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David Brin on Privacy
David Brin is interviewed and provides some strong words on modern conceptions of privacy and why they're off-base. Brin asserts - and argues well - that a land with little privacy is a freer land.
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One cannot forget that the Right to Privacy is not a constitutional right. Nowhere in the Constitution does it state that American citizens have a right to privacy.
Bringing irony to the Slash-masses
In Roe v Wade, the Justices fabricated a Constitutional Right to Privacy out of vapors, penumbras, and other mysterious gasses.
Who needs the amendment process when the Justices can "infer" anything they want out of the actual document?
This Court ruling was made on imagination and inference, not the actual document itself.
There is no constitutional right to privacy, of course. Maybe there should be. However, it should be added through the amendment process, rather than through the abuse of power of supreme court justices who push the edge with "if we say it is in the constitution, it is".
Look for yourself.
So if living one's life in full view is such a great thing, why do the powerful arrange things so that they (and their families) don't?
sPh
I bought Brin's book (ISBN: 0738201448) when it came out in '99. I was struck with his sense that surveilance in the larger sense was technologically inevitable- not only cameras, but every expenditure, even RF tags on your money . He argued that it was impossible to supress this capability; that doing so would simply give those in power the ability to take unfair advantage; so we should make everything completely transparent. If we all have the legal right to spy on each other, the little guy can't be sanctioned for finding out what the bigs guys are up to - kind of a pessimists take on "information wants to be free".
Maybe I'm failing to adapt to change, but the prospect of what he proposes makes me really uncomfortable and could lead to a level of social conformity that most of us would find stiffing. Also, I don't know that I have that little faith in our (western civilization's - I'm Canadian) ability to govern our behaviour and that of our institutions.
The book is worth a read - I may just haul it out and take another look.
The rewards for though who watch us through the telescreens to exceed their power will always outweigh our capacity to effectively police them.
Individuals, institutions and governments don't want to be embarrassed and would much rather sweep transgressions under the carpet than tackle them openly. A prime example is the Australian govt's response to revelations that our intelligence agencies spied on Australian citizens - i doubt that this will ever be properly investigated. It is all too easy for the watchers to invoke the specter of "national security" to scuttle any public investigation.
David is dead on.
/Dread
"Information wants to be free"
Apply this to information about YOU.
My point is, most of our actions are done in the public sphere, and can be observed by ANY casual observer. In theory, what anyone does in a public space, cannot be private by definition. Is it bad that people track you for your personal buying habits?
I dont think so, because I _could_ have spotted you buying it anyway.
Now, the problem is in WHO can see that data. F.E. if the governement or anyone really, has data on me, Id sure want to know what. So I should be granted access to that data. If only to correct errors made.
"Information is power"
It sure is. Just ask the MPAA.
Now who should have this power? Everyone. That way we can garantee supervising the supervisors.
So.. Privacy doesnt really exists, but that does not scare me. Information exists, and what scares me if the powers have infomation, that the public has no access too. That way the balance is off.
Gr
I won't insult intelligence.
The main idea is defining a problem in such a way you can sneak in something so odious, it normally wouldn't pass, but, "What are you, some kind of terrorist?!" rings Ashcroft.
Lemme see, in order to preserve freedom, we must suspend it? And, "The terrorists hate our freedom." So what do we do? We let our politicos take it freely(?).
I see ratcheting like this all the time(WI). Tuition increases side by side with huge prison budgets make for a totally numb dumb society. You know the former Gov. as Health Secretary, and he started the prison craze. We, (Milwaukee), are the worlds #1 FSCKING EXPORTER OF PRISONERS! NOT CHINA, NOT RUSSIA, HERE! To the tune of 5,000+ inmates sent out of state.
K, you are asking yourself, "What has this to do with the topic?" This-If you subsidize(sp?) prisons, get more prisons, less student grants-loans, fewer educated adults. The slingo around here is "The Brain Drain." Graduates leave in droves, and don't contribute back to the local system.
It all starts with the politicians, make no doubt, he's right. They are entrusted with assuring domestic tranquility, but end up bleeding taxes on military/police/prison budgets. If we challenge these priorities, we are labeled liberals.
The Big Brother of 1984 was supposed to be a benevolent government, but if you disagreed with it, you (read the book, this ain't cliff notes!)
My point is he didn't extend the consequences and causes far enough, but I agree with what is stated.
I'm convinced if they view liberty and freedoms as the priority, vs. we are tough on criminals/terrorists/Govt. of choice, we would hear different rhetoric.
I think it comes down to control. People in prison are definately under control, but I haven't figured out how paranoia driving graduates out solves anything either, but it's definately on state agenda.
This mind intentionally left blank.
The KKK a bunch of sheetheads? You decide!
That is something that far too few people that post to sites like slashdot and kuro5hin understand.
Best Slashdot Co
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. "
-Benjamin Franklin
Of Cousres this will be modded down But Please read and Mod me up...
First thing, I am a "geek" not an english major so spelling, puncuatin etc is not my strong suit(Flame Away)
I Post as a Anonymous Coward as I have a family, a job, and a life to protect
I have watched things change in this country over my lifetime (I am 32) We have lost more rights since 1980 then in the whole history of the USA.
I left the us army after I went to Riot control school that was amied at the US population (yet accoring to the consitution Federal soldiers cannot be used in law enforment but this is now standard practice).
How many remember the "temporary" secuirty messure at the airports during the Gulf War? 11 + years later they are still in place, and accepted by everyone who travels yet they did not protect us on Sept 11. Where do thes records of ID checks go? Who has access to a person flight records?
Lets look at the excuses used over the last 30 years to squish peoples privacy....
#1 the war on drugs
#2 Child porn on the Net
#3 Terroist Actions (both abroad and domestic)
#4 Tax evasion
#5 Saftey of Children
these are just a few of hundreds.
Yet Most of the times these "threats" have been over sensulized in the Media to scare people (retractions in newspapers being very small and in weird locations (never the same twice.
I did not get a social secuirty number till I was twelve, but when my son was born 3 years ago I was instucted by hospital staff before we left the hospital he must have one by age 1 or we could got to jail for violating a federal law.
What number do you give the DMV? SSN
Your bank? SSN
Your landlord? SSN
Your employer? SSN
Get stopped by a cop and have no id? SSN
Medical Care? SSN
These are just a few of the uses of a SSN in this country, yet the law that created them says they are to be used by the Social Security Adminstration ONLY any other use is a Violation of the law yet if you refuse (all these papers say it is Voluntary) you cant get a bank account, a loan, a drivers lienses, or a rental/purchased home.
Slowy but surely freedom is dieing.
Did you know that the current Generation is the First one in the history of the USA where the standard of living has GONE DOWN? The middle class is dissapering (20% of the population pays 80% of the taxes)and each year there are more on more poor, less middle class, yet the rich stay rich, and concentrate power and money in just a few familys.
Look at Current Laws Being passed... Where does the DMCA and that other abortion UCITA protect the person and not the "Coporate State?"
Look at a School text book form 30 years ago and look at one from today BIG pictures, little text today (few pictures Lots of text 30 years ago) Look at what gets left out of the avarage history book? Very Important stuff Like What is the federal reserve board? Is it part of the goverment? When was it created? there is so much that is left out now it scares me.
What do I see in the future?
The Coporate State (FM Busby Zelde Mtana Series)
wage slaves and people on welfare
Rich Oligarchs running the country and the people
a small tech class in the middle who makes it all work that are in constant fear of being pushed into the Masses of Welfare and Wage slaves.
A few outlaws who Read, comunicate, and hope for freedom.
At times I wonder at what kind of world my children will have and what I see scares me Yet I must Hope that it will change Or it probably would have been better that my children would have never been born.
Is available online here. Please, please, please read it... It articulates in clear and easy to understand terms Brin's arguments. It is also, like all Brin books, very well written.
Brin writes:
> Biometric-based I.D. cards for everybody are coming.
> Squint, look ahead 50 years and honestly tell me you
> can envision a world where such things are not simply
> assumed.
I think what bothered me most about the article was this particular foregone conclusion about the future. I hate to disappoint Brin, but I'm not so imaginatively myopic that his is the only future I can see.
> The important factor is not whether such cards exist,
> but whether they are a tool for robbing us of things
> we want and need.
This seems to imply that what we really want or need could be a _lack_ of such intrusive measures in our lives. There comes a point where if you're being challenged to validate your identity at every turn, we begin to adopt a mentality of "That which is not expressly permitted is automatically forbidden."
This flies in the face of the principles on which this nation was founded. As others have pointed out, read through the first ten ammendments (Bill of Rights) to the U.S. Constitution. Disregard what the courts have done to this fine set of principles in the last hundred years, and just read it.
If that doesn't say, "Anything not expressly forbidden is permitted, oh and by the way, these are limits that the powers can be can place on those 'forbiddens'" then I don't know what does.
