captives of the cloud part ii

14
7/25/2019 Captives of the Cloud Part II http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/captives-of-the-cloud-part-ii 1/14 Metahaven Captives of the Cloud: Part II ! Continued from ÒCaptives of the Cloud: Part IÓ Is the future of the world the future of the internet? Ð Julian Assange 1 The cloud is the informational equivalent to the container terminal. It has a higher degree of standardization and scalability than most earlier forms of networked information and communication technology. From social networking to retail, from financial transactions to e-mail and telephone, these and many other services end up in the cloud. Surely, the internet already was a wholesale for all types of information and media formats. As Milton Mueller notes, these Òused to be delivered through separate technologies governed by separate legal and regulatory regimes,Ó while now having converged on the internet and its protocols. 2  In the cloud, such Òdigital convergenceÓ goes even further: data becomes more effectively and thoroughly harvested, analyzed, validated, monetized, looked into, and controlled than in the internet; its centralization is not just one of protocol, but also of location. The Form of the Cloud Many writers in recent decades have grappled with a seemingly borderless information society rooted in physical territories, and finding words for this condition has been key to most serious writing about information networks. For example, the term Òspace of flowsÓ was coined in the 1990s by the Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells. It describes the spatial conditions of the global movement of goods, information, and money. According to Castells, the space of flows is constituted by a circuit of electronic exchanges (micro-electronics-based devices, telecommunications, computer processing, broadcasting systems, and high-speed transportation Ð also based on information technologies) that, together, form the material basis for the processes we have observed as being strategically crucial in the network society. 3 Castells adds that this material basis is Òa spatial form, just as it could be Ôthe cityÕ or Ôthe regionÕ in the organization of the merchant society or the industrial society.Ó 4  As legal scholars Tim Wu and Jack Goldsmith note in their study Who Controls the Internet?, beneath Òformless cyberspaceÓ rests Òan ugly physical transport infrastructure: copper wires, fiberoptic    e   -     f     l    u    x     j    o    u    r    n    a     l     #     3     8   Ñ     o    c    t    o     b    e    r     2     0     1     2     M    e    t    a     h    a    v    e    n     C    a    p     t     i    v    e    s    o     f     t     h    e     C     l    o    u     d    :     P    a    r     t     I     I     0     1     /     1     4 10.16.12 / 11:23:36 EDT

Upload: skl

Post on 28-Feb-2018

213 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Captives of the Cloud Part II

7/25/2019 Captives of the Cloud Part II

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/captives-of-the-cloud-part-ii 1/14

Metahaven

Captives of theCloud: Part II

! Continued from ÒCaptives of the Cloud: Part IÓ 

Is the future of the world the future of the

internet?

Ð Julian Assange1

The cloud is the informational equivalent to the

container terminal. It has a higher degree ofstandardization and scalability than most earlierforms of networked information andcommunication technology. From socialnetworking to retail, from financial transactionsto e-mail and telephone, these and many otherservices end up in the cloud. Surely, the internetalready was a wholesale for all types ofinformation and media formats. As MiltonMueller notes, these Òused to be deliveredthrough separate technologies governed byseparate legal and regulatory regimes,Ó while

now having converged on the internet and itsprotocols.2 In the cloud, such ÒdigitalconvergenceÓ goes even further: data becomesmore effectively and thoroughly harvested,analyzed, validated, monetized, looked into, andcontrolled than in the internet; its centralizationis not just one of protocol, but also of location.

The Form of the CloudMany writers in recent decades have grappledwith a seemingly borderless information societyrooted in physical territories, and finding wordsfor this condition has been key to most seriouswriting about information networks. For example,the term Òspace of flowsÓ was coined in the1990s by the Spanish sociologist ManuelCastells. It describes the spatial conditions ofthe global movement of goods, information, andmoney. According to Castells, the space of flowsis

constituted by a circuit of electronicexchanges (micro-electronics-baseddevices, telecommunications, computerprocessing, broadcasting systems, and

high-speed transportation Ð also based oninformation technologies) that, together,form the material basis for the processeswe have observed as being strategicallycrucial in the network society.3

Castells adds that this material basis is Òaspatial form, just as it could be Ôthe cityÕ or ÔtheregionÕ in the organization of the merchantsociety or the industrial society.Ó4 As legalscholars Tim Wu and Jack Goldsmith note in theirstudy Who Controls the Internet?, beneath

Òformless cyberspaceÓ rests Òan ugly physicaltransport infrastructure: copper wires, fiberoptic

   e  -    f    l   u   x    j   o   u   r   n   a    l    #    3    8

  Ñ    o

   c   t   o    b   e   r    2    0    1    2    M   e   t   a    h   a   v   e   n

    C   a   p    t    i   v   e   s   o    f    t    h   e    C    l

   o   u    d   :    P   a   r    t    I    I

    0    1    /    1    4

10.16.12 / 11:23:36 EDT

Page 2: Captives of the Cloud Part II

7/25/2019 Captives of the Cloud Part II

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/captives-of-the-cloud-part-ii 2/14

ÒLikeÓ versus ÒLawÓ: An ÒExtrajudicial DislikeÓ by US Senator Joe Lieberman prompting an industrial embargo against WikiLeaks.

ÒCypherpunk DreamÓ versus ÒData's Empire.Ó The dichotomy of the internet according to Michael Froomkin.

10.16.12 / 11:23:36 EDT

Page 3: Captives of the Cloud Part II

7/25/2019 Captives of the Cloud Part II

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/captives-of-the-cloud-part-ii 3/14

cables, and the specialized routers and switchesthat direct information from place to place.Ó5

James Gleick describes the networkÕs datacenter, the cables, and the switches as Òwheel-works,Ó and the cloud as its Òavatar.Ó6 The cloudpresupposes a geography where data centerscan be built. It presupposes an environmentprotected and stable enough for its server farmsto be secure, for its operations to run smoothly

and uninterrupted. It presupposes redundantpower grids, water supplies, high-volume, high-speed fiber-optic connectivity, and otheradvanced infrastructure. It presupposes cheapenergy, as the cloudÕs vast exhaust violates eventhe most lax of environmental rules. While datain the cloud may seem placeless andomnipresent, precisely for this reason, theinfrastructure safeguarding its permanentavailability is monstrous in size and scope.According to 2012 research by the New York

Times, the cloud uses about thirty billion watts

of electricity worldwide, roughly equivalent tothirty nuclear power plantsÕ worth of output.About one quarter to one third of this energy isconsumed by data centers in the United States.According to one expert, Òa single data centercan take more power than a medium-size town.Ó7

  A data center is a windowless, large, flatbuilding. Its architecture is foreshadowed by thesuburban big boxes of Walmart and the like.Unlike megamalls, the precise locations of datacenters are secret. Companies donÕt usuallyadvertise where data centers are: not the publicimage of their operations, but their actual

operations, depend on them.8 To users, the cloudseems almost formless, or transparent Ð alwaysavailable, ever-changing, hanging in the air, onscreens, in waves, appearing and disappearing,Òformless cyberspaceÓ indeed. Yet at the core ofthis informational ghost dance lies a rudimentaryphysical form Ð steel and concreteinfrastructure. If the enormous, energy-slurpingdata factories are the cloudÕs true form, thenthese instances of the Òspace of flowsÓ recall themedieval castle, the treasure chest, and themilitary base. They recall the political and

military conflicts that have dominated geographysince recorded history. As the architect andwriter Pier Vittorio Aureli states,

