01/11

Continued from "Captives of the Cloud, Part II"
A Massive, Expanding Surveillance State
With Unlimited Power And No Accountability
Will Secure Our Freedom by Hans ChristianAndersen.
Ð twitter.com/pourmecoffee1

Violence arms itself with the inventions of
Art and Science in order to contend against
violence.
Ð Carl von Clausewitz2

Infrastructure is the technology that
determines whether we live or die. Your
infrastructure will kill you Ð if it fails, youfail.
Ð Sm‡ri McCarthy3

Metahavene-flux journal #50 Ñ 50 december 2013 Ê Metahaven
Captives of the Cloud, Part III: All TomorrowÕs Clouds

Captives of the
Cloud, Part III:All TomorrowÕs
Clouds12.13.13 / 12:03:43 EST

The internet began as a place too complicatedfor nation-states to understand; it ended up, inthe second decade of the twenty-first century, asa place only nation-states seem to understand.
This has left omnipresent cloud giants Google
and Yahoo!, in their own words, Òoutraged.ÓÊThey
are helpless bystanders to US spy agencies as
they extraterritorially, without permission, andaided by the Brits, break into data center cables
just to find out if the next Bin Laden is out there
posting kitten videos on YouTube. In response,
Germany and Switzerland cash in on ÒsecureÓ
clouds; Russia fortifies its digital walls,
incarcerates Pussy Riot, and offers asylum to
Edward Snowden. Ecuador, which hosts Julian
Assange in its London Embassy as a politicalrefugee, is to rebrand itself as a Òhaven forinternet freedom.Ó4 These recent developments
show the deep divide between the perspectivesof various governments often claiming to restore
national sovereignty over data space, and thevery nature of the network itself, which is bydefinition transnational and borderless.
Internet and Society: The Dots Fight Back
General Keith Alexander is the director of the US
National Security Agency. In his previous position
as the head of the US Army Intelligence andSecurity Command, Alexander had anarchitectural firm decorate his so-calledÒInformation Dominance CenterÓ to look like theStarship Enterprise control room. This helped
him gain political enthusiasm for spying. As
Foreign Policy notes, ÒLawmakers and otherimportant officials took turns sitting in a leather'captain's chair' in the center of the room andwatched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction
movies, showed off his data tools on the big
screen.Ó5 At the time of this writing, Alexander is12.13.13 / 12:03:43 EST

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to step down from his position after a taxing year
at the helm of the spyboat. Before Edward
Snowden gave thousands of the agency's topsecret documents to the press, Alexander used
to publicly appear in full military attire.
Sometimes he tried to win sympathy by taking
the stage in a black T-shirt. In Las Vegas in 2012,
Alexander urged digital troublemakers to join the
NSA; he also pleaded that his agency operated
lawfully and transparently. ÒWe are overseen by
everybody,Ó he said.6 But that was 2012. There
were Patriot Act abuses, National Security
Letters, and overzealous US prosecutors goingafter The Pirate Bay, Megaupload, WikiLeaks, andChelsea Manning. As early as 2002, Mark Klein,an AT&T technician, witnessed an NSAcontrolled wiretapping room in full operation in adata center in San Francisco. Later, a handful of
US Senators warned the media about a secretinterpretation of the Patriot Act.7 Nobody
listened.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThen came Edward Snowden. As themagnitude of the NSA's surveillance of global
internet and phone communications systems
was being revealed, Keith Alexander changed his
public relations tactics accordingly, appearing as
an obedient, invisible bureaucrat. At Def Con
2013, Alexander presented his mission:Òconnecting the dots.Ó Hoovering up everythingfrom everyone up to three degrees of separation,or Òhops,ÓÊaway from a known suspect in order toavert the next 9/11.8 Columbia University law
professor Eben Moglen called it, plainly, Òspying
on humanity.Ó9 Alexander was simply following anorganization-wide, 9/11-centered PR memo
given out as a script to its representatives.10
Meanwhile, the NSA boasted that its surveillance
had thwarted fifty-four terrorist attacks.
However, that number lacked a real basis in fact,
as the website ProPublica concluded after
research.11ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊKeith Alexander's spaceship-style ops room
sparks the same dark pleasure as the happy
smile that sits on a hand-drawn NSA diagram
about infiltration into Google and Yahoo!12
Alexander Ð the man who plotted to ruin the
reputation of islamic ÒradicalizersÓ by publicly
revealing their porn site visits Ð is, after all, thepseudo-amicable human incarnation of neoStalinism.13 The NSA uses corruption withmartial agility. ÒOverseenÓ by opaque FISA
courts, whose deliberations and decisions are
secret, it has built a giant, data-slurping
behemoth facility in Utah: a Wal-Mart holding
everyoneÕs indeterminate digital past. Lost in a
BerlusconianÊbunga bunga party, the NSA
dreamed that its operations could go unseen
forever. When asked by Congress if the NSA
collected data on millions of Americans, theDirector of National Intelligence, James Clapper,

politely replied under oath: ÒNo, sir É notwittingly.Ó14 Clapper later apologized formisleading Congress by giving the Òleast
untruthful answer.Ó15ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn one cunning operation, the NSA wielded
its power to influence the technical standards onwhich the internet itself relies, including thepseudo-random number generators that occupy
our computersÕ microchips. As Yochai Benkler
asserts, the NSA Òundermined the security of the
SSL standard critical to online banking andshopping, VPN products central to secure
corporate, research, and healthcare provider
networks, and basic email utilities.Ó16 Jennifer
Granick calls the NSA Òan exceedingly aggressive
spy machine, pushing Ð and sometimes busting
through Ð the technological, legal and politicalboundaries of lawful surveillance.Ó17 Halfhearted attempts by the Obama Administration
to curb the agency's powers do little to reverse
the situation. A newly appointed oversightcommittee is, as Benkler notes, stocked withinsiders of the national security shadow world,even as the President claims, in awe-inspiring
legalese, that it consists of Òindependent outside
experts.Ó Surprise: the Obama-appointed chief
curator of the committee is James Clapper
himself.18 According to Slate, the proposed postSnowden NSA reform bill, spearheaded by
Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, Òfor the
first time explicitly authorizes, and therefore
entrenches in statute, the bulk collection ofcommunications records, subject to more or lessthe same rules already imposed by the FISA
Court. It endorses, rather than prohibits, what
the NSA is already doing.Ó19 Showing his deep
understanding of the privacy concerns ofordinary people, President Obama ordered an
end to the NSAÕs spying on the IMF and the World
Bank.20
Global Standards
Initially known for its quirky minimalism andmath, Google has been working hard on its
emotional impact on the public. Its vicepresident for marketing said in 2012 that Òif wedonÕt make you cry, we fail. ItÕs about emotion,
which is bizarre for a tech company.Ó21 Free
email, chat, and social networking are the Cokeand McDonalds of the internet. But they donÕt
promise Americanness. They promise
connections. The largest cloud services areglobal standards. They are Ònatural,Ó thus
dominant, focal points in the network, offering
the largest potential social reward and likelihoodof connection. ÒNetwork powerÓ obscures lesspopular alternatives. The ultimate container of
network power is the mobile app, whichbypasses the shared internet and its protocols
entirely. Instead, users are permanently within

