This is a response to and extension of A Free Irresponsible Press: Wikileaks and the Battle over the Soul of the Networked Fourth Estate by Professor Yochai Benkler
The rise of the Internet as a medium for the free exchange of information and organization provides us with a unique opportunity to democratize both journalism and the worlds impacted by such. The ability of a democratic people to exchange ideas freely necessitates a fundamental right to access to at least basic technology and further same without government interference, for the latter ultimately constitutes interference with the Bill of Rights' guarantee of freedom of the press.
The ultimate power of the Internet is that it can equalize access to information previously undisclosed. We've seen this in the form of Open Data initiatives through federal, state and local governments. FOIA was the first step in this process two decades ago, however executive initiatives especially under Obama combined with open source projects like Drupal (greatly embraced by governmental agencies worldwide in recent years) have extended a particular ethos previously unknown into the realm of public affairs. Much of this can be traced to Howard Dean and the folks behind the open source DeanSpace - people like Zack Rozen, Josh Koenig, Zephyr Teachout, Niel Drumm, and so many others now famous within the Drupal community (full disclosure: I remain a decade later friends with all of the original DeanSpace group and am heavily involved with the Drupal community). This meeting of open source tools around an ethos of open source government had revolutionized how we interact in public space - the reinvention of the Marketplace of Ideas to borrow from Franklin's terminology.
We have just recently left the golden era of this new Marketplace, a force then still largely unknown by elites where information suddenly started flowing far faster than the presses could print it, but the powers that be have become attuned to that exchange the world over and we now see a concerted effort everywhere to deal with that according to local mores. The question now becomes: can we, the Internet generation, keep information free? This question becomes even more important given the recent revelations of the NSA's Prism program. Herein I propose some solutions, especially as regards the growing security state in the United States of America.
The first of these must by nature be free and unfettered access to information, on any network at any time. The people have a right to know what's going on in the world around them, and even more importantly to directly participate in the process of sharing information, organizing people around particular causes and the like. The Internet, through tools invented by the Dean campaign and then perfected four years later by Obama, with significant help from people all across the technology industry and users of their tools (see twitter and Facebook organizing, IndieGoGo, Kickstart, the various tools built by Joe Rospars and Blue State Digital, NGP, Advonatic, etc).
Further to that cause must be the extension of freedom of assembly to the virtual world. The rise of the Internet has created a space whereby people of all creeds, nationalities, and ethnicities are now able to self organize in a way unparalleled in human history. For the first time in human history, a geek sitting at a computer in DC can directly empower people in Iran to bypass their government's censorship (I set up a squid proxy on my personal server during the Sabz Iran movement). Similarly, Occupiers can share information and tactics across the country. The laws of our government must be extended to protect that right.
Unfortunately, we've seen a number of laws attempt to clamp down on these inalienable rights, most notably the Communications Decency Act of 1996, the Child Online Privacy Protection Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, all of which have wonderfully altruistic sounding names but all of which have been thoroughly corrupted by the powers that be (with the exception of the first - read "An Indecent Act" by the author for explanation).
Now, even more frighteningly, we find ourselves faced with programs like Prism, and perhaps many more clandestine censorship operations that don't even receive the scrutiny of law directed by ISPs themselves, as was rumored to have been undertaken by Comcast in response to criticism two to four years ago. Unfortunately, with no real regulation, much if this is unverifiable, but sadly anecdotal evidence abounds.
The logical question then becomes how do we stem this reverse flow of power relative to what surely the founders intended and what clearly the Internet can enable. The first thing required is a 21st Century Bill of Rights, a new set of amendments that guarantees equal access to all to the Marketplace of Ideas, and defines the ideas exchanged therein to fall fully under the purview of freedom of speech, freedom of association (as befits online organizational tools), or freedom of the press (to address a rising blogosphere rapidly replacing traditional media). All of these thing represent an upheaval of current power strictures but in no less a fashion than did the likes of Thomas Paine's Common Sense.
The first part of this must be adoption of Net Neutrality, which guarantees equal access to the web in the sense that no ISP can favor one site's traffic over another or charge more for access to one than another for the same service. Under this scenario, Comcast could not have censored anyone as was alleged.
The second must be expansion of freedom of speech to the online realm, such that no one can be prosecuted or otherwise persecuted for things they post on the Internet. Speech online must be protected to the same extent that it is offline (and even that needs strengthening against recent encroachments).
Third, a reasonable expectation of privacy needs to be respected online as offline. Messages exchanged between friends on Facebook or Twitter should be treated the same as those exchanged via written letters, subject to full due process. Blanket surveillance programs like the NSA's Prism program should not be any more legal than wiretapping a phone without a court approved warrant. Furthermore, that court cannot operate in secret as does the current FISA court.
Fourth and finally, all aspects of the governance of the Internet must be open processes in every way. The public has a fundamental right to affect the way a public resource is regulated. The Internet has enabled an open source revolution and by its very nature calls for open source governance. We must demand fully democratic policies to govern the usage of the web to ensure that all have equal access and equal reach according to the validity of their ideas. No one should be privileged above any other and the Internet must continue to grow into the Marketplace for Ideas that I was designed to be and so naturally fulfills.
The very future of democracy depends on these values as we have seen so well demonstrated everywhere from Iran to Tunisia to Egypt and Libya as beyond. The Internet and the tools enabled by it is empowering the world in ways we have never experienced before. We are now watching, in real time, the transformation of societies into true democratic systems, not as defined by the United States but as embodied by the open source movement. The individual is now empowered to enact real change in the collective society as never before.
We must therefore explore the long term aims of this online evolution, or dare I say revolution. Ultimately some will be content with tinkering around the edges and even this I say is positive. However ultimately, we must look at the distant future of the country and our polity and how technology weighs on that discourse. We now have a choice: do we empower this cultural shift or do we imperil it? We destroy this paradigm shift at our own peril, I believe and even then may never actually succeed at doing so. Information wants to be free and so do people. Where there is will, there is always a way.