent more reliably and carefully. With
machine learning and social network analysis, dictators can identify future troublemakers far more
efficiently than through human intuition alone. Predictive technologies have outperformed their human counterparts: a project from
Telenor Research and MIT Media Lab used machine-learning techniques to develop an algorithm for targeted marketing, pitting their algorithm
against a team of topflight marketers from a large Asian telecom firm. The
algorithm used a combination of their targets’
social networks and phone metadata, while the human team relied on its tried-and-true methods. Not
only was the algorithm almost 13 times more successful at selecting initial purchasers of the cell phone plans, their purchasers were 98 percent
more likely to keep their plans after the first month (as opposed to the marketers’ 37 percent). Comparable algorithms to target people
differently have shown promise somewhat more ominously. For example, advanced
social network algorithms developed by
the U.S. Navy are already being applied to identify key street gang members in Chicago and
municipalities in Massachusetts. Algorithms like these detect, map, and analyze the social networks of
people of interest (either the alleged perpetrators or victims of crimes). In Chicago, they have been used to identify those most likely to
be involved in violence, allowing police to then reach out to their family and friends in order to socially leverage them against violence. The
data for the models can come from a variety of sources, including social media, phone records, arrest
records, and anything else to which the police have access. Some software programs along this line also integrate geotags from the other data in order to create a geographic map of events. Programs like these have proven effective in
evaluating the competence of Syrian opposition groups, in identifying improvised explosive device creation and distribution
networks in Iraq, in helping police target gangs, and in helping police better target criminal suspects for investigation. Related breakthroughs in
computer algorithms have proven effective in forecasting future civil unrest. Since November 2012, computer scientists have worked on Early
Model Based Event Recognition using Surrogates (EMBERS), an algorithm developed with funding from the Intelligence Advanced Research
Projects Activity that uses publicly available tweets, blog posts, and other factors to forecast protests and riots in South America. By 2014, it
forecasted events at least a week in advance with impressive accuracy. The algorithm learned steadily from its successes and failures, adjusting
how it weighed variables and data with each successive attempt. In Russia, the pro-Kremlin Center for Research in Legitimacy and Political
Protest think tank claims to have developed a similar software system, called Laplace’s Demon, which monitors social media activity for signs of
protest. According to the center’s head, Yevgeny Venediktov, social scientists, researchers, government officials, and law enforcement agencies
that use the system “will be able to learn about the preparation of unsanctioned rallies long before the information will appear in the media.”
Venediktov considers the tool a vital security measure for curbing protests, stating, “We are now facing a serious cyber threat—the
mobilization of protest activists in Russia by forces located abroad,” necessitating “active and urgent measures to create a Russian system of
monitoring social networks and [develop] software that would warn Russian society in advance about approaching threats.” Authoritarian
governments, of course, have access to much more data about their citizens than a telecom company, a local
police department, or Laplace’s Demon could ever hope for, making it all the easier for them to ensure that their people never escape the quiet
surveillance web of trouble-spotting algorithms. Classic Orwellian standbys such as wiretapping, collecting communication metadata, watching
public areas through cameras (with ever-improving facial recognition), monitoring online activity (especially true in China, which has direct
control over network providers and surveillance tools built directly into social media services), tracking purchase records, scanning official
government records, and hacking into any computer files that cannot be accessed directly will become only more effective through the use of
new technologies and algorithms. There are many new surveillance methods available at the touch of a button. For example, former Ukraine
President Viktor Yanukovych sent a passive-oppressive mass text to those near a protest, warning them that they were registered as
participants in a mass riot. Governments can monitor their citizens’ locations through their phones, and the future of tracking people through
wearable computers and smart appliances is still on the way. With a steady stream of data available from nearly every citizen, automated
sifters such as EMBERS can steadily learn which data are valuable and prioritize appropriately. Machines have already shown that they are
competent in deriving a variety of private traits through Facebook likes, using social media profiles to forecast whether groups will stick
together, identifying personality traits through phone data and Twitter activity, determining the stage of one’s pregnancy through purchase
behavior, or ascertaining how likely one is to take a prescribed medication based on a variety of seemingly unrelated factors. At
the same
time that mass surveillance is becoming less obtrusive, outright mass censorship, once a standby tool of
repressive regimes worldwide, may have a more effective alternative thanks to analytics. Not only can
blatant censorship provoke a backlash, it also complicates the ability of states to monitor their people by
encouraging them either to use communication channels that are harder to watch or to figure out how
to cleverly evade notice by using coded language or symbols. The Grass-Mud Horse, for example, is an entirely fictional
creature popularized on the Chinese Internet because its pronunciation sounds like an incredibly vulgar swear word that the Communist Party’s
automatic censors would normally catch. However, the text itself seems harmless, so the censors couldn't easily clamp down on it. Indeed,
Chinese Internet users have developed very extensive systems of code phrases to evade the automated detection of certain sentiments.
Authoritarian regimes have been getting smarter at how they influence the public dialogue. Russia
boasts a well-organized army of paid anonymous online commenters. These agents seek to covertly influence opinion
both internally and internationally, posting on Russian and English forums and social media outlets that feature news about the nation, items
on Ukraine, or criticisms of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Reports also link the group to attempts to manipulate global opinion of U.S.
President Barack Obama, as well as the perpetuation of several serious online hoaxes, including false reports in the United States of a chemical
plant explosion, an Ebola virus outbreak, and the lethal shooting of an unarmed black woman by police in the wake of the shooting in Ferguson,
Mo.
--XT Algorithms t/o solvency
Governments will never cede control
Maus 2015 (Gregory; Eye in the Skynet; Jul 1; https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2015-0701/eye-skynet; kdf)
The ability of autocrats to fend off regime change may be refined further through careful analysis of how
news and ideas spread. Academics have been able to track the diffusion of ideas (automatically
clustering distinctive words and phrases into unified memes) across millions of news sites since 2009
and have since been creating quantitative models of the diffusion. Since 2012, scholars have developed
mathematical models to infer how information flows from one group to another across millions of blogs
and news sites, without even having direct intelligence on how it was transmitted. These breakthroughs
can be used to turn phone metadata and online activity into complex models that depict how ideas
spread. When coupled with psychological profiles of specific subjects made by algorithms, governments
can forecast how ideas will spread and also steer them as they see fit. Even a difference as subtle as the
order in which a search engine returns results has been found to dramatically impact the formation of
political opinions: most Web users will click the first search results and ignore later results, suggesting
that a great deal of latitude can be had in influencing beliefs through subtle, calculated nudges.
Similarly, even the color of text can impact behavior and attitude, as evidenced in a recent study of
online gaming traits. With these advances either at-hand or in the near future, it would seem that
regimes will be able to steadily nudge their societies into an ideal of submissive police states, isolating
their subjects from any factors that could influence their thoughts towards rebellion. By identifying and
removing the “glitches” that cause dissent, these regimes could slowly, but steadily reengineer
humanity into the perfect machine-servants. Thanks to advances in computer science, autocracies can
be made more secure than ever before.
1NC – Democracy Turn
A free interent allows for authoritarian governments to use it as a means of greater
control—turns the case
Deibert, 15- (Ron Deibert is director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. He is the author of Black
Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet (2013). He was a co-founder and principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative
(2003–14).) “Cyberspace Under Siege” Journal of Democracy Volume 26, Number 3, July 2015, Project Muse, //droneofark
Third-generation controls are the hardest to document, but may be the most effective. They involve
surveillance, targeted espionage, and other types of covert disruptions in cyberspace. While firstgeneration controls are defensive and second-generation controls probe deeper into society, thirdgeneration controls are offensive. The best known of these are the targeted cyberespionage campaigns that emanate from China.
Although Chinese spying on businesses and governments draws most of the news reports, Beijing uses the same tactics to target human-rights,
prodemocracy, and independence movements outside China. A
recent four-year comparative study by Citizen Lab and
ten participating NGOs found that those groups suffered the same persistent China-based digital attacks
as governments and Fortune 500 companies.12 The study also found that targeted espionage campaigns can
have severe consequences including disruptions of civil society and threats to liberty. At the very least,
persistent cyberespionage attacks breed self-censorship and undermine the networking advantages that
civil society might otherwise reap from digital media. Another Citizen Lab report found that China has employed a new
attack tool, called “The Great Cannon,” which can [End Page 68] redirect the website requests of unwitting foreign users into denial-of-service
attacks or replace web requests with malicious software.13 While
other states may not be able to match China’s
cyberespionage or online-attack capabilities, they do have options. Some might buy off-the-shelf espionage
“solutions” from Western companies such as the United Kingdom’s Gamma Group or Italy’s Hacking Team—each of which Citizen Lab research
has linked to dozens of authoritarian-government clients.14 In
Syria, which is currently the site of a multisided, no-holdsbarred regional war, security services and extremist groups such as ISIS are borrowing cybercriminals’
targeted-attack techniques, downloading crude but effective tradecraft from open sources and then
using it to infiltrate opposition groups, often with deadly results.15 The capacity to mount targeted digital attacks is
proving particularly attractive to regimes that face persistent insurgencies, popular protests, or other standing security challenges. As these
techniques become more widely used and known, they create a chilling effect: Even without particular
evidence, activists may avoid digital communication for fear that they are being monitored. Thirdgeneration controls also include efforts to aim crowdsourced antagonism at political foes. Governments
recruit “electronic armies” that can use the very social media employed by popular opposition
movements to discredit and intimidate those who dare to criticize the state.16 Such online swarms are meant to
make orchestrated denunciations of opponents look like spontaneous popular expressions. If the activities of its electronic armies come under
legal question or result in excesses, a regime can hide behind “plausible deniability.” Examples of progovernment e-warriors
include Venezuela’s Chavista “communicational guerrillas,” the Egyptian Cyber Army, the pro-Assad Syrian Electronic Army, the pro-Putin
bloggers of Russia, Kenya’s “director of digital media” Dennis Itumbi plus his bloggers, Saudi Arabia’s antipornography “ethical hackers,” and
China’s notorious “fifty-centers,” so called because they are allegedly paid that much for each progovernment comment or status update they
post. Other
guises under which third-generation controls may travel include not only targeted attacks on
Internet users but wholesale disruptions of cyberspace. Typically scheduled to cluster before and during
major political events such as elections, anniversaries, and public demonstrations, “justin-time”
disruptions can be as severe as total Internet blackouts. More common, however, are selective disruptions. In Tajikistan,
SMS services went down for several days leading up to planned opposition rallies in October 2014. The government blamed technical errors;
others saw the hand of the state at work.17 Pakistan blocked all mobile services in its capital, Islamabad, for part of the day on 23 March 2015
in order to shield national-day parades from improvised explosive devices.18 During the 2014 prodemocracy demonstrations in Hong Kong,
China closed access to the photo-sharing site Instagram. Telecommunications companies in the Democratic Republic of Congo were ordered to
shut down all mobile [End Page 69] and SMS communications in response to antigovernment protests. Bangladesh ordered a ban on the
popular smartphone messaging application Viber in January 2015, after it was linked to demonstrations. To
these three generations,
we might add a fourth. This comes in the form of a more assertive authoritarianism at the international
level. For years, governments that favor greater sovereign control over cyberspace have sought to assert
their preferences—despite at times stiff resistance—in forums such as the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the United Nations (UN), and the
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).19 Although there is no simple division of “camps,”
observers tend to group countries broadly into those that prefer a more open Internet and a limited role for states and those that prefer a
state-led form of governance, probably under UN auspices. The
United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, and the
Asian democracies line up most often behind openness, while China, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and
various other nondemocracies fall into the latter group. A large number of emerging-market countries, led by Brazil, India,
and Indonesia, are “swing states” that can go either way. Battle lines between these opposing views were becoming sharper around the time of
the December 2012 World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT) in Dubai—an event that many worried would mark the fall of Internet
governance into UN (and thus state) hands. But the WCIT process stalled, and lobbying by the United States and its allies (plus Internet
companies such as Google) played a role in preventing fears of a state-dominated Internet from coming true. If recent proposals on
international cybersecurity submitted to the UN by China, Russia, and their allies tell us anything, future rounds of the cybergovernance forums
may be less straightforward than what transpired at Dubai. In January 2015, the Beijing- and Moscow-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO) submitted a draft “International Code of Conduct for Information Security” to the UN. This document reaffirms many of the same
principles as the ill-fated WCIT Treaty, including greater state control over cyberspace. Such
proposals will surely raise the ire of
those in the “Internet freedom” camp, who will then marshal their resources to lobby against their
adoption. But will wins for Internet freedom in high-level international venues (assuming that such wins are in the
cards) do anything to stop local and regional trends toward greater government control of the online
world? Writing their preferred language into international statements may please Internet-freedom
advocates, but what if such language merely serves to gloss over a ground-level reality of more rather
than less state cyberauthority? It is important to understand the driving forces behind resurgent authoritarianism in cyberspace if
we are to comprehend fully the challenges ahead, the broader prospects facing human rights and democracy [End Page 70] promotion
worldwide, and the reasons to suspect that the authoritarian resurgence in cyberspace will continue. A
major driver of this
resurgence has been and likely will continue to be the growing impetus worldwide to adopt
cybersecurity and antiterror policies. As societies come to depend ever more heavily on networked
digital information, keeping it secure has become an ever-higher state priority. Data breaches and cyberespionage
attacks—including massive thefts of intellectual property—are growing in number. While the cybersecurity realm is replete
with self-serving rhetoric and threat inflation, the sum total of concerns means that dealing with
cybercrime has now become an unavoidable state imperative. For example, the U.S. intelligence community’s official
2015 “Worldwide Threat Assessment” put cyberattacks first on the list of dangers to U.S. national security.20 It is crucial to note how
laws and policies in the area of cybersecurity are combining and interacting with those in the antiterror
realm. Violent extremists have been active online at least since the early days of al-Qaeda several decades ago. More recently, the rise of
the Islamic State and its gruesome use of social media for publicity and recruitment have spurred a new
sense of urgency. The Islamic State atrocities recorded in viral beheading videos are joined by (to list a few) terror attacks such as the
Mumbai assault in India (November 2008); the Boston Marathon bombings (April 2013); the Westgate Mall shootings in Kenya (September
2013); the Ottawa Parliament shooting (October 2014); the Charlie Hebdo and related attacks in Paris (January 2015); repeated deadly assaults
on Shia mosques in Pakistan (most recently in February 2015); and the depredations of Nigeria’s Boko Haram. Horrors
such as these
underline the value of being able to identify, in timely fashion amid the wilderness of cyberspace, those
bent on violence before they strike. The interest of public-safety officials in data-mining and other hightech surveillance and analytical techniques is natural and understandable. But as expansive laws are rapidly passed
and state-security services (alongside the private companies that work for and with them) garner vast new powers and resources, checks and
balances that protect civil liberties and guard against the abuse of power can be easily forgotten. The
adoption by liberal
democracies of sweeping cybercrime and antiterror measures without checks and balances cannot help
but lend legitimacy and normative support to similar steps taken by authoritarian states. The headlong
rush to guard against extremism and terrorism worldwide, in other words, could end up providing the
biggest boost to resurgent authoritarianism.
--xt-> Authoritarianism
The Cybersecurity market demand increases incentives for authoritarian governments
to re-enforce state control and broaden anti-democratic regimes.
Deibert, 15- (Ron Deibert is director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. He is the author of Black
Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet (2013). He was a co-founder and principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative
(2003–14).) “Cyberspace Under Siege” Journal of Democracy Volume 26, Number 3, July 2015, Project Muse, //droneofark
A third driving factor has to do with the rapid growth of digital connectivity in the global South and
among the populations of authoritarian regimes, weak states, and flawed democracies. In Indonesia the
number of Internet users increases each month by a stunning 800,000. In 2000, Nigeria had fewer than a quartermillion Internet users; today, it has 68 million. The Internet-penetration rate in Cambodia rose a staggering 414 percent from January 2014 to
January 2015 alone. By the end of 2014, the number of mobile-connected devices exceeded the number of people on Earth. Cisco Systems
estimates that by 2019, there will be nearly 1.5 mobile devices per living human. The same report predicts that the steepest rates of growth in
mobile-data traffic will be found in the Middle East and Africa.23 Booming
digital technology is good for economic growth,
but it also creates security and governance pressure points that authoritarian regimes can squeeze. We
have seen how social media and the like can mobilize masses of people instantly on behalf of various
causes (prodemocratic ones included). Yet many of the very same technologies can also be used as tools of
control. Mobile devices, with their portability, low cost, and light physical-infrastructure requirements, are how citizens in the developing
world connect. These handheld marvels allow people to do a wealth of things that they could hardly have dreamt of doing before. Yet all
mobile devices and their dozens of installed applications emit reams of highly detailed information
about peoples’ movements, social relationships, habits, and even thoughts—data that sophisticated
agencies can use in any number of ways to spy, to track, to manipulate, to deceive, to extort, to
influence, and to target. The market for digital spyware described earlier needs to be seen not only as a
source of material and technology for countries who demand them, but as an active shaper of those
countries’ preferences, practices, and policies. This is not to say that companies are persuading policy
makers regarding what governments should do. Rather, companies and the services that they offer can
open up possibilities for solutions, be they deep-packet inspection, content filtering, cellphone tracking,
“big-data” analytics, or targeted spyware. SkyLock, a cellphone-tracking solution sold by Verint Systems of Melville, New York,
purports to offer governments “a cost-effective, new approach to obtaining global location information concerning known targets.” Company
brochures obtained by the Washington Post include “screen shots of maps depicting location tracking in what appears to be Mexico, Nigeria,
South Africa, Brazil, Congo, [End Page 73] the United Arab Emirates, Zimbabwe, and several other countries.”24 Large
industry trade
fairs where these systems are sold are also crucial sites for learning and information exchange. The best
known of these, the Intelligence Support Systems (ISS) events, are run by TeleStrategies, Incorporated, of McLean, Virginia. Dubbed the
“Wiretappers’ Ball” by critics, ISS events are exclusive conventions with registration fees high enough to exclude most attendees other than
governments and their agencies. As one recent study noted, ISS serves to connect registrants with surveillance-technology vendors, and
provides training in the latest industry practices and equipment.25 The March 2014 ISS event in Dubai featured one session on “Mobile
Location, Surveillance and Signal Intercept Product Training” and another that promised to teach attendees how to achieve “unrivaled attack
capabilities and total resistance to detection, quarantine and removal by any endpoint security technology.”26 Major corporate
vendors of lawful-access, targeted-surveillance, and data-analytic solutions are fixtures at ISS meetings
and use them to gather clients. As cybersecurity demands grow, so will this market. Authoritarian policy
makers looking to channel industrial development and employment opportunities into paths that
reinforce state control can be expected to support local innovation. Already, schools of engineering, computer
science, and data-processing are widely seen in the developing world as viable paths to employment and economic sustainability, and within
those fields cybersecurity is now a major driving force. In Malaysia, for example, the British defense contractor BAE Systems agreed to
underwrite a degree-granting academic program in cybersecurity in partial fulfillment of its “defense offsets” obligation.27 India’s new
“National Cyber Security Policy” lays out an ambitious strategy for training a new generation of experts in, among other things, the fine points
of “ethical hacking.” The goal is to give India an electronic army of high-tech specialists a half-million strong. In a world where “Big Brother” and
“Big Data” share so many of the same needs, the political economy of cybersecurity must be singled out as a major driver of resurgent
authoritarianism in cyberspace.
xt -> Localization
Democracy promotion bolsters internet localization- turns the case
Deibert, 15- (Ron Deibert is director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. He is the author of Black
Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet (2013). He was a co-founder and principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative
(2003–14).) “Cyberspace Under Siege” Journal of Democracy Volume 26, Number 3, July 2015, Project Muse, //droneofark
December 2014 marked the fourth anniversary of the Arab Spring. Beginning
in December 2010, Arab peoples seized the
attention of the world by taking to the Internet and the streets to press for change. They toppled regimes once
thought immovable, including that of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. Four years later, not only is Cairo’s Tahrir Square
empty of protesters, but the Egyptian army is back in charge. Invoking the familiar mantras of
antiterrorism and cybersecurity, Egypt’s new president, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has imposed a suite
of information controls.1 Bloggers have been arrested and websites blocked; suspicions of mass surveillance cluster
around an ominous-sounding new “High Council of Cyber Crime.” The very technologies that many
heralded as “tools of liberation” four years ago are now being used to stifle dissent and squeeze civil
society. The aftermath of the Arab Spring is looking more like a cold winter, and a potent example of
resurgent authoritarianism in cyberspace. Authoritarianism means state constraints on legitimate
democratic political participation, rule by emotion and fear, repression of civil society, and the
concentration of executive power in the hands of an unaccountable elite. At its most extreme, it encompasses
totalitarian states such as North Korea, but it also includes a large number of weak states and “competitive authoritarian” regimes.2 Once
assumed to be incompatible with today’s fast-paced media environment, authoritarian systems of rule
are showing not only resilience, but a capacity for resurgence. Far from being made obsolete by the
Internet, authoritarian regimes are now actively shaping cyberspace to their own strategic advantage.
This shaping includes technological, legal, extralegal, and other targeted information [End Page 64] controls. It also includes regional
and bilateral cooperation, the promotion of international norms friendly to authoritarianism, and the
sharing of “best” practices and technologies. The development of several generations of information controls has resulted in a
tightening grip on cyberspace within sovereign territorial boundaries. A major impetus behind these controls is the growing
imperative to implement cybersecurity and antiterror measures, which often have the effect of
strengthening the state at the expense of human rights and civil society. In the short term, the disclosures by Edward
Snowden concerning surveillance carried out by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and its allies must also be cited as a factor that has
contributed, even if unintentionally, to the authoritarian resurgence. Liberal
democrats have wrung their hands a good deal
lately as they have watched authoritarian regimes use international organizations to promote norms
that favor domestic information controls. Yet events in regional, bilateral, and other contexts where authoritarians learn from
and cooperate with one another have mattered even more. Moreover, with regard to surveillance, censorship, and
targeted digital espionage, commercial developments and their spinoffs have been key. Any thinking
about how best to counter resurgent authoritarianism in cyberspace must reckon with this reality.
Mention authoritarian controls over cyberspace, and people often think of major Internet disruptions such as Egypt’s shutdown in late January
and early February 2011, or China’s so-called Great Firewall. These are noteworthy, to be sure, but they do not capture the full gamut of
cyberspace controls. Over time, authoritarians have developed an arsenal that extends from technical measures, laws, policies, and regulations,
to more covert and offensive techniques such as targeted malware attacks and campaigns to coopt social media. Subtler and thus more likely to
be effective than blunt-force tactics such as shutdowns, these measures reveal a considerable degree of learning. Cyberspace authoritarianism,
in other words, has evolved over at least three generations of information controls.3
SQ solves
Squo solves—net neutrality
Garside March 3, 2015 (Juliette; Net neutrality is like free speech – and the internet needs rules, says
FCC boss; www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/03/net-neutrality-free-speech-fcc-tomwheeler; kdf)
The US’s top media regulator hit back at critics of new net neutrality rules voted into law last week, comparing them to the first amendment
and saying neither
government nor private companies had the right to restrict the openness of the
internet. The Federal Communications Commission chairman, Tom Wheeler, was speaking in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress, the
world’s largest telecoms trade show, just as European governments are meeting to thrash out their own principles for keeping the internet
open. “This
is no more regulating the internet than the first amendment regulates free speech in our
country,” Wheeler said. “If the internet is the most powerful and pervasive platform in the history of the planet, can it exist without a
referee? There needs to be a referee with a yardstick, and that is the structure we have put in place. A set
of rules that say activity should be just and reasonable, and somebody who can raise the flag if they
aren’t.” Telecoms companies across Europe and America have railed against Wheeler’s reforms, saying they will
discourage investment in better cable and wireless networks and simply benefit bandwidth-hungry
services like Netflix and YouTube, which do not normally pay for their content to be carried across the internet. In the US, Verizon and AT&T,
the two largest mobile operators, have said they will try to reverse the new rules in the courts. Meanwhile, Wheeler told conference attendees
in Barcelona: “Those who were opposed to the open internet rules like to say this is Depression-era monopoly regulation. We built our model
for net neutrality on the regulatory model that has been wildly successful in the US for mobile.” The FCC rules will treat telecoms companies in
a similar way to utilities such as electricity. Internet service providers will
be explicitly prohibited from blocking, throttling or
prioritising internet traffic for commercial reasons. Where complaints are raised, the FCC will decide on a case-by-case basis whether
what network owners are doing is “fair and just”. The FCC has said it would not intervene areas such as pricing, network unbundling and
technical operating requirements. The
European parliament is in the midst of negotiations with member states
and network operators over final net neutrality rules, which could be published later this spring. A
source at one of Europe’s largest mobile carriers said the fear was that Europe would introduce similar
rules, only to find itself out of step when the FCC is forced to back down by a legal challenge or a change of president.
No backsliding—experts
Berkman, 14—writer for The Daily Dot, an e-magazine focused on key internet issues
Fran, “Tech experts discuss the greatest threats to Internet freedom,” July 4,
http://www.dailydot.com/politics/threats-to-internet-freedom/
Oh how the Internet has grown. What was once a small village of interconnected networks has grown into a booming digital metropolis with
billions of users. Like any prominent place, the Internet is continuously being shaped, for better or worse, by institutional forces. To get a better
sense for where this is all leading, the
Pew Research Center asked thousands of Internet experts their thoughts
on what the Internet will be like in 2025. Pew published a report titled “Net Threats,” detailing its findings, on Thursday. The
experts’ responses were generally optimistic; 65 percent of the 1,400 experts who responded said there would
not be “significant changes for the worse and hindrances to the ways in which people get and share
content online.” Whether they answered with optimism or pessimism, the experts were asked to elaborate on potential risks to Internet
freedom. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the experts cited government censorship and surveillance, as well as commercialization, as the greatest
threats to the Internet we’ve come to know and love. “Because of governance issues (and the international implications of the NSA reveals),
data sharing will get geographically fragmented in challenging ways,” said Microsoft research scientist danah boyd, one of the respondents
quoted in the Pew report. “The next few years are going to be about control.” boyd is referring to the past 13 months of revelations about the
National Security Agency’s (NSA) vast digital surveillance capabilities, as revealed through documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward
Snowden. On the topic of censorship, Pew notes that the Internet has shown it has the power to take down governments, as displayed during
the Arab Spring. This has caused dictatorial regimes to react by working to censor Internet access. But as one of Pew’s experts points out,
censorship is not a trend that’s limited to just China and Syria. “Governments worldwide are looking for more power over the Net, especially
within their own countries,” said Dave Burstein, editor of Fast Net News. “Britain, for example, has just determined that ISPs block sites the
government considers ‘terrorist’ or otherwise dangerous.” Indeed, a recent report found that British ISP filters are blocking one-fifth of the
100,000 of the country’s most popular webpages, including political blogs and medical information sites. As for commercialization, the last of
the three threats to Internet freedom detailed by the Pew experts, the respondents highlighted debates about net neutrality and copyright law
as key battlegrounds. It
certainly wasn’t all doom and gloom for the Internet. Google executive Vint Cerf,
one of the Internet’s founding fathers, responded to Pew with a bit more optimism. “Social norms will
change to deal with potential harms in online social interactions,” he said. “The Internet will become far
more accessible than it is today.”
Diplomacy doesn’t solve internet freedom
Wagstaff, 14—writer for NBC citing a report by the Pew Research Internet Project
Keith, “These Are the Four Biggest Threats to the Internet: Pew Report,”
http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/these-are-four-biggest-threats-internet-pew-report-n147391
More people are going online than ever, but Internet
freedom could be seriously at risk, according to a new report from the
Pew Research Internet Project. It identified four main threats. The first is the prospect of more nations cracking down
on access to the Web and mobile apps, like Turkey’s recent Twitter ban and China’s long-standing “Great Firewall.”
The next is a backlash against government surveillance programs in the wake of revelations about the U.S.
National Security Agency (NSA) and its British equivalent, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). Also
mentioned was the “pressures businesses are under to monetize Internet” — especially when it comes to “net
neutrality” and restrictive patent laws that could stifle innovation. The final threat to Internet freedom could be that we share too much
information, making us reliant on the algorithms of companies like Google and Facebook to find information,
filters that are often set with business considerations in mind.
--XT No Solve Internet Freedom
Silk Road conviction has undermined internet freedom –slippery slope
Maza 2015 [Cristina Maza, Staff writer, What guilty verdict in Silk Road trial might mean for Internet
freedom, Christian Science Monitor, http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2015/0205/Whatguilty-verdict-in-Silk-Road-trial-might-mean-for-Internet-freedom]
On Wednesday, a jury
decided that Ross Ulbricht is the “Dread Pirate Roberts,” the pseudonym used by the
architect of the Silk Road underground drug bazaar. Before it was shut down by the federal government in 2013, Silk Road
was considered the largest marketplace for finding illegal drugs online. The site was also used to sell fake IDs and other illegal goods using
bitcoin, an online currency that operates with no central authority or banks. The prosecution said that Mr. Ulbricht was a “kingpin” who
received a portion of every transaction that occurred on the site. Ulbricht will be sentenced in May and faces a minimum of 20 years in prison.
He could also be handed a life sentence. The defense has attempted to paint Ulbricht as a naïve kid who was framed after his Frankenstein
monster grew out of control. It is expected to appeal the decision. The
case is broadly important, experts say, because it
could have implications for Internet freedom. It explores not only the legal question of whether a website
operator can be held accountable for how his site is used by others but also how the government ferrets
out illegal Internet activity. Along the way, the proceedings have provided an unvarnished look at the Internet's dark side, perhaps for
the first time. "What's most interesting about this case is that it is the first case in its enormity involving the Dark Net and
it's going to be a wakeup for anyone using the Dark Net thinking they have anonymity. You cannot
remain anonymous on the Internet," Darren Hayes, assistant professor and director of cyber security at Pace University, told
CNBC. Ulbricht was arrested after the Federal Bureau of Investigation discovered a server in Iceland that linked
him to Silk Road. But how the FBI discovered the server has been a point of contention. Ulbricht’s defenders
claim that the government used illegal methods to locate Silk Road, violating his constitutional right to privacy, though a judge denied that line
of defense. The anonymity protections provided by the cryptographic software Tor mean that law enforcement would need to obtain a search
warrant to discover the the location of Silk Road's servers, Ulbricht's defenders say. The lack of a warrant taints the evidence found in the
subsequent investigation, the defense stated in a memo. The FBI stated that it located the server due to a misconfiguration of Silk Road’s
CAPTCHA system – the string of letters and numbers that helps protect a site from spam. This error inadvertently revealed the server's IP
address, the FBI said. But
experts claim that it would be impossible to use the CAPTCHA to find the server.
Some suggest that the National Security Agency might have had a hand in locating the server. “My guess is
that the NSA provided the FBI with this information. We know that the NSA provides surveillance data to
the FBI and the DEA, under the condition that they lie about where it came from in court,” wrote Bruce
Schneier, Chief Technology Officer of Co3 Systems and a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center, on his blog. Meanwhile, the
idea of charging a website’s operator with wrongdoing when a user conducts illegal activity raises
interesting questions about Internet freedom, says Hanni Fakhoury, an attorney at the Electronic
Frontier Foundation. "The main issue, the main Internet freedom issue is at what point are website operators
accountable for what happens on their site? In Silk Road, it's an easy case because they were catering to illegal activity. But
what is interesting is that you start with easy cases and then you start to go towards some of the borderline
cases," he said to CNBC. In Ulbricht’s case, the jury decided that, as the mastermind behind a site catering to the sale of nefarious content, he
should be held accountable. The evidence against Ulbricht, most of which was located on his laptop, was overwhelming and included digital
chat records, traced bitcoin transactions, and a diary he kept detailing the tribulations he faced while running the site. The jury deliberated for
under four hours before it found Ulbricht guilty on seven counts, including money laundering, drug trafficking, and computer hacking, among
others.
