Contents
[hide]
- 1 Introduction and context
- 2 Hack the State: a concept in transition
- 3 Notes and references
- 4 Appendix 1. (Original) Proposal for residence at Access Space Sheffield in the fall of 2009
- 5 Appendix 2. First interim/ preliminary report on my ‘Hacking Society’ project. Friday, March 12, 2010
- 6 Appendix 3. Second interim/ preliminary report on my ‘Hacking Society’ project. Friday, March 19, 2010
- 7 Appendix 5. Websites featuring elements of Hack the State/ the State Hacks Us (HtS/ tSHU)
HACK THE STATE?
Substantive report on my artist-in-residency at Sheffield’s Access Space,
March 8-27, 2010.
Introduction and context
In the second half of 2009 I applied for and was awarded a one month
residency with Access Space, the ‘Free Media Lab’ in Sheffield, UK. This
residency took place during the largest part of March of this year (2010).
The project I submitted for consideration was termed “Hacking Society” and
was inspired by Toni Prug’s initiative “Hack the State”
(http://hackthestate.org). Its leading idea was to research on the
opportunities (and actual occurrences) for citizens collectives to have
the machinery of government work with and for them instead of the other
way round by opening up its structure and mechanisms. Indeed, to ‘hack’
the state. (see Appendix … for the full description of the original idea).
The format of this research, apart from site-specific requests voiced by
Access Space, was in my mind to be very similar to the research I
undertook while in residency with the French Media Lab APO33 in October
2008. This enquiry had hackers, and hackers-related events, initiatives,
’spaces’, and ‘texts’ as its subject. The idea being to compile a
‘reasoned catalog’ of such occurrences, along with a tentative theoretical
exposition of their nature and their ways of coming about [1]
This relatively straightforward model, with regard to both idea and format
did not turn out to be practicable however. This was mainly due to the
fact that issue at stake proved in the course of looking at it far more
complex than I initially envisaged, something that also manifested itself
spectacularly in developments that took place in its immediate aftermath.
The consequence is that reporting on the subject matter of this residency
did not only turn unfortunately slow – for which I offer my apologies -
but also remains very much a ‘work in progress’ , or in less charitable
terms, an unfinished business.
Hack the State: a concept in transition
“Armed revolutionaries and anarchists hate the state. Social democrats
want to be the state. I say we better hack it.”
(http://hackthestate.org)
In my original idea, hacking the state was quite simply about motivating
people to acquire the necessary knowledge of the ways – both open and
covert – the state is functioning and apply this knowledge to make, or
even force, the state to work for the benefit of the people and not for
its own institutional sake. And in our times, the broad diffusion of
information technology tools and of Internet access has considerably
enhanced the opportunities to do just that. In this regard, I was greatly
inspired by my experience as member of the Dutch ‘We do not trust voting
computers’ action group (WVSCN) [2]. This collective of computer hackers
and legal activists managed to scuttle the hitherto near-universal use of
voting computers in local and national elections in the Netherlands [3].
Even though WVSCN was a very unique citizen action group in terms of
professional membership and financial resources, it seemed to provide an
inspiring example of how to carry out a successful ‘hack’ on the status
quo, even if the initial odds are not looking good at all [4].
But as I embarked into a search for this sort of initiatives, especially
in the United Kingdom, I quickly encountered numerous manifestations of
something I found puzzling at first, and then rather disquieting: a
reverse phenomenon to ‘hack the state’, namely “the state (is)hacking Us”.
this happens when the state, or rather one of its variegated agencies,
makes use of exactly the same approaches and technologies to ‘plug into’
the citizenry, and extract the information it needs for ‘good governance’
(and fostering a positive attitude to the same in the process…).
I realized at that that stage that the whole idea of hacking the state
(and its opposite) cannot be explained and understood without reference to
the general context of the political evolution of society in the past 30
years. Whereas IT and the Internet have greatly facilitated the gathering,
exchange , and use of information, the nature of polity and politics
itself had enormously changed. Political scientists have subsumed this
evolution under the moniker ‘the crisis of representation’ [5].
‘The crisis of representation’, at least in my view, can basically be
described as a state of mutual distrust that has arisen in the past 30
years [6] between people and politics – that is between the governing and
the governed – where the people feel their interests are no longer the
primary preoccupation of the government, and politicians in their turn
feel that they do not longer ‘understand’ the governed – in case they have
not entirely lost touch with them (see my second interim residency reports
in appendix 3 for more on the subject).
