Hello, Passengers, We're Listening

Some folks are naturally suspicious of government, and thereby primed to react strongly whenever it suggests an action they disapprove of. Take the example of the United States, where a general distrust of the government is one of the unifying factors of the modern right wing. While it's wise not to take anything a government says at face value with no critical analysis, it's equally wise to do the same for everything; in many respects, for-profit corporations have far more incentive to do things worthy of suspicion than do governments.

In Canada, that anti-government suspicion has been surfacing in fits and starts over the last year, ever since Stephen Harper got his majority and decided it was time to show Canadians what happens when the Conservatives have no checks on their power - for the record, what happens is along the lines of "fuck you, we're doing this anyway." The petulant refusal of the Conservatives to even consider breaking up their omnibus budget bill last week, the robotic party discipline which fuels the flames that lick at Canadian democracy... what, I ask, are they trying to hide from us? That is the sort of thing we should be focused on, the sort of thing we should hold the government to account over, the sort of thing we should make sure that we do not forget.

When it comes to this sort of situation, it's all about picking battles... but some people are so fired up that they want to pick them all.

Recently, the Canada Border Services Agency stated that it is working toward the installation of HD cameras and microphones capable of "[eavesdropping] on travellers' conversations." It didn't take long for this news to spread across the internet; Boing Boing pointed to it with the delightfully unbiased headline "Canadian government wants to fill airports with KGB-style hidden microphones." I've seen others react with surprise at the announcement... surprise that this wasn't already being done. I mean, these are airports we're talking about; places where my mom instructed me to never so much as utter the word "bomb" in any context whatsoever. To be honest, I was a bit surprised this wasn't already going on myself.

To be really honest, I'm having a hard time getting worked up over this.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. Please repeat your threat in the direction of the microphone."

I understand that when a government agency suggests surveillance, opposition is the appropriate automatic reaction; otherwise, democracy would probably last about half an hour. But we can't just build our policies and our outlooks based on automatic responses. This is not Nineteen Eighty-Four; this is not even close to it. Nobody's installing telescreens in our homes, nobody's wiring up public squares for audio/video monitoring, no one's tagging dissidents or making them disappear. These are, realistically, airports - places where something like eighty-seven percent of all the conversations these microphones could capture would deal with how some Air Canada flight is delayed yet again, or Air Canada lost someone's luggage, or that Air Canada is expensive and sucks.

They are, traditionally, not places that are vital to free expression. Airports are not public squares, and there wasn't any "Occupy LaGuardia" or "Occupy YVR" last year. Unless you work there, if you're there for more than a couple of hours than either you've gone through security really early, or Air Canada is delaying your flight by five hours. If this was something different, something more wide-ranging like banning all usage of photography or recording devices in airports, that would be a serious affront to our rights and cause for pushback; after all, that sort of law would have allowed the RCMP to sweep the circumstances regarding the death of Robert Dziekanski right under the rug.

Really, it's the idea of the slippery slope that has so many people fired up, I think. I wouldn't be surprised if Boing Boing's rather hyperbolic headline is at least partially motivated by that; Cory Doctorow, though originally from Canada, now lives in the United Kingdom and is well aware of what a surveillance state is like, and a UK-style ubiquitous CCTV setup should absolutely be prevented from being built in Canada.

The important thing is to pick one's battles. There are a lot of people who won't get worked up about this sort of surveillance in airports, who wouldn't see anything wrong with it, who would look at the people closing ranks against it and wonder what their problem is. Raising awareness about this kind of surveillance in airports is always a good thing, but unless it threatens to go beyond the airport... there are plenty of battles to be fought, and choosing the wrong ones only weakens the whole.

Blizzard's GIFT

For the last fifteen years, Blizzard Entertainment has been one of the most beloved companies of the video gaming industry. Their catalog since the release of Warcraft II is success after success - Diablo, Starcraft, Diablo II, Warcraft III, and the reigning king of the massively multiplayer online RPG field, World of Warcraft. I recall many good times in the late 1990s spent on Battle.net, Blizzard's multiplayer gaming framework. Even their acquisition by Activision a few years ago didn't cramp their style, since their new bosses weren't stupid enough to think they knew how to run Blizzard better than Blizzard. At least, that's what it seemed like at first.

Now, Blizzard is dealing with one of the first large outbreaks of anger among its customer base that I can remember, thanks to its newly-announced Real ID forum identification system. Blizzard describes it as "a completely voluntary and optional level of identity that keeps players connected across all of Battle.net." If you've never heard of it, it's simple - right now, posters on Blizzard's World of Warcraft forums can post under the name of any of their in-game characters; once Real ID is rolled out, there will be no option but to post under the name that appears on the credit card that is paying for the Battle.net account that's making the post. For now, this applies only to World of Warcraft accounts - other games haven't been folded into this system of forced identification yet. Nevertheless, with this precedent set, it's only a matter of time.