Alt cause –Silk Road conviction set a precedent for hypocrisy and violation of interent
freedom
Knibbs 2014 [Kate Knibbs, How The Silk Road Trial Set A Dangerous Legal Precedent, Gizmodo,
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/02/the-silk-road-trial-set-a-dangerous-legal-precedent/]
The Silk
Road trial is over. A jury found Ross Ulbricht guilty on all seven charges, including money
laundering, drug trafficking, and the “kingpin” charge. That’s not just bad news for Ulbricht, who faces life in prison. His
trial has set a dangerous precedent, which could allow law enforcement to gather evidence illegally. While
many watching the trial were fascinated by all the ways that Ulbricht’s identity was definitively linked to the pseudonymous digital drug bazaar
runner Dread Pirate Roberts, they overlooked something crucial. The
FBI never had to explain how it located and
infiltrated the Silk Road’s hidden servers. The fact that the evidence law enforcement provided from
those servers was admitted despite the lack of clarity about their sources is troubling. Privacy advocates
suspect the government’s search and seizure was not entirely above board, arguing the agency hacked into the anonymous site without a
warrant. As Adam Clark Estes wrote shortly before the trial: Both sides are clashing over one specific detail regarding how the FBI located the
hidden Silk Road server. Put simply, they hacked the site’s login page with a (potentially illegal) brute force attack. Or the NSA did it for them —
that part’s a little bit unclear. Neither of the government agencies had a warrant, of course. The defence says that this
sort of intrusion
represents a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. Just imagine if the FBI had broken into and
searched Ulbricht’s house instead of his server. That’s a reasonable concern, though it didn’t do the defence any good in
court. Judge Katherine Forrest rejected the argument on a technicality during the trial, and so the defence was not allowed to explore this line
of questioning. Without a clear answer, there’s no proof that the government upheld the Fourth Amendment and obtained the information
legally. The defence instead tried to run with the argument that the FBI had initially suspected someone else of running the Silk Road, Mt. Gox
CEO Mark Karpeles. But the prosecution shut down this line of questioning, and the defence was pretty much screwed. The prosecution had
obtained a damning pile of evidence, from Ulbricht’s diaries to a report tracing $US13.4 million Bitcoin from the Silk Road into Ulbricht’s
personal digital wallet. While defence lawyer Robert Dratel kept arguing about the
slipperiness of digital identity, it wasn’t enough
to sway the jury. What’s at stake here is a lot more than Ulbricht’s innocence or guilt. This trial set
precedents that will affect future defendants, too. The fact is that law enforcement was allowed to
present damning digital evidence without explaining where it came from. That’s bad news for our civil
liberties. It means that police and other law enforcement officers working digital crime cases may not have to worry as much about obeying
the law anymore when it comes to gathering evidence. Corruption would surely follow. Before the verdict came in, I talked to Ryan E. Long, a
lawyer affiliated with Stanford’s Center on Internet and Society, about the potential impact of this case
on future internet-related trials. He zeroed in on the importance of authenticating the evidence that
the government showed, and making sure it was obtained without violating the Constitution. “How did they
get this information, and did they breach the law by getting it? I think that will set the precedent with future electronic
cases about how the government got the information and whether they did it legally,” he said. The issue is,
he continued, “whether the government obtained the evidence that they wish to use to prove this narrative,
[Ulbricht's guilt] such as the identity of the server, in a lawful way consistent with the Fourth
Amendment, among other things.” That doesn’t mean Ulbricht did not do the things he’s now convicted of doing. It doesn’t mean
the Silk Road kingpin doesn’t belong behind bars. But it does mean, unambiguously, that the feds were allowed to present evidence that may
have been obtained unlawfully. In the legal world, there’s a metaphor called “fruit of the poisonous tree.” It’s used to describe
tainted evidence, evidence that comes from breaking the law. It’s not supposed to be admissible in court. But now, thanks to the Silk Road
verdict, it is.
--Net Neutrality
Net neutrality now with coming FCC rules
Liebelson, 2015 (Dana, “Stunning Victory Within Reach For Net Neutrality Advocates” Huffington Post,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/27/net-neutrality-fcc_n_6555036.html)
Next month, a wonky government agency will rule on the fate of the Internet. The Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) is expected to grant a major victory to net neutrality advocates, a
stunning turnaround following years of conventional wisdom to the contrary.
But advocates aren't celebrating yet. Instead, they're watching to see if the FCC will create rules that are
strong and enforceable, or that leave gaping holes for telecom and cable companies to drive through.
They are also eyeing a Republican-backed proposal that, they say, will undermine a free and open
Internet.
For months, the battle over net neutrality has centered on whether the FCC will reclassify consumer
broadband Internet as a utility under Title II of the Telecommunications Act. Reclassification would
empower the FCC to block Internet service providers, or ISPs, from charging content providers like
Netflix more for reliable Internet access -- thereby hampering, for example, a person's ability to quickly
and affordably stream "House of Cards." (ISPs maintain that they won't create a second network for
faster service.)
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has indicated that he supports Title II -- a proposal backed by President
Barack Obama -- and it's widely believed that Wheeler will go that route. Republicans contend that such
a move would qualify as government overreach, and they have introduced legislation that would
essentially gut the agency's authority. That bill's fate is unclear, given that it's unpopular among many
Democrats but still makes big net neutrality concessions that telecom and cable companies might not
favor.
Regardless, advocates say that Title II authority won't mean much unless the FCC creates enforceable
rules and doesn't allow loopholes.
"Right now, the big carriers are simply looking for a loophole," said Marvin Ammori, a lawyer who
advises major tech companies and supports net neutrality. He noted that there are multiple loopholes -like writing exceptions for mobile or specialized services -- that could undermine the whole FCC rule.
"They only need one," he said.
Still, it's not clear how much wiggle room Wheeler's rules will leave. He has said that he favors standards
that are "just and reasonable," not simply favorable to the ISPs.
Engstrom told HuffPost that even if the FCC only decides on Title II in this round of rulemaking, and
doesn't clarify additional rules until afterward, "that's certainly preferable to the proposals coming out
of Congress."
FCC rules will be strong, no loopholes and ISPs hate it
Brodkin, 1/8/15 - Ars Technica's senior IT reporter (Jon, “On net neutrality, Internet providers are
betrayed by one of their own” Ars Technica, http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/on-netneutrality-internet-providers-are-betrayed-by-one-of-their-own/)
When President Obama picked Tom Wheeler to lead the Federal Communications Commission in May
2013, our headline was, “Uh-oh: AT&T and Comcast are ecstatic about the FCC’s new chairman.”
They’re not happy anymore, especially not after Wheeler yesterday all but confirmed at the Consumer
Electronics Show (CES) that he will propose reclassifying Internet providers as common carriers in order
to impose net neutrality rules. This would expose broadband to some of the FCC’s strongest powers
contained in Title II of the Communications Act, usually reserved for wireline phone service.
Yet it seemed in 2013 that Internet providers had every reason to be pleased: Wheeler formerly led the
biggest trade associations representing the cable and wireless industries. Wheeler was CEO of the
National Cable Television Association (NCTA) from 1979 to 1984 and CEO of the Cellular
Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA) from 1992 to 2004.
Wheeler’s first stab at net neutrality in May 2014 didn't cause much concern in the industry, which
under that proposal would have remained a lightly regulated “information service” and been free to
charge Web services for priority access to consumers. But the proposal was widely condemned by
consumers and various advocacy groups. Eventually, Obama called on Wheeler to go with Title II for
both fixed Internet service and mobile, and it appears Wheeler will do just that.
If he does, Wheeler would show that Washington’s revolving door doesn’t always guarantee that
regulators do the bidding of the regulated. Former FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who made sure that
ISPs would face little regulation, now leads the NCTA and has repeatedly called on Wheeler to avoid
using Title II. Former FCC Commissioner and current CTIA CEO Meredith Attwell Baker has also lobbied
against such a move.
There were signs shortly after Wheeler’s swearing-in that he might not hold the same views as the
current heads of the cable and wireless trade groups he used to lead. For one thing, he hired prominent
consumer advocate Gigi Sohn as his Special Counsel for External Affairs. Wheeler admires Abraham
Lincoln's “team of rivals” approach, and for the past year and a half, Sohn has been instrumental in
laying groundwork for a likely Title II reclassification, according to an article in The Hill yesterday.
Wheeler has also repeatedly pointed to his past as a venture capitalist and entrepreneur, saying he
learned from experience that networks must be open to spur innovation.
Yup, Verizon's mad
Title II’s utility-style rules have long been applied to the traditional telephone system, but the rules
Internet providers face likely won’t be as strict. Obama urged the FCC to forbear from imposing rate
regulation and similar restrictions. But the FCC would use Title II to prevent ISPs from blocking or
throttling Web services or prioritizing services in exchange for payment.
Wheeler will circulate proposed rules to fellow commissioners on February 5 and hold a vote on
February 26, he said yesterday. We contacted the major ISPs and telecommunications industry groups
today, and their reactions were predictably negative.
GOP bill dead on arrival
Crawford, 1/28/15 – visiting professor at Harvard (Susan “The Net Neutrality Bait and Switch”
https://medium.com/backchannel/the-net-neutrality-bait-and-switch-cedb65f1a1cd
That same shorthand applies to a new “Internet openness” draft bill to amend the Communications Act
of 1934, introduced by Sen. John Thune (R-SD) and Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), the new leaders of the
Senate and House committees charged with oversight of the Federal Communications Commission.
Although calculated to address concerns about online fairness, its real thrust is to remove or constrain
the FCC’s authority in a host of areas. The bill will draw a swift presidential veto.
As well it should. The bill is full of problems. It would prevent the FCC from going after any new schemes
that position carriers like Comcast or Verizon as gatekeepers online. In cases where carriers are
subsidized to provide communications services in hard-to-reach places (like rural areas and tribal land),
it would raise barriers to the FCC’s ability to ensure that those carriers actually use those funds to offer
high-speed Internet access. It would bar the FCC from using its existing statutory authority to protect
consumers against privacy abuses and other exploits — like being billed for unauthorized charges. And
rather than allowing the FCC to create clear rules that set the terms of engagement in advance, it would
put the burden on consumers and businesses to prove problems through prolonged, expensive, case-bycase wrangling after the fact.
The GOP leadership has to know they’ve lost the PR wars on net neutrality. The bill so transparently
shackles the FCC that it doesn’t stand a chance in the open air—and even if it does, of course, the
President’s veto pen will be ready.
AT: Crowe
Squo solves
Crowe 14 (Tyler; The internet of things: our greatest shot at battling climate change; Feb 15;
www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/02/15/this-technology-is-our-only-real-shot-at-addressin.aspx;
kdf)
The Internet of Things is still very much in its infancy, but it's taking off fast. The pending boom in
machine-to machine communication helps explain why Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL ) shelled out more
thah $3.2 billion for smart-thermostat company Nest Labs. Its ability allows customers to better manage
heating and cooling in households and instantly provide feedback to utilities in order to better manage
energy demand during peak load hours. Sure, estimates put the total number of machine-to-machine
capable devices in the billions, but for the Internet of things to be truly effective, everything needs to be
connected. Estimates for total connected devices around the globe could reach into the trillions. This
could lead to an industry with annual revenues of a whopping $948 billion.
The big players in the technology world, like Google and Intel (NASDAQ: INTL ) , will undoubtedly be
major players in this fast-growing market. Aside from its investment with Nest for smarter home energy
use, Google is also getting into the transportation game with its Open Auto Alliance, a group of
automakers and technology companies that will establish common practices such that vehicles from
different manufacturers can communicate with each other -- the building block for self driving vehicles.
With that much money on the line, can you really blame these companies for diving into this market?
What a Fool believes
The Internet of Things trend is approaching ... fast. For investors, it could be an amazing opportunity to
get in on the ground floor of a new market with trillion dollar potential, but it is so much more than that.
Increased productivity and elimination of wasteful energy consumption through smart devices could be
the one and only key to cutting greenhouse gas emission enough to reduce the chances of significant
climate change. So go ahead and continue arguing about the use of fossil fuels or alternative energy -the investors who will really be betting on reducing carbon emissions will be putting their money here.
AT: Eagleman
Eagleman’s a hack and internet won’t save civilization
Mnookin 12
Seth Mnookin teaches science writing at MIT and blogs at the Public Library of Science, Download the
Universe, March 23, 2012, "The Frozen Future of Nonfiction",
http://www.downloadtheuniverse.com/dtu/2012/03/why-the-net-matters-how-the-internet-will-savecivilization-by-david-eagleman-canongate-books-2010-for-ipad-by-set.html
At least, that’s what I assumed before I read Why The Net Matters, Eagleman’s frustrating 2010 e-book
about how and why the Internet will save civilization. (I reviewed the $7.99 iPad version, which is the
platform it was designed for; a stripped-down, text-based version is available on the Kindle for the
portentous price of $6.66.) The problems start with Eagleman’s premise, which is so vague and broad as
to be practically meaningless. There are, he writes, just “a handful of reasons” that civilizations collapse:
“disease, poor information flow, natural disasters, political corruption, resource depletion and economic
meltdown.” Lucky for us (and Eagleman does offer readers “[c]ongratulations on living in a fortuitous
moment in history”), the technology that created the web “obviates many of the threats faced by our
ancestors. In other words...[t]he advent of the internet represents a watershed moment in history that
just might rescue our future.”
On the other hand, it just might not: In order to make his point, Eagleman either ignores or doesn’t
bother to look for any evidence that might undercut it. The first of six “random access” chapters that
make up the bulk of Why The Net Matters is devoted to “Sidestepping Epidemics,” like the smallpox
outbreak that helped bring down the Aztec Empire. In the future, Eagleman writes, the “protective net,”
in the form of telemedicine, telepresence (“the ability to work remotely via computer”), and
sophisticated information tracking, will save us from these outbreaks. That all sounds lovely, but what of
the fact that we’re currently experiencing a resurgence in vaccine-preventable diseases such as
measles...a resurgence which is fueled in no small part by misinformation spread over that very same
“protective net”?
A few chapters later, in a section celebrating the benefits of the hive mind, Eagleman invokes Soviet
pseudoscientist Trofim Lysenko, a famed quack who took over the U.S.S.R.’s wheat production under
Stalin. Because the Soviet Union spanned 13 time zones, Eagleman writes, “central rule-setting was
disastrous for wheat production. … Part of the downfall of the USSR can be traced to this centralization
of agricultural decisions.” That sounds nice, and might even be true—but it’s not a point that’s
supported by Lysenko, whose main shortcoming was not that he believed in a one-size-fits-all approach;
it was that he was a fraud.
Moving to the present day, Eagleman addresses wildfires that swept through Southern California in
2007, which, he writes, “brought into relief the relationship between natural disasters and the internet.”
At the beginning of the outbreak in October, Californians were glued to their television screens, hoping
to determine if their own homes were in danger. But at some point they stopped watching the
televisions and turned to other sources. A common suspicion arose that the news stations were most
concerned with the fate of celebrity homes in Malibu and Hollywood; mansions that were consumed by
the flames took up airtime in proportion to their square footage, which made for gripping video but a
poor information source about which areas were in danger next. So people be-gan to post on Twitter,
upload geotagged cell phone photos to Flickr, and update Facebook.
I had been fairly obsessed with the wildfires, and since I didn’t remember this “common suspicion,” I
decided to check the article Eagleman cites as the source of this info, which was a Wired blog post titled
“Firsthand Reports from California Wildfires Pour Through Twitter.” It contained no references to a
celebrity-obsessed news media; instead, the piece described how “the local media [was] overwhelmed.”
It also talked about a San Diego resident who was “[a]cting as an ad hoc news aggregator of sorts” by
“watching broadcast television news, listening to local radio reports and monitoring streaming video on
the web” and then posting information, along with info gleaned from IMs, text messages, and e-mails,
to his Twitter account.
AT: Genachowski
Genachowski was the worst—reject their ev
Gustin 13 [Sam Gustin, reporter at TIME focused on business, technology, and public policy, FCC
Chairman Julius Genachowski Stepping Down After Contentious Term, TIME,
http://business.time.com/2013/03/22/fcc-chairman-julius-genachowski-stepping-down-aftercontentious-term-reports/]
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski is stepping down, he announced Friday.
Genachowski, who became chairman in 2009, has presided over an agency that has grappled with contentious issues like U.S. broadband policy,
cable and telecom industry competition, and media consolidation. In seeking to strike a centrist balance, Genachowski managed
to
alienate both public interest groups that have pushed for a more activist FCC on issues like media
ownership and Internet openness, as well as industry giants, particularly AT&T, which had proposed buying T-Mobile
before the FCC objected. Verizon Wireless is currently suing the FCC in federal court over the agency’s “network neutrality” rules.
Genachowski’s announcement, which was expected, comes just days after another FCC commissioner, Robert McDowell, announced his plan to
leave the agency. Their departures create two vacancies on the commission, which will be filled by candidates nominated by President Obama.
The job of FCC chairman is particularly important, because the position wields significant power in shaping U.S. telecom regulatory policy. A
spokesman for the FCC’s office of the chairman declined to comment on the reports of Genachowski’s impending departure, but Reuters
reported that he informed his staff of his decision on Thursday. Genachowski, a former Internet executive at media mogul Barry Diller’s
IAC conglomerate, attended Harvard Law School with President Obama and later raised money for Obama. When
he was appointed,
public interest groups were optimistic that he would champion the open Internet principles at the heart
of “network neutrality,” the idea that Internet providers shouldn’t discriminate against rival services. But
public interest groups were dismayed when Genachowski ultimately settled on a compromise originally
crafted by Google and Verizon Wireless, which ensured net neutrality on wired networks, but did not
extend the principle to wireless networks. “When Julius Genachowski took office, there were high hopes that he would use his
powerful position to promote the public interest,” Craig Aaron, president and CEO of public interest group Free Press, said in a statement. “But
instead of acting as the people’s champion, he’s catered to corporate interests. He claimed to be a
staunch defender of the open Internet, but his Net Neutrality policies are full of loopholes and offer no
guarantee that the FCC will be able to protect consumers from corporate abuse in the future.” It’s easy to take
the idea of net neutrality for granted, but all Web users and companies have equal access to the Internet, in the same way that all Americans
have the right to travel anywhere in the 50 states without a passport. Companies and institutions have closed networks, but the main public
internet is accessible by all. Without this open access, net neutrality advocates argue, startups like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and thousands of
others could never have emerged to become the commercial and communications powerhouses they are today.
Genachowski also infuriated public interest groups with his decision to approve Comcast’s purchase of
NBCUniversal, which critics said concentrated too much power with one company. “Though President Obama
promised his FCC chairman would not continue the Bush administration’s failed media ownership policies, Genachowski offered the exact same
broken ideas that Bush’s two chairmen pushed,” Aaron said. “He
opposition to his plans.”
never faced the public and ignored the overwhelming
AT: McDowell
McDowell is all rhetoric—but he does say appointments and lack of platform
outweigh
McDowell, 13
(Chair-FCC, 2/15, “Commissioner McDowell Congressional Testimony,”
http://www.fcc.gov/document/commissioner-mcdowell-congressional-testimony)
Thank you Chairman Upton, Ranking Member Waxman, Chairman Royce, Ranking Member Engel, Chairman Walden, Ranking Member Eshoo,
Chairman Poe, Ranking Member Sherman, Chairman Smith and Ranking Member Bass. It is an honor to be before you during this rare joint
hearing. Thank you for inviting me. It is a privilege to testify before such a rare meeting of three subcommittees and beside such a distinguished
group on this panel. Ladies and gentlemen, the
Internet is under assault. As a result, freedom, prosperity and the
potential to improve the human condition across the globe are at risk. Any questions regarding these assertions are
now settled. Last year’s allegations that these claims are exaggerated no longer have credibility. In my testimony today, I will make five
fundamental points: 1) Proponents of multilateral intergovernmental control of the Internet are patient and persistent incrementalists who will
never relent until their ends are achieved; 2) The recently concluded World Conference on International Telecommunications (“WCIT”) ended
the era of an international consensus to keep intergovernmental hands off of the Internet in dramatic fashion, thus radically twisting the oneway ratchet of even more government regulation in this space; 3) Those
who cherish Internet freedom must immediately
redouble their efforts to prevent further expansions of government control of the Internet as the
pivotal 2014 Plenipotentiary meeting of the International Telecommunication Union (“ITU”)1 quickly draws nearer; 4)
Merely saying “no” to any changes is – quite obviously – a losing proposition; therefore we should work to offer alternate proposals such as
improving the longstanding and highly successful, non-governmental, multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance to include those who
may feel disenfranchised; and 5) Last year’s bipartisan and unanimous Congressional resolutions clearly opposing expansions of international
powers over the Internet reverberated throughout the world and had a positive and constructive effect. I. Proponents of multilateral
intergovernmental control of the Internet are patient and persistent incrementalists who will never relent until their ends are achieved. First, it
is important to note that as far back as 2003 during the U.N.’s Summit on the Information Society (“WSIS”), the U.S. found itself in the lonely
position of fending off efforts by other countries to exert U.N. and other multilateral control over the Internet. In both 2003 and 2005, due to
the highly effective leadership of my friend Ambassador David Gross – and his stellar team at the Department of State – champions of Internet
freedom were able to avert this crisis by enhancing the private sector multi-stakeholder governance model through the creation of entities such
as the Internet Governance Forum (“IGF”) where all stakeholders, including governments, could meet to resolve challenges. Solutions should be
found through consensus rather than regulation, as had always been the case with the Internet’s affairs since it was opened up for public use in
the early 1990’s.2 Nonetheless, countries
such as China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and scores of their allies never
gave up their regulatory quest. They continued to push the ITU, and the U.N. itself, to regulate both the
operations, economics and content of the Net. Some proposals were obvious and specific while others were insidious and
initially appeared innocuous or insignificant. Many defenders of Internet freedom did not take these proposals seriously at first, even though
some plans explicitly called for: • Changing basic definitions contained in treaty text so the ITU would have unrestricted jurisdiction over the
Internet;3 • Allowing foreign phone companies to charge global content and application providers internationally mandated fees (ultimately to
be paid by all Internet consumers) with the goal of generating revenue for foreign government treasuries;4 • Subjecting cyber security and data
privacy to international control, including the creation of an international “registry” of Internet addresses that could track every Internetconnected device in the world;5 • Imposing unprecedented economic regulations of rates, terms and conditions for currently unregulated
Internet traffic swapping agreements known as “peering;”6 • Establishing ITU dominion over important non-profit, private sector,
multistakeholder functions, such as administering domain names like the .org and .com Web addresses of the world;7 • Subsuming into the ITU
the functions of multi-stakeholder Internet engineering groups that set technical standards to allow the Net to work;8 • Centralizing under
international regulation Internet content under the guise of controlling “congestion,” or other false pretexts; and many more.9 Despite these
repeated efforts, the unanimously adopted 1988 treaty text that helped insulate the Internet from international regulation, and make it the
greatest deregulatory success story of all time, remained in place. Starting in 2006, however, the ITU’s member states (including the U.S.) laid
the groundwork for convening the WCIT.10 The purpose of the WCIT was to renegotiate the 1988 treaty. As such, it became the perfect
opportunity for proponents of expanded regulation to extend the ITU’s reach into the Internet’s affairs. In fact, in 2011, thenRussian Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin summed it up best when he declared that his goal, and that of his allies, was to establish “international control over the
Internet” through the ITU.11 Last month in Dubai, Mr. Putin largely achieved his goal. II. December’s WCIT ended the era of international
consensus to keep intergovernmental hands off of the Internet in dramatic fashion. Before the WCIT, ITU leadership made three key promises:
1) No votes would be taken at the WCIT; 2) A new treaty would be adopted only through “unanimous consensus;” and 3) Any new treaty would
not touch the Internet.12 All three promises were resoundingly broken.13 As a result of an 89-55 vote, the ITU now has unprecedented
authority over the economics and content of key aspects of the Internet.14 Although the U.S. was ultimately joined by 54 other countries in
opposition to the new treaty language, that figure is misleading. Many countries, including otherwise close allies in Europe, were willing to vote
to ensnare the Internet in the tangle of intergovernmental control until Iran complicated the picture with an unacceptable amendment. In
short, the
U.S. experienced a rude awakening regarding the stark reality of the situation: when push
comes to shove, even countries that purport to cherish Internet freedom are willing to surrender. Our
experience in Dubai is a chilling foreshadow of how international Internet regulatory policy could
expand at an accelerating pace. Specifically, the explicit terms of the new treaty language give the ITU policing powers over
“SPAM,” and attempt to legitimize under international law foreign government inspections of the content of Internet communications to assess
whether they should be censored by governments under flimsy pretexts such as network congestion.15 The
bottom line is, countries
have given the ITU jurisdiction over the Internet’s operations and content. Many more were close to
joining them. More broadly, pro-regulation forces succeeded in upending decades of consensus on the
meaning of crucial treaty definitions that were universally understood to insulate Internet service
providers, as well as Internet content and application providers, from intergovernmental control by
changing the treaty’s definitions.16 Many of the same countries, as well as the ITU itself,17 brazenly argued that the old treaty text
from 1988 gave the ITU broad jurisdiction over the Internet.18 If these regulatory expansionists are willing to conjure ITU
authority where clearly none existed, their control-hungry imaginations will see no limits to the ITU’s
authority over the Internet’s affairs under the new treaty language. Their appetite for regulatory
expansionism is insatiable as they envision the omniscience of regulators able to replace the billions of
daily decisions that allow the Internet to blossom and transform the human condition like no other
technology in human history. At the same time, worldwide consumer demand is driving technological
convergence. As a result, companies such as Verizon, Google, AT&T, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, and many more in the U.S. and in
other countries, are building across borders thousands of miles of fiber optics to connect sophisticated
routers that bring voice, video and data services more quickly to consumers tucked into every corner of
the globe. From an engineering perspective, the technical architecture and service offerings of these companies look the same. Despite this
wonderful convergence, an international movement is growing to foist 19th Century regulations designed for railroads, telegraphs and
vanishing analog voice phone monopolies onto new market players that are much different from the monoliths of yore. To
be blunt,
these dynamic new wonders of the early 21st Century are inches away from being smothered by
innovation-crushing old rules designed for a different time. The practical effect of expanded rules would
be to politicize engineering and business decisions inside sclerotic intergovernmental bureaucracies. If
this trend continues, Internet growth would be most severely impaired in the developing world. But even
here, as brilliant and daring technologists work to transform the world, they could be forced to seek bureaucratic permission to innovate and
invest. In sum, the
dramatic encroachments on Internet freedom secured in Dubai will serve as a stepping
stone to more international regulation of the Internet in the very near future. The result will be devastating
even if the United States does not ratify these toxic new treaties. We must waste no time fighting to prevent further
governmental expansion into the Internet’s affairs at the upcoming ITU Plenipotentiary in 2014. Time is
of the essence. While we debate what to do next, Internet freedom’s foes around the globe are working
hard to exploit a treaty negotiation that dwarfs the importance of the WCIT by orders of magnitude. In
2014, the ITU will conduct what is literally a constitutional convention, called a “plenipotentiary”
meeting, which will define the ITU’s mission for years to come. Its constitution will be rewritten and a new Secretary
General will be elected. This scenario poses both a threat and an opportunity for Internet freedom. The
outcome of this massive treaty negotiation is uncertain, but the momentum favors those pushing for
more Internet regulation. More immediately, the World Telecommunications Policy/ICT Forum (“WTPF”), which convenes in Geneva
this May, will focus squarely on Internet governance and will shape the 2014 Plenipotentiary. Accordingly, the highest levels of the U.S.
Government must make this cause a top priority and recruit allies in civil society, the private sector and diplomatic circles around the world.
The effort should start with the President immediately making appointments to fill crucial vacancies in our
diplomatic ranks. The recent departures of my distinguished friend, Ambassador Phil Verveer, his legendary deputy Dick Beaird, as well as WCIT
Ambassador Terry Kramer, have left a hole in the United States’ ability to advocate for a constructive – rather than destructive – Plenipot.
America and Internet freedom’s allies simply cannot dither again. If we do, we will fail, and global freedom and prosperity will suffer. We
should work to offer constructive alternative proposals, such as improving the highly successful multistakeholder model of Internet governance to include those who feel disenfranchised. As I warned a year
ago, merely saying “no” to any changes to the multi-stakeholder Internet governance model has
recently proven to be a losing proposition.19 Ambassador Gross can speak to this approach far better than can I, but using the
creation of the IGF as a model, we should immediately engage with all countries to encourage a dialogue among
all interested parties, including governments, civil society, the private sector, non-profits and the ITU, to
broaden the multi-stakeholder umbrella to provide those who feel disenfranchised from the current structure with a meaningful
role in shaping the evolution of the Internet. Primarily due to economic and logistical reasons, many developing
world countries are not able to play a role in the multi-stakeholder process. This is unacceptable and
should change immediately. Developing nations stand to gain the most from unfettered Internet
connectivity, and they will be injured the most by centralized multilateral control of its operations and
content. V. Last year’s bipartisan and unanimous Congressional resolutions clearly opposing expansions of
international powers over the Internet reverberated around the world and had a positive and
constructive effect, but Congress must do more. In my nearly seven years of service on the FCC, I have been amazed by how
closely every government and communications provider on the globe studies the latest developments in
American communications policy. In fact, we can be confident that this hearing is streaming live in some countries, and is being
blocked by government censors in others. Every detail of our actions is scrutinized. It is truly humbling to learn that even my statements have
been read in Thailand and Taiwan, as well as translated into Polish and Italian. And when
Congress speaks, especially when it
speaks with one loud and clear voice, as it did last year with the unanimous and bipartisan resolutions
concerning the WCIT, an uncountable number of global policymakers pause to think. Time and again, I have
been told by international legislators, ministers, regulators and business leaders that last year’s resolutions had a positive effect on the
outcome of the WCIT. Although Internet freedom suffered as a result of the WCIT, many even more corrosive proposals did not become
international law in part due to your actions.20 IV. Conclusion. And so, I ask you in the strongest terms possible, to take
action and take
action now. Two years hence, let us not look back at this moment and lament how we did not do enough. We have but one chance. Let
us tell the world that we will be resolute and stand strong for Internet freedom. All nations should join us. Thank
you for having me appear before you today. I look forward to your questions.
AT: Minton
Minton is writing for Breitbart which is bad
Source Watch no date – accessed 10/12 (Center for Media and Democracy,
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Andrew_Breitbart#Sourcewatch_resources)
Race baiting
Breitbart was behind the July 2010 attempt to smear Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod by
heavily editing a video of a speech she gave to make it appear she was confessing to being racist. The
story she told, in its entirety, was exactly the opposite -- it was a story of redemption in which Sherrod explained how she had
overcome feelings of racism to realize everyone needed to be treated equally.
Media Matters described the episode this way:
In a July 19 BigGovernment.com post -- headlined "Video Proof: The NAACP Awards Racism -- 2010" -- Breitbart purported to provide "video
evidence of racism coming from a federal appointee and NAACP award recipient." The heavily edited video clip Breitbart posted shows Shirley
Sherrod, then the USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development, speaking at an NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in Georgia, and stating that she
didn't give a "white farmer" the "full force of what I could do" because "I was struggling with the fact that so many black people have lost their
farmland, and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land." Breitbart characterized Sherrod's comments as her
"describ[ing] how she racially discriminates against a white farmer."
Full video vindicates Sherrod, destroys Breitbart's accusations of racism. On July 20, the NAACP posted the full video of Sherrod's
remarks, exposing how the clip Breitbart posted had taken Sherrod out of context. The heavily edited clip included her statements that she
initially did not help the farmer, but removed her statements indicating that she ultimately did help him save his farm and learned that "it's not
just about black people, it's about poor people."
Immediately prior to the portion of Sherrod's speech included in Breitbart's clip, Sherrod says that she originally made a "commitment" "to
black people only," but that "God will show you things and he'll put things in your path so that you realize that the struggle is really about poor
people." Immediately following the portion of the video included in the clip, Sherrod detailed her extensive work to help the farmer save his
farm. She then said, "working with him made me see that it's really about those who have versus those who don't," adding "they could be
black, and they could be white, they could be Hispanic. And it made me realize then that I needed to work to help poor people -- those who
don't have access the way others have." She later added, "I couldn't say 45 years ago, I couldn't stand here and say what I'm saying -- what I will
say to you tonight. Like I told, God helped me to see that its not just about black people, it's about poor people. And I've come a long way."