03/11the corporationÕs digital walls rather than in andout of it through their web browser.22ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊGoogle's top executives Eric Schmidt and
Jared Cohen published The New Digital Age, a
trailblazing book about their political ideas, and
how Google interacts with American power
abroad. WikiLeaksÕs Julian Assange finds that inthis paper-bound TED speech, aliberal sprinkling of convenient,hypothetical dark-skinned worthies
appear: Congolese fisherwomen, graphic
designers in Botswana, anticorruption
activists in San Salvador and illiterate
Masai cattle herders in the Serengeti are allobediently summoned to demonstrate theprogressive properties of Google phones
jacked into the informational supply chainof the Western empire.23

Solutionism
The seizure of the internet by public-private
technocrats, cloud providers, and secret services
is an example of what Evgeny Morozov callsÒsolutionism.Ó24 Solutionism takes problems
from social and political domains andrecalibrates them as issues to be dealt with bytechnology alone. It brings them under thecontrol of programmers, systems managers,
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, and their politicalavatars. Privacy and civil liberties are brushedaside:Êtechnological bypasses to political, social,and legal problems present themselves
everywhere as progress.ÊWho rules the internet
on whose behalf, as ridiculously archaic as thequestion may sound, is a political and legal issue
highjacked by solutionism. Milton Muellerphrases it slightly differently, as Òwho should be'sovereign' Ð the people interacting via theInternet or the territorial states constructed byearlier populations in complete ignorance of thecapabilities of networked computers.Ó25ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIt is uncertain whether sovereignty is
attainable at all; whether it,Êas a concept, holds
up against the network, with its winner-takes-itall technologies.ÊSecurity expert Bruce Schneiersays we must Òtake backÓ the internet:ÒGovernment and industry have betrayed theinternet, and us É We need to figure out how to
re-engineer the internet to prevent this kind ofwholesale spying. We need new techniques toprevent communications intermediaries fromleaking private information.Ó26
ÒNo Water = No Data CenterÓ
Infrastructure gets political when things donÕt
work. As long as they do, no questions are asked.
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Indeed, every transaction on a Google server isan event under American jurisdiction.

Drinking water is instantly political when nothingcomes out of the faucet. Scarcity is a big
politicizer. The broken internet grapples with an
opposite problem: it bathes in an overabundanceof apps and services, which thrive on thedeterritorialization, expropriation, and extortionof life and data. Benjamin Bratton calls thisÒmicroeconomic compliance.Ó27 It is probably themost convenient model of exploitation that has
ever existed.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe people on the internet live in territories.
They have citizenship. But this feedback loop
doesnÕt activate political agency. What, after all,reallyÊis the connection between these things ÐÒindifference, weariness and exhaustion fromthe lies, treachery and deceit of the politicalclassÓ perhaps, as Russell Brand aptly stated?28
Snapchat and Instagram are vehicles of social(and geopolitical) lure, endlessly more attractive
than our tacit complicity with the machinery ofrepresentative politics. No one talks about
political revolution, but the ÒTwitter RevolutionÓ
makes headlines in mainstream media.ÊThe only
problem with our digital tools is their underlying
standardization. We have an exhausted politicalmachine on the one hand Ð ÒcitizenshipÓ forced
into tiresome, backward rituals of participation.
And on the other hand, we have the splendor and
immediacy of love, friendship, connection, andtechnology built on microecononomic andgeopolitical compliance. It seems an all too easy
win for the latter.ÊPeople have not considered theinternet as a democratically governablestructure. Decisions on the internet aredelegated to a giant Òdon't be evilÓ mix.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊCarne Ross, a former British diplomat andfounder of Independent Diplomat, is looking for asolution beyond technology. ÒThe balance
between the individual and state needs to be
more fundamentally altered,Ó argues Ross. ÒNewrules, in fact new kinds of rules, are needed.
What is required is nothing less than arenegotiation of our contract with the state, andwith each other.Ó29 Ross's proposal is nottechnical or bureaucratic. It is political in themost personal sense. Its problem is that it draws
on decision-making and enforcement structures
which don't yet exist. People can look out for
their common good only when they sharecommon space and interest. They can work out
their own polity better than central governments
can, as Ross argues in his book The Leaderless
Revolution, which promotes benign anarchism.
Indeed, it is unclear how a renegotiation of theinternet's social contract might be achieved
without a unifying political mechanism for thoseon the network who canÕt bargain with the statusquo. For those forced into compliance with its
already dominant standards. Or for those whodonÕt yet know the faces of their friends.