Quite simply, the society that Brin sees us moving more towards is unamerican in its principles. If our government and society are to collapse and fail eventually, then let it do so because of a failure of the principles that it was founded on, not because of our collective unwillingness to stick to those principles.
Our ( America's) new gov't was framed in the idea that gov't can't be perfect, and that if it gets really screwed up, citizens should have the power to revolt, and to create a new gov't. This, I believe, is the root behind the 2nd amendment. Regular common people, it was written, should have the right to bear arms, form up a non-state controlled militia, and fight for their rights if they need to. ( Of course they never dreamed how of the twisted ways liberals would try to interpret the second amendment. If only they would have been a little more specific.)
I agree with the author. We SHOULD be fighting intensely for rigorous oversight of the Gov't in the cases where we can't stop them from taking our freedoms.. But we should NOT embrace the erosion of our freedom. Freedom is not just "freedom from attack by foreign bad people." Freedom is also "freedom from your own gov't." As we let the gov't be more in control, and in the know regarding each of our lives, we really are setting ourselves up to be citizens of the Big Brother country of the future, where it will be totally impossible for people to revolt if the USA runs astray.
Last year at an Apache Conference I heard David Brin talk. Really interesting! And then I bought his book at the conference. He has a lot to say and definitely worth the read.
The problems that he outlines are very legit and there is only his solution as a way out. For example he says secrecy laws like in Europe are DUMB. Living in Europe I thought they were good, but he put in further terms.
Data is immortal. Hence with data secrecy laws what ends up happening is some people have power and others do not. And having run conferences and mailing lists that is the exact problem. Once I ok the use of my data I cannot control it. For example lets say I want a mortgage. In Europe I sign a sheet saying yes the bank has the right to look at all of my data. But the question what data will the bank look at? And how will they use that data? The secrecy laws do not address that issue. That is the crux of the problem with or without data secrecy laws. I have no idea how the data is being used.
David Brin argues you can give out all the data you want, but you have control on what is being seen and manipulated.
My favourite part of his book is the following (it starts off with that). We have privacy in public. For example lets say that you go to lunch with people. Do other people listen in on your conversation? No because people mind their own business. The reason is because people can see when you are not minding your own business. And that is the crux of his argument regarding privacy laws. We cannot tell companies or governments to mind their own business!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Yesterday, on Ash Wednesday, I went up to my priest to get the ashes on my head. I was first in line. I yelled out "First Post!" The other people came and looked at me. The preist was clogged up wtih people who wanted to get ashes on their head. "Slashdotted already!" I said.
For all of Brin's Pollyanaism, he forgets one critical thing: a land without privacy is a land ruled byy blackmail. One where people are forced to conform for fear of ostracism, and no hope of release for any individuality. Rather ironic, actually; he doesn't see the bars of the cage he would construct for us.
Brin may be right, or he may be wrong.
The fact is that most Americans don't care if they have the government oversite that he speaks of. They TRUST their government.... after all, we're the GOOD guys. We would NEVER do anything wrong.
I saw Phil Zimmermann speak a few years ago and Phil spoke about how technical infrastructures rarely go away. There are no laws mandating 120 volts @ 60 cycles in the US. It's just an infrastructure that's in place, that will likely not go away, ever.
The same will be true for the spying infrastructures that we're allowing our government to install.
Brin's argument assumes a truly awful government will never be elected or take power by coup. Apparently he knows nothing about history.
Installing these infrstructures is a terrible mistake that we will one day regret.
Rich...
Ignore Alien Orders
I find that I agree with David Brin. I have always been a bit paranoid about my privacy and take many steps to safegaurd my private info. In retrospect, though, I have usually been much more relaxed about divulging private info when I know there are more rigid laws to protect it.
For example I would never open an account with an online bill paying service but as soon as my bank offerred one I jumped at the chance. I beleive that we have already traded any true privacy for the many conveniences that most of western civilization now demands. We are our own worst enemies in this regard. The most effective means of protecting ourselves is not to try to hide our personal information but to limit how others can legally use it.
Affecting a transparent society in which people could be seen doing illegal things (like smoking dope) would inevitably result in a society with much higher voter turnout, and less strict laws - I bet marijuana would become legal quickly, for example. What we have now could be argued to be a set of laws based on what most people agree would be a nice way to behave. It would be interesting to see what happens when laws are actually enforceable...
The idea that increasing transparency at all levels is an interesting one, but I would like to see how Brin would deal with the issue of simulated transparency verses actually seeing what is there.
He is correct that as the technology improves it is easier to share information and to gather information, it also makes it easier to simulate and falsify information. (Info-tainment, commercials disguised as informational presentations, etc.)
It might make for an interesting arms race between those who try to see what is really going on and those who obscure what is happening by creating false but believable data with the facilities available to them. A person could be so bombarded by so many 'experts', each claiming a different view point or interpretation of 'what really happened', that the person cannot decide who to believe.
There is probably a necessary layer of filtering required there (i.e. like people wear sunglasses to keep the glare from blinding them -- too much transparency can be bad), but that leads yet again to the accountability problem -- who runs the filters?
As an extreme example, South Africa and Brazil both decided to terminate and dismantle successful nuclear weapons progrms (S.A. after actually assembling and testing weapons). Both countries deliberately decided that the dangers of having that technology were greater than any possible benefit.
So the creation of an Iraqi-style national ID card in the U.S. is not inevitable.
sPh
" I just wish they weren't so contemptuous of the masses. If they weren't, they would notice that people are very sensible."
,in general the majority of people do not care about it and will not do any thing signifigant about it.
.Until this happens I do not believe that the public will be given, "fierce accountability measures", in fact I think that in most cases whatever laws or legislation that get's passed will most likely come out heavily in favor of big busines and not the general public.
.What is more likely to happen is a slow eroision of rights that the general public take for granted and are to apathetic to do anything about and by the time they realise, "hey why can't I do that any more ", and decide that maybe they should have done something about that 'crazy russian commie' who cracked adobe's ebook program and that maybe there Privacy is some thing they should care about,it will be to late and The majority of people through apathy and not a lack of inteligence will have, "grant(ed) our servants the tools they claim they need".
I do not think the problem is that the majority of people are stupid more that the majority of people are apethetic and lazy about issues which could effect them in both the long/short run, and unless something is shown to have a very direct immediate negative effect on there day to day lives
"Government power is kept in check by stripping the powerful down and subjecting them to scrutiny in the application of their delegated power, so that abuse of the power can be caught and rapidly dealt with. We are protected by enhancing our ability to see them, not by reducing their ability to see us."
The whole issue of who funds party's running for Government needs to be addressed before we will see truly open and observable government and business
People will not wake up one morning and suddenly find all there rights taken away and a secret police officer at there door enquiring about the printed copy of the anarchists cookbook under there bed
_________________________________________________
Having your live in the open has worked so well in the past. Let's see....
I'm sure that your discenting political opinion was a great thing to share in communist Russia.
And it was such a relief for Christians not to have to keep their religion private in ancient Rome.
And I'm sure the Jewish people loved not having to keep their very race in Nazi Germany. In fact, let's ask them how good of an idea national registration with ID cards is.
Not having privacy puts way too much trust in others agreeing with your every viewpoint and action.
...is that it's currently a one-way street. We, the individuals, are expected to give up personal information, allow unlimited surveilance and suspicion, and pretty much become an open book for the government and corporations. But the trend is for INCREASED privacy for those groups. Corporations are trying to lock up more and more information under the guise of "trade secrets" and have laws like the DMCA, etc. to back them up. Governments are moving more and more lawmaking into secret sessions, and hiding more information under the guise of "National Security."
I agree with the author that the only way the "transparent society" will work is if the transparency goes both ways. But that will never happen, as both governments and corporations see the citizenry as resources, not equals.
If the future is not in secrecy, then swamp the ***** with trivia, there are bound to be badder dudes to be got than you
[Though that begs the referrence:
First the Nazis came for the Communists; and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews; and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. When they came for the trade unionists I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a trade unionist. And when they came for the Catholics I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me... and by that time there was no one left to speak for anyone.
Attributed to Pastor Martin Niemoeller.
I suppose the answer is we stand up for the 'terrorists' whether they be in camp X-ray or not,
and stand up for a persons right to burn any flag,
because who knows when we will be labeled and marginalised.]
(thesis, antithesis I argue with myself, I just believe openness is the way forward, democracy and mob rule is not so bad.)
Just because you think you have something to hide, does not mean it is worth hiding. Do not hide your light under a bushel, if everyone is lighting the level playing field, defects will be dealt with more sympathetically.
Well its a theory. [Speaking as a manic depressive, from a police state, who owes some back taxes.]
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
"just as harmful for a supermarket to know what salad dressing you bought as it is for a convicted abuser to know the location of the battered wives "
This overlooks what he has already said regarding people on mass being smart. On an individual basis yes it's worse for the criminal to have the knowledge than the supermarket but on the agregated level if the super markets know enough it gives them more power to market to you.
Something that may be unwelcome an is one reason why I would protect my privacy.
