The wager: capitalism vs state power

The bet was against my partner, and the wager was made – not unusually, after a heated debate as we headed home in our campervan after a long and muddy weekend of hillwalking in the Scottish highlands.

My partner is a devoted Apple user, and his view was that Apple’s brand strategy and USP is built on their unique approach to protecting the data privacy of consumers – and that global market forces (that USP) would be sufficient to incentivise Apple to never roll back on their commitment to exclusively design products that can only be unlocked by the data owner.

It won’t surprise you all to know that I am more cautious, and pessimistic, about whether market forces alone will hold any company (or actor) to incentivise forever a rights affirming position, when it sits so squarely against state interest.

So offered a bet: for the next 30 years, Apple would not lower the digital privacy protections that it offered users, in response to any state government demands.

The stakes were a little reckless, but I felt confident.

My partner was confident, too – this being in 2021, and what feels like a very different time.

Who wins?

This week, Apple has announced that it is removing access to its highest level of data security for from consumers in the UK. Specifically, they are pulling access to Advanced Data Encryption for users not yet enrolled, and will turn off this function in the UK for users who are currently enrolled, at some point in the future.

This is in response to a demand from the UK Home Office for access to Apple users’ encrypted data under the UK Investigatory Powers Act in January 2025.

This is troubling, and whilst my partner (when he gets around to reading this article) will probably start with a long list of reasons why he has not yet lost this bet… my point is, even if he doesn’t concede now, we must both agree that the odds have significantly shifted in my favour, and at a minimum, this is a significant first step down the road of Apple eventually capitulating to state interests.

Why?

Because the next step for the UK Government is to find a very compelling “bad facts” case – where the public will feel obliged to agree that breach of an individual’s data privacy rights might be warranted – and then serve Apple with a demand to provide access to this person’s data.

Even if Apple cannot comply – even if, at that time, it is still technologically incapable of doing so – the fall out will build public and political pressure on the company to change how it operates. That’s the play; this is how states exercise power, and people lose rights.

A closer look at: UK media coverage

When I had a closer look at the UK Investigatory Powers Act, I was surprised at how wide ranging the powers are, and how little I knew about the consequences.

This is what relatively amateur observers, like me, have to navigate: here is GCHQ’s explanation of what the Act does, and here is a response from consumer advocates Open Rights Group.

There’s a lot to fill in between the two, and I wonder if we have access to enough easy to digest and independent information to do that work as informed citizens?

I also found it interesting that the BBC coverage of this issue sought to reassure readers:

“It’s also important to note that the government notice does not mean the authorities are suddenly going to start combing through everybody’s data.

It is believed that the government would want to access this data if there were a risk to national security – in other words, it would be targeting an individual, rather than using it for mass surveillance.

Authorities would still have to follow a legal process, have a good reason and request permission for a specific account in order to access data – just as they do now with unencrypted data.”

I’m not sure why a news editor felt it was important to reassure us that the UK Government would or would not do something that they clearly have the power to do, but …just to be clear, the “legal process” for issuing a notice under the Act does not require judicial authorisation. That means, no judge has to agree with a government decision that granting access to your data is in the state’s interest.

This is – not a legal process; this is the government marking its own homework.

Authoritarianism, beyond politics

My last point, is about the enduring risk that governments with power will seek to retain and exercise power.

It was a Conservative-led government that built the framework for dismantling our digital privacy rights.

But it was a Labour-led government that actually took the first steps, under the new legislation, to remove those rights.

Reflections, and what next?

So, I realise this may have been a bit of a hard hitting article for what I hope is a sunny and pleasant Friday for everyone reading today.

So as not to leave you down, I will say that I may not, in fact, have won my wager – but having made this bet (however reckless and ill-informed) has certainly sharpened my interest in a subject that is actually very important to all of us.

And maybe that is a good lesson to take away – that we cannot ever know and understand all the important things that influence the world around us, but:

we can stay open and curious to learning from others

we can make an effort to inform ourselves about issues that are new and unfamiliar to us

and we can stay committed to thinking critically about what we hear, and most of all, about continuously re-examining our own views

Thanks again for reading this week. I would love to hear your thoughts on the UK’s most recent moves around data privacy rights as well as welcome any additional reading you think I should be doing! And also, interested – if you’re happy to share – to hear if there are issues adjacent to your work or thinking that you’ve resolved to learn more about this year.

