Surveillance as Social Disorder - Andrea Togni | Web3Privacy Now - Rome Meetup 2024

[Music] thanks um thanks a lot uh PG for the introduction and also uh to you and to M and to the web three privacy Community for organizing this uh wonderful uh Meetup um it's a bit it's a little bit weird to talk about surveillance at a privacy Meetup so um but I think that yes thank you thank you thank you which one okay yeah uh but I think that it is pretty important because if we want to advance privacy and if you want to advance uh Freedom we should be able to adopt the worldview of the people that also um are against uh privacy and freedom and uh if we understand how they think maybe we are able to defend ourself in a in a better way so just a sec yeah ah okay okay so uh a quick a quick quick summary of the presentation first I will try to provide a conceptual definition of privacy and surveillance starting from the from a a fairly common definition of privacy then I will try to uh discuss the justification for surveilance and I will try to discuss the arguments that that are provided in order to defend uh surveillance then I will show the consequences of surveillance and in particular of course the consequence the consequence that uh gives the title to the uh to the to which means which is of course social disorder and then I will close with a reference to hoes argumentation ethics in order to show that privacy is a um a necessary condition in order to um um um in order to defend uh property rights so let's start I cannot use this okay so uh first of all just a very quick uh definition of privacy of course we can give a lot there are uh on the market a lot of definitions but I will just uh I will just provide provide this ones because I discussed it I discussed them uh in a couple of papers so we can Define privacy as the ability to make oneself Invisible by default to potential enemies and visible by choice to a trusted peers of course the keywords here are by default and by choice and basically it means that when we interact with uh with other people we should always be in control of that interaction and we must be able to choose whether to interact or not with other people I will return on this point later in the presentation a very important point to me is that privacy is also an a priority condition for the present for the preservation of property rights uh a priori is a philosophical term it means Universal and necessary and basically the idea here is that uh it is unconceivable to uh preserve property rights without having privacy it is literally unconceivable and uh which means that privacy is not just a matter of this or that tra tradeoff it is just not a utilitarian Choice it is not just an empirical issue but it is basically something that is needed in order to preserve property rights and natural rights in general of course when we discuss about privacy uh that discuss affects very different domains for example if it is different to to discuss privacy about the body and the mind on the one end or privacy about external physical objects on the other end or even more important for the cryptocurrency community privacy of ideas and information so we should be aware of these uh of these distinctions and of course the we can provide also very uh different kind of analysis about privacy for example uh I as a philosopher I like to provide conent definitions of privacy so to work on the theoretical level but of course we can discuss also about the empirical and practical implementation of of privacy as a lot of speaker already did in in this conference and we can also discuss about the Strategic uh um the Strategic use of privacy that and the strategies that we can use in order to advance it and freedom with it so uh a very quick point about uh privacy in the domain of ideas and information because it is the most relevant uh domain when it comes to cryptocurrencies so first of all here privacy is very important because it is an a priority is a necessary condition for the very existence of property rights in the domain of ideas and information of course we are all a costumed with for example cryptocurrency wallets and if private keys are not private anymore that means that we lose the ownership of the uh of the coins that are into the wallet so we cannot have property property cannot exist without privacy in in this domain and of course this is true also for ideas for example I'm talking about some ideas here I'm sharing them with you which means that I I'm losing the exclusive ownership of these ideas and and that we can all discuss about them and an important issue here is that in the domain of information and ideas we can have multiple homesteads so um take for example this talk of course before I shared the ideas of this talk I own the ideas exclusively uh that means that I were the only owner of these ideas but given that I'm sharing them with you it means that those ideas are not my property anymore they are entering your head and you can do whatever you want with these with these ideas which means that you can change them you can modify them you can you can attack them you can do whatever you like and in this process you gain ownership of new ideas that didn't exist before and uh um and these new ideas you own them exclusively of course until you share them the next time and so this is just to say that if we analyze privacy and property in different domains we can uh uh discover some interesting properties uh that are relevant not only for the cryptocurrency space but in this case also I think for the nature of knowledge in general so moving to surveillance so we can as a first approach as a first approach we can Define surveillance as The Logical negation of privacy that is is if privacy is the um is the is invisibility by default then we can Define surveillance as the imposition of visibility by default and if this is the case this means that basically surveillance can be used in order to violate property rights and to uh and to uh apply violence to people so just to be sure it is important to make a distinction here between horizontal surveillance on the one end and vertical surveillance on the other end because basically surveillance is something that we do every day when I talk about horizontal surveillance is the kind of surveillance that we do every day like for example I don't know Parents try to surveil their children in order to make sure that they don't get art or that they are going well at school or for example uh we hear we heard the talk uh before uh about ur's project that is surveilling the traffic on the internet in order to um extract some some information from from this data and horizontal surveillance is something that is not problematic when surveillance becomes problematic as surveillance becomes problematic when it is tied