What it does is even more severe. The constitution creates a government with a defined set of powers, and no others. To set limits hints that the government may do anything except what is forbidden, when in theory (sadly, not in fact) it is the other way around.
The government doesn't have rights -- only individual people have rights. The government has powers over those rights, as granted by the people, who can change or revoke it.
Of course, this limited government has a budget for this year of 2.1 trillion dollars. It is the most bloated thing ever to exist.
"All representatives are busy. The estimated hold time is one..hundred..sixty..four..minutes." Detroit Edison, 02/01/02
Here's a troll. From a philosphical perspective, any sense of privacy is complete falicy. Privacy assumes humans have control over themselves or the world. Fact is, no one has any control. Any attempt to maintain privacy is delusional, though not disabling or necessarily an illness. This whole privacy debate is partly spawned from the idea of manifest destiny. American culture predominantly believes the world was created for mankind and therefore man has control. Other cultures, like african, and asian look at privacy in a very different way. Perhaps as planet earth evolves into a global culture, the ideas, concepts and practices of different cultures will mix and attack this debate of privacy from a completely different perspective. Since obviously trying to battle it from the same tired old arguments isn't getting any where fast.
"Note how Barlow propounds that everything has happened 'invisibly to most of us'... >conveying the same implicit contempt for the masses that nearly all ideologues foster, >across the entire political spectrum. It feels so good to be one of the few who see The >Truth - a sensation relished by our own native fundamentalists, libertarians, Marxists, >free-marketers, postmodern leftists, as well as a great many regular Republicans and >Democrats, differing only in who they credit with sight and who qualifies as sheep!"
The masses are sheep. He argues against that sentiment, but lays no basis to refute it.
"Can we have both safety and freedom? The evidence can be seen all around us. We are - even after 9/11 - toweringly safer and freer than any other people in history. The two go together. All it takes is breaking the stupid notion of dichotomies and trade-offs."
I love the last sentence and agree that these notions of dichotomies must be abolished, however his preceding statements are contradictions. We were not 'towering safer and freer than any other people in history' prior to September 11th, if such a thing can be proved or measured...in any event, in such a society, WTC would not have occurred. Afterwards, perhaps we are towering safer, but it is at the expense of freedom.
Of course, what we fail to see in this particular article/interview (perhaps it is addressed in the book-I intend to read it now) is a certain trust OF the government is inherent in his theories. The government is not trustworthy. Our interests, as US citizens, are not important to the Federal Government. Their wealthy constituents...very wealthy, as they are also the same men (and some women) who hold offices in Washington, are the pulse of DC. And the drive to perpetuate their own existence. These things can be proved by categorizing the actions of our government and what entities benefitted from them.
And make no mistake: Terrorism cannot be defeated. Terrorism is an idea. The dangerous thing is that Americans are taking this 'war' seriously. It is a catchphrase, and our every freedom is in danger. One word can strip us of all of it: Terrorist. What is a terrorist? Your definition and that of the US government may differ.
In the movie "Men in Black," Tommy Lee Jones's character says, A person is smart. People are stupid. Cute, but it's exactly the opposite.
He comes back to this argument again. Some people are critical and incisive. I have worked in blue-collar jobs with people for whom this type of discussion means nothing. Nothing.
I can relate anecdotal evidence about WILLFUL ignorance. It seems to me that he is looking at a certain segment of society. The same segment of society that Chomsky identifies as participants in the system, the intended audience. Middle and upper-middle class. Well, the masses live in different circumstances, they are ignorant, and they are content. Programmed. I think Brin is a very intelligent man who is hampered by perspective. It is interesting that he rails against this very argument.
Well, since this is ME writing, all I can say in my own defense is that I went in objectively, but find that the arguments outlined in this particular piece seem built on a faulty foundation.
we need to have a different concept of privacy?
How much money do you make?
What's your Social Security Numer?
What's your mother's maiden name?
Are you sleeping with your wife?
If not above, who are you having sex with?
Do you have a girlfriend on the side?
How big is your penis?
by people who wanted to be left alone to do their own thing. they knew they needed a government, but wanted a minimal/efficent one.
privacy was implied in almost every other word of our founding documents. our founders felt very strongly about limiting governments medeling in citizens lives. for the last 225 years, almost every generation has had to test those same ideals.
the best defense, is a good offense...let's not make the usa a brightly lit stadium; lets give the military more flashlights.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
The supreme court hs found a constitutional right to privacy based on the 4th right to unreasonable search and seizure. ---> from US v. Henderson
U.S. Court of Military Appeals.
The Supreme Court of the United States, over the years, has recognized a variety of interests
constitutionally protected in the name of privacy. Among these are the right to advertise and distribute
contraceptives to minors, Carey v. Population Services International, 431 U.S. 678, 97 S.Ct. 2010, 52
L.Ed.2d 675 (1977); the right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy, Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93
S.Ct. 705, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973); the right to possess obscene materials in private, Stanley v. Georgia,
394 U.S. 557, 89 S.Ct. 1243, 22 L.Ed.2d 542 (1969); and the right of married couples to use
contraceptives, Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965). See also
Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 92 S.Ct. 1029, 31 L.Ed.2d 349 (1972) (affirming writ vacating
conviction for distributing contraceptives to persons of unknown marital status); Loving v. Virginia, 388
U.S. 1, 87 S.Ct. 1817, 18 L.Ed.2d 1010 (1967) (nullifying a miscegenation statute).
I like traffic lights
While I find Brin's arguments interesting, I am pessimistic that the huge imbalance of power between the government and the people can be rectified solely through oversight. Cutting off their supply of money also has to be part of the real solution. Though I do think that an independent Inspectorate would be a positive step. But weren't the congress and courts supposed to be doing that?
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
This interview explains very well Brin's viewpoints, very valid viewpoints, at that. I think it would interest many people to know that analysis of many privacy-thru-secrecy advocates actually subscribe to a philosophy closer to Brin's than they think. After all, it is not the additional security that privacy advocates are against, it is the potential for harm through abuse of the system that they decry. Precisely this harm is what is limited and eliminated by the oversight that Brin speaks of. When you have the good and eliminate the bad, what's to lose?
Most importantly, Brin points out that the citizens should have a say in what aspects of our supposed privacy should be 'transparent' and what should be kept private. This is an important point, don't miss it: the amount of privacy we enjoy should be determined not by committee, but by the masses. What could be more Open Source than this? Even if the committee contains members of the EFF, ACLU, or whatever other organization, that's not enough ... it should be up to the citizens themselves to determine as a mass what is adequate privacy, where to draw the line.
Whenever I think about national ID cards or have a conversation about it, I have to balance my views on privacy (as an EFF member, I have pretty strong views, views that didn't necessarily jive with Brin's before reading this article) and views on the benefits of a national ID system (done right) to verifying identity for online transactions, and such. The potential for limiting fraud through identity verification (done right) is quite large, when you think about it. I would love to see a system that provides for the strongest security (hardware device, biometric, and soft device) in all cases. If a system like this can be assembled and made easy to use without compromising its strength, that would be sweet.
His stance on surveilance might be a little idealistic (I tend to the more paranoid fears of big-gorvernments of now inefficient nation states increasingly getting rough with their own citizens).
He admits readily to being a very optimistic person.
In addition to issues of uniform access to surveilance information, he also talked about his ideas for "EON" Eye of the Needle Foundation, discussing the lack of morality of some high stakes investing, the possibility of the new-rich to donate their money for "positive sum games", charities that do the most good, and at the same time give the givers positive notoriety.
Anyway, disagree with David Brin if you want, but he seems right-on in his personal convictions.
-Mark
Now this is something that needs echoing. What a great quote.
I think that Brin has hit the nail right on the head with this handful of words. It blows right though the empty, ranting rhetoric put forward by anti-government hacks. Certainly a candidate for many a Slashdotter's sig.
Asikaa
Come in, twenty-seventy-seventy, your time is up.
...to me, usually means, "I haven't thought of a way around it." This can be because there is none such, or because of a failure of imagination.
Here's the fallacies I can pop off the top off my head:
Make every transaction, every movement traceable! Use scanners and biochips to make sure no one can perform a terraist [sic: Texan] act.
And how would this have stopped the men from threatening the passengers of the planes with boxcutters? The idea of a suicidal attack is that the attacker dies. What the hell use is the post-mortem activity of a dead man? The ability to throw every semite he knew into jail for the rest of their lives?
If we all lead transparent lives, then we can all live in peace --
Stop there.
The Bush administration has put ALL of its records into a vault, effectively for all time. And Reagan's. And Bush the First's. And Jeb's. Cheney is leading the way to establishing a totally opaque ruling junta. They are building walls around themselves. Hell, we don't even know where the Vice President is!!!
Guess which president's records are being selectively released, juiciest scandal-provoking one's first, by the administration? Oh, guess, guess!! Of course, all surrounding records that may show the releases are out-of-context have been sealed. Why? National security, of course.
