It is literally difficult to look into the face of our enemies. They prefer the shadows to obfuscate their identities, keeping safe their motives and true emotions. Terrorists who behead westerners in Iraq or the infanticidal fanatics of Beslan wrap their faces with ski masks, dark rags and the keffiyeh. Disjointed, monomaniacal armies that seek the West's destruction have in common the uniform of anonymity.
Increasingly, 21st century power is projected from secret places.
Sometimes terrorists hide by wearing the clothes and faces of those they wish to destroy. Palestinian suicide bombers blend in to get as close as they can to Israelis, before blowing them to bits. They dress as soldiers, or as Orthodox Jews. Some bombers have dressed as party girls, according to one account.
Closer to home, spammers, peer-to-peer file swappers, hackers, gamers and Web surfers largely prefer to go incognito. Many bloggers, including this one, prefer pseudonymous identities. Whole industries are now challenged by nameless warriors enabled by modern means of disruption. There's also anonymous dates, anonymous pornography, anonymous raves, anonymous flash mobs, anonymous chats, anonymous workers, anonymous shopping, anonymous customer support and anonymous poll-taking. Anonymity seems to be a rising star in neoteric culture---a kind of anti-celebrity in an age where celebrity has devolved into self-indulgent meaninglessness. Celebrity once represented the apogee of cultural power; but now the harsh x-ray spotlight only betrays human frailty---fodder for the circling sharks of our tabloid culture, but not the stuff of heroes.
The Internet age has created a new kind of community, one where true identity is an option, like a costume party of assumed identities---the oxymoron of public anonymity. Behind the masks lies the safety of anonymity, but also strength. Perhaps anonymity enhances conviction, or perhaps persuasion. Anonymity is powerful because people can unbridle their passions and their true motivations without risk of disillusioning colleagues, friends and family.
Power has often been wielded from the strength of a leader's personality, for good or evil. Personality was often the driving force of great movements throughout history. Leadership from behind the mask risks the creation of cults more than great societies. Events appear to be driven by anonymous players in this age. In a sense, human communities are regrouping, and reforming along different cultural pathways than just ten years ago. Loyalties and interests are not as obviously connected to nation or to traditional identities.
The light that floods from the networks of anonymous communities has recently flooded the dark corners of the news media. Committed bloggers and their legions of empowered readers blew the roof off of Dan Rather's Big Lie. A campaign waged by regular citizens to expose media bias has been achieved at a grassroots level. The Delphi Effect does not require the force of personality; instead, the collective acumen and will of committed people focused on an issue and brought together on the Internet is now driving history's plough. It matters little where these people live, what nationality they are, or even if their names are known.
In contrast to the bright side of the Delphi Effect, the darkness from the network of anonymous communities comes from malevolent cults bent on destruction. For them, it also does not matter if their names are known. They are also committed people focused on an issue. While morally opposite from the bloggers who brought down Mr. Rather's empire of lies, the theater of action has similar aspects: Terrorists are decentralized, largely anonymous, and apply their collective acumen to the task of destroying their enemies, by whatever means. There is no moral equivalence between terrorists and bloggers, but it is worth seeing how both are skating around convention and accepted rules to challenge established authority.
The biggest threat facing the ordered world is a rogue nuclear attack. If carried out effectively, there will be no attribution---no return address on the bomb. The goal of the attacker would be to disrupt and destroy, so keeping the atrocity anonymous would be optimal. Our armies wear uniforms and fly planes with national insignia on them; our enemies strike out from indistinct places---nameless, anonymous and vicious. Perhaps one of the key aspects to asymmetrical warfare is that the rogue half of the equation be anonymous to be as effective as possible. Is there an immutable law at play here, a new meme?
Some questions that relate to anonymity:
1) Was Dan Rather brought down by a grassroots organization of citizens, or a cult? Define the difference.
2) Are anonymous driving forces a new phenomenon? Or are they to be found throughout history? Does the Internet create a new kind of anonymity, more empowered than before?
3) Are cultures created by high-tech networked communities changing our values as citizens of the country we live in? Are our allegiances diverging as a result?
