Negative 1nc

2nc – anti-surveillance- encryption now

The squo is generating stronger encryption pressure because of the perception of NSA overreach

Greenwald, 14 – constitutional lawyer, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who broke the Snowden story for the Guardian; he also runs The Intercept (Glenn, The Intercept, “CONGRESS IS IRRELEVANT ON MASS SURVEILLANCE. HERE’S WHAT MATTERS INSTEAD” 11/19 https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/19/irrelevance-u-s-congress-stopping-nsas-mass-surveillance/
In pretty much every interview I’ve done over the last year, I’ve been asked why there haven’t been significant changes from all the disclosures. I vehemently disagree with the premise of the question, which equates “U.S. legislative changes” with “meaningful changes.” But it has been clear from the start that U.S. legislation is not going to impose meaningful limitations on the NSA’s powers of mass surveillance, at least not fundamentally. Those limitations are going to come from—are now coming from —very different places:

1) Individuals refusing to use internet services that compromise their privacy. The FBI and other U.S. government agencies, as well as the U.K. Government, are apoplectic over new products from Google and Apple that are embedded with strong encryption, precisely because they know that such protections, while far from perfect, are serious impediments to their power of mass surveillance. To make this observation does not mean, as some deeply confused people try to suggest, that one believes that Silicon Valley companies care in the slightest about people’s privacy rights and civil liberties.

As much of the Snowden reporting has proven, these companies don’t care about any of that. Just as the telecoms have been for years, U.S. tech companies were more than happy to eagerly cooperate with the NSA in violating their users’ privacy en masse when they could do so in the dark. But it’s precisely because they can’t do it in the dark any more that things are changing, and significantly. That’s not because these tech companies suddenly discovered their belief in the value of privacy. They haven’t, and it doesn’t take any special insight or brave radicalism to recognize that. That’s obvious.

Instead, these changes are taking place because these companies are petrified that the perception of their collaboration with the NSA will harm their future profits, by making them vulnerable to appeals from competing German, Korean, and Brazilian social media companies that people shouldn’t use Facebook or Google because they will hand over that data to the NSA. That—fear of damage to future business prospects—is what is motivating these companies to at least try to convince users of their commitment to privacy. And the more users refuse to use the services of Silicon Valley companies that compromise their privacy—and, conversely, resolve to use only truly pro-privacy companies instead—the stronger that pressure will become.

Encryption solves better than legislative protection

Greenwald, 14 – constitutional lawyer, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who broke the Snowden story for the Guardian; he also runs The Intercept (Glenn, The Intercept, “CONGRESS IS IRRELEVANT ON MASS SURVEILLANCE. HERE’S WHAT MATTERS INSTEAD” 11/19 https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/19/irrelevance-u-s-congress-stopping-nsas-mass-surveillance/
Increased individual encryption use is a serious impediment to NSA mass surveillance: far stronger than any laws the U.S. Congress might pass. Aside from the genuine difficulty the agency has in cracking well-used encryption products, increased usage presents its own serious problem. Right now, the NSA—based on the warped mindset that anyone who wants to hide what they’re saying from the NSA is probably a Bad Person—views “encryption usage” as one of its key factors in determining who is likely a terrorist. But that only works if 10,000 people around the world use encryption. Once that number increases to 1 million, and then to 10 million, and then to default usage, the NSA will no longer be able to use encryption usage as a sign of Bad People. Rather than being a red flag, encryption will simply be a brick wall: one that individuals have placed between the snooping governments and their online activities. That is a huge change, and it is coming.