The crisis of representation has many aspects and consequences, but the
one that is particularly relevant to us here is that it constrained or
even closed altogether the traditional channels of communication between
the governing and the governed. Where unions, political parties, and the
media either lost the trust of the public [7], or did no longer cater to
its interests, administrative authorities looked for new strategies to
obtain that input from the public they desperately need for governance to
work. New participative mechanisms and instruments were pressed into
service, many of them based on IT applications, and these are often nearly
indistinguishable from ‘hacking the state’ endeavors.
In fact, while mapping out all the initiatives that aimed at enhancing
participation of the citizenship in the realm of politics, I came to the
conclusion that there was something of a continuum covering both ‘Hack the
State’ and ‘The State (is) Hacking Us’ projects (’HtS’ and ‘tSHU’
respectively), and that it was sometimes difficult to distinguish the one
from the other. That is even more so when their set up actually enabled
one thing while officially being geared to the other.
The cases of ‘Rewired State’ and ‘Data.gov.uk’, for instance, [8] are
exemplary in this regard: both have been started and are owned by Her
Majesty’s government for its own purpose, yet both enable HtS activities,
one by making public, yet not easily available, data accessible
(Data.gov.uk) while the other provides opportunity to learn a lot about
the inner workings of the government machinery [9]. Another noticeable
aspect of all these initiatives is their lack of ambition, which is
probably deliberate. None were aiming at any, let alone a radical, change
in the power relationship between citizens and government – they are all
about plugging the gap that had been caused by the disintegration of the
classical consultative structures which used to be provided by unions,
political parties, and other class or social categories-based
establishments.
Before going on, another feature that should, in my opinion, be
prominently taken into account in our analysis, is the current economic
and financial crisis, one which has resulted in the further reduction of
the ‘window to the future’ – that is the period of time ahead of which
political courses and decision making can be formulated with an acceptable
degree of credibility. Neo-liberal capitalism, now running amuck, has
relentlessly narrowed it from years to months to weeks – and now any given
situation can change dramatically within days, or less, see the ups and
downs of the European currency.
Together with the above this leads me to a third,and ebven more
disquieting layer of ’state hacks’: those concerning what in Turkey and
Indonesia has come to be defined as “the Deep State”, where the core and
crux of state powers (or that of the ‘ruling class’) resides [9].
‘Hacking the State’ and ‘the State Hacks Us’ are narratives that can, with
some dose of creativity, be constructed as ‘thesis’ and ‘anti-thesis’,
asking to be resolved in some sort of constructive (or at least
satisfyingly descriptive) ’synthesis’. This alas, is not to be, at least
not in my opinion. And the reason lies in the discreet but defining
presence of the ‘deep state’ in the background of every political
situation, at whatever scale.
What is common to both ‘Hack the State’ and ‘the State Hacks Us’ is that
face of politics known as governance, with other words the everyday,
mundane business of government. It refers to the role of the state in
making society ‘work’ on a very practical and material basis. Upholding
the rule of law (in common matters), ensuring the functioning of public
services, maintaining a democratic and benevolent (or at least neutral)
dispensation between the governing and the governed. It does include areas
of conflict, sometimes violent, as well as negotiations, compromises, and
settlements, not all unilateral. And to a large extent, possession and
exercise of power is surely involved. It is in this realm that the game of
‘hacking’, ‘us’ ‘them’, and ‘them’ us’, is played out.
But ‘governance’ is not, in last instance, what real political power is
about, and where it is situated. ‘the State Hacks Us’ initiatives have the
- default rather than intended – characteristic to request participation,
pick up – or if you wish, exploit/ plunder – ideas and invite involvement
- without of course sharing decision-making power. Yet all this finds
place within fairly well-known and predictable parameters: matters of
public services, planning, maybe some local political issues. The ‘Deep
State’ is about unpredictability, especially in times of crisis – whether
it has caused it or not [10].