In Utah, the new data center is expected toneed 1.7 million gallons of water per day tokeep operational. That water is being
supplied by a political subdivision of thestate of Utah. Passage in that state of the
4th Amendment Protection act would ban
all state and local agencies from providing
material support to the NSA while itcontinues its warrantless mass
surveillance. No water = no data center.32

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04/11

NullifyNSA is politically on the libertarianconservative Right. Its ideas are, as Boldin says,
backed up by the advice of James Madison.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly issued
opinions over the years backing it up in a
widely accepted legal principle known as
the anti-commandeering doctrine. The
cases go all the way back to the 1840s,
when the court held that states couldn't beforced to help the feds carry out slavery
laws. The latest was the Sebelius case in2012, where the court held that states
couldn't be compelled to expand Medicaid,even under threat of losing federal
funding.33
NullifyNSA has all of the RightÕs typical rigor anddetermination even while it, as Boldinsummarizes, seeks to be ÒtranspartisanÓ in its
efforts:
Our goal is single-minded Ð stopping NSA
spying. It's a long haul, and it's going totake significant effort and resistance fromgroups and people not used to working
together. But the time is now to set aside
differences for the liberty of all.34

e-flux journal #50 Ñ 50 december 2013 Ê Metahaven
Captives of the Cloud, Part III: All TomorrowÕs CloudsÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊSome version of a social contract between
citizens and governments (and corporations) was
demonstrated in 2012 when citizens across theworld successfully prevented the Stop Online
Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act from coming
into effect.30 ÒSocial contractÓ here means thepossibility for people to bargain with thepowerful about measures that threaten thecommon good. Major websites like Google andWikipedia sided with the protesters against
SOPA/PIPA, which somewhat nuances thefamiliar picture of Òevil corporations.Ó However,this type of legislation tends to silently return ina different guise, most recently with the highly
secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
agreement. The Intellectual Property portion ofthis agreement was leaked to WikiLeaks in
November, 2013.31
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊA social contract for the internet requires
governments and corporations to welcome its
political inconveniences.ÊIt requires them toradically cut back on surveillance. It requires
them to unambiguously legalize leaks,
cyberprotests, and online civil disobedience as
legitimate political expressions.ÊAs noted in Part
II of this essay, in 2010 and 2011 UK- and USbased hacktivists used DDoS attacks to target
private corporations that imposed a corporate
embargo against WikiLeaks.ÊThe hacktivists
responsible were hunted down and tried as
criminals; the analogy between hacktivism andnonviolent civil disobedience was lost on thesystem and its judges. Cyberprotests expresstheÊabsence of any verifiable and binding
agreement between the system and its users.
Digital equivalents to strikes and blockades areframed as crimes against property and profit.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe activist group NullifyNSA has taken on
the task of disabling the NSA by shutting off thewater supply to its data centers. The fascinating
proposition is a stark reminder that the ability to
spy and to store data is ultimately dependent onelectricity and cooling. Thus, any ÒinternetÓ
operation is ultimately dependent upon the living
environment and its resources. Michael Boldin,
executive director of the Tenth Amendment
Center and a NullifyNSA representative, explains
that

The group explains the interdependency between
the digital and the physical domains accurately
and plainly. Almost no one on the Left seems tohave talked about data centers quite like this.
Boldin points out the ecological disaster that is
the NSA, adding that Òa state like Utah is in astate of near-constant drought. The fact that allthese precious resources are being used to spy
on the world should be disgusting to nearly
everyone.Ó35 He goes on to analyze the NSA's
distribution of data centers and its implications
for the organizationÕs own perception of its
vulnerabilities:
Back in 2006, the NSA maxed out theBaltimore area power grid. Insiders werevery concerned that expansion of the NSAÕs
ÒmissionÓ could result in power outages
and a Òvirtual shutdown of the agency.Ó In
reading their documents and press
releases over the years, we know that aprime motivation in expanding theiroperations in Utah, Texas, Georgia,
Colorado and elsewhere was to ensure thatloads of resources like water, electricity,and more, were distributed. That means
they know they have an Achilles heel.36
After all, the NSAÕs weak point may be its
insatiable appetite for electricity rather than its
breaches of the Constitution. NullifyNSA, a groupRecent calls for personal data sovereignty,
or the ability for a single individual to havecontrol over all of their personal data,
represent a similar fantasy. Had we thefaculties and the system for enabling every
digital citizen the ability to understand andcontinually manage the evolving datadriven internet, to control the data being
collected, organized, analyzed, repurposedand sold by every application, commercialorganization, non-commercial organization,
government agency, data broker and thirdparty, to understand and provide informed
consent to every terms of service
agreement, and privacy policy Ð would wehave time to actually use the internet? To
work? To have a family? To do anythingelse? This is the fallacy of personal data
sovereignty in a digital universe
increasingly defined by big data.41
The saying goes that if your only tool is ahammer, all problems look like nails. Data mayneed to be prevented from becoming ÒbigÓ in thefirst place. Obar inadvertently shows theconceptual similarity of Òbig dataÓ to bad
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The Possibility of an IcelandÒData sovereigntyÓ is a phrase of recent coinage
describing two distinct trends in internet
hosting. The first is the increasing tendency ofnation-states to make networks that fit within
national borders so they can completely control
what goes on inside the network. Russia andChina both have their own Facebook and Twitter,
controlled at all times by the state. The only
advantage of these networks is that they are notunder the auspices of the NSA.ÊBoutique data
sovereignty is a viable economic strategy in thewake of global surveillance. Secure "email madein Germany" is now hot; user data are protectedby supposedly watertight German privacy laws.38
Swisscom, Switzerland's telecommunications
company, which is majority-owned by thegovernment, is developing a secure "Swisscloud" aspiring to levels of security and privacy
which US companies can't guarantee.39
Luxembourg and SwitzerlandÕs recent wealthhavens, or freeports for property in transit Ðmostly expensive art Ð also offer data storage.40
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe second definition of Òdata sovereigntyÓ
is personal. Every internet user should ÒownÓ allof his or her online data. Jonathan Obar critiques
the idea, but for the wrong reasons. He claims
that personal data sovereignty is fallible because
we have now Òbig dataÓ:05/11

of conservatives with a practical bent, hints at
the under-investigated relationship between
data centers and their physical geographies.37