to the monopo on violence and to the use of violence so when government entities and cronies entities like beer corporations and so on and so forth use surveillance uh on a mass scale and uh they can also use violence on the people through law through legal means and so on and so forth well this is where of course surveillance becomes very very dangerous and this is what I mean when I talk about vertical surveillance and in this talk of course I'm talking about this kind of surveillance the the dangerous one so um it is important as I said before to try to understand how surveillance can be can be justified usually uh the um the advocates for surveillance use some kind of utilitarian approach they usually say that surveillance is is useful for some bigger goals like for example security of course here the prototypical example is the panopticon which which is a kind of prison that was developed by Jeremy Jeremy bentam in the 18th century which basically uh it is it is a kind of prison that is useful quote unquote in order to tackle the very the risk of crime and basically the panopticon creates a two- Tire Society on the one hand we have prisoners which are under constant surveillance that is they are visible by default to authorities and of course are the second Tire of society and on the other hand we have the guards which are of course the who are of course the authorities who basically are invisible by default the prisoners cannot know what the guards do and of course the guards can see on the other end everything that the prisoners do this creates an asymmetri of visibility basically only the authorities can enjoy privacy which means of course that they are in a position of power of of power of course the panopticon nowadays is a digital panopticon and I think that we can understand that this kind of a symmetry of visibility is very um is very clear in the closed the source in the closed the source environment a very important point is that surveillance is justified through the category of risk and the category of risk can be leveraged leveraged very easily so first of all uh the category of risk is so vague is is so broad that basically can include everything everything is a risk and if everything is a risk and surveillance is the cure for risk then basically it means that we can find a utilitarian justification for the uh for the application of surveillance me measures and moreover another important point if you which I'm sure you are familiar with is that when surveillance is evident that doesn't work well the advocates for surve for surveillance uh just say that well surveillance did work be because there uh there was um um there was not enough surveillance so we need more surveillance in order to prevent to prevent risk this means that again the category of risk can be leveraged in order to ask for more and more surveillance every time and an important feature of contemporary surveillance is of course is that it is future oriented surveillance is not only about controlling past and prev and present behaviors of the people but more importantly with AI and all the other technologies that we have nowaday it is it is used to predict behaviors and in this way to control future behaviors to nudge the population towards a certain goal and so on and so forth so here we have a tool that allows the allows governments and their cronies to control the life of the people from the past but also even more importantly uh to the Futures so surveillance is something that is quite common uh in in a history there are basically it is widespread nowadays and I could provide a number of examples surveillance is relevant for for the welfare state for war and so on and so forth I just focus on two on two of them uh one example is the so-called Lantern laws the lantern laws were passed in the in New York state in the 18th century and basically mandated black people to go around after sunset with with a luncher uh when they were not accompanied by a white so this is a practical application of the panoptical principle the idea that through surveillance we can create a two- Tire Society of course the black people were the second tired and therefore they they were mandated to be visible by default to the first Tire in this case of course the white people and of course another very good example of the of the power of surveillance in contemporary Society is of course Financial surveillance which we are accustomed with in the ecosystem of of cryptocurrencies because basically one of the main arguments for cryptocurrencies is that well they are not based on the Fiat system and we all know that Fiat money always go to zero and this is true historically speaking but it is also true that from an historical perspective The Current financial Fiat system uh lasted for more than 50 years which is something that is that is really unprecedented uh uh on the scale and even more importantly The Current financial Fiat system is a a global is a Global Financial system so the question becomes well if the Fiat system is so bad and if if Fiat money doesn't always goes to zero why didn't this happen so far and one of the reason I guess is that um the Contemporary Financial system is also a surveillance system that makes way more difficult for the people to exit it and of course we know that we if we want to use a centralized exchange we have 2K ourself uh if we want to withdraw I don't know a large sum of money we cannot do that unless we explain why we are doing this this is making more difficult for the people to exit the financial fat system and this is probably one of the reason why it is lasting so long so given that surveillance is so widespread then we should analyze the consequences of course of surveillance and of course the main one is C is complete disorder for example in the field of Economics uh we know that basically taxation is meaningless if the taxmen cannot track the properties of the people and the economic activities of the people so more surveillance means that governments and their cronies basically can track more economic activity and if they can track more economic activity uh they can regulate it tax it extract more value from it so this is of course disruptive for society because it it Hal the widespread of the market of free interaction between between people and forces people to interact in the way that Regulators want and of course another important issue regards also the um the human aspect the the human the social and the ethical and the ethical aspect of course surveillance means that basically governments and their cronies treat us treat the population like cattle or like ships and if this happens it means that they will get behaviors that are cattle Behavior ship behavior of course if you treat human beings in a certain way the response will be almost