Can the ‘Deep State’ be ‘hacked’? Shortly after I completed my residence
with Access Space, Wikileaks caused a major upheaval in the media by
broadcasting a video of the shooting incident involving US Army helicopter
over Baghdad in 2007, where a Reuter journalist and a number of civilians
were killed, apparently in cold blood (”Collateral Murder”). The outrage
was enormous, and Wikileaks’ extensive hoard of hitherto secret, ‘leaked’
documents, received much publicity. It was inferred that the power that be
were henceforth no longer immune to the exposure of their dirty laundry.
This sentiment was further enhanced by Iceland’s Wikileaks inspired and
supported ‘Modern Media’ initiative (still in progress to become a data
haven for confidential information and threatened sources (see IMMI’s site
http://immi.is/?l=en ) It now looked as if the carapace of the state, even
in its ‘deep’ … state, could be prized open.
But does Wikileaks – and apparented approaches – represent an effective
strategy of ‘hacking the (deep) state’? To a certain extent for sure, as
openness and publicity is the enemy of arbitrary power. But to a certain
extent only, because of the somewhat ‘Spy vs Spy’ nature of such
exercises. Wikileaks itself suffers from a lack of transparency and hence
accountability – it (f)actually rejects both – besides being handicapped
by its small size, elitist constituency, and financial shakiness.
But then how should the ‘deep state’ be tackled? To me, it appears to be
extremely difficult to offer a solution that would not include a wholesale
and revolutionary overhaul of the full concept of state power itself.
Piecemeal improvements, obtained through what was our first area of
concern and research, ‘Hacking the State’ in its simple form, remains
certainly feasible in the meantime, and is likely to be rewarding. It
should be conducted in a diligent, continuous, and broad-based
participative manner. Many movements act in this fashion, sometimes
bypassing altogether the concept and the issues of governance as
understood by political bureaucrats and managers. They should
wholeheartedly be joined and supported! [11].
Notes and references
[1] see http://www.apo33.org/dokapo/doku.php?id=open_ars_-_2008_2009
(English text under the French one)
[2] http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English
[3] This did not happen from one day to the next however. The campaign to
wave the public, the media and in the end, the government was long and
protracted and demanded an arduous passage, with a steep learning curve,
into the intricacies of the Dutch administrative and legislative system
and the foxiness of the “law on the openness of government action” – the
Dutch Freedom of Information Act.
[4] I used to quip that we went though the classic ‘Mahatma Gandhi’
phases: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight
you, then you win.”
[5] Of course, this does not – and by far – cover the whole, massive
changes our (western) societies have gone through, but I think it is the
single most important phenomenon regarding our relationship with politics
and governance.
[6] Probably the period defined by the Reagan-Thatcher years. the ‘crisis’
resonates with the latter’s famous “there is no such thing as society”, a
statement that also delegitimizes politics – but not the state…
[7] Unions, out of choice or forced by legislation, as in the UK, narrowed
their focus strictly on workfloor labour relations and no longer convey -
are even forbidden to – a political program. The major political parties,
as they move to the ‘centre’ actually do not longer represent a really
existing constituency, but merely a particular flavor of (more or less
imagined) middle class opinion. The media finally, have basically become
corporate mouthpieces, their ‘objectivity’ reduced to avoiding causing
offense.
[8] http://rewiredstate.org/ It’s mission statement: “Rewired State runs
hackdays where developers show government what is possible, and government
shows developers what is needed.” http://data.gov.uk : “Unlocking
innovation, Working with UK Public Sector information and Data”.
[9] “deep state’ (in Turkish ‘derim devlet’) is a more precise term than
the usual ’state within the state’ monicker, which is vague and fails to
highlight its permanent precedence over and above the more visible,
public, and usually benevolent layer of government.
[10] Giorgio Agamben defines sovereignty (i.e. state power) as ‘the power
to declare the state of emergency’. A somewhat cryptic yet precise
pronouncement: it is the moment where the state, that is its incumbents,
shuffle everything aside, and exercise arbitrary power. Even at the best
of times, that moment is always nearer than most people realize.
[11] A specific area of concern was expressed by my friend Cees Hamelink
just the other afternoon (over drinks 
He opined that as ‘freedom of
information’ legislation was extended, more and more official data and
information, even of the apparently innocuous variety, were going
underground and kept under the seal of confidentiality, invoking various
’security’ or ‘privacy’, or simply commercial/ financial considerations.
The struggle is clearly not over…
………………………………………………………………
Appendixes
Appendix 1. (Original) Proposal for residence at Access Space Sheffield in the fall of 2009
Proposal title (if it has one): Hacking Society!