Any power, no matter how supreme,totalitarian, ubiquitous, high-tech,democratic, and evasive, at the end has toland on the actual ground of the city andleave traces that are difficult to efface. Thisis why, unlike the web, the city as the actualspace of our primary perception remains avery strategic site of action and

counteraction. ... But in order to criticallyframe the network, we would need to

propose a radical reification of it. Thiswould mean its transformation into a finiteÒthingÓ among other finite things, and notalways see the network and its derivativeslike something immaterial and invisible,without a form we can trace and change.9

In discussion with Aureli, the theorist Boris Groysasserts that the network is situated on (or below)

a Òdefined territory, controlled by the military.ÓOn those terms, Groys claims,

the goal of future wars is alreadyestablished: control over the network andthe flows of information running through itsarchitecture. It seems to me that the questfor global totalitarian power is not behindus but is a true promise of the future. If thenetwork architecture culminates in oneglobal building then there must be onepower that controls it. The central political

question of our time is the nature of thisfuture power.10

A Renaissance of the StateThe early internet, in the hearts and minds of itsidealists, was something of an anarchic place.John Perry Barlow prefigured the Òcyber-idealistÓposition in his manifesto, ÒA Declaration of theIndependence of Cyberspace,Ó published in 1996.Barlow asserts that the network and itsinhabitants are independent from the old-fashioned rules and regulations of territorialstates, who have Òno sovereignty where wegatherÓ:

Your legal concepts of property, expression,identity, movement, and context do notapply to us. They are all based on matter,and there is no matter here. ... Ouridentities have no bodies, so, unlike you, wecannot obtain order by physical coercion.We believe that from ethics, enlightenedself-interest, and the commonwealth, ourgovernance will emerge. Our identities may

be distributed across many of your jurisdictions.11

BarlowÕs manifesto declared cyberspace a socio-political commons. A space seemingly beyondgravity, beyond the state Ð Òa world that all mayenter without privilege or prejudiceÓ; Òa worldwhere anyone, anywhere may express his or herbeliefs.Ó BarlowÕs ideas have somehowresonated; indeed, Saskia Sassen mentions thatÒa distinct issue concerning the relation betweenthe state and digital networks is the possibility

for the average citizen, firm, or organizationoperating in the internet to escape or override

   e  -    f    l   u   x    j   o   u   r   n   a    l    #    3    8

  Ñ    o

   c   t   o    b   e   r    2    0    1    2    M   e   t   a    h   a   v   e   n

    C   a   p    t    i   v   e   s   o    f    t    h   e    C    l

   o   u    d   :    P   a   r    t    I    I

    0    3    /    1    4

10.16.12 / 11:23:36 EDT

Page 4: Captives of the Cloud Part II

7/25/2019 Captives of the Cloud Part II

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/captives-of-the-cloud-part-ii 4/14

most conventional jurisdictions.Ó Some of thisthought, according to Sassen, is Òstill rooted inthe earlier emphasis of the internet as adecentralized space where no authoritystructures can be instituted.Ó12 Milton Muellercomments that cyber-libertarianism Ò... wasnever really born. It was more a prophetic visionthan an ideology or ÔismÕ with a political andinstitutional program. It is now clear, however,

that in considering the political alternatives andideological dilemmas posed by the globalinternet we canÕt really do without it ...Ó13

  Confusingly and hilariously, one place wherethe rhetoric of borderless information freedom ismost pervasive is in the cloud. The worldÕs mostpowerful information companies have insertedsome of the internetÕs foundational optimism intheir mission statements. These tech giants talkabout themselves as heartwarming charities.Every billionaire CEO is his own private DalaiLama. Pseudo-liberal jabberwocky of assumed

universal validity permeates the junkspace ofmission statements, annual reports, and TEDtalks, especially when it comes to the cloud.Microsoft wants to help everyone around theworld Òrealize their full potential.Ó14 Facebookaims to give Òpeople the power to share andmake the world more open and connected.Ó15

Skype makes it Òsimple to share experienceswith the people that matter to you, wherever theyare.Ó16 And Instagram, bought by Facebook,envisions Òa world more connected throughphotos.Ó17

  Cyber-utopianism never translated into apolicy outlook of sorts. But it is still associatedwith a set of practices and spatial forms: onlineanonymity, cryptography, Peer-To-Peer (P2P) filesharing, TOR (The Onion Router) bridges,bulletproof hosting, and offshore data havens, toname a few examples. Michael Froomkin, aprofessor at the University of Miami School ofLaw, defined the data haven in 1996 as Òtheinformation equivalent to a tax haven.Ó18 ThisÒplace where data that cannot legally be keptcan be stashed for later use; an offshore webhostÓ appears omnipresent in the cyber-

libertarian universe of thought, and is indeed anextreme form of keeping information away fromantagonistically minded states, corporations orcourts.19 The data haven is the spatial form that,at least theoretically, enables the evasion ofsovereign power, while establishing an enclosedterritory on the face of the earth. The data havenonce provided a business model for thePrincipality of Sealand, an unrecognized mini-state founded by a British family on a former warplatform in the North Sea. A notorious examplein internet law, Sealand was, in the early 2000s,

home to the servers of HavenCo, a startupproviding offshore data hosting beyond the reach

of any jurisdiction.20 HavenCo joined the dotcomboom with angel investment from Joi Ito (amongothers), who declared himself, still in 2002, Òagreat fan of the concept.Ó21 SealandÕs fragilesense of half-tested nationhood wouldtheoretically raise the bar for any opposing

 jurisdiction to physically invade the offshorehost. It would, indeed, demonstrate that cyber-libertarian ideology could take full control of an

experimental country, and reform the internet inits name. James Grimmelmann, a professor atNew York Law School, is skeptical about Sealandand HavenCoÕs treatment of the law:

HavenCo was selling the end of law. ÔThird-world regulationÕ was a euphemism forminimal regulation Ð or none at all. In itssearch for the lowest commondenominator, HavenCo was willing to divideby zero.22

Grimmelmann also questions HavenCoÕseffectiveness, as Òfor most purposes, cheapcommodity hosting on one side of the Atlantic orthe other could easily outcompete SealandÕsmore expensive boutique product in the middleof the North Sea.Ó23 Grimmelmann rhetoricallycontinues, Òin an age of YouTube, BitTorrent, andthe darknet, who needs HavenCo?Ó24 Sealandwas the flagship store of the internetÕs anarcho-libertarian movement. The P2P BitTorrentplatform The Pirate Bay famously tried to buy theailing principality in 2007, offering citizenship.25

Michael Froomkin, in a June 2012 lecture at theOxford Internet Institute, sketched out anarresting and slightly dystopian view of thecurrent internet. It looked like a completedichotomy Ð a dialectic between two opposingvisions, each serving broadly similar goals bycompletely antithetical means.26 The dialecticwas between ÒCypherpunk DreamÓ and ÒDataÕsEmpireÓ (see diagram), where most of theanarchic (Barlow-style) stuff would be on thefirst side, and most of the cloud and surveillanceon the other. Oddly, two cloud-based services,YouTube and Twitter, still appeared under the

Cypherpunk Dream, presumably because of thepivotal role both services play in online activismand Ògetting the information out.Ó Froomkinconnects DataÕs Empire to a Òrenaissance of thestateÓ Ð a re-emergence of state power over thenetwork and the networked, perhaps, Froomkinsuggests, in an unwitting reaction to a largelyunrealized spectre of internet utopianism andanarchy. While both the Cypherpunk Dream andDataÕs Empire seem to have a business model,the first oneÕs is Ayn Rand-style anarcho-capitalism, while the latterÕs looks more like a

digital form of industrial capitalism. The cloud,with its data factories, Òscalability,Ó

   e  -    f    l   u   x    j   o   u   r   n   a    l    #    3    8

  Ñ    o

   c   t   o    b   e   r    2    0    1    2    M   e   t   a    h   a   v   e   n

    C   a   p    t    i   v   e   s   o    f    t    h   e    C    l

   o   u    d   :    P   a   r    t    I    I

    0    4    /    1    4

10.16.12 / 11:23:36 EDT

Page 5: Captives of the Cloud Part II

7/25/2019 Captives of the Cloud Part II

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/captives-of-the-cloud-part-ii 5/14

 Escape Chess: Julian Assange's jurisdictional cat-and-mouse game with the powers that be.

