Just over three months ago, the collective outrage of millions of internet users over SOPA and PIPA was brought to bear on Congress thanks to the internet “Blackout” of January 18, 2012. The protest managed to kill the bills’ shot as passing for the time being, but they failed to stem the growing trend of legislation aimed at increasing government control of the internet. If this pattern continues, more and more digital activists think we’re going to need a plan to protect the “open web” from state surveillance and censorship.

Last year, a 17-year-old High School student from Vermont named Chris Bresee began work on a formal Darknet Plan, a project with the goal of creating a global internet-like ‘meshnet’ of individual users built around an open peer-to-peer architecture. Under this network, users would connect to and access content through one another as opposed to a central internet service provider, allowing them to encrypt data and anonymously re-rout it to avoid surveillance. The admittedly slightly convoluted diagram below shows an example of how one such system, Tor (short for The Onion Router), uses similar anonymizing techniques to protect user privacy:

By relying on P2P connections, meshnets may one day evade the need for an ISP to connect users to the internet, but for the time being, their application is still rather limited. This map was created to connect users for a planned future user-run wireless meshnet, and while it still clearly has a ways to go, as consumer wireless technology becomes cheaper and more effective, decentralized networks like this will become more viable. These networks have grown in popularity among residents under authoritarian regimes for their ability to thwart government monitoring; Iran, for example, is second only to the United States in number of Tor users. Though American censorship hasn’t yet come close to the scope or severity of the Islamic Republic’s, the Darknet’s architects don’t want to wait for it to become necessary.

Hacker Jeff Moss explained that “the more government tries to regulate, the more people will try to build an Internet that is uncensorable and unfilterable and unblockable.” Though these networks are unquestionably slower, less reliable and more dangerous than their surface-level counterparts, they’re likely to keep growing  as the combined interests of giant telecom companies and intellectual property owners coalesce into industry-wide agreements which stand to censor vast and popular portions of the internet. Free information activists hope that even if these measures go through, the popular content they try to suppress will simply change and move through new media like meshnets, just as it always has.

Earlier today, the Obama Administration levied new sanctions against Iran and Syria meant to curtail their ability to monitor activists online. The President said “these technologies should be in place to empower citizens, not to repress them,” which is pretty hard to disagree with, but it raises questions about whether this move might be a bit hypocritical. Obviously, American attempts to enforce copyright more aggressively or gather data for law enforcement aren’t on par with, say, Iran’s creation of the (not-at-all-hubristically named) “Supreme Council of Cyberspace” to push political and social censorship online. But at the same time, American authorities have been guilty of some of the same offenses as these regimes, such as subpoenaing data gathered through social media to use as evidence against nonviolent political activists.

Then again, maybe even this new medium isn’t safe. In 2010, it was revealed that Wikileaks – the archetypical anti-web-censorship paragon – had gotten its start when a hacker who ran an “exit node” on Tor intercepted and monitored intelligence communications being routed through his node. The documents he obtained would prove to be one of Wikileaks’ first big breaks and help establish it as a major player in the global battle over free information. It’s ironic that the same activists who helped garner support for a surveillance-free web would so readily use information gained through the same methods they’re fighting, but it also demonstrates an important lesson about how information works online: whether you’re reading personal emails, news stories or sensitive intelligence, it’s always sent via someone else. It’s inevitable that those who handle our personal information in the digital world will have the ability to invade our privacy- what matters is whether we trust them not to.

This morning, Professor Farrar suggested to her class of Highest Monkeys that they check out a WSJ column that mentioned Yale students and journalism (Crovitz’s Before ‘Watergate’ Could be Google). I woke up to her e-mail and immediately clicked her link, only to find myself unable to access the article. It was behind the WSJ’s annoying and complicated paywall. Just a few weeks back, when the class met with Alan Murray, Deputy Managing Editor and Executive Editor Online of the WSJ, he explained that their paywall was set up on a case by case, or article by article basis. If they think people would be willing to pay for it, they put it behind a paywall. I for one am frustrated with the inconstancy and today, while trying to find this article elsewhere on the web and utterly failing, decided it was time I was going to subscribe to the WSJ.

A few things happened on my way to subscription. I at first just clicked the link at the bottom of the stub article, which gave me two options: print+digital for $4.99 a week, or just digital for $3.99. The print+digital component had a SAVE OVER 50% and a BEST OFFER! sticker that made it look almost a little tacky, but like a good deal. Either way, I decided to go with the Digital subscription because I knew I wouldn’t be reading the print version either way. I was just about ready to subscribe when I noticed they would charge me on a month by month basis. Since I’ll be moving back to Brazil at the end of May and will most likely be closing my American bank account, I decided I wouldn’t want to subscribe now only to have to cancel later and tried to do a one time payment thing. After much googling, WSJ told me that the only way to do a one time payment would be if I also got the print version for $4.99 instead of $3.99. Frustrated, I was ready to give up on the subscription and the Crovitz article.