Breitbart portrayed Sherrod as a member of the Obama administration when she made the comments, which wasn't the case. The video of her
speech was made in 1986, many years prior to the Obama Administration.[3][4]
Distortion
Breitbart was also behind the coordinated release of heavily edited undercover videos that misrepresented
the activities of the community group ACORN. Media Matters writes,
On September 10, 2009, conservative activist and videographer James O'Keefe posted an entry to BigGovernment.com in which he revealed
that he and fellow activist Hannah Giles had posed as a pimp and prostitute at a Baltimore ACORN Housing office and secretly filmed their
meetings with ACORN staffers. As O'Keefe wrote, their intention was to take "advantage of ACORN's regard for thug criminality by posing the
most ridiculous criminal scenario we could think of and seeing if they would comply -- which they did without hesitation," the "scenario" being
the "trafficking of young helpless girls and tax evasion." O'Keefe would later release similar recordings of their interactions with ACORN and
ACORN Housing employees at several other ACORN offices nationwide. Breitbart
authored a separate September 10
BigGovernment.com post "introducing" O'Keefe and making it clear that he and BigGovernment.com would play a central role in the
distribution of O'Keefe and Giles' videos. But as Breitbart, O'Keefe, and Giles released and promoted the "heavily edited" videos, their
allegations about ACORN and its employees were undermined by numerous falsehoods and distortions. Subsequent
investigations revealed no pattern of intentional, illegal misconduct by ACORN, and no criminality by ACORN personnel. It did, however, find
the videos had been heavily edited to cast ACORN in a negative light. [5]
AT: Democracy
Their internal links are anecdotal
Bailard 2014 (Catie [Assist Prof of Media and Pubic Affairs @ George Washington; Catie received her
doctorate in political science from UCLA with concentrations in American Politics, Formal and
Quantitative Methods, and International Relations]; The other Facebook Revolution;
www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/142351/catie-bailard/the-other-facebook-revolution?cid=rss-rss_xmlthe_other_facebook_revolution-000000; kdf)
Empirical testing confirms that the Internet has clear and consistent influence on how citizens feel about their governments. As one might
expect, the mirror-holding and window-opening mechanisms boost public satisfaction with government in advanced democracies and public
dissatisfaction in nations with weak democratic practices. However, research also demonstrates that the
Internet’s effect is
neither automatic nor uniform—one democratic gain, such as more critical evaluations of poor-performing governments, does
not automatically set off a domino effect of entirely pro-democratic gains in citizens’ attitudes and
behaviors. Take Tanzania, for example, where I conducted a randomized field experiment to test the effect of Internet use on
evaluations of the 2010 general election. Although the Internet offered plentiful information about the
questionable integrity of a then-upcoming national election, the results of the experiment revealed that
Tanzanians with access to that information also became less likely to vote. After all, the belief that an election
would not be fair can produce two very divergent responses—although some people may feel inclined to respond by taking to the streets,
others may simply throw up their hands and stay home. Meanwhile, another
randomized field experiment that I conducted
in Bosnia and Herzegovina revealed that Internet users there who became more dissatisfied with the
quality of democratic practices in their country also became more likely to consider alternative forms of
government as preferable for their country. Taken as a whole, then, this research reveals that the Internet’s influence is
complex, and that in some instances it will have ambiguous effects for democracy and democratization. The effects of Internet use
on political evaluations tend to be particularly profound in hybrid regimes—governments that, despite being firmly
authoritarian, allow some form of so-called elections for various offices. In many cases, such elections are exercises in futility, the outcome
already determined by the ruling party regardless of what the ballots say. Although
outsiders may take for granted that
these elections are largely shams, however, citizens living in these countries often invest significant value in
them. This was demonstrated in the build-up to the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, during which a segment of the public that
was originally angered by police brutality became further incensed by ostensibly rigged parliamentary elections, eyewitness accounts of which
were amplified by videos uploaded and distributed online. It wasn't long before citizens began expressing their discontent by protesting in the
streets and demanding a change in the regime. Moreover, even in instances that do not result in tangible political activity, the effects of
Internet use on political evaluations and satisfaction have important implications for the day-to-day business of governance. Quite simply,
governments—democratic, democratizing, and nondemocratic alike—are aware that they have lost some degree of control over information
compared to what they enjoyed in the era of traditional media. As a result, they know that there is greater potential for their decisions and
actions to be broadcast on the national, and even international, stage, a venue and context that they have diminished control over. Thus,
leaders are forced, to varying degrees, to consider the potential activation of latent public opinion when making political decisions in ways that
they never had to previously. It is regrettable, if not entirely surprising, that, aside from a handful of notable exceptions, scholars
and
other political observers mostly failed to anticipate the Arab Spring. Many tried to make up for it by
focusing renewed effort on the role played by the Internet in the wave of political upheaval that
subsequently swept across the Middle East and North Africa. But they would be wise to focus on what
has largely remained a blind spot in scholarly research: the effects of Internet use on the very political
evaluations that can, and sometimes do, precipitate political action and organization.
--xt No Democracy
Bush family proves that democracy is non-existent
Sanders 2015 (Bernie; Email to Kurt Fifelski -- This is not democracy; Jul 10)
Kurt - Yesterday afternoon, Jeb Bush announced that a relatively small number of wealthy donors have
contributed over one hundred million dollars to his Super PAC. This is not a democracy. This is
oligarchy. Unfortunately, Jeb Bush is not alone. Almost all of our opponents have embraced this model of
fundraising — begging billionaire benefactors who have bought up the private sector to try their hand at buying a presidential election. One
of those Super PACs is already running ads against our campaign. Let me be clear: I am more than aware our opponents will outspend us, but
we are going to win this election. They have the money, but we have the people. Add your $3 contribution to our campaign today and help fuel
the political revolution this moment requires. The economic and political systems of this country are stacked against ordinary Americans. The
rich get richer and use their wealth to buy elections. It’s
answering the call. Bernie Sanders
up to us to change the course for our country. Thank you for
AT: Economy
Internet not key to growth
Lowrey 2011 (Annie; Freaks, geeks, and the GDP; Mar 8;
www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/03/freaks_geeks_and_gdp.html; kdf)
If you have attended any economists' cocktail parties in the past month or so—lucky you!—then you have probably heard chatter about Tyler Cowen's e-book, The
Great Stagnation. The book seeks to explain why in the United States median wages have grown only slowly since the 1970s and have actually declined in the past
decade. Cowen points to an innovation problem: Through the 1970s, the country had plenty of "low-hanging fruit" to juice GDP growth. In the past 40 years, coming
up with whiz-bang, life-changing innovations—penicillin, free universal kindergarten, toilets, planes, cars—has proved harder, pulling down growth rates across the
industrialized world. But wait! you might say. In the 1970s, American businesses started pumping out amazing, life-changing computing technologies. We got
graphing calculators, data-processing systems, modern finance, GPS, silicon chips, ATMs, cell phones, and a host of other innovations. Has
the Internet, the
nothing for GDP growth? The
answer, economists broadly agree, is: Sorry, but no—at least, not nearly as much as you would expect. A
most revolutionary communications technology advance since Gutenberg rolled out the printing press, done
quarter century ago, with new technologies starting to saturate American homes and businesses, economists looked around and expected to find computer-fueled
growth everywhere. But signs of increased productivity or bolstered growth were few and far between. Sure, computers
and the Web
transformed thousands of businesses and hundreds of industries. But overall, things looked much the
same. The GDP growth rate did not tick up significantly, nor did productivity. As economist Robert Solow put it in 1987:
"You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics." An overlapping set of theories emerged to explain the phenomenon, often termed the
"productivity paradox." Perhaps the new technologies advantaged some firms and industries and disadvantaged others, leaving little net gain. Perhaps computer
systems were not yet easy enough to use to reduce the amount of effort workers need to exert to perform a given task. Economists also wondered whether it might
just take some time—perhaps a lot of time—for the gains to show up. In the past, information technologies tended to need to incubate before they produced gains
in economic growth. Consider the case of Gutenberg's printing press. Though the technology radically transformed how people recorded and transmitted news and
information, economists have failed to find evidence it sped up per-capita income or GDP growth in the 15th and 16th centuries. At one point, some economists
thought that an Internet-driven golden age might have finally arrived in the late 1990s. Between 1995 and 1999, productivity growth rates actually exceeded those
during the boom from 1913 to 1972—perhaps meaning the Web and computing had finally brought about a "New Economy." But that high-growth period faded
quickly. And some studies found the gains during those years were not as impressive or widespread as initially thought. Robert Gordon, a professor of economics at
Northwestern, for instance, has found that computers and the Internet mostly helped boost productivity in durable goods manuf acturing—that is, the production of
things like computers and semiconductors. "Our central theme is that computers and the Internet do not measure up to the Great Inventions of the late nineteenth
and early twentieth century, and in this do not merit the label of Industrial Revolution," he wrote. Gordon's work leads to another theory, one espoused by Cowen
himself. Perhaps the Internet is just not as revolutionary as we think it is. Sure, people might derive endless pleasure from it—its tendency to improve people's
quality of life is undeniable. And sure, it might have revolutionized how we find, buy, and sell goods and services. But that still does not necessarily mean it is as
transformative of an economy as, say, railroads were. That is in part because
the Internet and computers tend to push costs
toward zero, and have the capacity to reduce the need for labor. You are, of course, currently reading this article for free on a
Web site supported not by subscriptions, but by advertising. You probably read a lot of news articles online, every day, and
you probably pay nothing for them. Because of the decline in subscriptions, increased competition for
advertising dollars, and other Web-driven dynamics, journalism profits and employment have dwindled
in the past decade. (That Cowen writes a freely distributed blog and published his ideas in a $4 e-book rather than a $25 glossy airport hardcover should
not go unnoted here.) Moreover, the Web- and computer-dependent technology sector itself does not employ that many people. And it does not look set to add
workers: The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that employment in information technology, for instance, will be lower in 2018 than it was in 1998. That
the
Internet has not produced an economic boom might be hard to believe, Cowen admits. "We have a collective
historical memory that technological progress brings a big and predictable stream of revenue growth
across most of the economy," he writes. "When it comes to the web, those assumptions are turning out to be wrong or misleading. The revenueintensive sectors of our economy have been slowing down and the big technological gains are coming in revenue-deficient sectors." But revenue is not always the
end-all, be-all—even in economics. That brings us to a final explanation: Maybe it is not the growth that is deficient. Maybe it is the yardstick that is deficient. MIT
professor Erik Brynjolfsson * explains the idea using the example of the music industry. " Because
you and I stopped buying CDs, the
music industry has shrunk, according to revenues and GDP. But we're not listening to less music. There's more music consumed than before." The
improved choice and variety and availability of music must be worth something to us—even if it is not easy to put into numbers. "On paper, the way GDP is
calculated, the music industry is disappearing, but in reality it's not disappearing. It is disappearing in revenue. It is not disappearing in terms of what you should
care about, which is music." As more of our lives are lived online, he wonders whether this might become a bigger problem. "If everybody focuses on the part of the
economy that produces dollars, they would be increasingly missing what people actually consume and enjoy. The disconnect becomes bigger and bigger." But
providing an alternative measure of what we produce or consume based on the value people derive from Wikipedia or Pandora proves an extraordinary challenge—
indeed, no economist has ever really done it. Brynjolfsson says it is possible, perhaps, by adding up various "consumer surpluses," measures of how much
consumers would be willing to pay for a given good or service, versus how much they do pay. (You might pony up $10 for a CD, but why would you if it is free?) That
might give a rough sense of the dollar value of what the Internet tends to provide for nothing—and give us an alternative sense of the value of our technologies to
us, if not their ability to produce growth or revenue for us. Of course, if our most radical and life-altering technologies are not improving incomes or productivity or
growth, then we still have problems. Quality-of-life improvements do not put dinner on the table or pay for Social Security benefits. Still, even
Cowen
does not see all doom and gloom ahead, with incomes stagnating endlessly as we do more and more
online and bleed more and more jobs and money. Who knows what awesome technologies might be just around the bend?
AT: Telemedicine
Telemedicine booming now
Hixon 10/22 (Todd; Why is Telemedicine Suddenly Hot;
www.forbes.com/sites/toddhixon/2014/10/22/why-is-telemedicine-suddenly-hot/; kdf)
Google's GOOGL +1.49% recent announcement that it will provide telemedicine services was the crescendo to
a swelling volume of recent interest: e.g., articles in VentureBeat, U.S. News, and The Economist. Telemedicine has been around
for a generation. Why is this happening now? Rising use of telemedicine takes different forms. Traditionally telemedicine has
played the biggest role in rural areas where visits to doctors are difficult and in consultations with specialists like radiologists and oncologists
where value is created by connecting a patient to the best expert. This
is expanding because broadband network coverage
is improving, patients and doctors are more comfortable with computers, pressure for cost savings is
increasing, and an emerging policy consensus favors telemedicine. This all makes sense. But, these forces have
been at play for a decade or more and hence don’t account for the current inflection point (1) of interest in telemedicine. The new
driving force is the rebirth of relationship medicine. By “relationship medicine” I mean a paradigm of medical practice that
puts the relationship between the patient and the doctor at the center. The most important relationship is with the primary care doctor,
because that relationship is life-long, and the primary care doctor is most concerned with the patient’s total health status and long term
prospects. This is how much of medicine was done in the 1950s, but it declined as Medicare and health insurers “industrialized” medicine,
slicing doctors’ time finer and finer and putting patients on a medical assembly line that moves them past doctors for ever-shorter office visits.
This echoes Henry Ford’s industrializion of car assembly. In the relationship medicine paradigm, care is based on a long-term conversation
between patient and physician about both long term health maximization and acute issues. That conversation occurs through a variety of
encounters. Some encounters are typical office visits. Once the relationship is established, many of these encounters can be remote.
Telepresence (e.g., Skype) can be very powerful, but remote encounters do not need to be high-tech: often a phone call, email, or even a text
can do the job. Remote encounters are usually more efficient and convenient for both patient and physician. For example, I had a serious toe
infection earlier this year, went in for an office visit, and came home with antibiotics which I took as prescribed. The next week I had to go
traveling and the toe was still swollen. I took a picture with my phone and sent it to the doctor. He wrote back, “Don’t worry, your toe is
mending”, and I went on with my trip. [I'm resisting the temptation to jazz up this post with the picture of my swollen toe.] This got the job
done and avoided a second office visit. Medicare and
states such as Massachusetts are holding hospitals responsible for
readmission rates. As one hospitalist doctor put it [paraphrase], “we used to think we were responsible for patients’ condition while they
were in the hospital, and now we realize we are responsible for their condition all the time!” In other words, the doctor and the patient need an
ongoing relationship and conversation, and telemedicine helps. Incentives play a big role, as the prior paragraph suggests. But the true driving
force here is better health and better use of medical resources. The VA medical system has embraced telemedicine, although its doctors are
salaried. My primary care doctor is not supposed to give me his email address and he does not get paid for looking at the picture of my toe, but
he did both gladly on request. It is fair to say, however, that aligning incentives correctly will accelerate the growth of relationship medicine.
The direct primary care movement (e.g, www.dpcare.org) advocates moving primary care doctors from the pay-for-procedure compensation
system created by Medicare and health insurers to payments that are fixed per patient or outcome-based. This encourages doctors to design
encounters and use their resources in the manner that creates the best outcomes with the best efficiency. Direct primary care is growing very
fast now as both plan sponsors and doctors come to believe that it offers major advantage in both quality of care and overall healthcare cost.
Their author is writing about net-neutrality
Trotter, healthcare specialist, ‘14
Fred, founder of the DocGraph Journal, a healthcare data journalist and author, the founder of CareSet
Systems and DocGraph journal, testified in the original hearings on the definition of Meaningful Use—
the standard in the Affordable Care Act for the effective use of electronic medical records “Reply
Comments of Fred Trotter, of the DocGraph Journal,” 8/5/14, http://engine.is/wpcontent/uploads/Reply-Comments-of-Fred-Trotter-of-the-DocGraph-Journal.pdf
Why? We all know healthcare costs are crippling this country. The costs for healthcare under Medicare
(mostly for old people, some of whom can no longer drive) and Medicaid (mostly for poor people, some
of whom cannot afford a car) are crippling our economy. A central tenet of healthcare reform is to
enable treatment of patients in their homes, using broadband Internet to allow for remote monitoring.
Pretty ironic, isn’t it? Telemedicine is the solution to our current real-world fast lane/slow lane problem.
Using telemedicine, we can get the same high levels of treatment to people no matter if they own a car
or not. But all of these programs, presume an Internet built with net neutrality. If we abandon net
neutrality, someone is going to have to pay the fast lane tax for patients who want telemedicine
solutions to really work. That means either patients are going to pay, or doctors are going to have to
pay. Having an Internet slow lane will ensure that poor patients will not be able to have video
telemedicine appointments (which operate just like streaming video) because their doctors do not have
the technical expertise or budget to afford the Internet fast lane. Think I am kidding? Already the Office
of the National Coordinator of Health IT(ONC) has seen that hospitals and practices that serve in
minority communities are late adopters of healthcare technology.4
AT: War
Internet doesn’t solve conflict
Elias 12
Phillip Elias, board member of the New Media Foundation, 20 January 2012, “Will humanity perish
without the internet?,”
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/will_humanity_perish_without_the_internet
The new Encyclopaedists make the opposite mistake about the future. Inherent
in their worldview is the idea that setting
up a system where information can be shared quickly, widely, and freely will somehow eliminate
corruption, greed and violence from the world. It is almost as though human foibles were glitches in the
software of society. But human vices can never be reduced to social viruses. They come from deep
within us and can find their way into the most scientific settings.
Do Wikipedians think themselves immune from the temptation to wield their power towards their own ends?
Free access to information for everyone could be said to be the Wikipedian creed. It encapsulates the Enlightenment values of
liberty and equality. But, like the French terror of the 1790s, it neglects that other ideal needed to give them gumption -a genuine concern for other human beings.
But fraternité
is not achieved by giving everyone more information, more freedom and more equality. And
it is what is so often lacking on the internet, on blogs, and in other forms of web communication. Online
interaction is so often vitriolic it is unreadable, and it is at its worst when the tech-savvy confront each
other. I have seen very few geeks who try to love their enemies.
Fraternité comes from empathising with others. This is difficult to learn online. But without it, how can we
understand the point of view of those who have different concepts of freedom or equality, or of
troglodytes who don’t blog, or of nematodes who don’t have access to the internet. Believe it or not, there is a
life offline and wisdom is wider than the web.
AT: Internet--Governance
No Governance – Alt cause
US has officially backed out of its internet governance role
Hyman 2015 (Leonard [former Google Public Policy Fellow]; U.S. To Scale Back Its Role In Internet
Governance; techcrunch.com/2015/02/19/1120736/; kdf)
Even though the Internet has long been an international community, the United States has always been
at its center. However, that all may be about to change as the U.S. Department of Commerce scales back its
role in Internet governance. The transition is a gradual one, but by the end of the year, the DOC is expected to give up its
oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to the international community.
The concept of “Internet governance” may seem like a bizarre one since it often seems like the Wild West out there. The most tangible example
of ICANN‘s impact on Internet governance is management of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions: When you type a
domain name in your browser (e.g. TechCrunch.com), it connects you with the long, multi-digit IP address that would otherwise be impossible
to remember. On its face, it may not seem like a big deal who manages this process. As long as TechCrunch.com actually gets you to
TechCrunch.com, does it really matter if it’s the U.S., ICANN, or some random guy who’s behind it? But that question assumes that your URL
actually gets you to your destination. If a foreign government doesn’t want you accessing a certain URL, why not redirect you into a dead end?
After all, naysayers argue, some countries already have robust firewalls, so why give them more control? The Department of Commerce claims
that by scaling back its role, it will be promoting “innovation and inclusion.” After all, if the Internet supposedly belongs to the world, shouldn’t
it actually belong to the world? Further, they maintain that it won’t relinquish control until safeguards are in place to prevent that from
happening. (Will it live up to that promise? We’ll see!) At the same time, U.S. leadership in this area was called into question — perhaps
justifiably — after Snowden’s NSA surveillance leaks. This is one of the factors that has nudged the U.S. toward giving up its contract. Maybe
the international community would do a better job than we have. As unfortunate as censorship would
be for foreign countries, the bigger challenge for the average American may be managing the domains
themselves. Over 1,000 generic Top Level Domains (e.g. dot-search, dot-eco, dot-docs, etc.) are slated to go live in the coming months. It
could easily be a headache for corporations to buy the thousands of domains related to their brand. (Imagine if amazon.buy took you to the
wrong site.) Of course, it could be an even bigger hassle for the budding startup, not to mention ICANN itself overseeing this entire process
without the support of the U.S. government. The Department of Commerce’s process of fully handing over the reins won’t be complete until
later this year; its contract with ICANN expires in September. In the meantime, ICANN is slated to begin its next round of sessions in Buenos
Aires in June. And because it’s a multi-stakeholder process, public participation is welcomed. If you’re concerned about the impact ICANN’s
increasing independence could have on a free and open Internet — and you fancy a trip to South America — I hear Argentina is lovely that time
of year.
No impact – Cyber war
Cyber war not existential
Healey 2013 (Jason [director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council]; No,
Cyberwarfare Isn't as Dangerous as Nuclear War; March 20, 2013;
www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/03/20/cyber-attacks-not-yet-an-existential-threatto-the-us; jw)
America does not face an existential cyberthreat today, despite recent warnings. Our cybervulnerabilities are
undoubtedly grave and the threats we face are severe but far from comparable to nuclear war. The most recent alarms come in a
Defense Science Board report on how to make military cybersystems more resilient against advanced threats (in short,
Russia or China). It warned that the "cyber threat is serious, with potential consequences similar in some ways to the nuclear threat of the Cold
War." Such fears were also expressed by Adm. Mike Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in 2011. He called cyber "The single
biggest existential threat that's out there" because "cyber actually more than theoretically, can attack our infrastructure, our financial systems."
While it is true that cyber
attacks might do these things, it is also true they have not only never happened but are far
more difficult to accomplish than mainstream thinking believes. The consequences from cyber threats may be similar in
some ways to nuclear, as the Science Board concluded, but mostly, they are incredibly dissimilar. Eighty years ago, the generals of the U.S.
Army Air Corps were sure that their bombers would easily topple other countries and cause their populations to panic, claims which did not
stand up to reality. A study of the 25-year history of cyber conflict, by the Atlantic Council and Cyber Conflict Studies Association, has shown a
similar dynamic where the impact of disruptive cyberattacks has been consistently overestimated. Rather than
theorizing about future cyberwars or extrapolating from today's concerns, the history of cyberconflict that have actually been fought, shows
that cyber incidents have so far tended to have effects that are either widespread but fleeting or persistent but narrowly focused. No
attacks, so far, have been both widespread and persistent. There have been no authenticated cases of anyone dying
from a cyber attack. Any widespread disruptions, even the 2007 disruption against Estonia, have been short-lived causing no significant
GDP loss. Moreover, as with conflict in other domains, cyberattacks can take down many targets but keeping them down over time in the face
of determined defenses has so far been out of the range of all but the most dangerous adversaries such as Russia and China. Of course, if the
United States is in a conflict with those nations, cyber will be the least important of the existential threats policymakers should be worrying
about. Plutonium
trumps bytes in a shooting war.
Cyber war not real – their rhetoric leads to less security
Mirani 2014 (Leo [reporter for Quartz]; Worrying about cyberwar is making countries less safe;
December 3, 2014; qz.com/305598/worrying-about-cyberwar-is-making-countries-less-safe/; jw)
Ten days ago, on Nov. 24, online security firms revealed the existence of a powerful computer virus called Regin. A tool of espionage (pdf), the
bug displayed all the hallmarks of nation-state backing, researchers said. Suspicion immediately fell on the US and Israel. The following day
came news of a massive intrusion into the systems of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Several pre-release films were leaked, along with detailed
personal records and communications of employees. An estimated 100 terabytes of data were stolen, and some 40 gigabytes have so far been
leaked. Investigators pointed the finger at North Korea (paywall). Unsurprisingly,
there has since been much hand-wringing
about cyberwarfare, with one prominent right-wing American website declaring that “The first cyber war is under way.” It is
precisely this sort of hype that Thomas Rid, a professor of security studies at King’s College London, and Robert M. Lee, an activeduty US Air Force cyber-warfare operations officer, warn against in their paper “OMG Cyber!” (pdf), published in the most recent issue of RUSI
Journal, a well-regarded peer-reviewed academic journal of defense and security topics. Cyber-riches Rid
and Lee argue that hype
makes for bad policy. As defense budgets have shrunk, cyber is one area where funding has grown. That leads to
perverse incentives, encouraging worry in order to gain and preserve funding. Since cyber is where the money is, all threats are relabelled cyber-something. That means “it is ever harder to say when something clearly is not cyber-related,” the authors write. “What we
are seeing is espionage and practices and techniques that are easy to understand both technically and politically,” says Lee. “By
hyping them into something they are not we fail to respond appropriately. Our policies, our technologies,
our education, [and] our military’s readiness are being focused on a classification and understanding of the problem that
does not align with the reality.” Such reinterpretation of traditional threats can escalate conflict. A NATO
official said earlier this year a cyber-attack would be covered by Article 5 of the treaty, which calls upon all member states to come to the
defense of any member under attack. However, the official did not say what would count as an attack and what the response would be,
suggesting it is meant as a deterrent. But that creates confusion. Does intrusion count? Espionage? From the paper: [T]he vast majority of
cyber-attacks also do not fall into NATO’s remit in the first place: espionage and cyber-crime are problems for intelligence agencies and law
enforcement, not for a military alliance. For militants and the Kremlin, the subtext is clear: cyber matters; better up your game. NATO—among
others—is escalating a problem that someone else will have to solve. More than the usual suspects The cyberwarfare hype does not arise solely
from defense officials attempting to protect their turf and budgets. Security
vendors have a vested interest in making
cyber-threats seem pervasive in order to sell their products. And some of the responsibility for creating the hype falls on
privacy activists and journalists who have helped give GCHQ, Britain’s signals intelligence agency, a profile and mystique matched only by James
Bond, says Rid. “[Edward] Snowden
and the journalists covering this in a rather naïve way helped created the image that
GCHQ and NSA [the US National Security Agency] are all-powerful, perfectly efficient surveillance machines that can
see everything, penetrate everything, and know everything they want,” says Rid. “And that’s just
laughable.”
AT: Economy Advantage
No link – Internet not k2 econ
Internet not key to growth
Lowrey 2011 (Annie; Freaks, geeks, and the GDP; Mar 8;
www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/03/freaks_geeks_and_gdp.html; kdf)
If you have attended any economists' cocktail parties in the past month or so—lucky you!—then you have probably heard chatter about Tyler Cowen's e-book, The
Great Stagnation. The book seeks to explain why in the United States median wages have grown only slowly since the 1970s and have actually declined in the past
decade. Cowen points to an innovation problem: Through the 1970s, the country had plenty of "low-hanging fruit" to juice GDP growth. In the past 40 years, coming
up with whiz-bang, life-changing innovations—penicillin, free universal kindergarten, toilets, planes, cars—has proved harder, pulling down growth rates across the
industrialized world. But wait! you might say. In the 1970s, American businesses started pumping out amazing, life-changing computing technologies. We got
graphing calculators, data-processing systems, modern finance, GPS, silicon chips, ATMs, cell phones, and a host of other innovations. Has
the Internet, the
nothing for GDP growth? The
answer, economists broadly agree, is: Sorry, but no—at least, not nearly as much as you would expect. A
most revolutionary communications technology advance since Gutenberg rolled out the printing press, done
quarter century ago, with new technologies starting to saturate American homes and businesses, economists looked around and expected to find computer-fueled
growth everywhere. But signs of increased productivity or bolstered growth were few and far between. Sure, computers
and the Web
transformed thousands of businesses and hundreds of industries. But overall, things looked much the
same. The GDP growth rate did not tick up significantly, nor did productivity. As economist Robert Solow put it in 1987:
"You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics." An overlapping set of theories emerged to explain the phenomenon, often termed the
"productivity paradox." Perhaps the new technologies advantaged some firms and industries and disadvantaged others, leaving little net gain. Perhaps computer
systems were not yet easy enough to use to reduce the amount of effort workers need to exert to perform a given task. Economists also wondered whether it might
just take some time—perhaps a lot of time—for the gains to show up. In the past, information technologies tended to need to incubate before they produced gains
in economic growth. Consider the case of Gutenberg's printing press. Though the technology radically transformed how people recorded and transmitted news and
information, economists have failed to find evidence it sped up per-capita income or GDP growth in the 15th and 16th centuries. At one point, some economists
thought that an Internet-driven golden age might have finally arrived in the late 1990s. Between 1995 and 1999, productivity growth rates actually exceeded those
during the boom from 1913 to 1972—perhaps meaning the Web and computing had finally brought about a "New Economy." But that high-growth period faded
quickly. And some studies found the gains during those years were not as impressive or widespread as initially thought. Robert Gordon, a professor of economics at
Northwestern, for instance, has found that computers and the Internet mostly helped boost productivity in durable goods manuf acturing—that is, the production of
things like computers and semiconductors. "Our central theme is that computers and the Internet do not measure up to the Great Inventions of the late nineteenth
and early twentieth century, and in this do not merit the label of Industrial Revolution," he wrote. Gordon's work leads to another theory, one espoused by Cowen
himself. Perhaps the Internet is just not as revolutionary as we think it is. Sure, people might derive endless pleasure from it—its tendency to improve people's
quality of life is undeniable. And sure, it might have revolutionized how we find, buy, and sell goods and services. But that still does not necessarily mean it is as
transformative of an economy as, say, railroads were. That is in part because
the Internet and computers tend to push costs
toward zero, and have the capacity to reduce the need for labor. You are, of course, currently reading this article for free on a
Web site supported not by subscriptions, but by advertising. You probably read a lot of news articles online, every day, and
you probably pay nothing for them. Because of the decline in subscriptions, increased competition for
advertising dollars, and other Web-driven dynamics, journalism profits and employment have dwindled
in the past decade. (That Cowen writes a freely distributed blog and published his ideas in a $4 e-book rather than a $25 glossy airport hardcover should
not go unnoted here.) Moreover, the Web- and computer-dependent technology sector itself does not employ that many people. And it does not look set to add
workers: The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that employment in information technology, for instance, will be lower in 2018 than it was in 1998. That
the
Internet has not produced an economic boom might be hard to believe, Cowen admits. "We have a collective
historical memory that technological progress brings a big and predictable stream of revenue growth
across most of the economy," he writes. "When it comes to the web, those assumptions are turning out to be wrong or misleading. The revenueintensive sectors of our economy have been slowing down and the big technological gains are coming in revenue-deficient sectors." But revenue is not always the
end-all, be-all—even in economics. That brings us to a final explanation: Maybe it is not the growth that is deficient. Maybe it is the yardstick that is deficient. MIT
professor Erik Brynjolfsson * explains the idea using the example of the music industry. "Because
you and I stopped buying CDs, the
music industry has shrunk, according to revenues and GDP. But we're not listening to less music. There's more music consumed than before." The
improved choice and variety and availability of music must be worth something to us—even if it is not easy to put into numbers. "On paper, the way GDP is
calculated, the music industry is disappearing, but in reality it's not disappearing. It is disappearing in revenue. It is not disappearing in terms of what you should
care about, which is music." As more of our lives are lived online, he wonders whether this might become a bigger problem. "If everybody focuses on the part of the
economy that produces dollars, they would be increasingly missing what people actually consume and enjoy. The disconnect becomes bigger and bigger." But
providing an alternative measure of what we produce or consume based on the value people derive from Wikipedia or Pandora proves an extraordinary challenge—
indeed, no economist has ever really done it. Brynjolfsson says it is possible, perhaps, by adding up various "consumer surpluses," measures of how much
consumers would be willing to pay for a given good or service, versus how much they do pay. (You might pony up $10 for a CD, but why would you if it is free?) That
might give a rough sense of the dollar value of what the Internet tends to provide for nothing—and give us an alternative sense of the value of our technologies to
us, if not their ability to produce growth or revenue for us. Of course, if our most radical and life-altering technologies are not improving incomes or productivity or
growth, then we still have problems. Quality-of-life improvements do not put dinner on the table or pay for Social Security benefits. Still, even
Cowen
does not see all doom and gloom ahead, with incomes stagnating endlessly as we do more and more
online and bleed more and more jobs and money. Who knows what awesome technologies might be just around the bend?
No Internal – No US Leadership
No US economic leadership—litany of alt causes
FT 2015 (America's wobbly economic leadership; Apr 23; www.ft.com/cms/s/0/35af0bbe-e8f5-11e487fe-00144feab7de.html#axzz3fVSr9rsv; kdf)
That is why so many
countries have rushed to join the AIIB and why the World Bank and the Asian
Development Bank have welcomed the new arrival. There is more than enough demand to go around. The concern is that the AIIB will
not adhere to best practices. At a time when the US is reluctant to fulfil its obligations to Bretton Woods
institutions, let alone join any new ones, US companies will find it tough to win a slice of the pie in Asia
and elsewhere. Exim’s standards are among the best in the world. It serves as a check on the crony capitalism practised by China and
others. Closing it would sound another US retreat. The concern is that Congress is too polarised to reverse the trend.
Most Republicans disdain global bodies and most Democrats revile trade deals. Congress continues to block the 2010 US-led
reforms of the International Monetary Fund. That is one reason China is setting up its own institutions. There are signs Capitol
Hill may be preparing to pass the fast track negotiating authority the Obama administration needs to wrap up trade deals in the Pacific and the
Atlantic. That would be welcome. But Barack Obama will first need to take on sceptics in his own party. Hillary Clinton, his likely successor, has
questioned the merits of another trade deal. Jeb Bush, her likely opponent, said he would close Exim. There
was a time when US
gridlock imposed a price on others. Now others are imposing a price on the US. The world is no longer waiting on
Washington’s prevarications.
No Internal – US Not Key
The US isn’t key to the global economy
Kenny 2015 (Charles; Why the Developing World Won't Catch the U.S. Economy's Cold; May 4;
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-04/why-the-developing-world-won-t-catch-the-u-seconomy-s-cold; kdf)
Last week the U.S. Commerce Department announced that first-quarter
GDP growth for 2015 was an anemic 0.2 percent. This
fears that a U.S. slowdown could lead to a global recession. But the cliché about
America sneezing and the rest of the world catching the cold doesn’t hold like it used to . The U.S. isn’t as
contagious as it was, and developing countries in particular are far more robust to economic shocks. That’s good
news for everyone. It means less volatility in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, which contributes to happier people, greater political
stability, and stronger long-term growth—all of which should help lift the U.S. out of its own doldrums. A team of IMF researchers
has looked at the long-term record of the world’s economies when it comes to growth and recession.
immediately sparked
They measured how long economies expanded without interruption, as well as the depth and length of downturns. Over the past two decades,
low and middle-income economies have spent more time in expansions, while downturns and recoveries have become shallower and shorter.
