Negative 1nc

Countersurveillance

2ac – Antisurveillance fails

Antisurveillance fails because it doesn’t offer an actual alternative to the state

Martin, 98 – Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong, Australia (Brian, “Antisurveillance” Information Liberation, http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/98il/il04.html
Instead of disrupting the surveillance that is carried out by powerful organisations, another approach is to undertake "countersurveillance": surveillance of powerful organisations. Today, large organisations and powerful individuals have as much privacy as money will buy, and most surveillance is carried out against the weak, disorganised and defenceless. The builders of weapons of mass destruction use every available means to ensure secrecy while spying on their enemies (foreign powers and peace movements). Can this pattern be challenged and reversed by promoting surveillance of the rich, powerful and dangerous?

The challenge is enormous, but some courageous individuals and groups have made efforts in this direction. A few investigators have probed the corridors of power.[10] Their exposés are incredibly threatening to organisational elites simply because they reveal what is actually happening on the inside. Such information undoubtedly contributes to better strategies by social movements. Many more exposés are needed. Even more daring is spying on spies and publicising the results, such as the efforts of the magazine Counterspy to expose CIA agents. This was so threatening to the spy agency that special legislation was passed to stop such revelations.

Much more could be said of the potential for disrupting surveillance. The techniques to do this deserve much more study and experimentation. It does seem, though, that they offer at most one part of a solution: they interfere with surveillance but do not offer an alternative to the systems that generate and thrive on it. Furthermore, as the experience of Earth First! has shown, disruption sometimes triggers increased surveillance and repression. To achieve a society with less surveillance, disruption is far from an ideal approach.

1ar – Antisurveillance fails

Anti-surveillance fails – state surveillance is too strong, the alt is a palliative

Green 99 – London School of Economics and Political Sciences, UK (Stephen, “A PLAGUE ON THE PANOPTICON: Surveillance and power in the global information economy, Information, Communication & Society, 2:1, 26-44”, 1999, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/136911899359745)//AS
The question, however, is how far this cyberspace utopianism actually impacts on social and political realities. Surveillance may ‘flow’ out of these communities, it might express grief and injustice, but the danger is that it doesn’t do anything. The surveillance target is ‘neoliberalism’, but the resources available are painfully limited, in comparison to what are perceived to be the ‘enemy’ assets of electronic listening-devices, infrared heat-sensors, aerial surveillance and well-established DEA/CIA ground-operatives (). Not only this but the entire battalion of ‘neoliberal’ forces from Wall Street to the Congress have been allied against what is perceived to be threatening ‘instability’. Linking networks may indeed spread information, but the challenge which confronts these self-consciously counter-hegemonic groups is converting information into productive political action and change. It is possible. Amnesty International, for instance, actively employs e-mail technology to connect local human rights monitors with a large and diverse audience (). This enables rapid protest after an arrest and has been found to be instrumental in the early release of political prisoners. Yet there are limits: the vast majority of ‘backstreet’, non-media-friendly protest groups do not receive attention, be it in virtual or in the more material forms of reality.

Disruption tactics fail – too small scale and vulnerable to federal infiltration

Martin, 98 – Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong, Australia (Brian, “Antisurveillance” Information Liberation, http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/98il/il04.html
Corrupting databases and other ways of disrupting surveillance challenge the encroachments of the surveillance society, but they have a number of limitations. Introducing errors into databases sounds effective, but databases are full of errors already. How much difference would more errors make? The impact would need to be financially significant (even more wrong names on mailing lists!) or politically potent (names of powerful people on embarrassing lists).

More importantly, disrupting surveillance in this fashion is, by necessity, mostly an individual activity. It provides a poor basis for mobilising a social movement; instead, it tends to breed secrecy and vanguards. Such secret activities are ideal for the duels of spy versus counterspy. When it comes to spying and infiltration, social movements are likely to come off second best to state agencies.

This was certainly the case with Earth First!, which was infiltrated by the FBI. Some Earth First!ers have renounced sabotage and secret tactics and, as a result, been able to forge links with workers in a way impossible using individualist, secretive methods.

Bottom up reform fails – the state can track movements

de Ville, 13- Geraud de Ville is a PhD researcher on on indigenous issues, ICTs and development at The Open University

(Geraud, 9/29/13, “Megaphone for social movements: campaigning in the surveillance state”, http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2013/nov/29/surveillance-online-campaigning-tips)//Yak

From the Arab revolutions to indigenous-led campaigns and, more recently, the spontaneous social movements that burst in Turkey and Brazil over the last three years, the internet seems to have turned into a megaphone for social movements.

