How do fiber optic networks challenge liberty-discipline?
The current configuration of fiber optic networks challenges disciplinary and regulatory power. Telecommunications monopolies, rules, and regulations have been and continue to be revised, many regulatory techniques have been rendered ineffectual, and many new, more invasive techniques are being introduced. The sheer number of websites, the multiple paths, and the rapidity with which sites are altered, built, destroyed and mirrored makes regulation of this new mass medium far more difficult than any other (its closest predecessor is the telephone, which does not broadcast). Unlike the telephone, it does make prosecution easier: if log files have been cached, one can track visits to a certain website or the sending location of emails (and one does not need a warrant in the U.S. or U.K. to access these locations). Prosecution is also easier postevent because by then the search terms are obvious. In addition, the illusion of privacy—the illusion that what one does in front of one’s compute