When I first heard about this initiative a few days ago, my first thought was that Blizzard was that Blizzard was trying to beat John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, first elaborated by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik of the webcomic Penny Arcade back in 2004 - a commentary on Internet culture that's genius in its simplicity. Blizzard's official comments seem to support this, as they claim to be changing the nature of the system in order to "contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven't been connected before."

Personally, thanks but no thanks. I like my veil of anonymity. It's one of the bedrock principles that makes the Internet what it is - and, I think, that's what might really be at the core of the issue. After thinking on this some more, this goes beyond forum names. What this looks like to me is one of the strongest signals yet that the great, freewheeling "frontier era" of Internet culture is under siege.

If I want you to know who I am, I'll bloody well tell you.

There have always been people who conducted business online under their own names. It was common in the days of Usenet, when the wired community was small and tight-knit, but when the World Wide Web exploded into the mainstream in the mid-1990s, millions of new Internetters flooded in and upended the original social mores. By the time I got my first home internet connection, back in 1998, many of the patterns that endure today had been set. Prime among those was the forum handle - a name you chose for yourself, another identity with which you could express yourself freely. Even then there were those people who chose to post under their true names, but at the core it was their choice.

While the "Wild West" nature of the Internet is, I think, one of its greatest strengths, it's not something that's idolized everywhere. Governments and corporations, for example, would love to parcel up the online wilderness into nice, neat, manicured lots - governments to control and monitor their populace, and corporations to sell, sell, sell! Unrestrained freedom is a threat to them, because the point-to-point communication that the Internet makes possible the diminution and degradation of their authority.

The saving grace is that in this particular situation, there's an easy way for people to register their discontent with it - vote with their feet. I've heard rumors that World of Warcraft account cancellations have been spiking in the few days since this was announced, and if I had one, I would be cancelling it too. For that matter I'm reconsidering my potential purchase of Starcraft II later this month, a game I've been waiting twelve years for.

I realize that this may be weird coming from someone who posts under his own name and face. The point is that to do so is my choice - and as James Alan Gardner wrote in Ascending: "Deliberate choices are the only sacred things in the universe. Everything else is just hydrogen."

Another Step Toward the Surveillance Society

Originally, I was going to write about Toronto cyclists flouting traffic laws, but James Nicoll made me aware of something with rather darker implications for society. On July 23rd the Daily Express, a British tabloid that seems to write about the same sort of things as the Toronto Sun, ran Alison Little's article "SIN BINS FOR WORST FAMILIES." These "sin bins" are the brainchild of Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families in the current British government, and will place twenty thousand "problem families" under round-the-clock surveillance within their homes.

Let me say that again - the British government is no longer content with placing CCTV cameras in essentially every outdoor spot that can accomodate a camera, it is now extending its surveillance to the privacy of the home.

"They will be monitored," the article reads, "to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time, and eat proper meals." While I'm sure that some parents would appreciate - nay, clamor for - the Voice of Authority booming down from On High for little Wossisname to get to sleep at a reasonable hour, this is yet another example of a government pushing a project through without any concern for the implications down the road - or, if you're authoritarian-minded, another example of a government turning up the heat on the frog by half a degree. More likely, though, this is an example of politicians looking at the moment and not sparing a thought for any of the potential consequences.

I understand that this is, on its face, an earnest attempt to mitigate social ills. Nevertheless, this sets an extremely dangerous precedent, regardless of the good intentions that created it. Once a government has been granted a power, it is loath to hand it back. For example, the income tax wasn't introduced in Canada until 1917, when it was instituted on a "temporary" basis to finance the First World War, and the government's debt load led to it becoming a permanent fixture.

Governments run on control just as much as they run on money. When all else is stripped away, control is the fundamental purpose of every government, control and organization and demarcation. I don't think there's any reason to believe that with this "foot in the door" validating remote surveillance within one's home, the future will see anything other than an expansion of the program.

What concerns me is that this being done to assist "problem families." Sure, in this context that's used to mean "chaotic" families with children at risk of falling into a life of crime, but who's to say that will always be the case? What if in the future, a "problem family" is one that isn't sufficiently religious or patriotic? Governments will use these tools to their own ends, and we can't blithely assume that every government's end will be a gain for society as a whole.

Is this just a rumor? It hasn't been getting much coverage outside the British tabloid scene, so maybe - but the crux of it is that given what the British government's done before, the whole thing is perfectly plausible to me. I've probably said it before, but I'll say it again - I'm damn glad my family left the United Kingdom in the 1960s. It seems like every week I read a story that suggests the incubator of modern democracy is turning its back on it.

I got through this entire post without saying the word "telescreen" once - wait... god dammit