Point? Privacy is sacrosanct -- for this administration, and all future Republican administrations. And their corporate friends.
Think of it: you ever read the minutes of ANY meeting of ANY corporation such as Enron? EVER?
Their privacy is sacred. And will remain so.
The only thing we will get from "total transparency" is the loss of common rights of privacy for suspiciously arabic foreigners, all non-corporate Americans, and anyone who pisses off the future right-wing administrations, such as popular former Democratic presidents and near-presidents, and journalists who don't agree with the adminstration.
Why in the hell do sane men suddenly get Royalty on the brain whenever a right-wing adminstration comes into power, but want armed citizens ready for revolt when a non-right wing president holds office?
The current power structure has shown what it will do with "transparency": nail its enemies and reward its friends.
No, I think I'll stay with my freedom, if it's all the same to you.
Just look at the civilian "oversight" of our police departments.
There may be some outrage which results in things improving for a while,
but things eventually settle back to "normal" from the police perspective.
There is a lot of reason for sympathy (they are fighting the good fight, it
is really tough dealing with bad people, etc.), but the net result is that any period
of strict oversight is rapidly followed by slothful oversight or outright collusion.
Or, the collusion takes place in the form of terms of the contract with the union-I live here in
Denver, and you couldn't get rid of a bad cop for drug sales (or useage) or felony theft-just about anything
short of 1st degree murder (and it could be argued some of our police shootings amount to that)
without the "disciplined" officer being reinstated after some farce of an appeal of his "rights".
There is also a lot of pre-occupation with capability and association in all this surveillance and
snooping, without any good coming out of it in the end. The British camera system is a case in point-not one single terrorist act has ever been prevented, nor has a single terrorist been detected by the cameras
those surveillance cameras. There have been a few street crimes solved, but they would have been just as well solved by adequate street patrols (so it is not really about results, it is about doing it on the cheap). I used to make fireworks (started in highschool), and quit making them about 20 years ago simply because the illegal wiretaps and breakins were getting to be a burden! Yes I could have made bombs, but neither I nor anyone I knew had the slightest interest in this. But you join a group of people with similar interests, and you name goes in the computer as a possible mad bomber, and I could talk on the phone with friends about certain subjects and one house or the other would be broken into (we got so we used telltales) and things with supposedly magical properties would be stolen (I pissed a friend off by going through this hoorahing with him and he lost a $20 can of resoncinol glue from it). What was I supposed to do-call the FBI, who was one of the two candidate agencies probably behind these outrages?
You are talking about overseeing people who are strongly motivated, and who have been cutting corners with the law for decades, and whose careers are made with results. Creating another layer of bureaucracy is not going to change the basic modus operandi of these people, would not be effective in any event, and is nothing but an utopian pipedream. Brin is full of shit on this one, and your only hope is to limit the scope of the invasive tendencies that the people in government (and in the private sector too) have.
Brin: When the government pursues new surveillance powers, our habit is to kick and scream and moan and then watch helplessly while they get what they want, as when something bad like 9/11 happens. A far more effective
technique is to demand fierce accountability measures in return for granting our servants the tools they claim they need. That?s how to keep both safety and freedom.
It's a shell game. In effect (I won't say it's deliberate) the focus on secrecy keeps the powerful in power. This is becausethe "watchdog" groups are so obsessed with secrecy that they ignore what the observers do with the information that they get regardless.
This works for both sides. The privacy lobby gets the ego boost and righteous publicity, while the watchers manage to get the information they want with minor restrictions on acquisition and very little constraint on its use.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
"Private property is a creature of society, and is subject to the calls of that society, wherever its necessities shall require it, even to its last farthing."
That's right folks, Bmn Franklin, communist libertarian. He also liked sex and alcohol too.
are we all supposed to agree to your definition of what constitutes "essential", "little", "temporary", "safety" and "freedom"?
But there is some information that I strongly believe should be public: tax returns (which, of course, include salary information), credit records, itemized donations to non-profit organizations, ownership of investments, driving records, driver's licenses (including photographs), places of residence, ownership of real property, beneficiaries of trusts, most police records, etc.
That kind of information would allow people to negotiate and participate more rationally in our economic system (e.g., in salary negotiations), and it would allow you to assess conflict of interest issues of other people involved in political decisions. In fact, arguably, without such information, our market economy and political system simply cannot function efficiently.
BRIN : Some privacy advocates neglect ever to rank their privacy concerns along any kind of scale. To them, it's just as harmful for a supermarket to know what salad dressing you bought as it is for a convicted abuser to know the location of the battered wives shelter. But this is obviously absurd.
I believe digital data is insecure and that any information used to tie me to a product can be harmful to my privacy and liberties; however having said that, they sure do make it more convienent to comply than to not comply, ie.. if you have your grocery card you can save a bunch! That doesn't mean I approve of being tracked globally by isreali intelligent agents.
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Read: Just because we didn't explicitly state you have the right to X, it doesn't mean you DON'T have the right to X. This amendment creates the possibility for debate over the extent of not only the other amendents (like four), but also creates wiggle room for preserving freedom in situations that the writers could not have forseen.
Such as the Internet.
GMFTatsujin
We are never going to see what the Bush adminstration is doing, not now, not ever. Nor Reagan's, nor Papa Bush's, nor Jeb Bush's.
By fiat, Bush has declared his record as governor of Texas sealed, his dad's sealed, and of course, Reagan's -- a lot of his staff are Reagan's people, and it could be very distressing to read the Iran-Contra records.
Somehow, Jeb Bush got his records sealed, a neat deal since he is violating the state of Florida's sunshine laws.
What the Bush admin wants, and corporations want, and the spooks want, and federal cops want, is access to OUR lives, for snooping, marketing, tracking, occasional blackmail, who knows?
What they do not want is their activities to be shown in the light of day. Ever.
Brin's nuts if he thinks we get a transparent government in trade for us stripping naked on a Homeland Security Monitor's command. We will get a fascist dictatorship beyong the dreams of any Austrian paperhanger.
And ten years from now, a pony nuke will detonate in front of the Statue of Liberty, and won't we all look like goddam idiots.
Not a single thing that the constitution's rewriters are proposing will stop a determined attack. They will get through, and we will respond by becoming even more psychotic.
There is NO correlation with privacy and vulnerability. Singapore, a nation which posts goverment monitors at apartment buildings to monitor the citizenry, was recently amazed when the CIA told their authorities that they had three, THREE Al Queda cells operating in their Perfect, Safe, Orderly World. Their Homeland Security, probably the most insane in the world, was totally flummoxed.
I imagine their response will be more instrusive monitoring of all citizens.
Insanity on more insanity. We discover a fire in our house, and we try to douse it with gasoline. Since that doesn't work, obviously we need more gasoline; and shout down that man over there if he unpatriotically points out that it won't work.
Brin's argues that we should be screaming for more oversight, not for more privacy protections.
This argument seems a bit overly optimistic. Even if we have oversight, how do we know the government (or corporate America) is really disclosing everything they are doing with our private information. If Enron has taught us anything it's that corporations do not do what is in the best interest of even their own shareholders, let alone the random Joe Schmoe. Brin points to the Freedom of Information act as being a good example of oversight of the government. Is it? A lot of what people ask for comes back highly redacted.
Furthermore, his solution seems like it would be expensive. How much would all these oversight committees cost? Who's going to want to raise taxes to pay for them?
The simplest solution is to just protect people's privacy. I really don't see why Brin has a problem with that.
Several times, Brin also talks about how our Liberties are not based on controlling what the government knows about us. Really? Well, he must be ignoring those handy laws about the government not being able to search our homes unwarranted, and that people are assumed innocent until proven guilty. What he is advocating is a police state, where anything that is yours is the government's right to know about ("I cannot believe how many sincere civil libertarians have actually convinced themselves that freedom is best preserved by blinding government. That has nothing whatsoever to do with how we acquired our present liberties."). Wrong David. That has everything to do with it.
...to quote the Good Doctor---in this case, the powerful will always try to cloak what they do, at least if we avoid the sort of fascism/Klingonry in which you _gloat_in_public_ over how much you're screwing everyone else. That is, no matter what the restrictions are, the powerful will buy their ways out of them, or what's a heaven for (that is, what's the point of being a powerful bastard if you can't enjoy things not available to other people)?
The only solution I can see is to eliminate power differentials; this is probably impossible. However, this doesn't eliminate pursuing a "harm reduction" policy. To my mind, the most obvious course is putting a floor on how powerless or abject you _can_ get, and increasing the likelihood of turnovers in societal power.
For example, we will never be able to guaranty that innocent people won't be imprisoned, but if we do guaranty that anyone, no matter how much we might hate them[sic], has the right to vote and to publish their grievances, and not to be killed, then we are all a bit safer from the government. If we put in a firm anti-lynching policy, we are safer from The People; if there is some kind of basic sustenance floor to the economy, we are less open to coercion (don't bother telling me it's not 'really') by our bosses.