Sousveillance solves - movements

Sousveillance constrains the state and bolsters social movements – it holds the greatest promise for radical social change

Bradshaw, 13 - Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work, Central Michigan University (Elizabeth, “This is What a Police State Looks Like: Sousveillance, Direct Action and the Anti-corporate Globalization Movement”, 6/26/13, Springer Link) KW

Within the literature on surveillance, resistance is often mentioned but seldom explored from the perspective of those who are surveilled, and even less attention is given to the ways in which surveillance itself can be used as a means of resistance. Stressing the importance of researching struggles, consciousness and subjectivities of surveillance, Gilliom (2001) documents the ways in which welfare recipients are engaged in a pattern of everyday resistance to surveillance regimes through such means as foot dragging, false compliance, and petty fraud. More commonly, resistance to surveillance in the public and media has been framed in terms of rights to privacy, which fails to adequately capture the range and complexities of surveillance experience (Gilliom 2006: 122). As Gilliom (2006: 126) states

A tour of the field suggests that we have been particularly good at studying the watchers- the police, the CCTV operators, etc.- but not so good at the necessarily messier, less institutionalized, and exploratory but absolutely crucial job of studying the watched- the real people and real bodies who are the subjects of these systems.

Without developing a body of research that makes sense of how differently situated people respond to varied surveillance settings, it is impossible to fundamentally define what surveillance is (Gilliom 2006: 126).

One of the few scholars to tackle resistance to surveillance head on, Gary T. Marx (2003) identifies eleven means by which people confront, evade and neutralize surveillance in their daily lives. Marx (2003: 84) describes ‘‘counter-surveillance moves’’ as turning the tables on those who are doing the surveilling. The greater availability of technologies for surveillance has also played a role in facilitating counter-surveillance, even leading some to call this the ‘‘democratization of surveillance’’. However, Marx (2003) cautions that the greater availability of the means of surveillance does not equate to democratization due to the inequality of resources between agents of surveillance and their resisters. Nonetheless, the ease of access of low-cost surveillance equipment such as digital video cameras and cell phones supply the means for counter-surveillance activities.

Counter-surveillance techniques can also document abuses by surveillance agents and have the potential to lead to changes. As Marx (2003: 384) explains, ‘‘If counter-measures uncover questionable practices, which are then publicized, it may lead, also, to their moderation or cessation.’’ The strategic and tactical communications of global justice protestors provide the networks and infrastructure to monitor police abuses of power during the protest through the use of common surveillance technologies such as cell phones and video cameras and then publicize sensational images of the repression via the internet. McGrath (2004: 198) concurs, stating that ‘‘Counter surveillance involves using surveillance equipment in a way that reverses the usual vectors of power. As such, its most basic manifestation may be the video cameras carried at most political demonstrations, on the look-out to record any police brutality.’’ Although protesters have been quite successful in documenting and publicizing police repression of protesters with the use of collaborative video projects, such counter-surveillance techniques have yet to tame the excessive use of force by the police at mass actions.

Sousveillance: Watching from Below

Resituating Bentham’s panopticon, Mann, Nolan and Wellman (2003) propose that surveillance technologies be freely distributed to promote the observation of people in positions of authority. Labeling this inverse panopticon ‘‘sousveillance’’ [from the French words for ‘‘sous’’ (below) and ‘‘veiller’’ (to watch)], Mann et al. (2003: 332–333) describe it as a type of critical reflectionism which challenges bureaucratic structures by mirroring their practices back at them. ‘‘Reflectionism becomes sousveillance when it is applied to individuals using tools to observe the organizational observer. Sousveillance focuses on enhancing the ability of people to access and collect data about their surveillance and to neutralize surveillance’’ (Mann et al. 2003: 333).

The sousveillance of police by citizens is one attempt to mirror, critique and question the primacy of state surveillance. ‘‘During mass actions, hundreds of media activists thus take to the streets to record video footage, snap digital photos, and conduct interviews’’ (Juris 2005: 201). Documenting police repression of protestors during demonstrations, photography abounds during the course of mass actions. As one media activist astutely noted ‘‘Everyone is watching everyone else’’ (Juris 2005: 201). Quite in-line with the anticorporate globalization movements’ goals of autonomy and decentralization, the authors explicitly recognize sousveillance as a form of direct action with historical roots in democratic social movements past, stating that