financial products that no one understands.
Personal data have become the credit default
swaps of the cloud, building a bubble economy
as unsustainable as the subprime mortgages
that triggered the 2008 financial collapse. The
NSA participates in this corporate feeding frenzyas much as cloud providers do. There is, in thislight, nothing strange about wanting more
personal control over oneÕs personal information.
A clear model for it is still missing, but a 2011
paper by US Naval Graduate School students
notes that Òdata sovereignty provides an explicit
tool to break a level of abstraction provided by
the cloud. The idea of having the abstraction of
the cloud when we want it, and removing it when
we donÕt, is a powerful one.Ó42 To break down the
abstraction of the cloud, the internet needs to be
more localized.43
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAn example of the boundaries between
nation-state politics and online politics being
traversed is Iceland Ð a sparsely populatedisland nation in the North Atlantic that has cometo be one of the rare places in the West where
political alternatives get a chance. On July 5,
2008, John Perry Barlow gave a speech at the
Reykjav’k Digital Freedoms Conference. The talkwas titled "The Right to Know."44 Barlow took his
audience on a journey that began with thewordless prehistory of homo sapiens; he ended
by pitching a somewhat unexpected update ofthe Òdata havenÓ Ð an offshore sanctuary for
information prefigured by cyberpunk science
fiction. Iceland, Barlow said, could become aÒSwitzerland of BitsÓ Ð a haven for digital
freedom, a safe harbor for transparency, asanctuary for the Enlightenment. Cyberspace, for
Barlow, was both global and local, and Òthe more
local it becomes, the more global it becomes.Ó
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊA mere three months after Barlow's talk,Iceland's banks collapsed. Relative to country
size, it was the largest banking crisis ever
suffered by a single state.45 Iceland's recovery
from the banking crisis became an opportunity
for national democratic and ethical reforms. A
twenty-five-strong Constitutional Assembly
rewrote the constitution, and a crowdsourcing
effort introduced thousands of comments andhundreds of concrete proposals from citizens
directly into the legislative process.46 On June
16, 2010, Iceland's parliament cast a unanimous
vote for IMMI, the Icelandic Modern Media
Initiative. IMMI combined a Ògreatest hitsÓ offreedom of speech and libel protection laws thatexisted in various other countries.47 And while
the idea for the Switzerland of Bits came from
Barlow, a cofounder of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, WikiLeaks also had an influence on
IMMI's legal architecture: Assange's
whistleblowing platform ran separate hosting
agreements with ISPs in various countries,

I think Iceland's plans are viable and wellconsidered. They are using Iceland's legalsovereignty, real-world isolation, global
connectedness, and stable political system
to advance a series of pro-expression
policy goals. They're doing so in ways that
don't fundamentally alter Iceland's nature
as a modern democratic state, but rather
play to the theoretical and practicalstrengths of that model. And McCarthyshows a good understanding of what thelimits to this strategy are, in terms ofeffects beyond Iceland's borders.50
In Iceland, the classical data haven has evolved
into a more advanced combination of policy,
software, coding, and advocacy, removing itself
from the anarcho-libertarian free-for-all. Theinternet, here, is an experiment with democracy.
The development of online communication andcoordination tools certainly falls within IMMIÕs
scope. The organizationÕs technical director,
Eleanor Saitta, explains its larger democraticvision:The Internet is an $11 trillion economy,
globally. ItÕs a largely post-national
economy (to a degree that quantizing it in
the currency of a single nation feels mildly
ridiculous), but the effects of that economy
touch specific people, on specific pieces ofground. What Iceland is becoming is anation deeply integrated with the internet
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benefiting from their laws.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe internet activist, software developer,
and writer Sm‡ri McCarthy is IMMIÕs executive
director. Much of the organization's impact
depends on IcelandÕs ability to influence newinternational standards, and to attract
companies and organizations to host data.48 At
the same time, McCarthy is involved in thedevelopment of MailPile, a secure email
application and collective decision-making
software that is in the political lineage of Òliquid
democracyÓ Ð a form of delegative democracy. A
founding member of the Icelandic Pirate Party,
much of McCarthyÕs work takes place on the
cutting blade of law and code.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊMcCarthy describes IMMI as an ÒNGOsomewhere half-way between a think tank and alobby group.Ó Can IMMI transform Iceland into a
Switzerland of Bits? McCarthy is unambiguous in
his answer: ÒYes. And not just Iceland.Ó He
explains: ÒLook through the legal code, the social
structure, and pretty easy entry points start tobecome obvious. Treat society as a Wiki Ð apublicly editable social space Ð and be bold."49ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊJames Grimmelmann, who is a Professor of
Law at the University of Maryland, comments:

at an economic level. There are ways inwhich that resonates strongly andtypologically with the notion of the ÒislandÓ
Ð it's a resonance we use at IMMI,
sometimes, to explain our work. However,the fact that itÕs happening in a
Scandinavian country also makes a big
difference. Iceland has obviously seen its
economy turned upside down by themassive financial looting of the past
decade, but the fundamental collectivist
nature of the country remains. This stands
in stark contrast with the hyper-libertarian,Òdamn anyone who can't keep upÓ attitudecommon among crypto-anarchocapitalists.

Building a data haven means something
very different when you do it in a place
where people live and have lived for
centuries, in a place where it is a national
project, not an also-ran that at best injects
a little cash and at worst exists only as
network colonialism. The notion ofresilience is critical here, too. While somelarge hosting companies are tentatively
approaching sustainability as a concept,theyÕre doing so to get punishing energy
budgets down to something manageable
and to comply with regulatory forces.
Resilience is much more thansustainability; it meshes very closely with
left-information politics, and in doing so,
combines to provide a basic politicalplatform much stronger than each alone.
Hence in Europe, the limitations of the
Pirates as (until their recent initial steps) asingle-issue party; likewise, the Greens,mostly working from a relatively obsolete
sustainability-only platform.51
Saitta sees the networked politics of the near
future to be strongly interconnected with locality,
so that the outcome is neither a purely nationstate-based affair nor commitment-free internet
clicktivism. Such politics spring from a space of
exception created both within the context ofIceland as a community and within the internet
as a human network:
As translated into the material context ofneoliberal capitalism, this provides
guidance for some specific corporation todecide where they wish to host servers, but
the creation is an act of the commons É
Now, as to how network culture can create
its own room in which to breathe, I thinkthatÕs a much more interesting question,
one where I think we will see networked

07/11post-institutional political non-state actors
continuing to take a lead, to see that theirpolitics leaks out from the internet into thereal locality in which they may live. In
creating room for themselves, they are inpart looking at their place in the web of
mutual obligation and stepping up to taketheir part in the deeper polis as much as
they are drawing on and reinforcing theobligations of their localities to them.52

I joke that my ten year stretch goal is to kill
the nation state, but really, I donÕt thinkthatÕs particularly necessary. There will
always be territorial organizational
structures, but theyÕre only one possible
structure among many that can interact. I
favor building up new alternatives, starting
now. If we somehow magically did manage
to destroy the nation state before there wasanything to replace it, weÕd all, quite
frankly, be fucked. IÕm a road fetishist. I
really like roads. And power. And food.
Those are all currently mostly provided byor coordinated through the state. Kill thestate now, and life looks grim. That said,
waiting until you've got a fully functional
alternative before taking any kind ofpolitical action aimed at common
emancipation is equally dumb, as isinvesting more effort in actively hostilesystems when you canÕt actually change
them. IÕm a realist, in the end. I want lesssuffering, for everyone, in both the shortand long term, and that doesn't come out of
the barrel of any one ideology, just as surely
as it isnÕt going to come by sticking to thestraight and narrow of our status quo
handbasket.53

