The Fight for Cyber Thoreau (original) (raw)
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In this article, I offer an outline of the papers comprising the special issue. I also provide a brief overview of its topic, namely, the friction between cyber security measures and individual rights. I consider such a friction to be a new and exacerbated version of what Mill called ‘the struggle between liberties and authorities,’ and I claim that the struggle arises because of the involvement of public authorities in the management of the cyber sphere, for technological and state power can put individual rights, such as privacy, anonymity and freedom of speech, under sharp devaluating pressure. Finally, I conclude by stressing the need to reach an ethical balance to fine-tune cyber security measures and individual rights.
The University of Chicago Law Review, 1998
The Supreme Court's partial invalidation of the Communications Decency Act on First Amendment grounds raises the more fundamental question of whether the state can regulate cyberspace at all.' Several commentators, whom I shall call "regulation skeptics," have argued that it cannot. Some courts have also expressed skepticism. The popular and technical press are full of similar claims. The regulation skeptics make both descriptive and normative claims. On the descriptive side, they claim that the application of geographically based conceptions of legal regulation and choice of law to a-geographical cyberspace activity either makes no sense or leads to hopeless confusion. On the normative side, they argue that because cyberspace transactions occur "simultaneously and equally" in all national jurisdictions, regulation of the flow of this information by any particular national jurisdiction illegitimately produces significant negative spillover effects in other jurisdictions. They also claim that the architecture of cyberspace precludes notice of governing law that is crucial to the law's legitimacy. In contrast, they argue, cyberspace participants are much better positioned than national regulators to design comprehensive legal rules that would both internalize the costs of cyberspace activity and give proper notice to cyberspace participants. The regulation skeptics conclude from these arguments that national regulators should "defer to the self-regulatory efforts of Cyberspace participants."
Civil Disobedience and Cyber Democracy
Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2017
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the emergence of civil disobedience in Malaysia specifically in the era of Abdullah Badawi, and its impact upon the democratization process. The whole analysis in this paper is qualitative and derived from two types of data which is primary and secondary data. The analysis shows that civil disobedience arose due to three factors, namely the government's failure to fulfill its promise to reform, Mahathir's criticism against Abdullah Badawi's leadership, and the government failure to handle racial issues. Consequently, Barisan Nasional (The National Front) government failed to gain two-thirds majority of the parliamentary seats in the 2008 general elections and at the same time lost five states to the opposition. In 2013 general election the result remain the same which is government failed to gain two-thirds majority of the parliamentary seats. Furthermore, even though the emergence of civil disobedience failed to create a change of government, it however has been able to give birth to cyber democracy and create awareness among Malaysians to pursue the process of democratization.
2002
Abstract: Prof. Jack Goldsmith's Against Cyberanarchy has become one of the most influential articles in the cyberspace law canon. The position he sets forth-what I call Unexceptionalism-rests on two main premises. The first is that activity in cyberspace is functionally identical to transnational activity mediated by other means (eg, mail or telephone or smoke signal).
Virtual nonviolence? Civil disobedience and political violence in the information age
Nonviolent civil disobedience is a vital and protected form of political communication in modern constitutional democracies. Reviews the idea of both demonstrating its continued relevance, and providing a basis for considering its uses as an information-age strategy of radical activism. The novelty of the forms of speech and action possible in cyberspace make it difficult to compare these new methods of expression easily. Whether in cyberspace or the real world, civil disobedience has historically specific connotations that should be sustained because the concept has special relevance to the political theory and practice of constitutional democracy. Civil disobedience is a unique means of political expression that is used to provoke democratic deliberation about important questions of just law and policy. Among the significant problems that new forms of radical political practice in cyberspace introduce is that their practitioners and advocates neglect the need to distinguish between violence and nonviolence. Examines that problem and others that are central to considering theoretical and political implications of radical activism in general, and civil disobedience in particular, in cyberspace.
Perverting Activism: Cyberactivism and Its Potential Failures in Enhancing Democratic Institutions
In this paper we will analyze the impact of new technologies on a range of practices related to activism. In the first section we show how the functioning of democratic institutions can be impaired by scarce political accountability connected with the emergence of moral hazard; in the second section we display how cyberactivism can improve the transparency of political dynamics; in the last section we will turn specifically to cyberactivism and isolate its flaws and some of the most pernicious and self-defeating effects.
Dissent and Digital Transumption in An Age of Insecurity
Dissent and Digital Transumption in An Age of Insecurity Djelal Kadir This is a diagnostic critique. Unlike a jeremiad, which is a cautionary admonition about what is bound to come, a critique is a diagnosis of what already is. By definition, a dia-gnosis aims at knowing two things––what is said and what is done––and exam- ines any discrepancies between the two. This is an essay on the cartography of dissent, which is to say, a critical interrogation of dissent’s possibilities in the present. The analysis probes the historical moment through the institutional discourse of two currently dominant ideologemes––the digital and the transnational. Any coincidence between the narrative of this analysis and your personal or institutional circumstances is purely fortuitous. The NSA has you covered, and your college or university has your back. As the agent says, “no need to worry, if you are not doing or saying anything you shouldn’t be.”
Cyber-Activism Within the Global Digital Divide
2014
The following thesis wants to explore if and to what extent cyber-activism is possible in a developing country such as Peru, in the context of the global digital divide. In order to do that, it will investigate Peruvians" perception of online activism; it will take into account recent cases of online activism from Peru; and it will put into discussion several concepts such as alternative media, the democratic divide and the global digital divide. The interest for this subject has emerged from my contact with news regarding the social movements taking place in Peru, in order to protect indigenous communities against resource depletion and exploitation. In order to conduct the research, I have used qualitative unobtrusive research methods such as media content analysis and netnography.