Acts of sousveillance redirect an establishment’s mechanisms and technologies of surveillance back on the establishment. There is an explicit ‘‘in your face’’ attitude in the inversion of surveillance techniques that draws from the women’s rights movement, aspects of the civil rights movement, and radical environmentalism. Thus sousveillance is situated in the larger context of democratic social responsibility. (Mann et al. 2003: 347)

One of the few studies to comprehensively rely on the concept of sousveillance is Vian Bakir (2010) Sousveillance, Media and Strategic Political Communication which uses numerous comparative case studies in Iraq, the US and the UK within the first decade of the new century to examine how web-based participatory media (especially blogs and social media sites) challenged political communication. Relying on Mann’s concepts of hierarchical surveillance (politically motivated watching of the institutional watchers) and personal sousveillance (human-centered life sharing that is apolitical), Bakir’s analysis incorporates perspectives from politics, media studies and cultural studies to explore ‘‘…the emergence of Web 2.0 (a revolutionary way of remixing, repurposing and managing information) and its impact on strategic political communication (the careful planning of communication tools to meet very specific political objectives)’’ (2010: 1).

On the whole, Bakir’s research demonstrates how sousveillance allows for people to feel empowered both by sharing their lives with others while also taking action against the surveillant state.

Just as the Panopticon operates through potential or implied surveillance, so sousveillance might also operate through the credible threat of its existence. As the ubiquity and awareness of sousveillance widens, it is this that may most empower citizens- by making the state and indeed, all strategic political communicators, realize their actions may, themselves, be monitored and exposed at any time. The permanent potential for sousveillance from so many…raises the likelihood that power abuses will be captured on record which can then be used to hold powerabusers and manipulators to account… (2010: 157)

However, in contrast to Mann’s original conception of hierarchical sousveillance which is a conscious act of resistance to surveillance, most of the acts considered by Bakir do not appear to be motivated by hierarchical sousveillance (2010: 160). In this regard, Bakir fails to fully articulate the use of sousveillance for the explicitly political means of challenging state and corporate authorities.

With the exception of a few notable scholars such as Bakir (2010), comparably limited research has been done on resistance to authoritarian surveillance practices. While Marx’s (2003) techniques for neutralizing surveillance contribute a framework for understanding the typology of resistance, it does not offer a detailed analysis of resistance techniques in various social settings. Despite the conceptual foundation for exploring resistance to surveillance that sousveillance provides, surveillance scholars have been reluctant to utilize the concept. In stark contrast to the all-knowing eye of Big Brother, sousveillance turns the hegemonic surveillance apparatus on its head by empowering ordinary citizens to question surveillance practices and expropriate them for their own use.

As a form of direct action, sousveillance is yet another means for anarchists, global justice activists and other protesters to confront authority and domination. Using strategic communications such as independent media centers to circulate footage of police repression and tactical communications such as cell phones and the internet to sousveill the activities of police, activists are not only registering their dissent but are more importantly altering these authoritarian practices through direct action.

Sousveillance allows social movements to network and speak truth to power against state and corporate violence

