I encourage everyone to set aside personal feelings around January 6 for a moment and once again look at the amount of power an angry government can bring to bear on a protest movement retroactively, using the permanent record created by social media surveillance as a weapon.https://twitter.com/_MAArgentino/status/1431319316956385283 …
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The lesson we learn over and over from tech is that it won't always be the good guys doing it to the bad guys, so it's worth looking at these processes structurally and thinking about what it implies for people whose goals we share and motives we admire
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The tension is between the ephemeral and mass nature of a large protest event, and the ability for governments to analyze such protests forensically without a time constraint, identifying every participant individually. There is no more safety in numbers or in spontaneity
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This seriously tips the balance of power in the favor of the state. The implication for protest movements (again, think Hong Kong or Belarus, not just Jan 6) is "up or out", because either you achieve your aims or you wait for the forensics teams to map out exactly what you did
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The two ways you could avoid state retribution were to mask your identity (which always looks shifty) or to act in concert with enough people that retribution was infeasible. But a permanent mechanized record of protest makes that second approach a gamble. The state now has time.
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Replying to @Pinboard
It’s disquieting but I don’t know what we do about it. I mean, don’t fuckin post it or livestream it to Facebook seems achievable. Protest organizers have been telling people not to bring their real phones for years now. That’s getting akin to asking people to leave a hand.
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There's times when that livestream or post is important to protecting protesters' safety, or to advancing the goals of the protest. It's not a simple question of not documenting it.
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