The WikiLeaks blockade: an embargo by a private ÒcloudÓ of companies, impacting the site's key resources. The actual embargo isbelow the timeline; some of the ÒcountermeasuresÓ are displayed above it.

10.16.12 / 11:23:36 EDT

Page 6: Captives of the Cloud Part II

7/25/2019 Captives of the Cloud Part II

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/captives-of-the-cloud-part-ii 6/14

standardization and centralization, indeed looksa little like an industrial revolution, yet it is onelargely one without a working class. Thisindustrial complex actually dislikes most thingsthat are small. Indeed, many of Silicon ValleyÕscloud protagonists practice Òacq-hiringÓ:promising startups are purchased only to gethold of their talented staff, while the product orconcept that staff worked on gets discarded.27

One of the most arresting aspects of FroomkinÕsscheme however is not in the dialectic as such,but in the reason he suggests for why it cameabout in the first place.

The Legal Void of ÒLikeÓ vs. ÒLawÓCyber-libertarians, in hopes of evading thestateÕs grasp, assumed that its coercive powerswould be constrained by jurisdictional andconstitutional limits. As James Grimmelmannconcisely puts that thought, ÒHavenCosimultaneously thumbed its nose at national law

and relied on international law to protectSealand.Ó28 The possibility of states evading theirown law, or international law, going rogue, sub-or supra-legal in their handling of disruptiveactors, was not considered. The dream ofoffshore information freedom reflects this vision.But state power can be deployed in a legal void,as was recognized early on by James Boyle, aprofessor of law at Duke University. In his 1997text Foucault in Cyberspace, Boyle refuted muchof the legalistic optimism of cyber-utopianism:

Since a document can as easily be retrievedfrom a server 5,000 miles away as one fivemiles away, geographical proximity andcontent availability are independent ofeach other. If the kingÕs writ reaches only asfar as the kingÕs sword, then much of thecontent on the Net might be presumed tobe free from the regulation of any particular 

sovereign.29

Even then, Boyle argued, de facto authority canstill be exercised by the state, as

the conceptual structure and jurisprudential assumptions of digitallibertarianism lead its practitioners toignore the ways in which the state canoften use privatized enforcement andstate-backed technologies to evade someof the supposed practical (andconstitutional) restraints on the exercise oflegal power over the Net.30

Boyle stressed that state power doesnÕt need tooperate in ways that confront its constitutional

limits. In a similar vein, Grimmelmann concludesthat Òno matter what a piece of paper labeled

ÔlawÕ says on it, if it has no correspondence withwhat people do, it is no law at all.Ó31 And indeed,it isnÕt. A mere thirteen years after Foucault in

Cyberspace, the controversial whistleblowingweb site WikiLeaks found itself to be the livingproof of this, as it became embargoed by UScompanies.  WikiLeaks began in 2007 as anÒuncensorableÓ web platform for the release of

leaked documents. Through an anonymous dropbox, users could upload digital files to WikiLeaks.The material would be published only if it had notbeen published before, and if it were ofhistorical, ethical, or political significance. Thesite first used a wiki format, where users andmembers would analyze and comment on on theleaks. The wiki format was since abandoned, butthe name WikiLeaks remained. The site would bepractically uncensorable for any government,since its hosting was set up in multiple

 jurisdictions. Its materials would be stored on

servers in multiple countries, and thus beprotected by the laws of these countries Ð a bitlike a distributed version of the Sealand datahaven. On July 29, 2009, as WikiLeaks publishedthe high-exposure loan book of the bankruptKaupthing Bank, the site ran a discouraging notefor its adversaries which demonstrated the legalfirewalls it had constructed for itself againststate and corporate power:

No. We will not assist the remains ofKaupthing, or its clients, to hide its dirtylaundry from the global community.Attempts by Kaupthing or its agents todiscover the source of the document inquestion may be a criminal violation of bothBelgium source protection laws and theSwedish constitution.32

Upon receiving a complaint from Kaupthing, aReykjavik court silenced IcelandÕs nationalbroadcaster RUV, which was planning to breakthe story on television. So instead of airing thestory, the TV host pointed viewers to theWikiLeaks web site, where they could see the

documents for themselves Ð to great social andpolitical effects in Iceland. WikiLeaks couldevade the gag order by hosting its informationoffshore Ð indeed, multiple times so. It was, asBoyle would say, beyond the power of a particular 

sovereign. WikiLeaks systematically won its jurisdictional chess games until, on November28, 2010, it began releasing its biggest leak ever:a trove of hundreds of thousands of classifieddiplomatic communications from US embassiesall over the world, now commonly referred to asÒCablegate.Ó

  WikiLeaksÕ source of income iscrowdfunding; the site relies on public

   e  -    f    l   u   x    j   o   u   r   n   a    l    #    3    8

  Ñ    o

   c   t   o    b   e   r    2    0    1    2    M   e   t   a    h   a   v   e   n

    C   a   p    t    i   v   e   s   o    f    t    h   e    C    l

   o   u    d   :    P   a   r    t    I    I

    0    6    /    1    4

10.16.12 / 11:23:36 EDT

Page 7: Captives of the Cloud Part II

7/25/2019 Captives of the Cloud Part II

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/captives-of-the-cloud-part-ii 7/14

donations, processed by the Wau HollandFoundation based in Kassel, Germany. WauHolland is reported to have collected about onemillion euros in donations to WikiLeaks in 2010.This, according to CBS News, would have paidWikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a salary ofabout sixty-six thousand euros that year.33 Thecrowdfunding went through Òconventionalpayment channelsÓ: PayPal, an online payment

system owned by eBay, Western Union, and VISAand MasterCard, two corporations whichtogether virtually dominate the credit cardmarket. One could say that the WikiLeaksdonations relied on a private ÒcloudÓ ofintermediary, US-based companies. According toWikiLeaksÕ own account, funding after therelease of the first cables peaked at an all-timehigh of 800 thousand individual donations in asingle month.34