This suggests countries have become more resilient to shocks. In the 1970s and '80s, the median developing economy took more than 10 years
after a downturn to recover to the GDP per capita it had prior to that slump. By the early 2000s, that recovery time had dropped to two years.
In the 1970s and '80s, countries of the developing world spent more than a third of their time in downturns, but by the 2000s they spent 80
percent of their time in expansions. The first decade of the 21st century was the first time that developing economies saw more expansion and
shorter downturns than did advanced economies: Median growth in the developing world was at its highest since 1950 and volatility at its
lowest. Developing countries still face a larger risk of deeper recession when terms of trade turn against them, capital flows dry up, or advanced
economies enter recessions themselves. But the scale of that risk has diminished. That’s because low and middle-income economies have
introduced policy reforms that increase resilience: flexible exchange rates, inflation targeting, and lower debt. Economies with inflationtargeting regimes see recovery periods less than a third as long as economies without targeting, for example. Larger reserves are associated
with longer expansions. And median reserves in developing countries more than doubled as a percentage of GDP between the 1990s and 2010.
Median external debt has dropped from 60 percent to 35 percent of GDP over that same period. Such policy changes account for two-thirds of
the increased recession-resilience of developing countries since the turn of the century, suggest the IMF researchers—leaving external factors,
such as positive terms of trade, accounting for just one-third. That’s good news for the developing world—not least because volatile growth is
particularly bad for poorer people, who are most at risk of falling into malnutrition or being forced to take children out of school, which has
long-term consequences for future earnings. That might help explain the relationship between growth volatility, slower reductions in poverty,
and rising inequality. Sudden negative income shocks can also be a factor in sparking violence: When rains fail, the risk of civil war in Africa
spikes, and when coffee prices in Colombia fall, municipalities cultivating more coffee see increased drug-related conflict. The African analysis
suggests that a five percentage-point drop in income growth is associated with a 10 percent increase in the risk of civil conflict in the following
year. Finally,
because volatility increases the uncertainty attached to investments, it can also be a drag on
overall long-term economic performance. Viktoria Hnatkovska and Norman Loayza of the World Bank estimated that moving
from a comparatively stable to a relatively volatile growth trajectory is associated with a drop in average annual growth of as much as 2 percent
of GDP. Lower volatility
in the developing world and its associated long-term growth performance is also
good news for the U.S. A strong global economy is still a positive force for growth in every country, including developed nations. And
with the developing world accounting for about one-third of trade and GDP at market rates, as well as three-fifths of U.S. exports, its role in
supporting American economic performance has never been greater. Those
hoping for a recovery in U.S. output should be
grateful for stronger economic immune systems in the rest of the world.
—xt no Internal
The global economy determines the US economy, not vice versa
Rasmus 2015 (Jack; US Economy Collapses Again; May 14; www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/14/useconomy-collapses-again/; kdf)
The problem of weak, stop-go, recovery in the U.S. today is further exacerbated by a global economy that
continues to slow even more rapidly and, in case after case, slip increasingly into recessions or stagnate at best.
Signs of weakness and stress in the global economy are everywhere and growing. Despite massive money injections by its central bank in 2013,
and again in 2014, Japan’s economy has fallen in 2015, a fourth time, into recession. After having experienced two recessions since 2009,
Europe’s economy is also trending toward stagnation once more after it too, like Japan, just introduced a
US$60 billion a month central bank money injection this past winter. Despite daily hype in the business press, unemployment in the
Eurozone is still officially at 11.4 percent, and in countries like Spain and Greece, still at 24 percent. Yet we hear Spain is now the
‘poster-boy’ of the Eurozone, having returned to robust growth. Growth for whom? Certainly not the 24 percent still jobless, a rate that hasn’t
changed in years. Euro businesses in Spain are doing better, having imposed severe ‘labor market reforms’ on workers there, in order to drive
down wages to help reduce costs and boost Spanish exports. Meanwhile, Italy
remains the economic black sheep of the
Eurozone, still in recession for years now, while France officially records no growth, but is likely in recession as
well. Elites in both Italy and France hope to copy Spain’s ‘labor market reforms’ (read: cut wages, pensions, and
make it easier to layoff full time workers). In order to boost its growth, Italy is considering, or may have already decided, to redefine its way to
growth by including the services of prostitutes and drug dealers as part of its GDP. Were the USA to do the same redefinition, it would no doubt
mean a record boost to GDP. Across
the Eurozone, the greater economy of its 18 countries still hasn’t reached
levels it had in 2007, before the onset of the last recession. Unlike the U.S.’s ‘stop-go’, Europe has been ‘stop-gostop’.
Impact inevitable -- Tech Bubble
Tech bubble collapse is inevitable, letting it happen now ensures a soft-landing
Mahmood 2015 (Tallot; The Tech Industry Is In Denial, But The Bubble Is About To Burst; Jun 26;
techcrunch.com/2015/06/26/the-tech-industry-is-in-denial-but-the-bubble-is-about-to-burst/; kdf)
In the face of these trends, a small group
of well-respected and influential individuals are voicing their concern.
They are reflecting on what happened in the last dot-com bust and identifying fallacies in the current unsustainable
modus operandi. These relatively lonely voices are difficult to ignore. They include established successful entrepreneurs, respected VC and
hedge fund investors, economists and CEOs who are riding their very own unicorns. Mark Cuban is scathing in his personal blog, arguing that
this tech bubble is worse than that of 2000, because, he states, that unlike in 2000, this time the
“bubble comes from private
investors,” including angel investors and crowd funders. The problem for these investors is there is no liquidity in their
investments, and we’re currently in a market with “no valuations and no liquidity.” He was one of the fortunate ones who exited his company,
Broadcast.com, just before the 2000 boom, netting $5 billion. But he saw others around him not so lucky then, and fears the same this time
around. A number of high-profile investors have come out and said what their peers all secretly must know. Responding to concerns raised by
Bill Gurley (Benchmark) and Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures), Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz expressed his thoughts in an 18tweet tirade. Andreessen agrees with Gurley and Wilson in that high cash burn in startups is the cause of spiralling valuations and
underperformance; the availability of capital is hampering common sense. The
tech startup space at the moment resembles
the story of the emperor with no clothes. As Wilson emphasizes, “At some point you have to build a real business, generate real
profits, sustain the company without the largess of investor’s capital, and start producing value the old fashioned way.” Gurley, a stalwart
investor, puts the discussion into context by saying “We’re in a risk bubble … we’re taking on … a level of risk that we’ve never taken on before
in the history of Silicon Valley startups.” The
tech bubble has resulted in unconventional investors, such as hedge funds,
in privately owned startups. David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital Inc. stated that although he is bullish on the tech sector, he
believes he has identified a number of momentum technology stocks that have reached prices beyond
any normal sense of valuation, and that they have shorted many of them in what they call the “bubble
basket.” Meanwhile, Noble Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller, who previously warned about both the dot-com and
housing bubbles, suspects the recent equity valuation increases are more because of fear than exuberance. Shiller believes that
“compared with history, US stocks are overvalued.” He says, “one way to assess this is by looking at the CAPE (cyclically
adjusted P/E) ratio … defined as the real stock price (using the S&P Composite Stock Price Index deflated by CPI) divided by the ten-year
average of real earnings per share.” Shiller says this has been a “good predictor of subsequent stock market returns, especially over the long
run. The CAPE ratio has recently been around 27, which is quite high by US historical standards. The only other times it is has been that high or
higher were in 1929, 2000, and 2007 — all moments before market crashes.” Perhaps the most surprising contributor to the debate on a
looming tech bubble is Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snapchat. Founded in 2011, Spiegel’s company is a certified “unicorn,” with a valuation in excess of
$15 billion. Spiegel
believes that years of near-zero interest rates have created an asset bubble that has led
people to make “riskier investments” than they otherwise would. He added that a correction was inevitable.
--xt Bubble will collapse
Bubble will collapse
Mahmood 2015 (Tallot; The Tech Industry Is In Denial, But The Bubble Is About To Burst; Jun 26;
techcrunch.com/2015/06/26/the-tech-industry-is-in-denial-but-the-bubble-is-about-to-burst/; kdf)
The fact that we are in a tech bubble is in no doubt. The fact that the bubble is about to burst, however,
is not something the sector wants to wake up to. The good times the sector is enjoying are becoming
increasingly artificial. The tech startup space at the moment resembles the story of the emperor with no
clothes. It remains for a few established, reasoned voices to persist with their concerns so the majority
will finally listen.
AT: E-commerce k2 economy
a) Ecommerce through the roof - Facebook
Adler 1/13/15 (Tim; Ecommerce sales through social media triple in 2013 for biggest US retailers;
business-reporter.co.uk/2015/01/13/e-commerce-sales-through-social-media-triple-in-2013-for-biggestus-retailers/; kdf)
The top 500 retailers in the United States earned $2.69 billion from social shopping in 2013, according to
the Internet Retailer’s Social Media 500 – up more than 60 per cent over 2012 – while the e-commerce
market as a whole grew only by 17 per cent. Growth is sure to accelerate and conversion rates should
improve as Twitter and Facebook roll out “Buy” buttons, predicts BI Intelligence. Buy buttons enable
social media users to buy by clicking on a retailer’s post or tweet. Facebook began testing buy buttons in
July, Twitter in September. Facebook is the clear leader for social-commerce referrals and sales. This is
partly because of the sheer size of its audience – 71 per cent of US adult internet users are on Facebook.
A Facebook share of an e-commerce post translates to an average $3.58 in revenue from sales
compared to just 85 cents on Twitter. But other social media sites are gaining on Facebook and Twitter.
Customers buying through fashion and style platform Polyvore spend on average $66.75 per order,
according to Shopify. Pinterest sees $65. Facebook by comparison trails at $55 per average order value
(AOV).
b) Ebay deal
Seetharaman 1/21/15 (Deepa; EBay's breakup plans may open door for e-commerce M&A;
www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/22/us-ebay-sale-idUSKBN0KV06Z20150122; kdf)
EBay Inc's plans to break up into three different companies could accommodate would-be suitors, signaling a potential
merger fight after the breakup. The company plans to spin off its payments division, PayPal, from its core marketplace division in
the second half of the year, making two standalone publicly traded companies that some analysts say could be worth more than the combined
entity. On Wednesday, eBay added that it will sell or prepare a public offering of its eBay Enterprise unit, which the company bought for $2.4
billion roughly four years ago. The announced moves are intended to give each business the ability to consider all their alternatives, including a
sale, eBay Chief Executive Officer John Donahoe said. "No one knows what's going happen down the road," Donahoe said in an interview on
Wednesday, after eBay reported fourth-quarter earnings. "But each business will have the flexibility they need to do what they need to do to
win." The moves come as Wall Street analysts question how long eBay
and PayPal can withstand growing competition
from online rivals such as Amazon.com Inc, Google Inc and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, as well as retailers such as Wal-Mart
Stores Inc which are investing in their own e-commerce and payments platforms. As part of the moves announced on Wednesday, eBay agreed
to adopt a number of corporate governance changes championed by activist investor Carl Icahn that would limit PayPal board's ability to
prevent a takeover once it splits from eBay. Any investor who owns 20 percent of PayPal will be able to call special meetings of shareholders,
Icahn said in a separate statement that coincided with eBay's release. EBay also outlined plans to cut 7 percent of its workforce, or 2,400
positions, in the current quarter. "I
don't think that is the primary goal, but in general these moves could make for
a cleaner, or more attractive, merger or acquisition," said Baird analyst Colin Sebastian, who has previously said Google
could be a suitor for eBay. The eBay Marketplaces unit is now going after so-called "avid" shoppers hungry for a
bargain. Its enterprise division, which advises companies on how to grow online, will strengthen its relationships with top retailers and
brands. Potential buyers of eBay Enterprise include companies focused on building ties with other businesses, such as Salesforce.com Inc, IBM
Corp, Demandware Inc, Adobe Systems Inc or startup Bigcommerce, some experts said. Salesforce declined to comment, while the other
companies were not immediately available for comment.
AT: Cloud Computing
Turn: Warming
The cloud uniquely makes warming worse
Matthews 2013 (Richard; How environmentally sustainable is cloud computing and storage?; Sep 12;
globalwarmingisreal.com/2013/09/12/sustainable-cloud-computing/; kdf)
Critique The cloud industry has also been called secretive, slow to change its practices, and overly
optimistic in its environmental assessments. The massive energy requirement of cloud computing can
create environmental problems. According to a 2012 report in the New York Times, data centers use 30
billion watts of electricity per year globally and the U.S. is responsible for one-third of that amount (10
billion watts). A Gartner report indicated that the IT industry is responsible for as much greenhouse gas
generation as the aviation industry (2 percent of the world’s carbon emissions). Just one of these
massive server farms can consume the energy equivalent of 180 000 homes. According to a McKinsey &
Company report commissioned by the Times, between 6 and 12 percent of that energy powers actual
computations; the rest keeps servers running in case of a surge or crash. “This is an industry dirty
secret,” an anonymous executive told the Times. However, cloud supporters counter that this may be
better understood as a necessary evil if data companies are to ensure that they are able to provide
reliable service at all times. Greenpeace has published a report, “A Clean Energy Road Map for Apple,”
that follows up on the organization’s April “How Clean is Your Cloud?” report. These studies indicate
that many cloud providers use energy sources that are neither clean nor sustainable. The Greenpeace
analysis showed that tech companies like Akamai and Yahoo! are the most environment-friendly while
companies like Amazon, Apple and Microsoft each rely heavily on power from fossil fuels. Cloud
computing is almost directly responsible for the carbon intensity increase at Apple, which gets 60
percent of its power from coal. Although Apple is increasing the amount of renewable energy used to
power its cloud computing, the company has been criticized by Greenpeace for moving slowly. In May
2013, Apple said that its North Carolina data center will be exclusively reliant on renewable power by
year’s end, and that all three of its major data centers will be coal-free by the end of this year. Solutions
Despite all of this convincing data, it is important to understand that saving energy does not always
mean that you are reducing your GHG emissions. To be environmentally sustainable these centers
must draw their power from renewable sources of energy. The location of cloud servers is the key issue
that determines whether this is a truly sustainable option. Ideally, cloud computing centers should be
located in places where the grid portfolio is clean. (It would be even better if these data centers
generated power themselves from renewable sources.)
Climate Change is a threat magnifier—policy making must focus on finding the best
avenue to avert disaster
Pascual and Elkind 2010 (Carlos [US Ambassador to Mexico, Served as VP of foreign policy @
Brookings]; Jonathan [principal dep ass sec for policy and int energy @ DOE]; Energy Security; p 5; kdf)
Climate change is arguably the greatest challenge facing the human race. ¶ It poses profound risks to the
natural systems that sustain life on Earth and¶ consequently creates great challenges for human lives, national economies,¶ nations' security,
and international governance. New scientific reports¶ emerging from one year to the next detail ever more alarming
potential¶ impacts and risks.¶ It is increasingly common for analysts and policymakers to refer to ¶ climate change as a threat multiplier, a
destructive force that will exacerbate¶ existing social, environmental, economic, and humanitarian
stresses .¶ The warming climate is predicted to bring about prolonged droughts¶ in already dry regions, flooding along coasts and even inland rivers, an¶ overall increase in severe weather events, rising seas, and the
Such impacts may spark conflict in¶ weak states, lead to the displacement of
millions of people, create environmental¶ refugees, and intensify competition over increasingly scarce¶
resources.¶ One of the great challenges of climate change is, indeed, the scope of¶ the phenomenon. The ongoing warming of the globe results chiefly from¶ one of the most ubiquitous of human practices, the conversion
of fossil fuels¶ into energy through simple combustion. Halting and reversing climate¶ change, however, will require both unproven-perhaps even unimaginedtechnology¶ and sustained political commitment. We must
change living¶ habits in all corners of the globe over the course of the next several decades.¶ We must
resist the impulse to leave the problem for those who follow us¶ or to relax our efforts if we achieve a few years of promising progress. The¶
profound challenge will lie in the need for successive rounds of sustained¶ policymaking, successive
waves of technological innovation, and ongoing¶ evolution of the ways in which we live our lives.
spread of¶ disease, to cite just a few examples.
Cloud Computing – Bad
Cloud computing capabilities are all hype
Marks 13 - Publisher of six best-selling books on small business management (Gene, 10/21/13, "The
Embarrassing Truth about the hybrid cloud" www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2013/10/21/theembarrassing-truth-about-the-hybrid-cloud/)
Why the growth in hybrid cloud technology? Well, that’s the embarrassing secret no one wants to admit.
Some may say it’s validation of the cloud’s role in a company’s infrastructure. I’m not so sure. In my opinion, it actually represents the
limitations of the cloud. The
cloud has received a lot of hype over the past few years. But now smarter people
are starting to better understand its reality. “IT departments are starting to rationalize the cloud as just
part of an infrastructure,” says Mike Maples, managing partner at Palo Alto-based FLOODGATE Fund. “You can’t just let all
the bits of your enterprise go to the cloud. It’s not all or nothing. The world is becoming a more hybrid
enterprise.” Cloud based applications have exploded over the past few years. Collaboration services, mobile apps,
customer relationship management systems and document storage offerings have literally changed the
lives of consumers and employees at companies, big and small. I am accessing my customers’ data from a smartphone on a
plane at 30,000 feet. A roofer is creating a work-order for a new job while holding onto a chimney and entering the data into his tablet. A
college kid sits on a train from New York to Boston and catches up on the latest episodes of Walking Dead on her iPad. It’s glorious. It’s mindblogging. And it’s maddening too. Because with
all the hype, with all the excitement, with all the money thrown at
it, the cloud has been disappointingly and embarrassingly imperfect. Yes, I am accessing my customers’
data from 30,000 feet but the connection is so slow and drops so many times that it takes me ten times
as long to retrieve the information I’m looking for. The customer’s credit card information that the roofer is entering into his
tablet is being snagged by the guy three streets over who has hacked into his connection. That college kid audibly groans as the episode freezes
and her screen goes black, time and time again, eventually pulling out a book. The
cloud will be wondrous and fast and secure
and reliable…one day. Today, it is not. And until that day comes we have the hybrid cloud. Why else
would Carbonite, whose model has been built around delivering a cloud based backup service, release
an on-premise storage device to complement their online service? Why would VMWare and Microsoft
MSFT -0.2% duplicate data delivery to multiple servers? Why would venture capital firms plough millions into a software
base service like Egnyte so that users can get the same data that is stored in different locations? It’s because the cloud is useless unless we can
get to our data fast. The
cloud is useless if it’s not making us more productive and enabling us to do things
quicker than before. It’s useless if our data is less secure than when it was stored on our own servers.
And without hybrid cloud technologies, many companies are learning that this is very much the case. So
over the course of technology history our data has travelled from server to desktop to cloud and now back to the server again. It’s not a 360
degree turnaround. It’s a partial turnaround. A hybrid solution to make up for the cloud’s defects. The
cloud is great. But the
enormous growth of hybrid cloud technologies only proves that it still has a long way to go before it’s
fast and secure. “In the end, customers and users don’t even care about the cloud,” says Maples. “They
just have a job to do. It’s performance and convenience that an all-or-nothing cloud approach can’t
deliver.” Can’t we all admit that embarrassing truth?
Cloud computing bad – no one uses
Cloud computing is unreliable
CCA ’15 (Cloud Computing Advices, Cloud Computing advices is the one of the best leading cloud
computing blogs, where you can access the tutorials on cloud computing, breaking news, security issues,
top cloud computing providers, certifications, training programs and jobs opportunities for freshers and
experienced IT Professionals, “Cloud Computing Disadvantages”,
http://cloudcomputingadvices.com/disadvantages-cloud-computing/, 2/20/2015)//HW
Negative effects and Disadvantages of cloud computing:¶ The Greenpeace NGO announces, in its 2010
report on the ecological impact of the IT industry, the negative impacts of cloud computing.In the below
list you can see the 5 disadvantages of cloud computing as per the report.¶ 1.The main drawback is the
security issues related to storing of confidential information in the cloud. As all information is available
via internet if taken to the cloud, there may be concerns with breach of confidential information.¶
2.There is a tendency for some firms to lose their control over the piled up information in the cloud.¶
3.The legal issues including ownership of abstraction on the location data of cloud computing.¶ 4.Cloud
computing also poses problems in terms of insurance, especially when a company submits an operating
loss due to failure of the supplier. Where one company covering a risk, the insurance company offering
the cloud architecture takes more, slowing sharply compensation.¶ 5.The customer service of cloud
computing becomes dependent on the quality of the network to access this service. No cloud service
provider can guarantee 100% availability.
--xt: People don’t use the cloud
Lots of drawbacks to cloud computing – people won’t switch over
Ward ’11 (Susan, business writer and experienced business person; she and her partner run Cypress
Technologies, an IT consulting business, providing services such as software and database development,
“5 Disadvantages of Cloud Computing”, About Money,
http://sbinfocanada.about.com/od/itmanagement/a/Cloud-Computing-Disadvantages.htm,
11/8/2011)//HW
5 Disadvantages of Cloud Computing¶ 1) Possible downtime. Cloud computing makes your small
business dependent on the reliability of your Internet connection. When it's offline, you're offline. If
your internet service suffers from frequent outages or slow speeds cloud computing may not be suitable
for your business. And even the most reliable cloud computing service providers suffer server outages
now and again. (See The 10 Biggest Cloud Outages of 2013.)¶ 2) Security issues. How safe is your data?
Cloud computing means Internet computing. So you should not be using cloud computing applications
that involve using or storing data that you are not comfortable having on the Internet. Established cloud
computing vendors have gone to great lengths to promote the idea that they have the latest, most
sophisticated data security systems possible as they want your business and realize that data security is
a big concern; however, their credibility in this regard has suffered greatly in the wake of the recent NSA
snooping scandals.¶ Keep in mind also that your cloud data is accessible from anywhere on the internet,
meaning that if a data breach occurs via hacking, a disgruntled employee, or careless
username/password security, your business data can be compromised.¶ Leaving aside revelations about
the NSA, switching to the cloud can actually improve security for a small business, says Michael Redding,
managing director of Accenture Technology Labs. "Because large cloud computing companies have more
resources, he says, they are often able to offer levels of security an average small business may not be
able to afford implementing on its own servers" (Outsource IT Headaches to the Cloud (The Globe and
Mail).¶ 3) Cost. At first glance, a cloud computing application may appear to be a lot cheaper than a
particular software solution installed and run in-house, but you need to be sure you're comparing apples
and apples. Does the cloud application have all the features that the software does and if not, are the
missing features important to you?¶ You also need to be sure you are doing a total cost comparison.
While many cloud computer vendors present themselves as utility-based providers, claiming that you're
only charged for what you use, Gartner says that this isn't true; in most cases, a company must commit
to a predetermined contract independent of actual use. To be sure you're saving money, you have to
look closely at the pricing plans and details for each application.¶ In the same article, Gartner also points
out that the cost savings of cloud computing primarily occur when a business first starts using it. SaaS
(Software as a Service) applications, Gartner says, will have lower total cost of ownership for the first
two years because SaaS applications do not require large capital investment for licenses or support
infrastructure. After that, the on-premises option can become the cost-savings winner from an
accounting perspective as the capital assets involved depreciate.¶ Cloud computing costs are constantly
changing, so check current pricing.¶ 4) Inflexibility. Be careful when you're choosing a cloud computing
vendor that you're not locking your business into using their proprietary applications or formats. You
can't insert a document created in another application into a Google Docs spreadsheet, for instance.
Also make sure that you can add and subtract cloud computing users as necessary as your business
grows or contracts.¶ 5) Lack of support. In These Issues Need to be Resolved Before Cloud Computing
Becomes Ubiquitous, (OPEN Forum) Anita Campbell writes, "Customer service for Web apps leaves a lot
to be desired -- All too many cloud-based apps make it difficult to get customer service promptly – or at
all. Sending an email and hoping for a response within 48 hours is not an acceptable way for most of us
to run a business".
Aff Answers
Innovation Addon
Internet K2 Innovation
Internet freedom is key to innovation – China proves
Hoffman 14 - Professor of Communication and Political Science, University of Delaware
Lindsay Hoffman, 2/5/2014, The Huffington Post, “Internet Censorship: A Threat to Economic Progress in
China?”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lindsay-hoffman/internet-censorship-a-thr_b_4395167.html,
7/18/2015, \\BD
Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have helped to ignite an information revolution by
allowing individuals around the world to use the Internet for communicating, learning, teaching, and
protesting. However, these endless possibilities pose a threat to oppressive governments, and as a
result, technology use has been severely limited in some nations. The Chinese government's strict
regulation of Internet exemplifies these limitations within the context of an increasingly powerful
nation. While the incredible economic progress of China over the past several decades suggests it is a
threat to the status of the United States as the world's superpower, censorship may stop upward
progress in its tracks.∂ The expansion of the Internet in recent years has rendered this technology
necessary to the day-to-day lives of people throughout China and the world, and that dependence has
become a significant tool of power for oppressive governments. Beyond establishing a great firewall to
block thousands of sites from being accessed within China, the government also works to prevent
opposition on social media websites and blogs. The government listens to what citizens are saying
online, thereby enabling officials "to address issues and problems before they get out of control" (see
Rebecca MacKinnon's book, "Consent of the Networked"). In early September, a Chinese judge reinterpreted Internet restrictions so that any individual spreading "slanderous rumors" on the Internet
that are seen by 5,000 people or shared by 500 people could face up to 10 years in prison. This stricter
interpretation of Internet limitations indicates that an open Internet China is not on the immediate
horizon.∂ Google Chairman Eric Schmidt recently made headlines when he visited Hong Kong and
suggested that China's prevention of free expression online may pose a threat to continuing economic
progress for the country. Although many people may not connect the Internet to economic success,
Schmidt suggests that the limitations placed on online speech by Chinese officials will prevent the
country from overcoming the "middle-income trap." This occurs when countries move up from a place
of poverty but are unable to further progress, leaving them trapped on a plateau below higher-income
nations. Schmidt seems to be a celebrant, as his words echo the notion that the Internet "has the power
to determine outcomes" for people, countries, and the entire world, although McChesney argues that
this perspective is "ultimately unsatisfactory" in a complex reality (see McChesney's "Digital
Disconnect").∂ Schmidt criticized the 500-repost rule as well as other restrictions placed on citizens'
words and behavior on the Internet by the Chinese government. He suggested that in order to solve
economic problems such as unemployment, nations require the "entrepreneurs" and "innovation" that
an open Internet encourages. As the Chairman for such an economically successful company as Google
understands, individuals must be allowed to think of fresh ideas when they use their technology.
Extensive firewalls and harsh punishments for certain forms of expression prevent citizens from being
able to make creative and helpful economic contributions through the Internet. Schmidt's warning to
the Chinese government seems intended to persuade the Chinese government that there may be
negative consequences of a closed and restrictive Internet that they had not previously considered. The
tireless attempts to maintain power over citizens through Internet regulation and censorship may
actually be threatening the economic power of the nation in an increasingly technological world. The
Chinese government may soon discover that when you hold on to something too tightly, it is far more
likely to slip right out of your hands.
AT: Internet Bad K
State action key
Policy change is the only method to achieve internet freedom – their author
Power and Jablonski 2015 (Shawn M [Assistant Professor of Communication at Georgia State
University] and Michael [attorney and presidential fellow in communication at Georgia State University];
The Real Cyber War; University of Illinois Press; p. 198; kdf)
Despite the fury, the
private sector and technologists still depend on state actions for long-term solutions to
privacy online. While AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, Yahoo! and others condemn undue
surveillance activities, their solution is to call for policy reform.60 Technologists have promised to try and
beat the government’s invasive techniques, but even the best cryptographers in the world agree that it
will take a tremendous amount of human effort, and years of work, to combat the NSA’s surveillance
programs. As Twitter’s former head of cybersecurity Moxie Marlinspike explains, “We all have a long ways to go,” adding, “[and] it’s going to
take all of us.”61 Outraged governments—fueled by their outraged publics—are calling for greater control over the international information
flows, not less. While
it is easy for many in the United States and in parts of Europe to decry such
perspectives as government censorship, or a power grab by international institutions (see chapters 4 and 5), the reality is
that accepting some level of shared internet regulation is a far superior option to an internet splintered
along geographical and national boundaries. This is exactly what will happen if current policies remain unchanged. Amid an
onslaught of rhetoric that highlights how new technologies are changing societies and institutions
around the world, it may be helpful to look back to how states navigated similar technological
revolutions in the past, assess if and how those approaches worked, and determine their relevance to the challenges today’s ICTs
present. The history of interstate cooperation and rulemaking is, actually, neatly intertwined with
developments in international communication. The first two intergovernmental organizations were created in order to
coordinate the rules by which information flowed across national borders. The International Telegraph Convention established the first
organization in 1865. After the invention and widespread adoption of radio technology, it was renamed the International Telecommunications
Union (ITU) to encompass all types of transnational telecommunication issues.
Perm Solves
The permutation solves
Fish 2014 (Adam; Beyond surveillance fridges and socialized power drills: social media and the
financialization of everyday life; Mar 29; savageminds.org/2014/03/29/beyond-surveillance-fridges-andsocialized-power-drills-social-media-and-the-financialization-of-everyday-life/; kdf)
Meanwhile, Jeremy Rifkin
sees Morozov’s “Internet of Things” not as a horror of surveillance and eversharper financial practices, but as the birth of a maker movement. When the net cost of production not just of digitized
information like music and movies but of physical objects approaches zero, he claims, capitalism faces a fundamental challenge,
one in which the winners will be found in the nonprofit sector. All those networked fridges and 3D printers, he says, are
enabling a second economy to grow up alongside capitalist production, an economy based on sharing of
goods and information, where we live “partly beyond markets,” in “an increasingly interdependent
global commons.” Well, which will it be, dental espionage or ride-sharing our way into a global village? We’ve gone out into the field to
try to find out, by examining new companies who’re trying to combine big data and the sharing economy,
and asking hard questions of their managers and of the people who’re turning to them as alternatives to
old-school consumerist products and services. In our project, “Third Party Dematerialization and Rematerialization of Capital,” funded by the
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s “Digital Economy Research In The Wild” initiative, we are researching Zopa Limited, the
sort of financial innovator Morozov has in mind when he speaks of Silicon Valley’s ability to “disrupt” Wall Street with “better data and better
engineers.” Zopa is a “non-bank” – as regulation designed to discourage upstarts and protect the market share of slow-to-innovate and too-bigto-fail firms limits the use of the value-laden term “bank” – a “peer-to-peer lender.” Zopa uses a proprietary algorithm to evaluate credit risk,
and then matches individual borrowers of relatively small sums with potential investors of a bit of spare cash. Zopa claims that their highly
stringent credit-evaluating algorithm, their lack of legacy infrastructure, both buildings and IT, and their individual evaluation of potential
borrowers – rather than trusting entirely to automated processes – enable them to offer better rates to borrowers and lenders than high street
banks can bother with. Zopa is a successful financial firm with only one top executive from the financial industry – their risk analyst. With Big
Data experts and social marketing managers, Zopa explicitly applies Silicon Valley logics to a segment of what once was a UK high street banking
Zopa neither deploys fleets of drones or
the latest gimmicks of “gamification” – the techniques developed from the realization that we’ll do nearly anything for the quick
hit of an endorphin rush from “rewards” as ephemeral as points or levels in a colorful game interface. While gamification is often
claimed as the missing link between financialization and social mediatization – we’ll do anything for rewards, and
we want all our friends to see our status, so we’ll click to create the data for others to profit from – today’s reality is remarkably
more old-fashioned. The twin challenges of social financialization are managing and marketing trust and risk. Once solely the province of
monopoly – short to medium-term unsecured consumer lending and borrowing. Yet
banks, who used neoclassical architecture, three-piece suits, and free toasters to convey social messages of high trust and low risk, the largely
dematerialized companies of social financialization necessarily use social media and internet user interfaces to do the same job. The trendsurfers and hipsters of the world aren’t Zopa’s clients: rather Zopa works to appeal to the newly financialized: older people with a bit of extra
money who are neither wealthy nor connected enough to be worth the time of innovation-challenged, blue-blooded UK banks, and young
families yet to see the “recovery” talked up on the newly-ubiquitous financial media. Zopa designers see their job as creating an online
presence that looks enough like a bank to convey messages of trustworthiness and low risk, while simultaneously appealing to a demographic
that feels abandoned by banks in their oscillations between high risk/high return algorithm-driven trading and “credit crunch” unwillingness to
lend to anyone who might actually have a need for funds. It
is in these everyday, slightly dowdy design choices that
social financialization is being built, in a process of connecting the dots between a lost age of bricks-andmortar rhetorics of trustworthiness – a trustworthiness coupled with incentives against too much financial literacy, too much
desire to look behind the neoclassical facades to interrogate actual banking practices – and Morozov’s all too likely future of
trying to level up our gamified toothbrushes to lower our dental insurance premiums. We need the
cautionary tales of the dystopias we’re building and the utopian visions of data power to the people, but
more, we need to know if our gateway drugs of social financialization really are harmless hits and
performance enhancements, or whether they will lead inevitably to refrigerator madness. One thing we suspect is true:
we can’t “Just Say No.”