Servers in the Clouds
The possibility for a network Ð centralized,
decentralized, or distributed Ð to override
jurisdiction and state power is a foundational
dream of the internet, as well as a perpetualmirage shaped and inspired by science fiction.
What was once thought to be Òthe internetÓ Ð adeterritorialized space amongst a world ofnation-states Ð is known today to be incredibly
saturated with the spatial implications of
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The design agenda for the future of the internet
seems straightforward: become a networked,
post-institutional, non-state actor and startright where you live with political reform.Ê The
idea of a Òlocalized internetÓ anticipates
increasing overlaps betweenÊdigital andphysicalÊsocial structures. Eventually, all social
structures take on physicality.ÊSaitta:

borders, jurisdictions, and sovereignty.Ê New
approaches to guaranteeing internet freedoms
are increasingly becoming premised on literally
eluding these spatial implications of a (perhaps
always) reterritorialized internet.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe Pirate Bay is a famous Swedish-based
P2P BitTorrent sharing service. Recently, accessto its service was blocked in various countries
and the siteÕs three founders were sentenced on
charges of enabling the violation of intellectual
property by facilitating illegal downloads. At thetime of this writing, the final sentences are still
pending in Sweden, where the case has beenbrought to the Supreme Court. Apart from being
a file sharing site, the Pirate Bay is also a kind ofliving manifesto for the cyber-anarchic internet;
it has issued various memes, it had plans to buy
the Principality of Sealand, and in March 2012, it
issued an unusual announcement that detailed
the next possibility for evading jurisdiction. The
Pirate Bay announced that it would start hosting
content on airborne drones, evading law
enforcement and copyright claims.54 The Pirate
Bay's own tagline was: ÒEveryone knows WHATTPB is. Now theyÕre going to have to think about
WHERE TPB is.Ó While clearly part of the Pirate
Bay's amazing array of publicity stunts andmemes, the plan is not technologically
impossible. In the same month, the website
TorrentFreak interviewed Tomorrow's Thoughts
Today, an organization exploring Òtheconsequences of fantastic, perverse andunderrated urbanisms,Ó which has built a set ofwirelessly connected drones operating like amobile darknet.55 These machines constitute
what the organization says is Òpart nomadic
infrastructure and part robotic swarmÓ:We have rebuilt and programmed thedrones to broadcast their own local wifi
network as a form of aerial Napster. They
swarm into formation, broadcasting theirpirate network, and then disperse,
escaping detection, only to reform
elsewhere.56
Though some of the Pirate BayÕs servers
reportedly now operate out of a secret mountainlair,57 its proposed Low Orbit Server Stations(LOSS) would host servers that redirect traffic toa secret location. Though the plan is,conceptually, a call for a deterritorializedinternet space, it seems somewhat oblivious to
the lingering legal implications of having a
localized server. TomorrowÕs Thoughts TodayÕs
Electronic Countermeasures project, on the other
hand, is based equally on deterritoriality as well
as locality. Liam Young, cofounder of TomorrowÕs
Thoughts Today, reflects:

Pierre Englebert and Denis M. Tull assert in theirstudy on failed states and nation building in
Africa:

08/11

As a culture we are having to come to somekind of collective agreement about what
copyright means in a digital age. Who owns
information as it becomes a digitalcommodity. Industries and governments
are too slow to adapt and projects like
Electronic Countermeasures or The Pirate
Bay drone servers are imagined for the
purposes of examining these issues andspeculating on new possibilities. The
privatization of knowledge is something we
all need to be thinking about. Moves toward
the storage of all our data in the cloud, acloud managed by private companies or
nation states, is potentially very dangerous.
Even if this drone network isnÕt
implemented as a practical solution wewould be just as interested if the work
made us question what is happening andwhat alternatives there may be in data
distribution.58

Failed states can be seen as their own politicalmodel; a ÒfailureÓ to produce outcomescompliant with accepted norms can be seen as aÒsuccessÓ in arenas where such norms are
disputed. Failed states don't govern, don't hold amonopoly of violence, don't control borders, anddon't enforce a rule of law. They are at the outerborders of the international system and theworld political map. Insofar as they are still,
partially at least, inside that system, they may
present new opportunities for internet practice,
new sovereignties for hosting, and new areas fornomadic infrastructure.ÊJames Grimmelmann
outlines some of the complications that thismodel faces:

12.13.13 / 12:03:43 EST

e-flux journal #50 Ñ 50 december 2013 Ê Metahaven
Captives of the Cloud, Part III: All TomorrowÕs Clouds

YoungÕs Ònomadic speculative infrastructuresÓ
are relatively harmless in areas that are alreadyheavily covered by regulations. But in lessregulated areas, they might become something
more.
Failed States in International Waters
An island can be created either by expressly
carving out law, or by not legislating at all. Statepower works both ways; negatively, somejurisdictions on the world map lack control overtheir borders and have no centrally administered
rule of law Ð they are ÒÔlawlessÕ zones in various
states of anarchy, poverty, decay and crime.Ó59 In
international relations it has become customary
to apply a set of rules to define statehood; astate needs to have control over borders, acentrally administered rule of law (even if a
dictatorship), and to a considerable extent, itneeds to comply with customary practices in"international society" or "the international
system." As a normative categorization, thispresupposes the institutional characteristics ofWestern statehood as the one legitimate form towhich all states should aspire.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe term Òfailed stateÓ was introduced inWestern foreign policy to signify any stateauthority not substantially fulfilling either one ofthese criteria. Since the introduction of the term,
various failed states have emerged, many ofthem in Africa: Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, and Mali
are but a few examples. The designation ofÒfailureÓ seems legitimate when applied to raging
civil wars, violent conflicts, and their fallout. But
it also points back to the political process,ideology, or entity that hands out thedesignation. In other words: one man's failed
state is, potentially, another man's utopia. As

