

The Use of Computers to Support Oppression - dimitar
http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~cale/cs201/apartheid.comp.html

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no_fans_please
I grew up in South Africa, where most of my family were anti-apartheid
activists.

My family made extensive use of IBM computers and technology in their ANTI-
apartheid activities.

They wrote speeches with Wordperfect and Wordstar on IBM XTs.

They saved them to Verbatim floppy disks, printed them out on Epson and HP
printers, faxed them with imported fax machines (Canon?), scanned for viruses
with McAfee antivirus, shredded evidence with imported shredders, and powered
it all with no doubt dubiously imported UPSes and petrol generators.

Then they used US Robotics modems and PCAnywhere with encryption software (2)
to transmit files to people both around South Africa and overseas.

They used personal-database software to keep track of press articles and
potential supporters overseas, and then used Lotus 123 to calculate where the
money was going.

They used the international telephone system (Gasp! Technology!) and Swiss
Bank accounts (I think - I was never sure on where the banks were) to transfer
money that supported anti-apartheid causes.

They also smuggled people over the border, no doubt using foreign-manufactured
cars, airplanes, and perhaps foreign weapons in the process.

Did my family help more than having a computer system run the Pass system
hurt? Absolutely not - but I like to think that by having access to some of
this technology things changed for the better sooner.

Somehow in this history I've picked up a healthy anti-respect for authority, a
view that some things can be used for both good and evil, and a fundamental
respect for the power of computers. Balance in all things.

1\. Many of your friends no doubt earned their pocket money by cleaning the
yard and taking out the trash. I earned mine by shredding hundreds of pages of
activist documentation for my grandmother.

2\. The encryption software they used was dumbed down thanks to US ITAR export
rules, probably putting the lives of countless good people in danger.

------
conanite
The problem here is the oppression, not the computers. An "Access Control
System" is a banal piece of software that decides who to let in and who to
keep out. Hotels, banks, golf clubs ... and oppressive regimes, they all use
one.

You could also write an article on "The Use of Clothing to Support
Oppression", and again, the problem is not with the clothes.

~~~
scarmig
That's too blase for my taste.

Technologies are transformative: they create the opportunities for agents to
commit entirely new kinds of actions, good and bad. You can't decouple their
existence from the new things that result from them (from Nazi death camps to
apartheid to the contemporary Panopticon State), any more than you can try to
decouple, say, totalitarian political systems from the oppression they entail.

This doesn't mean that we should smash all our technology and all return to
the farm. It just means we've got to think critically and pro-actively about
how to make sure technology is used for good.

~~~
zenogais
I have to disagree here.

