[p2p-research] Drone hacking

[Kevin Carson]

On 12/24/09, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> The only thing I think is worth commenting on right now, is this:

> "my dog doesn't worry about privacy from me.  I protect it, walk with it, be
> its companion, feed it, take it out to pee.  If I was the dog, I don't think
> I'd care very much about privacy... I don't see why I'd care.  I don't care
> now.  The only threat is from other people...not from machines.  If machines
> wish to kill us, I suspect others will wish to protect us...  We can easily
> stop most crime now by rfiding all vehicles and making all money
> electronic...  Fearing governments is a bit 20th century Orwell was a
> brilliant writer and an interesting guy, but the gig is sort of up." (Ryan)

> I guess this proves the point that computers will soon be smarter than
> humans, because I remain astounded that humans can be so incorrigibly
> stupid.  Ryan, you evidently have no idea how states actually work.  They
> are not, and never have been, benevolent protectors.  Nobody in political
> theory seriously believes that unconstrained states able to override
> constraint by society and/or individuals are benevolent protectors - not
> Locke, not Marx, not Burke.  I'm not going to waste time debating how far
> totalitarianism reduces 'crime', but suffiice to say it always drastically
> increases the far more serious 'crimes' and legalised atrocities of the
> powerful.  Now, go away, read about Cointelpro, read about MOVE, read about
> destabilisation campaigns, read about the strategy of tension in Italy, read
> about the abduction of Aristide in 2004, read about how the police behaved
> in St. Paul's last year, read about Mumia, read about neoliberal
> restructuring, then read about the history of the genocide of Native
> Americans, colonialism, the slave trade, the Nazis, the rise of Stalinism,
> and come back and tell us if you still think states are benevolent
> guardians.

I meant to address this when Ryan first wrote it, but deleted the message.

There's a big problem involved in saying that the danger is from other
people rather than machines.  Machines with such capabilities are
generally developed by INSTITUTIONS, and you'd damn well better be
afraid of the people running the institutions that develop those
machines.  Those machines will not be used in a manner motivated by
disinterested benevolence, for the welfare of "all of us."  They'll be
used for the interests of the ruling classes that control the dominant
institutions.  And those interests are in pretty much a zero-sum
relation to ours.

No, Ryan's dog is not worried about its privacy, because it loves him
and trusts his benevolence.  But if you believe the people running the
corporate state, regardless of their professed motives, feel the same
way about you that you feel about your dog, be prepared for a nasty
surprise when you cease to be useful or become and inconvenience, and
you find yourself in the gas chamber at the local animal shelter.

It gets back to Ryan's earlier stated view of neoliberalism and
American hegemony, accepting at face value their stated rationales for
their own agenda, and contrasting the benevolent civics book language
of America's cultural reproduction apparatus with the actual deeds of
Islamic fundamentalists.  News flash:  Islamic fundamentalists, to a
significant extent, ARE one of the real-world deeds of the American
hegemons.  No mujaheddin, no Al Qaeda--period.  And the same is true
of the awful "threat" from Saddam's secular tyranny, which "used
(gasp) weapons of mass destruction against its own people."  As the
saying goes, "we" knew Saddam had WMDs, because "we" kept the
receipts.

What the U.S. government does around the world, and the rhetoric it
uses to legitimize itself, are two very different things.  From Arbenz
to Mossadeq to Allende, to WIPO and TRIPS, the rhetoric has always
been "democracy, free trade, and free markets."  The reality has
always been a boot stamping on a human face.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html