The goal of rebuilding collapsed states is torestore them as "constituted repositoriesof power and authority within borders" andas "performers and suppliers of politicalgoods." Almost all African states, however,
have never achieved such levels ofstatehood. Many are "states that fail[ed]before they form[ed]." Indeed, the evidence
is overwhelming that most of AfricaÕs
collapsed states at no point in the
postcolonial era remotely resembled theideal type of the modern Western polity.60

The problem that failed states face is thatit's difficult to create telecommunications
infrastructure without security and afunctioning economic system. They havedomains that may not be effectively under
their control and are backed up by aninternational body. Their internet
infrastructure frequently relies ontechnological providers who operate fromout-of-state; what is available is often oflimited connectivity and quite expensive.
De facto, these places of weak enforcement
may tend to function as data havens Ð
particularly when there are many of them Ð
but the reliability of provisioning any
specific content is low.61
A country like Cameroon presents a borderline
case. There is digital infrastructure in the
country, but its statehood appears to descend
into failure anyway. In 2008, Ozong
Agborsangaya-Fiteu warned that in his country,Òunless there is clear political reform that willallow citizens to finally enjoy basic civil liberties
Ð including full freedom of expression, freeelections and the rule of law Ð a crisis isinevitable.Ó62 About a year later, internet security

People before Clouds
In The Truman Show Ð with Jim Carrey starring as
Truman, the unwitting protagonist of a real life
sitcom Ð the series director, or ÒCreator,Ó makes
an emotional appeal to Truman in an attempt toconvince him that reality out there is no better,and no more real, than reality inside the giant
suburban Biosphere that was built for him.
Truman's world is a world without visible signs ofgovernment; there are only signposts, andwarnings, and red tape, at the edges of its
liveable reality.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊGovernment, for Truman, is the drone-likeperspective of the series director. Isn't the pointof view offered by NSA Director Keith Alexander
similarly comforting? Keith Alexander begins
almost every other sentence with the phraseÒfrom my perspective.Ó He wonÕt really ever refer
to anyone elseÕs perspective, but it sounds as if
he could. ÒFrom my perspectiveÓ sounds almost
modest. Alexander has innumerable
grandchildren and their love for iPads illustrates,
for the General, the countless possibilities andthreats of the Òcyber.Ó AlexanderÕs NSA is aboutÒsaving lives,Ó as if it were a virtual ambulancerushing to rescue the digitally wounded. He
brags about his agencyÕs Òtremendous
capabilitiesÓ as if he were a middle-aged
computer room systems manager boasting about
the robustness of his Apache server. How do webest escape the custody of this virtual father
figure, and others standing in line to take overonce he steps down? How do you liberate asociety that has the internet?
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNo one really knows, but to begin with, weneed to get rid of the deceptive gibberish oftechnocracy. We have become the enslaved
consumers of nonsensical abstractions. No one
has ever seen the cloud, or its main tenant, Òbigdata.Ó These are objects of ideology and belief,
and at times, treacherous harbingers of Big
12.13.13 / 12:03:43 EST

09/11
e-flux journal #50 Ñ 50 december 2013 Ê Metahaven
Captives of the Cloud, Part III: All TomorrowÕs Clouds

firm McAfee revealed that Cameroonian websites
were the most dangerous in the world for theirusers Ð even more than Hong Kong websites.
McAfee found that Cameroon boasts a shadow
industry of Òtypo-squattingÓ domains. Typosquatting exploits users who mistype a popular
URL, leading them to a scam website.
Cameroon's domain name extension (Ò.cmÓ)differs but one character from the ubiquitous
Ò.comÓ Ð hence Cameroon's success in building
popular Potemkin destinations based on typos.
Facebook.cm, apparently, leads to a highly
offensive porn ad.63 Is the boom in ÒcybercrimeÓ
from countries with weak oversight some sort ofdata haven byproduct? Grimmelmann
comments: ÒYes, you could put it that way: I'mreminded of the Eastern European virus-writing'industry.'Ó64

Brother. Those who argue that we need new tools
to fix the broken internet are right, but theyshouldnÕt forget that we also need the right
polities to use them. The spectacle of technology
needs to be unleashed to further the ends ofthose who wish for a way of their own, rather
than rule over others. People are real. CloudsarenÕt.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊReformist and legislative currents in theongoing surveillance drama have put their stakes
in institutions that are themselves therepositories of vested interests. Thisbureaucratic apparatus is incapable of reform,
because it canÕt fire itself from the job it hasdone so badly for so long. Shielded from themost basic democratic accountability, an opaquedata orgy plays out inside the boardrooms, spybases, and data warehouses of surveillance.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThose who promote that we should, in
response, encrypt all our communications, seemto have a strong point. Anonymizing technologies
and other protections bring to mind the sort ofprivacy that was once expected from a sealed
envelope or a safe. Yet on the other hand, thevery argument for total encryption is the flipsideof solutionism; it seeks for technology to solve a
political problem. Encryption canÕt, by itself, heal
the internet.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊSeparate from these two strands is a third
possibility: a localized internet, one that wields
the double-edged sword of political andtechnological reforms, and saves the networkfrom being a looming abstraction manipulated by
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. We should be able
to explain the network to each other in thesimplest possible terms, in mutual agreement.
We should not need to be under the gray cloud of
a super-jurisdictional, abstract Totalstaat. We
deserve to wake up from the dreamless lethargythat is induced by the techno-managerial matrix,
and look each other in the eye.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNew polities, new technologies, and new
jurisdictions are needed Ð all three of them, inabundance. Democracy and people need toforever come before clouds. Drinking waterneeds to always be prioritized over spying. Life
itself is the enemy of surveillance.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ×
To be continued in Captives of the Cloud IV (slight return): Fix
My Geopolitics!
Written by Daniel van der Velden, Vinca Kruk, and Alysse
Kushinski (research assistant).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ1
August 16, 2013.

