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GOVERNMENT, CAPITALISM, AND THE CONTROL OF THE POPULATION

-- By ScottMcKinney - 16 Nov 2009

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INTRODUCTION

How can we account for the current state of affairs, in which privacy (anonymity and autonomy) is being swept out from under a naïve public's feet, while intellectual property laws are being used to strengthen monopolies over proprietary software and technology? Although a concise answer to this question does not exist, a common theme emerges: control. Corporations seek to control competition, information, and their customers. The government seeks to control its citizens, and in turn is often controlled by corporations.

CAPITALISM, GOVERNMENT, AND IP LAWS

Capitalism does not favor competition. Over time, capitalism creates an environment in which corporations naturally consolidate power and limit competition. With the advent of new technology, corporations like Microsoft and Apple realized that the easiest way to control the marketplace without creating obviously illegal monopolies is to control their customers. These computer giants achieve this control by preventing their customers from improving their own technology. Their business philosophies prevented innovation, and suppressed the far superior anarchist-production model of software creation.

Unfortunately, at a time in which the U.S. Government could have promoted innovation, it instead favored corporate control of technological innovation through a series of miscues. Although copyright protection is automatically granted once a computer program's source code is placed in a fixed medium (the signing of the Berne Convention eliminated the need for formalities), there are still many benefits to registering a copyright. However, the copyright office does not require a computer program to register all of the source code. Therefore, software companies were able to copyright programs, register the programs, and not disclose the extent of the meaningful source code. For a long time, it was assumed that computer programs were unpatentable. Laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas (including algorithms) are not patentable subject matter. However, after the Supreme Court's decision in Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175 (1981), which upheld a patent on a process for vulcanizing rubber which utilized a computer program, the patent floodgates were opened. Although the Court was clear in Diamond v. Diehr that a patent on a computer program alone would not be upheld, the arrival of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in 1982 changed things. Over the next 27 years, the CAFC oversaw an explosion of patents that included granting broad protection for the pharmaceutical industry, patenting thousands upon thousands of computer programs, and allowing the infamous “business method” patents now at issue in Bilski.

Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to “promote the Progress of Science and Useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” There is a glaring inconsistency between the constitutional grant of power and the way in which the patent system functions for computer software: software patentees are not required to divulge the source code to their programs. Granting a patent on computer software might actually promote science and the arts if the U.S. patent system required the programs' source code to be divulged. If source code were divulged in patents, then programmers could better learn from innovative code and learn how to improve code, just as they do in an anarchical production system. Basic UML-style diagrams are not sufficient to “promote the progress of science.” Instead, software patents act to stifle innovation and allow software companies to control software for inordinate amounts of time (twenty years is many lifetimes in the computer industry).

GOVERNMENT CONTROL OVER PRIVACY IN BRITAIN

Just as corporations within a capitalist system naturally grow more powerful and garner more control over the marketplace, governments naturally trend towards procuring greater control over society. Thankfully, America has the benefit of a written constitution, which in theory limits the ability of the government to take complete control over people's lives. Despite the existence of the Patriot Act, the constitution and the American system of checks and balances has acted to remind the U.S. Government that it was created by the people, not to control them. As technology has progressed over the past 30 years, privacy in America has regressed. However, things could be worse: you could live in Britain.

The UK possesses no written constitution and instead operates under the dominion of parliamentary supremacy. There is nothing to check the power of Parliament, and as a result privacy in the UK has gone the way of the dodo. Parliament can overturn itself, but governments rarely take power away from themselves. Using “defending national security”, “deterring crime”, and “protecting societal harmony” as justifications, Britain has installed over 4.2 million CCTV surveillance cameras. George Orwell would be impressed. This figure averages out to one surveillance camera for ever fourteen people. For comparison, China has one camera for every 472,000 citizens. Recently, Britain added facial recognition software to it's surveillance system. To add to the mix, Britain is compiling the largest DNA database in the world—the government has DNA records on 7% of the population and counting. Police in Britain can take DNA samples from anyone arrested on suspicion of an offense. Furthermore, private CCTV and surveillance systems are pervasive in Britain, with the specter of selling the data trail to interested third parties looming large. Recently, it has been proposed that everyone in Britain be issued a unique carbon footprint number. Each citizen would be required to use this number when purchasing things that have a negative carbon impact, such as airline tickets, electricity, and fuel. Britain's close neighbor, the Netherlands has recently approved a “road tax” bill which would install GPS systems on every car, in order to track when and where a person drives so as to enable the government to tax people based on number of kilometers driven. Similarly, Britain has a centralized “camera grid,” which is able to track vehicle movements throughout the island.

Although “limiting carbon emissions,” “preventing crime,” and “fighting terrorism,” all seem like fine justifications, they are not sufficient reasons to diminish the right to anonymity and autonomy. Britain's CCTV systems have improved the efficiency of the courts in medium-sized towns like Oxford—a local magistrate estimated that between 95 to 99 percent of suspected criminals immediately plead guilty after being shown CCTV footage. However, the surveillance systems have not proven to deter crime. Crimes that occur in public are rarely planned, and those that plan to commit public crimes are quite aware of exactly where the cameras are located.

The U.S. must look to and learn from Britain. Britain's Orwellian surveillance network is about control, and control over the individual cannot be justified if the cost is the loss of anonymity and autonomy.

CONCLUSION

The proper role of government is not to control the people, but to be controlled by the people. However, it is government's job to prevent unfair, insidious monopolies. Corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Disney, Apple all seek to maximize profits by retaining control over the information and therefore the marketplace. By making the availability of their products hinge upon individuals releasing personal information, companies give naïve consumers no realistic choice but to surrender their anonymity and autonomy. Therefore, it is up to us to control our privacy, by educating the naïve public about the dangers and consequences of the loss of privacy, by influencing the government to serve its proper purpose—providing a check to monopolistic corporations, not assisting them—and by providing the public with favorable private technological alternatives. Furthermore, we must work to eliminate legal devices such as unnecessary and uninformative software patents that assist those with monopolistic control over the marketplace. The more personal information that government and corporate entities stockpile, the less control individuals have over their daily decisions. If we do not act soon, the U.S. will continue down the road towards Britain’s Orwellian state of existence.

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