And then…. I saw a tiny little button at the top of the page. It was actually so so tiny that I had to zoom in on my computer screen to be able to read it correctly. The button said: Students click here and ta-da! It was magical! The WSJ has a student price, a very well-hidden student offer, which allows you to subscribe to the WSJ for 75% off and pay $29.95 for fifteen weeks of the paper. This is in fact a pretty good offer. It gives students the print paper (which I admittedly don’t need or want, but there was no option), and digital and the mobile subscriptions for $29.95 when it would cost $75.00 for the same products at the first time subscriber saver option, their second cheapest offer. However, as I was getting ready to subscribe, something caught my eye on the corner of the screen:

Was the WSJ honestly telling me this? Was I really going to be smarter, improve my GPA and be 140% (is this even a true percentage?) more likely to start a full-time job upon graduation? For starters I thought the statistics were complete and utter bogus. How did they even measure this? Why couldn’t I click through to a survey or something to understand how they came up with these numbers? But even if the numbers turned out to be true, by some survey they conducted or another, has anyone ever talked to them about dependence and correlation? It could simply be that students who read the WSJ are more likely to want to work in finance and there is a higher hiring rate for these jobs. It could also be that WSJ subscribers are more likely to be Economics majors and there is a higher grading curve in these classes. My point is…. these were some bogus statistics and I was a little disturbed about how they were thrown at me as if they were factual.

Undeterred however, I subscribed. I thought the deal was too sweet to let go and I’m only a student for one more month, so I figured I needed to use it.  I think a subscription to the WSJ is worth three Gourmet Heaven sandwiches right? I guess we’ll see.

A famous quote which has been attributed to everyone from Albert Einstein to Benjamin Franklin (though it most likely originated from a very different source) defines insanity as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” The maxim has become so thoroughly entrenched in our cultural consciousness that it’s hard to imagine anyone over the age of 6 avoiding having it recited to them at some point in their lives.

And yet it looks like the authors of this WhiteHouse.gov “We the People” petition somehow managed to pull it off.

With the snappy title “Actually take these petitions seriously instead of just using them as an excuse to pretend you are listening,” the petition calls out the Obama Administration for making it “blatantly clear the White House intends to just support its current stances and explain them with responses everyone who has done any research already knows.” Pretty harsh words, but maybe they were well-deserved.

We the People was launched with moderate fanfare in September 2011 with the admirable goal of using the internet to more closely connect people with their government. They promised that any petition which could garner 5,000 signatures within 30 days would receive an official review and response from the White House.

At this point, anyone who’s ever seen the internet could probably tell you what would happen next.

Within a week, 375,000 users registered and created more than 7,800 petitions, 30 of which had already hit the 5,000 signature mark. Swamped with demand, the White House raised the threshold to 25,000 signatures in 30 days, which was pretty reasonable, given that it isn’t particularly hard to find 5,000 people on the internet who agree with something.

The initial slew of petitions included, well, exactly what you’d expect: disclosing the government’s dealings with aliens, investigating the Church of Scientology and, of course, legalizing marijuana. That’s not to say there weren’t also petitions with a better shot at succeeding (some of which actually did prompt policy changes), but you get the idea. While a lot of legitimate concerns were being raised through We the People, by virtue of the fact it was on the internet, much of what resulted ranged from the standard conspiracy fodder about UFOs to the legitimate-but-obviously-quixotic drives for drug law reform.

One of the biggest complaints about the new system wasn’t just that the responses were offering boilerplate, talking-point-like replies the petitioners’ concerns, but that in some cases policymakers weren’t even doing that. Petitions to investigate the MPAA for bribery, free Bradley Manning, prosecute Casey Anthony for perjury and a half-dozen other topics were all met with a simple “no comment” from the White House.

It was this stonewalling which prompted the meta-petition to get the administration to take their own outreach program more seriously, and while frustration with the system was understandable, it also seemed to miss the point. It’s a lot like the problems the President’s campaign is facing with rising public anger over high gas prices: a lot of the time, the American people expect the President to be able to do things which he simply can’t.

Take the examples about the MPAA, Bradley Manning and Casey Anthony. In each of these cases, petitioners were demanding that President Obama direct Federal law enforcement to either initiate or intervene in a criminal investigation/trial, something which the official responses pointed out would be an improper intervention by the President in internal Justice Department matters. Petitions on subjects like marijuana legalization and the Defense of Marriage Act have the same problem: the President can’t just unilaterally decide to change Federal law.

That’s not to let the White House off the hook, though. When confronted with public backlash against their unresponsive responses, they sought to re-establish the public’s confidence through a video with the reassuring yet not-at-all-reassuring title of “We’re Listening. Seriously.”

Maybe the most telling moment comes at the 2:00 mark, where Office of Digital Strategy director Macon Phillips discusses the White House’s responses to petitions, which apparently range from “clear articulations of where we stand” to “requests for further engagement” to “sometimes actually changing policy” [emphasis mostly his]. In the vast majority of cases, any response other than the third one is going to leave petition authors unsatisfied, something which the White House is clearly aware of.

So then what’s the point of We the People, anyway? To me, it seems a lot like any other outlet for internet activism: the vast majority of the time it won’t accomplish anything, but in some cases, maybe even just a few, it will. Sure, it might not be the big (and probably ill-advised) issues like abolishing the TSA that succeed, but those aren’t the only ones out there. Sometimes programs like this have the biggest impact on issues which don’t always dominate the headlines, but can still make a huge difference for people. The President is bound by law, precedent and politics, which means that in most cases petition-signers will come away disappointed, but at the same time you have to ask whether they thought the Patriot Act would really get repealed if enough people on the internet asked nicely.

Maybe the one petition which understood this better than any other was titled “We demand a vapid, condescending, meaningless, politically safe response to this petition.” If nothing else, had it reached the required number of signatures (it didn’t), its creators might have been the only ones guaranteed that their petition would get the response it asked for.