Brian Martin - Technology for Nonviolent Struggle

Thomas Icom, “Cellular interception techniques,” 2600 , Vol. 12, No. 1, Spring 1995, pp. 23-27.

Caller number identification also raises issues concerning protection of personal data. Thus, it is possible that there could be friction between priorities on privacy and on nonviolent resistance. For a discussion of potential problems with surveillance in a social defence system, see Brian Martin, “Possible pathologies of future social defence systems,” Pacifica Review, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1995, pp. 61-68.

On the early history of the British post office, including attempts to shut down alternative posts, see Herbert Joyce, The History of the Post Office from its Establishment down to 1836 (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1893). On postal worker struggles in Britain, see H. G. Swift, A History of Postal Agitation from Fifty Years Ago till the Present Day (London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1900). For a comprehensive history of disputes in the US Congress over what things should be allowed to be mailed, censorship and wartime controls, see Dorothy Ganfield Fowler, Unmailable: Congress and the Post Office (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1977). On government attempts to monopolise the post, see Carl Watner, “’Plunderers of the public revenue’: voluntaryism and the mails,” The Voluntaryist , No. 76, October 1995, pp. 1-7. A pilot study of the post in relation to social defence is reported in Alison Rawling, Lisa Schofield, Terry Darling and Brian Martin, “The Australian Post Office and social defence,” Nonviolence Today , No. 14, April/May 1990, pp. 6-8.

See, among others, Ann Cavoukian and Don Tapscott, Who Knows: Safeguarding Your Privacy in a Networked World (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997); Simon Davies, Monitor: Extinguishing Privacy on the Information Superhighway (Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 1996); David H. Flaherty, Protecting Privacy in Surveillance Societies: The Federal Republic of Germany, Sweden, France, Canada, and the United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989); Oscar H. Gandy, Jr., The Panoptic Sort: A Political Economy of Personal Information (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993); Simson Garfinkel, Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly & Associates, 2000); David Lyon, The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994); Gary T. Marx, Undercover: Police Surveillance in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).

There is a vast body of writing about the net. Useful treatments of net culture include Wendy M. Grossman, Net.wars (New York: New York University Press, 1997); Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community: Finding Connection in a Computerized World (London: Secker and Warburg, 1994).

David S. Bennahum, “The Internet revolution,” Wired, Vol. 5, No. 4, April 1997, pp. 122-129 and 168-173.

Bob Travica and Matthew Hogan, “Computer networks in the x-USSR: technology, uses and social effects,” in Debora Shaw (ed.), ASIS ’92: Proceedings of the 55th ASIS Annual Meeting, Vol. 29 (Medford, NJ: Learned Information, 1992), pp. 120-135.

On hacking see the magazine 2600 and The Knightmare, Secrets of a Super Hacker (Port Townsend, WA: Loompanics, 1994).

For the dabate over government-sponsored encryption, see Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau, Privaacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998) and Lance J. Hoffman (ed.), Building in Big Brother: The Cryptographic Policy Debate (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1995).

See for example Simson Garfinkel, PGP: Pretty Good Privacy (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly & Associates, 1995).

Richard B. Gregg, The Power of Nonviolence (New York: Schocken Books, 1966); Krishnalal Shridharani, War without Violence: A Study of Gandhi’s Method and its Accomplishments (London: Victor Gollancz, 1939).

M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography or the Story of my Experiments with Truth (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1927).

According to a constructivist perspective, “truth” is always based on human interests rather than objective reality, and hence is more problematical than Gandhi believed. But for this outline of his ideas, “truth” is used without quotes.

See V. V. Ramana Murti, “Buber’s dialogue and Gandhi’s satyagraha,” Journal of the History of Ideas , Vol. 29, No. 4, 1968, pp. 605-613. I thank Tom Weber for pointing out this reference.

Robert A. Bode, “Gandhi’s theory of nonviolent communication,” Gandhi Marg, Vol. 16, No. 1, April-June 1994, pp. 5-30.

Note that feminists have criticised the Gandhian emphasis on suffering by nonviolent activists.

Thomas Weber, “’The marchers simply walked forward until struck down’: nonviolent suffering and conversion,” Peace & Change , Vol. 18, No. 3, 1993, pp. 267-289.

Johan Galtung, Nonviolence and Israel/Palestine (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Institute for Peace, 1989).

Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1. Reason and the Rationalization of Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984); Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2. Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987).

James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990).

In the appendix, this terminology is explained in the context of theories of technology.

On energy vulnerability see Wilson Clark and Jake Page, Energy, Vulnerability, and War: Alternatives for America . New York: Norton, 1981; Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security . Boston: Brick House, 1982; James L. Plummer, ed., Energy Vulnerability . Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1982.

See Colin Kearton and Brian Martin, “Technological vulnerability: a neglected area in policy-making”, Prometheus , vol. 7, no. 1, June 1989, pp. 49-60; Peter G. Neumann, Computer-Related Risks (New York: ACM Press, 1995).

Brian Martin, “Technological vulnerability,” Technology in Society, Vol. 12, No. 4, 1996, pp. 511-523.

Geoff Simons, The Scourging of Iraq: Sanctions, Law and Natural Justice (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998, 2nd ed.); Nikki van der Gaag (ed.), “Iraq: What United Nations sanctions have done” (theme issue), New Internationalist, No. 316, September 1999.

David Cortright and George A. Lopez (eds.), Economic Sanctions: Panacea or Peacemaking in a Post-Cold War World? (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995).

The contrast between UN inaction over Indonesia’s invasion and occupation and UN-sponsored action over Iraq’s invasion and occupation is striking.