Verde Garrido, 15 – Berlin Forum on Global Politics (BFoGP), Germany (Miguelángel, “Contesting a Biopolitics of Information and Communications: The Importance of Truth and Sousveillance After Snowden” Surveillance & Society, 13(2): 153-167. http://www.surveillance-and-society.org) ICT = Information and Communications Technology
The previous section explained that global mass surveillance is a state and/or corporate deployment of a biopolitical technology of power that regulates the biosociological processes of information and communication. It also explained that the contestation of state and corporate control over the regime of truth is even more important when we consider that their policies and practices extend not only to ICT infrastructure, networks, and content, but also to entire citizenries and global consumer markets. The notion of parrhesia, Foucault clarifies, involves courageously speaking the whole truth without reserves, despite the fact that it may place the speaker at risk of violence at the hands of the authority that is contested (Foucault 2011: 6; 9; 11). The biopolitics of information and communications of states and corporations employ cutting-edge scientific and technological developments. These mechanisms of control are deployed so ICT data traces can be thoroughly monitored and examined in order to govern populations more efficiently in accordance to electoral calculations, market imperatives, and security concerns. In contemporary surveillance societies, parrhesiastic action has important sociopolitical implications because it contests the regime of truth that attempts to ensure the political, economic, and social regulation and compliance of civil society inasmuch as citizens and consumers.1 Recent Snowden revelations evidence that GCHQ deploys covert tools over the internet to spread false information, manipulate the results of online polls, divert traffic to or away from websites and videos that are of their interest, and even permanently disable internet users’ accounts by infiltrating their computers (The Intercept 14th July 2014). This is particularly worrying because “most conceptions of democracy”, explain Bauman et al., “rest on some sense that people are able to think and make judgments for themselves” (Bauman et al. 2014: 137). Fortunately, the escalating development of ICT and their inventive use by civil society has also led to the emergence of numerous modalities of resistance that can contest the mechanisms of control of contemporary biopolitics of information and communication. Civil societies continue to develop their political agency and are learning to strengthen a nascent digital agency, both of which enable them to contest state and corporate regimes of truth as parrhesiastes that search for the resemantization of their social, economic, and political processes.

In consequence, there are various important individual and collaborative actions of parrhesia in contemporary society that did not exist only a few decades ago. In general terms, we find alternative media organizations and citizen journalism that employ internet websites and blogs as well as social media networks to post and distribute their reporting. More specifically, there are whistleblowing organizations such as WikiLeaks have that globalized, online and offline, the revelations substantiated by carefully vetted materials sent anonymously to them by individuals and/or groups concerned by state and corporate wrongdoings and abuses. Quite recently, hacktivists and hacktivism collectives as well as collaborative networks that crowdsource open data analysis—which journalist Barrett Brown calls ‘pursuances’ (Brown 2012)—have shed light upon the strategies by which the state-corporate nexus deploys espionage and persona management (i.e., using online identities for purposes of astroturfing or disinformation) to infiltrate or hinder the activities of non-profit organizations and sociopolitical activism groups (Masnick 25th November 2013). Lastly, there are numerous national and international non-profit (NPO) and nongovernmental organizations (NGO) committed to establishing radical transparency of the state, corporations, and the media. These organizations investigate, report, and publicize their findings on a broad scope of topics, that cover state and corporate corruption, free and fair elections, environmental impact, consumer rights, freedom of information and of the press, corporate lobbying, and digital rights— but to name a few.

Parrhesiastic contestation of the regime of truth is also embedded within the social, economic, and political processes of contemporary surveillance society. Because of its commitment to detaching the truth from the economic and political hegemonies that control it, we cannot consider an ICT-enabled parrhesiastic action to embody the very biopolitics of information and communications it contests. However, the commitment of parrhesia to transparency appears to require that it share the interest of surveillance in monitoring and collecting data on certain individuals and populations. In order to clarify whether this is the case, it is fundamental to consider whether what appears as surveillance is not in fact something altogether different.

Murakami Wood has questioned whether we should not begin to talk about “multiple and multiplying ‘veillances’”, rather than simply ‘surveillance’, in order to understand the reception, reaction, and resistance to global surveillance (Murakami Wood 2013: 324). Steve Mann conceptualizes and theorizes from the intersection of Surveillance Studies and his technical trailblazing in the development of wearable computing, especially those devices that involve computational photography. From the standpoint of this technico-conceptual crossroad, Mann posits an understanding of surveillance that, although “commonly used to refer literally to visual signals”, also covers “other sensory signals and observational data in general” (Mann and Ali 2013: 243). Surveillance, for Mann, frequently exhibits the following traits: it is usually deployed from a fixed viewpoint, commonly architecture-centered, and attached to property; it establishes an “oversight” perspective, which watches from above; and, it is commonly initiated by property owners and/or its custodians, such as governments (Mann 2004: 626-627). Contemporary developments in wearable computing and ICT, such as “social networking, distributed cloud-based computing, self-sensing, body-worn vision systems, wearable cameras, and ego-centric vision” (Mann 2014: 605), lead Mann to propose an alternative or counterpart to surveillance, which he terms sousveillance. Sousveillance, for Mann, exhibits the following traits: it is usually deployed from a mobile viewpoint, commonly human-centered, and worn by a person; it establishes an “undersight” perspective, which watches from below; and, it is commonly less hierarchical and more rhizomic than its counterpart, surveillance (Mann 2004: 626-627). In this sense, sousveillance seems to explain parrhesia more correctly and more in detail than surveillance does. To be clear, it is not necessary to consider every instance of parrhesia an instance of sousveillance and vice-versa, but we can argue that they may coincide quite often. Mann and Ferenbok intuit the potential for parrhesia of sousveillance when they argue that in contemporary society “people can and will not only look back, but in doing so [can and will] potentially drive social and political change” (Mann and Ferenbok 2013: 24).