4) Are terrorists, empowered by the age of telecommunications and the Internet, reflecting the same forces that are internally changing western culture? Stripping away the moral contrasts, does that leave us with a new set of rules that affects all of us?
5) Is public anonymity the new fame?
6) How much of your public life is anonymous?
Welcome to Winds of Change.NET, "Cicero"! Some of you may know him as "Marcus Tacitus" from the Belmont Club-esque Blog Between Hope and Fear
Like his fellow Californian Marc "Armed Liberal" Danziger, "Cicero" will go by a pseudonym for now. He can be reached by emailing the handle "cicero" here @windsofchange.net
I hope you all enjoy his work as much as I do.
Welcome Cicero! I really enjoy your blog, and I think you have belonged here from the start! :)
But, as for Dan Rather, no cult or organization brought him low, but his own hubris. Olbos, khouros, hubris, ate. "Classic".
If I have to choose, I'll say grassfroots contributed-- hypotheses and proofs sprang up many different places, in many different forms, and all data was shared instantly. Charles Johnson's proofs are the most compelling, because they are visual, and scientific. Who can argue with Mathematics?
"2) Are anonymous driving forces a new phenomenon? Or are they to be found throughout history? Does the Internet create a new kind of anonymity, more empowered than before?"
Speaking as someone who is not anonymous ...
I don't think anonymity adds or detracts from credibility on the Internet. It's mostly irrelevant here, as blog discourse (at its best, anyway) is fact-driven, not based on appeals to authority, claims of expertise, or access to undisclosed sources of information. Rathergate demonstrates this nicely.
On the Internet no one knows that you're a typing dog, and it doesn't matter.
The anonymity of the Internet is not the anonymity of the "legacy" media, which bases claims on anonymous sources - whose credibility cannot be examined by the public - and expects their claims to be believed because they are vouched for by an allegedly trustworthy reporter. Farewell to that paradigm.
"1) Was Dan Rather brought down by a grassroots organization of citizens, or a cult? Define the difference."
He was brought down by neither. He was brought down by a large number of unorganized people who - thanks to the Internet - had unprecedented access to information, and the unprecedented ability to talk back to the Establishment media.
Glen Wishard, Not unorganized, but self organizing, like in self organizing systems, simmulated annealing models, where you wind up with local minima where connections are the most optimized because of shared ideology. :)
And, Marcus Cicero, how could the internet be a cult? There is no common, shared ideolgy that would encompass the whole net.
There are two reasons to be anonymous, versions of one reason: fear of unjustified or justified persecution.
A movie star trying to go incognito to have a bit of a life without braindead fans clogging the way.
Beheaders avoiding pursuit and retribution.
Bank robbers avoiding cameras and eyewitnesses.
Underground writers of samizdat broadsheets.
Chickenshit posters wanting to rant and spew.
:)
Joe--
Thanks for the warm welcome. Happy to be here. And honored.
Jinderella--
Perhaps I didn't write clearly, my fault. I didn't mean to imply that the Web might be a cult. But it seems to be a medium that allows for cults to flourish.
Jinderella & Glen--
Self-organizing sounds about right. There are also cult-like possibilities with the personalities that run blogs. Ahem, Joe, for example; but also Wretchard the Cat or Charles Johnson, or others. I understand the annealing model, but I don't entirely buy that people simply assimilate around common interests, and there's your communities. I think there's more to it. So sayeth my gut.
Brian H--
Very pragmatic reasons not to be known, I agree. Your reasons for anonymity---bank robbers, beheaders fleeing pursuit---imply that anonymity leaves space for subversive activities. Some of which might actually be good. Some not.
Anyway, thanks for all the thoughts. Back to my baby daughter for now.
MC
Cicero:
"There are also cult-like possibilities with the personalities that run blogs. Ahem, Joe, for example; but also Wretchard the Cat or Charles Johnson ..."
There are cult-like possibilities with anyone who has a personality. Note that there is no Peter Jennings Cult.
No organization qualifies as a true cult, IMO, unless it seeks to create a closed or separate reality for its members. Which makes CBS look more like a cult than its critics do.
