Civic Cybersecurity

A political idea that everyone should be secure in their digital lives and that digital security is a democratic construction which cannot be managed by a guardian class.

Civic Cybersecurity encompasses not just technical (device, data and network) security, but social and psychological security of citizens within a digital society.

Read a pre-pandemic [paper] exploring civic cybersecurity as an educational practice.

In a nutshell: most of what the media resonates with is the interests of two stakeholders;

One is "business"; the corporate world of finance, investments, industry, and markets.

The other is "government", including political structures, law, military - and in wealthier countries education and healthcare.

Each is important and should be held in balance. But a voice is conspicuously missing. In sheer size it dwarfs the other two interests. It is the end to which the other two exist, but we have forgotten. It is the voice of the people. Those who are governed citizens, workers, customers, voters…

In terms of workers, everyone has heard of The Luddites, the skilled machine operators and engineers who opposed the misuse of technology for exploitation in the 19th Century. As lovers of technology they questioned its misapplication by shallow-minded profiteers and were met with armed violence by government mercenaries acting at the behest of rich industrialists.

This issue of voice around technology now goes far beyond mere labour relations, since technology fully structures oir society.

Because markets really have nothing to do with digital technology (how much do you pay for your GMail account?), and because political representatives have scant knowledge or informed opinions about technology, there remains a massive hole in society, a vital need for people to have fully democratic say in how technology is created and used.

We had hoped that "The Internet" would provide a natural democratic tool for consensual technological advance and peace. It turned instead into a giant engine of surveillance and control, while being an amplifier for crime and corruption.

That is no reason to "give up on technology". Nor to chide business or government. But there is a genuine danger of a super-backlash, uncharted forms of social unrest, fragmentation and misery as "civil cyberwar" and possible collapse. Authorities have always punished hackers (not mere cybercriminals) disproportionately out of the same fear the Luddites presented; loss of economic control. Twelve thousand soldiers were deployed against a handful of protesters to elicit shock and awe, to make an example to strike fear into people, because the government knew the Luddites could win easily. The machines were delicate, unprotected, dispersed. Now we've connected them all to a giant neowork and allowed them to fall into disrepair. If people wholeheartedly turn against technology today it will be over very quickly, and no amount of threats, fines, or troops will make any difference for the losers, who will be everyone.

If the path of technology is set only by conflict between liberal free markets and social authoritarianism we are in trouble. Climate, energy resources, borders, and identity increasingly impact on technology choices. Neither markets nor policy can steer technology safely, nor can they together, not without clearer popular mandates and clear benefits to society.

Yet for the overwhelming majority of ordinary people technology remains something that happens to them, and is imposed upon them without reflection, without consultation. With democracy weakening the benefits, harms and relation to [rights] must be understood on a scale never seen before, through radical new forms of education, research, art, documentary, debate.

Out stab at "Civic Cybersecurity" is one small piece of this bigger struggle.

It matters who owns and controls our computers. Modern technology is an extension of our bodies and being. It matters that we control it. Technology is not a new bargain with either business or government that bypasses social contract. Despite the power of "social media" to suppress and control superficial thought and opinion the real social factors of technology will not go away and cannot be ignored. Civic cybersecurity offers a possible basis for more effective, mature and joined-up flavour of digital security thinking.

Like Einstein says; technology forces us to choose, we are either in this together or we are at war with one another.