Sousveillance is key to create dissent and effective politics

Bakir 10 (Vian, May 2010, “Sousveillance, Media and Strategic Political Communication : Iraq, USA, UK,” Continuum International Publishing, pp. 156-7)//ES

Undoubtedly, the urge and practice of dissent has always been with us, and people exploit the participatory media technologies at hand to mark and spread their dissent. However, the rise of web-based participatory media and sousveillance cultures have made it easier for many more to record and spread this dissent globally, unimpeded by traditional media’s commercial distribution restrictions such as pre- defined circulation runs or paid-for airtime, or the need for expert Developments and Implications 157 knowledge in media production. Mann has long maintained that the ‘informal nature of sousveillance, with its tendency to distribute recordings widely, will often expose inappropriate use to scrutiny, whereas the secret nature of surveillance will tend to prevent misuse from coming to light [Mann, 1995]’ (Mann, 2005, p. 641). Indeed, by the end of 2006, the internet was awash with sousveillant civilian footage – for instance of police abuse in Malaysia, union-busting in Zimbabwe, and women posting photos of men who had harassed them (Hoffman, 2006b). 8 By 2009, G20 protesters in London openly collected sousveillant footage of the police presence to deter police officers from excessive use of force and to provide evidence for legal action against the police where excessive force was used. Meanwhile, pilot tests by police in 2006–2007 of ‘body worn video devices’ – typically small cameras attached to the head – were pronounced a success by the Home Office in that they led to a drop in complaints against the police, vindicating the police’s own versions of events (Rohrer, 2009). Just as the Panopticon operates through potential or implied surveillance, so sousveillance might also operate through the credible threat of its existence. As the ubiquity and awareness of sousveillance widens, it is this that may most empower citizens – by making the state and indeed, all strategic political communicators, realize that their actions may, themselves, be monitored and exposed at any time. The permanent potential for sousveillance from so many (as opposed to more formalized exposés at the hands of investigative reporters, a small media elite) raises the likelihood that power abuses will be captured on record which can then be used to hold power-abusers and manipulators to account, providing of course, that there is a functioning legal system and/or public sphere (with mechanisms in place to translate popular demands and moral outrage into real-world change). Some of the key features of sousveillant cultures as realized in webbased participatory media and revealed in the case studies examined in this book are issues of anonymity; the blurring of boundaries between personal and hierarchical sousveillance and its implications for resistance and social change; and the interplay between semipermanence and instantaneity. These are discussed below.

Sousveillance is revolutionary – it can expose abuse and drive revolutions against power relations

Mann, 13 - professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, with cross-appointments to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Faculty of Forestry, at the University of Toronto, (Steve, New Media and the Power Politics of Sousveillance in a Surveillance- Dominated World. Surveillance & Society 11(1/2): 18-34. http://www.surveillance-and-society.org
But we do not live in virtual prisons, at least not ones without some form of agency. And new media, in particular personalized broadcasting, and more specifically networked, wearable computers capable of broadcasting and sharing virally what we see have significant implications for the power dynamics within society. Imagine that prisoners in Foucault’s panopticon could look back—imagine they could see their guards and be able to record their interactions. In the Matrix movie, where human-beings are reduced to a shared delusional state and serve as batteries to their mechanical overlords, copperheads cannot look back! In Orwell’s 1984, people can’t see who is behind the telescreen. But the power of mobilized media that is always on, always able to broadcast, always able to access a network of followers or friends or circles, changes these broader notions of surveillance and oppression. We are entering an age where people can and will not only look back, but in doing so potentially drive social and political change. No one can tell you what the matrix is, but once you’ve seen it, you are immediately embroiled in the power politics of Sousveillance.