The networked nature of web 2.0 applications, in particular social media, and the explosion of users worldwide provide citizens and activists with unprecedented tools to communicate their ideas, mobilise supporters and take action outside established hierarchical power structures. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have become privileged fields of action for professional campaigners as well as grassroots movements.

With their built-in feature allowing many-to-many communication, social media have revolutionised the way information is produced and shared: everyone is encouraged to participate, share opinions, pictures and videos on issues they care about or witness and instantly upload them from their smartphone on the Internet. Institutions and individuals that represent public authority are now under constant citizen scrutiny.

They know that any abuse, any mistake can spark online retaliation and take proportions that may be hard to control. Many activists and academics see in digital networks a new source of power that will eventually force the ruling elite around the world to become more transparent, more accountable and protect human rights and democracy.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a technological fix to a complex problem and, the solution itself has quite a few downsides. Indeed, while digital technologies have helped the success of social and revolutionary movements, they also tremendously enhance the effectiveness of state surveillance.

Due to the supervision they exert on the physical infrastructure, governments are tempted to use digital networks to control populations by monitoring communications, blocking access of certain users or even tracking and imprisoning dissidents, e.g. in China and Iran.

Recent revelations by the Guardian on the surveillance system set up by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and its British counterpart: the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) have shown that this is not an exclusive feature of authoritarian or non-democratic regimes.

2ac – sousveillance

Sousveillance is a flawed theory – farmer's dilemma and lack of trust

Danaher 14 - John Danaher holds a PhD from University College Cork (Ireland) and is currently a lecturer in law at NUI Galway (Ireland). His research interests are eclectic, ranging broadly from philosophy of religion to legal theory, with particular interests in human enhancement and neuroethics. (John, "What's the case for sousveillance?", IEET, Feb 10, 2014, http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/danaher20140210)//A-Sharma

