hi clo,
i think this is the moment to strike a different balance between digital liberty and the state if it is ever going to happen.
used to think this would happen via secure client hardware. but looks to me like the keys won't be controlled by end users and/or that governments will have their own copies. so that avenue is blocked.
the international internet service providers and social media companies are surely going to have more of an arm's length relationship with the us government going forwards. they have been made to look very foolish and their businesses have been badly harmed.
if i was facebook or google, i'd move my hq offshore. you can't be a good us citizen and a trustworthy international service provider if the us treats foreign citizens as having second-class rights.
so this is an economically doom-laden set of policies. if the us courts and government want the "security" of being able to read all correspondence, then us citizens lose their privacy and will end up much poorer.
if they act in a way that honours privacy and only targets bad actors, then the us gets to keep its economy. this is obama's choice.
or it can treat the rest of the world as unexceptional and end up creating the thing it fears.
the greatest protection against future 911s is the horror of the first one. the us had the whole world on its side before it invaded iraq. but it responded to aq by going nuts. and has been losing the respect of folks who might be its allies.
the people i speak with generally think the us is resorting to bullying more as its influence diminishes. in the end, if the us behaves in nasty ways, non-us people will just avoid interacting.
that's a shame. but the us government keeps thinking and behaving the same way. america is the exceptional country!
humility is always more appealing than arrogance.
the greatest security comes from folks generally liking and respecting you. that is the place i begin when thinking about keeping the world safe from terrorism.
how do you get people to join up to aq against a country folks think was unfairly harmed and that generally acts with kindness and decency to other peoples? that's a hard sell for extremists. i like things to be as difficult as possible for those kinds of people.
but you go down the road of assassination, torture, mass surveillance - you make it easy for them.
these us intelligence guys are so linear it's scary.
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