My Privacy, Your Secrecy

27 December 2010 Dan McGarry

In the years to come, it’s possible that historians will place the battle over privacy alongside the universal suffrage and civil rights movements as one of the core social conflicts in recent history.

On one side of the issue is a definition of privacy closely linked to individual freedom and the right to protect oneself from scrutiny by the state. Fundamentally, it can be expressed as follows: “As long as no one gets hurt, what I think, say or do is nobody’s business but my own.” Essentially, it posits that you don’t have the right to know certain things about me and vice versa.

At the other end of the continuum is the contention that people have no expectation of privacy in public places. And the digital world is a very public place.

To make matters worse, many state and non-state actors deny that sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. While they have no qualms about using the vastly more powerful surveillance capabilities that modern technology affords them, when the same tools are applied to their own secrets they call it calumny, espionage and even treason.

There are two things wrong with this argument for privacy: The first is that it imagines, paradoxically, that a legal privacy framework will be enforceable without transparency. Second, it imagines that society actually wants privacy for everyone.

Let’s take these points in turn.

Those who conceive of the battle over privacy as a Manichean struggle between individual privacy and universal surveillance are missing a fundamental fact. We are becoming a society without walls. With few exceptions, electronic data has become cheaply, nearly infinitely copyable. Steps can be taken to make it more difficult to do, but it only needs to be copied once.

The immediate problem we face, however, is unequal access to data.

If recent experience has taught us anything, it is this: Anyone in control of the flow of information inevitably leverages that control to view and manipulate the data crossing their wires.

Google is perhaps the most obvious example of this. Their stock in trade is the fact that they can see virtually everything you do and say on the Net. They use that insight to send you advertisements as well as to refine their services, giving them still greater abilities where behavioural analysis is concerned. To their credit, they credibly argue that their data mining is mostly automated. In other words, no human actually sees what you’re up to, and the computer algorithms that do watch you don’t judge you in any way. They have gone to court and even walked away from entire markets rather than divulge information about specific individuals to governments.

This is almost certainly due to the influence of founder Sergei Brin, who spent his early childhood growing up in the surveillance society that was the Soviet Union. One can only shudder when considering what will happen to personal privacy when, inevitably, he and co-founder Larry Page (also a strong defender of civil liberties) hand over the reins to their vastly powerful data store.

Google’s restraint is, however, the exception rather than the rule. Other commercial data mining operations –Facebook, for example– are not nearly as reluctant to trade in personal information. With sufficient effort, you can find out vastly more about any individual with an active online life than they would willingly divulge to you face to face.

Among the most powerful data mining operations in the world is the US intelligence establishment. The National Security Agency almost certainly monitors all information crossing US communications networks, and a great many more besides. The fact that, to date, they have contented themselves with mere eavesdropping is cold comfort.

Modern computing capabilities are such that, with sufficient resources, organisations could quite literally store details about every email, telephone conversation, text message, Facebook update and social network linkage for every single citizen on the Net. And to the extent that they can, they do.

But technology is (more or less) an equal opportunity tool. Author Bruce Sterling, in a superb essay on the WikiLeaks debacle, observes that there’s really not a lot of daylight between the spooks at the NSA and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange:

“The geeks who man the NSA don’t look much like Julian Assange, because they have college degrees, shorter haircuts, better health insurance and far fewer stamps in their passports. But the sources of their power are pretty much identical to his. They use computers and they get their mitts on info that doesn’t much wanna be free.”

And here we arrive at the second major flaw in treating privacy as just another article in a notional Bill of Rights: As much as we might value our own privacy, we don’t value that of others.

My privacy is your secrecy.

We respect a private person; we get suspicious if they’re secretive. We’re all big fans of transparency until it affects our own ability to get things done. We’ll say the most scandalous things about others, right up to the moment when we realise they might hear. When someone else, however, repeats those same scurrilous details in public, we are delighted. As long as they don’t implicate us, that is.

The immense relief you feel when someone stands up at a gathering and says the uncomfortable thing you’ve been thinking evaporates when they turn to you and say, “And I know you’ll agree with me on this.”

Viewed in this light, there’s nothing surprising at all about the US Department of State sponsoring an Open Internet policy and at the same time calling for the extra-legal suppression of the release of their own cables. That the vast majority of these missives are little more than embarrassing is barely germane. The fact is, someone’s told tales out of school, so they can’t be friends any more. There’s hardly a person in the world who would act differently.

That’s going to change.

In an interview with New York Magazine, Author William Gibson argues that technology, not culture, is in the driver’s seat now. Technology “is not only what we do, it’s literally who we are as a species. We’ve become something other than what our ancestors were.”

It’s closer to the truth to say that technology and culture are inextricably entwined. In any case, the plain fact is that secrets, as we in the West know them, are dead. If you record your thoughts or actions –and in this increasingly digital world, you inevitably do– they will be copied. And if they are copied once, they can be copied infinitely. The only limitation on this is human interest.

