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Immaterial Constitution: The Post-Snowden Maintenance of the Internet.

The question of whether rights can be enforced by code underlies the maintenance of Internet protocols by the IETF in the wake of the Snowden revelations of NSA mass surveillance. Arguments over the expectations of users for access and privacy between the respective inventors of the Web and the Inte...

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Published in:Techné: Research in Philosophy & Technology Vol. 29; no. 2/3; pp. 202 - 230
Main Author: Halpin, Harry
Format: Article
Published: Philosophy Documentation Center 2025
Subjects:
Internet
Privacy
Right of privacy
Internet protocols
Whistleblowers
Mass surveillance
Cryptography
United States. National Security Agency
Engineering standards
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Summary:The question of whether rights can be enforced by code underlies the maintenance of Internet protocols by the IETF in the wake of the Snowden revelations of NSA mass surveillance. Arguments over the expectations of users for access and privacy between the respective inventors of the Web and the Internet laid the ground for a new conception of net rights founded upon the extended mind thesis. A number of legislative initiatives attempted to form a "Magna Carta" for the Web to enforce these nascent net rights such as the right to private communication, but these efforts uniformly failed. Yet the repair and maintenance of the technical standards of the Internet itself by the IETF produced a new kind of immanent constitution for the Internet based upon the use of cryptography to defend these rights.