automatic and in this case um if people are not let free and if people are considered something dangerous something risky then of course that we you create mistrust you dehumanize human beings you don't think that human beings are able to act to decide from for themselves but you think that basically uh every action must be controlled by a central Authority and of course in the end in the end as a lot of aern economists and philosophers like for example misas rothbart and so on and so forth showed pretty well that plant societies always always always lead to social to to social disorder exactly because they H interfere with free Human Action so given that this is the picture of contemporary Society I I want to um to show why why privacy is so important even in this context and in this case and and for doing this I want to bring up an argument by Hans her manop which is a which is an Austrian which is an a philosopher from the a from the a school and from the libertarian school who basically is the founder of so-called argumentation ethics the idea of argumentation ethics is that basically um the very fact that we argue with each other that we talk to each other provides an a prior justification for the existence of property rights and uh this this is because of course talking to each other means that we control our own body and I just want to read the this quick this quick passage because of course his words are way better than mine so he said that he says that argumentation is a form of action Of Human Action and requires that a person have exclusive control over the scarse resource of his body body such a property right in one's own body must be said to be justified a priority that means in a universal and necessary way for anyone who will try to justify any Norm whatsoever would already have to presuppose the exclusive right to control over his body as a valid Norm simply in order to so to say I propose such and such further any person who try who tried to dispute the property right in his body will become quote in a practical contradiction since arguing in this way would already imply acceptance of the very Norm which he was disrupting disputing would not even open his mouth if he were right so basically here we have a justification a philosophical justification for the Existence and for the universal status of property rights and of course I completely agree with the position of ope but I want to add I want to add a little twist because of course argumentation is an action but so is the refusal to argue and the ability to refuse to argue with someone is as much as important as the act of of arguing with other people and if we refuse to uh to talk to other people it may be basically for two reason first maybe because uh the people refu the the person refusing to uh to to talk to other people wants to use violence against them which is of course a problem and in that case we should defend ourself against that person or in the other case because just a person wants to be left alone which is of course completely legitimate of course if we want to force someone else to talk with us then we will need to apply violence against them and uh this means that forcing a to talk will be a violation of a property rights over our body so this is a this is a very important point that has a big consequence and the consequence is that we can complete if we want H argumentation eics by saying that not only property rights are a precondition for free argumentation but also privacy is a precondition for free argumentation because argumentation can be free if and all if we are in a position to engage with others if we want if we choose to do so but also to refuse to talk with others if we choose so of course in a nonviolent matter of course and U this is confirmed also x negative we may say by the behaviors of of government because governments basically are trying to make to to make surveillance of course by default mandatory below and are try to make are trying to make the refusal to talk to institution basically a crime and we see that everywhere for example I don't know if you are a parent in Italy for example and you don't want to disclose to the go to to the government how you want to rise your children then your children may be uh may be taken from you for example or in in the financial world if you don't want to explain what you are doing with your money and if you don't want to talk basically to financial institutions then you are treated like a dangerous criminal and so on and so forth we can provide a lot of a lot of examples so we need to understand that uh privacy is one of the uh is one of the tools actually and a priority tool a universal tool a necessary tool that we can uh that we can use in order to build a free Society so the conclusion of this talk is fairly obvious of course it is just that well of course we are all here because we want to defend privacy and and to advance freedom but of course in order to do that we know we we must also try to understand how our enemy think and this is a quote of of course of by sunu from The Art of War who says exactly this who uh who underlines exactly this points basically we have to know our enemy in order to uh be able to uh Advance our uh object uh objectives so thank you for listening to me thanks of course if there are any questions I I am happy to I will give back to you um so if we know our en if we know our enemy we can develop a tactics to confront and to deal with it and stuff like that how do you think why many um people in the Privacy community are so easily baited by surveillance emotionally so easily can be triggered by just the fact that and say whatever surveil and they keep triggering the whole community in this negative Loop of Bad actors B actors B actors instead of proposing anything new and I have this I even developed a meme I wish every time a person complains within the pr Community better contribute or make a pull request in a GitHub then it would make it so much better so returning why they cannot develop resilience techniques uh that are uh related with social media and emotions okay um that's actually a great question of course I don't have an answer to this question but uh I will say that first well um when we talk about the Bad actors and risk and so on and so forth it is a very very power ful category because basically these categories mean nothing they are so Broad and uh but also so emotionally powerful that just using that label makes you feel feel uncomfortable and this of course a huge factor of course we are privacy activists we we want a better world and we don't want to be associated with Bad actors and so uh just the use of these labels of these kind of labels touches Upon Our emotions and uh um uh unfortunately I'm a philosopher I like to think that rationality