This is going to force some very uncomfortable compromises. Scientist and author David Brin has taken the rather unpopular stance that the answer to this unprecedented assault on privacy is more openness, not less:

“Instead of trying to blind the mighty –a futile goal, if ever there was one– we have emphasized the power of openness, giving free citizens knowledge and unprecedented ability to hold elites accountable. Every day, we prove it works, rambunctiously demanding to know, rather than trying to stop others from knowing.”

In essence, Brin is arguing for a return to village life, but for everyone, not just individuals. Companies, governments, organisations of all kinds who trade in data, should become subject to precisely the same scrutiny they impose on everyone else.

Secrecy, in other words, will be replaced by confidentiality, an unwritten social contract not to penalise people for exposing their own human foibles, provided they don’t harm others.

It’s a nice idea, and if Vanuatu society’s ability to make scandal and impropriety public without (necessarily) using it as a scourge is any indication, it could even be made to work. But it works in Vanuatu because there’s no alternative. The moment someone has the ability to evade the watchful eyes of the community, you can bet your boots they’ll do so.

Constant scrutiny is at the core of this dynamic.

The way the Internet is shaped these days, individual privacy is vastly disadvantaged relative to state and corporate secrecy. This imbalance will only be perpetuated unless the physical networks through which our data runs are restructured. As things stand right now, virtually all of our communications pass through an increasingly limited number of physical cables, websites and service providers.

If we learn nothing else from the repressive measures imposed on free speech on the Internet, it is that ownership of the means of transmission matters more than anything else. If a government or corporation has enough leverage over a significant portion of the communications network, they can define exactly how it behaves.

In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, New York University professor Clay Shirky recounts how attempts by the Philippine Congress to co-opt the 2001 impeachment of then-President Joseph Estrada were subverted by a spontaneously organised protest, largely catalysed by a text message saying, “Go 2 EDSA. Wear blk.” (EDSA is Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, a major intersection in Manila.) Within two days, over a million black-shirted people had congregated.

The government was caught flat-footed and fell as a result.

He then describes how attempts by the Iranian Green Movement to replicate this kind of effect were quickly trumped by the government’s ability to monitor mobile and Internet traffic and to reduce it to a trickle at critical junctures. This aided them significantly in the subsequent crackdown and wholesale imprisonment of dissident activists.

The victory came at significant cost to the credibility of the state, but in the short term, the state prevailed.

The tension between privacy and secrecy is becoming increasingly lop-sided. The only comfort we can take is that even if the physical networks are increasingly centralised and therefore pulling in the direction of secrecy, the communications protocols that run across these wires are still what we call end-to-end. In other words, they allow us (or rather, our computers, smart phones, etc.) to speak directly to each other.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but the ability to communicate one-to-one militates strongly in favour of openness. Because we are the ones choosing to communicate, the network transmits only what we freely share. Above all else, we love to share what we know about others. Now, this phenomenon needs to be leavened by an awareness that the rest of the online world is within earshot. If we say something sufficiently embarrassing, be it about ourselves or someone else, the world will quickly know we said it.

Following the massive breach of diplomatic secrecy perpetrated by WikiLeaks, international relations have already seen a fundamental change in perspective. The banner of Transparency has been lowered from the ramparts. Many state and non-state actors are moving quickly to reshape the world into something they are more comfortable with, one in which a culture of secrecy prevails once more.

Odds are, they will eventually lose this ground. Just as resistance to market forces has ultimately proven futile in the global economy, those who fight openness with increasingly centralised control are working at a disadvantage to those who are willing to be more opportunistic, flexible and accepting of the opportunities that better access to information give them.

The battle –and make no mistake, this is a battle– is far from over. I sympathise with Bruce Sterling when he expresses a rather melancholic, depressed response to this first open conflict between secrecy and the transparency of the network:

“[Assange is] a different, modern type of serious troublemaker. He’s certainly not a “terrorist,” because nobody is scared and no one got injured. He’s not a “spy,” because nobody spies by revealing the doings of a government to its own civil population. He is orthogonal. He’s asymmetrical. He panics people in power and he makes them look stupid. And I feel sorry for them. But sorrier for the rest of us.”

There is a new, defining conflict in the world. Technology’s assault on secrecy will succeed just as surely as it has on our privacy. There are only two ways to come to terms with Wikileaks and its successors: Repression or negotiation. Repression is not a long-term viable option, because the costs are always greater than the benefits for the majority. A totalitarian crackdown lasting generations is possible, but unlikely. And with anything less than that, there will inevitably be a correction in the direction of openness.

Negotiation requires a state of uncomfortable, shifting compromise in which we establish new cultural tabus based on each party’s knowledge of the other. It’s almost Victorian in its essence: We retain a pretence of propriety and respect; I don’t reveal your more awkward secrets so that you won’t reveal mine.

