Cory Doctorow

I just read this essay by Cory Doctorow, and I thought it was great.  Possibly with a few things I'd change (notably the Russophobia), but still great.  I'm just discovering Cory Doctorow now.  

(I've long followed Gilbert Doctorow, a European/Russian affairs analyst, not related, and Cory has inconsistently denied he's related to E.L. Doctorow, a novelist.)

Not some right wing crank, Doctorow is a DSA member, and has long had mutualistic associations with EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which aims to protect users digital rights.  (He was NOT a founder of EFF.)

That EFF connection is what enrages another of my sources, Yasha Levine.  Levine calls EFF "Electronic Friends of Facebook."  (That certainly isn't the impression you get reading EFF or Doctorow, but Levine finds connections underneath the surface.)

Generally, as an analyst of present affairs, I think I'm siding more with Doctorow, but seeing some faults in both.

Perhaps only because I know him better, I find more (minor) faults and food fights in Levine's work, so much so I quite subscribing to him about 5 years ago, but still treasure his book and other insights at least sometimes.  It's only because of Levine I know that Signal and Tor, for example, were CIA funded and promoted to the public because they didn't want only spies using them.  It's not that these networks are insecure, they are among the most secure, but users are serving as cover for the spying operations they were built for.  Doctorow would never say those things, EFF was also a proud sponsor of Signal and Tor.

But it's a minor issue, IMO.  I don't expect ANYTHING on the internet to be SECURE, and Signal and Tor are about as good as you can get.  Meanwhile, there are a whole host of other issues beyond simple privacy, which I care little about.  (I want to share my work with as many as possible, even if that includes spooks reading my hard drive, as I presume it does.*  I know they will never embarrass me because that would reveal their sources and methods, which they are loathe to do.  And keeping scammers in check is mostly the job of the financial institutions I deal with.)

Though identified with digital privacy, Cory's big baddie these days has been DRM, which is something I sympathize with him on.

* With ICE running rampant, and a looming future of repression, how can I say these things?  I don't expect martyrdom as I'm not important enough, nor am I begging for it, but it is one path to the greatness which has otherwise eluded me.  Anyway, if they wanted to find leftists, all they need to do is look at my fully public social media.  There isn't much more than that on my hard drive.