"I don't entirely buy that people simply assimilate around common interests, and there's your communities. I think there's more to it. So sayeth my gut."
After 9/11, blogs served as a rallying point for people who were indeed expressing a common interest - in many cases, discovering that they had common interests that cut across traditional cultural and political stereotypes.
[This has not gone far enough to suit me - I hope to see this new medium smash all the old Republican/Democrat false dichotomies ... but I'm happy with the progress to date.]
Through the Internet, people are able to define issues that previously were defined for them by the Establishment media. And they are able to encounter other people and other groups that were previously known to them only by the second-hand definitions of others.
Through Charles Johnson's LGF, for example, I've seen Republicans and Democrats encounter each other in ways that break out of traditional definitions - likewise, Christians, Jews, and secularists have encountered each other in new ways. This is not unique to LGF by any means - LGF is only one symptom of a much broader trend.
This does not bode well with some people, who are anxious to preserve old divisions in order to make political hay out of them, but it is happening none the less.
Marcus Cicero, I knew what you meant! I am in both the Cult of Charles Johnson, and the Cult of Wretchard!
Glen Wishard, you speak of "Intellectual Imprinting" I think-- that is going to be the follow on post to my post on 'Sexual Imprinting' and David Boxenhom's post on 'Spiritual Imprinting'. But I have to finish 'EGT and 4th gen Warfare' first. :)
Joe Katzman has a sort of 'Knights of the Round Table' approach to his blog, but it is still intellectual imprinting. People may come here who are imprinted by Dan Darling or Trent Trelenko, OR by Joe himself! It expands the variance in the audience. Charles and Kos are more like feudal warlords with hundreds, even thousands, of followers.
Your post is of the kind to invite thoughtful soul searching... a “call for thoughts” addressed to, what, the collective acumen (distributed intellect, aggregate reflection, cooperative thinking) ?
Well, here is the contribution from my lone neurone: I think that humanity has been heading for majority rule for a while now... perhaps since the 16th century. In the 1930s, philosopher Ortega-Gasset wrote “The rebellion of the Masses” , telling of his anguish in front of the upsurge in Europe of faceless anti-individual totalitarian systems.
After all, anonymity is one of the attributes of totalitarianism...
In democracy, individuals aren’t anonymous in that sense, they have the right to privacy... Just for the sake of the argument: if you don’t take into account the disparity in communicational power between your computer and a box of coke, there is no essential difference between the Internet and London’s Speaker Corner. You may blog to your heart’s content and keep your name private and nobody is entitled to ask his to the man on top of the coke box, arguing for a republican system for Britain.
Now, terrorists are something else. They are clandestine, which is radically different. They don’t want to argue. They want to kill and destroy and to bring down the democratic system in the name of their particular utopia (to bring about the universal caliphate, to install extreme collectivism in Peru or to found a Basque state). They have been around since long ago. Remember the origin of “zealot” or Alamut . And then, talking about networking, I am convinced that their being decentralized has been largely exaggerated; their cellular networks are very much reminiscent of the Komintern than of the free loose association of bloggers, the swarm that defeated dear mediasaurs CBS and Dan Rather. And I think the real difference is that al Qaeda terrorists (or ETA or Tamil Tiger members or whatever) always have a political commissar. Bloggers have none...
A friend's parents once told me that they worked out a way to secretly pay a neighbor's electric bill for a few months after hearing that this particular neighbor, who was not a close friend, was having all sorts of money problems. (Isn't that a cool idea? I'd never thought to pay the utility company directly.) So, being kind of lame, I asked why they did so anonymously. I wanted them to get credit for it! They, not being lame, pointed out that one benefit of doing so anonymously was that the neighbor would be nicer to all of his neighbors because he would be wondering which one of them had been so kind. Brilliant.
So, being kind of lame, I asked why they did so anonymously.
That's very Jewish. In the levels of Tzedakah, that's the next to highest: it's matan b’seter (“giving in secret”).