Yes – Internet-> Democracy
The thesis of the K is wrong—Free Internet helps promote democracy movements—it
is key to tackling authoritarian government—studies Prove
OSU 12—Ohio State University (“Internet use promotes democracy best in countries that are already
partially free” April 4, 2012 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120404152004.htm)//JLee
Although use of the internet has been credited with helping spur democratic revolutions in the Arab world and
elsewhere, a new multinational study suggests the internet is most likely to play a role only in specific
situations. Researchers at Ohio State University found that the internet spurs pro-democratic attitudes
most in countries that already have introduced some reforms in that direction. "Instead of the internet
promoting fundamental political change, it seems to reinforce political change in countries that already
have at least some level of democratic freedoms," said Erik Nisbet, lead author of the study and assistant professor of
communication at Ohio State University. "Internet use is a less effective means to mobilize citizens for democracy
in extremely authoritarian countries." In addition, demand for democracy is highest in a country when
more people are connected to the internet and, most importantly, when they spend more time online. "Internet
penetration in a country matters in terms of how much people want democratic reforms, but it is even
more important that people are spending greater amounts of time on the internet and that they are connected
to other people in their community," said Elizabeth Stoycheff, a co-author of the study and doctoral student in communication at Ohio State.
Nisbet and Stoycheff conducted the study with Katy Pearce of the University of Washington. Their study appears in the April 2012 issue of the
Journal of Communication, a special issue dedicated to social media and political change. The
researchers analyzed previously
collected data on 28 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. This included surveys of 37,549 people
who participated in the 2008 Afrobarometer and 2006-2008 Asian Barometer surveys. Included were questions that evaluated how
much the citizens in each country demanded democracy and their frequency of internet use. In addition, the researchers looked at
country-level data that measured how democratic each country was, and their levels of internet penetration,
international bandwidth per internet user and other sociodemographic factors. The results suggest that the internet is most likely to
play a role in democratization in countries that have a moderate to high internet penetration and that
have at least a partly democratic political regime. In countries ruled by authoritarian regimes, people
may have access to the internet, but the rulers may control the content available, how users may interact with
each other, and whether they may get information from outside their own country, Stoycheff said. "The internet's effect on citizen
demand for democracy is somewhat contingent on both the technological context and the political
context," Stoycheff said. Based on the results of the study, Nisbet said there are some countries that currently appear to have the right
political and technological mix for the internet to play a role in social and political change. Those countries include Kenya, Senegal, Uganda,
Singapore and Zambia. But countries in the survey that are run by highly authoritarian regimes, such as Vietnam and Zimbabwe, are not likely
to see democracy flourishing anytime soon, regardless of use of the internet, the findings suggest. Other countries,
like
Mozambique and Tanzania, are partly free but have a low citizen demand for democracy and little
internet penetration, Nisbet said. But if internet use grows in these countries, it has the potential to encourage people there to
challenge their autocratic regimes. "Our results suggest that the internet can't plant the seed of democracy in a country," Nisbet said.
"However,
the internet may help democracy flourish if it has already started to grow."
Internet Capitalism Good
Internet makes capitalism good—creates low cost revenue and is easier to trade
Rifkin 14—Jeremy is the author of The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of
Things, The Collaborative Commons, and The Eclipse of Capitalism. He is an adviser to
the European Union and to heads of state around the world, and president of the
Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, DC (“Capitalism is making way for the
age of free” March 31, 2014
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/31/capitalism-age-of-freeinternet-of-things-economic-shift)//JLee
In a capitalist market, governed by the invisible hand of supply and demand, sellers are constantly searching
for new technologies to increase productivity, allowing them to reduce the costs of producing their goods and services so they
can sell them cheaper than their competitors, win over consumers and secure sufficient profit for their investors. Marx never asked
what might happen if intense global competition some time in the future forced entrepreneurs to introduce ever
more efficient technologies, accelerating productivity to the point where the marginal cost of production approached zero,
making goods and services "priceless" and potentially free, putting an end to profit and rendering the market exchange
economy obsolete. But that's now beginning to happen. Over the past decade millions of consumers have become
prosumers, producing and sharing music, videos, news, and knowledge at near-zero marginal cost and
nearly for free, shrinking revenues in the music, newspaper and book-publishing industries. Some of the US's leading economists are
waking up to the paradox. Lawrence Summers, former US treasury secretary, and J Bradford DeLong, professor of
economics at the University of California, Berkeley, addressed this in August 2001, in a speech delivered before the Federal Reserve Bank of
focused their presentation on the new communication technologies that were
already reducing the marginal (per-unit) cost of producing and sending information goods to near zero. They
began by acknowledging that "the most basic condition for economic efficiency: [is] that price equal marginal
cost", and further conceded that "with information goods the social marginal cost of distribution is close to zero". They then went to
the crux of the problem. "If information goods are to be distributed at their marginal cost of production – zero – they cannot be
created and produced by entrepreneurial firms that use revenues obtained from sales to consumers to cover their [fixed setup] costs … [companies] must be able to anticipate selling their products at a profit to someone." Summers and DeLong opposed
government subsidies to cover up-front costs, arguing that they destroy the entrepreneurial spirit. Instead
they supported short-term monopolies to ensure profits, declaring that this is "the reward needed to spur private enterprise
to engage in such innovation". They realised the trap this put them in, recognising that "natural monopoly does not meet the most
Kansas City. Summers and DeLong
basic condition for economic efficiency: that price equal marginal cost" but nonetheless concluded that in the new economic era, this might be
the only practical way to proceed. The
pair had come up against the catch-22 of capitalism that was already
freeing a growing amount of economic activity from the market, and threw up their hands, favouring
monopolies to artificially keep prices above marginal cost, thwarting the ultimate triumph of the invisible hand. This final victory, if
allowed, would signal not only capitalism's greatest accomplishment but also its death knell. While the
notion of near-zero marginal cost raised a small flurry of attention 12 years ago, as its effects began to be felt in the music and
entertainment industry and newspaper and publishing fields, the consensus was that it would likely be restricted to
information goods, with limited effects on the rest of the economy. This is no longer the case. Now the
zero-marginal cost revolution is beginning to affect other commercial sectors. The precipitating agent is an
emerging general-purpose technology platform – the internet of things. The convergence of the communications internet with the
fledgling renewable energy internet and automated logistics internet in a smart, inter-operable internet-of-things system is
giving rise to a third industrial revolution. Siemens, IBM, Cisco and General Electric are among the firms
erecting an internet-of-things infrastructure, connecting the world in a global neural network. There are
now 11 billion sensors connecting devices to the internet of things. By 2030, 100 trillion sensors will be attached to natural
resources, production lines, warehouses, transportation networks, the electricity grid and recycling
flows, and be implanted in homes, offices, stores, and vehicles – continually sending big data to the communications, energy and logistics
internets. Anyone will be able to access the internet of things and use big data and analytics to develop predictive algorithms that can speed
efficiency, dramatically increase productivity and
lower the marginal cost of producing and distributing physical
things, including energy, products and services, to near zero, just as we now do with information goods. Summers and
DeLong glimpsed that as marginal costs approach zero, "the competitive paradigm cannot be fully appropriate" for organising commercial life,
but admitted "we do not yet know what the right replacement paradigm will be". Now
we know. A new economic paradigm –
the collaborative commons – has leaped onto the world stage as a powerful challenger to the capitalist
market. A growing legion of prosumers is producing and sharing information, not only knowledge, news and entertainment, but also
renewable energy, 3D printed products and online college courses at near-zero marginal cost on the
collaborative commons. They are even sharing cars, homes, clothes and tools, entirely bypassing the conventional capitalist market.
An increasingly streamlined and savvy capitalist system will continue to operate at the edges of the new
economy, finding sufficient vulnerabilities to exploit, primarily as an aggregator of network services and solutions, allowing it to flourish as a
powerful niche player. But it will no longer reign. Hundreds of millions of people are already transferring bits
and pieces of their lives from capitalist markets to the emerging global collaborative commons, operating
on a ubiquitous internet-of-things platform. The great economic paradigm shift has begun.
The alt fails—its attempt to block the internet’s economic progress will fail due to new
businesses
Rifkin 14—Jeremy is the author of The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, The
Collaborative Commons, and The Eclipse of Capitalism. He is an adviser to the European Union and to
heads of state around the world, and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington,
DC (“THE ZERO MARGINAL COST SOCIETY THE INTERNET OF THINGS, THE COLLABORATIVE COMMONS,
AND THE ECLIPSE OF CAPITALISM” 2014 http://digamo.free.fr/rifkin14.pdf pg. 11)//JLee
Edited for Gendered Language
Attempts to block economic progress invariably fail because new entrepreneurs are continually roaming
the edges of the system in search of innovations that increase productivity and reduce costs, allowing them
to win over consumers with cheaper prices than those of their competitors. The race Lange outlines is relentless over the
long run, with productivity continually pushing costs and prices down, forcing profit margins to shrink. While most
economists today would look at an era of nearly free goods and services with a sense of foreboding, a few
earlier economists expressed a guarded enthusiasm over the prospect. Keynes, the venerable twentieth-century economist whose economic
theories still hold considerable weight, penned a small essay in 1930 entitled “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,”
which appeared as millions of Americans were beginning to sense that the sudden economic downturn
of 1929 was in fact the beginning of a long plunge to the bottom. Keynes observed that new technologies were
advancing productivity and reducing the cost of goods and services at an unprecedented rate. They were
also dramatically reducing the amount of human labor needed to produce goods and services. Keynes even introduced a new term, which he
told his readers, you “will hear a great deal in the years to come—namely, technological unemployment. This
means unemployment
due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can
find new uses for labour.” Keynes hastened to add that technological unemployment, while vexing in the short run, is a great boon in
the long run because it means “that mankind [Society] is solving its economic problem.”7
Internet Capitalism Good -- Environment
The internet is able to helps the environment, detect Natural Disasters, and farmers
Rifkin 14—Jeremy is the author of The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of
Things, The Collaborative Commons, and The Eclipse of Capitalism. He is an adviser to
the European Union and to heads of state around the world, and president of the
Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, DC (“THE ZERO MARGINAL COST
SOCIETY THE INTERNET OF THINGS, THE COLLABORATIVE COMMONS, AND THE
ECLIPSE OF CAPITALISM” 2014 http://digamo.free.fr/rifkin14.pdf pg. 16-17)//JLee
Internet of Things is quickly being applied in the natural environment to better steward the Earth’s
ecosystems. Sensors are being used in forests to alert firefighters of dangerous conditions that could precipitate fires. Scientists are
installing sensors across cities, suburbs, and rural communities to measure pollution levels and warn the
public of toxic conditions so they can minimize exposure by remaining indoors. In 2013, sensors placed atop the
U.S. Embassy in Beijing reported hour to hour changes in carbon emissions across the Chinese capital. The data was instantaneously
posted on the Internet, warning inhabitants of dangerous pollution levels. The information pushed the
Chinese government into implementing drastic measures to reduce carbon emissions in nearby coalpowered plants and even restrict automobile traffic and production in energy-intensive factories in the
region to protect public health. Sensors are being placed in soil to detect subtle changes in vibrations and earth
density to provide an early warning system for avalanches, sink holes, volcanic eruptions, and
earthquakes. IBM is placing sensors in the air and in the ground in Rio de Janeiro to predict heavy rains and mudslides up to two days in
advance to enable city authorities to evacuate local populations.21 Researchers are implanting sensors in wild animals and
placing sensors along migratory trails to assess environmental and behavioral changes that might affect their
well-being so that preventative actions can be taken to restore ecosystem dynamics. Sensors are also being installed in rivers,
lakes, and oceans to detect changes in the quality of water and measure the impact on flora and fauna
in these ecosystems for potential remediation. In a pilot program in Dubuque, Iowa, digital water meters and accompanying
The
software have been installed in homes to monitor water use patterns to inform homeowners of likely leaks as well as ways to reduce water
consumption.22 The
IoT is also transforming the way we produce and deliver food. Farmers are using
sensors to monitor weather conditions, changes in soil moisture, the spread of pollen, and other factors that 16
affect yields, and automated response mechanisms are being installed to ensure proper growing conditions. Sensors are being
attached to vegetable and fruit cartons in transit to both track their whereabouts and sniff the produce
to warn of imminent spoilage so shipments can be rerouted to closer vendors.2
Internet Inevitable
The expansion of the internet is coming—makes Capitalism inevitable—alt cannot do
anything about it
Rifkin 14—Jeremy is the author of The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, The
Collaborative Commons, and The Eclipse of Capitalism. He is an adviser to the European Union and to
heads of state around the world, and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington,
DC (“THE ZERO MARGINAL COST SOCIETY THE INTERNET OF THINGS, THE COLLABORATIVE COMMONS,
AND THE ECLIPSE OF CAPITALISM” 2014 http://digamo.free.fr/rifkin14.pdf pg. 62-63)//JLee
The enormous leap in productivity is possible because the emerging Internet of Things is the first smartinfrastructure revolution in history: one that will connect every machine, business, residence, and vehicle in an
intelligent network comprised of a Communications Internet, Energy Internet, and Logistics Internet, all embedded in a single operating
system. In the United States alone, 37 million digital smart meters are now providing real-time information on
electricity use.9 Within ten years, every building in America and Europe, as well as other countries around the world, will
be equipped with smart meters. And every device—thermostats, assembly lines, warehouse equipment, TVs, washing machines,
and computers—will have sensors connected to the smart meter and the Internet of Things platform. In 2007, there were 10 million sensors
connecting every type of human contrivance to the Internet of Things. In
2013, that number was set to exceed 3.5 billion,
and even more impressive, by 2030 it is projected that 100 trillion sensors will connect to the IoT.10 Other sensing devices,
including aerial sensory technologies, software logs, radio frequency identification readers, and wireless sensor networks, will assist in
collecting Big Data on a wide range of subjects from the changing price of electricity on the grid, to logistics traffic across supply chains,
production flows on the assembly line, services in the back and front office, as well as up-to-the-moment tracking of consumer activities.11 As
mentioned in chapter 1, the intelligent infrastructure, in turn, will feed a continuous stream of Big Data to
every business connected to the network, which they can then process with advanced analytics to create
predictive algorithms and automated systems to improve their thermodynamic efficiency, dramatically increase their
productivity, and reduce their marginal costs across the value chain to near zero. Cisco systems forecasts that by 2022, the
Internet of Everything will generate $14.4 trillion in cost savings and revenue.12 A General Electric study published in November 2012
concludes that the efficiency gains and productivity advances made possible by a smart industrial Internet could resound across virtually
every economic sector by 2025, impacting “approximately one half of the global economy.” It’s when we look
at each industry, however, that we begin to understand the productive potential of establishing the first intelligent infrastructure in history. For
example, in
just the aviation industry alone, a mere 1 percent improvement in fuel efficiency, brought about by
using Big Data analytics to more successfully route traffic, monitor equipment, and make repairs, would generate
savings of $30 billion over 15 years.13 The health-care field is still another poignant example of the productive
potential that comes with being embedded in an Internet of Things. Health care accounted for 10
percent of global GDP, or $7.1 trillion in 2011, and 10 percent of the expenditures in the sector “are wasted from inefficiencies in the
system,” amounting to at least $731 billion per year. Moreover, according to the GE study, 59 percent of the health-care
inefficiencies, or $429 billion, could be directly impacted by the deployment of an industrial Internet. Big
Data feedback, advanced analytics, predictive algorithms, and automation 62 systems could cut the cost in the global health-care sector by 25
percent according to the GE study, for a savings of $100 billion per year. Just
a 1 percent reduction in cost would result in a
savings of $4.2 billion per year, or $63 billion over a 15-year period.14 Push these gains in efficiency from 1 percent, to
2 percent, to 5 percent, to 10 percent, in the aviation and health-care sectors and across every other sector, and the magnitude of
the economic change becomes readily apparent. The term Internet of Things was coined by Kevin Ashton, one of the founders of the MIT Auto
ID Center, back in 1995. In the years that followed, the IoT languished, in part, because the cost of sensors and actuators embedded in “things”
was still relatively expensive. In an
18 month period between 2012 and 2013, however, the cost of radio-frequency
identification (RFID) chips, which are used to monitor and track things, plummeted by 40 percent. These tags now cost less
than ten cents each.15 Moreover, the tags don’t require a power source because they are able to transmit their data using the energy from the
radio signals that are probing them. The
price of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), including gyroscopes,
accelerometers, and pressure sensors, has also dropped by 80 to 90 percent in the past five years.16 The other obstacle that slowed
the deployment of the IoT has been the Internet protocol, IPv4 which allows only 4.3 billion unique addresses on the Internet (every device on
the Internet must be assigned an Internet protocol address). With most of
the IP addresses already gobbled up by the more
than 2 billion people now connected to the Internet, few addresses remain available to connect millions and eventually
trillions of things to the Internet. Now, a new Internet protocol version, IPv6, has been developed by the Internet
Engineering Task Force; it will expand the number of available addresses to a staggering 340 trillion trillion trillion—more than
enough to accommodate the projected 2 trillion devices expected to be connected to the Internet in the
next ten years
Indict – Morozov
Morozov’s idea is wrong—he fails to recognize technology have biases
Davis 13—Ron is the CEO of Tenacity, a health technology startup using cutting-edge behavioral
science to improve people’s lives and save employers money. . He holds degrees from Harvard Law
School, The University of Oregon and George Fox University. As an employee of Fidelity National
Financial, he drove several successful strategic initiatives, was widely known for his consulting and
coaching program, and broke all local sales records. (“Morozov Is Wrong: Smart Technology Enhances
Choice” May 18, 2013 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ron-davis/morozov-is-wrong-smartte_b_2891165.html)//JLee
Morozov's rational actor famously performed center stage in classical economic theory, which assumed
that people maximize their own well-being when making purchases. Ironically, though, he scolds engineers for
curtailing choice by offering consumers the choices they crave. Rather than follow his own advice and provide
unbiased information about smart products, he imports his idiosyncratic ideas about choice, and labels these
products "bad," and suggests they make us dumb. They appeal to "base instincts," as if Runkeeper users are baboons. By his
own confused standards, his words "fall somewhere between good smart and bad smart." Even Morozov's modest suggestion
that BinCam should benchmark customer's recycling habits is a known tactic for creating comparison and appealing to
"base" instincts like people's pride and their desire to keep up with others. Perhaps Morozov fails to recognize that all
technologies have biases, as Rushkoff has argued. Guns and pillows can kill, but their bias toward doing so differs
exponentially. We can pick any kind of car to get to work - gas, diesel, electric--and among hundreds of models, but "this sense of choice
blinds us to the fundamental bias of the automobile toward distance, commuting, suburbs, and energy consumption." Morozov has
strangely singled out smart technology for criticism, though bias is common to all products and at least
smart technologies make many of their nudges explicit. People buy them because they want to change their behavior. It's
hard to say the same for the biases that come with products like ramen and chips and fast food. People don't purchase these with chronic
disease and early death in mind, though unfortunately that's often part of the package. Morozov
misses the forest and then cuts
down the wrong tress. This doesn't mean all products are evil. But it seems that bias and base instincts are unavoidable.
Technologies frame our decisions. Marketers influence our choices by bombarding us with messages that appeal
to impulses like pride, fear, sex, exclusivity and security. Animal urges - like starvation avoidance, push
us to overeat. City planning, or the lack thereof, constrains our choices about where we live and how we travel. In other words, we are up
against all kind of intentional and unintentional forces that we didn't ask for, all of which conspire to curtail our autonomy. And, in rarer cases,
Even libertarians have long acknowledged that freedom should be limited when
our actions harm others. This is why we have a criminal code. Breathalyzers that keep drunks from driving should limit their liberty to
we should circumscribe choice.
injure innocents, just as the threat of prison or an officer's pistol strongly encourages people to avoid violent altercations. Appropriate
autonomy is more than mere license. Morozov
raises more serious concerns, like privacy and the possibility of
people getting forced to turn over information or engage with coercive technology. But he offers nothing new
here: these worries are widely shared and decent legislation can protect citizens from overzealous technocrats and rapacious businesses.
More important, Morozov's rubric for "good" and "bad" relies on discredited ideas about human
autonomy and choice, causing him to so wildly miss the mark that he criticizes smart technology as autonomy-limiting,
when it actually offers us the chance to play a greater role in choosing our own destinies.
Morozov advocates a critique without a coherent understanding of IT, falls prey to his
own critique, fails to undertake analysis of the state, all the while moving debate
away from central questions of internet freedom with smoke and mirrors
Muller 11, (Milton, Professor at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies,
“WHAT IS EVGENY MOROZOV TRYING TO PROVE? A REVIEW OF “THE NET DELUSION
”, http://www.internetgovernance.org/2011/01/13/what-is-evgeny-morozov-tryingto-prove-a-review-of-the-net-delusion/)
Flirting with “the dark side”∂ The subtitle suggests that Morozov wants to position himself on the
authoritarian side of the political spectrum. But he doesn’t really. That is, I don’t think he does. He
seems to oppose censorship and authoritarianism and doesn’t want to join the copyright holders, the
cyber-spooks, the Chinese Communist Party, the Islamic fundamentalists and the Christian morality-inmedia types in singling out freedom online for destroying the fabric of civilization. What he does is
remind us that there is a dark side to human nature which often manifests itself on the Internet. To
attribute this dark side to the Internet itself, however – which Morozov sometimes does – is to fall prey
to the Internet-centrism he tries to attack. Moreover, some of his most vivid stories are not about the “
dark side of Internet freedom” but rather about how unfree networks can be controlled and
manipulated by authoritarian states in unfree societies.∂ When it comes to deflating cyber-utopianism
related to the Internet, I don’t think anyone has done it better, and with more detail and empirical
knowledge of Internet developments around the world. At some level, however, his basic point is trivial.
Any sentient user of the internet knows by now that creating a gigantic, globalized sphere for social
interaction means that the activity there will exhibit all the classical problems of human society:
bullying, fads and follies, propaganda, political domination, rumor-mongering, theft, fraud, and intergroup conflicts ranging from nationalism to racism. We have been accepting and responding to that
reality for the past decade, instituting various technical, legal and behavioral controls on Internet use
while seeking to preserve the freedom and openness that made the Internet such a valuable resource.
That is why we are having dialogue about internet governance and security at the global, national and
local levels.∂ Yes, it’s wrong to assume that open information will necessarily and automatically topple
dictatorships and advance democracy. But you don’t advance that dialogue very much by wallowing in
colorful horror stories of bad Internet-enabled activities and peddling them as a byproduct of “Internet
freedom.” That’s what the copyright interests do to carve their pound of flesh out of our freedom;
that’s what the cyber-security interests (elsewhere, so ably attacked and satirized by Morozov himself)
have done and are doing; that’s what the content regulation and web site blocking hawks have done
and are doing. Is Morozov intent on feeding this frenzy?∂ In his zeal to deflate utopian notions that “
networking is always good” Morozov sometimes embraces the other idea he wants to attack, Internet
centrism. The Internet is to be blamed, he implies, for gang wars in Cuernevaca, the illegal trade in
endangered species, and many other things – because the practitioners “use the Internet.” “Text
messaging has been used to spread hate in Africa,” he writes (apparently oblivious to the fact that SMS
technology is not the Internet) – implying both that communication-information technology itself
created the problem of tribal warfare, and that we can make it go away if we regulate or control the way
the technology is used. He writes approvingly of China’s decision to shut down the internet in Xinjiang
province in the summer of 2009 as tensions flared between Uighurs and Han Chinese.∂ But Morozov
never articulates a consistent position on what Internet freedom means and how and when it should be
supported. All in all, one comes away with the conclusion that he doesn’t really know where to go with
his critique.∂ The two “Internet freedoms”∂ That is because a fundamental confusion lies at the very
core of this book. His subtitle and much of his material identifies “Internet freedom” as its object. But
careful readers (and of course, most readers will not be) soon notice that this term means two distinct
things.∂ Most of the time, especially in the earlier pages, Morozov’s notion of “Internet freedom”
can be accurately defined as “the support of Internet freedom by the US government as a way of
meeting US foreign policy and public diplomacy goals of promoting democracy and human rights
overseas.” When the book is narrowly focused on this topic, it is excellent. I say this not because I
completely agree with the critique, but because it raises the right questions and calls attention to many
possible unintended side effects.∂ On the other hand, Internet freedom can – and usually does – refer to
a normative political position on how much or how little the people using the internet should be
controlled by states, or some other hierarchical authority. This notion of Internet freedom recognizes
that the U.S. government, like any other state, can adopt policies and practices hostile to freedom. More
broadly, it denotes the debate over what is the proper role of freedom of expression, freedom of
association online, and the free flow of information in society. Although it is usually universalistic, this
notion does not commit its proponents to any tactical belief that freeing the Internet is inherently
transformative of repressive societies.∂ Although at times Morozov does manage to separate analytically
these two approaches to “Internet freedom,” just as often he conflates them. Worse, he repeatedly
equates support for Internet freedom in the normative sense with cyber-utopianism, which is both
incorrect and irresponsible.∂ Networks and states? ∂ Insofar as he tried to weigh in on the deeper issues
of Internet freedom, Morozov is unsuccessful. He makes (in passing) a vague argument that freedom
requires “the state.” But M’s discussion of “the state” is abstract, ahistorical and tautological; it
confuses “the state” with “order.” The definition of the state he relies on refers broadly to the way
society institutionalizes the capacity to produce and enforce order. With such a definition, the assertion
that “the state” is needed to secure freedom is nothing more than a tautology. It describes an
idealized outcome of having the right kind of state but tells us nothing about what states should do to
the internet now. And it begs the question of what kind of a state should act, whether it should it be the
nation-state or some other form, and how globalized communication infrastructure alters the way states
function. Any concrete, historically specific instantiation of the capacity for supplying order may, in fact,
generate as much disorder and chaos as its absence in specific situations. Morozov claims that there has
been no engagement with this issue. He is wrong. There is a robust dialogue going on about the degree
to which the Internet does or does not require new forms of global governance. Entire books have been
written about it [wink].∂ The many faces of Morozov∂ Contributing to the overall sense of inconsistency,
Morozov adopts differing identities or perspectives, as long as they can be used to score points. He
writes: “internet freedom may make policymakers overlook their own [political and strategic] interests.
” Here he postures as jaded realpolitik advisor to powerful decision makers in existing governments.
They have to look after their interests, and not worry about ideals. Elsewhere, we find a different
Morozov – one who rips into the hypocrisy of the US government for promoting Internet freedom on
the one hand and supporting dictators, surveillance of Internet users both domestic and foreign, and
other policies designed to advance and promote US state’s power. This critique, unlike the first one,
presumes that freedom is a higher value that should not be subordinated to national interests and
realpolitik. In yet other places, Morozov positions himself as earnest giver of advice about how we
[NGOs, govts] need to promote civil society, democracy and liberalism in the rest of the world and how
Internet policy may help us do that.∂ Typically, his style is to take long, detailed and rhetorically
convincing excursions into narrative alleys that link Internet technology to social problems, and then
cover his ass by issuing two or three concluding sentences as a more nuanced escape valve: e.g., “
Networks can be good or bad. Promoting internet freedom must include measures to mitigate the
negative side effects of increased interconnectedness.” Most readers emerging from this tunnel are
simply going to come away with the conclusion that the internet is responsible for a lot of problems and
should be regulated more in order to avoid them. Regulated how? By whom? How to ensure that the
cures aren’t worse than the diseases? Those are the real issues.
Even if Morozov is right, his critique ultimately devolves into pssissm and hopefulness
– vote aff for at least a chance to reform the inter
Chatfield 11, (Tom, doctorate from and professor at St John's College, Oxford, author
and technology theorist, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/09/netdelusion-morozov-review)n
In this sense, all of Morozov's arguments boil down to the same thing: a war against complacency. The
masses are mired in dross – but the echo chambers of the elite are equally pernicious, as intellectuals
travel the world from conference to book signing, chatting to each other about freedom while their
native countries clamp down. There's an anguish here that emerges most clearly when Morozov talks
about his native Belarus, where "no angry tweets or text messages, no matter how eloquent, have been
able to rekindle the democratic spirit of the masses, who, to a large extent, have drowned in a
bottomless reservoir of spin and hedonism, created by a government that has read its Huxley".∂ Is this
really what our brave new world amounts to? Morozov longs for the sacred light of reason to shine into
the web's dark corners. But, as his own diagnosis suggests, politics has always been a matter for the
passions. And if it's naive to think that the internet can save us, it's naive to think that it can damn us
too. Here, his avowedly realist programme runs into idealistic trouble: for if the twinned, venal natures
of man and media are to blame for our ills, there's not much we can do. This helps no one, and runs
counter to his incisive anatomy of the issues at stake. For better and for worse, the world has arrived
online – and duly busied itself looking at cute pictures of cats, building encyclopedias and distributing
classified diplomatic cables. If there is hope, it lies exactly where Morozov himself seems most hopeless:
in acknowledging and building on what it is that people actually fear, desire and believe in.
Morozov fails to undertake stastical analysis and cherrypicks empirics to support his
arguments
Thierer 11, (Adam, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason
University, “Book Review: The Net Delusion by Evgeny Morozov”,
http://techliberation.com/2011/01/04/book-review-the-net-delusion-by-evgenymorozov/)
Morozov thinks that the “ridiculously easy group-forming” that his leading nemesis Clay Shirky
described in his recent book Cognitive Surplus is, in reality, leading largely to cognitive crap, at least as it
pertains to civic action and political activism. Indeed, at one point in Chapter 7 (the creatively-titled, “
Why Kierkegaard Hates Slacktivism”), Morozov speaks of the development of what we might think of
as a “tragedy of the civic commons” (my term, not his). He argues that:∂ When everyone in the group
performs the same mundane tasks, it’s impossible to evaluate individual contributions, and people
inevitably begin slacking off… Increasing the number of participants diminishes the relative social
pressure on each and often results in inferior outputs. (p 193)∂ It’s an interesting theory, as far as it
goes, but Morozov doesn’t muster much more than a handful of anecdotes in support of it. He notes,
for example, that even back in the Berlin Wall era, young East German students were more likely to
know intimate facts about popular American dramas like Dallas and Dynasty than current political
affairs. And, echoing the recent laments of Andrew Keen (Cult of the Amateur) and Lee Siegel (Against
the Machine), Morozov worries about the “narcissism” and “attention seeking” of social
networking denizens. “There’s nothing wrong with the self-promotion per se, but it seems quite
unlikely that such narcissistic campaigners would be able to develop true feelings of empathy or be
prepared to make sacrifices that political life, especially political life in authoritarian states, requires.”
(p 187)∂ But this ignores many legitimate forms of social organization / protesting that have been
facilitated by the Net and digital technologies. Despite what Morozov suggests, we haven’t all become
lethargic, asocial, apolitical cave-dwelling Baywatch- rerun-watching junkies. If all Netizens are just
hooked on a cyber-sedative that saps their civic virtue, what are we to make of the millions of
progressives who so successfully used the Net and digital technologies to organize and elect President
Obama? (Believe me, I wish they wouldn’t have been so civic-minded and rushed to the polls in record
numbers to elect that guy!)
Morozov fails to understand the internet as a way of disseminating information and
instead dismisses it without subjecting it to any analysis.
Thierer 11, (Adam, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason
University, “Book Review: The Net Delusion by Evgeny Morozov”,
http://techliberation.com/2011/01/04/book-review-the-net-delusion-by-evgenymorozov/)
Yet, in his zeal to counter those who have placed too great an emphasis on the role of information
technology, Morozov himself has gone too far in the opposite extreme in The Net Delusion by
suggesting that technology’s role in transforming States or politics is either mostly irrelevant or even,
at times, counter-productive. I’m just not buying it. I think you’ll find a more nuanced and balanced
set of conclusions in this new white paper, “Political Change in the Digital Age: The Fragility and
Promise of Online Organizing,” by Bruce Etling, Robert Faris and John Palfrey. In it, they conclude: The
Internet has an important role in increasing information sharing, access to alternative platforms, and
allowing new voices to join political debates. The Internet will continue to serve these functions, even
with state pushback, as activists devise ways around state online restrictions. Conditions that contribute
to success are likely determined not by the given technological tool, but by human skill and facility in
using the networks that are being mobilized. … It is less clear how far online organizing and digital
communities will be allowed to push states toward drastic political change and greater democratization,
especially in states where offline restrictions to civic and political organization are severe. As scholars,
we ought to focus our attention on the people involved and their competencies in using digitallymediated tools to organize themselves and their fellow citizens, whether as flash mobs or through
sustained social movements or organizations, rather than the flow of information as such. In other
words, we should view information as one of many means to the end and not the end in and of itself.
