View source for Technology Can Be a Force for Liberation


Introduction to the Persian edition of the science fiction novel Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow, London, June 2008

Available for free download via http://www.archive.org/details/LilBroPersian, under the "Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0" Creative Commons license.


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I wrote this book because I believe that technology can be a
force for liberation. Not always, and not easily, but nevertheless.
I grew up in Canada, but my family were Soviet refugees;
my father was born in a Displaced Persons camp in Azerbaijan.
When WWII ended, my grandparents didn’t go home to
Russia (where my grandmother was from) or Poland (where my
grandfather’s family was). Instead, they left the USSR behind,
crossing all the way through it to come to Canada and start new
lives in Toronto.

They left because the Stalinist program was a nightmarish marriage
of totalitarianism and technology. There have always been
repressive governments that declared that they had absolute dominion
over their citizens’ lives. But without technology, the
state’s power was always constrained to what could practically
be accomplished: a state can only employ so many secret policemen
before everyone is spying on everyone else, and no one
is keeping the trains running, no one is harvesting the fields, no
one is making sure the lights stay on.

But technology multiplies the secret policeman’s power. With
wiretaps, hidden cameras, powerful databases and data-mining,
the state is able to turn every snitch into a superman, whose
ears can hear sounds from across the nation, whose eyes can be
everywhere.

That was the disastrous nature of Stalinism: the authoritarian
urge, coupled with technology to realize it.

But technology isn’t inherently a tool of control. Rather, it is a
tool of disruption: whatever the status quo, technology makes it
possible to upend it. Technology gives the advantage to attackers
over defenders. This is a lesson as old as medieval sieges: the
same earth-moving technology that made it possible to protect a
city with high walls and ramparts also made it possible to tear
them down. The difference was that the wall-builders needed
to erect a perfect and flawless wall, while the attackers merely
needed to find a single flaw to bring it down and pour into the
city.

So the Soviet Union built a tower of surveillance with technology.

In East Germany, the secret police maintained files on
practically every person in the country. In Finland, during the
Soviet occupation, the KGB (Russian secret police), took over
the 12-storey Hotel Torni (the tallest building in Helsinki) as
headquarters. When they left, the Finns discovered a network of
20 kilometers of wire-tapping wire in the walls, as each spy used
technology to surveil the other spies.

And then the citizens of the Soviet Union dismantled their
society with technology. Old technology was inadequate: typewriters
could be uniquely identified based on the idiosyncrasies of
their keys; printing presses were huge and hard to disguise; tuberadios
were bulky and easily detected. But new technologies –
computers, electric typewriters, fax machines, miniature radios –
made it possible to fly under the surveillance state’s radar.

And just as technology toppled the Stalinist regime, it liberated
people all around the world. In the summer of 1979, I was eight
years old, and we’d just gotten an Apple ][+ personal computer.

It had a modem, and through that modem, I was able to go
practically anywhere on the planet. Through the nascent network
of BBSes and information services, I had access to tools, ideas
and communities that would have been beyond the reach of all
but the richest and most powerful adults until then.

All through my adolescence, technology was a source of personal
and generational liberation. We were free to go places,
conduct dialog, and expand our horizons and autonomy through
networks, computers and phones. Organizing group activities,
from grand demonstrations to trivial dinner parties, grew easier
day by day.

But technology disrupts. Even as technology was liberating
a generation, another generation was finding in it an oppressor.

By the time I was leaving university, high school students were
discovering that their schools were using technology to spy on
every click, every IM, every email. Little kids discovered that
their parents could install software on their phones that used the
in-built GPS to track their every step, like a paroled felon wearing
an ankle-cuff.

Hence Little Brother: a novel about the next turning point.

A novel about the moment when technology shifts again, giving
power back to the individual and groups of individuals to rebalance
the oppressive might of the state.

The technologies outlined in this book are real: cryptographic
tools, proxies, and other systems can be used to effectively evade
surveillance and control. But they aren’t perfect, and they aren’t
easy. As the attacker, trying to disrupt the system, technology
gives you the advantage. As the defender, trying to keep the system
from eavesdropping on your conversations, technology gives
the advantage to your enemies.

It is not enough to find a tool that claims to be ”secure.” To be
secure, you need to understand what the technology is making
you secure against, and you need to evaluate whether there are
avenues of attack left open. Email encryption can keep your communications
secret, but what if the recipient stores unencypted
backups on a server that can be seized by the state? Encrypting
your hard drive can keep its contents secret from the police, but
what if the police simply jail you for refusing to give them the
password?

Encryption, proxies and social networking tools are powerful
ways to increase the power of individual and to form groups to
take action. But they are not perfect, and can even open up
new vulnerabilities: a compromised social network can be used
to implicate all your friends, comrades and family members, a
keylogger on your computer puts every keystroke in the hands of
spies and bullies.

Being informed, being critical, and being alert are all mandatory. The existence of a security technology isn’t an opportunity
to relax your guard: it’s a warning to increase it. Every time you
find yourself marvelling at the power of a new tool, imagine not
just how you’d use it, but how it might be used against you.
Be careful. Be safe. Be free."



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