Transcript The Information Society and the future of the nation state

The Information Society and the
future of the nation state
David Allen
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Nation State and the Panoptican
Allocate
Nation State
Electronic government
increases the
states ability to
Enforce
Surveillance
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Issues covered in this lecture
• From Nation State to market place?
• The Individual and the State
• The future of Democracy in the Information
Society
• State Control of Information
• Regionalisation - from the nation state to the city
state?
• Crime and the State
• Regulation, Surveillance and the State
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1. Globalisation and the Nation
State
“ National law has no place in cyberlaw. Where is
cyberspace? If you don’t like the banking laws in the
United States, set up in the Grand Cayman Islands. Don’t
like the copyright laws in the United States? Set up your
machine in China. Cyberlaw is global law, which is not
going to be easy to handle...I expect the nation-state to
evaporate... before some global cybestate commands the
political ether. Without question, the role of the nation state
will change dramatically and there will be no more room
from nationalism than there is for smallpox.”
(Negroponte, 1996: 336)
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From Nation State to Global
Market Place?
• Multi-Nationals choose geographical sites
where they comparative advantage is
greatest:
– cheap labour force
– Tax incentives
– Low tax regimes
• Significant threat to states abilities to raise
taxes from multi-nationals and therefore a
threat to the welfare state?
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Wales
“Since 1983 Wales has attracted more than 350 overseas companies who
between them have invested more than US$ 7 billion in their Welsh
operations. Major companies investing in Wales include Nortel, British
Airways, Ford, Bosch, Toyota, Sony, the Trustee Savings Bank and
LG.
• Inward Investment and Relocation Services include:
– Advice on property selection, planning and construction through the
WDA’s Property Services
– Financial Incentives are available for some companies via the Welsh
Office
– A full range of Business Services to help plan, establish and develop a
successful business in Wales
– Advice and relocation support , which is essential in the often complex
process of investment decision making, is provided by Team Wales”
(http://www.wda.co.uk/investing/index.htm)
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Multi-nationals dictate government
policy?
• September 1999: Glaxo Wellcome’s flu drug Relenza obtained a
licence and was launched in UK.
• October 1999: National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice)
recommended that it should not be prescribed on the NHS. Confirmed
by UK Health Secretary, Frank Dobson.
• Glaxo Wellcome warned the Government that if took a hostile attitude
to the development of new drugs, the industry would move its research
base elsewhere.
• Glaxo Wellcome was backed by AstraZeneca and Smithkline
Beecham.
• Government maintained refusal to allow it to be prescribed on NHS.
• Glaxo Wellcome announce redundancies (worldwide but large % in
UK)
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2: The Individual and the State
• Free market in labour + restructuring of
Industry:
– The Knowledge Worker (The New
Informational Elite)
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•
•
•
Not tied to any one geographical location
Highly skilled and highly paid
Working in a global common language
Working over networks
But what about the rest...?
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Regionalisation and
Globalization
• From the nation state to
the city state (Hong
Kong/Singapore)
• From national to regional
communities (Community
Networks).
• Globalized Virtual
Communities
(“Networks of Interest”)
• Cultural and economic
globalisation
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Cyberspace and Virtual
Communities (“Networks of Interest”)
• Wherever you are spatially you have a ‘virtual’
community.
• Augments not replaces physical community.
• As society fragments ‘atomises’ - internet brings us
together.
• New freedoms for disadvantaged - allows one to by-pass
the barriers of gender/class/ disability.
• Virtual reality - taking it all a BIT further...
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3. The future of Democracy in
the Information Society
demos = people, kratos = power
• direct democracy promoted by the new electronic means, tools and methods
(information networks)
• new opportunities to have influence on common matters and decision making (to
get heard and seen)
• the original form of democracy was of direct democracy (vs. contemporary
representative democracy)
• now the new technology removes the problems of time and space: in theory,
everybody may speak up
• there is an obvious demand for the direct democracy, people want to have more
control over their own things (or do they?)
• "to know implies can"?