First published on LinkedIn on 28 February 2025:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-digital-privacy-should-matter-you-jen-ang-v0l0e

For a start, this week, we celebrated the launch of a new Roma Cultural Centre in Govanhill, Glasgow – my work with the brilliant Romano Lav team has included delivering a session with their Community Catalysts on the law as oppression or liberation, grounded in principles of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Earlier in the week, I also attended a showcase event featuring the work of law students in the University of Glasgow School of Law Glasgow Open (GO) Justice programme, and this put me in mind of the powerful connection between learning and teaching, even for students who are still themselves figuring out their relationship to the law and legal practice.

Since 2007, I have taught law at the The Open University alongside legal practice for most of my professional career. I know why I continue to teach, but I honestly cannot remember the reasons I first applied for the role. Why, at the age of 29 and many months’ pregnant – I thought adding a second part-time gig to my already demanding full-time job, just ahead of discovering for the first time what it was to be a parent – was going to be a great idea.

Teaching as an inheritance

I knew about teaching as a career option because my father was a teacher before me. He taught at a community agricultural college for about 10 years, while raising me and also trying to finish his PhD in the evenings and weekends. My mother was also a college librarian. As they did not have close family nearby, I spent many school nights, sat in the back row of my father’s evening World Civilisation lectures, or falling asleep in piles of unshelved books in the children’s section of the college library.

I knew then that my father taught a required course (history) to students who mostly did not choose to learn that material – they were attending college mainly to gain certificates in agriculture, or animal husbandry, or primary education, perhaps.

I remember the tactics my father used to make his lectures memorable, and worth attending – humour, surprise and relatability. He spoke plainly, he played the clown – and his students laughed, and learned.

The educator has the duty of not being neutral, Paulo Freire

My father was a historian and he taught me this one thing early in life: there is no neutral interpretation of history. History is written by the winners. He referred me to a book called The Whig Interpretation of History which I have never read. Now, many decades later, I reflect this is quite an odd thing to say to your seven-year-old child… I just might read that book.

Teaching as an education

Since picking up that job at the OU, I have never looked back.

My students were keen, hard-working, grateful for the opportunity of an education and – especially in the early years – exceptionally kind and forgiving of my shortcomings as a tutor.

I did a lot of trying, and failing, in the first decade – and in putting in that time, I grew wiser and more confident about what could work, less afraid to try new things in the classroom too.

My students became the reason I continued to teach.

Whoever teaches, learns in the act of teaching; and whoever learns, teaches in the act of learning, Paolo Freire

Teaching is, for me, the best way to learn. You test your own understanding when you try to communicate your ideas with others. You hold yourself vulnerable to critical feedback and to the simplest questions (which are usually the hardest).

And if you ask students the right questions, you broaden your own experiences of the world, expanding your horizons and connections.

Teaching as a revolutionary act

For many years, people have spoken to me about this book: Pedagogy of the Oppressed written by Paolo Freire, a Brazilian educator in 1967/68. He began working with illiterate peasants in 1947 in the NE of Brazil and, two decades later, had organised a popular movement to eradicate illiteracy.

But I have never read the book in its entirety, and that is what I’ve set out to do this month.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far

• Traditional education adopts a “banking” approach – teachers have a fixed amount of knowledge that they need to transmit to students, who must be filled up, or must “bank” this knowledge. If they are able to reproduce what they have banked, they have demonstrated understanding and the process is a success.
• This process is itself the product of systems that create oppression and therefore reinforces the oppression of those who are worst off in our societies. We cannot expect people who benefit from exploiting others to design systems that liberate the people they exploit.
• If educators are truly committed to uplifting people’s lives through education, we need to change and challenge the system – what we teach, where we teach, how we teach

If the structure does not permit dialogue, the structure must be changed, Paolo Freire

And finally, if we do this thing – if we challenge and question and transform how we teach… we are committing a revolutionary act.

That is the act of dismantling systems of oppression – and this work can be done both from the outside (in communities that are normally shut out from traditional education) and from the inside (in educational settings like universities that are traditionally allies of the establishment).

Concluding thoughts

I am not finished with the book yet, and to be honest it is hard going!

I would really welcome suggestions about other media for understanding Paolo Freire’s work (video, lectures, comics or animation) that might be more accessible for grasping the best of his ideas. I would share these, if I knew what they were – so please do write back if you have something to recommend.

Thanks again for reading and thanks also to all of you out there, who spend even a little bit of your time, sharing your knowledge and life experience with others

Education is an act of love; and love is an act of courage, Paolo Freire

First published on LinkedIn on 7 June 2024:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/teaching-revolutionary-act-jen-ang-cxdve/