This is an awkward and innately unfair scenario, because disparities in wealth (i.e. knowledge) will almost certainly bring about the same injustices as we see in unbridled capitalism. Only concerted social opprobrium will keep bad actors at bay.

Societies will certainly go through convulsions coming to terms with this new détente. But we will inevitably do so. Like it or not, technology makes us what we are.

No matter what the outcome, I worry about the cost.

"Journalism"

12 December 2010 Dan McGarry

I’m not arguing that complete access to all information is the only true form of journalism. I’m suggesting that making a distinction between WikiLeaks and ‘journalism’ as we understand the word does not describe the process; it describes the actors.

[Updated slightly to ~~fix the facts around the policy~~ more accurately reflect reality.]

Jillian York, in her rather timid defense of WikiLeaks, states that ~~she~~[*] some people ‘got off the bus’, metaphorically speaking, shortly after the release of the ‘Collateral Murder’ video. Describing her personal ambivalence about the latest leak, she draws a distinction between what she characterises as WikiLeaks’ ‘firehose’ approach and conventional journalism.

But to accept that distinction, we have to ignore what happens when we back up a little from our current context and ask: what, exactly, is journalism? I think we can accept that, essentially, it is a means (until recently, our primary means) of obtaining verifiable and ostensibly reliable information about the world around us. The fact that it has become formalised -indeed, institutionalised- is a collateral feature. It does not follow that its formalisation via a collection of ethical practices is necessary to the provision of information. Journalistic ethics, in other words, are very much defined by their context and indeed their application.

As the Judith Miller debacle showed us, unconditional protection of anonymous sources can prove detrimental to the integrity of the craft. Neither selective leaks nor ‘access’ to anonymous sources are sufficient to healthy reporting. Truth, ultimately, is the only reliable measure of the effectiveness of a particular news source. It goes without saying that truth is an increasingly adulterated alloy in popular news reporting these days. It’s not even sufficient to speak nothing but truth; one must, somehow, find a way to tell all the truth that pertains to a particular subject.

WikiLeaks, for better or for worse, represents the logical conclusion of this train of reasoning. I’m open to arguments that it is actually an over-correction, but I don’t feel I’ll be moved without reference to particular details. And that requires access to sufficient information; in short, you can only make that argument retrospectively.

You can see where I’m going with this….

[*] Reading comprehension FAIL on my part. I mistakenly elided the first two letters of ‘some’, changing the meaning fundamentally. Jillian was kind enough to call this mistake to my attention.

‘Nother update: I just re-read this sentence:

Neither selective leaks nor ‘access’ to anonymous sources are sufficient to healthy reporting.

I’m tempted to be a even more provocative and to ask whether they are even necessary to healthy reporting.

As a gendakenexperiment, I wonder what the journalistic craft would look like if secrets of all kinds were tabu.

As students of the Englightenment, most of us immediately shy away from the thought of an environment in which individual privacy is nearly absent. But having lived on the edges of Vanuatu village culture for the last seven years, I can attest to the fact that there are indeed ways to accommodate oneself to a world more akin to what David Brin describes than the ideal world of a doctrinaire libertarian.

Individual privacy is not as axiomatic as many in the West tend to assume….

What Necessity?

11 December 2010 Dan McGarry

If indeed, the threat of force was used to bar the public and press from a session of Parliament in which a change of government took place, and there was no compelling reason for this action, then Vanuatu’s politicians, no matter how inspired or high-minded their intentions, have led the country away from its roots.

Transparency is not just the name of a local political gadfly. It is a real thing. It is crucial to the country’s well-being. And it is not possible to like it on Monday, ignore it on a Tuesday and promise to be back Wednesday.

As the recent WikiLeaks controversy has shown us, a shining light can be discomforting, even embarrassing at times. It can actually make it more difficult to get things done. But –and here’s the key– it makes it more difficult for us to do wrong, too.

[This column appeared in today’s Vanuatu Daily Post]

The week before last, Vanuatu witnessed an unprecedented event in its political history. Parliamentary Speaker George Wells instructed the members of the Police and the Vanuatu Mobile Force to bar all members of the public and the press from entering Parliamentary precincts.

Then, with no one but the MPs themselves to witness, the government changed.

We are told that a vote was held on a pending no-confidence motion. We are told that certain members of the Government crossed the aisle to vote with the Opposition. But we don’t know precisely what happened, what words were spoken and what actions were taken to ensure this outcome.

Were Police or soldiers present inside Parliament as well as outside? Were any threats, implicit or explicit, made to Members before the vote? Were any blandishments or other incentives offered?

I’m not suggesting any of these things took place. I’m suggesting that they could have, and we would never know. Anything could have happened during that session, and unless we find some way of getting corroborated evidence of what did happen, a question mark will always lie over the proceeding.