  Upon the release of the cables, WikiLeaksÕSweden-based servers were hit by a vast

distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack,which compelled the organization to make themove of hiring cloud space from Amazon WebServices (AWS). On December 1, 2010, a day afterthe siteÕs move to the cloud, Amazon kicked allWikiLeaks files from its servers, marking theeffective beginning of a pan-industrial, state-corporate embargo.35 AmazonÕs decision wasprompted by an aggressive call to arms from JoeLieberman, senior US Senator for Connecticut,and chairman of the Senate Committee onHomeland Security. Lieberman urged Americanenterprises Ð including Amazon Ð to stopproviding services to the whistleblowing site,even though he had no legal authority to enforcethis.36 His words amounted to nothing more thanan opinion. Lieberman took the position of bothaccuser and judge, stating that Òit sure looks tome that Assange and WikiLeaks have violated theEspionage Act.Ó37 The result was that WikiLeaksÕvital infrastructure fell through, as keycompanies withdrew themselves from WikiLeakswithout the check of a court. EveryDNS, aCalifornia-based domain name registry, stoppedproviding access to the wikileaks.org domain

name server, so that the site would only bereachable if a user entered its IP address in thebrowser bar. MasterCard, PayPal, VISA, andWestern Union ceased to process WikiLeaksdonations. Apple removed a WikiLeaks iPhoneapp from its store, as was noted in Part I of thisessay. These operations, together, amounted toan extra-legal embargo for which theorganization was unprepared. Yochai Benkler, aprofessor of law at Harvard University, examinesthe embargo in detail in a 2011 article, analyzinghow WikiLeaks became constrained by Òa large-

scale technical distributed-denial-of-service(DDoS) attack with new patterns of attack aimed

to deny Domain Name System (DNS) service andcloud-storage facilities, disrupt paymentsystems services, and disable an iPhone appdesigned to display the siteÕs content.Ó Benklerasserts that the attack came from multiplesources, some of which were more clearly anddirectly involved and identified than others. Yetindirectly and opaquely, Yochai Benkler argues,the attack came on behalf of the Obama

administration,

having entailed an extra-legal public-private partnership between politiciansgunning to limit access to the site,functioning in a state constrained by theFirst Amendment, and private firmsoffering critical functionalities to the site ÐDNS, cloud storage, and payments, inparticular Ð that were not similarlyconstrained by law from denying service tothe offending site. The mechanism coupled

a legally insufficient but publicly salientinsinuation of illegality and dangerousnesswith a legal void.38

James Boyle asserted that there can be aÒformal language of politics organized aroundrelations between sovereign and citizen,expressed through rules backed by sanctions,Óversus an Òactual experience of power.Ó Thedistinction is significant Ð it captures, spot on,the role of the state in the WikiLeaks embargo.The Òactual experience of powerÓ operates muchmore like a social network Ð Senator Liebermanoccupying a powerful node, capable (or,believably suggesting being capable) of apotentially devastating set of cascading effectsin case his friendly suggestions are not followedup Ð Don CorleoneÕs offer you canÕt refuse, pureand simple. Power then is to personally governthe pressing and depressing of ÒLikeÓ buttons,deciding on life or death, like Romans oncepresided over the fate of gladiators. FacebookÕsÒLikeÓ symbol Ð a thumbs up Ð has its origins inancient Rome. Arguably, Lieberman clicked theÒDislikeÓ Ð thumbs down Ð on WikiLeaks, causing

a wave of consequences resulting from hisprivate, social, network power, while backed byhis stature as a Senator. James Grimmelmanncomments:

It is not just that Lieberman possesses theusual sovereign power, so that his publicstatements are raw threats. There is apolitical cost to him to pushing legislation;it will have to be checked by the judicialsystem, etc. Rather, he is a actor within anexus of sovereign, economic, and social

power, leveraging some of those in serviceof his goals.39

   e  -    f    l   u   x    j   o   u   r   n   a    l    #    3    8

  Ñ    o

   c   t   o    b   e   r    2    0    1    2    M   e   t   a    h   a   v   e   n

    C   a   p    t    i   v   e   s   o    f    t    h   e    C    l

   o   u    d   :    P   a   r    t    I    I

    0    7    /    1    4

10.16.12 / 11:23:36 EDT

Page 8: Captives of the Cloud Part II

7/25/2019 Captives of the Cloud Part II

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/captives-of-the-cloud-part-ii 8/14

The WikiLeaks financial embargo by VISA andMasterCard was fought in an Icelandic court byDataCell, the company acting as WikiLeaksÕ localpayment processor. A July, 2012 ruling requiredthat Valitor, VISA and MasterCardÕs paymenthandling agent in Iceland, should resumeprocessing donations to the site as a contractualobligation to DataCell. The ruling was touted (by

WikiLeaks) as Òa significant victory againstWashingtonÕs attempt to silence WikiLeaks.Ó40 Itremains, however, questionable as to whetherthe order against Valitor will actually restorefunding to the site. James Grimmelmann doubtsthat US payment links to WikiLeaks areanswerable to the Icelandic ruling. He suggeststhat

global payment networks still have seamsalong national boundaries. Valitor, acompany which can be thought of as

WikileaksÕ Òaccepting bank,Ó will notnecessarily have donation payments toprocess. The ruling does not affect theembargo still in place by VISA andMastercard who continue to control themoney flow between the issuing bank (onbehalf of their customers) and Valitor.41

Sveinn Andri Sveinsson, a lawyer for DataCell, isless pessimistic. Sveinsson was quoted callingthe victory a Ògood day for the freedom ofexpression.Ó42 Still, the case was decided as amatter of contractual law rather thanconstitutionality.43

  The situation for WikiLeaks got worsewhen the organization's founder, JulianAssange, was accused of (but not charged for)sexual misconduct in Sweden. This led Interpolto issue a Red Notice Ð normally reserved for thelikes of Muammar Gaddafi Ð for Assange'sarrest, and an ensuing two-year standoffbetween Assange and UK prosecutors. AfterAssange lost his appeal against his extradition toSweden at the Supreme Court in May 2012, theWikiLeaks founder escaped to the Ecuadorian

Embassy in London, applying for (and receiving)political asylum Ð apparently not to evadeSwedish accusations, but to prevent AssangeÕspossible extradition to the United States onpresumed charges of espionage.44

  The lines along which AssangeÕs legal teamfought his extradition, followed by his move intothe embassy, are in remarkable consistency withWikiLeaksÕ multi-jurisdictional hosting model.The case brought to the surface deepambiguities in the treaties regulatingextraditions, prompting the Cambridge Journal of 

International and Comparative Law to argue thatthe UK Supreme CourtÕs decision displayed Òa

fundamental mistakeÓ in its judgment.45 At theembassy, meanwhile, AssangeÕs life seems tohave become fully equivalent to that ofWikiLeaksÕ data. The Ecuadorian outpost here islike an offshore internet server, beyond the graspof Western powers Ð and indeed, there waswidespread anger when Britain brieflythreatened Ecuador to annul the status of itsLondon embassyÕs premises.46

  Assange himself frequently deployschessboard metaphors when talking about jurisdiction in a multipolar world. His personaltelevision show, The World Tomorrow, wasproduced by RT, the Western branch of RussiaÕsstate broadcaster (which, as especially liberalcommentators prefer to add, is ÒKremlin-backedÓ). As Assange explained to the Daily Mail

in September 2012, Òif it proceeds to aprosecution then it is a chess game in terms ofmy movements. I would be well advised to be in a

 jurisdiction that is not in an alliance with the US

...Ó In AssangeÕs view,

we must see the countries of the world as achess board with light and dark areas inever shifting arrangements depending onour latest publication.47

If WikiLeaks, and Julian Assange, are making onething clear, it is that the jurisprudentialassumptions of cyber-libertarianism can have avisceral afterlife in the nondigital, materialworld. Traditional liberal-constitutional nicheslike freedom of expression and civil disobedienceare no longer that convincing; they, in a sense,exhibit the same weaknesses as Sealand and thePirate Bay in their wide-eyed expectation of statepower curbed by law. The gross inequality inresources between the state and its idealistcritics becomes painfully obvious when statesdeliberately shred to pieces, like discardedpaperwork, legally certified limits on theirexecutive power. It is becoming increasinglyobvious that liberal-democratic conceptions likenetwork neutrality, internet freedom, andfreedom of expression, despite their key

democratic value, donÕt give any actualprotection to those who need them most. In aglobal internet under a renaissance of the state,it is not just the network, but the networked, whoare the ultimate subject of power.