Mann and Ali are clear that "authority" here is understood in terms of ability and legitimacy. In other words, a person possesses authority over another if they have the ability and the legitimacy to impose their will on that other. This is the first slip-up in the argument for me. They explicitly say that legitimacy is understood in a "normative sense", but I don't see why they say that. Indeed, many of the most problematic cases of surveillance — ones that sousveillance may be able to counteract — arise precisely because the person doing watching can illegitimately impose their will on another. Furthermore, depending on how you define legitimacy, this definition of "authority" risks foreclosing much of the ethical debate about surveillance and sousveillance. If legitimacy entails the moral right to enforce your will, it's difficult to see how or why the use of surveillance equipment would be of major ethical concern. I would suggest, then, that we drop "legitimacy" from the definition of authority. This raises the next issue. It seems obvious that in making a case for sousveillance you must, implicitly or explicitly, believe that there is something morally problematic or sub-optimal about a world in which surveillance dominates. But what is that something? Well, first of all, let's consider the advantages of surveillance. Clearly, surveillance has advantages from the perspective of authority. It can be used to police and enforce behavioural norms (e.g. street cameras and laws against vandalism) or to prevent the breach of such norms. Consequently, to the extent that these norms are morally valid, surveillance is of benefit to us all. The obvious disadvantages of surveillance are when it goes too far, and personal rights such as the right to privacy are traded-off against the good of enforcement, or when the norms being enforced are not morally valid. Another, perhaps more subtle, problem with a surveillance culture is best-expressed using republican conceptions of liberty and non-domination. One thing that constant surveillance seems to carry with it is the implicit threat that if you do something to displease the de facto authority figure, you risk punishment or sanction. You live in the permanent shadow of a threat. This will force you to engage in ingratiating, self-censoring and extra-cautious acts. The position strikes me as being similar to that of the happy slave in neo-republican political theory. The happy slave is happy only to the extent that he or she doesn't step out of line. That's not real freedom (according to the republican theory). Those us living under the domination of surveilling authorities might have a similarly restricted type of freedom. This problem of surveillance and domination needs further exploration, but it seems important to me. Indeed, I think it can be used to great effect when evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of Mann's case for sousveillance. Let's turn to that case next. 2. Trust, Exchange and the Case for Sousveillance The main argument that Ali and Mann make for sousveillance is based on the value of efficient economic exchange. As any classical economist will tell you, free and fully-informed exchanges between rational agents should increase societal well-being. The idea being that such a system of exchange ensures that resources are distributed to their highest expected value uses. Now, there are many problems with this model, particularly in terms of the idealistic assumptions one needs to make in order for the conclusion to hold. Nevertheless, Mann and Ali's arguments are based on the notion that sousveillance gets us closer to those idealistic assumptions. Central to this argument is an analysis of the conditions for efficient economic exchange. It has long been clear that social cooperation can be mutually advantageous. It has also long been clear that such cooperation carries risks. Hume's story of the two corn farmers illustrates the point rather nicely. Imagine that there are two farmers, A and B, both with crops of corn. These crops will ripen at different times. Each farmer will need the help of the other to ensure that they can harvest their crops, and put them in storage in good time. Without such help, a portion of the crops will start rotting in the field. In this case, cooperation would be mutually beneficial. The problem is that a purely rationalistic analysis suggests that they won't help each other: if farmer A helps B before his crops ripen, then farmer B will have no real incentive to help farmer A later on. Reasoning backwards, A will expect B to betray him and so won't bother helping B. This is sometimes referred to as the Farmers' Dilemma. There are various solutions to this dilemma. A legal system that enforces promises is one: if the breach of promise carries with it a risk of legal sanction, then more people might be inclined to keep their promises. So too is trust: simply voluntarily committing yourself to help another, in spite of the risk. Some people argue that trust is a social emotion that evolved so that we could solve the problem of social cooperation. And some people argue that trust of this sort is incredibly virtuous. Something that society should be keen to promote and protect. Indeed, trust plays a considerable role in many important social exchanges. People can feel offended if you don't trust them, and may back out of an exchange if you seem to lack trust. Think, for example, of how betrayed you might feel if you caught your partner snooping through your text messages just to make sure you were being faithful. Ali and Mann argue that sousveillance can facilitate beneficial social exchanges. They say it does so by making the parties to an exchange less vulnerable to exploitation. The mechanism for this is not stated, but I assume the authors are imagining something like the following: There is a system in place that will enforce promises if they are breached (this system could be a formal legal system or an informal social one). This system relies on proof of claim before enforcement. Those who use sousveillance will record every detail of every negotiated promise. In this way, they will always be able to prove a claim should they need to rely on the social system of enforcement. Consequently, every exchange with a sousveiller will carry an implicit threat of enforcement. If both parties are sousveillers (as they should be according to Ali and Mann), they can keep each other honest, and thereby clear the path to beneficial exchange. In this sense, sousveillance is a trust-substitute: it overrides the vulnerabilities inherent in exchange without forcing us to voluntarily assume the risk of exploitation. To lay this out more formally: (1) If mutually advantageous social exchanges carried less risk of exploitation, people will be more likely to undertake them. (2) Sousveillance helps to reduce the risk of exploitation inherent in mutually advantageous social exchanges. (3) Therefore, sousveillance increases the likelihood of people undertaking mutually advantageous social exchanges. We've already considered the case for premise (2) in the preceding paragraph. I want to dwell on premise (1). It seems to me that this is potentially vulnerable to a counterargument. The counterargument brings us back to the virtue of trust. Although some exchanges could be facilitated by sousveillance, it could also be the case that people insist on the voluntary assumption of risk as a gesture of good faith prior to entering into an exchange. We could imagine, for example, one of the CEOs of two major corporations, negotiating a merger deal, asking the other to "switch off" his sousveillance equipment before they agree on the final terms of the deal. After all, if this merger is going to work, they need to trust each other, and they can't do that if they are constantly monitoring and recording one another's words. This might, of course, be terribly naive, and agreeing to this gesture of good faith may be costly, but humans are sometimes irrational and one could imagine this kind of insistence taking place. What matters is whether the number of valuable exchanges in which people insist upon trust, will be larger than the number of valuable exchanges facilitated by sousveillance. In their discussion, Ali and Mann break the possible exchanges down into three categories: (i) those that are unaffected by the presence of sousveillance; (ii) those that are facilitated by sousveillance; and (iii) those that are discouraged or prevented by sousveillance. As long as categories (i) and (ii) are larger and more valuable than category (iii), a case for sousveillance can be made. So which is it? Ali and Mann try to argue that the number of exchanges in category (iii) will be minimal. They do so on the grounds of desensitisation. As sousveillance becomes more widespread, people will adjust their expectations to accommodate it. They will be less "creeped out" or offended by its use. Arguably, this has already happened with surveillance technologies. Whenever I get the train, I see little signs reminding me that my every movement is being recorded by CCTV. It doesn't bother me. I've become so used to it. Why wouldn't the same thing happen with sousveillance? I think there are some problems with this argument. While it is true that we could become desensitised to sousveillance if it achieved sufficient social penetration, that seems to assume what needs to be proved, namely: that sousveillance will achieve sufficient social penetration. Elsewhere in their article, Ali and Mann defend this on the grounds of economic inevitability: sousveillance will be so economically beneficial that it will become widespread. But, again, that seems to assume what needs to be proved: that sousveillance really is economically beneficial. If the economic benefit of technology depends on whether it facilitates voluntary exchange between parties, and if a sufficient number of parties are offended by the use of sousveillance technologies, then they won't be economically beneficial. People won't consent to their use. This is markedly different from the surveillance case. Since surveillance technologies are imposed from the top-down — by de facto authorities — they don't require the immediate consent of those being watched. Economic exchanges arguably do. Admittedly, this is a technical objection, based more on how Ali and Mann make their argument, than on what I think the reality is going to be. The fact is that the marketplace is currently characterised by inequalities of bargaining power between parties to economic exchange. It is perfectly possible that those inequalities create conditions in which veillance technologies will get a foothold. This may clear the path to widespread sousveillance

