Worth reading
Al Gore made a fine speech today about the risks of broad executive power. It's not long, and worth reading.
The speech isn't solely about the NSA wiretapping legal crisis (although it certainly covers that issue carefully). It's more an indictment of the entire idea of unconstrained Presidential discretion.
We seem to live in a time of “inherent” and unquestioned powers, a time when “you're either with us or against us,” when every conversation is a litmus test of loyalty. The K Street Project is just one symptom of this problem; there are so many others that are far more serious. As Dean Koh said (and he's quoted by Gore), “If the President has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution.” Perhaps this President won't go that far, but the next one might — that's Gore's point.
Gore even got in a plug for the internet, as his very last word of concern:
It is particularly important that the freedom of the Internet be protected against either the encroachment of government or the efforts at control by large media conglomerates. The future of our democracy depends on it.
Back in 1994, Gore said this:
A nascent GII [Global Information Infrastructure] already exists. What we seek is a superior GII, one that has higher capacity, is fully interactive, faster, and more versatile. One that is less expensive to use than existing systems, and more accessible to all the people of the world. But our goal is not merely technological advancement – more bandwidth, faster switching, more powerful processing capability, and greater compression and storage capacity. We view technology not as an end in itself but as the means through which the GII can realize its potential to improve the well-being of all people on this planet.
Some good speeches.
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Gore's admonition that the internet must be preserved from the encroachment of government reminds me of the work of contemporary German philosopher Jurgen Habermas (especially his masterpiece, A Theory of Communicative Action). Habermas's ideas are notoriously difficult to explain, but I believe it is fair to say that, long before the internet became a global phenomenon, Habermas masterfully described the relationship between free public discourse, on the one hand, and systems of money and power, on the other. For Habermas, free public discourse (like Gore's speech, or the interactive nature of this blog) is sacrosanct. By its very nature, discourse is interactive, always seeking and, indeed, conferring authority on both interlocutors. As such, discourse operates as a bulwark against systems of money and power that ultimately answer to no one. Crucially, Habermas does not demonize these systems: on the contrary, he sees them as essential to the preservation of discourse! Although at first this seems absurd, consider for example the internet. To the extent it is a system, it answers to no one. On the other hand, the internet is also a fertile medium of public discourse. Gore reminds us that the internet as a medium of discourse must be preserved against systems that seek to encroach upon it and ultimately control it. But how do we preserve it? For the counterintuitive answer we must go back to Habermas: it is precisely through our use of systems, such as posting speeches and blogs on the internet (for the internet is a system), giving money to organizations like the ACLU (for money is a system), and even having public hearings on Capitol Hill (for the government is also a system). The trick, Habermas thinks, is for the public to stay one step ahead of the systems in society, so that the systems do not drown out the discourse that is the lifeblood of society. In the internet age, then, vigilence is no longer a sufficient price to pay for liberty. Rather, we must find creative ways to transform passive vigilence (or, what is the same thing, “surveillance”) into purposeful action (what Habermas called “communicative action”).
You'd enjoy Michael Froomkin's “Habermas@Discourse.net,” published in the Harvard Law Review not so long ago.