Description of the project:
Hacking Society should be understood both as ‘hacking society’, as in
‘hacking a (computer) program, and as ‘the hacking society’, i.e. the
(informal) association of people, and their ideas about … hacking society:
making the state, corporate, and other institutional structures working
for you instead of the other way round. In the way of a favourite Foucauld
metaphor: like judokas, using the opponent’s strength as lever for your
own.
The main inspiration for this proposal is Toni Prug’s ‘Hacking the State’
initiative, itself part of a much broader endeavour to ‘open’ the
structures and mechanisms that influence and often dictate our lives as
individual citizens, communities, and non-state, non-corporate actors in
general. A fine example of this is what was achieved by the Dutch hackers
and political activist group “we do not trust voting computers” (of which
I was member), scuttling, against considerable odds, the entire electronic
voting infrastructure (and the associated political mindset) of the
Netherlands.
All over the world there are many more such initiatives eroding the
carapace of secrecy, back-hand dealings, collusion/ corruption, and
unchecked, arbitrary, and arrogant exercise of power that is,
unfortunately, characteristic of political power structures at any given
level or place. Various and very diverse grass-root, ‘civil society’ (not my
favourite word btw) groups have taken a leaf from the F/OSS (Free and/or
Open Source Software) movement’s book. Just as this movement broke the
monopoly of proprietary ICT, they want to break free of structural
constraints imposed from above in the matter of knowledge and power to
decide and act. The F/OSS movement has provided them, albeit often
indirectly, a basic, non party-political, ideology for a much more
extensive call for ‘free’ (”as in freedom”) and ‘open’. And so, ‘new’ social
movements are using a whole gamut of institutional, para-institutional,
and extra-institutional instruments, as well as a wide array of strategies
and tactics to expose and grind down the stronghold corporate and
government forces exercises on our lives to limit, if not altogether
suppress, our fundamental freedoms.
I propose to reflect about how this cross-pollination took place, but
mostly to look at a number of these initiatives in a fairly descriptive way
with the aim to arrive at a ‘catalogue raisonne’ (or explicative list) of
what is going on in terms of such initiatives, and what, in view of their
aims and the context in which they operate, they have been able to achieve
so far (and possibly also speculate on what theymight achieve in future!).
I would naturally focus on the place taken by IC technologies in the
operation and organization of such initiatives, and more particularly on
the role of independent practitioners of ICT, variously known as hackers,
techies, nerds, geeks, and what have you
Similar to my residence with APO33 in Nantes (France) in October 2008,
when I looked at the various venues, events, and organizational set-ups of
the ‘hackers movement’, this should result in an article, backed up by a
comprehensive list of links, illustrating the ‘hacking society’ concept by
evidencing its occurrence. This article and links could be published
on Access Space’s (research) blog or website, and further distributed by
posting on mailing lists and other community media, including of course
those most involved in the issues at stake. A (public) talk/ discussion
about this research is also perfectly feasible and welcome as far as I am
concerned.
And last, but most certainly not least, I would tremendously enjoy
dialoguing and sharing experiences with the members/ visitors/ residents
of Access Space, and would not hesitate to devote considerable time to
that purpose. Closeted research has never really been my cup of chai…
===============================
Appendix 2. First interim/ preliminary report on my ‘Hacking Society’ project. Friday, March 12, 2010
As my research (slowly) progresses I am coming to the somewhat
disheartening (if interim) conclusion that ‘hacking the state’ is rather
the exception and ‘the state hacking us’ (Toni Prug) actually the rule.
This can be seen from the numerous initiatives deployed by various
governmental bodies and authorities in Europe to tap into the knowledge
represented by individual citizens or ‘civil society’ organisations in
order to both further their ‘governance’ agenda and to lend legitimation
to their politicies by giving them the veneer of citizen participation.
These initiatives are almost always backed up by the use of advanced IT
(giving them a very ‘kewle’, ‘clued-in’, sheen), and more often than not
involving social institutions in a consulting, if not leading, role -
alas.