Captives of the Cloud, or: the Dissent of theNetworked

In early 2011, Birgitta J—nsd—ttir, an IcelandicMember of Parliament, found out that the USDepartment of Justice sought information abouther Twitter account. J—nsd—ttir was under

investigation because of her alleged involvementin the making of a WikiLeaks video called

   e  -    f    l   u   x    j   o   u   r   n   a    l    #    3    8

  Ñ    o

   c   t   o    b   e   r    2    0    1    2    M   e   t   a    h   a   v   e   n

    C   a   p    t    i   v   e   s   o    f    t    h   e    C    l

   o   u    d   :    P   a   r    t    I    I

    0    8    /    1    4

10.16.12 / 11:23:36 EDT

Page 9: Captives of the Cloud Part II

7/25/2019 Captives of the Cloud Part II

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/captives-of-the-cloud-part-ii 9/14

Twittertracing in the cloud: the US Department of Justice, in its pursuit of WikiLeaks, subpoenaed Icelandic MP Birgitta J—nsd—ttir'sTwitter account.

Collateral Murder , which was edited andproduced in Iceland in 2010.48 The videodocuments the shooting of unarmed civilians inBaghdad by a US helicopter crew; the scene wasfilmed from the gun turret camera of an Apacheattack helicopter. The video material used inCollateral Murder was received by WikiLeaksfrom a source in the US military, alleged to bePrivate First Class Bradley Manning. Manning is

currently under a court martial pretrial forcharges including Òaiding the enemy.Ó A GrandJury investigation into WikiLeaks brought aboutthe DOJÕs interest in the J—nsd—ttirÕs Twitterinformation, along with the account informationof Jacob Appelbaum and Rob Gonggrijp,computer experts who are also alleged to havehelped with the production of Collateral Murder .All Twitter user information is stored on serversin the US, which are accessible to US lawenforcement with or without a court order. Thesubpoena was issued so that the receiving party

was forbidden from talking about it; TwitterÕslawyer however successfully lifted the gag order,so that J—nsd—ttir, Gonggrijp and Appelbaumcould be informed about the subpoena. OnNovember 13, 2011, J—nsd—ttir tweeted:

A foreign government would have a hard

time getting permissions for officialsentering my offline home, same shouldapply to online home.49

Her message was retweeted over 100 times. Theproblem is that in the cloud, there is noequivalent to a Òhome.Ó Cloud computing maysometimes mimic or emulate some of the virtuesof the anarcho-libertarian internet, such as

anonymous PGP keys and personalized securityarchitecture.50 Amazon Web Services Ð acompany which extra-legally censored WikiLeakson the request of Joe Lieberman Ð boasts that iterrs on the side of Òprotecting customer privacy,Óand is Òvigilant in determining which lawenforcement requests we must comply with.ÓIndeed, it heroically says, ÒAWS does not hesitateto challenge orders from law enforcement if wethink the orders lack a solid basis.Ó51 However, allcyber-anarchic playtime must happen under thegaze of the webÕs digital Walmart, without any

definition of what a Òsolid basisÓ is. In addition,the possibility of revolving door interestsbetween business and government canÕt be ruledout either. AmazonÕs current, Washington D.C.-based Deputy Chief Information Security Officeris reported to possess a Òdistinguished career infederal government security and law

    0    9    /    1    4

10.16.12 / 11:23:36 EDT

Page 10: Captives of the Cloud Part II

7/25/2019 Captives of the Cloud Part II

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/captives-of-the-cloud-part-ii 10/14

enforcement.Ó52 A cloud service providerÕs ownsecurity staff may in various ways Ð socially,geographically, and through expertise Ð bealready intimately connected to the very lawenforcement agencies whose requests it issupposed to scrutinize. As Rebecca Rosenexplains, the notion of data storage beinghandled by a cloud provider already removessome of the legal constraints on evidence-

gathering by law enforcement, especially onsubpoenas:

Grand jury subpoenas are used to collectevidence. Unlike warrants, subpoenas canbe issued with less than probable cause.The reasoning for the lower bar is in partthat if someone does not want to turn overthe requested evidence, he or she cancontest the subpoena in court. Grand juriescan subpoena not only the person whocreated a document but any third parties

who might be in possession of thatdocument. Under the StoredCommunications Act, a grand jury cansubpoena certain types of data from thirdparties whose only role is storing thatdata.53

This, then, reflects an outdated idea of a thirdpartyÕs role in a subpoena. At the time the lawdeveloped, it could be assumed that Òany thirdparty with access to someoneÕs data would havea stake in that data and a relationship with theperson who created it.Ó As Rosen concludes, Òinthe old days of storing information in filingcabinets, subpoena power was constrainedbecause people didnÕt save everything andinvestigators had to know where to look to findincriminating evidence.Ó54 A cloud provider is anew kind of third party; it manages and hostsvast troves of personal data belonging to itscustomers. But it is not a stakeholder in suchdata. Neither was the manufacturer of a filingcabinet a stakeholder in the private documentsstored in it. There are many such filing cabinetsin the cloud, storing the online self. Together,

they form the scattered Òonline homeÓ weinhabit. Information in the cloud perverselyechoes the utopian dream of a weightless andautonomous internet, independent from theconstraints of territory. But this utopian dreamis, in reality, a centrally managed corporation. AsJames Gleick writes,

all that information!all that information

capacity!looms over us, not quite visible,

not quite tangible, but awfully real;amorphous, spectral; hovering nearby, yet

not situated in any one place. Heaven mustonce have felt this way to the faithful.

People talk about shifting their lives to thecloud!their informational lives, at least.

You may store photographs in the cloud; e-mail passes to and from the cloud andnever really leaves the cloud. All traditionalideas of privacy, based on doors and locks,physical remoteness and invisibility, areupended in the cloud.55

J—nsd—ttir, Appelbaum and Gonggrijp tried tofind out if, and which, other social mediacompanies had received similar subpoenas. Theyhad reason to believe this would be the case,because Twitter is known (and often praised) forcollecting relatively little information about itsusers; it would seem, as Glenn Greenwald wrote,Òone of the least fruitful avenues to pursueÓ forthe DOJ to rely solely on Twitter information.56

J—nsd—ttirÕs demands for transparency wereflatly refused. US Attorney Neil MacBride wrotein a court filing that her request demonstrated

an Òoverriding purpose to obtain a roadmap ofthe governmentÕs investigation.Ó MacBridefurther stated that

the subscribers have no right to noticeregarding any such developments in thisconfidential criminal investigation Ð anymore than they have a right to notice of taxrecords requests, wiretap orders, or otherconfidential investigative steps as to whichthis CourtÕs approval might be obtained.57

This is a brazenly imperialist thing for MacBrideto say. If the US government wants, for thepurpose of a Òconfidential criminalinvestigation,Ó to have the tax records of a non-US citizen like J—nsd—ttir, it canÕt simplysubpoena them from a US cloud service. It mustfile a case with a foreign government, anddemonstrate probable cause. Apparently, toMacBride, obtaining information on a non-USsubject from a US server is the same obtainingsuch information from foreign territory; smoothcompliance is simply expected, and indeedpresupposed. In a piece for the Guardian,

