More Awesome Than Money

by Jim Dwyer

  Yet it hardly seemed possible to divorce the practices of governmental and commercial surveillance. In the fall of 2013, Eben Moglen gave four talks on “Snowden and the Future.”

  The government’s ability to conduct wholesale global surveillance was made possible by “the great data-mining industry that has grown up in the United States, to surveil the world for profit, in the last fifteen years,” Moglen said, comparing it with the industrial overreaching that was modifying the planet’s climate. Analogously, the surveillance panopticon “is merely an ecological disaster threatening the survival of democracy.”

  The loss of privacy, Moglen said, was not the interception of a single kind of commerce or instance of communication between two people: “Privacy is an ecological rather than a transactional substance.”

  He cited two changes that had fundamentally altered the integrity of individual identity and privacy: e-mail and social networking: “They offer you free e-mail service, in response to which you let them read all the mail, and that’s that. It’s just a transaction between two parties. They offer you free web hosting for your social communications, in return for watching everybody look at everything.”

  On the notion that people had agreed to the monitoring by their use of the “free” services, he turned to the example of environmental law, which set standards for clean water and air. “You can’t consent to expose your children to unclear or unsafe drinking water in the United States, no matter how much anybody pays you,” he said.

  All the huffing and puffing about the decrepit sense of modesty in young people—“humanity’s overpublishing, that the real problem is the kids are sharing too darn much”—was misdirection, he said. If people were saying too much, then that could be a subject of complaint, but no more than that. “But really what has gone wrong is the destruction of the anonymity of reading, for which nobody has contracted at all,” he said. “The anonymity of reading is the central, fundamental guarantor of freedom of the mind.”

  For the guidance of antiquity, Moglen—lawyer, hacker, and historian—turned to Edward Gibbon’s volumes on the rise and fall of the Roman empire. From Scotland to Syria, the Romans had extended their empire by building roads that were still being used fifteen hundred years later. Down those roads, the emperor marched his armies.

  “But up those roads he gathered his intelligence,” Moglen said. “Augustus invented the posts: first for signals intelligence to move couriers and messages at the fastest possible speeds; and then for human intelligence.”

  With that infrastructure, Moglen said, “the emperor of the Romans made himself the best informed human being in the history of the world. That power eradicated human freedom.”

  There were easy ways to defeat the machinery of mass surveillance in the modern empire, Moglen said—or at least easy enough for those who worked with such technologies. The challenge was to spread it beyond the technical elite. “We must popularize it, make it simple, cheap, and easy—and we must help people put it everywhere,” he said.

  Or as the Diaspora guys had said: they had to make it for normal people.

  —

  Diaspora, inspired by Moglen’s prophetic warnings more than three years before his Snowden lecture, had not penetrated popular culture; it was not a staple of world commerce; it was not both verb and noun, understood across the globe, like Facebook. Yet Diaspora, with its vision of decentralized, private communications centered on protecting the integrity of human connections, remains one of the most active open-source projects in the world. It has had more than fifty-five thousand lines of code, twenty-two revisions, hundreds of contributors over the course of its existence, and seventy-seven of them still regularly contributing code.

  It had not died. It was not vaporware. The four NYU guys had not spent the money on appletinis and hookers. Its imaginative sparks, which could not be tracked completely, had lit up corners of the world far from the third-floor computer club at NYU. Diaspora had become even more necessary than when Dan, Rafi, Ilya, and Max had first been gripped by its possibilities.

  As the project they created in 2010 moved to a foundation in 2013, Max wrote to the community that was going to be running it. “Diaspora is more than just code,” he said. “It’s about a glimmer of hope that a small group of people could actually make a profound change.”

  Or live trying.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Late one night in May 2010, Maxwell Salzberg, Daniel Grippi, and Raphael Sofaer spoke to me on a conference call for a newspaper column about their project. A few months later, I met Ilya Zhitomirskiy. By then, all four had agreed to let me chronicle their work for this book. From the beginning, they endured my presence and ignorance with nothing but generosity. They were idealists and gentlemen. It was a joy getting to know them.