Thus wearing a camera does not necessarily mean we're ‘shooting back’ against surveillance. We might actually be in favour of both forms of veillance, especially in times of danger or high risk. This is where blogging, Eye Glass (EyeTap), Google Glass (‘Project Glass’ 2012), practical philosophy and socially responsible design intersect. What was once a fringe of inventors and early adopters is now increasingly, with projects like Digital Eye Glass (EyeTap) and Project Glass, part of the everyday. With mobile and pervasive computing quickly becoming part of our reality, the possibility for sousveillance—that is undersight of political and corporate entities, the ‘watchers’—becomes increasingly possible. It is this change, the shift towards mainstream that makes it particularly apropos to rethink the politics of sousveillance. The politics of sousveillance are themselves divisible into those that deal with the channels, media and technology of sousveillance that intern influence power and its efficacy. The efficacy and power of sousveillance is in part influenced by the design of media technologies that channel the message. This relationship between mediated and distributed undersight, technology, communication and the privileging of some political agendas over others happens at the system design stage.

Sousveillance changes the relationships between the asymmetric paradigm for social control that Foucault discussed as the formational characteristics of modern societies—what he termed the panoptic gaze (Foucault 1995). Adding sousveillance to the mix makes the shaping of society more of a continual dialogue between prisoners and guards, politicians and citizens, bureaucrats and people (figure 2). Sousveillance differs critically from surveillance in the relationship of power between the observing gaze and its subject (see figure 3). This relationship implies that there is power in the act of looking back, but it also makes clear that looking back is ‘uphill’, and that even if an individual cannot ‘see’ his guard the looking back provides a kind of back channel, a social check-and-balance to potentially serve as a mechanism for helping to regulate the scope and socio-political boundaries of institutional surveillance practices. Where the viewer is in a position of power over the subject, this is considered surveillance, but where the viewer is in a lower position of power, this is considered sousveillance. Sousveillance represents a ‘gazing’ from below. The viewer is by definition at a lower power potential than the subject of the gaze.

Just as the efficacy of surveillance relies on ‘la potence’ (potency, e.g. ‘the gallows’), the efficacy of sousveillance requires a different kind of ‘potency’ or reciprocal concept, i.e. another force to make the undersight an effective social mechanism for political action and change. We name this force ‘swollag’ (‘gallows’ spelled backwards). This other equalizing force, swollag, although it can be political or economic, is considered here as a socio-technical assemblage of new media and social networks. The coalescing of power through new media and its distribution through social networking represents the mechanism for potentially effective undersight. In this power triangle, if the viewer’s incline is small, then the efficacy (‘swollag’) required for effective undersight is relatively little. However, if the inclination is steep, the swollag required for effective change through sousveillance is much greater. The practice of viewing from below when coupled with political action becomes a balancing force that helps—in democratic societies—move the overall ‘state’ towards a kind of veillance (monitoring) equilibrium, what we refer to as equiveillance. Sousveillance may lead to revolutions and uprisings, and could be for example argued to have arisen in the modern state at the very onset of the French Revolution. The storming of the Bastille was itself the flashpoint where distributed power from below was brought to bear on the existing social structure of order and control—the prison (which at the time only housed seven prisoners and had 144 guards). However, it is really since the proliferation of video recording and transmitting, and ubiquitous computing that a major swell in the practices of and effectiveness of sousviellance have become noticeable—and worthy of further study and analysis.