Slashdot Mirror
The Myth of the "Transparent Society"
palegray.net recommends a piece by Bruce Schneier up at Wired. Schneier addresses the central fallacy of the "transparent society" idea promoted by David Brin, and also takes on the flawed arguments that attempt to justify increased government monitoring of citizens. From the article: "If I disclose information to you, your power with respect to me increases. One way to address this power imbalance is for you to similarly disclose information to me. We both have less privacy, but the balance of power is maintained. But this mechanism fails utterly if you and I have different power levels to begin with."
what if my powr level is over 9000 and yours isn't?
We should be able to to see what our police are doing and what our congesspeople are doing. Why? Because they work for us. ( If someone from a foreign country claimed the same privelege, we would not take them seriously, right? )
But once you grant that assertion, it follows - for all slashdot readers who are not self-employed - that your employer should be able to watch you.
I'm not advocating either side here, just pointing out the logical consequences of the position that we should be able to watch them.
That aside, who says the goal of privacy is to have power over people? If I hit you in the head with a brick and you hit me in the head with a rock, "the balance of power is maintained" but it seems like a suboptimal solution.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Only internal incompetance and lack of interest currently stops your government knowing everything about you!
If we are to have a "transarent" society then the citizen should be able to "see" everything that thier government does. Currently in the US not even congree can see what the executive is doing.
The 60s civil rights movement has triumphed, we have equality -- everybody is downtrodden.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
Those who have nothing worth keeping secret from the public possess very little that is of value in their lives.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
;P
But eventually, the Transparent Society would be replaced by the TMI Society, and the goggles will still do nothing.
If suitably motivated , a horrible person can play nice for a long time, and then suddenly "cash in". Never underestimate the power suitably motivated people.
meh
The nature of the relationship between those with power and those without is quite obvious, especially with respect to current privacy issues, but I always appreciate Bruce Schneier's ability to explain the issues clearly and thoroughly.
Transparent society doesn't even make the cut of a Myth ...
For transparent society to have a chance of reality one would need transparent government. Like that is gonna' happen
Is it really a "myth" if nobody has ever heard of it until now?
In the Discourses of Epictetus, he relates the way people will try to get information out of you by giving information about themselves using the argument that it would be unfair for you to know something about themselves while they do not know any of your secrets. Epictetus' counter to this is that you told me something about yourself because you thought it appropriate for you to do so; that does not mean that it is appropriate for me to tell you anything about myself.
Humans also need dignity. They need to be able to make mistakes. They need to be able to make suppositions about ideas without being judged in order to challenge ideas they do not agree with due to free will, and while this may not be illegal, it may challenge the laws and ideals of society themselves. If someone were to snuff out those who challenge society then it may flourish or fester by people who won't think outside the box (something also valued in business these days). Many times in history we've faced the alteration of convention, but without privacy, convention is re-enforced by group mentality.
That guy only got 7 years for shooting a guy in the face on an elevator? Even 14 seems pretty low to me.
I don't understand why police interviews are not typically recorded. In the UK most interviews have been recorded for a long time -- probably 20 years.
After all..... if the police have nothing to hide, why should they object to interviews being recorded and the defendant getting a copy of the tape?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The guy who wrote that article is an idiot. He talks about the "transparent society" without considering that other things in society are going to have to change alongside.
If you're going to have a transparent society, and you don't want to be powerless, you need to bloody participate. You need to break down the ultra-specialization that has become so commonplace in modern society, educate yourself about the various sectors that sustain your life and your society, and participate in each of them actively.
The example given was of cops. Well, in a transparent society, you don't want cops, because everyone is a cop. If you see someone doing something, and you know they shouldn't be doing it, you rally the people around and take action personally.
Another example, government. Government isn't supposed to "serve" the people, it is supposed to "be" the people. The matters that government are concerned with should be the very first things that are made transparent, not the inside of your refrigerator.
If all you want to do is sit around in blissful ignorance while the government runs your life, then a transparent society isn't going to make you particularly happy.
If you actually want to be an active participant in your society and work at making it better, transparency is necessary to get started.
This guy clearly doesn't want the responsibility that the loss of ignorance brings with it, but personally, I'll be fucked if I'm going to remain quietly ignorant so people like him can remain blissfully happy.
Those sorts of people are MEANT to be powerless.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
His issue is that "...this mechanism fails utterly if [the two parties] have different power levels to begin with." His primary example was one of police deception during a suspect's interrogation (and later perjury in court). He asks "Why aren't all interrogations recorded?" This is exactly what The Transparent Society proposes. Leveling the playing field. He complains about the NSA's warrantless surveillance, but in The Transparent Society, a Grand Jury would be looking at the same information as the investigators. He's making Brin's argument for him.
