After the crash of 1929 as the Great Depression took hold of the American\u00a0 economy, Hoover rejected the prospect of sweeping bold action. Instead his timid interventions accelerated decline.\u00a0 As economist Brad deLong has pointed out, Hoover\u2019s prescriptions<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0 left the world economy in free fall.\u00a0 His programs showed a poor understanding<\/span><\/a><\/span> of the systemic nature of the domestic economy and its relation to other economies.\u00a0 Hoover raised taxes, cut spending, and his trade quotas helped plunge the rest of the world into Depression while crippling American exports.<\/p>\n Now Obama\u2019s timid prescriptions leave the Internet in free-fall, as people around the world withdraw their trust from its operations and especially from American companies<\/span>.<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong> Back in the 1930\u2019s it took FDR to grasp that even a market economy lives inside politics and history. It had to be regulated and managed through substantial enduring legislation and oversight. The New Deal completed a multi-decade process of institutionalizing a new social contract for a modern industrial society.<\/p>\n In the run-up to Obama\u2019s January 17 speech<\/span><\/a><\/span> on NSA data collection programs,\u00a0I argued <\/span><\/a><\/span>in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (English version here<\/span><\/a><\/span>) that the debate over the NSA is the tip of the iceberg in a much larger discussion. We are in the transition from an industrial to an information civilization, and the character of this new civilization is deeply contested. Will we be the masters of information or will we be its slaves?\u00a0 Are we heading toward a totalitarian future buttressed by a new fusion of corporate and state interests with increased social stratification and the social relations of the surveillance paradigm?\u00a0 Or is there still hope for a future that draws on the democratizing and empowering potential of the digital?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The NSA debate is one early signal of this larger epochal crisis. Thanks to Snowden we now know that the NSA is well on its way to becoming a free-standing global surveillance empire.\u00a0 We also know that Big Tech is following close behind and is poised to catch up with the ominously titled \u201cInternet of Everything.\u201d<\/p>\n Americans\u2019 hopes for the future, and the world\u2019s, require an FDR-like sweeping reexamination of the origins, legitimacy, and effectiveness of intelligence data gathering. We also need substantial legislative initiatives that protect citizens from the predations of Big Tech, whose data sweeps are on a trajectory to become functionally indistinguishable from militarized government data. If Obama does not take the lead, it will fall to Angela Merkel and the leaders of the EU, as the U.S. limps through the decade in search of epochal leadership.<\/strong><\/p>\n Obama\u2019s FDR opportunity is to engage in the depth and breadth of intervention and reinvention that enshrine trust, rationality, democratic governance, and consumer sovereignty. This means eliminating the secret ubiquitous information access, storage, and intrusive meta-analysis\u00a0 perpetrated by the government and by companies.<\/strong> It means legislation that guarantees transparency, informed choice, public oversight, and individual control. As we have learned during these last months of revelations, NSA, police, and private sector surveillance activities are by now deeply enmeshed and threaten to become the foundation of a full blown surveillance state.<\/p>\n Obama\u2019s January 17 speech provided an important glimpse of his understanding of the larger significance of this moment. But the speech was perplexing for the dispiriting juxtaposition of his FDR insights and Herbert Hoover prescriptions.<\/strong> Here are the key examples of Obama\u2019s\u00a0 FDR-like\u00a0 grasp of the historical transition and its most trenchant challenges:<\/p>\n \u201c… the power of new technologies means that there are fewer and fewer technical constraints on what we can do. That places a special obligation on us to ask tough questions about what we should do.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n \u201c…in the absence of institutional requirements for regular debate — and oversight that is public, as well as private or classified — the danger of government overreach becomes more acute.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n \u201c… surveillance technology and our reliance on digital information is evolving much faster than our laws.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n \u201cThis effort will not be completed overnight, and given the pace of technological change, we shouldn\u2019t expect this to be the last time America has this debate.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n \u201cGiven the unique power of the state, it is not enough for leaders to say: Trust us, we won\u2019t abuse the data we collect. For history has too many examples when that trust has been breached. Our system of government is built on the premise that our liberty cannot depend on the good intentions of those in power; it depends on the law to constrain those in power.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n \u201c<\/i>When you cut through the noise, what\u2019s really at stake is how we remain true to who we are in a world that is remaking itself at dizzying speed…So while the reforms that I have announced will point us in a new direction, I am mindful that more work will be needed in the future.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n \u201cAs the nation that developed the Internet, the world expects us to ensure that the digital revolution works as a tool for individual empowerment, not government control. Having faced down the dangers of totalitarianism and fascism and communism, the world expects us to stand up for the principle that every person has the right to think and write and form relationships freely — because individual freedom is the wellspring of human progress.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n \u201cFor more than two centuries, our Constitution has weathered every type of change because we have been willing to defend it, and because we have been willing to question the actions that have been taken in its defense. Today is no different.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n But these valuable insights were fatally compromised by a Hoover-like inclination to fine-tune, persuade, ignore, trivialize, patronize, fear-monger, and, despite the rhetoric, rely on good intentions, rather than to fundamentally question the powers that have accrued to the NSA and private companies. The President’s\u00a0 prescriptions leave nearly all current capabilities in place, along with large loopholes where new practices are imposed.<\/strong> Nor is there any future blueprint for comprehensive debate and review of the many dimensions of the emerging\u00a0 surveillance state \u2013\u2013 including commerce and government \u2013\u2013 and the kinds of legislative and regulatory protections that will be required if democracy is to be preserved for another century.<\/p>\n![\"Screen](\"http:\/\/www.shoshanazuboff.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Screen-Shot-2014-01-19-at-5.22.36-PM.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>In the West, and especially in the US, the Internet too has been treated as some kind of autonomous force, outside the sphere of democratic governance.\u00a0 The overreach of private companies and government surveillance demonstrates that democratic societies have the obligation to impose Constitutional protections on the Internet, or the slow drift into totalitarianism becomes a more real possibility with each dazzling new capability.\u00a0 Once again, this will ultimately require substantial legislation that institutionalizes a new social contract for our new information society and sets the standard for the broader information civilization that will define the next century.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n