Dan Rather has not been brought down yet. I do not like that people seem ready to declare victory and quit the field, with the citadel of fraud shaken but still standing.
But this is one of the most stimulating, thought-provoking posts I've read all year. It is the kind of thing that stops you when you want to make an answer at conversational speed, because suddenly you're unconvinced that the ideas you already have will meet the new insights or questions on an appropriate level.
Anyway, to be polite ...
One thing the blogsphere isn't is (bureaucratic) "rule by nobody" (Hanna Arendt's worst form of government "because there is nobody to appeal to"). It's so personal - cat-blogging, Lileks and the adventures of Gnat, posts from baldilocks' mom, quirky interests, Charles' bicycle trips, neighbourly posts of concern for missing people, celebrations of weddings and commiserations on breakups and deaths in the family - and so on. Unless you are utterly unbearable (or foolishly reveal that though you can type you are slowly mutation into a Kafaesque cockroach), there is always someone to appeal to.
I'm not sure that terror-cult anonymity is of the same kind, the same flavour and quality.
But I need to think more.
Thank you, Cicero, and a warm welcome! (does the Roman salute, no "fascist" sarcasm intended)
Knights of the Round Table. I like it! Of course, this is cyberspace. It's more like Winds' Knights of the Infinite Table. As Jinnderella pointed out, to succeed it needs to establish and nurture multiple stars, each of whom brings a different constituency. I wonder what our readers think of our performance in that regard?
And before I get off this "Round Table" meme... Marc, you look sideways at my girl and there's gonna be trouble. Just sayin'.
The other model for Winds is Rivendell, I think - but I do so dislike being associated with Agent Smith. Every time I see Elrond on screen, this voice in my head goes "Misssterrr Aragorrrn...."
Which brings us all the way back to anonymity. Sometimes not being tied to past imprints you've made can be a good thing.
PS: needs amplification.
When you give into terror, who are you giving in to? Nobody. Not only do not know, there is actually nobody authorised to accept your surrender (and your Danegeld) and shield you effectively against other, competing terror-protection rackets. It doesn't work like that.
This is a step beyond anonymity. When you need to find the person, the human heart to appeal to, /there is really nobody there/.
This is true individually.
"As panicking children and parents fled into the school, Elza Viktorovna, one of the teachers, began to remonstrate with the armed men, demanding that they should at least release the youngest children.
A gunman appeared to listen intently to her request, then asked: "Have you finished?" As she nodded he shot her in cold blood."
No heart there. No humanity. Absolutely none. From a functional point of view, these are zombies - depraved zombies that rape as well as murder school-children.
But this (the absence of the "somebody to appeal to" that is so characteristic of the blogsphere) is also true structurally.
When you try to avoid using the word "terrorist" so as not to offend terrorists, who are you actually appeasing? Anybody in general who might practice terrorism against you if you said the word? Then you are submitting to nebulous terror, as nebulous as a "war on terror" or more so.
It is a different kind of anonymity, very different. But to define it neatly/economically and unambiguously - not easy.
I like Rivendell, comparatively speaking. Do you know what the elves have that the medieval knight lacked, Mister Katzman? Baths. And for that matter, deoderant. It's the smell of knights of old that's so repulsive, so penetrating, so revoltingly human . . .
(by the way. I regard Hugo Weaving as a living national treasure, though Aussie is not short on decent actors at the moment)
"As Jinnderella pointed out, to succeed it needs to establish and nurture multiple stars, each of whom brings a different constituency. I wonder what our readers think of our performance in that regard?"
Pretty darn good, with one glaring problem, that is Armed Liberal.
Trent is way up on my hit parade, but ultimately he could be replaced. As could you, Joe, no offence. But you tried to replace Armed Liberal, and you can't. That's a flaw.
We can't seem to get beyond left and right, though I would love to, because in general the left is a howling void. Right on Red summed up the Beslan bloggers, and it was morally devastating. You could see who wanted to ignore the mass murder of Russian children. In the Rather fraud case, the right investigated and investigates honestly, the left did the opposite. You can't include people in ways that dissolve partisanship and dishonesty if they line up and lie (Kos of the CBS scandal), and stonewall, evade, divert or just pretend nothing is happening. You know? It just doesn't work. It's A.L. or … jeez.
