“We do not conceive our structure as an answer to state control, but in general terms, it is the only decent thing coming to our mind that could guarantee freedom of expression and avoid uncontrolled profiling by companies and governments”.

“Freedom and rights? You have to sweat blood for them! On the internet, too.” Infoaut interviews Autistici/Inventati

According to this interview, privacy is not something we should leave to third parties to protect. It is not something that we can delegate.

“Our core strategy is that of never storing any information that could be useful in user profiling, which in our opinion is plain respect for individual freedom and good sense. However, we should also emphasize that in Italy investigations tend to directly revolve around the user rather than the service provider; also by resorting to malwares that damage the computer of the person under investigation and control her without her knowledge (our legislation calls them information collectors). Usually, the end user is the weak link and the police services prefer in 99% of the cases to seize the information they are after directly from that user. They do so out of two reasons: on one hand to collect evidence, and on the other to further supply intelligence activities with information in order to map the relational network of the subject under scrutiny. It is also for this reason that we periodically insist on the fact that the safeguarding of one’s own privacy cannot be delegated to anyone. Not even to us.”

We do not want people to think they can buy freedom and rights. You have to sweat blood for that.

You’ll have to be ready to act in first person, without proxies. In a world of spectators and voters this is often rather puzzling. Really, the problem behind it all is the tainted concept of democracy that people are imbued with: everything passes through delegation…

We do believe the problem of privacy to be more political than technical. So I do not think that a privacy industry can solve these problems, since we are dealing with an antagonist with substantially infinite resources and against whom any “arms race” has little hopes of victory. The technical solution cannot be anything but part of the solution. And I strongly suspect that to be a pretty secondary part. I also expect that some people will create services to fill this gap in the market. There will be those with good intentions (like Lavabit) and those only interested in money…

An ironic comment in that interview:
It is really funny to see how well the “free” market works. Many people in the world want to have a secure mail service… and their best option is a group of Italian anti-capitalist activists? Well, it does not look exactly like a model of efficiency to me.

In summary, the people who have formed the Autistici/Inventati network believe that the market will not be able to resolve the crisis of privacy protection. We have to become interested in the technical details first hand, and perhaps a voluntary association of users working with those who have the technical knowledge, will be the only tool that can stand up to the overwhelming powers of surveillance that are being deployed against every human on the planet…cipro in south africa