If one party is always in power, they will treat members of others badly. If there are fairly regular changeovers, every party has an interest in seeing that the losers are not treated too badly. Similarly, if Mr Ashcroft could be convinced that the guns and cameras he wants will eventually be aimed at _him_....well, he might get off on it, unfortunately---he already believes himself to be living in a Universal Dictatorship, where you're always under observation and your only right is to freely choose to agree with the Boss or go to a very bad prison forever.
Sorry; well, to pop the stack: if a _reasonably_ _rational_ Attorney General were to believe that that powerful white men like him were eventually subject to frequent random stops in his neighbourhood, racial profiling there wouldn't be an issue (this is why the "racial" element is so nasty---it cuts off the feedback loop by assuring some people that it will never happen to _them_).
Anyone with a wad of cash, my social security number, my mailing address, and a little charm can easily obtain the following:
- my entire credit record, including account numbers
- which in turn can get them access to account histories
- my tax records
- my DMV records
- a partial transcript
- my medical records
Rummage through my trash and you'll know what I consume on a regular basis, as well as where I shop and how I pay (again including the precious account numbers).
Review the security tapes that watch me as I work and you'll learn my mannerisms to build a psychological profile. Bribe someone at my cable company and you can find out what I'm watching with the power of Digital Cable. Capture my signature and other handrwriting samples from hundreds of forms and receipts. My ISP, my employer, Echelon, and any Internet site I choose to access records my activities online.
Yet in no way do I feel that I lack the freedom to do as I choose. As long as the restrictions on personal activities are limited by a system of Checks and Balances, as long as I have the power to refuse unwanted solicitation, and as long as I - and everybody else - can be held accountable for improper activities, "privacy" be damned.
You can't hold companies and the government accountable, but not individuals. Neither can you hold individuals accountable without restricting the rights of companies and the government.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
To them, it's just as harmful for a supermarket to know what salad dressing you bought as it is for a convicted abuser to know the location of the battered wives shelter. But this is obviously absurd.
Why is this absurd? The point is, if privacy is not valued for it's own sake, it will be taken from you when you really need it. Of course we don't need special rules to protect privacy when even Mrs. Grundy can see that it's needed.
The Anschluss was approved by an overwhelming majority of Austrian voters. Albert Goering, who did not share the political beliefs of his more famous brother, described how this vote worked to his Allied interogators after the war.
Voting took place in a large hall. In the centre there was a table, surrounded by seated officials, with ballots and ballot boxes. At the far end of the hall was a privacy booth. One approached the table and was handed a ballot with the Brinesque instruction that if voting "yes" (in favour of unification), there was no need for privacy - you could skip that long lonely walk to the booth. (Amusingly, the "Yes" alternative was printed very large on the ballot, the "No" very small. The Nazis weren't exactly subtle.)
Goering insisted on using the booth, but of course this was tantamount to an admission that he was voting "no". He could afford to do this because his powerful brother could free him from the clutches of the Gestapo (as happened on more than one occasion.) Most voters didn't have that luxury.
There was no way to argue the merits of privacy in the particular case, as Brin advocates, without arguing the case itself. If it had been possible to argue for privacy on a principled, rather than particular, basis, more people might have voted "no".
"The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
Whenever anybody says that they have nothing to hide, I always say, "OK, then. Drop your trousers." People usually don't, and they act all offended. This proves they don't really mean what they say.
Fortunately, I have a personal full-disclosure policy and no body shame, so I can walk the walk while they just talk the talk.
When people say, "If you haven't done anything illegal, you don't have anything to hide," what they really mean is "I'm all right, Jack. I've got mine. I have enough money for a lawyer and a nice house and 'upstanding member of the community' status. I have white skin, and I'm heterosexual. Maybe I even know some of the guys on the force. I'm not going anywhere."
I like David Brin as an author, a writer of fiction, very much. But he does have white skin and money and a doctorate and an established writing career and a family. Laws that are thinly disguised justifications for racism, etc. are not directed at him.
In the original interview, he parrots phrases like:
We are - even after 9/11 - toweringly safer and freer than any other people in history.
...
no government ever knew more about its people than ours does - and no people have ever been so free.
Obviously he has never lived outside the USA for any significant length of time, and obviously he doesn't know much history.
Even in the United States in the last couple of centuries, some people at some times were freer than they are now. Could Thoreau have done what he describes in Walden today? Of course not - or at least, not legally. He had no means to pay the property taxes that would be levied on his "house in the woods".
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
The idea is not that everyone knows everything. The idea is that the information that is already being collected, like what salad dressing you buy, is not in the hands of an elite. A national ID card is much more likely than a camera in every room of every house. The information is already being gathered, where and how you use your credit card, what time you swipe in if your office is secure, what ppv movies you watch. And not only are there digital records but individual strangers are usually involved. If all the information was gathered to regulated databases, and you had control over it, wouldn't that be better? No one (yet) is trying to come into your house and watch you. This is about the management of data that is already being gathered and viewed.
Maybe the data would be categorized as medical, credit, personal, legal, consumer, etc... and when someone wanted to do a credit check you would release the credit data to them. Maybe anyone in politics would be required to reveal some information to the public, just as individuals are often required to release information to employers.
The information wouldn't be things like when you last got high unless you were arrested for it, in which case the information is gathered anyway. But now you would be able to see your records and give them out to whom you chose. Of course the government would require full access, but it would also need a warrant in most cases. And it wouldn't care about joe citizen unless joe drew attention to himself in some other way.
Anyway, the private data is very private anyway, and the really juicy bits would still be hoarded by the government, and of course there are all kinds of practical flaws with the ease of cracking computer databases and the appeal of attacking a centralized database like this one, and of course the potential for abuse is there. but most of those practicalities exist in the current system, and there is less that joe citizen can do about it.
Remember this Slashdot thread last year, about a Massachusetts court ruling which made it illegal for citizens to tape-record their interactions with the police?
Not true, actually. Two child murderers, and one nail bomber have been caught specifically because of CCTV, and that's just the examples that come immediately to mind. Details here
This is just to demonstrate that CCTV has a proven role to play in keeping Very Bad People (TM) off the streets, not to demonstrate unconditional support. I'm very worried indeed about the uncontrolled sharing/distribution of personal info.
To address one point Brin makes,I certainly wouldn't want my shopping receipts being seen by other people - for example insurance companies, for example, who might then decide that my intake of alcohol/ nicotine/ caffeine/ sugar/ saturated fat/ [fill in whatever it is you buy a lot] is higher than what they think is appropriate and rack up my premiums, and share that data with all their friends...
The issue here is not what the government CAN do.
It is what they are allowed to do, or appear to have done, in public (i.e. it is generally known to most people eventually).
Everything imaginable has been done, or can be done, by the government to us, in secret, that we can possibly imagine. The question is whether it is complete and infinite secrecy, or just temporary and "journalizable" secrecy.
Those that work in complete secrecy are our "oversight" of those that can be called on the carpet in public, eventually. Whether we like it or not "they" have the absolute power that they will not give away.
They are the ones that will oversee the-rest-of-the-government. Perhaps they may even do a good job. We will never know until they fail miserably or history takes its course.
Why? "Top Secret" and "Official Secrets Act" or some such other designation depending on the country we are talking about.
"Oversight" of government can only refer to the competing "public" and "secret" camps having access to each other's dirty-little-problems.
So if the FBI is bugging your phone because you are a criminal you had better hope that the CIA thinks you are vital to national security, or vice-versa.
"Argues well?" No. Forcefully, and perhaps eloquently, but very badly.
His central thesis is that government "sight" will not be abused if there is citizen "oversight". He completely ignores the fact that, again and again, the majority of citizens have proven quite willing to allow the state to run roughshod over the rights of the minority.
Brin writes from the position of a supporter of the general political and social status quo - his outlook is basically that our society is the best that's ever been. In this article, he claims we're both the safest and the freest, making no mention at all of such facts as our absurdly high incarceration rate. I've read other essays where he's quite exhuberant about his praise for modern western culture.
Now that's all well and good. While his praise of the system is sometime more emotional than rational, he does have some good points. But he seems keenly unaware of the nature (maybe even the existance) of dissent, and of the sociopolitical reaction against it.
Would citizen oversight have protected leaders like Martin Luther King and Huey Newton against the FBI's COINTELPRO? Would it have protected anti-globalization protestors who were pre-emptively raided before WTO protests in Seattle, IMF protests in D.C., and the RNC in Philadelphia? No. The system had done an excellent job of convincing the masses that these people were a threat to The Very American Way Of Life.
Brin's a smart guy. I like a lot of his fiction, and on many issues he's pretty right on. This, however, is not one of them. He argues from either ignorance of, or deliberate refusal to acknowledge, the attitudes of the majority toward political dissent.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I grew up in small town American -- places where the neighbors knew who you were, and were likely to tell your parents what you were doing. There are some obvious bad points to that, but also good points. Brin's proposal amounts to using internet cameras, etc., to create a similar situation everywhere.