The main problem here is that when you read the original article, the case Schneider gives contradict what he says. Brin argued that the people who have power can (and will) invade your privacy anyway. They already have the surveillance cameras. In the example Schneider gave, the kid with the portable MP-3 recorder was able to fight back purely because he did have his own recording (of what turned out to be useful to him to record)-- that's precisely what Brin had argued. It's precisely the opposite of what Schneider said: "The more power you have, the more additional power you derive from the new data." Without the "new data"-- the recording-- the kid had no power; the police had all the power.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
In the case where the cop asks for your name, knowing your name gives no power in itself - you might have given a false name. it's only when that information can be used that the power is given/lost. When the cop does the PNC lookup, that is when they get power. Likewise, if you ask the cop their name, you have no means to use that information and therefore no power.
Even if you could record the police (which in the UK, you can't) you still have to have a means to use that recording for it to have power. Unless there's a heinous action on it, the media won't be interested. You can put it on youtube - but really, who cares?
Oh, and while we're on the subject. Society != Government.
Society is me, my partner, the people in my road, the queue in Sainsbury's. Govenerment is a group of dehumanised institutions - the two cannot be compared
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Vegita, what does the scouter say?
You've got to be trusted,
by the people that you lie to,
so that when they turn their backs on you,
you can stab the knife in.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
The example given was of cops. Well, in a transparent society, you don't want cops, because everyone is a cop. If you see someone doing something, and you know they shouldn't be doing it, you rally the people around and take action personally.
That's heretic. I'm going to report this; bloody communist pagans.
Your head a splode
privacy is good idea. there are some times though, where you have to give privacy up. these times are limited to a prudent rational argument for why you should surrender your privacy in limited ways and for a limited time
i now await your screed announcing this attitude of mine is making way for fascist authoritarianism (rolls eyes)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
Howard Roark, in The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
If you haven't read the book, basically the argument that Brin makes is that the complete loss of privacy is inevitable given technology, and thus we shouldn't delude ourselves in thinking we can preserve it, but rather embrace it and fight for transparency on both sides. I don't buy the inevitability argument, and whether he is right or not, the best course of action to preserve balance of power is the same - to fight to preserve privacy on our part, and to increase transparency in the government.
However, there are some more interesting arguments in the book. For example consider CCTV systems. Assuming that their installation is inevitable, he argues that we should fight to make the feeds were available to everyone not just the government. This would empower us to watch the government as much as government is watching us. However, the biggest opposition to this would not be from the government, but from citizens themselves who trust the authorities to watch them, but not their neighbors. This was the attitude he was trying to counter in his book.
I noticed the same thing, and was a bit peeved. I liked where the article was going, and then he made himself an unreliable narrator, which in turn made the article a rant and fodder. The argument of power is interesting. It is too complex for a one pager. First you have to deal with dynamics of individual vs individual, ind. vs group, group vs group, etc. Ugh, thinking about it is giving me a headache. I guess I can be classified as starting from a lower plane of power than some of you. And then me vs. slashdot as a whole. I am getting depressed. . . .
Schneier addresses the central fallacy of the "transparent society" idea promoted by David Brin
Brin doesn't suggest that the transparent society is a good thing; he suggests that it's inevitable so we should figure out which kind is the least offensive and make sure that's the one that happens.
Schneier demonstrates why the transparent society is undesirable, but this is not counter to Brin's claim. Schneier fails to offer argument which counters Brin's view of inevitability.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
My complaint about wiretapping and privacy in general isn't that the government can listen in on my phone calls. It's that I can't listen in on theirs. George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove say much more interesting and important on the telephone and in their emails, I'm sure, than the frivolous trivialities of my communication. And generally, the more responsibilities you have, the more you need be overlooked, otherwise there's no accountability.
Arguments like Brins don't come out of the blue; it's not a question of whether we decide to eliminate privacy or maintain it; we already have lost our privacy selectively and irretrievably--to the government and corporations--the question is what we're going to do about it. Demanding "mutual disclosure" doesn't mean that I give up any more than I'm already forced to give up anyway, it means that people who currently use their power to prevent giving me information about themselves now have to.
Schneier also ignores third parties. Right now, the government has much more information on my neighbor than just about anybody else. The government might use that information to compel my neighbor to do something (like testify falsely against me), but I can't. This power imbalance results from an information imbalance. If everybody's information becomes shared and public, the information imbalance between the government and me is reduced. There are still other reasons why the government has more power, but overall, it's an improvement.
I don't particularly like Brin's work, but it's on a personal style level rather than an ideological level. When I read his stuff, I come away feeling like I've been talked down to by a pretentious twit. I don't even think, if I met him in person, that he is like that. It's just that his style of writing rubs me that way.