• direct democracy would not abandon representative one, it would support it
example: televoting
• the goal: to make it possible for citizens to be a part of the decision making process
already in the beginning of the process
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Democracy based on Technology
“...like all middlemen in the new electronic
world, political representatives will have to
justify their roles. The network will put the
spotlight on them as never before....it won’t
be long before a senator receives a million
pieces of e-mail on a topic or has his beeper
announce the results of a real-time opinion
poll of his constituents. (Gates, 1996, 308)
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Community politics?
• Politicians in this turbulent age as puppets of the digital
mob.
• Politicians so overwhelmed by deluge of ‘contact’ from
constituents that accountability and interest in voter
feedback declines- grassroots become irrelevant politicians become representatives of corporate patrons/
lobbyists.
• The proliferation information produced by the minority
(e.g. Far Right’ - E-mail - WWW- Games)
• The mediation of control leads to loss of individual
accountability and the sanitation of political decisions.
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4. Netwar and State Control of
Information
“The term netwar refers to conflict (and
crime) at societal levels where the
protagonists rely on network forms of
organization and technologies. (Rondfelt
and Martinez, 1998:369)
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Netwar
•
•
•
•
•
mass media
low cost globalization
communication without censorship
subversive potential
more ‘command and control’ - ‘rapid
response times’
• Lack particular national identity
• Multi-organizational networks
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Guerrilla Warfare
• Mao Tse-Tung “because guerrilla warfare
basically derives from the masses and is supported
by them, it can neither exist nor flourish if it
separates itself from their sympathies and cooperation” (Griffiths, 1978: 41)
• Greater Mobility than conventional enemy forces
• Detailed knowledge of the geographical area
• Better intelligence systems than its enemy - which
must include a high level of security (Cross, 1962)
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Use by sub-state groups: 3C I
• Propaganda and lobbying
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–
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–
•
•
•
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e-mail services
fax broadcasts
WWW sites
communities of interest
Hacking
E-mail bombs
Electronic fraud and cybercrime
Planning and control
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Propaganda and lobbying
: The Zapatistas
“The first informational guerrilla movement”
(Castells, 1997: 73)
Zapastista Front of National Liberation (FZLN)
[http://www.peak.org/~joshua/fzln/]
Chiapas 95 - Accion Zapastista de Austin
[http://www.eco.utexas.edu:80/Homepages/Faculty/
Cleaver/chiapas95.html]
Ya Basta (EZLN) [http://www.ezln.org/]
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Zapatistas
“The revolutionary forces of the future may consist increasingly of
widespread multi- organizational networks that have no particular
national identity, claim to arise from civil society, and include
aggressive groups and individuals who are keenly adept at using
advanced technologies for communications, as well as
munitions.” ( Arquilla and Rondfeldt, 1993 as quoted by Castells,
1997: 81)
• !Zapatistas!: Documents of the New Mexican Revolution
• gopher://lanic.utexas.edu/11/la/Mexico/Zapatistas
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Hacking: East Timor
Propaganda
Timor Today- East Timor International Support Centre
[http://www.easttimor.com/]
ETAN/US - The East Timor Action Network/ United States
[http://etan.org/]
Department of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Indonesia. [http://www.dfadeplu.go.id/]
“You might try to restrict information, but technology enables us to stand
as equals”
Hacking the military/civil infrastructure...
Masters of Downloading
[http://www.wired.com/news/technology/story/11811.html]
LOpht (Brosnan 20/5/98) [http://www.washtimes.com]
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E-mail bombs: Denial of Service
• DUP posted cartoons lampooning Gerry
Adams on the internet - site closed down
• A Basque site presenting information
supporting Eta - site closed down by a
concentrated spam and e-mail bombs
organised by a Spanish Newspaper
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Electronic fraud and cybercrime
Information Economy:
– Logic bombs and banks
– Hacking air traffic control
– ....science fiction?
“The difficulty in arriving at reliable results in such
surveys... is exacerbated by the fact that more than
85% of computer fraud goes unreported as
institutions seek to preserve their reputations for
secure practice (Rathmell et al, 1998)
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Communication: MRTP - Tupac
Amaru
• MRTA
[http://burn.ucsd.edu
/~ats/mrta.htm]
• http://www.rand.org/
publications/MR/M
R880/contents.html
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Planning: Globalisation of protest
•
•
•
Particularly powerful tool for global co-ordination of NGOs on global themes…
1,200 NGO’s in 87 countries co-ordinate calls for reform of WTO (http://www.n30.org).