It's likely to happen regardless of whether we want it to or not -- between the government using every opportunity to stampede the sheeple into allowing increased governmental powers to "protect" them, and old folks whiling away their time with video cameras (I think that was a Brin novel...). But several things are needed to make the good balance the bad:
1. Government should be at least as subject to surveillance by citizens as the other way around. That is, if a corporate official comes around a congressman's home or office the day before a vote, we should at least be able to see him going in and out. If they go out to a restaurant, we can tape them -- if they are taping us.
2. There are a few government issues which have to be worked in secret -- weapons designs (sometimes), military planning, police investigations. But these categories should be strictly defined, as limited as possible. Everything else must be open to the public, and classified items must be opened up as soon as possible. There must be severe penalties for overclassifying materials -- mandatory minimum of being barred from ever working for the government again, plus fines and possible jail time. Don't depend on gov't prosecutors to enforce this -- private citizens can file charges before a grand jury, prosecute if the grand jury indicts, and get well-paid out of the fines. (I know, that's encouraging the sharks to go feed themselves. Better on gov't officials than us...)
3. There are public areas and private areas. You DON'T surveil private areas without a warrant. If you saw what Mr. Jones and Mrs. Smith were doing inside Mr. Smith's house, you'd better keep it to yourself, you damned peeping tom!
4. One big fear about a no-secrets society is that we have things we don't want the neighbors to know about -- not illegal stuff, but embarrassing. If you knew what your neighbors were hiding, you probably don't have anything to be embarrasssed about . We'll have to get used to people not being perfect. Small-towners know that -- and the only ones that are excessively concerned about what their neighbors are doing are the old ladies without a life... ("Old lady" is not defined by gender...)
5. Don't expect perfection from politicians, either. J. Edgar Hoover once had enormous power, more from fear of what might be in his secret files than from respect of his abilities as director of the FBI. Remember, once it's out in the open, it's not blackmail material any more...
5. Repeal a hell of a lot of outmoded laws. We're not only worried about the neighbors seeing something embarrassing, but also about some malicious DA digging up a 150 year old law and prosecuting.
The problem with transparency is that it creates another dichotomy of the Haves and Have-Nots -- those who have privacy and those who don't. As others have mentioned, there will be groups who can reasonably argue for privacy in the interest of national security.
Also, transparency would benefit only certain people/groups. For example, knowing or not knowing CowboyNeal's buying habits doesn't benefit me in the least (despite Brin's assertion to the contrary); but knowing *would* benefit corporations.
More importantly, transparency gives a huge advantage to the established power structure. For example, it would be much easier for a large, established corporation to squash a small start-up company if the start-up were not able to keep its developments secret. That's why we have Non-Disclosure Agreements.
And even if I agreed with Brin that transparency were a good thing, it seems to me that we *must* have the accountability that he describes FIRST. As other people have noted, *that* has been a problem all along.
Anyway, I do agree with Brin that we can have both security and freedom/privacy. And I agree that the cost of liberty is eternal vigilance. I just don't think that either of these things means "constant surveillance."
-- D
Brin's stance would be more tenable if there were any evidence that information flow might go both ways. Unfortunately, such evidence does not exist.
The Bush administration is engaged in restricting information flow from the government to the greatest degree in our history as a nation. Records from back to the Reagan-era have been sequestered. You can absolutely forget about seeing anything from Bush senior or Bush junior's administration. Cheney et al are busily stonewalling the General Accounting Office's inquiry into the Energy Task Force - and the GAO's inquiry isn't even substantive, simply a list of who was present.
These issues of sunshine and transparency in our government can and will be fought all the way to the Supreme Court. Thus, only the most absolutely vital of interests will make it that far - and that's assuming the court does not record another 5-4 victory for the conservatives. Even assuming a Supreme Court victory, such a ruling may be construed in the narrowest way possible, and further stalled for reasons of expediency or "national security."
Brin spends his energies attacking the civil libertarians and their "short sighted" views. He devotes space to comment about how "wonderful the civil libertarians must feel when they see the truth and the masses don't." This is the pot calling the kettle black.
If he truly believes his thesis, then he needs to stop assaulting the civil libertarians and devote his energies to getting more sunshine and transparency in government.
His "transparent society" will not start with the masses - that way leads only to the fascist police state. It will start with transparency for government, thus assuring the people that they have a basis for trust when they give up their privacy.
Until that day I'll keep my privacy, thanks.
We want to see it all in public. Prove you really mean it and lead by example.
Live up to it, or shut up.
If we all lead transparent lives, then we can all live in peace --
Stop there.
The Bush administration has put ALL of its records into a vault, effectively for all time. And Reagan's. And Bush the First's. And Jeb's. Cheney is leading the way to establishing a totally opaque ruling junta. They are building walls around themselves. Hell, we don't even know where the Vice President is!!!
Did you even read Brin's article? If you had, you would have realized that the problem he has with the current debate is exactly the thing you point out--that our loss of privacy is currently happening without a corrisponding loss of privacy within the Government.
Without that corrisponding loss of privacy within the Government, it strips us of our own privacy without the necessary controls to allow us to know who has information on us and what they are doing with it. It also allows a small, elite class of people to arise who can control information on themselves (and, thus, do great harm or illegal stuff a'la Enron), while the rest of us are relegated to "sheep."
Until this transparency happens in Government, there is a problem.
The current power structure has shown what it will do with "transparency": nail its enemies and reward its friends.
And that's why Brin, in his article, called for transparency within Government. Otherwise, we cannot watch the watchers.
No, I think I'll stay with my freedom, if it's all the same to you.
But you have already lost your freedom. Enron happened; the powerful elite who can control the public's ability to see what they are doing already have closed the shutters and have already committed crimes which took money out of your pocket (if you are an investor or live in California and buy electricity here).
Only transparency (which means also the transparency to see what Bush--and Clinton--had to do with Enron) will allow you to prevent a bunch of elite thieves from picking your pocket in the future.
Think about it. Greater insight into what our government is doing, supposedly on our behalf, is a Good Thing(tm) independent of Brin's transparent society ideal.
Now let me add my nasty comments.
The problems with transparency are so obviously on the side of the government, that I have to wonder why a smart guy like Brin focuses his energy on the civil libertarians instead.
My guess is it comes down to three issues:
(1) There are actual opponents worth of intellectual combat (such as Barlow) among the civil libertarians, rather than the faceless bureaucracy of the government.
(2) Many people are attacking the lack of transparency in the government, civil libertarians among them, so there is no chance to stand out from the crowd.
(3) Attacking civil libertarians gets much better press.
Okay, I feel better now.
I've enjoyed almost every book written by Brin, with the exception of the book "Earth". In this world of tomorrow, privacy is a thing of the past. Virtually everything you say and do is open to public scrutiny. It was a frightening world, one in which I would not wish to live in.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Your example is not a very good one in my opinion. Yes one terrorist was detected, but we can say anthing was prevented. ( read the story you linked to.. )
Your own example of the kind of oversight you wouldn't like is quite apt. It demonstrates why you can't trust powerful people to do right. Insurance company looking at your credit reciepts would be bad. There is a case in in Britian, I think, where an insurance company raised the rates of a women because they found through DNA testing that she had a gene which might predispose her to cancer.
I believe that case was exposed and went to the courts.
Hmm. And we could apply the same priciples to the economic world as well as to the govermental world, couldn't we? Like, say, when a company releases financial and accounting data to it's shareholders. How do we know they're telling the truth? Well, we should require that this information be audited by an independent agency. That should stop any abuse from happening. Gee, what a great idea.
Maybe Andersen could do the "oversight" of the government's data collection...
True, we can't ever say that anything was prevented. However, the guy was caught. The comment I replied to stated that CCTV hadn't caught any terrorists either, which is proven false by the article I linked to.
I can (with misgivings) accept a transparent society, with government and citizens having access to a large amount of information about citizens, government, and government processes.
But there is another requirement to this.
With transparency MUST come tolerance. And I worry that there is not sufficient tolerance in our society to allow transparency. There are too many "minority rights" issues still around for me to really believe that there is enough tolerance for transparency to work well.
I'd also say that this would require removing a lot of the so-called victimless crimes, drug use among them. But then, that's almost a completely separate (and loud, probably) argument.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
The reality of the world today is that each one of us leave a trail of bits as we pass through our days. The purpose of "privacy" is not to stop those bits, but to keep them from being aggregated and used against me.
If my kroger buyer card shows that I do not buy pork and I charge fuel and fertilizer on my lawn care company visa, I do not want to be questioned by the FBI as a terrorist. The oversite needs to be on the use of the data, not it's existance.
My doctor needs the ability to genetically screen for disease, but my insurance company, even if it knows my flaws, should not be allowed to charge more. In the past I had the security through obscurity that my privacy provides, but this is no longer the case.
The transparent society is an open source society. The 'source code' of an individual are their life experiences. The exploits are already in the wild. (People generally by milk and produce in a grocery so why are those sections the furthest apart?).
