Interview with Phillippe Agrain about the Pisanu Decree and related matters

Here is a first interview about effects and scope of Italy's "Pisanu Decree" - a series of urgent measures to counter international terrorism approved after the London attacks in 2005. Slated to expire on December 31, 2008, this measure is under discussion for another year renewal - strongly opposed by the Nexa and other organizations well beyond Italy. Phillippe Agrain, CEO of Sopinspace and renowned author/researcher, answers a few questions about the Pisanu Decree and related matters. (Interview also available in Italian).

Why is it that governments tend to avoid analyzing the overall socio-economic impact before ruling about the Internet? What about the notion of digital technologies and communications as a common good to be protected in the first place?

This is actually two different questions. Regarding the first one, the avoidance of overall socio-economic impact assessment before ruling about the Internet (and actually more generally about information and knowledge) the key word is "overall". Government and interest groups invoke many economic and at lesser extent social arguments. But these are micro-arguments, specifically carved to isolate a localized positive effect of a measure, for instance that putting roadblocks on how people can access the Internet could have made society safer against one particular usage of the Internet for communication between terrorists, or that software patents are good because a limited number of SMEs get easier access to investment if they hold them. These arguments do not hold under any serious scrutiny of more general effects (for instance on the true needs of anti-terrorism investigation, or on the overall economic and innovation impact of software patentability).

This said, we must be aware that when this reluctance to serious overall socio-economic impact has been there for many years, the ability to do it must be re-constructed. A generation of economists and sociologists has been trained that ignores the best of macro-economic, mixed macro/micro-economic or overall societal analysis, and shows little interest for infrastructural goods such as the Internet or information and knowledge commons. Many of them have become mercenaries who sell their ability to juggle with demand/supply curves for isolated goods to the highest bidder. Some very fine economists have continued to work in assessing global benefits, in particular to identify how the localized or micro-benefits do not mechanically transfer into global welfare. The same is true for the information commons, where a variety of legal and policy specialists have deconstructed the fundamentalism of property or of profit maximization on one piece of information or knowledge. Recently, the recognition of the value of information, communication and knowledge commons has reached a new stage: we -meaning the groups of thinkers who address these issues- are now reflecting on how to organize the relationship between these commons and the economy or society at large. One of the most frustrating elements is that when there is so much to explore in positive proposals, we have to lose time fighting non-sense. Though the value of information and communication commons is now recognized in intellectual circles, policy making has not yet taken it in account sufficiently. Recent experience has shown that serious socio-economic impact occurs only when people request it quite loudly. So I am glad that you do so in this particular instance.

As a modern society, do we really need such stringent measures? How can we better balance the need for security with the promotion of technical innovation while assuring users' access to new media?

I am not a security specialist, so anything I mention on security issues is based on hearsay from people who know more than me. But even the layman can see that the Internet access roadblocks of the Pisanu decree hurt about everybody else more than they do hurt people who mean harm. So I will answer a slightly more general question: what is the proper balance between the preventive and the judicially ordered investigation? Asking ID of people in cybercafes is just one small element of a much wider trend to install systematic control, storage, or differentiated access in the information infrastructure. It is clear than terrorism or paedophilia are only sale arguments for other goals. I remember that just after September 11th, there was a G8 meeting on cybercrime. Its focus was on the security of large information infrastructure. All the IPR lobbies of the world screamed that they wanted to get intellectual property infringement included in the list of world security threatening cybercrimes. They got it. When you see such absurdity, the first step towards an answer to your question is to say "use some common sense".

Now, fighting terrorism or other criminal activities is very valuable. There was an immense life experiment in the US after the Patriot law of how much breaking with the due process of law and basic human rights is worth. The answer is: it brings little and damages a lot. It has damaged the standing of the US so deeply, that many of my friends there carry now a deep moral wound that will take years to heal. There were other life experiments: the law enforcement teams who fight crimes against children seem to have been remarkably efficient at catching the authors of criminal activities making use of the Internet, without need for breaking with the due process of judicially controlled investigation.

Your question is also about the promotion of technical innovation and user acces to new media. I assume that you mean access to expressing oneself in new media, not just being force-fed media contents. I think we know the answers there : Net neutrality, universal access to the Internet, free public spaces of information, lots of education, and many physical public spaces where people can meet. I see nothing in that that would be incompatible with the needs for security.

What could be the 'side effects' of such preventive measures on people's privacy and freedom of speech? Is this maybe another step toward the surveillance society?

As a frequent visiter to Italy for scientific or public debate purposes, I have seen how the Pisanu decree has turned the best universities of Italy into places where access to the internet by visitors is more difficult than in universities of emerging countries, for instance. This is only a small corner of the issue. More generally, preventive measures are everywhere, in proposals for the early detection of 3-year old future delinquents in France or the UK, in proposals such as the French "riposte graduÈe", in much more obscure corners of media regulation.

Indeed, one can be afraid of a drift towards a surveillance society because there has been a collision of two very distinct trends: what Naomi Klein calls the government of catastrophe, and the general distaste of centralized media and some governments for a public space where all can speak. When governments are at a loss on how to propose visions of the common good, they are much more comfortable with managing catastrophies in urgency. When we have a huge problem of social justice and globalized inequalities, government can produce and distribute thousands of billions of euros in order to "manage" the financial crisis. In parallel, the detestation of the open public space, the refusal of a democracy of expression, culture and media is a deeply entrenched attitude in limited but powerful economic and political players.

However, I am more optimistic here. What this collision is producing is also a growing consciousness in societies that apparently distinct issues have a common element. The open public space is recognized as an aim in itself, but also as a need for all those who care for other public goods. Our time is one of huge challenges for these public goods. Challenges such as climate change, how to organize a post-consumption era, countering the growth of inequalities without betraying the immense hope in emerging and developing country of benefitting from globalization. We have much better to do that living in fear and building walls to cage it. Our present problem is that this growing awareness is not much relayed in political parties or schools of thought. We -meaning the communities of interest that try to promote the Internet and information commons- have a duty of pedagogy in this respect.
[12dec08]