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Environmental...
Control: World Economic Forum
A mounted policeman charges
protesters during clashes
outside the Melbourne venue of
the World Economic Forum
September 11, 2000. Thousands
surrounded the venue in an
attempt to block some of the
world's most influential
business leaders from attending
the conference, claiming that
the forum does nothing to help
the world's poor and developing
countries. REUTERS/Jason
Reed
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Reservations: guerrilla warfare
and the net
• Regulation
• Those with access/ skills have most to lose from
revolutionary actions.
• In the Middle East and Latin America resistance from the
‘info poor’.
• Direct action on the internet doesn’t work.
• Western (US) Audience.
• Low technology still predominates.
• Encryption…
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Net increasingly ‘normalised’
• Official information “news is..the site of social
competition among interest groups and individuals
struggling to influence the representation of themselves to
the eyes of the watching ‘we’ (Ignatieff, 1999:27).
Homogenized, tabloidised, linked to military
• “Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch
him, by ours. There are no need for wardens or gates or
Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted
by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual
round of entertainment's, when serious public conversation
becomes a form of baby talk, when, in short, a people
become an audience and their public business a vaudeville
act..” (Postman, 1986: 161)
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5. Regionalisation
• From the nation state to the city state?
• From national to regional communities.
• From politics of exclusion to the politics of
inclusion
• Cyberspace and Community Networks
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MAN in the UK
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•
•
•
Definition of a MAN remains rather imprecise
Regional/local networks set up by the JISC
Management contract awarded to a local university
LAN uses high speed links to connect buildings close
together (under 10km) and part of an organisation
• WAN links different management domains independent of
geography and at much slower speeds
• MAN serves a geographic area beyond LAN technologies,
but restricted by a defined community of interest, such as a
city and its surroundings.
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The Country MAN
• Can link non-metropolitan areas and thus has
potential to cover the whole of the UK
• FaTMAN (Fife and Tayside MAN) covers a
mixture of rural and urban areas
• Dundee has a population of only 250,000
• Links 3 universities – Abertay, Dundee and St
Andrews plus Northern College.
• Length of initial fibre optic network 48km
• Data transfer rate is 155M using ATM
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Networks in other sectors
• Narrower purpose, or poorer funding.
• Local authority networks
– concerned with administration and financial
control of the parent body
– No remit for information sharing
• National Health Service networks
– patient administration (obsession with secrecy
on grounds of patient confidentiality)
– inability to support cross-sectoral networking.
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Cyberspace and Community Networks
(Freenets, Virtual Cities, Civic Networks, Electronic Village Halls)
• Network of computers with modems that
are interconnected via telephone lines to a
central computer.
– provide community information,
– provide a means for the community to
communicate electronically,
– focus on access for all,
– Founded on a belief that the system can
strengthen and vitalise existing communities.
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From the individual within anarchy to
individual within community
• The politicisation of existing physical community
using electronic medium.
• Emergence of New ‘Politicians’ who are
representatives of the on-line communities of
interest .
• Technology as the basis for Social Inclusion
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6. Crime and the State
• The age of Rage?
• Globalised Linkage of Crime:
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–
–
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Money Laundering (Russian Mafia)
Pornographers
White Collar Crime
When the criminals know more than the police
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7. Regulation, Surveillance and the
State
• “Freedom of discussion is thus not merely a safeguard against
the abuse of authority in democracy, but a condition of
democracy itself’ (Ben and Peters, 1959: 352 as quoted by Rabb,
1997 in Loader, 1997: 161)
• The absence of surveillance and protection of privacy are
therefore necessary conditions of both liberal and participative
democracy.
• Then how does the state protect itself?
• Not Big Brother but the gathering of information on individuals
Little Sisters - by business firms, and organisations of all kinds,
and in the creation of a market for this information.
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Selling the Future
• Political landscape is changing
• New Possibilities
• New Threats
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