Technology itself clearly is not something that you can "make sure..is used
for good". The problem is not with any one piece of technology (eg. the
computer) or technology as the sum of all individual technologies. I see the
root of the problem being technologizing. Oppression is more oppressive
because we've technologized it. Totalitarian governments are more controlling
because they've technologized control. The essence of technology is control.
The plow let farmers control where and what things grew in an area of land.
The hydroelectric dam controls the flow of an entire river to generate
electricity. Your cellphone lets you control personal and professional
interactions. Control and technology are deeply connected. That is why
technology is both dangerous and beneficial. Technologies are not
transformative they are indicative of trends in the larger field of
control/power.

~~~
scarmig
I'm not sure we disagree.

I'd phrase my core logic as this. Historically, most really big things, great
or terrible, have been done by centralized states. Central to state-building,
though, is the concept of legibility: making information about the world
understandable to the State and making it so that the State can efficiently
use and act on that information to enact its will on the world. And technology
--particularly telecommunications, including spoken language, counting,
writing, roads, the printing press, arithmetic, ship building, radio, all the
way up to computer programming--is all about legibility. Every advance in
technology extends the State's power, and that continues today.

That's why Lenin could hop on a train in 1917 and drop straight into
absolutist Russia without anyone in charge noticing. Then in the 1980s the
apartheid government had the ability to effectively track the movements and
contacts of dissidents and activists. And today the US federal government can
call up a couple contacts and know everything about you, from how many times a
week you get a coffee from the store at the corner to what you were thinking
and searching for online on January 4, 2010, after lunch.

I'd agree that it was unrealistic for me to say we can direct how technology
will end up being used. It's obviously true that you can't really direct it,
nor can you really avoid it by ignoring it and hoping it goes away. What's now
important for being proactive is building technology that will make human
actions _less_ legible and less subject to control by external forces.

------
csharpminor
I'm not going to get into the technoppression debate, but I will say that the
use of computers under Apartheid is quite similar to Immigration and Customs
Enforcement program known as "secure communities".

Secure communities is a data sharing initiative between ICE, the FBI and
several other agencies. Participating police districts now automatically pass
on the citizenship status of detainees to ICE. Under President Obama, secure
communities has deported more "dangerous illegals" than any other
administration.

Talking with a friend who works at the county jail, this is the same protocol
that was previously done by a human being, only made much more efficient by
the data sharing initiative. Instead of having an officer look through a list
of names for dangerous criminals, the system picks up people with really minor
offenses.

To date my state of Washington has deported more people for having an expired
fishing license than for murder. Secure communities has certainly upped the
ante in terms of who is deported when pulled over by a police officer.

------
clutchrockwell
Is there any scope in our developed economy for inventors to maintain
influence over who it is that gains from their creativity? Or is that hope
completely lost?

~~~
wisty
Not really, but inventors can educate the public on the risks their inventions
create.

------
kylebrown
I'd already heard about IBM supplying the Nazis, but not South Africa.
Interesting to know..

~~~
awakeasleep
If anyone else is interested,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust>

------
richardw
At the same time Southern Africa was fighting a proxy war between the West and
USSR. It was pretty hard to dismantle apartheid but be sure Russia didn't end
up with a South African client. After the cold war ended the decision became
much easier.

------
mcantelon
I vaguely recall computerized lists were used during the Rwanda massacres as
well, but can't find any citation.

------
guard-of-terra
I hate how you americans kicked South Africa for the same things they stopped
to do, like, just fifteen years earlier.

That's like punching other people instead of saying "sorry, I did bad things".
Bonus thing, you ruin a country in process.

~~~
_delirium
The initial leaders of the disinvestment-from-South-Africa campaign were some
of the _same_ people who were involved in the American Civil Rights Movement
(e.g. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Sullivan>), so it seems pretty
consistent to me. They opposed white segregationists in the U.S. first, then
once they'd won significant victories there, took the fight to white
segregationists elsewhere.

The US establishment was definitely not on board with that until years later.
When the disinvestment campaigns were launched in the mid-1970s, and sanctions
efforts had some initial success in the UN General Assembly, the US and UK
opposed any Security Council involvement (i.e. anything with teeth).

It was only in 1986, following a significant escalation in violence and
repression in South Africa, that the anti-apartheid activists in the US
Congress (led by another Civil Rights Movement veteran,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Dellums>) finally got a bill passed--- and
Ronald Reagan vetoed that bill. It was eventually passed again over his veto.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Still I don't understand why South Africa.

Most of world's countries are in sad state, especially africa. South Africa
was unique because it was both successful and messed up at the same time. It
could go either up and down. I have the feeling they went down: more messed up
than successful today. I don't exactly know what happens there, tho.

The question is: why "nuke" (economically and politically) this particular
country and not any other?

~~~
scarmig
Because their ruling class was a brutish sibling to the Anglosphere's, and we
were giving them massive amounts of economic and military support to dominate
and terrorize 90% of their country's population in what was effectively a set
of really large concentration camps?

~~~
guard-of-terra
Well, just stop doing that without going bully on them?

You made it bad by supporting them and then made it even worse by cutting
support really fast and isolating them.

It's amazing how you got the worst outcome possible. Glad they more or less
survived it anyway. It could me much worse.