But we also shouldn’t discount its importance too lightly.
Morozov fails to clarify an alternative to his critique and promotes the same internet
authoritarianism he critiques – only the perm is able to overcome this solvency defecit
Thierer 11, (Adam, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason
University, “Book Review: The Net Delusion by Evgeny Morozov”,
http://techliberation.com/2011/01/04/book-review-the-net-delusion-by-evgenymorozov/)
There’s a more profound problem with Morozov’s thesis. If he is correct that the Net poses such
risks, or undermines the cause of democracy-promotion, isn’t the logical recommendation that flows
from it technology control or entertainment repression? If, as Morozov implies, Netizens are spending
too much time viewing Lolcats and not enough in the streets protesting or running down to the Peace
Corps to sign up for a tour of duty, then what would he have us do about it? Shall we restrict access to
the growing abundance of technological / entertainment choices that he laments? Amazingly, he never
really clarifies his views on this important point. Like so many other cultural critics before him, Morozov
finds it easy to use caustic wit to tear apart inflated arguments and egos on the other side while also
conveniently ignoring the logical consequences of their critiques or bothering to set forth a constructive
alternative. About the closest he comes is to detailing his views is Chapter 9, which focuses on the
danger of the Net and modern digital technology being used to spread extremist views. Even though he
refuses to get more specific about potential responses, what, exactly, are we to conclude when we hear
Morozov speak of the need for “measures to mitigate the negative side effects of increased
interconnectedness.” (p. 261) And what are we to make of his claim that “More and cheaper tools in
the wrong hands can result in less, not more, democracy.” (p. 264) Or, his argument that: The danger is
that the colorful banner of Internet freedom may further conceal the fact that the Internet is much
more than a megaphone for democratic speech, that is other uses can be extremely antidemocratic in
nature, and the without addressing those uses the very project of democracy promotion might be in
great danger.”(p. 265-6) Or, finally, his conclusion in that chapter that: If the sad experience of the
1990s has taught us anything, it’s that successful (democratic) transitions require a strong state and a
relatively orderly public life. The Internet, so far, has posed something of a threat to both. (p. 274)
Reading those passages — especially the words I’ve highlighted — it’s hard not to conclude that
Morozov would like to put the information genie back in the bottle. To be clear, he never says that
directly since he simply refuses to be nailed down on specifics. But, again, his tone seems to suggest that
some form of technological control or information repression may be necessary. I hope that in coming
essays Evgeny will be willing to clarify his views on this issue since The Net Delusion leaves us scratching
our heads and wondering just how far he would go to counter the supposed “danger” or “threat”
posed by digital technology.
Morozov fails to understand the historical context of the internet and doesn’t
undertake cost benefit analysis of the internet – on balance it has improved quality of
life and government accountability.
Thierer 11, (Adam, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason
University, “Book Review: The Net Delusion by Evgeny Morozov”,
http://techliberation.com/2011/01/04/book-review-the-net-delusion-by-evgenymorozov/)
Moreover, Morozov once again overplays his hand here. He spends so much time arguing that digital
technologies have made our lives more transparent to the State that he underplays the myriad ways it
has simultaneously made government activities more visible than at any point in history. It is
extraordinarily difficult for even the most repressive of States today to completely bottle up all its
secrets and actions. Morozov says modern China, Putin’s Russia and Hugo Chavez are embracing new
digital technologies in an attempt to better control them or learn how to use them to better spy on their
citizens, and he implies that this is just another way they will dupe the citizenry and seduce them into a
slumber so they will avert their eyes and ears to the truth of the repression that surrounds them. Sorry,
but once again, I’m not buying it. Repressive regimes really do face a tension when they embrace
modern information and communications technologies. It does force them to make certain trade-offs as
they look to modernize their economies. Morozov thinks this so-called “dictator’s dilemma”
hypothesis is largely bunk, but he seems to expect this process to unfold overnight once new technology
moves in. In reality, these things take more time. The general progression of things in most states is
toward somewhat greater transparency and openness, even if it does not magically spawn regime
change overnight. Importantly, he never really offers a credible cost-benefit analysis of the life of
citizens in those regimes today relative to the past. Are we seriously supposed to believe that
information-deprived Chinese peasants of the Mao era were somehow better positioned to influence
positive regime change than the more empowered modern Chinese citizen? It’s a tough sell. Are their
downsides associated with those new technologies (especially the potential for citizen surveillance)?
Yes, of course. But let’s not use that as an excuse for marching backwards, technologically-speaking.
Morozov concludes affirmative – policy action is a necessary prerequisite to
challenging internet delusion – this link turns the kritik
Thierer 11, (Adam, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason
University, “Book Review: The Net Delusion by Evgeny Morozov”,
http://techliberation.com/2011/01/04/book-review-the-net-delusion-by-evgenymorozov/)
Chapter 8 of the book focuses on what Morozov describes as the “Cultural Contradictions of Internet
Freedom.” He again scores some points for rightly pointing to the hypocrisy at play in the United States
today — by both government and corporations — when it comes to the promotion of Net freedom
globally. He correctly notes that “while American diplomats are preaching the virtues of a free and
open Internet abroad, an Internet unburdened by police, court orders, and censorship, their
counterparts in domestic law enforcement, security, and military agencies are preaching — and some
are already pursing — policies informed by a completely different assessment of those virtues.” (p.
218) Similarly, Morozov castigates many of America’s leading high-tech companies — Facebook,
Google, Microsoft, Apple, Twitter, etc. – for preaching the values of Net freedom but then all too
willingly handed over information about dissidents to repressive State actors, or playing ball with foreign
thugs in other ways. Morozov is right; American leaders in both government and business need to better
align their actions with their rhetoric when it comes to the interaction of government and technology.
Too often, both groups are guilty of talking a big game about the Internet and freedom, only to later
take steps to undermine that cause. As Morozov asks in a recent New York Post column, “Shouldn’t
America’s fight for Internet freedom start at home for it to be taken seriously by the rest of the world?
” Yes, it should.
AT: Tech Bubble DA
No Bubble
No such thing as a tech bubble—tons of stats prove
Harris 7/16—Melissa joined the Chicago Tribune as a business columnist in 2009 after nearly five
years as an award-winning metro reporter at The Baltimore Sun. Prior to joining the Sun, she was a
metro reporter at The Orlando Sentinel. She is a graduate of Northwestern and Johns Hopkins
universities (Bachelor of Science in journalism and Master of Arts in government), and a two-time finalist
for the Livingston Award, honoring outstanding reporting by journalists younger than 35. (“Hate to
burst your bubble, but tech investment is healthy” July 16, 2015
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/ct-harris-tech-bubble-0717-biz-20150716column.html)//JLee
The tech bubble doesn't exist. That's the point of a 53-slide presentation last month in which three
partners from the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz supplied evidence that the
tech market is nowhere near the mania levels of 1999 and 2000. Andreessen Horowitz's data show that
private and public funding for tech companies remains at about 40 percent of what it was in 1999. There's
been no surge in venture capital fundraising. It's rising but still below 2006 levels. And venture capital funding as a percentage of the gross
domestic product created by the sector is down by half since 1980. There's also a real market for these businesses now. The
number of
Internet users has increased from 738 million in 2000 to 3.2 billion in 2015, according to a new report
from the International Telecommunication Union. Venture funding per person online has been flat since the bubble, while
people are spending more on it. Yes, the S&P 500 Information Technology Index is approaching 1999 level s but this
time, Andreessen Horowitz argues, profits are driving these returns with price-to-earnings multiples at early 1990s levels. (A price-to-earnings
ratio is the current price of a share of stock divided by its earnings per share. A large multiple can signal that the market's perception of the
company is inflated.) "The
price-to-earnings ratio of the tech component of the S&P is in fact lower than for
the index as a whole," Bloomberg reported. Instead, almost all of the returns are being had in private markets,
meaning without a company going public. In other words, you have to know someone or be a large institutional investor to be
able to buy equity in privately held companies like Uber even though its estimated worth is some $40 billion. Overall
dollars raised by technology companies are being dominated by such deals. The good news is that momand-pops can't bet their retirement funds on Uber. The bad news is that there was at least $32.97 billion in venture capital
sitting out there for 4,378 venture deals in 2014. That first number comes from Dow Jones VentureSource and
represents a 62 percent increase from 2013 and the highest total since 2007. The deal number comes from
PricewaterhouseCoopers' MoneyTree, a quarterly study of venture capital activity in the United States, and represents a 4 percent increase
from 2013. Why is that bad? Keep reading. The way to look at the tech sector is to think of it like an hourglass,
explained Waverly Deutsch, a clinical professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. (Disclaimer: I attend
Booth. Deutsch previously coached a startup I founded.) There
is an increasing number of companies being created at
the bottom, and about 60 highly valued startups worth $1 billion or more, known as unicorns, at the
top. In the middle is a big squeeze. The base at the bottom of the hourglass is widening. The number of companies
raising capital has doubled since 2009, and the number of funding rounds has grown by 150 percent. But the size of those rounds has
fallen by a third since 2004. "The collapse of the cost of creating tech companies in the last two decades means
many more are being created," Andreessen Horowitz's Morgan Bender, Benedict Evans and Scott Kupor wrote. "With each
one needing less money to get started, there are a lot more small rounds. That is, there is a surge in
seed-stage funding." There has been a seven-times increase over 10 years in the amount of money raised in $1 million
to $2 million funding rounds, although that totals to only $1.1 billion, or about 5 percent of all funding going into
deals of less than $40 million, according to Andreessen Horowitz. At the other end of the hourglass, all unicorns combined
equal the value of about one Facebook. Still, these private funding rounds of $40 million or more
dominate fundraising. "The headlines are ominous," Bender, Evans and Kupor acknowledge. "Seventy-five percent of the
largest VC investments have been raised in the last five years. ... Many companies that would have in the past done an
IPO are now doing late-stage rounds (effectively quasi-IPOs). ... Thus, traditional public market investors and buyout funds, who
would not typically invest in companies at this stage, have moved into the private markets." Sixteen of the Top 20 tech deals last year
had participation from "non-traditional investors," according to Andreessen Horowitz. More large investors want access to these fast-growing,
scalable tech companies than there are fast-growing, scalable tech companies. Comparatively few exist because right before that comes the
squeeze. Funding
to get to proof of concept — a company has a product and a few customers — is plentiful and cheap. Heck,
many companies can get that far without raising any outside funding at all. But scaling that product to reach millions
of customers is very expensive. There are so few ideas that can make that leap, even with stellar leadership. That's reflected
in the venture data. Total funding for deals in the $10 million to $25 million range has fallen in half since 1999, according
to Andreessen Horowitz. And total money going into deals under $40 million is back to 2001, post-bubble-burst levels.
"You get terms in the valley, like the cockroaches, companies that are just kind of crawling along, self-funding with
small streams of revenue, but not enough to pay founders legitimate salaries, not enough to grow and not enough to invest in
marketing," Deutsch said. "You've got tens of thousands of companies getting money from angels, graduating from accelerators all
thinking the way they're going to grow their business is through venture capital, and there are 2,365 seed and
early-stage deals being done. "The early-stage venture capitalists whittle this giant pool of tens of thousands of companies
down to 2,365 companies, then they can overpay for the growth of those companies," Deutsch continued. "The pipeline is
kind of broken in the middle. ... But if you squeeze through this neck, you've got this massive amount of venture capital
that's waiting. The valuations are crazy because there's competition among the big funds to get their billions of dollars placed."
The funnel is frustrating for entrepreneurs, but that squeeze is the only thing preventing a bubble. The unicorn euphoria can't be
allowed to cascade down, and the Andreessen Horowitz presentation makes a persuasive case that it hasn't. Yet.
The tech bubble does not exist—Unicorn start-ups do not exist
Smith 7/6—Noah is an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University and a freelance writer
for a number of finance and business publications. He maintains a personal blog, called Noahpinion.
(“There Is No Tech Bubble. Still, Be Worried.” July 6, 2015
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-07-06/there-is-no-tech-bubble-still-be-worried-)//JLee
Andreessen Horowitz, the most innovative and outspoken of Silicon Valley’s big venture capital firms,
recently came out with a
presentation intended to kill the idea that there’s a new tech bubble under way. The 53-slide presentation, by
Morgan Bender, Benedict Evans and Scott Kupor, takes on the idea that too much money is flowing into private
technology companies, especially in the highly valued startups called “unicorns.” First, a little background. Bubbles, by definition,
pop, and if tech crashed it would hurt a lot of investors. People making the case for a bubble often focus
on unicorn startups (those with a valuation of greater than $1 billion) such as Uber, which is now valued at $40 billion without having
gone public. They claim that large private financing by late-stage venture capital, backed up by large asset managers like Fidelity or Tiger Global
Management, have replaced initial public offerings as the driver of overvaluation. This is known as the “private IPO.” The probubble case is that these private financing rounds have inflated the value of the unicorns without spilling over into the public markets.
Andreessen Horowitz’s team
attacks this idea from a number of directions. First, they show that overall funding for tech
startups -- both private financing and IPOs -- is still nowhere near the dizzying heights it reached in 1999 and 2000,
especially when measured as a share of the economy. The same is true of venture capital fundraising. They also present various
arguments that long-term earning potential for tech startups is much stronger this time around. (Bloomberg LP, the parent
company of Bloomberg News, is an investor in Andreessen Horowitz.) The Andreessen Horowitz presentation makes a very
convincing case. We should not be drawing a parallel between the boom in private late-stage funding of unicorn
startups and the late-’90s IPO boom. They just don’t look like the same phenomenon. So there’s probably not a unicorn
bubble. How about a tech bubble more generally? The Andreessen Horowitz team points out that the tech sector isn't taking over the
Standard & Poor's 500 stock index the way it did in the late-’90s tech bubble: The
share of tech in the index has been flat for
about 12 years now. And, as Sam Altman pointed out on Twitter, stock valuations for technology
companies don’t look any higher than other stock valuations; the price-to-earnings ratio of the tech component of the
S&P is in fact lower than for the index as a whole. So we’re probably not in a tech bubble of any kind. That said, there was
one Andreessen Horowitz slide that's ominous. It shows that all the unicorns together are valued at slightly less
than Facebook. That reminded me of an e-mail debate between financial economists Eugene Fama and Ivo Welch, on the question of
whether the ’90s tech bubble was really an episode of market irrationality. In that debate, Fama said the following: During 1999-2000 there
[were] 803 IPOs with an average market cap of $1.46 billion … 576 of the IPOs are tech and internet-related
… [thus] their total market cap [was] about $840 billion, or about twice Microsoft's valuation at that time. Given expectations at that time
by the internet, is it unreasonable that the equivalent of two Microsofts
internet-related IPOs?
about high tech and the business revolution to be generated
would eventually emerge from the tech and
AT ISIS Turns
No Link – Internet Not Key
The internet is not the main point of ISIS recruitment—even if they do recruit through
the internet the recruitment is small
Franz, 6/2- (Barbara Franz teaches political science at Rider University, Lawrenceville and Princeton,
New Jersey.) “Popjihadism: Why Young European Muslims Are Joining the Islamic State” Mediterranean
Quarterly Volume 26, Number 2, June 2015, Dunke University press, Project Muse.//droneofark
Jihadism has become a media phenomenon. Videos distributed by IS and other radical groups, with their
own YouTube accounts, flourish on the Internet. The films appeal to Muslim youth with messages of martyrdom and loyalty
packaged in rock and rap video formats.16 A Viennese social worker states, “All like Jihadism. It has a pull.”17 Some have dubbed the
new genre popjihadism.18 However, one German study found that only 18 percent of jihadists were radicalized through online
resources. By far the most important variable for the radicalization of German youth is contact with imams [End Page 9] and mosques (23
percent) and with friends who have gone off to fight in the jihad before them (30 percent).19 What
these popjihadists express in
blogs is crucial and highly influential for their friends at home. For example, the young woman behind the Umm Layth
blog presents herself as a British immigrant to the caliphate. She asks, while posting photos of herself and her “sisters” clothed in black burqas,
“How can you not want to produce offspring who may be, God willing, part of the great Islamic revival?”20 Just as curious are the ventures of
Samra Kesinovic and Sabina Selimovic, two Austrian teenagers of Bosnian background ages fifteen and sixteen, whose story has circulated
throughout the local media scene.21 The two young women left Vienna in April 2014, and in August Selimovic appeared in a selfie on Instagram
wearing a hijab. The woman is a jihadi now — the picture depicts her wearing a burqa and holding a gun. A number of Austrian teenage
women, including some recent converts and one thirteen-year-old girl, have formed a Whatsapp group and are planning to sojourn to Syria as
well.22 Other IS fighters, such as the nineteen-year-old Firas Abdullah, an Austrian with Tunisian roots, currently stationed in ar-Raqqa, Syria,
use online platforms like ask.fm to blog about their experiences.23 Through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr, IS easily spreads its
message to a Western audience. Yilmaz, a smiling Dutch jihadist with Turkish roots, has become a social media sensation with his Tumblr
account Chechclear.Tumblr.com glorifying his stint in Syria as the ultimate adventure by posting photos of warfare alongside children and
kittens.24 Although
YouTube videos, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr accounts often initiate interest in the
jihad, recruitment is a more complex issue and does usually not occur via electronic means. The
sympathizer group is usually small and concise. In Vienna, for example, only a dozen or so people really know how
recruitment actually happens. The recruitment of individuals occurs not only in the virtual world but also in public places. There are a [End Page
10] number of known meeting areas for possible recruits in Vienna, according to two anonymous informants of the weekly paper Der Falter.
They are, for example, on the Danube Island, at the Handelskai, and the Jägerstraße, all working-class locales close to public transportation
frequented daily by crowds of commuters.25 Some youth might have been recruited by Salafite imams. Recently, some radical voices in Vienna
apparently have begun to call for volunteers for the holy war, including a Bosnian imam in a mosque in Vienna’s second district, Leopoldstadt,
who incited hatred against Jews, Christians, atheists, and women. His followers supposedly have engaged in military exercises in the woods
around Vienna.26 An Egyptian preacher in Styria’s capital Graz labeled Christian Austrians as successors of “apes and pigs,” and a preacher from
Gaza called Western women whores and argued that the pope is a fool and not worth the “nail in the sandals of the prophet.”27 While this
might distress good Austrian Christians, whether this
language is enough to entice individuals to become jihadists is
questionable. It is, however, part of a rhetorical strategy to divide the world into the good and the bad
in general, the believers and the infidels, and good and bad Muslims.28 In the mosque, nationality does not matter;
Bosnians, Chechens, Turks, Kurds, and Austrians pray side by side. In a society in which discrimination and marginalization of ethnic minorities
remains a key feature, the mosque provides something new for young Muslims. For many
young converts who feel they have
no career prospects and no economic opportunities, these are spaces where they are given self-worth
because they are given a choice: if they chose the “right” side, Salafite jihadism, they are promised that
they will become heroes. [End Page 11]
No internal link—governments use the internet to discredit ISIS as much as they use it
as a persuasion tactic.
Farwell, 14- (holds a B.A. from Tulane University, a J.D. in Law from Tulane University, and a D.C.L.S. in Comparative Law from the
University of Cambridge (Trinity College). In addition, he is a Senior Research Scholar in Strategic Studies at the Canada Centre for Global
Security Studies, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto) “The Media Strategy of ISIS” From “Survival: Global Politics and
Strategy”, Routledge Publishing vol. 56 no. 6 | December 2014–January 2015 | pp. 49–55, pdf, //droneofark
Yet there is a strategic downside to ISIS’s approach. The ubiquity of smartphones has empowered
individual fighters to spread messages and images of their own, including videos of atrocities, such as the
chopping off of a man’s hand in Raqqa, whose filming ISIS leaders had banned to avoid sparking a backlash. ISIS fighters may take
pride in tweeting and bragging about their experiences, but such material provides fodder for the
group’s opponents, who can use it to discredit the militants’ narrative while mobilising opposition.17 The
US State Department, for example, has created a video mocking ISIS recruitment efforts by showing, in graphic detail, the group’s ugly brutality
and suggesting that the group’s adventure trail ends in an inglorious death.18 During
an earlier phase of conflict in Iraq, alQaeda realised that images of Muslims killing Muslims were counterproductive, and became critical of
ISIS for carrying out such actions. Likewise, Egyptian cleric Yusuf alQaradawi and the Association of Muslim
Scholars in Iraq have spoken out against ISIS beheadings.19 Releasing warm and fuzzy images of ISIS murderers hugging
pets was a good gambit, but the emotional impact of images depicting ISIS militants drenched in the blood of Muslims and other innocents is
likely to backfire. That
doesn’t mean the road ahead will be easy for ISIS’s opponents. The Iraqi government has tried
to shut down Internet access in regions where ISIS has gained a physical foothold, and has cut Internet traffic across Iraq by one-third.20 But
the government in Baghdad lacks centralised control over the country’s telecommunications
infrastructure, limiting its ability to get its own messages out. ISIS has proven more adroit, leveraging the
capabilities of providers in Turkey and Iran for its own purposes. It will be interesting to see how Ankara and Tehran
respond. ISIS leaders seem to recognise that social media is a double-edged sword. The group tries to
protect the identity and location of its leadership by minimising electronic communications among top
cadres and using couriers to deliver command-and-control messages by hand. Social media is reserved
for propaganda. Still, advances in technology may eventually leave the group vulnerable to cyber
attacks, similar to those reportedly urged by US intelligence sources to intercept and seize funds
controlled by Mexican drug cartels.21 Ultimately, defeating ISIS will require focused efforts aimed at
discrediting and delegitimising the group among Muslims, while working towards the only long-term
solution for the evil the group has brought to the world: eradication. One hopes the policymakers
building coalitions and launching strikes against ISIS have these aims in mind, and will calibrate their
narratives, themes and messages accordingly.
No Link – Fill in solves
Even if the aff curtails surveillance, other countries solve the impact
Dodd 6/21 – writer for The Guardian
Vikram Dodd, 6/21/2015, The Guardian, “Europol web unit to hunt extremists behind Isis social media
propaganda”, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/21/europol-internet-unit-track-downextremists-isis-social-media-propaganda, 7/17/2015, \\BD
A new Europe-wide police unit is being set up to scour the internet for the ring leaders behind Islamic
State’s social media propaganda campaign, which it has used to recruit foreign fighters and jihadi
brides.∂ The police team will seek to track down the key figures behind the estimated 100,000 tweets a
day pumped out from 45,000 to 50,000 accounts linked to the Islamist terror group, which controls parts
of Iraq and Syria.∂ Run by the European police agency Europol, it will start work on 1 July, with a remit to
take down Isis accounts within two hours of them being detected.∂ Europol’s director, Rob Wainwright,
told the Guardian that the new internet referral unit would monitor social media output to identify
people who might be vulnerable and those preying on them. He said: “Who is it reaching out to young
people, in particular, by social media, to get them to come, in the first place? It’s very difficult because
of the dynamic nature of social media.”∂ The director added that the police team would be working with
social media companies to identify the most important accounts operating in a range of languages that
are “underpinning what Isis are doing”.∂ Europol said it would not name the social media firms who have
agreed to help the police. It will use network analytics to identify the most active accounts, such as
those pumping out the most messages and those part of an established online community.∂ Wainwright
said the new unit would aim to “identify the ringleaders online”, but even then counter-terrorism
investigators could not go through every one of the estimated 50,000 targeted accounts, as there were
too many and new ones could easily be set up.∂ Last week, Isis’s ability to reach into British communities
to gain recruits was demonstrated once again. One Briton, Talha Asmal, a 17-year-old from Dewsbry,
West Yorkshire, is believed to have killed himself in a suicide bombing in Iraq, while three Bradford
sisters are feared to have fled to Syria with their nine children in the hope of joining a brother who has
been fighting the Assad regime.∂ A total of 700 Britons have travelled to territory controlled by Isis in
Syria and Iraq – a problem shared with other European countries. Europol’s database tracking suspected
foreign fighters in the two countries has 6,000 names. Some of those may be facilitators, or their
associates. Wainwright said up to 5,000 were believed to have travelled to Isis-held territory from
countries including Holland, France and Belgium, as well as from the UK.∂ He said some were
“disaffected” youths migrating from teenage gangs in their own countries seeing Isis as a “bigger gang in
Syria”. But he added that others being attracted are those who had bright futures in their home
countries.∂ The new European initiative is in part based on Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism internetreferral unit. The hope is the new unit will boost efforts across European countries, with results passed
back to nations to take action against the individuals running the accounts.∂ The unit is part of European
governments’ response to the terrorist attacks on the office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris
in January.∂ Wainwright said money used to fund Isis activities will also be hunted down. He added:
“Where you follow the money trail, it helps find who they are, what they are doing and who their
associates are.”∂ The home secretary, Theresa May, stressed in a speech this week the need to tackle the
cross-border threat of Isis. She said: “The threat … that we face is a common one shared by many of
your countries. And if we are to defeat it, we need to work together. ∂ “We have also supported the EU
in setting up an internet-referral unit at Europol to address the increasing amount of terrorist and
extremist propaganda available on the internet, and I am pleased to say the UK will be seconding a
police officer to this unit.”
Link Turn -- Internet Solves ISIS
The Internet allows us to monitor information about their location
Starr 5/12 – writer for CNN
Barbara Starr, 5/12/2015, CNN, “Pentagon hunts for ISIS on the secret Internet”,
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/12/politics/pentagon-isis-dark-web-google-internet/, 7/17/2015, \\BD
Though a tough space to shed light on, now the Pentagon is developing a way to pry the doors open and
chase ISIS and others down.∂ "We need a technology to discover where that content is and make it
available for analysis," said Chris White of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.∂
DARPA has a new military technology known as MEMEX that acts as a unique search engine -- seeing
patterns of activity on the Dark Web and websites not available via traditional routes like Google or
Bing.∂ "MEMEX allows you to characterize how many websites there are and what kind of content is on
them, " White said. "It was actually first developed to track down human trafficking on the web -- it's an
idea that works for an illicit activity users try to keep hidden."∂ It all starts, White said, by being able to
track down locations where activity is happening.
Increased marketing allows us to combat ISIS
AFP 2/20
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, 2/20/2015, Raw Story, “Winning the Internet war is key in ISIS fight: experts”,
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/02/winning-the-internet-war-is-key-in-isis-fight-experts/, 7/17/2015,
\\BD
The Internet has become a crucial battleground in the fight against jihadist propaganda and Western
nations need to step up their game, according to participants in a Washington meeting on countering
radical groups.∂ Experts say governments must engage in corporate-style marketing if they are to
combat the Islamic State, which is using slick videos to lure foreign nationals to the battlefields of Iraq
and Syria.∂ “If ISIS has a branding and marketing department, where is ours?” said Sasha Havlicek, the
founding chief executive officer of the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD).∂ The think
tank has carried out several experiments using Google Ideas, Twitter and Facebook to try to directly
engage with potential recruits — and dissuade them from joining the brutal jihadist movement.∂ In one
campaign, ISD released several videos of Abdullah X — a fictional character who tries to convince young
Muslims that following the Islamic State is not the way forward.∂ “We were able to ‘hypercharge’ that
content — inserting him in the very spaces the extremists were using (…) anchoring this content to
extremist Twitter accounts, posting it on extremist pages, having it pop out whenever you search for
jihad in Syria,” said Havlicek.∂ “And within a few months, this went from reaching 50 people to 100,000
people of our target group of individuals searching to go to Syria for jihad,” she said.∂ The best indicator
of success was that ISIS responded by running five pages of “urgent refutation” of the arguments of
Abdullah X, she added.∂ The ISD think tank also launched a pilot project using Facebook to “walk back
people from the edge” of extremism by proposing a one on-one chat with people expressing interest in
violent jihad.∂ “Right now, only extremist groups and intelligence services are really engaging with this
constituency online,” Havlicek said.∂ The next step is to see “if see if that outreach can be automated,”
she added.∂ For that to happen, private companies with well-developed online marketing strategies can
offer that knowledge to associations and activists working against the IS message, Havlicek said.∂ –
Counter ‘brainwashing’ –∂ The US government is already working to weaken extremist groups online — a
digital blitz involving a State Department team that posts opinion pieces on radical Islam, cartoons and
graphic photos.
Unmasking online profiles allows us to gain info about ISIS
Matthews 2/24 – writer for Open Canada
Kyle Matthews, 2/24/2015, “Five ways to fight ISIS online”, http://opencanada.org/features/five-waysto-fight-isis-online/, 7/17/2015, \\BD
4. Unmask online profiles∂ It is essential that action is taken to expose, disrupt and make public ISIS
members on social media, as well as their cheerleaders. Last year a business executive in India was
exposed as the person behind the country’s most prolific ISIS Twitter account. He was arrested and then
apologized, with no proof that he has since urged others to wage holy war. Recently, the hacker group
known as Anonymous, following the murder of the journalists at Charlie Hebdo in Paris, declared a social
media war against jihadist groups online and recently shut down over one hundred such Twitter and
Facebook accounts.
--xt Internet Segregation Turn
The Internet is key to solve ISIS
Dettmer 6/2 – journalist for The Daily Beast
Jamie Dettmer, 6/2/2015, The Daily Beast, “Can the West Beat ISIS on the Web?”,
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/10/can-the-west-beat-isis-on-the-web.html,
7/17/2015, \\BD
But that could result in a tremendous loss of useful information in the fight against the Islamic State. “If
every single ISIS supporter disappeared from Twitter tomorrow, it would represent a staggering loss of
intelligence—assuming that intelligence is in fact being mined effectively by someone somewhere,”
argue analysts J.M. Berger and Jonatho Morgan in a study published Friday for Brookings, a U.S. think
tank, called “The ISIS Twitter Census.”∂ The report garnered media coverage at the weekend for its
estimate that last autumn the followers of the terror group had over 46,000 and possibly as many as
90,000 accounts on Twitter, which has become the main social media hub for ISIS, allowing it to
disseminate links to digital content hosted on other online platforms.∂ The authors argued, “By virtue of
its large number of supporters and highly organized tactics, ISIS has been able to exert an outsized
impact on how the world perceives it, by disseminating images of graphic violence (including the
beheading of Western journalists and aid workers, and more recently, the immolation of a Jordanian air
force pilot), while using social media to attract new recruits and inspire lone actor attacks.”∂ But the
authors maintain that Twitter’s aggressive suspension of jihadist accounts in recent weeks—a policy that
has earned the threat of retaliation against the company’s executives by the terror group—could well be
counter-productive. A total suspension, they say, could have unintended consequences. Not only would
it deny intelligence agencies useful operational and tactical information, they fear, it could speed up
radicalization by channeling potential recruits and lone wolves like Cornell into segregated ISIS Internet
channels.∂ That, they maintain, would reduce any possibility of moderating influences being brought to
bear by the intelligence services and de-radicalizing experts on potential recruits. But such sophisticated
efforts seem a long way from being applied.
Iraq Solves
Iraq solves propaganda – ISIS can’t post their memes online
Harris 14 – senior staff writer at Foreign Policy, four times been named a finalist for the Livingston
Awards for Young Journalists
Shane Harris, 6/17/2014, Foreign Policy, “Iraqi Government Takes Its Fight With ISIS Online”,
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/06/17/iraqi-government-takes-its-fight-with-isis-online/, 7/17/2015,
\\BD
Iraqi soldiers may have dropped their weapons, stripped off their uniforms, and fled the Islamist
jihadists who have conquered a growing list of cities as they move closer to Baghdad. On the battlefields
of cyberspace, by contrast, the Iraqi government is putting up a fierce fight against the forces of the
Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).∂ In the past week, government ministries have blocked Internet
access in regions where ISIS has a physical foothold in an attempt to stop the group from spreading
propaganda and recruiting followers among Iraq’s repressed Sunni minority. The government has also
ordered Internet service providers across the country to block all access to certain social media sites,
including Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, which are ISIS’s favorite tools for spreading propaganda and
posting photos and videos of their victories over the Iraqi military and their wholesale slaughter of
unarmed Shiites — both sources of tremendous embarrassment for the government of Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite.∂ Baghdad’s online offensive appears to be having some effect. As of Tuesday,
June 17, daily Internet traffic across Iraq had dropped by roughly a third, said David Belson, editor of the
State of the Internet Report, published by web services company Akamai Technologies, which monitors
Internet access around the world.