J—nsd—ttir referred to her legal ordeal as anexample of ongoing attempts of the US to silencethe truth as a means of maintaining power. Shewrote that the DOJÕs subpoena constituted aÒhack by legal means.Ó58 Perhaps out of amisunderstanding of the mechanisms of socialmedia, or out of genuine Orwellian intent, cloudsubpoena procedures can take on grotesquedimensions. For example, in December 2011, theBoston District Attorney subpoenaed Twitter overthe following material:

Guido Fawkes, @p0isonANon,@occupyBoston, #BostonPD, #d0xcak3.59

   e  -    f    l   u   x    j   o   u   r   n   a    l    #    3    8

  Ñ    o

   c   t   o    b   e   r    2    0    1    2    M   e   t   a    h   a   v   e   n

    C   a   p    t    i   v   e   s   o    f    t    h   e    C    l

   o   u    d   :    P   a   r    t    I    I

    1    0    /    1    4

10.16.12 / 11:23:36 EDT

Page 11: Captives of the Cloud Part II

7/25/2019 Captives of the Cloud Part II

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/captives-of-the-cloud-part-ii 11/14

The subpoena sought not just information on aspecific user, but on all users connected tocertain words and hashtags associated with theOccupy movementÕs activities in Boston, and thehacktivist collective Anonymous, at a given pointin time. WikiLeaks, in linking to this story,tweeted that it was now time for Twitter to moveits servers offshore.60 The Australian journalist

Bernard Keane concluded from the Boston DAÕsbizarre Òfishing expeditionÓ that

the only real solution is social medianetworks outside the jurisdiction of nation-states. WikiLeaks is currently establishingits own social network, Friends ofWikiLeaks, and Anonymous has establishedAnonPlus; there have also been anonymousmicroblogging sites such as Youmitterestablished, but their lack of critical massis a key impediment, as is resilience in the

face of surges in traffic, and they remainvulnerable, to the extent that itÕsenforceable, to authorities claiming toexercise jurisdiction over whatever serversare used to host the networks.61

GroysÕs Òfuture powerÓ over the network isunlikely to pose direct, legal limits on freespeech. Instead, like in the WikiLeaks embargo, itdirectly affects the material basis of those whospeak. One is tempted to think of the ways inwhich the FBI pursued hacker collectivesAnonymous and LulzSec after their DDoS attackson MasterCard and VISA. The FBI fully exploitedthe real-world frailties and vulnerabilities of thehackers, who presented themselves asinvulnerable superheroes online. But theywerenÕt, in reality. The authorities made noqualms about the question whether or notAnonymous and LulzSecÕs cyber-conflict entailedacts of Òcivil disobedience.Ó They were treated ascyber-terrorists, and the option for theirpractices to constitute a legitimate realm of civicprotest was eclipsed Ð even though some of themost thorough previous analysis of Anonymous

had focused on these possibilities.62 One of thegroupÕs most prominent members, Sabu, wasapprehended by the FBI and turned into aninformant. New York Magazine wrote about Sabu,using his real name instead of his onlinepseudonym:

On the day that he joined forces with thehacker collective Anonymous, Hector XavierMonsegur walked his two little girls half adozen blocks to their elementary school.ÒMy girls,Ó he called them, although they

werenÕt actually his children. Monsegur,then 27, had stepped in after their mother Ð

his aunt Ð returned to prison for heroindealing.63 

 Ars Technica adds that Òworried about the fate oftwo children in his charge, Monsegur hasallegedly been aiding the FBI since his arrest lastsummer Ð aid which culminated in arrests todayof several LulzSec members.Ó64 The Guardian

completes this story, as

Monsegur ... provided an FBI-ownedcomputer to facilitate the release of 5memails taken from US security consultancyStratfor and which are now being publishedby WikiLeaks. That suggests the FBI mayhave had an inside track on discussionsbetween Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, andAnonymous, another hacking group, aboutthe leaking of thousands of confidentialemails and documents.65

The space of flows is absolutely not smooth. Itlooks like a data center, and the coal plant thatpowers it. It looks like Julian AssangeÕs room inthe Ecuadorian Embassy in London. It looks likethe Principality of Sealand. It looks like SabuÕssocial housing unit on Manhattan's Lower EastSide. The landing from the digital onto thematerial is hard; it comes with a cruelty andintensity we havenÕt even begun to properlyunderstand. Along these lines, we might grasp anemerging political geography of information,resources, and infrastructure. In such ageography, the state and the cloud are among themost important layers, but they are not the onlylayers by far. Saskia Sassen writes that we needto problematize Òthe seamlessness oftenattributed to digital networks. Far from beingseamless, these digital assemblages are Ôlumpy,Õpartly due to their imbrications with nondigitalconditions.Ó66

Once again, the world indeed is lumpy enough forus not to draw easy conclusions. This story is notover yet. TomorrowÕs clouds are forming.  !

'Written by Daniel van der Velden and Vinca Kruk. Research

Assistant: Alysse Kushinski. Design Assistants: RasmusSvensson, Allison Kerst and Michael Oswell. All imagescourtesy of Metahaven. Metahaven 2012.

 

To be continued in ÒCaptives of the Cloud:

Part III. TomorrowÕs Clouds.Ó   e  -    f    l   u   x    j   o   u   r   n   a    l    #    3    8

  Ñ    o

   c   t   o    b   e   r    2    0    1    2    M   e   t   a    h   a   v   e   n

    C   a   p    t    i   v   e   s   o    f    t    h   e    C    l

   o   u    d   :    P   a   r    t    I    I

    1    1    /    1    4

10.16.12 / 11:23:36 EDT

Page 12: Captives of the Cloud Part II

7/25/2019 Captives of the Cloud Part II

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/captives-of-the-cloud-part-ii 12/14

Metahaven is an Amsterdam-based design collectiveon the cutting blade between politics and aesthetics.Founded by Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden,Metahaven's work Ð both commissioned and self-directed Ð reflects political and social issues throughresearch-driven design, and design-driven research.Research projects included the Sealand Identity 

Project, and currently include Facestate,  and Iceland

as Method. Solo exhibitions include Affiche Fronti•re

(CAPC musŽe d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, 2008)and Stadtstaat (KŸnstlerhaus Stuttgart/Casco, 2009).

Group exhibitions include Forms of Inquiry  (AA London,2007, cat.), Manifesta8 (Murcia, 2010, cat.), theGwangju Design Biennale 2011 (Gwangju, Korea, cat.),Graphic Design: Now In Production (Walker Art Center,Minneapolis, 2011, and Cooper-Hewitt National DesignMuseum, New York, 2012, cat.) and The New Public

(Museion, Bolzano, 2012, cat.). Metahaven's work waspublished and discussed in The International Herald

Tribune, The New York Times, Huffington Post, Courrier 

International, Icon, Domus, Dazed, The Verge,l'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, and Mute, among otherpublications. Vinca Kruk is a Tutor of Editorial Designand Design Critique at ArtEZ Academy of Arts inArhem. Daniel van der Velden is a Senior Critic at theGraphic Design MFA program at Yale University, and aTutor of Design at the Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam.In 2010, Metahaven released Uncorporate Identity , adesign anthology for our dystopian age, published byLars MŸller.

  1Julian Assange, in: ÒThe JulianAssange Show: CypherpunksUncut (p.1)Ó, RT.com, July 29,2012. Seehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i85fX9-sKYo

  2Milton Mueller, Networks andStates. The Global Politics of Internet Governance. Cambridge(MA): The MIT Press, 2010, 9-10.