The success of the transparent society will depend on the protections we provide for our most valuable intellectual property we own, ourselves.
Lawrence Lessig has an article that descibes a new system for protecting IP. Add ability to copyright your personal data and we have a start on the Transparent Society.
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
According to your reasoning, laws punishing killers take away my freedom to shoot who I want legally.
The passage you quoted only enforces the entire Declaration; it simply says that the articles above (being of good intent) cannot be used for malicious intent. How is this any different than a government law which prohibits using the legal system for criminal activities?
Strange that you agree with me substantially but act exasperated.
Those "hate crime" law of which you speak. Just what do you rate the probability that David Brin is going to be convicted of one, even if he wrote something that offended the powerful? I'd put it as pretty close to zero.
Look at the people who do get convicted. For example, there's that case of a 16-year-old convicted of tying a 33-year-old black man to a tree and setting him on fire.
Now, which is more plausible: that a single 16-year-old can manage, single-handedly to tie a fully grown male to a tree, or that he was kind of a loner, a bit outside the community, and handy?
"Hey, Lemuel, we've got to catch somebody for this. How about that weird kid nobody likes?" happens.
"Hey, Lemuel, we've got to catch somebody for this. How about David Brin?" does not happen.
Hurrah! Brin's got it right. The goal should be for everyone to be able to find out anything, but with heavy penalties for misusing those rights.
The biggest problem with a lack of privacy is when you want to do something the majority doesn't like: The freedom to do only that which others approve of is no freedom at all. Yet see what happens when everyone knows you're gay in Podunk, North Carolina or say 50 years ago just about anywhere. Until we stop harassing or prosecuting victimless "crimes", or just people who are different, we need privacy.
From what I have read of Brin, his problem with privacy advocates is that they are uncompromising. He believes that we need to bargain on privacy. If we can get the same information about the government and corporations as they get about us, then the bargain is even, and we have a better restraint on their extremes.
Enron had plenty of privacy, even from those who owned part of it.
I personally think Brin has some wrongheaded ideas, but that he brings up points that others aren't really talking about. Sure, let's force the openness from the government first, but if everyone can do everything in secret than we must suspect everyone. That is not a healthy way to live.
Well, then, there will always be a problem, because legitimate national security issues prevent full transparency in government, and government officials will exploit this exception to cover up their abuses.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
You suffer from exactly what he is talking about!
It doesn't matter if you re-define stupidity to mean apathy. You assume if you're not one of the elite who "know the truth" that you're worthless and letting people run all over you.
Try having a conversation with people who don't have any college experiance, don't program, manage or research. You'll fine they can still think.
The terrible thing is that they only get their information from ONE source. The mainstream media. In a society like Brin proposes, information would be free.
They simply don't know about a lot of issues, but things like personal security, you'll find most people (even the apathetic plodding morons) still have an opinion.
You can't call people apathetic or studid just because they disagree with you!
One of the most powerful tools, in war and politics, is surprise. Without it, power almost never changes hands. Think about it. How do you get the upper hand when someone else controls the police, the press... (and I'm mainly talking politics here, not war... though the same principles apply).
You don't have to be a revolutionary to have a problem with the way things are being done - and legitimate protest can lead to targeting. A significant political movement has a hard time developing when its members are isolated, harassed, and discredited before they can form up.
And if you think that loss of privacy will be symmetrical, they you Just Don't Get It.
Those who retain privacy will be the usual suspects: the elected, the appointed, the wealthy, and the popular.
It will be a simple power (surprise) shift in favor of those who already have the power, just like newspapers and TV stations love "campaign finance reform" that shuts private citizens and groups up and lets the press blather on as much as it wants - because it maintains and expands their power.
Politicians like speech restrictions and privacy reduction for exactly the same reason.
It may seem cynical to some of you, but go to the capitals, volunteer to help, sit in on the meetings, talk to insiders, and see what they think. See how they talk about their relationship to "the people."
As someone wise once said to me, "You may not be in the game, but you're still on the board, so you had better damn well care about the rules."
Every time the privacy thing comes up, I say the same thing, and I'll say it again here:
I have no problem with being watched as long as the public gets to watch the police.
Usually I have to post the link to the first chapter of Brin's Transparent Society, but I don't think that will be necessary this time.
For geek dads: Contraction Timer
Dave Drake's Lacey and His Friends (paperback, get it whereever you like to shop is a set of three novellas about a world where cameras and surveillance are everywhere by law, in every room larger than roughly a public bathroom stall. They're very dystopian SF. Nicely done, though.
Mod parent up, mod parent up, mod parent up!
The parent post actually seems to understand what Brin is talking about. It is almost a perfect response (almost exactly what I was about to write).
For geek dads: Contraction Timer
Who needs it anyway?
...
hmmm, I think I will check out that jerk who cut me off this morning.
Lets see, hmm, he browsed a bomb-making site last year - hmm - yep - he took chemistry in college, a B+. Lets see what else we got - ok, he bought fertilizer last year, along with his veggies - I see a pattern here! Better order the in-house infrared surveillance.
Wow - he did what with his wife? That is still illegal in Connecticut - we got him! the criminal. Lets see what else - oh yeah, we got a tip he smoked pot in high school. And he went on vacation to that southern country 3 years ago. And he is a NRA member! He listens to Floyd! Must be a communist drug dealer! Yep - he bought plastic baggies last month. Lets see what else - a Democrat - so we will go to a Republician judge for the trial
Naa - who needs privacy.
My life is not open source. Just because some sick motherfucker on slashdot decides that Brin's argument is a good tool to wield in his quest to butt into my life doesn't make it one I have to put up with.
And ultimately, it's my choice. I may not be able to do a great deal about the government spying upon me - although I'll continue to try - but if you, some schmuck with a camera and self-righteous attitude insists on following me around a public park I'll punch you in the nose. And guess what? Most Americans would call what you do 'harrassment', and a broken nose a small price to pay for being a stupid twit.
You don't have any right whatsoever to sift through my life. None. Nothing in the Constitution grants you that right, but even more fundamentally there is no 'natural right' to such activity either. My business is just that and your curiosity doesn't count for dick as a justification for getting into it.
I don't care how many laws are passed, or how many pathetic losers with no lives campaign for privacy loss so they can vicariously steal the lives of others, I'll *still* punch you in the nose if you follow me around with that camera.
And perhaps, just perhaps, enough of use nose-punchers will get together and set up shop elsewhere away from your nasty little prying eyes and your sad lives, leaving you to spy on the dull, boring, vapid existence you lead when you no longer have the opportunity to live parasitically off the more interesting.
Because, in reality, that's what it all boils down to, doesn't it, for those of you opposed to privacy? The fact that you yourselves are so utterly boring and pathetic that you'd probably slit your own throat if you couldn't spy on your neighbors and mess with their affairs? Yeah, sure, bleat in objection like the sheep you are, but *we* know the truth, don't we? Sure we do.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
As I understand it, his suggestion is to apply the "many eyes" philosophy of open source to privacy/freedom/security. Seems like an elegant solution - if it works.
As a person who believes in God (even though I am not necissarly too religous) I believe that God knows and sees everything I do, but for some reason this does not bother me. In this context, the problem is not that people can see or observe what I do, but rather their reactions, attitudes, and social impositions based off of their opinions or percieved personal benefits relating to what they think I should be doing.
Theologically, God has a reaction too (eg natural consequences). However, I trust the reactions of of God alot more than I do of men and government - even though I value justice (eg for a murderer) men are finite and don't always get it right.
EG. How much money I have is none of your business only because I dont want fools marketing me to death, friends bagering me, and the government being able to confiscate it at will. If I am isolated from these then I really don't care. A simple solution might be to let people have trade and bank accounts that are not linked to their identity, but secure enough for accountability.
Anyhow, I don't think governments can give us things like this. We need to secure them for ourselves through technology.
Which is why a truly transparent society is just like the other perfect utopian societies -- they're interesting ideas, but they can never ever happen, no matter how hard anyone might try to erect them.
Privacy is a basic human need or desire. If you disagree, skip the rest of the post- it will mean nothing to you.
First of all, privacy allows diversity. Until human nature changes, there will always be the urge to contain, limit, discourage, and take punative measures against those whose behavior or ideas are different than some prescribed norm dictated by less than democratic activism . While there are fleeting successes and short-lived theories of openness in society, the record is replete with examples of quite the opposite story, long-lived, harmful, and distasteful as they are to many of us now.
Second, openness is preferential. The desire for privacy, being a basic element of human nature, is meted and doled unequally when it becomes a commodity by virtue of restriction. Think drug war- accountability becomes impossible or irrelevant. Authority and power gain access to more, and one becomes a symbol for the other.
The measures in place will have absolutely no impact on the security of this nation against enemies from abroad. A five minute brainstorm session with several of your friends could net more schemes for attacking our country that would have been more effective, easier, and more visible than anything having to do with 9-11, and you can bet there have always been folks who spend 24/7 thinking about how to do it abroad for decades. And it gets better......they have the head start.