1ar – sousveillance fails

Sousveillance can't solve – gives rise to liberty-undermining surveillance and is counterproductive in nature

Danaher 14 - John Danaher holds a PhD from University College Cork (Ireland) and is currently a lecturer in law at NUI Galway (Ireland). His research interests are eclectic, ranging broadly from philosophy of religion to legal theory, with particular interests in human enhancement and neuroethics. (John, "What's the case for sousveillance?", IEET, Feb 10, 2014, http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/danaher20140210)//A-Sharma

Here's my problem with all of this: Although I have no doubt that constant monitoring of activities with veillance technologies — both pre and post-transaction — could reduce (some) information asymmetries, I find it hard to see how this wouldn't simply give rise tosur-veillance of a highly coercive and insidious nature, rather than sousveillance of a positive and autonomy-enhancing nature. As you'll recall from part one, surveillance is when de facto authorities impose surveillance on ordinary people; sousveillance is when everybody uses veillance technologies. Whenever there are inequalities of power, there is a potential de facto authority. If those authorities can insist upon monitoring our activities, it seems to me like we have the conditions for liberty-undermining surveillance. I suspect this is what would happen in the case of things like insurance contracts. Consider, in the first instance, the signalling powers of sousveillance technologies could indeed be quite autonomy-enhancing. The early-adopters could credibly signal that they are low-risk customers, and reap all the benefits of reduced costs of insurance premiums. But this could easily set-up a slippery slope to the compulsory use of such technologies. After all, given the benefits, why wouldn't the insurance company insist upon monitoring every customer's waking move before agreeing to give them insurance. And since the exchange between insurance providers and customers is characterised by inequalities of bargaining power (e.g. we are often legally obliged to buy insurance), it is hard to see why this wouldn't amount to a kind of coercive surveillance. You would be dominated by the company: subtly encouraged to bring your behaviour in-line with their preferences, whatever those preferences happen to be. And since similar inequalities of bargaining power are present in other markets, I think this is a general problem for the economic case for sousveillance. (There are possibly counterarguments to this domination-style argument. I'd be interested in hearing about them in the comments section) 3. Conclusion So that brings us to the end of this aspect of my series on Mann's arguments for sousveillance. The next post on the topic will be more concerned with the general concept of sousveillance and different types of veillance society. Consequently, it's worth briefly recapping the arguments discussed so far. As we have seen, Ali and Mann's primary case in favour of sousveillance is based on its potential economic advantages. They present this argument in three different ways. The first being a general argument about trust and the risks of economic exchange; the second being about information asymmetries; and the third being about opportunism. They then add to this economic case the claim that sousveillance will help to reduce feelings of terror/helplessness in the face of bureaucratic decision-making. In each case, I've suggested that Ali and Mann may have overstated the arguments for sousveillance. Although there may be some benefits, it's possible that several of the examples discussed by Ali and Mann would give rise to liberty-undermining surveillance, rather than autonomy-enhancing sousveillance. This is due to their underappreciation of inequalities of bargaining power in economic exchanges. Furthermore, although sousveillance may encourage some kinds of good behaviour, its widespread use may be counterproductive. This is because many people might perceive it as an affront to their autonomy, or a sign of a lack of trust.