The Inter-Parliamentary Union, a United Nations organisation that works to strengthen democracies worldwide, lists five key attributes of a healthy democracy:

It is representative; it is accessible; it is accountable; it is effective. And it is transparent.

Without transparency, none of the other attributes are measurable.

Secrecy runs counter to kastom as well. It is frankly unimaginable that any change in the customary power structure could take place beyond the view of the people.

Arguably, MP Wells had the legal authority to clear the public and the press from Parliament. Whether he had the moral right to do so is not so easy to determine.

While the Constitution clearly states that the proceedings of Parliament are to be public, it leaves room for extraordinary circumstances. The Standing Orders of Parliament, the rules by which the Speaker is legally bound, state, ‘The Speaker may order the withdrawal of visitors [from Parliament] in special circumstances.’

The Orders further state that, ‘In exercising his duties, the Speaker may request assistance from officers of Parliament or if necessary, members of the Police Force.’

‘… If Necessary….’

So, MP Wells need only explain what ‘special circumstances’ required that Parliament be barred to the public in order to reassure the citizens of Vanuatu that he acted legally.

And then, of course, he would have to lay out the reasons why the use of Police was necessary. The Standing Orders only allow the use of Police ‘if necessary.’ Any reasonable definition of necessity requires the presence of an obvious and otherwise unavoidable circumstance. It should therefore be easy for MP Wells to explain what threat to public order existed that required the presence of armed soldiers at Parliament’s gates.

Was there danger of insurrection? A coup? Violent criminal activity? I’m not being facetious here; I’m genuinely asking. Mr. Wells obviously didn’t just decide out of the blue that these measures were necessary. I trust that he had his reasons.

I only ask that he share them.

It is critically important that the ex-Speaker justify his actions and demonstrate to the people of Vanuatu that he acted lawfully and with reason. If he does not, then the legality –and the legitimacy– of the vote is called into question. If the vote is called into question, then so too is the government.
That’s not something anyone wants.

This is not a trivial issue, a slip-up in a young democracy that’s just finding its feet. If indeed it is the case that the public and the press were barred for no good reason, then a terribly dangerous precedent will have been set that cannot be allowed to continue. It is anti-democratic, and it is anti-kastom.

The only thing that could excuse this behaviour is if MP Wells can demonstrate that he did not overstep.

By all accounts, nothing happened during the vote that had not happened before. This should not make us complacent. It should have the opposite effect.

Newly-minted Prime Minister Sato Kilman has already voiced his reservations about the measures taken by the Speaker. That is commendable. He should introduce changes to the Standing Orders in the next sitting of Parliament to ensure that if these rules are ever again invoked, they will not be applied frivolously and with little cause.

Open Source Diplomacy

30 November 2010 Dan McGarry

The commoditisation of information proceeds apace, and although the stakes are perceived to be higher in this case, the effects will probably be similar in nature. A fractious dialectic is already emerging between those who truly believe in the benefits of information resources like those circulated to millions of US military and government staffers on SIPRNET, and those who seek to leverage proprietary knowledge for their country’s -and sometimes their own- gain.

All secrets are like kindling. Used at the right time, gossip can provide warmth, build allegiance and influence. Used rashly, well… you know where this is heading. In that sense, wikileaks may seem like a 10 year old boy with a stolen box of matches. But applied judiciously and with a sober sense of timing, the same principles of near-complete openness and sharing that are at the heart of free software development (and the Internet itself) could usefully animate international diplomacy.

[This column appeared in the Vanuatu Daily Post.]

Say what you like about wikileaks and their recent dump of over 250,000 US diplomatic cables, but there is probably not a single researcher in International Relations, History or Political Science without a tingle in their pants today. Never in modern history has so much information been made available in such a readily accessible format. This is, for researchers, a gift that will keep on giving for decades to come.

The thing that impressed me most from my brief perusal of the 200-odd documents released on the first day was not so much the content as the quality of the analysis. The cables were well-written and obviously well-researched. I suspect that there’s more than one junior foreign officer out there with a quiet smile on their face today, because finally the world will see just how good they are.

Yes, I’m ignoring completely the ethics and morality of the situation. That horse is out of the barn, and incidentally, what a barn it is….

These cables will provide more insight and understanding into American diplomacy than anything else ever has. Just as access to hitherto proprietary source code sometimes unearths dirty secrets of which even its author is ashamed, there is likely to be a lot of unpleasantness to be found in the cables.

I think the longer term result, however, will be that much of what’s good about the US diplomatic corps (and there’s a lot of that) will assist countless others to improve their own work. In fact I think it’s likely there might be more than one diplomat that might actually be relieved to see the unspeakable spoken aloud. This torrent of data just might break more logjams than it creates.

The rise of the Free Software movement in the 1990s increased access to the source code that runs our computers and caused fundamental changes in software development. Their echoes are still quite strong today. Code that was once hidden behind thick corporate walls was now being handed about in a vast open source bazaar. This discomfited many vendors who were dismayed to discover that their crown jewels could become valueless overnight as software became commoditised.