I'd like to add my thanks to Cicero for the interesting post, and I hope I don't diverge too much from the topic here.
David Blue wrote:
We can't seem to get beyond left and right, though I would love to, because in general the left is a howling void ... In the Rather fraud case, the right investigated and investigates honestly, the left did the opposite.
The left is not quite a howling void yet. Todd Gitlin speaks out against the rise of anti-Semitism, Christopher Hitchens speaks out against the jihadists, and you can hear reasonable voices from Dissent.
The problem is that while the extreme right of Klannery and neo-Nazism is marginalized and generally despised, the anti-American far left is allowed to have unprotected intercourse with liberalism, and it's getting harder and harder to draw the line between them. Notice how easily someone as uninspired as Michael Moore can win praise from liberal and leftist alike.
This is a major obstacle to overcoming outworn left/right dichotomies, even the trivial ones, because the far left is totally opposed to the project. They are complete, utter reactionaries on the subject. They can dispense with the Democratic party (they're constantly threatening to do it) but not with their precious political divisions. They want to fight the same war forever, no matter how many times they lose. And they've fallen into the intellectual pit of believing that the people are "sheeple" who will believe anything they're told, if they're told it loudly enough.
A lot of that reactionary thinking colors the major "liberal" blogs. I don't think these liberals really like the blogosphere. They definitely don't like that portion of it that disagrees with them and they expend huge amounts of energy slandering it. They understand the utility of blogs in directing money to political candidates and causes, and they make good use of them that way - though the leading liberal blog nearly ruined itself in that regard by an outburst of pure intemperate ultra-leftism.
All in all, the major liberal bloggers (who are pretty left-liberal) seem to be in the same predicament as liberal talk show hosts in national venues. They have to be there because the right is there, but they don't really champion the medium itself, they don't really respect its audience, and they definitely don't like the diversity of opinion. And no way in hell are they going to make common cause with conservative bloggers in a paradigm shift that might disturb traditional liberal institutions.
So when it came to a confrontation between (some of) the blogs and CBS, there could be no doubt what side the left bloggers would choose. They rallied to the defense of the status quo, of course.
David,
Actually, I'm much less replaceable than I'd like to be. Or than I'm trying to be. It doesn't show so much in the posts, but there's a back end of organization, scheduling, and editing that goes all to hell, and does show up at the front end if it falters. I'd love to replace myself in these roles.
Re: A.L. as a solid counterpart across the aisle... yes. A thin list, and it's too bad. I hope I'm just missing some talented and worthy counterparts who might be coaxable one day.
Now, to your earlier point:
This critical absence has been noted as a key trait of sociopaths, and their most distinguishing feature. It also has roots that can be seen in mythology, reminding us that monsters can also be made:
All in black, and no description of his face - and no name, "for he himself had forgotten it.... And he was more cruel than any orc." Of course, and yet not really - for there is no longer a "he" to speak of.
In his nameless featurelessness it is the Mouth of Sauron, even more than the Ring-wraiths, who represents the true acme of surrender to evil in Tolkien's cosmology. For the evil done is not only found the nature of the Lord he serves, but in the nature of the service itself - all the more horrifying in that it was chosen rather than compelled.
Indeed, Galadriel passes her ultimate test by recognizing this very point:
All shall love me - and despair. But that is not a servitude she will compel, even though it save Lorien and all she holds dear in the world.
Heroes, too may choose the shadows, and challenge their own authorities. Ultimately, the shades of difference may lie in the nature of their service. Anonymity and independence - or effacement? Service in hope, or a servitude of despair?
The Klan. Hamas. The blood-cultists in the above picture. All are human, acting in love of a cause that has despaired of realizing its goals by any other means, and no longer even wishes to. An evil that demands not the enhancement of human heart and judgment, but utter surrender and the embrace of its own despair.
"All shall love me - and despair." And hide their faces. And forget their names.