Brin's primary delusion is that he still believes in the democractic fiction that the masses, given enough information, can make things come out all right in the end. Somehow. While they are entertaining themselves to death.
What he seems conveniently unaware of is that government transparency without civilian means lacks credibility. Would it have helped the residents of the Nazi extermination camps if they knew when the SS were going to kill them? What if they new it on the trains? How about when the Brown Shirts were ravaging the streets? If they had known what was going to happen to them before Kristallnacht would they have been able to do anything? An armed uprising against the Nazi's with what? Pitchforks? Rocks anyone?
Brin's supposition is that democracy hasn't already been tried here and elsewhere. The people are sheep and will give up their freedom in a mad scramble when they are convinced a wolf is in their midst. I'm not saying that a wolf isn't lurking, but its lurking because some adventursome militarists can't keep their nose out of other people's business. I, for one, would rather not fly then start submitting myself to the equivalent of informational body cavity searches.
And I know that Brin is primarily arguing for more governmental transparency. Thats been tried. Don't you think that everything that we attempt will be subverted by the Washington bureacracy? If you don't, you've never been to DC.
Even at the local level it doesn't matter. I remember when some libertarians were protesting that they weren't being allowed in the national debates. They were attacked by local police out of nowhere. A few people had Hi-8 camcorders and they caught the whole incident on tape. After this the whole group of moms, kids, dads and students were rounded up by the secret service and held prisoner under MP5 submachine guns and german shephards. Yes, its all on tape. Does it really f'ing matter? Did it change a thing? Who had the guns?
Lastly, berating the privacy advocates because they demand a fundamental human right is a little like berating firearms advocates and saying we should have total disarmament. So stop whining when they come for your guns. Don't worry eventually we'll all just disarm. And have total disarmament. And Brin got a degree from where? Apparently is his earnestness to get his BS,MS or PHd he skipped game theory. Only a person ultimately in love with the state, so completely infatuated by big brother would come to the conclusion that the only alternative to big brother is big brother with his pants down.
Tell you what, David. I'll stand back a couple hundred yards with a camcorder and telephoto lens while you pull big brother's pants down. What? Oh you say we'll all just vote to have big bro pull his own pants down? Heheheh. This is rich stuff. Still on the anti-psychotics, David? Yes? Up the dosage!
Brin is right and Brin is wrong.
Brin is right - privacy need not matter - it's what can be done with information about you that matters.
Brin is wrong - we won't get transparency into government without some sort of revolution - whether political or by force of arms.
And if one-way transparency goes too far in favor of government, revolution of any kind may become nearly impossible. As soon as that ultimate form of accountability appears to be gone, those in power will quickly decide that they deserve to stay in power permanently.
Already the Democrats and Republicans have collaborated to make the US a "two-party nation" - and every election they get more and more alike.
subject says it all
You make two fundamental errors:
- that laws will put everyone on equal footing. This simply won't happen. The rich and powerful always get special treatment; new laws only serve to put more and more of the burden on the powerless.
- that you'll get to watch the rich and powerful. You won't; they don't hang out with you now, they don't frequent the same places, they don't engage in the same activities. They sure as hell don't mingle with the dirty prolls.
And they won't in this future world of yours either. In fact, they'll be all the more inclined to set up 'gated communities', 'gated country clubs', and 'gated parks' to keep you and your goddamned cameras away from them. Again, only the powerless are affected by all those cameras and all those nosy little shithead citizens who refuse to keep out of your business.
Like I said in a previous post, Brin is naive and so are the people who buy into his silliness. He implies that a loss of privacy ensures egalitarianism when in fact it does exactly the opposite: exposing the poor and powerless to reprisals by stripping them of anonymity while not touching the rich and powerful at all.
A world without privacy would be a world that a rich oligarchy would love to no end. Privilege would be more precious than ever before.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
A favorite author no less sucking big brothers cock.
Gee, YOUR post appears to be geared solely towards/about the POLICE(NAZIS) of THIS nation(U.S.)!
.45, do YOU have body armor and a gas mask as well?....NO i'll bet!
.454 Casull round at point-blank range), and a gas mask that filters out current airborne NBC agents.
Who kills more...POLICE!
Who kidnaps more people...OUR GOVERNMENT!
Who shot Amadou Diallo...THE POLiCE!
For doing what....NOTHING!
I trust the FIREMEN!
I trust the EMTs!
I NEVER trust police...NEVER!!!
I now NEVER trust this government!!
I will NEVER take a commercial flight(don't have to, I'm a pilot)!
Care to "enlighten" the world with warm thoughts of our "gracious" government?
When the FBI raids a home, do they have FULL-AUTO weapons pointed at YOU....YES!!!!
When YOU fight back with your
Do the nazi police have ARMORED VEHICLES to ATTACK YOU?.......YES!
Do you have an armored vehicle to PROTECT yourself against INVASION?......NOPE!!
I made a decision many yeas ago, to have EVERY piece of "protection" that I can afford and implement..I HAVE full body armor(It WILL STOP a
I reload ALL my own ammo.!
I do my own gunsmithing(A MUST for consistent headshots!).
I shoot/train regularly for quick response, fast draws and accuracy of shot placement( another MUST).
Do I feel "safe" living with nazi police driving by my home?....NO WAY!
Invade me...I SHOOT!
Invade another...I'll assist!
Shoot at me...I RETURN FIRE!I don't give a damn WHO you are...you fired at me first!
I have every RIGHT to self preservation...police or not!
Do I look for a reason to go "gunning" for trouble...NO!
Will I back down if it comes to me...NO!!!
Commit a crime in my presence, I'll arrest YOU at gunpoint!(citizen's arrest powers)!
NO effort is too great for me to stop fighting for my rights!
Carry and READ/UNDERSTAND the BILL OF RIGHTS!
I carry a booklet in my car and have one in the home as well!
Limit the information you provide, falsify that which you can, and deny at all times, anything that restricts your ability to know what anybody knows about you.
While driving on the highway, always watch out for the vehicle that's directly behind the vehicle in front of you!
Live free, love free, live secure and safe....FOREVER!
I would rather HAVE a gun, and NOT need it, then to NEED a gun, and NOT have one available to me!
Join the NRA for FREEDOM FIRST!
Even IBM acknowledges Linux(shameless plug!).
*This message posted on a stolen computer loaded with pirated windows and Linux....my PGP keys are also forged out of solid billet steel for security!*
206.39.38.2, DDN-BLK-36, DOD NET INFO CENTER. 800.365.3642 206.36.0.0-206.39.255.255 NET RANGE.
Has anyone noticed the simiilarity to the Free Software (source code available element) security model and what is being advocated.
Many eyes remove bugs or bad guys!
Also if your freedom is protected it can't be taken away from you unless you abuse it read GPL
Most "legitimate national security" issues would be un-necessary if we would avoid foreign entanglements and stop trying to right all the wrongs of the world.
No need to have secret agents spying on other countries or have top secret weapons if no other country has motives to attack us. No need to worry about spies in our country if we have no intention of doing harm to others.
Even if you say "but this or that exception!" you should recognize that at minimum it's a matter of degree - with less foreign entanglements, we'll have far less "legitimate" need for secrecy.
"You can't hold companies and the government accountable, but not individuals."
Nonsense. Why would you say that? How long will it be before people wake up and see that the inventions of man should at no time enjoy the same rights as man himself?
The inventions of man(business and government), being operated by collectives of men, should be held MORE accountable, just by the fact that they have more resources to internally police themselves.
As soon as you people give up this retarded notion that somehow, a company with no capicity for suffering or being oppressed, should have rights that were originally claimed by Men to stop the suffering and oppression of men, you will begin to see things as they are. At that time, you will stop voting for nimrods who make laws that make you subserviant to the interestes and desires of corporations. Awaken.
I'm not an american. I live under that other English -speaking tradition: the parlimentary democracy. However, there is a tradition that what people do in their own home is their business. We have a both a privacy and an official information act that assume citizen's own and can access both their own information and official information: the onus is on the government to prove it has a need not to give the information to the requestor. We also have censorship, police using entrapment, and incredibly stupid, intrusive laws. I live in New Zealand. I think that in the end a culture that respects privacy is the best protector of privacy. If you move too far away from the traditions of your society you lose that... and if we are creating our own cyber-society we have to consider the traditions that we are using. One of those traditions is free speech. {I'd suggest another is is free software: a third is free information). We need to think about how this applies not only locally but globally. Indeed, in adhering to these traditions and values, we may be subverting the laws of the state in which we live: this can and will lead to some people suffering under those laws). The resilience of the syber-culture, and the value that we place on these rights, will be shown by the strength with which we defend them. No right has been taken by the people without a struggle. And in this case, the struggle will be against corporations as much as any government.
Chris Gale Dunedin, New Zealand. http://www.pukeko.net.nz
For that matter, there are legitimate secrets that have nothing to do with foreign entanglements (e.g. the witness protection program).
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.