A lot of dirty laundry got aired in the process. Bug-reports, software update schedules, coding practices all became subjects of open discussion and, yes, dispute. Tolerance for second-rate code dwindled significantly. Emphasis began to fall more and more on results. As one acerbic commenter wrote: “A single line of running code trumps a thousand lines of argument.”

Companies who attempted to retain their secretive ways were simply bypassed and their flaws exposed for all to see. Sound familiar?

In the late 1990s, Microsoft identified Linux specifically and Free Software generally as the greatest strategic threat to their organisation. They were right. Microsoft’s stagnation is partly attributable to the advantage that FOSS has given several of its competitors. IBM, Apple and Google have all leveraged open source software to jump-start various endeavours that compete directly with Microsoft. Likewise, Microsoft’s need to increase the pace of development resulted directly in their death-march to Windows Vista.

Just as Microsoft was able to drive Netscape Communications out of the market by commoditising the web browser, others are commoditising vast swathes of the computing industry by leveraging FOSS.

All secrets are like kindling. Used at the right time, gossip can provide warmth, build allegiance and influence. Used rashly, well… you know where this is heading. In that sense, wikileaks may seem like a 10 year old boy with a stolen box of matches. But applied judiciously and with a sober sense of timing, the same principles of openness as a default stance and and a predilection toward sharing that are at the heart of free software development (and the Internet itself) could usefully animate international diplomacy.

To be perfectly clear: I’m not suggesting that there is no need for secrecy whatsoever in diplomacy. I’m suggest that, as we’ve discovered with programming processes, secrecy might prove to be less necessary -and effective- to security than it appears to be.

Cyber Wuh?

29 October 2010 Dan McGarry

I’ve argued in the past that the centralisation of network hardware is a liability not only to civil defense but to personal liberty. It’s gratifying to see someone else make the case so well. If you want to understand the current dynamic between an open Internet that enables unparalleled social forces and a network infrastructure that allows vastly increased levels of surveillance, censorship and control, you have to read Hersh on the matter. He’s not the last word in the discussion, but his contribution is indispensable.

Seymour Hersh is a better, more generous man than I. He does a characteristically sober and thorough job of investigating purported threats to military and civilian communications networks in the latest edition of the New Yorker magazine. I might like him better if he had avoided using the words ‘Cyber’, ‘War’ and ‘Terror’ all in a single headline, but in fairness, sometimes to you have to use the language to negate its power.

I would also have preferred it had he not given such prominence to Richard Clarke’s fear-mongering, indulging him with a lengthy quote describing a catastrophic cyber war scenario with nationwide power cuts and planes ‘literally falling out of the sky'[*]. It takes him several more paragraphs to debunk Clarke’s ramblings as self-promoting opportunism, and he does so with trademark aplomb – describing in some detail the economic interests at stake in this discussion and drawing a compelling portrait of the desire for control that motivates many of the characters in the world of online security.

A more cynical writer might jam a refutation up front in order not to leave impatient readers with the mistaken impression that he might somehow be endorsing these views. Hersh, it seems, trusts his readers to work through 6000 words of calm analysis; and, damn him, his trust in me at least is never misplaced.

Alas, he suffers fools far more gladly than I. His style is one which provides all involved with more than enough rope. I suspect that this equality of opportunity is what allows him to maintain access to extremely privileged sources in defense circles.

But what makes Seymour Hersh so valuable as a reporter on the military is his ability to cut through the fog of war-talk, to make clear distinctions between the actual threats and their portrayal in popular dialogue. In this particular case, he renders the world a service by drawing a clear line between electronic espionage (a commonplace activity in which the intrusions come more often from Western allies then from enemies) and actual Cyber War. He lines up a number of analysts who cogently and calmly dispel the latter as largely a fabrication used to drum up support (and budget) for increased military influence in civilian communications networks.

Most infuriatingly, he does so without down-playing the truly disturbing lack of protections against attack that characterise much of our modern communications infrastructure.

His dry-eyed depiction of NSA Director and newly-minted commander of the US military’s Cyber War command Gen. Keith Alexander is a truly magisterial piece of work. Without once voicing a word of criticism, he lays out a portrait of a man who wants, effectively, to dismantle the open, distributed (and yes, sometimes even anarchic) Internet and replace it with the digital equivalent of the Maginot Line.

There exists an innate tendency among all people with any influence to say, “Wait, this Internet thing is completely out of our control. We need to do something!” While the first sentence may be true, they neglect the simpler conclusion: If the network can’t be controlled from any single point, it can’t easily be destroyed by a single, targeted attack.

… Which is exactly what the Internet was invented to prevent.

[*] Clarke’s words, of course. It’s those literal falls you have to worry about. The figurative ones aren’t nearly as dangerous.

