I have an article in the latest boundary 2 titled “The Militarization of Language: Cryptographic Politics and the War of All against All.” It is my most sustained attempt to locate and critique a political philosophy in the discourse of encryption advocates, a project I’ve addressed as well in pieces like “Code Is Not Speech” […]
Brief version Advocates understand the idea that “code is speech” to create an impenetrable legal shield around anything built of programming code. When they do this they misunderstand, or misrepresent, free speech law (and rights law in general), which rarely creates such impenetrable shields, the principles that underlie that law, and the ways those principles […]
As important as the technical issues regarding Tor are, at least as important—probably more important—is the political worldview that Tor promotes (as do other projects like it). While it is useful and relevant to talk about formations that capture large parts of the Tor community, like “geek culture” and “cypherpunks” and libertarianism and anarchism, one […]
“Game of Drones,” aka, “Gameful, or Shameful?,” aka “Presto Change-O World Peace, from the Same Team That Brings You Permanent War” Paper delivered at SLSA 2012 Annual Conference, Milwaukee, WI, September 2012. Full paper: “Game of Drones” Abstract The recent widespread deployment by the US in particular of Unmanned Combat Vehicles (UCVs), especially Unmanned Aerial […]