This is of course not so surprising in view of the developments in Western
societies over the past 30 years, basically after the
Thatcherite-Reaganian revolution (or reaction and the demise in the
belief both of the ‘great narratives’, and more prosaically, of the
welfare state. This has been characterized, at the individual level, by an
increasing ‘atomisation’ of the subjects, a ‘precarisation’ of their
material circumstances, and the gradual (near-)disappearance of the
effectiveness and credibility of their operative organisations (labour
unions, political parties), as subsumed in the well-worn phrase ‘the
crisis of representation’. On the other hand, the state has increasingly
shed its social, political, and economic commitment to the citizenry at
large, replacing it by a (individual) ‘client (customer) approach’ model,
the fig leaf for its relentless drive to become a corporate business
machine like that of any other big enterprise, albeit one with sovereign
rights, i.e. holding the legal, and ultimate, monopoly of physical
violence. (’Ultima Ratio Regum’ was already the phrase engraved on the
mouths of the Sun King’s – Louis XIV – canons …)
Such developments have completely turned the tables on the population in
general which is now basically left to its own (rather limited) devices in
front of the onslaught of both corporate and etatic might (which are
increasingly indistinguishable anyway). So we have now a situation of
far-reaching, sometimes near-absolute, imbalance and inequality, not
easily remedied in the present circumstances, material and ideological.
Seen in this light, the ‘Hack the State’ moniker quickly gets
overshadowed, as said above, by its reverse: the state and corporations
hacking us, and that constantly, and not in a small measure. This happens
within the context of another hallowed ‘post-modern’ development: the
information society and the paramount role played by knowledge (in terms
of work this is subsumed by ‘post-fordism’ and ‘immaterial labour’
respectively). This is not the place to go very much further into this
issue, but for one very important feature.
The element of conflict and the realisation of very divergent and
irreconcilable interests between the two sides has been deftly obscured
and effectively evacuated from the public discourse, just as it has been
one-sidedly escalated in practice, albeit in a way that ‘is not making the
headlines’. Objectives and processes that are contradictory to the
interest of the people and the absence of their actual involvement in the
decisions that shape their lives has been succesfully fudged by numerous
attempts to ‘include’ them, on strictly individual basis, in the
governance ‘consultation’ process (or, for corporates, in products or
services development), suggesting participation and democratic mechanisms,
while in the end it are the real and ultimate interests of the powers that
be which prevail. Yet in the meanwhile a most valuable mass of information
has been gathered, usually with no remuneration to the purveyors of the
same.
It is therefore, at this stage a bit tricky to envisage ‘hacking the
state’ -or ‘time to hack back’ (Toni Prug, again) with high optimism. But
this is only a preliminary report, meant to chart a view on the present
(’departure’) situation. Rather that giving in to immediate and
hypothetical optimism, I prefer to start from a pessimistic assessment in
order to then look at the unmistakably existing rays of light and proceed
from there. The most important point being to see whether and how such
occurrences and initiatives can be extrapolated to larger dimensions so as
to be able to cause real changes.
So – to be continued!
Hack the State:
(original texts at: http://www.hackthestate.org)
http://statehacks.org/
http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English
The State Hacks Us:
http://data.gov.uk/
http://rewiredstate.org/
http://amsterdamopent.nl
etc.
Appendix 3. Second interim/ preliminary report on my ‘Hacking Society’ project. Friday, March 19, 2010
My Net-enquiries during this week have unearthed quite some more relevant
documentation, a majority of which is not unexpectedly, of the ‘The
State’s Hacking Us’ variety. But there is also an interesting ‘minority
report’
But first it may be helpfull to provide for some more general background,
i.e. to briefly dwell on the current political and economic context. This
because I think the Hacking the State (HtS) and ‘the State’s Hacking Us’
(tSHU) issues cannot and should not be dissociated from the ongoing
‘financial’ crisis – which at the last reckoning appears not to recede,
but on the contrary to rebound even deeper. This will be the moment that
the relatively begnign concept of ‘governance’ (conducted, among other
things, by way of, e.g. ‘crowdsourcing’ – or tSHU) morphs into far less
innocuous ‘crisis management’, the predicted endgame of which might well
be an already theorecised ‘low intensity civil war’(*).