Next Generation Internet in the Pacific

20 September 2010 Dan McGarry

The Internet helps make old things new again. It provides a new and powerful way to ensure that the bonds of family and society continue to tie everyone in Vanuatu together. At this year’s PacINET conference, we saw yet again how strong communities make society healthier and more able to develop itself.

[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post.]

PM Edward Natapei Nipake addresses the PacINET 2010 conference Vanuatu welcomed over 140 attendees from Vanuatu and throughout the Asia-Pacific region this week to the annual PacINET technology conference. It was organised by the Pacific Islands Chapter of the Internet Society (PICISOC) and by the Vanuatu IT Users Society (VITUS).

At Wednesday’s opening ceremony, Prime Minister Edward Nipake Natapei highlighted Vanuatu’s leadership role in driving technological development in the country.

“The effects,” he said, “have been revolutionary. As a result of our telecommunications policies, economic activity has increased, adding an additional 1% to GDP growth at a time when the world economy was shrinking. Studies show that social bonds are strengthened, too, making families safer and stronger in a time of increased mobility and migration.”

The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Next Generation Internet: Security and Governance’. Among the highlights were deployment through the Pacific region of a new Internet protocol that will allow Internet-based businesses and organisations to continue to grow, a day-long investigation of the One Laptop Per Child project and another all-day workshop aimed at school principals – key stakeholders in ICT for development in Vanuatu.

Backing all these efforts is something people in Vanuatu understand better than most in the world – a thriving Pacific ICT community willing to share knowledge, experience and insight to make life better, not just for IT geeks, but for everyone.

Without the efforts of a devoted band of volunteers, the success of information and communications technologies (ICT) as tools for development would be severely limited. While the developed world has benefited significantly from entrepreneurialism and business development to drive technological advancement, the soul of the Pacific lies in the sense of community service that we all share.

Our resources are limited, we rely (some say too much) on donor aid for most improvements in our day-to-day lives, and though market players such as TVL have a tremendously influential role to play, their success is largely contingent on the willingness and capacity of the community to take advantage of their products and services.

Indeed, one the defining characteristics of these commercial operations is their close ties to the local community. Every day we saw TVL staffers contributing time and attention to ensuring the conference ran smoothly. Many attendees commended the quality and performance of the WiMax broadband link donated by TVL, one of the largest deployed to date in Vanuatu. The consensus is that it was every bit as good as they’d seen in conferences in Australia or New Zealand.

But all the Internet bandwidth in the world won’t help us if we don’t make the most of what we have. It was for this reason that conference organisers decided to concentrate on the next generation of Internet technologies. All week long, IT professionals focused on the deployment of a new kind of addressing system for the Internet.

Called IPv6, this protocol will allow the Internet to continue to grow in the years to come. Just as every mobile phone needs its own number, every computer connected to the Internet requires a unique address in order for others to be able to talk to it. The first allocation of about 4 billion numbers is about to run out, and unless action is taken, this will severely limit the growth of the Internet in the Asia-Pacific region.

Once we’ve assured that everyone can get an address, the next task is to help people find a way to make use of those addresses. That’s why PacINET 2010 organisers helped arrange a meeting between Michael Hutak, Oceania director of the One Laptop Per Child project and the Prime Minister. PM Natapei showed his continuing commitment to the development of a comprehensive ICT policy, promising his support for a year long trial of up to 2000 of these robust, low-cost and low-power devices in Vanuatu’s outer islands.

Following the meeting, Hutak was quick to point out that one cannot simply parachute laptops into a community and expect everything to work swimmingly. “Follow up,” said Hutak, “is crucial.”

He was preaching to the choir. Led by volunteer George Tasso with significant support from the Department of Education, VITUS members organised a full-day event for school principals aimed at informing them of the perils and profits involved in ICT deployment in schools.

Tasso and others have been working for over a year now with local IT volunteers, pairing them up with schools in Port Vila and organising high-level support and assistance from more experienced VITUS members. The result is that young volunteers not only get the opportunity to learn from more experienced colleagues, but schools benefit from no-cost, on-site technical support.

This week’s workshop featured the announcement of a partnership between Edwards Computer Foundation and Vanuatu schools in which IT graduates will be paired with a mentor from within the VITUS community and given the opportunity to spend time in a post-graduation work-study programme in community schools.

An American Dreamer

10 August 2010 Dan McGarry

The world is not gentle to the innocent, but no matter how it battered him, Tim Drefahl never let it win. Vanuatu offered solace for a while and, on an island ringed by an azure lagoon, there are people who will never forget his duty, his devotion, his love.

He swung and missed at every ball, and never blamed the bat. And every time he stepped up, he believed – he believed this time was different.

Vanuatu seemed made for Tim Drefahl, and he for it. He wasn’t the typical Peace Corps volunteer. Older than most, much younger than the rest, he struggled to find his place in the fraternity. Perhaps it was his outsider status that made him a true friend for some of us and a devoted, caring member of his adoptive family in the Maskelyne islands.

