All posts by Thomas L. Knapp

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Privacy and Politics: The Hypocrisy of the Surveillance Statists

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The New York Times reports that at least six members of the Trump administration used personal email accounts to discuss White House matters.

Given president Donald Trump’s campaign and post-campaign harping (as the Times puts it) on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s illegal use of a private server and mishandling of classified information, it’s unsurprising to hear charges of hypocrisy from Democratic quarters. But the hypocrisy here  a matter of  political class elitism, not partisan politics. Those in power, regardless of party, want to know what you’re doing, but think what they’re doing is none of your business (except when they send you the bill for all of it).

The US government and its state and local subsidiaries operate the largest and most far-reaching surveillance apparatus in the history of humankind. Their intelligence and police agencies intercept, analyze and catalog our phone calls and emails, create and install malware on our computers to keep track of what we do online, and watch us via satellite and over vast networks of  cameras in public areas. They track our activities using our Social Security numbers, drivers’ licenses, car VINs and license plates, banking and employment information, and electronic device IP address and MAC IDs. Modern America puts the Third Reich’s death camp tattoo system and the Soviet Union’s internal passport scheme to shame in this respect.

Whenever we mere mortals notice and complain about any aspect of this surveillance state, the response consists of operatic appeals to “national security,” “fighting crime,” and other variations on the theme of “we’re just trying to protect you.”

But whenever an Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning or Julian Assange pulls back the curtain, revealing  crimes committed by the political class, all hell breaks loose. How DARE these pesky whistle-blowers show the serfs that  their emperor isn’t just naked, but also killing and stealing on a scale that would make Ted Bundy and Bernie Madoff blush? And how dare the serfs notice?

Excuse me for a moment while I break out the world’s smallest violin and compose “Dirge for the Lost Privacy of Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, Jared Kushner, Stephen Bannon, Reince Priebus, Gary Cohn, Ivanka Trump and Stephen Miller.”

So long as American politicians and bureaucrats continue to put the rest of us under a magnifying glass, they deserve no sympathy when they  get caught trying to hide their own actions from public view.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Social Media: When Does “Actively Working With the Government” Become Censorship?

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Criticism of Facebook
Criticism of Facebook (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In a September 21 post, Mark Zuckerberg shared nine steps the  site he started is taking “to protect election integrity and make sure that Facebook is a force for good in democracy,” by “actively working with the government” and “partnering with public authorities.”

The day before that, the United Kingdom’s prime minister, Theresa May, used the United Nations General Assembly as a forum to demand that social media networks “ensure terrorist material [read: content that May disapproves of] is detected and removed within one to two hours.”

From the current Red Scare (“Russian election meddling”) and other nation-state attempts to limit speech they define as foreign propaganda or support for terrorism, to ongoing efforts to “combat hate speech,”  the cycle of demands from government and compliance by social media giants is speeding up regarding what the rest of us are allowed to read, write, watch, and share.

Newer social media networks like Minds.com and Gab.ai have been growing as the targets of these efforts abandon Facebook and Twitter. But those upstarts are themselves facing backlash of various sorts from service providers such as web hosts and domain registrars.

An increasingly important question, especially for libertarians (of both the civil and ideological variety), is:

At what point does “actively working with the government” and “partnering with public authorities” cease to be private, albeit civic-minded, market activity and become de facto government activity?

Or, to put it differently, when does it cease to be merely “you can’t talk like that in my living room” (exercise of legitimate property rights) and start becoming “you can’t talk like that, period” (censorship)?

My own answer: When Mark Zuckerberg starts using the phrase “actively working with the government” as if that’s a good thing, we’re well into the danger zone.

Fortunately, the situation is (or at least can be) self-correcting. Companies rise and companies fall. The positions of Facebook and Twitter atop the social media pile may SEEM unassailable at the moment, but there was a time when few expected a new generation of retailers to bring Montgomery Ward or Sears, Roebuck to their knees. If you’re not too young you may remember how that turned out.

Social media already serves two masters: Its users and its advertisers. One more master — the state — is one too many. If Facebook and Twitter don’t stop playing with fire, let market demand for free speech burn them to the ground.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Jamie Dimon is Right to Fear Cryptocurrency

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Bitcoin (stock photo from http://maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com, CC0 license)
Bitcoin (stock photo from http://maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com, CC0 license)

When JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon called Bitcoin a “fraud,” what ensued looked a lot like a “poop and scoop”  con: The practice of driving down a thing’s price by saying bad things about it, then buying up a bunch of it before the price bounces back. After Dimon’s comments, JPMorgan briefly became one of the cryptocurrency’s biggest buyers. The company claims it was purchasing Bitcoin on behalf of clients, not as corporate policy, but it looked bad.

Now Dimon is badmouthing cryptocurrency again. And, as before, he clearly either has no idea what he’s talking about or has sinister motives.

“It’s creating something out of nothing that to me is worth nothing,” Dimon told CNBC. “It will end badly.” He also warned that as cryptocurrencies become more popular, government crackdowns will drive them into the black market (that’s happening in China right now).

The key words in Dimon’s “to me [it’s] worth nothing” are “to me.” Value is subjective. What’s a thing worth? Whatever it’s worth to you, or to me, or to Jamie Dimon. Each of us may find that thing more valuable, or less, than do the other two.

Dimon considers cryptocurrency “worth nothing” for one reason only: Because his company — the largest bank in the United States and among the largest in the world — doesn’t control it. And that’s one of several reasons why others find it very valuable indeed.

Cryptocurrencies run on blockchains, “distributed ledgers” without central authorities. Dimon prefers fiat currencies, which are created by governments, managed by central banks, and funneled through institutions like his, legally privileged choke points taking generous rake-offs from wealth created by others but forced to pass through them.

Neither crypto nor fiat currencies are backed by physical commodities like gold or silver, but the resemblance ends there. Crypto is backed by the work of maintaining its ledgers, called by the imaginative name “mining.” Fiat currency is backed only by your trust in the governments (and the Jamie Dimons) of the world.

“Creating money out of thin air without government backing is very different from money with government backing,” he says. He’s right. Money with government backing pays Jamie Dimon. Cryptocurrency threatens his business, his paycheck and his way of life.

His prediction of government crackdowns isn’t just a prediction, it’s a fervent wish. He’s desperate to see cryptocurrency crushed, unless he can find a way to force it through the JPMorgan toll booth.

Dimon should be careful what he wishes for. If cryptocurrency is forced entirely into the “black market,” that market will, sooner or later, bury his. His only chance is to co-opt blockchain and cryptocurrency methods into the fiat system. Here’s hoping he fails.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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