As we surf the net we are under the watch of a big brother. But we can hide from these piping Toms using what is called obfuscation. Obfuscation is a deliberate addition of misleading, confusing or ambiguous information to interfere with surveillance and data collection. ‘Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest? What does he do if there is no forest ? He grows a forest to hide it in’ says G. K Chesterton. Obfuscation is growing a forest to hide a leaf. Obfuscation serves our privacy interests.
Think of a similar cars on the road and a VIP is in one of them. This is a simple mode of obfuscation. Even the data that is allegedly given to Rahul Gandhi by the election commission of India might qualify to be obfuscatory. The election commission seems to have not given machine readable voters lists to deliberately make the extraction of patterns of ‘vote chori’ within it more difficult. It is a strategy of scattering chaff or hiding a needle in a heap of pins.
We have also twitter or X bots. They troll people and fill the platform with noise. They can also be used to drown information that is deemed as dangerous so that it cannot be highlighted by the hashtag. This is done by putting gibberish or other information on the same hashtag. This is the manner in which a trending topic is derailed on twitter/ X. Thus, twitter/ X bots can stifle discussions and shift attention. This is obfuscation as a destructive act. What we whish to discuss here is obfuscation as an act of resistance. We have CacheCloak that is used to hide the use of Location-based services (LBS). TrackMeNot is another software that conceals our online activity with imitative signals. It is used to mainly foil profiling of users through their searches. There are several such obfuscation techniques. Even shuffling sim cards can make it difficult for security agencies to track their users.
We are readable, visible and audible on the net . But we can try to keep ourselves away from the pervasive eyes of surveillance. Obfuscation is a way of putting sand in the gears and hide in the crowd of signals . Obfuscation is a strategy of resistance available to ordinary people. It can obstruct data collection , observation and analysis . Our personal data is collected when we are not aware. There is a asymmetry of power operating in the condition of life that we are living. We are faced with the unknowable unknowns and we cannot anticipate how our private data will be use against us or others. But opting out of this asymmetrical power relation is unreasonable. We seem to be living in a panopticon (total surveillance). Hence, obfuscation becomes one important tactic to protect our privacy. Obfuscation , therefore , is a privacy practice that is available to people who are not able to deploy optimally configured privacy-protection tools because they are on the weaker side of the information-power relation.
Obfuscation is not as strong as cryptography. Cryptography offers precise degree of security cover and can be measured accurately. With obfuscation such a degree of precision is not possible. It is contingent and is shaped by the problems we seek to address and adversaries we wish to foil or delay. But it is characterized by a simple underlying circumstance: not being able to refuse or deny observation , we create many plausible , ambiguous, misleading signals within which the information that we want to conceal is lost. We can use obfuscation when it is impossible to be invisible. Obfuscation is not just a tool taken up by the weak or those who on the wrong end of asymmetrical power relations. It is also used by the powerful. The data of the voter list handed over to Rahul Gandhi is one instance of how the powerful use obfuscation to avoid scrutiny. But obfuscation is largely hailed as the weapon of the weak.
Obfuscation techniques are adversarial and use dissimulation and misdirection. Hence, the ethics of the use of obfuscation becomes an important issue for our consideration. The use of obfuscation because it works is not enough justification for its use. The use of obfuscation has to be compatible with the political values of the society in which one lives. Obfuscation is power to the weak. It redistributes power to the weak and when used by the weak it is legitimate.
It is impossible to avoid the charges of dishonesty when one uses obfuscation. But one can argue that it is a form of mental restriction or dissimulation and at best a lesser evil that is employed guard oneself (self-defence) against a greater evil. Only under circumstances when obfuscation becomes a tool of resistance against exploitation and coercion that one may resort to obfuscation.
Some say that obfuscation is wasteful. It distracts and misguides and wastes time and other resources. There is as thin line between use and waste. Again it is also the question of ‘for whom’ it is use or waste. For the weak it is always an use and not waste. Others might accuse the obfuscators of free riding on services and not paying back. There is no free coffee. But when one is deceived that the coffee is free by the giver who then get his/her pound of flesh that is then used to manipulate decisions of the users , it is important to resist manipulation. Obfuscation is resisting manipulative use of data by obscuring its collection. Obfuscation pollutes data and analysis and its use is made difficult. Data integrity is justified only when its use is emancipative for the humans and our environment.
Obfuscation is a privacy practice and individuals have right over their intimate data and therefore they can use the practice. Obfuscation is a subversion of the data practices of the rich and the powerful by the weak and the poor. Obfuscation is a rebellion. It is way of becoming an anti-Oedipus or anti-Oculus or refusal to be an assemblage by becoming a disassemblage. It is profoundly political and disrupts the economic and the political craft of the rich and powerful.
