Archive

Bob Lord Misinformation Keynote at DEF CON 27

I’m pret­ty ner­vous about the 2020 elec­tions. We’ve seen a lot of lit­tle deep­fakes here and there. And I sus­pect it’s not going to sur­prise you to say that I’m wor­ried that things are going to get far far worse and far more nuanced.

Hearsay Culture #252 — Prof. Ben Peters on the History of the Failed Soviet Internet

The Soviet expe­ri­ence sug­gests some­thing real­ly impor­tant for us today, which is that net­works are entire­ly com­pat­i­ble with sur­veil­lance. And many of our favorite things to talk about, then, peer-to-peer pro­duc­tion, or end-to-end intel­li­gence, kind of missed the point that I think is now obvi­ous. That whether you’re the NSA or Google or who­ev­er else…you’re a gen­er­al sec­re­tari­at, seek­ing to pri­va­tize our pow­er, and you are sur­veilling us, because you have a net­work in place.