  Yosem Companys worked with them for eighteen months because he believed in their cause. From his records and extensive correspondence, I was able to grasp the turns that the project took, its aims and disappointments. In all our dealings, Yosem has been honest and diligent, a pleasure to learn from and to know.

  Other people deeply involved in Diaspora, Rosanna Yao, Dennis Collinson, Sarah Mei, and Michael Sofaer, were generous in providing context for the events.

  I profited immensely from Eben Moglen’s lectures, as will anyone who searches for them online, and also from meeting with him a number of times during the research for this book.

  Support from the Society for Professional Journalists through the Eugene C. Pulliam Fellowship enabled me, on the eve of the Arab Spring, to travel and meet journalists and activists of many countries. Among them were Walid Al-Saqaf, Houeïa Anouar, Mehdi Saharkhiz, Mohammad al-Abdallah, Chiarnuch Premchaiporn, Sharon Hom, Shivam Vij, and Esraa Rashid.

  For insights and help, I thank Katitza Rodriguez of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Jim Schuyler and Mike Rispoli, and Danny O’Brien, the journalist and civil libertarian.

  I thank, among many who patiently tutored me in the nuts, bolts, and values of the open web, Tantek Celik and Blaine Cook. Also: Chris Messina, Evan Prodromou, Jon Phillips, Henrik Moltke, Mitchell Baker, Mark Surman, John Lilly, and Bill Woodcock. Harry Hamlin and Ian Jacobs, associated with the World Wide Web Consortium, gave me a primer on that organization’s interests. My thanks to Tim Berners-Lee for speaking with me. Also, for inventing the world wide web.

  Evan Korth and Biella Coleman, professors at New York University, who encouraged the explorations of the Diaspora Four and of many other students, helped me understand the spirit at the school when the four young men were students. Thanks also to Fred Benenson, Jamie Wilkinson, and Aditi Rajaram.

  Finn Bruton, a postdoctorate fellow at NYU, first brought the Diaspora project to the attention of Cathy Dwyer, my wife, during a seminar run by Helen Nissenbaum, a leading privacy scholar. From Helen I learned about the tenth-century rabbi who prohibited opening other people’s mail.

  Among those in California who were generous with their time and insights, I thank Mitch Kapor, Randy Komisar, Janice Fraser, Rob Mee, Ian McFarland, and Aza Raskin.

  I was helped by many friends of the four Diaspora principals, including Bobby Fishkin, Elizabeth Stark, Tony Lai, Gardner Bickford, David Kettler, Katie Johnson, Dan Goldenberg, Stephanie Lewkiewicz, Sashy Richmond, Adi Kamdar, Parker Phinney, and S. J. Klein. My thanks also to Carolyn Grippi, Casey Grippi, and Michael Wolf.

  I had vital research help from Arikia Millikan, who spoke with many of Ilya’s friends after his death, and from Lysandra Ohrstrom, who thoroughly briefed me on the ecology of apps and social networks.

  At Viking, I thank Maggie Riggs and Georgia Bodnar, Randee Marullo, Noirin Lucas, John Thomas, Daniel Lagin, Gina S. Anderson, Nancy Sheppard, Carolyn Coleburn, Winnie de Moya and Louise Braverman.

  While this book was being born, I had the support of editors and colleagues at The New York Times, including Susan Edgerley, Joe Sexton, Bill S
chmidt, Phil Corbett, Carolyn Ryan, Wendell Jamieson, Gloria Bell, Noah Cohen, Jill Abramson, Dean Baquet, and Pete Khoury. The writing brothers Dolnick, Sam and Ben, passed along a great physical tool for writers (Scrivener) and my colleague and friend Emily S. Rueb shared an indispensable psychic contrivance (take it bird by bird, per Anne Lamott).

  The enthusiasm and generosity of early readers, James McBride, Ken Auletta, Kevin Baker and Kevin Kelly, were most appreciated.

  Through her dauntless representation of me over the last twenty-five years, Flip Brophy has made it possible for me to write books. My thanks, also, to her assistants, Holly Hillard and Julia Kardon.

  Then there is the book’s editor, Wendy Wolf, a relatively new presence in my life. Smart and painstaking and tactically brutal, she sees far and near, and is all you could ever wish for in an editor. Also, patient. And with bonus wisecracks. Other writers are envious when they hear about her, as well they should be.