Suffice to say, without entering into ‘French Theory’ at this point, that
this aspect needs to be taken into serious consideration when discussing
ways of ‘making the State work for us instead of the other way round’, or
with other words, that our knowledge of the functioning of the state
apparatus and our development of tools to be on par with it, must address
both relativelty amiable issues (eg those concerning education, health,
housing, transport etc. etc.) and considerably less amiable ones
(regarding ‘law and order’ in its widest acceptation)
This being stated, it will come as no surprise that, at least the more
sophisticated tSHU initiatives are mainly directed at creating information
and ideas exchange platforms bridging governments and citizens (some more
jejune ones hope to enlist citizens as police auxiliaries to
prevent/combat crime and terrorism – they are not necessarily the less
popular or succesful ones…). Such initiatives follow the logic of
externalisation, but are also bolstered by the prevalent ideology of
depolitisation and of running the government as if it were a business,
with citizens as customers – or colaborators.
In the UK, the work of former cabinet minister Tom Watson MP appears to go
in that direction with his ‘Power of Information Taskforce’. This is also
the case with initiatives such as those deployed by UK Citizens Online
Democracy, the backers of the MySociety.org website, allegedly “running
most of the UK’s best known democracy websites”. The list of their
projects itself says a lot about the issues they are concerned with (and
also which ones they are not): * TheyWorkForYou; * No. 10 Petitions; *
WriteToThem; * WhatDoTheyKnow; * PledgeBank; * Travel Time Maps; *
FixMyStreet; and * HearFromYourMP. Alike initiatives also exist in other
European countries, eg the ‘Rathenau Institute for Public and Politics’
and the German ‘Federal Center for political education’ (BPB).
It is also important to notice at this juncture that tSHU ventures maybe
run by the government itself (Rewired State being my favourite peeve, and
the German BPB the nearest thing to what a government should do), but many
if not most are autonomous, ‘civil society’ organisations whose mission
statements (if not truly held beliefs) are about fostering a harmonious
and mutually beneficial relationship between governing and governed. This
does not make the task of critically apraising their activities any easier
and might actually be part of their raison d’etre (as they usually enjoy
generous funding from local, national, or even european governmental
bodies).
To end on an optimistic note, there are fortunately also organisations and
project that support foursquare the interests of citizens rather than
those of the state (whether or not obscured behind a rethoric of ’society
at large’). I already mentioned the BPB, which embodies the official
preoccupation in Germany to never repeat the crimes of dictatorship. But
one should mention also FoeBud, a German citizens initiative extremely
active – and effective – in deconstructing attempts by authorities to
digitally subvert society. In the UK, the Open Rights Group is keen to
protect “your rights in the digital age”, in the Netherlamnds we have
‘Bits of Freedom’ and so are 25 other digital and civil rights
organisations in Europe which are part of the EDRI (European Digital
Rights) federation, itself largely modelled on the American (USA)
Electronic Frontier Foundation.
It should be noted, however, that all these groups are (i) mostly, if not
exclusively, focused on ‘digital’ issues; and that (ii) they almost all
are more reactive than pro-active in their endeavours, monitoring
government and corporate moves, starting campaigns of protests and
sometimes going to court. They have, afaik, not yet engaged in projects
that would concretely ‘empower’ their constituency viz thoses forces that
define their livelihood circumstances. Concurrently, official, or
officially supported, initiatives have stayed clear of matters with clear
political implications, especially those that would entail, or merely
highlight, the issue of power sharing.
So the interim conclusion is that I have yet to scratch beyond the surface
of the real concern at stake here: Hacking the state so as to make the
state work for us in all aspects, if not of life, then at least of
governance. I hope to advance a bit further next week!
This week’s harvest of websites:
More like Hack the State (HtS):
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/
http://www.eff.org (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
https://www.bof.nl/ (Bits of Freedom, Netherlands – in Dutch)
http://www.foebud.org (FoeBuD, Germany – in German)
In Between:
http://www.bpb.de (Bundeszentrale fuer politische Bildung, Germany – in
German)
http://www.publiek-politiek.nl/English (Rathenau Institute “for Political
Participation”)
More like the State’s Hacking Us (tSHU)
http://www.mysociety.org/ – and associated sites
http://www.ukcod.org.uk (UK Citizens Online Democracy, its mother lode)
http://powerofinformation.wordpress.com/about/
Straight tSHU:
http://rewiredstate.org/
Tom Watson’s MP website:
http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/
(*) The French urbanist Jean-Pierre Garnier has a fairly encompassing,
coherent theory about Western governments’ apprehensions regarding the
future and their probable, because already discernible, responses to them:
http://blog.agone.org/category/La-chronique-de-Jean-Pierre-Garnier
(in French)
==========================================================================
Beta Text for the Public Event (March 27 at Access Space), sent to the
panelists and registered participants.