Sousveillance fails – "surveillers" will have access to more data and lead to a loss of freedom

Pesce 14 - Specialties: Columnist for The Register, Producer & Host, This Week in Startups Australia; Inventor of VRML, the standard for 3D on the Internet and a core component of MPEG-4. Author of 6 books, including "VRML: Browsing and Building Cyberspace", "The Playful World", and, most recently, "The Next Billion Seconds". Founder & CEO of MooresCloud, an IoT startup. Well-known speaker, consultant in areas intersecting technology and culture. Well-respected educator, and panelist / judge on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's "The New Inventors" from 2005 – 2011 (Mark Pesce, 4-17-2014, "Finding freedom in a 'sousveillance' society," ABC News, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-17/pesce-finding-freedom-in-a-sousveillance-society/5395592)//A-Sharma

In a world where everything is recorded by everyone, what is left of our freedom when the state collects this information? Mark Pesce writes. Cameras have become a commonplace phenomenon at protests of all sizes. No longer just the lenses of the mainstream media, high-definition cameras are now carried by every smartphone-toting individual (that is, nearly all of us) all the time. We can upload video of our protest to YouTube, and even stream it in real-time to everyone else on the internet. A few years ago I viewed the Oakland, California police department as they violently broke up the Occupy Oakland demonstrations via a stream from a smartphone rapidly burning through its batteries. More recently, you could see protests in Cairo or Istanbul from the point of view of the protesters, as the police came for them. All of this has happened entirely organically. No one orchestrated the transformation of political protest into pervasively broadcast events. Put enough smartphones into enough hands and it just happens. Surrounded in a halo of coverage, protests inevitably draw the attention of the forces of law and order. Police have cameras too, and after the protest has ended they go back to the tape, map faces to names, and issue arrest warrants. Each side in the conflict attempts to use the camera to undermine the natural advantages of the opposition. Protesters have shouted 'The whole world is watching!' into live cameras since the 1968 riots in Chicago; police wait until the mob disperses before going after its visibly identified leaders. Protesters now wear balaclavas to disguise their identities; police use artificial intelligence and pattern recognition to peer beneath the Guy Fawkes mask. From the empty (yet vaguely menacing) glare of CCTV cameras, to the seemingly innocent but far more pervasive 'sousveillance' (literally, 'to watch from below') of more than ten million smartphone-toting Australians, the public sphere places us under constant observation. We've gone from Big Brother to a planet of 'Little Bothers', everyone watching everyone watching everyone watching everyone. Not a sparrow falls from the sky without its descent being captured and commented upon. Sousveillance sounds friendly, as though all these watching eyes, so similar to our own, and on our same level, could never mean us harm. Individually they might not, but collected together, these moments of innocence can be assembled into a mosaic of meaning, and - in the right hands - power. Last week, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department announced the immediate availability of an app that twists sousveillance inside-out. The Large Emergency Event Digital Information Repository, or LEEDIR, allows citizens to contribute their own media to the LEEDIR collection - in effect, handing the images and video collected by their smartphones directly to the LAPD. This could be immensely useful when the 'Big One' hits Los Angeles (presuming the mobile networks are still operational after a massive earthquake - a big ask), as LEEDIR could help emergency planners get a sense of the scope of the damage and the areas in need of greatest assistance. That's the good side of the tech - the side the police are happy to talk about. On the other hand, LEEDIR turns everyone into a police spy. While the LAPD never acknowledges this capacity, they have already used LEEDIR to request photos and videos of a wild party in a Los Angeles neighbourhood. The line between crowd-sourced emergency assistance and instruments of state surveillance collapses in LEEDIR. Under the cover of the best of intentions, LEEDIR encourages people to dob one another in. Already well on its way toward LEEDIR-ship, the Federal Government, as recently reported by Fairfax, now scours social media for content it considers "offensive" - particularly in the debate over immigration policy - and has intimidated its foes into removing offending posts. If social media posts critical of government policies merit responses more appropriate to a standover man, then surely any comments made in public (social media being the latest incarnation of the public sphere) by any citizen must be equally worthy both of detection and of swift, sure correction. If I had the ear of those in power, I might recommend requiring the telcos to install an app on the smartphones they sell us, one that records everything we say for later analysis. It should also note the people we associate with, where, and for how long. That data would be used to calculate a 'loyalty rating', one that would be displayed on the lock screen of our smartphones, so we need only peek at our mobiles to monitor the official assessment of our current behaviour. As the days passed, and we learned the boundaries of safe activity, we would begin to self-censor appropriately. The problem would soon take care of itself. And what of freedom? We've suddenly realized freedom has a quantum-like slipperiness - it exists only when not being observed. The act of capturing something takes away its freedom. Now that we live entirely in a world of recorded activities, where everything visible about us is being noted somewhere, what remains of our freedoms? Freedom exists - if at all - in what we do not say, at least not publicly. Freedom is hidden, but not invisible. Freedom is the private place, where the cameras have been taped over, where the mobile broadband has been blocked, where the devices have been turned off. Freedom is low voices conspiring in near darkness. Only there can we reveal who we are, without fear. This is who we are now.