matters but emotions are way way way stronger stronger than rationality on the other hand I must say that we in the Privacy Community often very very often offer self-defeating arguments when when we try to defend privacy and we often adopt a utilitarian worldview which is the worldview of the governments and of and of the people that are pushing for surveillance uh how many times did you hear that for example privacy is a risk in the Privacy Community but maybe it must be balanced with other societal needs these kind of arguments privacy has its cost has its benefits and so on and so forth we as a privacy activist often um try to push these kind of arguments but these kind of arguments will never ever ever ever win it is impossible for the very simple reason that we are not as privacy activists in the position to Define what is a cost and what what is a benefit to Define what is a risk and what is not a risk and to define the terms of the discussion we are not in that position the government big big corporations are in in are in a position of are in the position of power and they we Al always always always Define what is useful and what is not useful according to their needs so basically we should avoid as much as possible this kind of arguments and we sh we should try to defend privacy not just because it is useful but as a matter of principle as I said before I try to um in another in another paper on another issue I try to show that privacy is not just an empirical condition for the defense for the defense of natural right but it is an a priority condition it is a universal and necessary requirement to defend human nature we should be able to defend privacy on this principle level because otherwise if we if we accept it to discuss on the utilitarian level we will always always always lose always and just a quick follow up uh small y uh we're also in a situation when many and since you're in active in the Monero Community you see that privacy Advocates sometimes go berser after another privacy like hey my Monero is better than your zcash my protocol is better than yours let's run away from signal just because and uh it's strange because if you work in open source and you're serious you know it's a broad stack that requires I know 50 applications 40 whatever and many tricks along the way and it's not just one Silver Bullet to S sort of solve the thing how also the specifically crypto Community is trapped by this mentality of one solution will solve the stuff yeah I mean again a great question I mean I think that's one of the again one of the issues as you uh just underlined is that often crypto communist are are subjected to a kind of tribalism that is I mean they are in it of course not for the ideas for the um for privacy as a universal condition for defending natural right but but basically just for the money and of course if I if if I'm in Monero and you are in the cash just for the money then we will fight for each against each other because we understand economy as a zero s game as a zero s game game basically but but but if we understand privacy as a universal and necessary a priority requirement to defend natural rights then it becomes obvious that the more people try to tackle privacy in a very different ways the better it is because what really matters is not the this or that implementation of privacy that is useful for this or that uh use case what really matters is the principle itself and of course the principle given that it is universal can take a lot of different OT lot of different shapes and I think in the case of the Monero community of course there is some tribalism as always in the as always in the crypto ecosystem but I think that it's pretty open in trying to state that whatever technology works it is great even uh it is great even if if it is not actually implemented in Monero if even if there is another project that implements it because the goal is to uh gain as much privacy as possible and indeed as you can see from um the rest and the listing for for example from Kraken and the one from binance earlier this year I mean the point is not to get some cheap money the point is to advance an ideal even if the cost is pretty high high in a short term so I think that if we really focus if we really understand privacy as a universal notion and not just as a a nice feature to have then all of these issues like tribalism in the different crypto communities just go away because it just doesn't matter anymore I would like to leave some silence after your last sentence because it's very beautiful you just said something I like very much thanks uh I have a more philosophical question why don't you Explore More the aspect of dehumanization I would have expected a quote of Jac Ranier or why don't you call call it dis subjectivation I a big fan of Michelle FCO so I feel that in your slides maybe a little head of f would fit no absolutely absolutely I try to I try to insert the panopticon exactly for this reason and the the reason I didn't I didn't get deeper into the humanization is just a matter of time so I mean it is just a crypto meet up so I focused on Financial on the financial issue but I completely agree I mean it's like a through dehumanization or or dis subjectivation because basically well actually I come from a more Austrian background from a more libertarian background and the idea is that human beings human beings are defined by by their ability to act and therefore to take an autonomous choice about the scarse means that they possess so of course in a surveillance Society in in a surveillance Society um this becomes basically impossible because of course if you are if you're under complete surveillance you are not free to act and indeed fuk fuk um fuk underlined that into the panopticon um the prisoners that are under constant surveillance 24-hour surveillance basically discipline themselves because there is a sort of chinning effect that basically makes it impossible for them to act freely because they know that they're under the Gaze of of the guards and that their behavior can be interpreted in a variety of way and that the power to the to determine whether the whether the behavior is good or bad is in the hands of the guards so basically the the um the power of the panopticon is exactly that I mean um the subject The Prisoner the second Tire of society is forced is forced to uh control themsel and to do the job of of the guards so of course this imply of of course dehumanization because I mean you are not free to think for yourself anymore basically so I mean I of course this is bad I think then this is why the event will last two hours more and we have beers to talk about Fuko and other implications of that of course of course there is any other question for Andrea good thanks a lot Andrea cheers thank you [Music]