10/11

Metahaven is an Amsterdam-based design collectiveon the cutting blade between politics and aesthetics.
Founded by Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden,
Metahaven's work Ð both commissioned and selfdirected Ð reflects political and social issues throughresearch-driven design, and design-driven research.
Research projects included theÊSealand Identity
Project, and currently includeÊFacestate, andÊIcelandas Method. Solo exhibitions includeÊAffiche Fronti•re(CAPC musŽe d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, 2008)andÊStadtstaat (KŸnstlerhaus Stuttgart/Casco, 2009).
Group exhibitions includeÊForms of Inquiry(AA London,
2007, cat.),ÊManifesta8(Murcia, 2010, cat.),theÊGwangju Design Biennale 2011 (Gwangju, Korea,cat.),ÊGraphic Design: Now In Production (Walker Art
Center, Minneapolis, 2011, and Cooper-Hewitt
National Design Museum, New York, 2012, cat.)andÊThe New Public (Museion, Bolzano, 2012, cat.).
Metahaven's work was published and discussed inÊThe
International Herald Tribune,ÊThe New York Times,
Huffington Post,ÊCourrier International,Icon,
Domus,ÊDazed,ÊThe Verge,l'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui,
and Mute, among other publications. Vinca Kruk is a
Tutor of Editorial Design and Design Critique at ArtEZ
Academy of Arts in Arhem. Daniel van der Velden is a
Senior Critic at the Graphic Design MFA program at
Yale University, and a Tutor of Design at the Sandberg
Instituut Amsterdam. In 2010, MetahavenreleasedÊUncorporate Identity, a design anthology forour dystopian age, published by Lars MŸller.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ2
Carl von Clausewitz, On War,trans. J. J. Graham (London,
1873). See
http://www.clausewitz.com/readings/OnWar1873/BK1ch01.htm
l.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ3
Sm‡ri McCarthy, ÒIceland: A
Radical Periphery in Action.
Sm‡ri McCarthy interviewed by
Metahaven,Ó Volume 32 (2012):
98Ð101.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ4See
http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosi
egray/ecuador-bids-to-be-see
n-as-the-home-of-internet-fr
eedomÊÊÊÊÊÊ5See
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/09/08/the_cow
boy_of_the_nsa_keith_alexand
er?page=fullÊÊÊÊÊÊ6See
http://www.wired.com/threatl
evel/2012/07/nsa-chief-denie sdossiers/

e-flux journal #50 Ñ 50 december 2013 Ê Metahaven
Captives of the Cloud, Part III: All TomorrowÕs CloudsÊÊÊÊÊÊ7
Senator Ron Wyden: ÒWeÕre
getting to a gap between what
the public thinks the law says
and what the American
government secretly thinks thelaw says.Ó Quoted in Mike
Masnick, ÒSenators Reveal That
Feds Have Secretly
Reinterpreted the PATRIOT Act,Ó
Techdirt, May 26, 2011.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ8ÒAll of your friends, that's one
hop. Your friends' friends,
whether you know them or not Ð
two hops. Your friendsÕ friendsÕ
friends, whoever they happen tobe, are that third hop. ThatÕs amassive group of people that the
NSA apparently considers fairgame.Ó Quoted in Philip Bump,ÒThe NSA Admits It Analyzes
More People's Data Than
Previously Revealed,Ó The
Atlantic Wire, July 17, 2013. See
http://www.theatlanticwire.c
om/politics/2013/07/nsa-admi
ts-it-analyzes-more-peoplesdata-previously-revealed/67287/ÊÊÊÊÊÊ9See
http://snowdenandthefuture.i
nfo/PartI.html
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ10See
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/10/30/reveale dnsa-pushed911askeysoundbit
etojustifysurveillance.html
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ11See
http://www.theatlanticwire.c
om/politics/2013/07/nsa-admi
ts-it-analyzes-more-peoplesdata-previously-revealed/67287/ÊÊÊÊÊÊ12

12.13.13 / 12:03:43 EST

See
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/ns ainfiltrates-links-to-yahoo google-data-centers-worldwi
de-snowden-documentssay/201 3/10/30/e51d661e4166-11e3-8 b74d89d714ca4dd_story.html
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ13
A document that reveals thisNSA plot was published by the
Huffington Post. The documentÕs
origin is ÒDIRNSA,Ó the agencyÕs
director. See Glenn Greenwald,
Ryan Gallagher, Ryan Grim, ÒTopSecret Document Reveals NSA
Spied On Porn Habits As Part Of
Plan To Discredit ÔRadicalizers,ÕÓ
Huffington Post, November 26,
2013,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/nsa-porn-muslim
s_n_4346128.html?1385526024
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ14
Ruth Marcus, ÒJames ClapperÕs
Ôleast untruthfulÕ answer,Ó The
Washington Post, June 13, 2013.
See http://articles.washingtonpo
st.com/2013-06-13/opinions/3
9950057_1_oversight-national intelligence-national-secur ityagencyÊÊÊÊÊÊ15
Jason Howerton, ÒJames Clapper
Apologizes For Lying To Congress
About NSA Surveillance: ÔClearly
ErroneousÕ,Ó The Blaze, July 2,
2013. See
http://www.theblaze.com/stor
ies/2013/07/02/james-clapper apologizes-for-lying-to-con
gress-about-nsa-surveillance clearly-erroneous/ÊÊÊÊÊÊ16
Yochai Benkler, ÒTime to tame
the NSA behemoth trampling ourrights,Ó The Guardian,
September 13, 2013. See
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/13/nsa-behemoth-trampling-rightsÊÊÊÊÊÊ17
Jennifer Granick, ÒNSA SEXINT
is the Abuse YouÕve All Been
Waiting For,Ó Just Security,
November 29, 2013. See
http://justsecurity.org/2013/11/29/nsa-sexint-abuse-youv
e-waiting/ÊÊÊÊÊÊ18
See
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/13/james-clapper_n_3748431.html
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ19
David Weigel, ÒNew NSA Reform
Bill Authorizes All the NSA
Activity That Was Making You
Angry,Ó Slate, November 1, 2013.
See
http://www.slate.com/blogs/w
eigel/2013/11/01/new_nsa_ref
orm_bill_authorizes_all_the_nsa_activity_that_was_making_you.html
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ20
Mark Hosenball, ÒObama halted
NSA spying on IMF and WorldBank headquarters,Ó Reuters,
October 31, 2013. See
http://www.reuters.com/artic
le/2013/10/31/us-usa-securit y-imf-idUSBRE99U1EQ20131031

Ibid.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ21
Claire Cain Miller, ÒGoogle Basesa Campaign on Emotions, Not
Terms,Ó The New York Times,
January 1, 2012. See
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/
01/02/technology/google-hones-its-advertising-message-pl
aying-to-emotions.html?_r=2&