  On my way home from a reporting trip for this book, I stopped in Ireland and made my way to a farmhouse in Ower, County Galway, where the Molloy family has been making me welcome all my life.

  Mary G. Murphy and T. J. Reagan fed me and let me hang out with them in San Francisco. Making friends with Mary in high school more than forty years ago turns out to have been a pretty good idea, so far.

  Phil Dwyer, my dad and neighbor, listened to me talk about this book during breakfast at Vicky’s diner and just as he always had, did everything he could to make it possible for me to get to the work I wanted.

  In concrete ways, Cathy, Maura, and Catherine, wife and daughters, opened my eyes to the power of social media. Maura arrived for freshman year at college in 2004, just as a brand new thing called Facebook was being introduced. She and her roommate soon found that they were checking in so obsessively that during exams, they had to change each other’s passwords to avoid temptation. Cathy noticed; she herself was starting work toward her doctorate, and wound up writing her dissertation on privacy management in Facebook and MySpace. At the time, hardly anyone was paying attention to the subject.

  It was Cathy who told me about Diaspora in 2010 and why it mattered. She was right and wise.

  If you are among the many people who helped me with this work but are not mentioned here, please mark the lapse as a failure of wit and order on my part. It is not a shortage of gratitude. Thank you.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  More Awesome Than Money follows the evolution of the Diaspora project between September 2009 and September 2013. I started paying attention in May 2010, first to write a newspaper column about it and then to chronicle its development. I did that primarily by spending time with the four cofounders in California and New York as they worked, played, dreamed, and ate. I witnessed many of the events described here or was in the room for a lot of the conversations reproduced here. But many things I did not see or hear myself. Instead, I was told about them in detail from people who were present. Where important differences in recollections among sources could not be reconciled, the alternative versions are presented. In virtually every case, this account rests on two or more on-the-record sources, including interviews with the four founders, their friends, teachers, and associates, e-mail exchanges, online discussions, and other documentary sources such as contemporaneous notes or Youtube video. The names of the interviewees can be found in the acknowledgments, beginning on page 347. No unnamed sources were used in the making of this book. None of the subjects sought or was offered editorial control of the contents.

  That books are static is intrinsic to their value. Fixing perspective at a given moment makes understanding events and their context a manageable undertaking. This book covers what happened, as best I could figure it out, during four years when dictators were overthrown, revolutions were launched and turned back, companies merged, and whistles blown. No less than our own skin, the membranes of technology and society are dynamic: the configurations of code, law, and businesses evolve by the instant. You never step into the same browser twice.

  NOTES

  EPIGRAPH

  There’s something deeper: Emily Nussbaum, “Defacebook,” New York Magazine, September 26, 2010.

  INTRODUCTION

  “Facebook holds and controls”: Eben Moglen, prepared testimony for Congress, December 2, 2010, http://www.softwarefreedom.org/events/2010/do-not-track/Eben-Moglen-2010-12-2-privacy-testimony.pdf.

  At the headquarters: James Harkin, “The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick,” The Guardian, July 17, 2010, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jul/18/the-facebook-effect-david-kirkpatrick-book-review.

  Atlas Solutions, purchased: Eliza Kern, “Facebook Purchases Microsoft’s Atlas Solutions for Reported $100 Million,” Gigaom, February 28, 2013, http://gigaom.com/2013/02/28/facebook-purchases-microsofts-atlas-solutions-for-reported-100-million/.

  And virtually unknown to users: Edmund Sanders, “AOL Cookies, Web Bugs, to Track Advertising,” Los Angeles Times, October 5, 2001, http://articles.latimes.com/2001/oct/05/business/fi-53680.

  “What They Know”: A comprehensive series on tracking by the Wall Street Journal, accessible online at http://online.wsj.com/public/page/what-they-know-digital-privacy.html.

  In mid-2013: Savik Das, Adam Kramer, “Self Censorship on Facebook,” a paper presented on July 8, 2013, at the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, and posted online at http://sauvik.me/system/papers/pdfs/000/000/004/original/self-censorship_on_facebook_cameraready.pdf?1369713003.