  3Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society andCulture, Vol I: The Rise of theNetwork Society  (Malden, MA:Blackwell 1996 [2000]), 442.

  4Ibid.

  5Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, WhoControls the Internet?: Illusionsof a Borderless World (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2006),73.

  6James Gleick, The Information: A

History, a Theory, a Flood, (NewYork: Pantheon Books, 2011),396.

  7James Glanz, ÒThe CloudFactories: Power, Pollution andthe Internet,Ó New York Times,September 22, 2012.See http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industry-image.html?pagewanted=1&ref=technology.

  8When, for example Dutchfilmmaker Marije Meerman,

while working on a documentaryabout the financial crisis and therole of high-speed trading,wanted to find data centersservicing the New York StockExchange, she found no officialrecord of where these werelocated. Instead, Meermantracked them down by lookingfor clues on the web sites of theconstruction companies thatbuilt them, and by flippingthrough local files of New Jerseytown hall meetings. Eventually,she mapped a ring of datacenters around New York City.See Marije Meerman, lecture atMediafonds, Amsterdam,

January 12, 2012, andhttp://itunes.apple.com/us/app/money-speed-inside-black-box/id424796908?mt=8.

  9Pier Vittorio Aureli. In PierVittorio Aureli, Boris Groys,Metahaven, and MarinaVishmidt, ÒForm.Ó In UncorporateIdentity  (Baden: Lars MŸller,2010), 262.

  10Boris Groys. In Pier VittorioAureli, Boris Groys, Metahaven,and Marina Vishmidt, ÒForm.ÓIn Uncorporate Identity  (Baden:Lars MŸller, 2010), 263.

  11

John Perry Barlow, ÒADeclaration of the Independenceof Cyberspace,Ó ElectronicFrontier Foundation, February 8,1996. Seehttps://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html.

12Saskia Sassen, Territory Ð

 Authority Ð Rights. FromMedieval to Global Assemblages,(Princeton/Oxford: PrincetonUniversity Press, 2006, 2008),

330.

  13Milton Mueller, Networks andStates, 268.

  14ÒAboutMicrosoftÓ See http://www.microsoft.com/about/en/us/default.aspx.

  15See Gillian Reagan, ÒTheEvolution of FacebookÕs MissionStatement.Ó New York Observer ,July 13, 2009. Seehttp://observer.com/2009/07/the-evolution-of-facebooks-m

ission-statement/.

  16See ÒAbout SkypeÓ seehttp://about.skype.com/.

  17See Instagram FAQhttp://instagram.com/about/faq/.

  18A. Michael Froomkin, ÒFloodControl on the InformationOcean: Living With Anonymity,Digital Cash, and DistributedDatabases,ÓUniversity of Pittsburgh Journal of Law andCommerce 395 (1996). See

http://osaka.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/ocean.htm.

19See ÒData Haven by BruceSterling from Islands in the NetÓ,technovelgy.com.See http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=279.

  20The Principality of Sealand isdiscussed at length in ourbook, Uncorporate Identity . Inour interview with hacker,cryptographer, and internetentrepreneur Sean Hastings, aself-styled inventor of SealandÕs

data haven, Hastings declaredthat Òthe world needs a frontier.Every law, for good or ill, is animposition on freedom. Thefrontier has always been a placefor people who disagree with themorality of current law to beable to get away from it.Ó SeanHastings, in ÒThe Rise And FallOf The Data Haven, Interviewwith Sean Hastings,Ó Metahavenand Maria Vishmidteds., Uncorporate Identity (Baden: Lars MŸller, 2010),65. Later examples includeSeasteading, an enterprisefounded by Patri Friedman,designed to be a set of sovereignfloating sea vehicles under

ultraminimal governancewithout welfare or taxes. In

   e  -    f    l   u   x    j   o   u   r   n   a    l    #    3    8

  Ñ    o

   c   t   o    b   e   r    2    0    1    2    M   e   t   a    h   a   v   e   n

    C   a   p    t    i   v   e   s   o    f    t    h   e    C    l

   o   u    d   :    P   a   r    t    I    I

    1    2    /    1    4

10.16.12 / 11:23:36 EDT

Page 13: Captives of the Cloud Part II

7/25/2019 Captives of the Cloud Part II

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/captives-of-the-cloud-part-ii 13/14

2011, Seasteading receivedfunding from Paypal founderPeter Thiel. This Òlibertarian seacolonyÓ was directly modeledafter the Principality of Sealand,mixed with the gatedcommunity, the ranch, and thecruise ship. It is uncertainwhether such physical havens, ifrealized in the first place, willever escape their founding visionof conservative-libertarianfrontier romanticism. SeeCooper Smith, ÒPeter Thiel,

PayPal Founder, FundsÔSeasteading,Õ Libertarian SeaColony,Ó Huffington Post, August19, 2011, seehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/18/peter-thiel-seasteading_n_930595.html.

  21Joi Ito, ÒHavenco Doing WellAccording BBC.Ó Quoted fromSlashdot, July 10, 2002. Seehttp://joi.ito.com/weblog/2002/07/10/havenco-doing-w.html

  22James Grimmelmann, ÒSealand,Havenco, And The Rule Of

Law.ÓIllinois Law Review 405,2012, 460. Seehttp://illinoislawreview.org /wp-content/ilr-content/articles/2012/2/Grimmelmann.pdf

  23Grimmelmann, ÒSealand,Havenco, And The Rule Of Law.Ó462.

  24Grimmelmann, ÒSealand,Havenco, And The Rule Of Law.Ó463.

  25Cory Doctorow, ÒPirate Baytrying to buy Sealand, offering

citizenship.Ó boingboing.net,January 12, 2007. Seehttp://boingboing.net/2007/01/12/pirate-bay-trying-to.ht ml.

  26Michael Froomkin, ÒInternetRegulation at a Crossroads.ÓLecture at Oxford InternetInstitute, University of Oxford,June 2012. YouTube.See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2aVcdcr4MA.

  27See Liz Gannes, ÒThe Vanity ofthe ÔAcqhireÕ: Why Do a Deal ThatMakes No Sense?Ó AllThingsD,

August 10, 2012. Seehttp://allthingsd.com/20120810/the-vanity-of-the-acqhire -why-do-a-deal-that-makes-no -sense/

  28Grimmelmann, ÒSealand,Havenco, And The Rule Of Law.Ó479.

  29James Boyle, Foucault InCyberspace: Surveillance,Sovereignty, and Hard-WiredCensors, 1997.See http://law.duke.edu/boylesite/foucault.htm.

  30Ibid.

  31Grimmelmann, ÒSealand,Havenco, And The Rule Of Law.Ó484.

  32ÒIcelandic bank Kaupthingthreat to WikiLeaks overconfidential large exposurereport.Ó WikiLeaks.org, July 31,2009. Seehttp://wikileaks.org/wiki/Icelandic_bank_Kaupthing_threa

t_to_WikiLeaks_over_confidential_large_exposure_report,_31_Jul_2009.

  33See Xeni Jardin, ÒWSJ obtainsWikileaks financial data:spending up, donationsdown.Ó Boingboing, December24, 2010.See http://boingboing.net/2010/12/24/wsj-obtains-wikileak.html and Joshua Norman,ÒWikiLeaksÕ Julian Assange NowMaking $86k/year.Ó CBS News,December 24, 2010.See http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20026597-5035 43.html.