Beta Version of general text for Saturday.
Today is the Public Day and also the last day of my ‘artist-in-residency’
at Access Space. I hope we’ll have all together a lively and interesting
discussion.
The original designation under which I applied for this residency was
called “Hacking Society”, and the issues I wanted to look at were tagged
under the theme “Hack the State”.
The idea was to look into ways citizen could gather sufficient knowledge
about the working of the state apparatus at all levels so as to be able to
effectively ‘operate’ it so that the state would serve us instead of the
other way round.
Now that both society at large and the state use information technology
(IT) to a considerable extent, I would naturally look for the larger part
at the ‘digital’ aspect of the interaction between ‘civil society’ and
‘the state’.
There are many instances were this interaction takes place, and I was
particularly inspired by my experience with a citizen group succesfully
overturning electronic voting in the Netherlands – but only after a
protracted and difficult struggle.
But many (digital) initiatives to resolve conflicts or ‘bridge the gap’
between both parties are set in motion, or at least supported – often
lavishly – by the authorities themselves. This led me to the formulation
of a reverse to ‘hacking the state’: ‘the state is hacking us’.
This takes many forms, from relatively innocuous mining for informations
and suggestions under the citizenry, to outright calls for collaborations
in matter of fraud, crime and terrorism fighting. ‘Crowdsourcing’ is
definitely becoming popular in government circles! ‘Externalisation’ and
cost-cuttings is also here the name of the game.
The authorities at all levels, are also becoming very good at enlisting
societal bodies, ‘independent’ experts, and even ‘geeks’ to this effect.
But also the diversity of agencies involved, and the variety of the issues
being addressed, not to speak of the complexity of the interests involved
makes it very difficult to attain a clear, overall picture of what is
going on. And I cannot say I have succeeded in this.
Rather, where I first saw a single issue, and then a continuum of sorts
(between ‘hacking’ and ‘being hacked’) I am now perceiving a rather dense
and foggy cloud of activities taking place, and of possible, and
conflicting, interpretations thereof. Together with a bevy of risks and
threats, but also of opportunities for resistance and appropriation.
As society, we cannot do without some form of governance, i.e. a state.
And probably neither can we as individuals. So what will we do now? I have
no ready solution, but I am sure the age-old slogan still works:
Don’t Panic!
Hack It!
(And let’s do it together)
(I have now a good deal of sites you might be interested to look at. I’ll
clobber them together to-morrow, with some context when deemed necessary)
Cheers for now, patrizio & Diiiinooos!
================================================
Appendix 5. Websites featuring elements of Hack the State/ the State Hacks Us (HtS/ tSHU)
(Sentences between ” ” are lifted as such from the respective website.)
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/
“Founded in 2005 by 1,000 digital activists, the Open Rights Group is the
UK’s leading voice defending freedom of expression, privacy, innovation,
consumer rights and creativity on the internet.”
“We campaign to change public policy whenever citizens’ or consumers’
rights are threatened. We do this by talking to policy-makers and
mobilising our supporters to stop bad laws in the UK and EU.”
Tom Watson MP’s blog. Tom Watson (Labour, West Bromwich East) is allegedly
one of the few British politicians being clued in about digital culture.
He started:
http://powerofinformation.wordpress.com/about/
whose Terms of Reference are:
“To advise and assist the government on delivering benefit to the public
from new developments in digital media and the use of citizen- and
state-generated information in the UK, including those identified in the
Power of Information.”
MySociety states that it “run(s) most of the UK’s best known democracy
websites”.
its goals are:
“mySociety has two missions. The first is to be a charitable project which
builds websites that give people simple, tangible benefits in the civic
and community aspects of their lives. The second is to teach the public
and voluntary sectors, through demonstration, how to use the internet most
efficiently to improve lives.”