  That means: Jennifer Golbeck, “On Second Thought: Facebook wants to know why you didn’t publish that status update you started writing,” December 13, 2013, Slate. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/12/face book_self_censorship_what_happens_to_the_posts_you_don_t_publish.html.

  Almost everyone on Planet Earth: Eben Moglen, “The Union May It Be Preserved,” a talk given at Columbia University School of Law, November 13, 2013, http://snowdenandthefuture.info/PartIII.html.

  One day in the 1970s: Author’s interview with Doug Engelbart, April 9, 1997.

  A little-celebrated figure: John Markoff, “Computer Visionary Who Invented the Mouse,” New York Times, July 3, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/technology/douglas-c-engelbart-inventor-of-the-computer-mouse-dies-at-88.html?pagewanted=all.

  The cofounder of Apple: Jessica Guynn, “Douglas Engelbart Dies at Age 88; Computer Visionary,” Los Angeles Times, July 3, 2013, http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-douglas-engelbart-20130704,0,1651153.story.

  Writing in the Atlantic: Alexis C. Madrigal, “The Hut Where the Internet Began,” Atlantic, July 7, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/13/07/the-hut-where-the-internet-began/277551/.

  By 2010, in just the two years: Eric Eldon, “New Facebook Statistics Show Big Increase in Content Sharing, Local Business Pages,” Inside Facebook, February 15, 2010, http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/02/15/new-facebook-statistics-show-big-increase-in-content-sharing-local-business-pages/.

  A manager in Facebook’s growth: Andy Johns, “What Are Some Decisions Taken by the ‘Growth Team’ at Facebook that Helped Facebook Reach 500 million users?” Curaqion, October 2012, http://curaqion.com/issue/01/facebook-growth.

  CHAPTER ONE

  a commonplace computer language: http://www.facebook.com/blog/blog.php?post=2356432130.

  10 million websites: http://www.php.net/usage.php.

  two researchers at the University of Texas: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/shmat_oak08netflix.pdf.

  The digital bread crumbs led: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?_r=2&oref=login&pagewanted=all&.

  CHAPTER TWO

  a piece of hardware: From Max, August 8, 2010.

  Ilya was rewarded: Talk by Robert Dorf at Ilya’s memorial service, November 20, 2011.

  In 2013, Makerbot: Ashlee Vance and Joshua Brustein, “MakerBot Sells Out to 3
D Printing’s Old Guard for $403 Million,” Bloomberg Businessweek, June 19, 2013, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-19/makerbot-sells-to-3d-printings-old-guard-for-403m.

  The work of Turing: George Dyson, “An Artificially Created Universe”: The Electronic Computer Project at IAS,” The Institute Letter, The Institute for Advanced Study, Spring 2012, http://www.ias.edu/about/publications/ias-letter/articles/2012-spring/george-dyson-ecp.

  CHAPTER THREE

  They were so obviously struggling: Sarah Perez, “Diaspora Project: Building the Anti-Facebook,” May 5, 2010, ReadWriteWeb, www.readwriteweb.com/archives/diaspora_project_building_the_anti-facebook.php.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Outside, the reaction was brutal: Ryan Singel, “Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative,” Wired, May 7, 2010. http://www.wired.com/business/2010/05/facebook-rogue/.

  Around that time: Michelle Madejski, Maritza L. Johnson, and Steven M. Bellovin. “A Study of Privacy Settings Errors in an Online Social Network,” PerCom Workshops, pp. 340–45. IEEE (2012), https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/fb-violations-sesoc.pdf.

  They were dizzy: Komisar interview with me and his e-mail to Yosem:

  From: Randy Komisar

  Date: Sat, May 8, 2010 at 2:30 PM

  To: Yosem Companys

  Thx

  Friday we all agreed they would come out for the summer and work with us in the incubator.

  Best

  rau

  At midnight, my column was posted: Jim Dwyer, “Four Nerds and a Cry to Arms Against Facebook,” New York Times, May 11, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/nyregion/12about.html?_r=0.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In an interview with Wired: Ryan Singel, “Mark Zuckerberg: I Donated to Open-source Facebook Competitor,” Wired, May 28, 2010, http://www.wired.com/business/2010/05/zuckerberg-interview/all/.