#lca2012

This post is in response to the session "Freedom, Out of the Box!", presented by Bdale Garbee at Linux.conf.au 2012. The talk was about the FreedomBox Project:

FreedomBox is a personal server running a free software operating system and free applications, designed to create and preserve personal privacy by providing a secure platform upon which federated social networks can be constructed.

My view on this project is likely to be controversial given the extremely positive response to the presentation on Twitter. However, it is important for a community to be able to tolerate critical analysis of ideas - in fact it is a sign of vitality and sustainability.

Let me start though, on the points we have in common. I completely agree that privacy is one of the great issues facing our society today. Specifically, that the new capabilities that technology has bestowed upon companies, individuals, and governments present new areas of moral hazard which have not been encountered previously in history. We are in the unknown.

I also agree that this issue is about values. It is about one of those few values which are considered universal, and applicable in all cultures. There are at least two articles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which are applicable:

Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 19.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. 

So if there is a spectrum of Ideal to Pragmatic, I am on the idealistic end. In matters of values, especially those universally held, you can only be idealistic. People generally don't make great personal sacrifices to defend pragmatism - it is ideals which make people passionate. And I, for one, am passionate about privacy.

Which is why I think the FreedomBox is a noble effort. It is bringing the skills of the OSS community to bear on a critical matter of our time. However, it is also misdirected.

It was revealing today, during the introduction to the talk, that Bdale said that people need to care more about their privacy. He identified the signs that people are currently not thinking about their privacy, in the casual way almost everyone - even he - hands over information to third party cloud services. I was completely with him to this point. And then we he described his solution, he lost me.

The FreedomBox, as it has been described, is certainly idealistic. It aims to solve the problem of protecting people by giving them a technical means to ensure their privacy. The fact that it faces substantial challenges such a network effects, incumbents, and competitive disadvantage is a topic for another post. Beyond practicality however, I believe it is the wrong solution to the problem.

It is a technical solution to an adaptive problem. The whole project to date has spent enormous effort specifying hardware, selecting software, all in a long lead time to get a device to retail. But what then? If society doesn't value privacy, who will buy this device regardless of how simple it is?

I believe the only solution to this problem is to fix the problem upstream. If we don't have legal protection for our data when its on third party servers, lets not build a competing service. We need to get legal protection for our data on third party servers. Our privacy laws and legal protections were never drafted with our present scenario in mind. They must be debated and updated for the times, reflecting the highest ideals of civil society. They must be aspirational, stretch goals. The current custodians of our data must complain about how difficult it will be to comply. It is through protection of the rule of law that broad, society wide change will be brought about in the area of privacy.

So I am frustrated that at this critical time, the community with the ideals, passion, and knowledge is off building boxes when we should be leading the charge. The solution is not in putting another gadget on the shelves - "Buy your privacy here!" - but in helping people learn that privacy matters. Through that learning will we effect the change we desire at the scale it is needed.

I should note an exception to my proposed solution, and that is for people who are in societies without the protection of the rule of law. In those places, technical means can be a temporary aid in the greater adaptive change. For example, Tor protecting communications to enable street protests leading to democratic change.

If we truly believe that Western society has degenerated to a point where we no longer enjoy the protection of the rule of law, then again, we should not be building boxes but fomenting a revolution. I believe that the rule of law still holds in Western society, but society is groping in the dark on issues of privacy.

Today was the first day of Linux.conf.au proper, here at the University of Ballarat. It's a beautiful regional campus, comfortably sprawling and surrounded by bushland. It presents a mix of gum trees, scrub, landscaped lakes, and university buildings which is so delightfully Australian. Maybe because I also just described Canberra.

There are many others who are reflecting on individual sessions in more detail, so I was interested in themes which emerged for me today. I came up with three: Change, Inspiration, and Growth.

One of the things I have learnt in the last year is about change. Today at the conference, I saw repeated examples of a common error make when approaching change: applying technical solutions to adaptive problems. Ron Heifetz defined change in two categories: technical, where the problem is well defined and domain knowledge extensive; and adaptive, where the outcome is less clear and learning is required. Generally we prefer technical change, because there is less uncertainty. However if you approach an adaptive change as though it were technical, you get pain and suffering.

In several sessions today, often in the Q&A at the end, I heard examples of people treating adaptive change as though it were a technical problem: social issues, the habits of users, team or organisational direction, or the direction of entire open source projects. It's really important to ask the question "What is the nature of this change?" because the way you approach it will be very different. This is also related to adaptive capacity, important when building sustainable projects.

Today, I was also inspired. I had that thrill that one gets when the imagination is fully engaged. The session was about Project Horus, and the sheer awesomeness of seeing a group of friends able to achieve great things, and realising that technology now means that amateurs can send a payload to ~35km on a regular basis. Incredible. To top it off, they launched a balloon from the conference!

Finally, I was remembering my experiences at the first Linux.conf.au I attended in Dunedin in 2006 and how much I have grown since then. Dunedin was an incredible, stimulating event. I was starry eyed and awestruck at these gods among men who wrote this thing Linux I love so much. ("OMG is that Keith Packard? OMG is that ANDREW TRIDGELL!?")