What Microsoft’s filed patent for “digital manners policy” could lead to (and yet another note on FRA)

Microsoft has filed for a patent for something they call “digital manners policy”, which is supposed to work like a digital version of common social conventions. Apparently, you’d set up zones where you broadcast commands to the devices you want to affect (such as cell phones, cameras, laptops, etc), for example forcing all cell phones shut off on an airplane, make them go into vibration mode in a cinema, or disabling photography within a museum; much like you ask people to not smoke in certain areas (only in this case, it would be impossible to actually light the cigarette even if you wanted to).

Common social conventions only exist while the majority of the public endorse and follow them (preferrably it would work like that at least, there are always circumstances hindering this). There are hundreds, thousands, of social conventions that have existed in the past but do so no longer simply because the public opinion changed. Smoking in public places, not letting black people sit on certain benches or go to certain schools, not allowing females to vote, etc (or for that matter using “du” instead of “ni” in Sweden when speaking for strangers). I could give countless other examples.

Now imagine a wide-spread digital manners policy (for example areas covering whole cities), where institutions, or even governments, can decide what digital devices should function and for what with the press of a button. It’s Chinas wet dream (basically, they’re doing it already, but this would no doubt make it much easier and fine tuned); they’d be able to control the digital access of the public like never before. And far from just China would be more than glad to implement such a technology nation-wide. Most western countries would revel at the thought, probably not with bad intentions initally, but more and more restrictions would surely be added. And before you know it, freedom of speech could be no more (to an even larger degree than today).

I realise I paint a picture that’s (hopefully) highly exaggerated, and many years into the future (if in the future at all), and that I’m probably sounding like a hippie technology-scared wacko, but seriously, there’s constantly more and more stuff like this coming. And no, there’s nothing saying that such a technology would be used to restrict freedom of speech simply because it existed (I would be more than happy not to hear any ringing telephones in the cinema, but I still think people should turn their phones off out of their own will), but let’s face it, there’s a very large risk it would. Just look at the law about FRA.

Speaking of which, help make sure the FRA-law doesn’t go through! Write to your members of parliament and tell them what you think! We don’t want to be spied on by the state on a massive scale! We don’t want to be treated as suspects when we’ve done nothing wrong (except possibly that we live in this inane country)! Adresses and more are available at this link (same as above).
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Song of the day: Nobuo Uematsu – Vivi’s Theme
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[Click to see in high resolution]

~ by koeus on June 12, 2008.