Category: Non-fiction; Rating: 3 out of 5; Tags: CBC Massey Lectures, Internet, Social Media
Ronald Deibert delivered the 2020 CBC Massey Lectures, and this book is the transcript of those lectures. Deibert discusses the problems with smart phones, the internet, and social media, which, despite their appeal, have serious flaws, some of which are not obvious to their users. The social, security and environmental problems associated with digital services are serious, but we use these services so much that they and their drawbacks have become nearly invisible. This review just scratches the surface of Deibert’s comprehensive coverage.
Start with the social problems. Quite apart from the toxic abuse suffered by users of social media, App users have given up an enormous amount of their personal data in exchange for “free” services. Unknown parties know where you go, who you text, what you buy, what websites you visit, and perhaps your heartbeat and sleep patterns. A game you play on your phone shouldn’t need access to your contacts and location in order to work; it requires these permissions so app makers can harvest and sell your data. When it’s said that “data is the new oil”, it means that valuable data is harvested from users of internet services, largely without their true knowledge or consent.
Security is so lax that data breaches are common: private tax information, stored on Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud service, has unintentionally been made accessible to anyone. Installing Zoom allowed laptop cameras to be turned on without you knowing or agreeing. Facebook exposed millions of users’ passwords to its employees. A researcher was able to track almost anyone’s phone without their knowledge or consent, something he discovered and activated fairly easily. Sometimes the data is also shared with government agencies like the FBI and NSA.
Many of these breaches are accidental, but some are deliberate. Subversion, psychological operations, extortion through ransomware, and propaganda are now done online. The argument that “if you’ve got nothing to hide, it’s not a problem”, fails, because “there is no jurisdiction that is immune to corruption and authoritarian practices – only greater or lesser degrees of protection against them.” Not that long ago, Hoover’s FBI was guilty of illegal wiretaps, the CIA engaged in mind control experiments on prisoners and mental health patients, and the RCMP broke into homes without warrants; you can be innocent and live in a liberal democracy, but still have your rights violated.
Then there are the environmental problems. Our shiny devices seem magical, floating in air, but they are firmly connected to the physical world. Mining the materials used to make electronics causes massive environmental damage in the form of toxic tailings and landscape destruction. Around 95% of the waste is generated in the mining and manufacturing processes, so recycling consumer products can never offset this. Running the servers and other infrastructure uses lots of power. An hour of streaming video a week uses more power than a new refrigerator. A Google search emits as much CO2 as driving a car fifty-five feet, and global e-mail use generates as much CO2 as seven million cars. Training a single artificial intelligence model can emit almost five times the life cycle emissions of an average car.
This is a transcript of a lecture series, so Deibert can be forgiven for the odd slip – he refers to an example of “clearly inappropriate abuse” of digital technology, making me wonder what would constitute “appropriate abuse”. He sometimes uses redundant descriptions, perhaps to make the dangers of the internet seem more ominous – isn’t “sowing division” the same as “undermining cohesion”? And he gives a list of the social ills of screen time without explaining how serious or prevalent they are – they could be serious or minor; he doesn’t say. But perhaps a little fear-mongering is justified given the real problems we face.
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