In his first real foray outside the confines of Reaganite California, Tim found himself bewildered by the sarcasm and piss-taking of his newfound expat mates. He struggled and, as he always did, adjusted. By his second year here, he was leaning into the banter, trying gamely to give as good as he got.

No such struggle was required in his integration with ni-Vanuatu society, not at first. His love for the people of the Maskelynes and his devotion to their development gave focus to his unquenchable determination. An American Dreamer to the last, he KNEW that, with a liberal application of sweat and willpower, anything could be achieved. No matter what the world threw at him, no matter how he struggled to find his stance, this was one lesson he never un-learned.

Tim could be thick, occasionally breath-takingly wrong. He was awkward, often comically lacking in timing and sense. But he was true. Few people can be said to be genuinely pure of heart, but this man was one. And the world, with its piercing subtleties and sharpened edges, made sure that he paid more for every lesson.

Tim never learned caution and never lost hope. He stumbled into success and failure with equal resolve and unending faith in the rightness of his cause. It was his misguided clarity, ultimately, that closed Vanuatu’s door to him. Contracted to work in the administration of donor funds on a project close to his heart, he butted heads continually with departmental staff. No battle was too small. Right was right and wrong was wrong and that was it.

He was too Good. He succeeded too well. His project stayed on track, more or less, but winning so bluntly guaranteed that he would not work here again.

His exile from Vanuatu was purest misery. Alone and nearly friendless, he kept himself going through a year teaching English in Korea with the promise of return. But an extended vacation was the most he could muster. The world, as usual, exacted its price. The realisation that he could not make this his home nearly broke him.

He never stopped fighting, though; we knew he wouldn’t. Back to the US, then to Seoul for a time, just long enough to find a new passion: The city of Osaka, Japan. A clownish barbarian at the gates, he threw himself into this new exploration with blind enthusiasm. Appropriating friends like a pinball gaining points, he bounced and stumbled and clutched his way toward work, a home, a place of his own.

But the world does not reward the quixotic. Courage untempered by caution is brittle indeed. The causes are unclear, but on the 22nd of June, Tim was admitted to hospital with severe head injuries. He lingered for a few weeks, and on July 13th, 2010 he died.

“I miss you,” wrote one of his newfound Japanese friends, “I’m very sorry that I couldn’t save you even though I was near you.”

There are many in Vanuatu who feel the same.

Strange Fruit

23 June 2010 Dan McGarry

The purpose of this column is simple: I want us to stop beating, abusing and neglecting our women and to start loving, respecting and learning from them instead. And lest you expat men think yourselves exempt from this; you’re not. I’ve seen ni-Vanuatu women treated despicably by black and white alike.

If I seem angry, that’s because I am. I have encountered instances of children solicited for sex, fathers turning their wives out and taking up with their under-age daughters, dozens of cases of rape and abuse, and some acts of violence that would make your blood curdle.

None of these appeared in the news or even in the crime statistics. Few of them were ever dealt with under law or kastom. It’s as if they don’t exist.

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root…

These are the opening lines of a song made immortal by American Jazz singer Billie Holiday. Her personal story was heroic; battling poverty, marginalisation, racism and abuse, she managed to become one of the most influential singers of the 20th Century.

‘Strange Fruit’, Holiday’s signature tune, became a hallmark of a quickening social sensitivity to the plight of black people in America. Provocative, courageous and compelling, its twelve short lines could reduce even the most jaded listener to tears.

The song’s central image is the victim of a lynching, the ‘strange fruit’ hanging from a tree. Holiday, who had been raped at 11 and prostituted by 14, and who faced a lifetime of drug addiction and domestic abuse, made it a vessel into which she poured all of her pain and suffering.

Vanuatu has its own strange fruit: Planted between the roots of a nakatambol tree lie the bones of a Tannese woman murdered, burned and discarded after 14 years of neglect by her own people. An overgrown lot in Freswota is aflower with yellow crime scene tape marking the place where another young Tannese woman was raped and beaten to death with a timber. Her 3 year old daughter lay strangled nearby.

Just as the mightiest tree often comes from the smallest seed, Vanuatu continues to reap this bitter harvest because, in every aspect of their lives, women are subject to coercion.

No Silver Bullet

17 May 2010 Dan McGarry

The recent prisoner escape has –quite understandably– raised emotions among Port Vila residents. Our collective inability to end this chronic threat has led many to call for drastic action in order to resolve the problem once and for all.

If only it were that easy.

[Originally written for the Vanuatu Daily Post.]

If only it were that easy.

Much has been said on the topic, most of it in the heat of the moment. As difficult as it may be when we feel our loved ones are threatened, we need to step back from our emotions so we can properly evaluate the situation.