Cicero,
I read your linked Delphi-effect post – good job drawing the analogy to open source software, Raymond, Torvalds, et al. I found it amusing that some MSM types wringing their hands in panic – who will check the bloggers! – were likely publishing their worries with systems which had been authored and validated by a bunch of amateurs i.e. the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl) at the heart of so many web sites. Probably a lot of that code was written by people wearing pajamas.
Is “anonymity” really the right label for those such as we who chose to take a nom de blog? In the literature on internet communities, I recall that the term pseudonymity is used. Much is made of the idea that arguments from authority and reputation don’t hold sway in cyberspace – too much, I think. Pseudonyms allow virtual reputations to be created and maintained (or trashed), and it must be acknowledged that among familiar participants, that reputation plays a key role in blog discourse. This is especially true with respect to leadership, which, like friendship, is as much about how to be wrong in the right way as it is about being right. This is the kind of reputation which makes a positive “imprint” on people.
I think the idea of identity and leadership can be further developed with respect to the blogosphere, and the open source community and the terrorist community are perhaps ahead here. God forgive me for making this analogy, but Bin Laden has a role similar to Linus Torvalds in some respects – moved from individual contributor to editor and publisher, and respected arbiter of internal disputes. Eric Raymond has written extensively about the role of project leadership in open source, and it is an underappreciated topic as the meme of open collaborative authorship moves to a wider audience.
Finally, part of the problem with blogs is that they don’t accrue, they just sort of flow by. Joe has a fabulous indexing system and I’ve explored some of the older areas, but I’m probably the exception. Perhaps Wiki in conjunction with blogs – as the Command Post has done – is a way forward here.
Are anonymous driving forces a new phenomenon?
One possible analogy with anonymity in communicating information comes to mind: anonymous/pseudonymous political and religious pamplets in 17th Century England. (Likely elsewhere also, and perhaps earlier on?).
Another aspect to this:
If, in coming decades, terrorist organisation evolve in sophistication, and technologies of potential DIY mass destruction develop.
What then is the probability of political pressures building toward a "total surveillance society", in which anonymity becomes impossible, and perhaps even illegal?
David: I don't think either Trent or Joe is replaceable! But you are right about AL, he is a rara avis. I have an 'honored adversary' that I go and argue with at dKos sometimes. I have to cycle logins because my comments, where I disagree, keep ranking me downward to banning status. He's decent, but rare. Mostly they won't argue there, just cuss and yell.
But lewy is right about pseudonyms-- they inform who you are! Lewy's is so him, mine is so me-- mine isn't even what I started with! It evolved! :)
Marcus Tacitus becomes Marcus Cicero, because it is a better representation of who he is. Your street name is what you're given, but your psuedonym informs who you are. I think it gives more information instead of less. :)
Knights of the Round Table. Hmm.
"We're Knights of the Round Table.
We dance whene'er we're able.
We do routines and chorus scenes
With footwork impeccable.
We dine well here in Camelot.
We eat ham and jam and spam a lot.
In war we're tough and able,
Quite indefatigable.
Between our quests we sequin vests and impersonate Clark Gable.
It's a busy life in Camelot."
ARTHUR: Well, on second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
Daivd Blue said:
"A gunman appeared to listen intently to her request, then asked: "Have you finished?" As she nodded he shot her in cold blood."
That's more telling then you think! I know a lady who as a young girl of 6 or 7 was taken by the Khmer Rouge to the killing fields. She asked them: "Before you kill me, please tell me why!"
They couldn't come up with an answer and let her go.
So one could infer that these folk are colder killers than the Khmer Rouge!
It should be noted that there's a big difference between pseudonymity and anonymity.
A pseudonym is persistent, attached to one person. The person who goes by a pseudonym nevertheless establishes a reputation over time, which he or she can be judged by. The persistence is what allows this establishment of reputation, with all its implications for social interaction (for example, the pseudonymous person is a known quantity in some sense; the person will hesitate to do certain stupid things because of the possibility of damage to reputation; etc.)