Europol Solves
Europol solves – ending data localization is key
Chorley 7/1 – writer for Daily Mail
Matt Chorley, 7/1/2015, Daily Mail, “100,000 terror web posts removed since 2010 as Europol sets up
dedicated unit to stem tide of ISIS propaganda”, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article3145689/Europe-wide-police-team-launches-wipe-ISIS-web-aim-terrorist-accounts-taken-twohours.html, 7/17/2015, \\BD
Almost 100,000 pieces of terrorist or extremist web posts have been removed from the internet by the
British authorities in the last five years, it emerged today.∂ The government says it is proof that it takes
'seriously the threat from online terrorist and extremist propaganda'.∂ But with some 46,000 accounts
linked to the terror group operating in Iraq and Syria, there are fears it could be an impossible task to
halt its sophisticated internet publicity machine.∂ In a sign of an escalation in the problem, Europol today
set up a Europe-wide police unit begins work today to tackle the tide of ISIS propaganda online being
used to radicalise and recruit extremists around the world.∂ Officers say they aim to have new accounts
on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites closed down within two hours to protect the 'the
safety and liberty of the internet'. ∂ It follows the revelation that Tunisian gunman Seifeddine Rezgui,
who killed 38 tourists including up to 30 Britons, posted increasingly extreme messages on Facebook
after becoming radicalised.∂ A Home Office spokesman said today: 'This Government takes seriously the
threat from online terrorist and extremist propaganda, which can directly influence people who are
vulnerable to radicalisation.∂ 'We are working with the internet industry to remove terrorist material
hosted in the UK or overseas and since 2010 we have successfully removed more than 95,000 pieces of
terrorist-related content.∂ 'Building on this, the UK worked with Europol and other EU Member States to
establish the new EU Internet Referral Unit, which will be able to remove a wider range of sources and
in a wider range of languages.∂ 'We also support the work of civil society groups to challenge those who
promote extremist ideologies online, and we are working on projects in local areas that increase the
awareness, confidence and capability of parents and teaching staff by building an understanding of how
the internet is used to radicalise young people.'∂ Social media companies have come under increased
pressure from the UK government to take 'stronger, faster and further action' to stop ISIS and other
terror groups from recruiting fighters and spreading propaganda online.∂ Police and intelligence agencies
claim their ability to track the work of extremists is hampered by web firms protecting users' privacy.
Memes Solve
Government trolling solves ISIS – memes are key
Branstetter 2/3 – writer for The Daily Dot
Ben Branstetter, 2/3/2015, The Daily Dot, “To fight ISIS, government spies are trolling you on the
Internet”, http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/government-agents-online-trolling/, 7/17/2015, \\BD
Once again, it’s time to admit the conspiracy theorists were right: Government agents are distributing
misinformation online as a massive propaganda campaign. ∂ While much has been made of the social
media campaigns of ISIS and other nefarious groups, it’s also becoming more clear how much
governments—both Western and not—are spreading their message online. The Israeli Defense Force
has long had an active online propaganda campaign, even offering scholarships to college students for
circulating pro-IDF messages online. The Daily Dot’s own James Neimeister explored how Russian
operatives spread rumors to the press through Twitter to assist pro-Russian rebels in the fight against
Ukraine.∂ Just this week, Great Britain unveiled their own troop of "Facebook warriors" for the
information age. The 77th Brigade—so named after a legendary and controversial group of BritishBurmese guerrilla fighters—will practice "non-lethal warfare" by creating "dynamic narratives" on social
media. In short, these 1,500 British troops will be scouring Facebook and Twitter to promote proWestern narratives to combat the storyline ISIS uses to recruit young people across the planet.∂ If you
aren’t a government agent or a terrorist operative, however, this still affects your life. The Internet, for
all of its ability to bring the world’s libraries to your fingertips, is also a hotbed of misinformation, deceit,
and plain old lies. While such campaigns have been waged by corporations, special interest groups, and
trolling pranksters, this evolution of world governments participating—especially clandestinely—
deserves the attention of even the most discerning consumer.∂ On many levels, this British force is a
necessary part of combatting groups like ISIS or the misinformation campaigns of Putin’s Russia. ISIS has
created one of the most effective recruiting campaigns of any terrorist group in history, convincing
thousands of Westerners to join their fight in Syria. Such a nefarious use of social media needs the truth
to combat against it, such as this French campaign that promises future ISIS fighters "you will discover
Hell on Earth and die alone and far from home."
Memes are the only effective method to stop ISIS
RT 5/8 – Russian Times
Russian Times, 5/8/2015, Russian Times, “Meme's the word: US lawmakers want to 'blow ISIS out of the
water' with...the internet”, http://www.rt.com/usa/256717-senators-isis-recruitment-internet-memes/,
7/17/2015, \\BD
While the US is fighting ISIS intensively on the ground, some lawmakers also want Washington to take
the battle online. One even proposed using internet memes, noting that the terrorist group has
successfully used them to further its mission.∂ During a 'Jihad 2.0' hearing on social media and terrorism,
the Senate Homeland Securities and Government Affairs Committee discovered that the Islamic State
(IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) has managed to attract the interest of 62 people in the US through social media.∂
The interested online parties either tried to join IS (some successfully) or supported others in doing so.
Of the 62 people, 53 were very active on social media, downloading jihadist propaganda. Some of them
directly communicated with IS.∂ But Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) had just the answer to the problem –
and it didn't involve deadly weapons or military troops.∂ “Let’s face it: We invented the Internet. We
invented the social network sites. We’ve got Hollywood. We’ve got the capabilities…to blow these guys
out of the water from the standpoint of communications,” he said.∂ He was supported by Sen. Cory
Booker (D-N.J.), who had an unconventional trick up his sleeve: internet memes. “Look at their fancy
memes compared to what we’re not doing,” Booker said while clutching print-outs of ISIS memes.∂ He
said the Islamic State is busying making “slick, fancy and attractive” videos, while the US is spending
“millions and millions on old school forms of media.”∂ A prolific user of Twitter, Booker said he knows
“something about memes.” He became a viral sensation himself after rescuing his neighbor from a
burning building in 2012.∂ The heroic move inspired his own Twitter hashtag, with social media users
sharing their own (false) superhero encounters with Booker. One user tweeted that when he needed a
kidney, Booker “instantly ripped out his own, handed it to me & flew away.”∂ The hearing, titled 'Jihad
2.0: Social Media in the Next Evolution of Terrorist Recruitment,' is part of an ongoing attempt by
Congress to identify ways to thwart efforts by overseas terrorists to lure foreign fighters or incite
jihadists to commit attacks inside the US.
Literally, government meming solves
Donoughue 3/12 – witer for ABC News
Paul Donoughue, 3/12/2015, ABC News, “Twitter wars: How the US is fighting Islamic State propaganda
through internet memes”, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-12/state-department-counterradicalisation-twitter/6290436, 7/18/2015, \\BD
The Islamic State group's widespread use of social media to recruit fighters is well publicised, and this
week prompted a Sydney Muslim community leader to call for Australia to immediately launch a social
media campaign to halt the grooming of jihadists. But what might such a campaign look like?∂ The US
State Department already runs three Twitter accounts - @DOTArabic, @DSDOTAR, and
@DigitalOutreach - that fire off dozens of tweets a day in Arabic and often directly reply to people who
espouse radical views.∂ The aim, it says, is to "counter terrorist propaganda and misinformation about
the United States across a wide variety of interactive digital environments that had previously been
ceded to extremists".∂ Many of the tweets poke fun at IS beliefs and use images that resemble internet
memes to target the group's hypocrisy. Here are 12 such memes, with translations into English.
Epist Indict
Be skeptical – overestimating the threat legitimizes jihadists
Gander 7/7 – writer for The Independent
Kashmira Gander, 7/7/2015, The Independent, “Isis: Threat posed by extremist group should not be
amplified, urges Australian politician Malcolm Turnball”,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/isis-threat-posed-by-extremist-group-should-notbe-amplified-urges-australian-politician-malcolm-turnball-10373544.html, 7/18/2015, \\BD
Politicians must be careful not to over-hype the threat that Isis poses, so as not to legitimise the
“delusions” held by jihadists, an Australian politician has urged.∂ Communications minister Malcolm
Turnbull has called for the debate on terrorism to remain calm, civil and proportional.∂ His comments
come after Prime Minister Tony Abbott warned the country that Isis is “coming after us”, Australia’s ABC
reported. ∂ In a speech to the Sydney Institute, Turnbull urged Australia to avoid inadvertently aiding Isis
by making them appear more dangerous than they are, or else risk becoming “amplifiers of their
wickedness and significance”, The Guardian.∂ He told the audience that while the security threat Isis
poses should not be underestimated, politicians must maintain a sense of perspective.∂ “We should be
careful not to say or do things which can be seen to add credibility to those delusions,” he said, arguing
that Isis’ leaders “dream” of sweeping across the Middle East and into Europe like medieval Arab armies.
ISIS Impact D
ISIS not a threat – comparative evidence citing the Air Force General
Klimas 7/14 – writer for The Washington Post, citing the Air Force General
Jacqueline Klimas, 7/14/2015, The Washington Post, “Islamic State no threat to U.S. homeland: Air Force
general”, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/14/isis-no-threat-us-homeland-air-forcegeneral-says/, 7/18/2015, \\BD
Air Force Gen. Paul Selva on Tuesday ranked the Islamic State the least-threatening group to the U.S,
saying that the terrorists do not pose a threat to the homeland.∂ At a Senate Armed Services Committee
hearing on his nomination to be the vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Sen. John McCain, Arizona
Republican, asked Gen. Selva to rank the threats the U.S. is facing today.∂ “I would put the threats to this
nation in the following order: Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and all of the organizations that have
grown around ideology that was articulated by al Qaeda,” he said, mirroring the list gave by Marine
Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford last week in his nomination to be chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.∂ Gen.
Selva, pressed by Mr. McCain on why he would put terrorists groups such as the Islamic State last, said
that the group does not threaten Americans or its allies at home.∂ “Right now [the Islamic State] does
not present a clear and presence threat to our homeland and to our nation,” he said. “It is a threat we
must deal with … but it does not threaten us at home.”
AT ISIS Bioweapons
ISIS Ebola threat is all hype
Evans 14 – writer for Slate
Nicholas G. Evans, 10/10/2014, Slate, “Ebola Is Not a Weapon”,
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/10/ebola_and_bioterrorism_the_viru
s_is_not_a_bioweapon_despite_media_myths.html, 7/18/2015, \\BD
Stop it. Just stop it. Ebola isn’t a potential weapon for terrorists.∂ It isn’t, as reported by Forbes and the
Daily Mail, a low-tech weapon of bioterror for ISIS. It isn’t the final refuge of a lone wolf on a suicide
mission, in the words of Fox News. It isn’t a U.S.-built race-targeting bioweapon, as the leader of the
Nation of Islam declared.∂ Ebola is very real, and very scary. But this outbreak isn’t a recipe for a
bioweapon. Not unless you want to be the most incompetent bioterrorist in history.∂ First, the virus isn’t
a viable bioweapon candidate. It doesn’t spread quickly—its R0, a measure of how infectious a virus is, is
about 2. That means that, in a population where everyone is at risk, each infected person will, on
average, infect two more people. But because someone with Ebola is infectious only when she shows
symptoms, we’ve got plenty of chances to clamp down on an outbreak in a country with a developed
public health system.∂ And unlike some bioweapons, such as anthrax, Ebola’s transmission mechanism
makes it really hard to weaponize. Anthrax spores can be dried and milled so they form little particles
that can float on the air and be inhaled. Ebola requires the transmission of bodily fluids, and those don’t
make efficient or stealthy weapons.∂ (And no—even though you may have heard this—Ebola is not
“airborne.” The one study everyone talks about showed that pigs could transmit Ebola to macaques
through an unknown mechanism that may have involved respiratory droplets. The researchers noted,
however, that they couldn’t get macaques to transmit it to each other. The take-home from the study is
really that pigs can spread Ebola.)∂ This alone pretty much rules it out as a bioweapon. A terrorist
organization would have to go door to door with bags of blood and vomit to infect even a handful of
people—and you’d probably notice it.∂ What about “suicide sneezers,” you may ask? Someone who
deliberately infects herself with Ebola and then proceeds to pass it on to others?∂ That’s a losing game
for the terrorist. Someone with Ebola isn’t infectious until she has symptoms, and even then, there is
often only a small window for action before the disease takes hold. Many people who contract Ebola do
so while caring for someone who is crippled by the affliction. A terrorist who wants to infect others isn’t
likely to be functional enough to run around spreading the disease for very long—and even then, will
find it hard to transmit the virus.∂ As for conspiracies about engineered Ebola, we know the virus
appeared in 1976. The 1970s was also a time when genetic engineering was in its infancy—no one
could’ve engineered a virus, even if he’d wanted to. Short of a time-traveling bioterrorist, that particular
theory isn’t tenable.∂ What about now, though? Could a bioterrorist group—or, more likely, a secret
national bioweapons program, like the one run by the Soviet Union during the Cold War—take Ebola
and modify it to be airborne or more contagious? It isn’t likely. Why? One, because it is really difficult—
we just don’t know enough about viruses to spontaneously engineer new traits. There is also a whole
host of other nasty bugs that are already better designed to be weapons. Bugs like smallpox. If terrorists
are going to go to all the trouble of engineering a bioweapon, they are likely to pick a much, much better
starting point than Ebola.∂ Finally, even if one of these unlikely scenarios came to pass, what enemy is
going to be able to claim to have weaponized Ebola and have anyone believe them? ISIS and other
militant groups rely on carefully managed reputations to achieve their goals. Executions and explosions
work for terrorists because there is something to be gained in doing so: fear, and credit for causing fear.
There’s nothing to be gained in using a disease like Ebola during an outbreak because it is difficult prove
it was deliberate, and thus you can’t brag about it.∂ The fear that an emerging infectious disease could in
fact be a weapon is not new. In 1918, Lt. Col. Philip S. Doane voiced a suspicion that the pandemic
“Spanish flu” strain was in fact a germ weapon wielded by German forces. More recently, an Australian
professor of epidemiology argued that Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome could be a bioterror agent.
People love to craft theories that provide malevolent agency to disease outbreaks. Yet while
bioterrorism is possible—advances in technology are making that easier—for now, nature is almost
always the culprit.∂ Ebola isn’t a weapon; it’s the collision between humans and their environment. It’s
about the failure of public health in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. And it’s a failure, on our parts, to
act and assist the people of these countries. That’s a failure of trust.∂ In developed countries, the biggest
threat is not the terrorist, but fear. That fear is causing lawmakers to campaign for stepping up
screening, even though it is unlikely to work—it is too hard to track people in air travel, and it isn’t
effective at detecting cases. That fear is causing politicians to claim that we should seal the border to
Mexico, or ban all flights out of West Africa.∂ That fear is a powerful weapon that can be used against us.
Terror leading us to make bad decisions is much more effective against rich, developed nations than
Ebola could be. If we want to beat the latter, we have to beat the former.∂ To beat Ebola, we have to
worry less about terrorists, and more about helping others.
Democracy
New Democracy ! Cards
Democracy decreases the likelihood of conflicts – assumes non-democracy wars
Desposato and Gartzke 4/4 – Associate Professor at UC San Diego in Political Science, Associate
Professor at UC San Diego in Political Science
Scott Desposato and Erik Gartzke, 4/4/2015, “How ‘Democratic’ is the Democratic Peace?”,
http://www.democracy.uci.edu/files/docs/conferences/suong.pdf, 7/20/2015, \\BD
Discussion∂ This study provides evidence of democracy’s pacifist effect among publics of all regime
types.∂ Not only are citizens of Brazil, a democracy, hesitant to go to war against another democracy,∂
but citizens of China, a non-democratic country, are also more reluctant to strike a democratic∂ country.
Our results imply that the reluctance to fight a democracy is more widespread∂ than many may have
thought. Put slightly differently, rather than possessing uniquely paci-∂ fistic publics, democracies appear
to benefit from a “halo effect,” in which citizens of other∂ countries are generally reluctant to initiate
military aggression against them.∂ Empirically, the effect of democracy is substantially and consistently
larger in Brazil than∂ in China; in most comparisons, the effect of democracy is twice as big in Brazil as in
China.∂ These patterns, while intriguing, are also not statistically significant. However, they suggest∂ a
critical next step. We now know that democracies enjoy a peace surplus of opinion both in∂ democracies
and in non-democracies—but are there systematic differences in the magnitude∂ of this affect across
countries? Future work involving larger data collection efforts will clarify∂ whether there are crossnational differences in affect toward democracies.∂ Our study has other limitations. Like other scholars
working in this area (Tomz and∂ Weeks, 2013b), we used an internet based survey drawn from a
commercial panel, not random∂ samples.12 Although Brazilian and Chinese respondents seem to share a
reluctance to∂ strike at a democratic target without UN approval, observed differences or nondifferences∂ may reflect different sampling frames instead of different or similar attitudes. The effect of∂
democracy is consistently smaller in China than Brazil by a small margin. A bigger sample∂ size may allow
us to propose an alternative hypothesis about the differing effect of regime∂ type in Brazil and China. At
present we cannot reject the null hypothesis of no difference∂ between Brazil and China.
Internet K2 Democracy Camp Cards
Data localization will end internet freedom – that’s key to freedom of expression
Hill 14 – Internet Policy at U.S. Department of Commerce (Jonah, “The Growth of Data Localization
Post-Snowden: Analysis and Recommendations for U.S. Policymakers and Business Leaders”, The Hague
Institute for Global Justice, Conference on the Future of Cyber Governance, 2014 , May 1, 2014,
SSRN)//TT
Free Expression and Internet Freedoms Are Not Well Served∂ Most troubling of all the potential harms of data
localization is its effect on free expression and Internet freedom. This is ironic, in that to many of its advocates, data localization is a remedy to the threat
posed by the NSA to free expression and Internet freedom. I suggest that the opposite is actually true, that the “remedy” only serves to make the danger greater. ∂ The Internet and other online media have
become indispensable tools for individuals to communicate globally, and have furthered individual
participation in the political process, increased transparency of governmental activities, and promoted
fundamental rights. Data localization, by centralizing control over digital infrastructure, can diminish this capacity in a number of ways. As was discussed
above, data localization as a local server or local data storage requirement can limit freedom by permitting countries more easily to
collect information on their citizens (through domestic surveillance). It allows a government more quickly and effectively
to shut down Internet services (usually via legal threats to local Internet service providers) that the government believes is abetting unwanted political opposition. 115∂ Data
localization mandates also can obstruct Internet freedom in other, indirect ways. Restricted routing, in particular, is problematic, because it is not technically possible
∂
as the existing Internet is designed or organized. Unlike the telephone network, the Internet operates under a model known as “best effort delivery,” where data is delivered to its destination in the most efficient manner possible,
without predetermined routes. For instance, data sent from the United States to Botswana will attempt to travel along the shortest and most direct route possible. However, if there is a bottleneck along the shortest route, a
packet may find a longer but more expeditious route. This is a core feature of the Internet that makes network congestion easy to navigate around. In order to restrict data routing to specific geographies as governments are
advocating, all Internet routers that are currently programmed to follow this “best effort” routing model would have to be reconfigured to prohibit data from one country from moving through the territory of “prohibited”
countries. Moreover, since Internet addresses are not always assigned according to a specific geography, the Internet’s addressing system currently would have to be dramatically altered as well. Thus, the Border Gateway Protocol
(one of the core Internet networking protocols), the Internet’s routing tables (the address books by which routers send data), and the process by which IP addresses are allocated, would all have to be modified. Such an undertaking
would require a fundamental overhaul not only of the Internet’s operating structures, but also of the governance structures by which those structures are implemented and standardized.∂ These are not just arcane concerns of
These alterations in the way the Internet works will, I
believe, materially restrict the power of the Internet to support free expression. These modifications to these core characteristic of the current Internet –
modifications that localization would require – may result in intelligence agencies acquiring a previously unavailable capacity to assess where data had originated and
where it was heading, because the origin and destination information would be included in the data packet.116 A centralized governance process, further, which would be required to
change the routing protocols and IP allocation system, would give authoritarian countries significantly more influence over how information
on the Internet is regulated. In fact, this is one of the main reasons why China, Russia, many Arab states (among
others) have pushed for tracked routing protocols in the past, 117 just as they have lobbied for a handover of
the global Internet governance system to the U.N.’s International Telecommunications Union. 118∂ In short,
localization would require dramatic changes to the current structure of the Internet, changes that would have adverse consequences for those who see
it as a principal – if not the principal – means of global democratization. For some, those adverse consequences would be unintended; more chillingly, there are those who intend
precisely those consequences. This would be an enormous price to pay, particularly since the other objectives that are promoted as justifications for localization – namely, security
those involved in Internet governance, although they surely are matters that greatly trouble those who favor an efficient and interoperable Internet.
for communications and economic development – are illusory.∂
Other countries will use US Internet surveillance as an excuse to oppress their citizens
Solash ’13- contributor to SG News, (Richard S., “US Internet surveillance could backfire,”
http://sgnews.ca/2013/07/22/us-internet-surveillance-could-backfire/0-) VD
The University of Toronto's Deibert says the NSA affair could also lead to renewed calls for an international agreement on
cyberspace governance — calls that Internet freedom advocates and Western governments have found problematic in the
past.¶ He recalls a "code of conduct" for cyberspace proposed by China, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan at the UN General
Assembly in 2011 that favored state controls.¶ "The proposals that were made by Russia and other countries at
the UN were more or less fumbles politically and were scuttled for that reason," Deibert says. "But in
the wake of the NSA revelation, I am sure those types of proposals will be resurrected and find much
greater traction among a wide range of swing countries which no doubt are now looking with a great deal
of skepticism towards the United States-led Internet freedom agenda." Some have also expressed concern that
the US government's explanation for its surveillance program — legitimate or not — could be manipulated by
repressive governments: Washington has defended the program as a legally authorized method of helping to guard the
country against terrorist attacks. Countries ranging from China to Belarus to Uzbekistan have previously
rationalized pervasive online censorship under the banner of national security. ¶ Rebecca MacKinnon, an
expert on internet freedom at the New America Foundation in Washington, says the United States can still work against the
misuse of the NSA revelations by foreign governments.¶ Implementing reforms and ensuring accountability is the way to do so,
she says.¶ "The United States needs to absolutely bring its system of surveillance and national security into line with
constitutional checks and balances and if it fails to do so, I think then rest of the world will use our failure to do so as an excuse
to be unaccountable themselves," MacKinnon says. "Unless and until we begin to lead by example, unfortunately,
things are not going to be pretty."
*Internet freedom facilitates democratic transitions—extensive scholarship proves
Nisbet 12
et al 12 – PhD in communication, assistant professor at the School of Communication at The Ohio State University, research on public
diplomacy, foreign policy, comparative democratization, and communication (Erik, “Internet Use and Democratic Demands: A Multinational,
Multilevel Model of Internet Use and Citizen Attitudes About Democracy”, Journal of Communication, April 2012,
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2012.01627.x/epdf)//DBI
Moving from institutions to citizens, an
open question is whether greater Internet penetration and use influence
individual attitudes about democracy? Though not empirically tested, Howard (2009) answers this question in the affirmative,
theorizing that Internet use plays an important role in shaping and mobilizing citizen attitudes about
democracy in transitioning or emerging democracies. Howard asserts that traditional media in nondemocratic
states ‘‘constrains’’ public opinion to those of ruling elites, creating a passive public incapable of
challenging autocratic institutions and power-relations. Leslie (2002) and Howard view the Internet as distinct
from the one-way communication of radio, television, and print media that provide information to an audience, but are incapable
of soliciting immediate feedback. The Internet is lauded as having great democratic potential because it does allow
for feedback and encourages the development of ‘‘participant’’ citizens, as described by Almond and Verba (1963).
Rather than acting as passive receptors of political information, participant citizens are more sophisticated and engage
with political information provided to them and subsequently respond or make ‘‘demands’’ from it (Almond &
Verba, 1963). For example, as Lei (2011) observes in the case of China, the ‘‘Internet has contributed to a more critical and politicized citizenry’’
with ‘‘citizens no longer merely compliant receivers of official discourse’’ (p. 311). In this sense, Howard sees the potential of the Internet,
especially when paired with organizations such as political parties or movements, to promote
the formation of ‘‘mass’’ public
opinion that demands political change within authoritarian or democratizing states.∂ Other scholars also
embrace the Internet’s capacity to promote political change by serving as a pluralistic media platform
(Bratton et al., 2005; Groshek, 2009; Lei, 2011). Bratton and colleagues (2005) argue that media use in transitioning or emerging
democracies ‘‘expands the range of considerations that people bear in forming their political and
economic attitudes,’’ which promotes democratic citizenship and greater demand for democratic
processes and reform (Bratton et al., 2005, p. 209). Media that enjoys low government regulation and high
plurality of content have ‘‘the greatest impact in inducing an audience to reject authoritarian rule,
especially one- party rule,’’ compared to other forms of media use (p. 210). In this context, Groshek (2009) draws upon media dependency
theory (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur, 1976) to argue that Internet
use influences the democratic orientations of
audiences—which in turn promotes (democratic) change in sociopolitical systems in which audiences are embedded.
Internet penetration, in other words, allows citizens to access more pluralistic content that increases citizen
demand for democracy. Increased demand promotes ‘‘bottom-up’’ democratization by increasing the
likelihood of democratic transitions in nondemocratic states or strengthening democratic institutions in
young democracies. Lei (2011) asserts this bottom-up democratization has emerged in China, with ‘‘netizens’’ constituting ‘‘an
important social force that imposes much pressure on the authoritarian state’’ (p. 311). Moreover, this theoretical perspective is
consistent with scholarship examining the role of citizen attitudes in processes of democratization
(Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Mattes & Bratton, 2007; Welzel, 2007).
The Internet is vital to the emergence of global publics – that’s key to democracy
Keane 11 – Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney (John, “Democracy in the Age of Google,
Facebook and WikiLeaks” http://sydney.edu.au/arts/downloads/news/ALR.pdf)
Communicative abundance enables one other trend that is of life-and-death importance to the future of
democracy: the growth of cross-border publics whose footprint is potentially or actually global in scope.∂ The Canadian Scholar
∂
Harold Innis famously showed that communications media like the wheel and the printing press and the telegraph had distance-shrinking effects, but genuinely globalised communication only began (during the nineteenth century)
with overland and underwater telegraphy and the early development of international news agencies like Reuters. The process is currently undergoing an evolutionary jump, thanks to the development of a combination of forces:
weblogs and other specialist computer-networked media, the growth of global
journalism and the expanding and merging flows of international news, electronic data exchange, entertainment and education materials controlled by giant firms like Thorn-EMI,
AOL/Time-Warner, News Corporation International, the BBC, Al Jazeera, Disney, Bertelsmann, Microsoft, Sony and CNN.∂ Global media linkages certainly have downsides
for democracy. Global media integration has encouraged loose talk of the abolition of barriers to communication (John Perry Barlow). It is said to be synonymous with the rise of a ‘McWorld’ (Benjamin Barber)
wide-footprint geo-stationary satellites,
dominated by consumers who dance to the music of logos, advertising slogans, sponsorship, trademarks and jingles. In the most media-saturated societies, such as the United States, global media integration nurtures pockets of
parochialism; citizens who read local ‘content engine’ newspapers like The Desert Sun in Palm Springs or Cheyenne's Wyoming Tribune-Eagle are fed a starvation diet of global stories, which typically occupy no more than about 2%
of column space. And not to be overlooked is the way governments distort global information flows. Protected by what in Washington are called ‘flack packs’ and dissimulation experts, governments cultivate links with trusted or
these fickle countertrends are sobering, but they are not the whole story. For in the age of communicative abundance there
are signs that the spell of parochialism upon citizens is not absolute because global media integration is
having an unanticipated political effect: by nurturing a world stage or theatrum mundi, global journalism and other
acts of communication are slowly but surely cultivating public spheres in which many millions of people scattered
across the earth witness mediated controversies about who gets what, when, and how, on a world
scale.∂ Not all global media events - sporting fixtures, blockbuster movies, media awards, for instance - sustain global publics, which is to say that audiences are not publics and public spheres are not simply domains of
‘embedded’ journalists, organise press briefings and advertising campaigns, so framing - and wilfully distorting and censoring - global events to suit current government policies.∂ All
entertainment or play. Strictly speaking, global publics are scenes of the political. Within global publics, people at various points on the earth witness the powers of governmental and non-governmental organisations being publicly
named, monitored, praised, challenged, and condemned, in defiance of the old tyrannies of time and space and publicly unaccountable power. It is true that global publics are neither strongly institutionalised nor effectively linked
to mechanisms of representative government. This lack is a great challenge for democratic thinking and democratic politics. Global publics are voices without a coherent body politic; it is as if they try to show the world that it
resembles a chrysalis capable of hatching the butterfly of cross-border democracy - despite the fact that we currently have no good account of what ‘regional’ or ‘global’ or ‘cross border’ democratic representation might mean in
global publics have marked political effects, for instance on the suit-and-tie worlds of diplomacy, global
business, inter-governmental meetings and independent non-governmental organizations. Every great
global issue since 1945 - human rights, the dangers of nuclear war, continuing discrimination against
women, the greening of politics - every one of these issues first crystallised within these publics. Global publics sometimes have ‘meta-political’
practice.∂ Still, in spite of everything,
effects, in the sense that they help create citizens of a new global order. The speech addressed to ‘global citizens’ by Barack Obama at the Siegessaule in the Tiergarten in July 2008 is a powerful case in point, a harbinger of a
remarkable trend in which those who are caught up within global publics learn that the boundaries between native and foreigner are blurred. They consequently become footloose. They live here and there; they discover the
‘foreigner’ within themselves.∂ Global publics centred on ground-breaking media events like Live-Aid (in 1985 it attracted an estimated one billion viewers) can be spaces of fun, in which millions taste something of the joy of acting
publicly with and against others for some defined common purpose. When by contrast they come in the form of televised world news of the suffering of distant strangers, global publics highlight cruelty; they make possible what
Hannah Arendt once called the ‘politics of pity’. And especially during dramatic media events - like the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl, the Tiananmen massacre, the 1989 revolutions in central-eastern Europe, the overthrow and
arrest of Slobodan Milosevic, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the recent struggles for dignity in Tunisia and Egypt - public spheres intensify audiences’ shared sense of living their lives contingently, on a knife edge, in the subjunctive
The witnesses of such events (contrary to McLuhan) do not experience uninterrupted togetherness. They do not enter a ‘global village’ dressed in the skins of humankind and thinking in
the terms of a primordial ‘village or tribal outlook’. They instead come to feel the pinch of the world’s power relations; in consequence,
they put matters like representation, accountability and legitimacy on the global political agenda, in
effect by asking whether new democratic measures could inch our little blue and white planet towards greater
openness and humility, potentially to the point where power, wherever it is exercised within and across
borders, would come to feel more ‘biodegradable’, a bit more responsive to those whose lives it
currently shapes and reshapes, secures or wrecks.
tense.∂
Data localization leads to authoritarian information control – collapses democracy
Chandler and Le 15 – Professor of Law, B.A. from UC Davis, J.D. from Harvard; B.A. fom Yale, J.D.
from US Davis
- * Director, California International Law Center, Professor of Law and Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall Research Scholar, University of California,
Davis; A.B., Harvard College; J.D., Yale Law School AND **Free Speech and Technology Fellow, California International Law Center; A.B., Yale
College; J.D., University of California, Davis School of Law (Anupam and Uyen, “DATA NATIONALISM” 64 Emory L.J. 677, lexis)
E. Freedom∂ Information control is central to the survival of authoritarian regimes. Such regimes require the
suppression of adverse information in order to maintain their semblance of authority. This is because "even authoritarian governments allege a
public mandate to govern and assert that the government is acting in the best interests of the people." n280 Information that disturbs the claim
of a popular mandate and a beneficent government is thus to be eliminated at all costs. Opposition newspapers or television is routinely
targeted, with licenses revoked or printing presses confiscated. The
Internet has made this process of information control
far more difficult by giving many dissidents the ability to use services based outside the country to share
information. The Internet has made it harder, though not impossible, for authoritarian regimes to suppress their citizens from both sharing
and learning information. n281 Data localization will erode that liberty-enhancing feature of the Internet.∂ The end result of data
localization is to bring information increasingly under the control of the local authorities, regardless of
whether that was originally intended. The dangers inherent in this are plain. Take the following cases. The official motivation for the Iranian
Internet, as set forth by Iran's [*736] head of economic affairs Ali Aghamohammadi, was to create an Internet that is "a genuinely halal
network, aimed at Muslims on an ethical and moral level," which is also safe from cyberattacks (like Stuxnet) and dangers posed by using
foreign networks. n282 However, human rights activists believe that "based on [the country's] track record, obscenity is just a mask to cover
the government's real desire: to stifle dissent and prevent international communication." n283 An Iranian journalist agreed, "this is a ploy by
the regime," which will "only allow[] [Iranians] to visit permitted websites." n284 More recently, even Iran's Culture Minister Ali Janati
acknowledged this underlying motivation: "We cannot restrict the advance of [such technology] under the pretext of protecting Islamic values."
n285∂ Well aware of this possibility, Internet companies have sought at times to place their servers outside the country in order to avoid the
information held therein being used to target dissidents. Consider one example: when it began offering services in Vietnam, Yahoo! made the
decision to use servers outside the country, perhaps to avoid becoming complicit in that country's surveillance regime. n286 This provides
important context for the new Vietnamese decree mandating local accessibility of data. While the head of the Ministry of Information's Online
Information Section defends Decree 72 as "misunderstood" and consistent with "human rights commitments," n287 the Committee to Protect
Journalists worries that this decree will require "both local and foreign companies that provide Internet services ... to reveal the identities of
users who violate numerous vague prohibitions against certain speech in Vietnamese law." n288 As Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch
argues, "This is a law that has been established for selective persecution. This [*737] is a law that will be used against certain people who have
become a thorn in the side of the authorities in Hanoi." n289∂ Data localization efforts in liberal societies thus offer cover for more pernicious
efforts by authoritarian states. When Brazil's government proposed a data localization mandate, a civil society organization focused on cultural
policies compared the measure to the goals of China and Iran:∂ [SEE FIGURE IN ORIGNIAL]∂ Translated, this reads as follows: "Understand this:
storing data in-country is the Internet dream of China, Iran, and other totalitarian countries, but it is IMPOSSIBLE #MarcoCivil." n290∂ Thus,
perhaps the
most pernicious and long-lasting effect of data localization regulations is the template and
precedent they offer to continue and enlarge such controls. When liberal nations decry efforts to control
information by authoritarian regimes, the authoritarian states will cite our own efforts to bring data
within national control. If liberal states can cite security, privacy, law enforcement, and social economic
reasons to justify data controls, so can authoritarian states. Of course, the Snowden revelations of
widespread U.S. surveillance will themselves justify surveillance efforts by other states. For example, Russia has
begun to use NSA surveillance to justify increasing control over companies such as Facebook and Google. n291 Such rules have led critics to
worry about increasing surveillance powers of the Russian state. n292 Critics caution, "In the future, Russia may even succeed in splintering the
web, [*738] breaking off from the global Internet a Russian intranet that's easier for it to control." n293 Even though officials describe such
rules as being antiterrorist, others see a more sinister motive. The editor of Agentura.ru, Andrei Soldatov, believes that Zheleznyak's proposal is
motivated by the government's desire to control internal dissent. n294 Ivan Begtin, the director of the group Information Culture, echoes this,
arguing that Zheleznyak's surveillance power "will be yet another tool for controlling the Internet." n295 Begtin warns, "In fact, we are moving
very fast down the Chinese path." n296∂ Finally, creating a poor precedent for more authoritarian countries to emulate is not the only impact
on liberty of data localization by liberal states. Even liberal states have used surveillance to undermine the civil rights of their citizens and
residents. n297 The proposal for a German "Internetz" has drawn worries that national routing would require deep packet inspection, raising
fears of extensive surveillance. n298 The newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine argues that not only would a state-sanctioned network provide "no
help against spying," it would lead to "a centralization of surveillance capabilities" for German spy agencies. n299 India's proposed localization
measures in combination with the various surveillance systems in play - including Aadhaar, CMS, National Intelligence Grid (Natgrid), and Netra
- have raised concerns for human rights, including freedom of expression. n300∂ [*739] In addition to concerns regarding human rights
violations based on surveillance and censorship, data localization measures also interfere with the freedom of expression - particular the
"freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontier[]." n301 Preventing citizens from using foreign
political forums because such use might cause personal data to be stored or processed abroad might interfere with an individuals' right to
knowledge. n302 Armed
with the ability to block information from going out and to filter the information
coming in, data location consolidates power in governments by making available an infrastructure for
surveillance and censorship.
