Response 9

Notes:

For this week, the prompt is

In "Cybersecurity and Cyberwar," Peter W. Singer and Allan Friedman identify a series of trends that they say threaten "traditional Internet values of openness, collaboration, innovation, limited governance, and free exchange of ideas" (p. 3).

How does Jürgen Habermas understand these values fit into a functioning democracy? Include at least two quotes from Habermas's book, along with page numbers from the text, and an explanation in your own words, of what each quotation means, to explain your analysis.

Traditional Internet values

"traditional Internet values of openness, collaboration, innovation, limited governance, and free exchange of ideas"

Threaten by:

Increased Security Focus and Confidentiality: The emphasis on the CIA triad (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability) leads to trade-offs with basic liberties, convenience, and capabilities. This focus works against the traditional ideal of openness and free exchange by prioritizing secrecy and access control.
Centralized Governance and Private Power: Although the Internet was founded on principles like "rough consensus and running code", governance has become focused on chokepoints like ICANN, which is criticized for potentially favoring powerful commercial and governmental interests. This shift challenges the ideal of limited governance and collaboration.
Asymmetry of Knowledge/Identity Issues: The reality that IP addresses and browsing patterns can be correlated with individuals, combined with systems that incentivize maximizing data collection, restricts the free exchange of ideas. When people cannot maintain anonymity, it leads to a loss of psychological independence in communication.

Connecting These Threats to Habermas's Democratic Theory

Jürgen Habermas argues that for a democracy to function and be legitimate, it must fulfill the normative presuppositions that these Internet values traditionally represent. The political system must be steered by the communicative power generated by citizens, achieved through an inclusive public sphere where opinions are formed freely and rationally. When factors like security, corporate control, and identity surveillance threaten the openness and free exchange of ideas, they attack the democratic system's very legitimacy.

The values of openness and free exchange are crucial because they allow citizens to engage in a "joint formation of opinion and will", which is essential for determining the common good and reconciling private interests.

Quotes from Habermas

On Autonomy and Communication (Connecting to Limited Governance and Free Exchange)

This quote emphasizes that citizens must actively legislate their own rights through communication and participation to ensure their autonomy and prevent paternalistic rule, which relates directly to the traditional Internet values of limited governance and free exchange of ideas.

Quote: "The private liberties of the constitutional state can only correspond to their own interests if citizens confer their rights on themselves. Legislation oriented to the common good must strike a balance between conflicting social interests and seek to compensate for the social inequalities that continually arise in a quasi-natural way in capitalist societies, to such an extent that all citizens receive the same opportunities to lead a self-determined life in accordance with their individual conceptions of themselves. (p. 84)"
On the Necessity of the Public Sphere (Connecting to Openness and Collaboration)

This quote underscores that in large modern societies, the media infrastructure of the public sphere is necessary to enable citizens to jointly form opinions and wills, which aligns with the traditional Internet values of openness and collaboration.

Quote: "This latent danger can only be averted in the large-scale polities of the modern era insofar as the media infrastructure of the public sphere enables halfway deliberative opinion and will formation by the population itself. (p. 96)"

Draft 1

In "Cybersecurity and Cyberwar", Singer and Friedman state that core Internet values, such as "limited governance and free exchange of ideas, are currently threatened by trends like centralized control and security demands that prioritize confidentiality. Habermas views these values as foundational to a democracy, arguing that legitimacy comes from citizens actively exercising their freedom, not just being ruled. He emphasizes this by stating, "The private liberties of the constitutional state can only correspond to their own interests if citizens confer their rights on themselves". This means citizens must participate as self-legislators in making their own rules. When governance becomes centralized or security demands force people into anonymous communication, it prevents citizens from controlling their own rights and causes a loss of this essential political autonomy, in that way moving more towards paternalistic heteronomy.

Furthermore, the Internet's values of openness and focus on collaboration are necessary for a healthy public sphere, where citizens can jointly determine the common good. If this sphere fails, the state loses its democratic foundation. Habermas states that this danger "can only be averted in the large-scale polities of the modern era insofar as the media infrastructure of the public sphere enables halfway deliberative opinion and will formation by the population itself". This means that for a large, modern democracy to work, its communication systems, in this case the internet itself, must be open enough for people to talk and collaborate, forming a shared, rational political will. When this infrastructure is closed off or controlled as exemplified by Singer and Friedman with ICANN, being a centralized authority, democracy cannot generate the power it needs from the people.

Draft 2

Democracy Needs an Open Digital Space.

Habermas's ideas about how citizens should talk and govern themselves line up perfectly with the problems that are now threatening the open internet. In "Cybersecurity and Cyberwar", Singer and Friedman assert that Internet values such as “limited governance” and the “free exchange of ideas” are being endangered by the movement towards centralized control and security agendas characterized by confidentiality concerns. Habermas regards such values as essential for democracy; deliberative democracy legitimizes itself only through the active exercise of the subject's freedom, not only by being subject to it (being ruled). He emphasizes this by stating, "The private liberties of the constitutional state can only correspond to their own interests if citizens confer their rights on themselves" (p. 84). This means citizens must participate as self-legislators in making their own rules. When governance becomes centralized or security demands force people into anonymous communication, it prevents citizens from controlling their own rights and causes a loss of this essential political autonomy, in that way moving more towards paternalistic heteronomy.

In addition, the value orientation of the Internet towards "openness" and focus on collaboration are necessary for a healthy public sphere, where the citizenry cooperates in determining the common good. If this sphere fails, the state loses its democratic foundation. Habermas states that this danger "can only be averted in the large-scale polities of the modern era insofar as the media infrastructure of the public sphere enables halfway deliberative opinion and will formation by the population itself" (p. 96). This means that for a large, modern democracy to work, its communication systems, in this case the internet itself, must be open enough for people to talk and collaborate, forming a shared, rational political will. When this infrastructure is closed off or controlled as exemplified by Singer and Friedman with ICANN, being a centralized authority, democracy cannot generate the power it needs from the people.