« The cyberlibertarian approach that emerged out of the United States isn’t particularly surprising. The political dynamic in the United States has a stronger libertarian bent than in many other countries, especially the high-income Western countries it’s usually compared to. Digital politics in California had already integrated libertarianism and neoliberalism, so it wasn’t a big jump for it to define the approach to the internet. “The California Ideology is a mix of cybernetics, free market economics, and counter-culture libertarianism,” wrote Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron in 1995. They described it as a “profoundly anti-statist dogma” that resulted from “the failure of renewal in the USA during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.” »

It’s an argument that once again treats digital technology and the internet as an exception where traditional norms cannot apply — particularly the fact that authorities have long been able to get warrants to search people’s mail, wiretap their phones, or obtain their text messages. That’s the trade off we’ve collectively made, and one that the vast majority of people have never seen as a threat to their rights, freedoms, or liberty — because they’re not libertarians.

Source : Disconnect