That will collapse the global internet
Chandler and Le 15 – Professor of Law, B.A. from UC Davis, J.D. from Harvard; B.A. fom Yale, J.D.
from US Davis
- * Director, California International Law Center, Professor of Law and Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall Research Scholar, University of California,
Davis; A.B., Harvard College; J.D., Yale Law School AND **Free Speech and Technology Fellow, California International Law Center; A.B., Yale
College; J.D., University of California, Davis School of Law (Anupam and Uyen, “DATA NATIONALISM” 64 Emory L.J. 677, lexis)
The era of a global Internet may be passing. Governments across the world are putting up barriers to the
free flow of information across borders. Driven by concerns over privacy, security, surveillance, and law
enforcement, governments are erecting borders in cyberspace, breaking apart the World Wide Web. The first
generation of Internet border controls sought to keep information out of a country - from Nazi paraphernalia to copyright infringing material.
n1 The new generation of Internet border controls seeks not to keep information out but rather to keep data in. Where the first generation was
relatively narrow in the information excluded, the new generation seeks to keep all data about individuals within a country.∂ Efforts
to
keep data within national borders have gained traction in the wake of revelations of widespread
electronic spying by United States intelligence agencies. n2 Governments across the world, indignant at the recent disclosures,
have cited foreign surveillance as an argument to prevent data from leaving their borders, allegedly into foreign hands. n3 As the argument
[*680] goes, placing data in other nations jeopardizes the security and privacy of such information. We define "data localization" measures as
those that specifically encumber the transfer of data across national borders. These measures take a wide variety of forms - including rules
preventing information from being sent outside the country, rules requiring prior consent of the data subject before information is transmitted
across national borders, rules requiring copies of information to be stored domestically, and even a tax on the export of data. We argue here
that data
localization will backfire and that it in fact undermines privacy and security, while still leaving
data vulnerable to foreign surveillance. Even more importantly, data localization increases the ability of
governments to surveil and even oppress their own populations.∂ Imagine an Internet where data must stop at national
borders, examined to see whether it is allowed to leave the country and possibly taxed when it does. While this may sound fanciful, this is
precisely the impact of various measures undertaken or planned by many nations to curtail the flow of data outside their borders. Countries
around the world are in the process of creating Checkpoint Charlies - not just for highly secret national
security data but for ordinary data about citizens. The very nature of the World Wide Web is at stake. We
will show how countries across the world have implemented or have planned dramatic steps to curtail the flow of information outside their
borders. By creating national barriers to data, data localization measures break up the World Wide Web, which was designed to share
information across the globe. n4 The Internet is a global network based on a protocol for interconnecting computers without regard for
national borders. Information is routed across this network through decisions made autonomously and automatically at local routers, which
choose paths based largely on efficiency, unaware of political borders. n5 Thus, the services built on the Internet, from email to the World
[*681] Wide Web, pay little heed to national borders. Services such as cloud computing exemplify this, making the physical locations for the
storage and processing of their data largely invisible to users. Data
localization would dramatically alter this fundamental
architecture of the Internet.∂ Such a change poses a mortal threat to the new kind of international trade
made possible by the Internet - information services such as those supplied by Bangalore or Silicon Valley. n6 Barriers of distance or
immigration restrictions had long kept such services confined within national borders. But the new services of the Electronic Silk Road often
depend on processing information about the user, information that crosses borders from the user's country to the service provider's country.
Data localization would thus require the information service provider to build out a physical, local infrastructure in every jurisdiction in which it
operates, increasing costs and other burdens enormously for both providers and consumers and rendering many of such global services
impossible.∂ While others have observed some of the hazards of data localization, especially for American companies, n7 this Article offers
three major advances over earlier work in the area. First, while the earlier analyses have referred to a data localization measure in a country in
the most general of terms, our Article provides a detailed legal description of localization measures. Second, by examining a variety of key
countries around the world, the study allows us to see the forms in which data localization is emerging and the justifications offered for such
measures in both liberal and illiberal states. Third, the Article works to comprehensively refute the various arguments for data localization
offered around the world, showing that data localization measures are in fact likely to undermine security, privacy, economic development, and
innovation where adopted.∂ [*682] Our paper proceeds as follows. Part I describes the particular data localization measures in place or
proposed in different countries around the world, as well as in the European Union. Part II then discusses the justifications commonly offered
for these measures - such as avoiding foreign surveillance, enhancing security and privacy, promoting economic development, and facilitating
domestic law enforcement. We appraise these arguments, concluding that, in fact, such measures are likely to backfire on all fronts.
Data
localization will erode privacy and security without rendering information free of foreign surveillance,
while at the same time increasing the risks of domestic surveillance.
Mandatory data localization wrecks US internet company competitiveness and US
internet freedom – also threatens the functioning of the internet itself
Kehl, 14 – Policy Analyst at New America’s Open Technology Institute (Danielle, “Surveillance Costs: The
NSA’s Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom & Cybersecurity” July,
https://www.newamerica.org/oti/surveillance-costs-the-nsas-impact-on-the-economy-internetfreedom-cybersecurity/
Some analysts have questioned whether data localization and protection proposals are politically motivated and if they would actually enhance
privacy and security for ordinary individuals living in foreign countries,160 especially given the existence of similar laws in a number of countries
and Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs) between nations that provide cross-border access to data stored for lawful investigations.161 Yet
there is no doubt that American
companies will pay a steep price if these policies move forward. Mandatory
data localization laws could lead to soaring costs for major Internet companies such as Google,
Facebook, and Twitter, who would be faced with the choice of investing in additional, duplicative
infrastructure and data centers in order to comply with new regulations or pulling their business out of
the market altogether.162 In testimony before Congress last November, for example, Google’s Director of Law Enforcement and
Information Security suggested that requirements being discussed in Brazil could be so onerous that they would
effectively bar Google from doing business in the country.163 The penalties that companies face for violating these new
rules are also significant. In some cases, unless U.S. policy changes, it may be virtually impossible for American
companies to avoid violating either domestic or foreign laws when operating overseas.164 The costs and legal
challenges could easily prevent firms from expanding in the first place or cause them to leave existing markets because they are no longer
profitable.165 ITIF’s Daniel Castro has suggested that data privacy rules and other restrictions could slow the growth of the U.S. technologyservices industry by as much as four percent.166∂ Data
localization proposals also threaten to undermine the
functioning of the Internet, which was built on protocols that send packets over the fastest and most
efficient route possible, regardless of physical location. If actually implemented, policies like those suggested by India and
Brazil would subvert those protocols by altering the way Internet traffic is routed in order to exert more national control over data.167 The
localization of Internet traffic may also have significant ancillary impacts on privacy and human rights by making it easier for countries to
engage in national surveillance, censorship, and persecution of online dissidents, particularly where countries have a history of violating human
rights and ignoring rule of law.168 “Ironically, data
localization policies will likely degrade – rather than improve –
data security for the countries considering them, making surveillance, protection from which is the
ostensible reason for localization, easier for domestic governments, if not foreign powers, to achieve,”
writes Jonah Force Hill.169 The rise in data localization and data protection proposals in response to NSA
surveillance threatens not only U.S. economic interests, but also Internet Freedom around the world.
The last tech bubble caused premiums to go sky high – natural bubbles ruin the
economy
Tabb 04 [Tabb, William K.. Economic Governance in the Age of Globalization. New York, NY, USA:
Columbia University Press, 2004. ProQuest eLibrary. Web. 19 July 2015.]//kmc
If war and terrorism are to frame the world’s prospects a number of costly consequences follow for
important sectors such as the travel industry, airlines and hotels, and more widely in such aspects as the cost of insurance coverage for
buildings, ships, and factories for which premiums jumped in a number of locations in the wake of military activity in the
Persian Gulf. Security concerns add to the cost of transporting goods and can have an impact on industries whose products are considered
strategic. William Archey, president of the American Electronics Association, fearing more restrictions on sales, spoke for the thousands of
companies he represented of the impact of export controls. Two
years after the high tech bubble had peaked, the sector
had lost over half a million jobs, and fear of a security state augured to make matters worse. Archey’s
members, he said, “are worried that politicians will take a short sighted approach to national security
that will not make us more secure but will harm our economy” (Foremski, 2003: 1). U.S.-based producers
were losing out to overseas competitors who were profiting from those restrictions. The group was also alarmed
at massive cutbacks to education from squeezed state budgets. “We need well-educated people; it is what feeds the high
tech sector,” he said adding that loss of a skilled workforce would push firms to go abroad. His was not
the only industry which expressed such concerns.
The tech bubble isn’t real – venture capital, demand
Harris 7/16 [Melissa, 2015. Hate to burst your bubble, but tech investment is healthy.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/ct-harris-tech-bubble-0717-biz-20150716column.html 7/19]//kmc
The tech bubble doesn't exist.∂ That's the point of a 53-slide presentation last month in which three partners from the Silicon Valley
venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz supplied evidence that the tech market is nowhere near the mania levels of 1999 and 2000.∂
Andreessen Horowitz's data show that private and public funding for tech companies remains at about
40 percent of what it was in 1999. There's been no surge in venture capital fundraising. It's rising but still
below 2006 levels. And venture capital funding as a percentage of the gross domestic product created
by the sector is down by half since 1980.∂ There's also a real market for these businesses now. The
number of Internet users has increased from 738 million in 2000 to 3.2 billion in 2015, according to a
new report from the International Telecommunication Union. Venture funding per person online has
been flat since the bubble, while people are spending more on it.∂ Yes, the S&P 500 Information Technology Index is
approaching 1999 levels but this time, Andreessen Horowitz argues, profits are driving these returns with price-to-earnings multiples at early
1990s levels.∂ (A price-to-earnings ratio is the current price of a share of stock divided by its earnings per share. A large multiple can signal that
the market's perception of the company is inflated.)∂ "The price-to-earnings ratio of the tech component of the S&P is in fact lower than for the
index as a whole," Bloomberg reported.∂ Instead,
almost all of the returns are being had in private markets,
meaning without a company going public. In other words, you have to know someone or be a large
institutional investor to be able to buy equity in privately held companies like Uber even though its
estimated worth is some $40 billion.∂ Overall dollars raised by technology companies are being
dominated by such deals.∂ The good news is that mom-and-pops can't bet their retirement funds on Uber.
Censorship Bad -> Localization
Censorship creates inconsistencies within internet localization that spurs innovation
to bypass them.
Deibert, 15- (Ron Deibert is director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. He is the author of Black
Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet (2013). He was a co-founder and principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative
(2003–14).) “Cyberspace Under Siege” Journal of Democracy Volume 26, Number 3, July 2015, Project Muse, //droneofark
First-generation controls tend to be “defensive,” and involve erecting national cyberborders that limit citizens’ access to information from
abroad. The archetypal example is the Great Firewall of China, a system for filtering keywords and URLs to control what computer users within
the country can see on the Internet. Although few countries have matched the Great Firewall (Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, and
Vietnam have come the closest), first-generation controls are common. Indeed, Internet filtering of one sort or another is now normal even in
democracies. Where
countries vary is in terms of the content targeted for blocking and the transparency of
filtering practices. Some countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, block
content [End Page 65] related to the sexual exploitation of children as well as content that infringes
copyrights. Other countries focus primarily on guarding religious sensitivities. Since September 2012, Pakistan has
been blocking all of YouTube over a video, titled “Innocence of Muslims,” that Pakistani authorities deem blasphemous.4 A growing
number of countries are blocking access to political and security-related content, especially content
posted by opposition and human-rights groups, insurgents, “extremists,” or “terrorists.” Those last two terms
are in quotation marks because in some places, such as the Gulf states, they are defined so broadly that content is blocked which in most other
countries would fall within the bounds of legitimate expression. National-level
Internet filtering is notoriously crude.
Errors and inconsistencies are common. One Citizen Lab study found that Blue Coat (a U.S. software widely used to automate
national filtering systems) mistakenly blocked hundreds of nonpornographic websites.5 Another Citizen Lab study found that Oman residents
were blocked from a Bollywood-related website not because it was banned in Oman, but because of upstream filtering in India, the passthrough country for a portion of Oman’s Internet traffic.6 In Indonesia, Internet-censorship rules are applied at the level of Internet Service
Providers (ISPs). The country has more than three-hundred of these; what you can see online has much to do with which one you use.7
As
censorship extends into social media and applications, inconsistencies bloom, as is famously the case in
China. In some countries, a user cannot see the filtering, which displays as a “network error.” Although
relatively easy to bypass and document,8 first-generation controls have won enough acceptance to have
opened the door to more expansive measures. Second-generation controls are best thought of as
deepening and extending information controls into society through laws, regulations, or requirements
that force the private sector to do the state’s bidding by policing privately owned and operated
networks according to the state’s demands. Second-generation controls can now be found in every region of the world, and
their number is growing. Turkey is passing new laws, on the pretext of protecting national security and fighting cybercrime, that will expand
wiretapping and other surveillance and detention powers while allowing the state to censor websites without a court order. Ethiopia charged
six bloggers from the Zone 9 group and three independent journalists with terrorism and treason after they covered political issues. Thailand is
considering new cybercrime laws that would grant authorities the right to access emails, telephone records, computers, and postal mail
without needing prior court approval. Under reimposed martial [End Page 66] law, Egypt has tightened regulations on demonstrations and
arrested prominent bloggers, including Arab Spring icon Alaa Abd El Fattah. Saudi blogger Raif Badawi is looking at ten years in jail and 950
remaining lashes (he received the first fifty lashes in January 2015) for criticizing Saudi clerics online. Tunisia passed broad reforms after the
Arab Spring, but even there a blogger has been arrested under an obscure older law for “defaming the military” and “insulting military
commanders” on Facebook. Between 2008 and March 2015 (when the Supreme Court struck it down), India had a law that banned “menacing”
or “offensive” social-media posts. In 2012, Renu Srinavasan of Mumbai found herself arrested merely for hitting the “like” button below a
friend’s Facebook post. In Singapore, blogger and LGBT activist Alex Au was fined in March 2015 for criticizing how a pair of court cases was
handled. Second-generation
controls also include various forms of “baked-in” surveillance, censorship, and
“backdoor” functionalities that governments, wielding their licensing authority, require manufacturers
and service providers to build into their products. Under new antiterrorism laws, Beijing recently announced that it would
require companies offering services in China to turn over encryption keys for state inspection and build into all systems backdoors open to
police and security agencies. Existing
regulations already require social-media companies to survey and censor
their own networks. Citizen Lab has documented that many chat applications popular in China come preconfigured with censorship and
surveillance capabilities.9 For many years, the Russian government has required telecommunications companies and ISPs to be “SORM-
compliant”—SORM is the Russian acronym for the surveillance system that directs copies of all electronic communications to local security
offices for archiving and inspection. In like fashion, India’s Central Monitoring System gives the government direct access to the country’s
telecommunications networks. Agents can listen in on broadband phone calls, SMS messages, and email traffic, while all call-data records are
archived and analyzed. In Indonesia, where BlackBerry smartphones remain popular, the government has repeatedly pressured Canada-based
BlackBerry Limited to comply with “lawful-access” demands, even threatening to ban the company’s services unless BlackBerry agreed to host
data on servers in the country. Similar demands have come from India, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The company has even
agreed to bring Indian technicians to Canada for special surveillance training.10 Also
spreading are new laws that ban security
and anonymizing tools, including software that permits users to bypass first-generation blocks. Iran has
arrested those who distribute circumvention tools, and it has throttled Internet traffic to frustrate users trying to connect to popular
circumvention and anonymizer tools such as Psiphon and Tor. Belarus and Russia have both recently proposed making Tor and similar tools
illegal. China has banned virtual private networks (VPNs) nationwide—the [End Page 67] latest in a long line of such bans—despite the
difficulties that this causes for business. Pakistan has banned encryption since 2011, although its widespread use in financial and other
communications inside the country suggests that enforcement is lax. The United Arab Emirates has banned VPNs, and police there have
stressed that individuals caught using them may be charged with violating the country’s harsh cybercrime laws. Second-generation
controls include finer-grained registration and identification requirements that tie people to specific
accounts or devices, or even require citizens to obtain government permission before using the Internet.
Pakistan has outlawed the sale of prepaid SIM cards and demands that all citizens register their SIM cards using biometric identification
technology. The Thai military junta has extended such registration rules to cover free WiFi accounts as well. China has imposed real-name
registration policies on Internet and social-media accounts, and companies have dutifully deleted tens of thousands of accounts that could not
be authenticated. Chinese users must also commit to respect the seven “baselines,” including “laws and regulations, the Socialist system, the
national interest, citizens’ lawful rights and interests public order, morals, and the veracity of information.”11 By
expanding the reach
of laws and broad regulations, second-generation controls narrow the space left free for civil society,
and subject the once “wild frontier” of the Internet to growing regulation. While enforcement may be
uneven, in country after country these laws hang like dark clouds over civil society, creating a climate of
uncertainty and fear.
Aff solves Democracy
The aff is an example of providing greater accountability and HR reliance to solve back
for anti-democratic rhetoric—sill solves for democracy.
Deibert, 15- (Ron Deibert is director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. He is the author of Black
Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet (2013). He was a co-founder and principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative
(2003–14).) “Cyberspace Under Siege” Journal of Democracy Volume 26, Number 3, July 2015, Project Muse, //droneofark
Since June 2013, barely a month has gone by without new revelations concerning U.S. and allied spying—revelations that flow from the
disclosures made by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The disclosures fill in the picture of a remarkable effort to marshal extraordinary
capacities for information control across the entire spectrum of cyberspace. The Snowden revelations will continue to fuel an important public
debate about the proper balance to be struck between liberty and security. While
the value of Snowden’s disclosures in
helping to start a long-needed discussion is undeniable, the revelations have also had unintended [End
Page 74] consequences for resurgent authoritarianism and cyberspace. First, they have served to deflect
attention away from authoritarian-regime cyberespionage campaigns such as China’s. Before Snowden fled to
Hong Kong, U.S. diplomacy was taking an aggressive stand against cyberespionage. Individuals in the pay of the Chinese military and allegedly
linked to Chinese cyberespionage were finding themselves under indictment. Since Snowden, the pressure on China has eased. Beijing,
Moscow, and others have found it easy to complain loudly about a double standard supposedly favoring
the United States while they rationalize their own actions as “normal” great-power behavior and
congratulate themselves for correcting the imbalance that they say has beset cyberspace for too long.
Second, the disclosures have created an atmosphere of suspicion around Western governments’
intentions and raised questions about the legitimacy of the “Internet Freedom” agenda backed by the
United States and its allies. Since the Snowden disclosures—revealing top-secret exploitation and disruption programs that in some
respects are indistinguishable from those that Washington and its allies have routinely condemned—the rhetoric of the Internet
Freedom coalition has rung rather hollow. In February 2015, it even came out that British, Canadian, and
U.S. signals-intelligence agencies had been “piggybacking” on China-based cyberespionage campaigns—
stealing data from Chinese hackers who had not properly secured their own command-and-control
networks.28 Third, the disclosures have opened up foreign investment opportunities for IT companies
that used to run afoul of national-security concerns. Before Snowden, rumors of hidden “backdoors” in Chinese-made
technology such as Huawei routers put a damper on that company’s sales. Then it came out that the United States and allied governments had
been compelling (legally or otherwise) U.S.-based tech companies to do precisely what many had feared China was doing—namely, installing
secret backdoors. So now Western companies have a “Huawei” problem of their own, and Huawei no longer looks so bad. In
the longer
term, the Snowden disclosures may have the salutary effect of educating a large number of citizens
about mass surveillance. In the nearer term, however, the revelations have handed countries other than
the United States and its allies an opportunity for the self-interested promotion of local IT wares under
the convenient rhetorical guise of striking a blow for “technological sovereignty” and bypassing U.S.
information controls. There was a time when authoritarian regimes seemed like slow-footed, technologically challenged dinosaurs
whom the Information Age was sure to put on a path toward ultimate extinction. That time is no more—these regimes have proven themselves
surprisingly (and dismayingly) light-footed and adaptable.
National-level information controls are now deeply
entrenched and growing. Authoritarian regimes are becoming more active and assertive, sharing norms,
technologies, and “best” practices with one [End Page 75] another as they look to shape cyberspace in ways
that legitimize their national interests and domestic goals. Sadly, prospects for halting these trends
anytime soon look bleak. As resurgent authoritarianism in cyberspace increases, civil society will
struggle: A web of ever more fine-grained information controls tightens the grip of unaccountable elites.
Given the comprehensive range of information controls outlined here, and their interlocking sources deep within societies, economies, and
political systems, it
is clear that an equally comprehensive approach to the problem is required. Those who
seek to promote human rights and democracy through cyberspace will err gravely if they stick to highprofile “Internet Freedom” conferences or investments in “secure apps” and digital training. No amount
of rhetoric or technological development alone will solve a problem whose roots run this deep and cut
across the borders of so many regions and countries. What we need is a patient, multipronged, and well-grounded
approach across numerous spheres, with engagement in a variety of venues. Researchers, investigative journalists, and others must learn to
pay more attention to developments in regional security settings and obscure trade fairs. The
long-term goal should be to open
these venues to greater civil society participation and public accountability so that considerations of
human rights and privacy are at least raised, even if not immediately respected. The private sector now
gathers and retains staggering mountains of data about countless millions of people. It is no longer enough for
states to conduct themselves according to the principles of transparency, accountability, and oversight that democracy prizes; the companies
that own and operate cyberspace—and that often come under tremendous pressure from states—must do so as well.
Export controls
and “smart sanctions” that target rights-offending technologies without infringing on academic freedom
can play a role. A highly distributed, independent, and powerful system of cyberspace verification
should be built on a global scale that monitors for rights violations, dual-use technologies, targeted
malware attacks, and privacy breaches. A model for such a system might be found in traditional arms-control verification
regimes such as the one administered by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Or it might come from the research of
academic groups such as Citizen Lab, or the setup of national computer emergency-response teams (CERTs) once these are freed from their
current subordination to parochial national-security concerns.29 However
it is ultimately constituted, there needs to be a
system for monitoring cyberspace rights and freedoms that is globally distributed and independent of
governments and the private sector. Finally, we need models of cyberspace security that can show us
how to prevent disruptions or threats to life and property without sacrificing liberties and rights.
Internet-freedom advocates must reckon with [End Page 76] the realization that a free, open, and secure
cyberspace will materialize only within a framework of democratic oversight, public accountability,
transparent checks and balances, and the rule of law. For individuals living under authoritarianism’s heavy hand, achieving
such lofty goals must sound like a distant dream. Yet for those who reside in affluent countries, especially ones where these principles have lost
ground to antiterror measures and mass-surveillance programs, fighting for them should loom as an urgent priority and a practically achievable
first step on the road to remediation.
AT: Cloud computing Bad
Cloud Computing solves Warming
Green cloud computing solves the warming impact
Zhang et al. 11, (Yanwei, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Master of Science, “
GreenWare: Greening Cloud-Scale Data Centers to Maximize the Use of Renewable
Energy”http://www2.ece.ohio-state.edu/~xwang/papers/middleware11.pdf)
In this paper, we propose GreenWare, a novel middleware system that conducts dynamic request
dispatching to maximize the percentage of renewable energy used to power a network of distributed
data centers, subject to the desired cost budgets of Internet service operators. We first model the
intermittent generation of renewable energy, i.e., wind power and solar power, with respect to the
varying weather conditions in the geographical location of each data center. For example, the available
wind power generated from wind turbines is modeled based on the ambient wind speed [35,9], while
the available solar power from solar plants is estimated by modeling the maximum power point on
irradiance (i.e., solar energy per unit area of the solar panel’s face) and temperature [31,41]. Based on
the models, we formulate the core objective of GreenWare as a constrained optimization problem, in
which the constraints capture the Quality of Service (QoS, e.g., response time) requirements from
customers, the intermittent availabilities of renewable energy in different locations, the peak power
limit of each data center, and the monthly cost budget of the Internet service operator. We then
transfer the optimization problem into a linear-fractional programming (LFP) formulation for an efficient
request dispatching solution with a polynomial time average complexity. Specifically, this paper makes
the following major contributions: – We propose a novel GreenWare middleware system in operating
geographically distributed cloud-scale data centers. GreenWare dynamically dispatches incoming service
requests among different data centers, based on the timevarying electricity prices and availabilities of
renewable energy in their geographical locations, to maximize the use of renewable energy, while
enforcing the monthly budget determined by the Internet service operator. – We explicitly model
renewable energy generation, i.e., wind turbines and solar panels, with respect to the varying weather
conditions in the geographical location of each data center. As a result, our solution can effectively
handle the intermittent supplies of renewable energy. – We formulate the core objective of GreenWare
as a constrained optimization problem and propose an efficient request dispatching solution based on
LFP. – We evaluate GreenWare with real-world weather, electricity price, and workload traces. Our
experimental results show that GreenWare can significantly reduce the dependence of cloud-scale data
centers on fossil-fuel-based energy without violating the desired cost budget, despite the intermittent
supplies of renewable energy and time-varying electricity prices and workloads.
Cloud Computing Solves Environment
Cloud computing is good for the environment – prefer actual studies with comparative
analysis to the squo rather than their uncontextual evidence
Matthews 13, (Richard, The Green Market Group President, Owner/President Small
Business Consulting, “How Environmentally Sustainable is Cloud Computing and
Storage?”, http://globalwarmingisreal.com/2013/09/12/sustainable-cloudcomputing/)
The case for the cloud being environmentally sustainable Many see the cloud as a key feature
of IT environmental sustainability. Cloud infrastructure addresses two critical elements of a green
IT approach: energy efficiency and resource efficiency. As explained by BSR, “Cloud services
make a positive contribution to sustainability: The cloud encourages important clean-tech
applications like smart grids and it also encourages consumers to use virtual services such as video
streaming to replace resource-heavy physical products. The cloud also draws resources to where
they are used most efficiently and its jobs tend to be cleaner and safer than those of more
traditional industries.” Saving energy, money, time, hardware and waste The cloud saves
energy and provides more efficient supplier management. Another of the cloud’s green attributes
take the form of “dematerializing” the economy which involves reducing the number of physical
materials. The cloud’s efficiency and scalability help reduce energy usage and trash. By reducing
the need for hardware, companies can reduce costs and eliminate the need for maintenance
and upgrades. The cloud offers cheaper running costs and more flexibility for businesses hoping to
expand. The cloud is ideal for businesses with time sensitive data, and it significantly reduces
computing time and expenses. The cloud also increases productivity through its ability to
accommodate online collaboration that reduces the need for face to face meetings. Many of the
firms interviewed by Verdantix reported cost savings as a primary motivator for adopting
the cloud, with anticipated cost reductions as high as 40 to 50 percent. According to a
report by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) titled Cloud Computing: The IT Solution for
the 21st Century, cloud computing can save U.S. Companies $12 billion. A 2011 Pike Research
report titled “Cloud Computing Energy Efficiency,” said data center energy consumption will
drop by 31 percent from 2010 to 2020 due to the continued adoption of cloud computing and other
virtualized data options. The technological reason for these energy savings is that the cloud uses
energy in a more streamlined and efficient way than traditional, in-house data centers. Cloud
computing uses multi-tenant architecture and this tends to be more efficient than the
typical, single-tenant, statically-allocated data centers. Carbon reduction The cloud reduces
carbon emissions through minimized energy requirements. According to the CDP report,
offsite servers have the potential to prevent 85.7 million metric tons of annual carbon
emissions by 2020. Research carried out by Google suggested that businesses could save around
60-85 percent on their energy costs simply by switching to a cloud facility. The environmental
impact of these substantial reductions in energy are significant. One study surveying the
clients of Salesforce, a fast-growing cloud computing giant, suggested carbon reductions of
95 percent compared to companies with servers on their premises. “The Salesforce
community saved an estimated 170,900 tons of carbon in 2010—the equivalent of taking 37,000
cars off the road, or avoiding the consumption of 19.5 million gallons of gas.” said Marc Benioff,
Salesforce’s chairman and CEO. A 2010 study from Accenture, Microsoft and WSP
Environment and Energy reported a huge impact of the cloud on CO2 emissions. They
found out that businesses with systems and applications on the cloud could reduce peruser carbon footprint by 30 percent for large companies and 90 percent for small
businesses. Cloud providers are getting even more efficient with companies like Cheeky Munkey
further diminishing environmental impacts by using servers designed to use hardware as efficiently
as possible, driving down energy resource and also keeping costs low.
We will link turn this bad impact with our even worse advantage scenario (seriously is
advantage is a joke) – even if they win squo computing is bad innovations solve –
there’s only a risk we improve the market
Foster 11, (Pete, Pete Foster is a writer, researcher and consultant on sustainable
information and communications technologies, "Cloud computing – a green opportunity
or climate change risk?”, http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/cloudcomputing-climate-change)
Cloud computing enables users to to share resources and carry out tasks remotely. Rather than using
your own local PCs or servers to do the work, you connect to a remote data centre, often provided by an
IT services or software company. It means more computing is migrating to purpose-built data centres.
From a low carbon perspective it's no bad thing. Data centres tend to be more energy efficient than
individual servers distributed around an organisation and, while there is still vast room for
improvement, many companies are working to make their computing facilities more energy efficient.
Software and IT services suppliers, for example, have been vying to be seen as the greenest provider –
apart from the PR value there is a great deal of money to be saved in greater energy efficiency. There is
also growing evidence of the extent of energy and emissions that can be saved from cloud computing. A
report from cleantech market intelligence firm Pike Research found that the adoption of cloud
computing will lead to a 38% reduction in worldwide data centre energy expenditure by 2020, compared
to what would otherwise be used. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) reached a similar conclusion,
finding that large US companies that use cloud computing will be able to save $12.3bn in energy costs
and 85.7 million metric tons of CO2 emissions annually by 2020. The energy savings are equivalent to
200 million barrels of oil – enough to power 5.7 million cars for one year.