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ35
Ibid.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ22
See our discussion of network
power in the bookÊUncorporate
Identity.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ38
Elizabeth Dwoskin and Frances
Robinson, ‟NSA Internet Spying
Sparks Race to Create Offshore
Havens for Data Privacy,Ó The
Wall Street Journal, September
27, 2013. See
http://online.wsj.com/news/a
rticles/SB100014240527023039
83904579096082938662594

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ24
See ÒEvgeny Morozov ontechnology Ð The folly ofsolutionism,Ó The
Economist.com, May 2, 2013.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ25
Milton L. Mueller, Networks andStates: The Global Politics ofInternet Governance (Boston,
MA: MIT Press, 2010), 268.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ26
Bruce Schneier, ÒThe US
government has betrayed theinternet. We need to take it
back,Ó The Guardian, September
5, 2013. See
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/05/gov
ernment-betrayed-internet-ns
a-spyingÊÊÊÊÊÊ27
See http://www.eflux.com/journa l/some-traceeffects-of-the- postanthropocene-on-acceler
ationist-geopolitical-aesthe
tics/ÊÊÊÊÊÊ28
See
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YR4CseY9pk
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ29
Carne Ross, "Citizens of theworld, unite! You have nothing tolose but your data," The
Guardian, October 31, 2013. See
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/31/cit
izens-world-unite-data?CMP=t
wt_guÊÊÊÊÊÊ30
The US Congress withdrew thebills proposing SOPA and PIPA in
February 2012 after widspread
protests. Around the same time,
the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade
Agreement (ACTA) was
successfully defeated bycitizens in the European Union.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ31
See https://wikileaks.org/tpp/pr
essrelease.html
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ32
Michael Boldin/NullifyNSA,
email to authors, December 4,2013.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ33
Ibid.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ37
For NullifyNSA, see
http://nullifynsa.com/

11/11ÊÊÊÊÊÊ36
Ibid.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ51
Eleanor Saitta, email to authors,
November 4, 2012. See
http://mthvn.tumblr.com/post/38457685064/decentralizatio
ndesignandthecloudÊÊÊÊÊÊ39
Caroline Copley, ÒSwisscombuilds ÔSwiss CloudÕ as spyingstorm rages,Ó Reuters, November
3, 2013.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ52
Ibid.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ53
Ibid.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ40
See
http://www.economist.com/new
s/briefing/21590353-ever-mor
e-wealth-being-parked-fancystorage-facilities-some-customers-they-areÊÊÊÊÊÊ54See
http://arstechnica.com/techpolicy/2012/03/pirate-bay-pl
ans-to-build-aerial-server-drones-with-35-linux-computer /ÊÊÊÊÊÊ41
Jonathan A. Obar, ÒPhantom
Data Sovereigns: Walter
Lippmann, Big Data and the
Fallacy of Personal Data
SovereigntyÓ (March 25, 2013).
See
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/
papers.cfm?abstract_id=22391
88ÊÊÊÊÊÊ55
See
https://torrentfreak.com/wor
lds-first-flying-file-sharin gdrones-in-action-120320/
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ56
Electronic Countermeasures
GLOW Festival video, Liam
Young. See
http://www.tomorrowsthoughts
today.com/

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ42See
https://www.usenix.org/legac
y/events/hotcloud11/tech/fin
al_files/Peterson.pdf
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ43
See the extensive study byAnselm Franke, Eyal Weizman,
and Ines Geisler, ÒIslands: The
Geography of ExtraterritorialityÓ
Archis 6 (Amsterdam: Artimo,
2003): 19Ð21,
http://www.scribd.com/doc/81
773982/Franke-a-Weizman-e-ithe-Geography-of-Extraterrit
orialityÊÊÊÊÊÊ44See
https://www.youtube.com/watc
h?v=snQrNSE1T7Y
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ45
See
http://www.economist.com/nod
e/12762027?story_id=12762027
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ46ÒThe Constitutional Council
hands over the bill for a new
constitution.Ó Stjornlagarad, July29, 2011. See
http://stjornlagarad.is/engl ish/ÊÊÊÊÊÊ47
ÒIcelandÕs media law: ÔTheSwitzerland of bits,ÕÓÊThe
Economist, June 17, 2010. See
http://www.economist.com/blo
gs/babbage/2010/06/icelands_
media_lawÊÊÊÊÊÊ34

12.13.13 / 12:03:43 ESTÊÊÊÊÊÊ49
ÒIceland: A Radical Periphery in
Action. Sm‡ri McCarthy
interviewed by Metahaven,Ó
Volume 32 (2012): 98Ð101.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ50
James Grimmelmann, email toauthors, July 17, 2012.

e-flux journal #50 Ñ 50 december 2013 Ê Metahaven
Captives of the Cloud, Part III: All TomorrowÕs CloudsÊÊÊÊÊÊ23
Julian Assange, ÒThe Banality ofÔDonÕt Be EvilÕ,Ó The New YorkTimes, June 1, 2013.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ48‟Birgitta J—nsd—ttir ÐSamara/Massey Journalism
Lecture.Ó Uploaded on July 21,
2011. See
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyFKP1VXFww

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ57
ÒThe Pirate Bay Ships New
Servers to Mountain Complex,Ó
Torrent Freak, May 16, 2011. See
http://torrentfreak.com/thepirate-bay-ships-new-servers to-mountain-complex-110516/ .
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ58
See
http://mthvn.tumblr.com/post/41818910653/opensourceskyÊÊÊÊÊÊ59
Franke, Weizman, Geisler, ibid.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ60
Pierre Englebert and Denis M.
Tull, ÒPostconflict
Reconstruction in Africa. Flawed
Ideas about Failed States,ÓInternational Security, Vol. 32,
No. 4 (Spring 2008): 106.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ61
James Grimmelmann, email toauthors, July 17, 2012.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ62
Ozong Agborsangaya-Fiteu,ÒAnother failed state?
Cameroon's descent,ÓInternational Herald Tribune,
April 10, 2008. See
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/opinion/10iht-edcamero
on.1.11865189.html?_r=0ÊÊÊÊÊÊ63
Andy Greenberg, ÒCameroon's

Cybercrime Boom,Ó Forbes.com,
December 2, 2009. See
http://www.forbes.com/2009/1
2/01/cybercrime-mcafee-spywa
re-technology-cio-network-ca
meroon.html
ÊÊÊÊÊÊ64
James Grimmelmann, email toauthors, July 20, 2012.