MySociety hosts for instance:
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/
“Keeping tabs on the UK’s parliaments and assemblies”
MySociety itself is part of a Charity:
http://www.ukcod.org.uk/ UK Citizens Online Democracy
Linked to MySociety and UKCOD is also:
“an experimental site designed to make it easier to have detailed
discussions around the contents of major public documents, such the Iraq
Survey Group report (or just stuff that would benefit from a bit of
transparency). ”
“Bits of Freedom (BoF) is the Dutch digital rights organization, focusing
on privacy and communications freedom in the digital age. Bits of Freedom
strives to influence legislation and self-regulation, on a national and
also on a European level. Bits of Freedom is one of the founders and a
member of European Digital Rights (EDRi).”
http://www.publiek-politiek.nl/English
The (Dutch) Institute for Public and Politics, aka ‘Rathenau Institute’
“is an independent, non-partisan organisation that promotes political and
social participation both in the Netherlands and abroad.”
It is quite active in the digital domain, and is mostly funded by
government agencies.
The Federal Agency for Civic Education is part of the German government:
“The work done by the Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale
für politische Bildung/bpb) centres on promoting awareness for democracy
and participation in politics.”
Its raison d’etre is grounded on a (the?) basic principle of post-WWII
German politics: ”Considering Germany’s experience with various forms of
dictatorial rule down through its history, the Federal Republic of Germany
bears a unique responsibility for firmly anchoring values such as
democracy, pluralism and tolerance in people’s minds.”
(Site mostly in German, but the ‘international page’ is here:
http://bit.ly/94MzFV)
FoeBud is the citizens organisation for digital rights, it “has been
working since 1987 for the defense of civili liberties and the protection
of citizens’ data. Diverse people coem together within FoeBud in order to
critically research technology and politics and to shaping these in a
human way”
(my translation, the site is entirely in German)
Rewired State has “Geeks Meet Government” as motto, or alternatively
“Connecting Geek and Government”. Practically speaking: “Rewired State
runs hackdays where developers show government what is possible, and
government shows developers what is needed.”
EDRI, the European Digital Rights Initiative has 27 affiliated privacy and
civil rights organizations which “have joined forces to defend civil
rights in the information society” at the EU level, “as more regulation
regarding the internet, copyright and privacy is originating from European
institutions, or from International institutions with strong impact in
Europe.”
Coadec, the Coalition for A Digital Economy, launched in December 2009,
“is a new entity being launched today to support the creation of a
lasting, sustainable and innovative Digital Economy for British
businesses.”
http://bricolabs.net/politics/zero-dollar-laptop
The Zero Dollar Laptop is a Free Software based project centered on
recycling discarded laptops for useful community and individual learning
and empowerment purposes.
http://participator.zelena-istra.hr/bin/view/Participator
Participator is a project run by the environmental association ‘Green
Istria’ (Pula, Croatia) that is apparently aiming to foster active
political participation (instead of mere consumption) by the citizenry -
more I can’t say, it’s all in Croatian
http://www.networked-politics.info/ together with
http://www.onlinecreation.info/
Are two sites run by Mayo Fuster i Morell, a PhD student with the European
University Institute in Florence (Italy), whose thesis is about ‘Online
communities governance’ The first site (Networked Politics) is “a
collaborative research on new forms of political organization”, whereas
the second, while documenting the progress of her research, contains quite
a lot of useful links and resources.
Is a HM government (UK) site which “seeks to give a way into the wealth
of government data and is under constant development.”
‘Elevator pitch’:
“We’re very aware that there are more people like you outside of
government who have the skills and abilities to make wonderful things out
of public data. These are our first steps in building a collaborative
relationship with you.”
“Hack the Government” is a Dutch site whose aims and constituency appears
closely related to ‘Rewired State’: Geeks liaising with the government
(and v.v.) to ‘make things better’. It also includes (very Dutch style)
journalists and other ’significant’ (or ‘expert’) members of the general
public
Demos is possibly the strangest animal in the collection (immo). Behind
the rhethorics of being “a think-tank focused on power and politics. We
search for and communicate ideas to give people more power to shape their
own lives. Demos’ vision is a democracy of free citizens, with an equal
stake in society” lays a “Progressive Conservatism Project” since
“Conservative means can serve progressive ends”.
Full pitch:
“The Progressive Conservatism Project is a new Demos initiative that
explores how radical conservative philosophy, politics, and policy can
serve truly progressive goals. Since its inception in January 2009, the
Project has established itself as the leading centre of cutting-edge
conservative thinking in the UK, influencing policy-makers and politicians
across the political spectrum with ideas that are independent, rigorous
and radical.”
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