  34See ÒBankingBlockade.Ó WikiLeaks.org. Seehttp://wikileaks.org/Banking -Blockade.html.

  35Ryan Paul, ÒWikileaks kicked outof AmazonÕs cloud.Ó Ars Technica,December 1, 2010. Seehttp://arstechnica.com/security/2010/12/wikileaks-kicked -out-of-amazons-cloud/.

  36Alexia Tsotsis, ÒSen. JoeLieberman: Amazon Has PulledHosting Services ForWikiLeaks.Ó Techcrunch,

December 1, 2010.See http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/01/amazon.

  37Paul Owen, Richard Adams,Ewen MacAskill, ÒWikiLeaks: USSenator Joe Lieberman suggestsNew York Times could beinvestigated.ÓThe Guardian,December 7, 2010. Seehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/07/wikileaks-jo e-lieberman-new-york-times-investigated.

  38Yochai Benkler, ÒWikiLeaks and

the Protect-IP Act: A NewPublic-Private Threat to theInternet Commons,Ó Daedalus 4(2011), 154Ð55.

  39James Grimmelmann, e-mail toauthor. July 17, 2012.

  40Charles Arthur, ÒWikiLeaksclaims court victory againstVisa.Ó The Guardian, July 12,2012. Seehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jul/12/wikileaks-court-victory-visa.

  41

James Grimmelmann, e-mail toauthor, July 17, 2012.

  42Omar R. Valdimarsson, ÒIcelandCourt Orders Valitor to ProcessWikiLeaksDonations.Ó Bloomberg, July 12,2012. Seehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-12/iceland-court-orders-valitor-to-process-wikileaks-donations-1-.html.

  43Charles Arthur, The Guardian.

Ibid. Seehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jul/12/wikileaks-court-victory-visa.

  44William Neuman and MaggyAyala, ÒEcuador Grants Asylumto Assange, Defying Britain.Ó TheNew York Times, August 15,2012. Seehttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/17/world/americas/ecuador -to-let-assange-stay-in-its-embassy.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

  45Tiina Pajuste, ÒAssange v

Swedish Prosecution Authority:the (mis)application of Europeanand international law by the UKSupreme Court - PartI.Ó Cambridge Journal of International and ComparativeLaw, June 20, 2012. Seehttp://www.cjicl.org.uk/index.php?option=com_easyblog&view=entry&id=22&Itemid=101

  46The British authorities sent aletter to Ecuador saying thatÒYou need to be aware that thereis a legal base in the UK, theDiplomatic and ConsularPremises Act 1987, that wouldallow us to take actions in order

to arrest Mr Assange in thecurrent premises of theembassy. We sincerely hope thatwe do not reach that point, but ifyou are not capable of resolvingthis matter of Mr AssangeÕspresence in your premises, thisis an open option for us.Ó SeeMark Weisbrot, ÒJulian Assangeasylum: Ecuador is right to standup to the US.Ó The Guardian,August 16, 2012. Seehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/16/julian-assange-asylum-ecuador

  47Sarah Oliver, ÒÔItÕs like living in a

space stationÕ: Julian Assangespeaks out about living in a one-room embassy refuge with amattress on the floor and a bluelamp to mimic daylight.Ó TheDaily Mail,September 29, 2012.Seehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2210522/Its-like -living-space-station-Julian -Assange-speaks-living-room-embassy-refuge-mattress-floor-blue-lamp-mimic-daylight.html

  48See Raffi Khatchadourian, ÒNoSecrets. Julian assangeÕsmission for total

transparency.ÓThe New Yorker ,June 7, 2010. See

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian?currentPage=all.

  49Twitter. Seehttps://twitter.com/ioerror/statuses/135980031037022208.

50See ÒAWS Security andCompliance Center.Ó Seehttp://aws.amazon.com/securi

ty/.

  51See ÒAmazon Web Services: Riskand Compliance White PaperJuly 2012.Ó Seehttp://d36cz9buwru1tt.cloudfront.net/AWS_Risk_and_Compliance_Whitepaper.pdf.

  52See Malcolm Ross, ÒAppianWorld 2012 Ð DeveloperTrack.Ó Appian.com, March 16,2012. Seehttp://www.appian.com/blog/uncategorized/appian-world-2012-developer-track.

  53Rebecca J. Rosen, ÒHow YourPrivate Emails Can Be UsedAgainst You in Court.Ó The

 Atlantic, July 8, 2011. Seehttp://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/07/how-your-private-emails-can-be -used-against-you-in-court/241505/

  54Ibid.

  55James Gleick, The Information,395Ð96.

  56

Glenn Greenwald, ÒDOJsubpoenas Twitter records ofseveral WikiLeaksvolunteers.Ó Salon.com, January8, 2011. Seehttp://www.salon.com/2011/01/08/twitter_2/singleton/.

  57Kevin Poulsen, ÒFeds: WikiLeaksAssociates Have ÔNo RightÕ ToKnow About Demands For TheirRecords.Ó Wired, June 2,2011. Seehttp://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/wikileaks-twitt er/

  58

Birgitta J—nsd—ttir, ÒEvidence ofa US judicial vendetta againstWikiLeaks activists mounts.Ó TheGuardian, July 3, 2012. Seehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/03/evidence-us-judicial-vendetta-wikileaks-activists-mounts?INTCMP=SRCH.

  59Bernard Keane, ÒThe Bostonfishing party and AustraliansÕrights online.Ó Crikey , January 17,2012. Seehttp://www.crikey.com.au/2012/01/17/the-boston-fishing-party-and-australians-rights-online/.

  60

   e  -    f    l   u   x    j   o   u   r   n   a    l    #    3    8

  Ñ    o

   c   t   o    b   e   r    2    0    1    2    M   e   t   a    h   a   v   e   n

    C   a   p    t    i   v   e   s   o    f    t    h   e    C    l

   o   u    d   :    P   a   r    t    I    I

    1    3    /    1    4

10.16.12 / 11:23:36 EDT

Page 14: Captives of the Cloud Part II

7/25/2019 Captives of the Cloud Part II

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/captives-of-the-cloud-part-ii 14/14

Twitter. Seehttp://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/159247260121706496

  61Bernard Keane, ibid.

  62See Gabriella Coleman, TheMany Moods Of Anonymous:Transcript. Discussion at NYUSteinhardt, March 4, 2011. Seehttp://www.onthemedia.org/2011/mar/04/the-many-moods-of-

anonymous/transcript/

  63Steve Fishman, ÒHello, I AmSabu ... Ò New York Magazine,June 3, 2012. Seehttp://nymag.com/news/features/lulzsec-sabu-2012-6/

  64Nate Anderson, ÒLulzSec leaderÔSabuÕ worked with FBI sincelast summer.Ó Ars Technica,March 6, 2012. Seehttp://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/03/report-lulzse c-leader-sabu-worked-with-fb i-since-last-summer/

  65Charles Arthur, Dan Sabbaghand Sandra Laville, ÒLulzSecleader Sabu was working for us,says FBI.Ó The Guardian, March 7,2012. Seehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/06/lulzsec -sabu-working-for-us-fbi

  66Saskia Sassen, Ibid., 382-3.

   e  -    f    l   u   x    j   o   u   r   n   a    l    #    3    8

  Ñ    o

   c   t   o    b   e   r    2    0    1    2    M   e   t   a    h   a   v   e   n

    C   a   p    t    i   v   e   s   o    f    t    h   e    C    l

   o   u    d   :    P   a   r    t    I    I

    1    4    /    1    4