An anonymous posted, on the other hand, has no name by which he or she is known. There is no opportunity for persistent identification, and therefore no possibility of building (or ruining) a reputation. For the anonymous poster, the only bar to the temptation to act destructively is that person's own inner character - which may or may not be adequate. (I personally think that anonymity pretty much always changes the quality of a person's interactions - even someone who is above outright destructive actions. The knowledge that no one can attach this post to the post you make tomorrow does change the dynamic, and not for the better.)
An anonymous person is invisible. A pseudonymous one only wears a mask; we may not know the person's legal name or real-life station, but nevertheless, over time, his or her essence does become known to us.
Bush sucks. There I said that and can move along to the comments.
Lesson learned during Vietnam. Guerilla warfare can not be fought with a huge hightech army better designed to attack or defend against another huge army. Instead new tactics had to be employed.
Moving along. I do not condone torture or killing. The American public should never ever hear about thier army doing those kinds of things. Notice the operative word there? Hear. Covert operations should always remain covert. It's one of the failings I pin on this administration. The inability to carry out a succeful campaign as well as the inability to watch over things that will cause bad publicity. But..........
Unless America is willing to adopt many of the tactics used by the terrorist we will not win the war in Iraq or against terrorism. We also cannot continue passing around tax cuts to the rich while underfunding the infrastructure of this country. Law enforcement and border patrols are two fine examples.
But don't go thinking I believe Kerry can or will solve any of these problems any better than Bush. Of my own opinion there is no one there to vote for and no one willing to be as brutally honest with America as we need.
Joe, post #30125: just wow. (very impressed)
Wow.
lewy14, post #30128 and especially: "God forgive me for making this analogy, but Bin Laden has a role similar to Linus Torvalds in some respects moved from individual contributor to editor and publisher, and respected arbiter of internal disputes."
I think you're also onto something real here.
John Farren, #30133: "What then is the probability of political pressures building toward a "total surveillance society", in which anonymity becomes impossible, and perhaps even illegal?"
People will try for that. (Would-be Torquemadas are ever with us.) But I don't think the main danger would come from that direction.
The key in fighting terrorism is not scrutiny but will. For example, we know an enabler of terrorism right here in Sydney: it is Sheik Taj el-Din Al Hilaly of Lakemba Mosque. We don't need total surveillance to know that. Nor did we need new laws get rid of him, because he was in the country illegally. But his so-moderate Muslim supporters pressed the government to let him stay, and now you can't get rid of him.
One very dysfunctional model seems to be where the culturally Western population loses its independent power and becomes a passive mass under the false protection of a state /that does not regard itself as a protector of that population, but more like a neutral arbiter among constituencies/. In other words, the high-"security" state now reduces security, not only through potential abuses (the conventional and sound objection to it), but through not providing any real check on the people we should be worried about, and often are worried about.
Let me put this in a story form. You are a Brit, and you have always taken for granted that there are traditions in your country protecting things like freedom of speech. (You have no written constitution, so a shared understanding of tradition is pretty much all there is - it is /very/ important.) Now dangerous Muslim mobs are demanding Salman Rushdie be killed, for speaking freely. You go to the police - this is an outrage! But they don't care. They see the bloodthirsty mobs as a constituency and you as a less numerous and less pressing constituency. Well then, you press! You threaten to counter-protest! The police then threaten to lock /you/ up.
Now, do you go home and start lobbying for a total surveillance state? Why should you? It obviously won't be on your side. There is no short term appeal to blind you to the long-term dangers. On the contrary, more "security" will keep you more intimidated and powerless as the danger increases.
Hi, jinnderella. :)
3dc, post #30141: I think at Beslan, in Nazi horror camps, in the killing fields of Cambodia, we reached a point where "more evil" almost ceases to make sense. It's all evil, a trackless moral waste. All of it calls for the same opposing level of effort, which is pretty much "whatever it takes."
jaed, post #30153. Good point.
An identifier is one thing, a personal name is another. An unambiguous identifier can be something like "prisoner 3456." Prisoner 3456 is bereft of anonymity but nameless. jinnderella is not identified for bureaucratic security purposes but is a named member of a community.