Let’s consider some of the pronouncements that have been made in the media over the last week or so:

1) Prison escapes are getting worse, not better. Correctional Services is a failure.

Unproven. The frequency of prison escapes has dropped in direct relation to the Government’s commitment of funds and resources to Correctional Services. There’s every reason to believe that escapes will decrease even further once a proper correctional centre is built.

2) Escapes diminished drastically after the VMF were tasked with rounding up prisoners.

Patently false. The largest escape in the history of Port Vila’s history was motivated in part because of the role the VMF played in prisoners’ regular and brutal mistreatment. Joshua Bong was unable to stop a mass escape even when told by the prisoners themselves when the breakout going to happen.

The escapes stopped (until now) only after a thorough-going revamp of procedures accompanied by the construction of a more secure and more humane facility.

3) None of this would have happened if we hadn’t let foreign influences dictate to us.

This is Vanuatu’s problem. Placing the blame on others’ shoulders is intellectually lazy and un-productive.

Prison reform was not foisted upon us. This path was freely chosen by the Government. Not to put too fine a point on it, if both parties were as committed to the process as New Zealand is, it might have been implemented –properly– 5 years ago.

We need to recognise that New Zealand agreed to partner with the Government in reaction to the prisons’ sieve-like security post-1980. We also need to ask ourselves why a programme that is effective in New Zealand consistently fails in Vanuatu.

If reports are correct, the direct cause of the prisoners’ escape was the fact that they were left unsupervised for at least 30 minutes because a guard wanted a cup of tea.

While kastom-based village justice programmes have proven useful in rehabilitating many offenders, a minority of our prisoners are dangerous and probably beyond rehabilitation. I challenge anyone to come up with a more measured and pragmatic plan for them than that which has been proposed.

4) Prison guards should have firearms.

This suggestion flies in the face of prison doctrine world-wide. Guards who interact directly with the prison population are deliberately not given firearms because those weapons can be captured and turned against them, making the escapee(s) even more dangerous.

Ask yourself: How would you feel if you heard these same prisoners were loose in Port Vila and armed with pistols or assault rifles?

Reports have suggested that the guards allowed themselves to be intimidated by the mere threat of stoning. Clearly, steps need to be taken to ensure they don’t lose control of their charges so easily. But giving guards guns makes things worse, not better.

5) Escaped prisoners’ human rights should be ignored.

Let’s be honest: This is really just a polite way of saying that prisoners should be shot, or at least beaten at will.

Without going into the why’s and wherefor’s of this debate, let’s at least be clear about one thing: If the police or VMF are going to be given the power to summarily punish or even execute certain individuals, then they need some clear rules established concerning when, why and how this happens.

Nobody is going to argue that Kasimir’s rights outweigh those of our sons and daughters. But if we’re going to authorise his trackers to shoot him on sight, what’s keeping your son or daughter out of the crossfire?

When the bullets start flying, they don’t distinguish between Good Guys and Bad.

Moreover, does this death penalty (let’s call it what it is) apply to all escapees? Consider the real case of a young Tannese man straight from the island, jailed for theft. He speaks no Bislama or English and doesn’t fully understand why he’s been incarcerated. Were he to escape, unaware of the consequences, should we shoot him too?

If society is intent on putting aside people’s human rights under certain circumstances, then for its own sake it had damn well better be clear about what those circumstances are, lest the innocent suffer with the guilty.

Equally important, the responsibility for who gets to live and who dies is too great to be trusted to a few individuals, both for their sake and for ours. We as a society must own that choice.

Until the Law says otherwise, killing or beating prisoners after their apprehension is a crime.

6) Prisoners don’t deserve respect or kindness.

Anyone who’s heard the details of the crimes committed by some of these men would be hard-pressed to show even the slightest flicker of compassion. My honest reaction to the news that one of them had kidnapped a young woman from my neighbourhood, torturing and raping her for four days was… well, suffice it to say that I don’t know if he’d survive 5 minutes alone with me.

But before we indulge that desire to return an eye for an eye, we need to remember two things:

Some prisoners truly are psychopaths and a danger to society. But they are the minority. Treating all of them that way becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Kick the sweetest-natured dog often enough and eventually he will bite back.
The unbearable, inhuman conditions described by the prisoners themselves led even remand prisoners to escape. Poor prison conditions only made them more desperate, more willing to go to any lengths to escape.

Treating prisoners humanely is a pragmatic concern, not a moral one. Simply put, a prisoner who is treated with a modicum of decency has less reason to run away.

I have no silver-bullet solutions to offer here. That’s because they don’t exist. We’re deceiving ourselves if we pretend they do.

It’s not my place to prescribe the choices Vanuatu society makes about its own offenders. All I’m suggesting is that, when we consider our options, we think them all the way through.

Dealing with its transgressors is one of human society’s defining challenges. It’s a thicket of thorns that has entangled us throughout history, one from which we can never completely emerge.