But, what I've gleaned from standing on the edges and watching others talk about his work is that the idea Brin puts forward in the Transparent Society is that eventually technology will render the idea of privacy a dream. And that at that point, we will have the choice between the illusion of privacy by allowing only the "authorities" to watch our every move, or the reality of the new world by allowing everyone to watch anyone. My previous comment history can probably tell you which way I lean in this discussion.
However, Bruce's argument seems to be purely engaging in pointing out the illusion of privacy we already have rather than actually providing counterpoint to the solution proffered by Brin.
In the example of the police officer that Bruce provides, is not this exactly what Brin posits will happen if we insist in maintaining the illusion? The reason the exchange of ID's is inequitable is purely because the officer has access to databases which you have no equivalent access to. It would seem to me, this is exactly the problem Brin outlines.
If instead, when the officer goes to check your ID against the database, you also are checking their ID (pulling up their employment 'jacket' and cross-referencing their information against a civil liberties watchdog database) then the balance of power returns. You know if he's a cop with a history of bad arrests and he knows if you are a citizen with a habit of blowing away people for pulling them over on a traffic stop.
The issue that I feel Bruce is presenting is less "a transparent society can't work" but "we are so far away from being able to have one I think it's a pie in the sky dream". And in that, I unfortunately agree. I am pessimistic by nature, and whenever I look at the people in America who I know fully well to be rational, intelligent human being act more and more like scared sheeple, the less and less am able to hold out for the idea that the pendulum will someday swing back this way.
Privacy is one of the most fundamental things about being human. If privacy is to become null, the very definition of being human is going to have to change.
A transparent society where industry and government can spy and know all information about the citizens and consumers would allow government and industry to crush any opposition to the criminal enterprise or status quo.
It is our collective ignorance and current system design that creates an environment conducive to the production of criminals and extremists.
Criminals and extremists create huge profit centers for business.
Fear may be the biggest generator of income creating fictional needs and an artificial economy.
If someone one can create fear in your mind and then provide some solution to eliminate that fear, then they have a sale.
"an infinite player that has lost his finite mind" ~Infinite Play the Movie (it blends with reality)
Lets assume that it is possible to have instant knowledge about anything or anybody. Lets also assume that it's impossible for someone to hide. Then, the society would be very, very, different. We would behave differently, we would avoid doing stuff that we don't want others to know, some things we do right now in privacy would become normal and public.
In this situation, no one would have a special power over the other due to information. People with power would become a focus of attention and would need to be more careful, people without power would need to be careful as they could be watched by anyone...
Our lives would be very different. Could it be better? Maybe, who knows how well we would adapt.
But, BTW, why do we need to have secrets? Why?
"Sunlight is the best disinfectant; electric light the best policeman."
"Fear grows in darkness; if you think there's a bogeyman around, turn on the light."
"The plant that grows in darkness and wilts in the light give forth bitter fruit."
Bruce seems to be missing the point. Technology is giving the common man power to snoop on the powerful and the only defense the powerful have is to hide behind privacy laws and other form of censorship. Imagine if everyone wore devices that recorded everything they saw or heard - police would never be able to abuse their power like the cop Perino tried to do with Crespo. That kids MP3 recording saved his ass - what if everyone used that tech everyday? Privacy would disappear but so would many of the abuses of power that Bruce seems so worried about.
But once you grant that assertion, it follows - for all slashdot readers who are not self-employed - that your employer should be able to watch you.
Yes. My employer has purchased a chunk of my time and effort. He should be able to see what I am doing during that time. Inasmuch as I am using his equipment, he should also be able to know what I am doing with that equipment. He should be able to know what project I am working on, what strategy I am taking, what the progress status is, and so on.
If I am in his office, he should be able to physically see me. I should not expect to be able to work in a closet with the door closed and make my boss knock before he comes in. It is perfectly acceptable for me to keep my door open and let people (particularly my employer) walk right in at any moment.
Once I go home, and am off the clock, that is a completely different story. My employer should have zero visibility to what I do on my own time, with my own resources. That is none of his business.
What is the problem here?
Wow clever. So when do we pass laws to enforce participation on those that don't give a damn now?
Any practical society must be designed with the majority in mind not the vocal minority. Communism would work too, if everyone did what's good for a communist society.
Technology changes the balance of power..... giving it to the common man. Brin is advocating for people to give up privacy, he's saying that modern technology is making it so cheap and easy for people to record and share information that people are going to spy on each other all the time and maybe that's not such a bad thing. If we try to ban this tech then only the rich and powerful will be able to do the spying..... but if we keep it we gain a powerful weapon against the powerful.
Yet privacy is clearly a conditional right. You have to behave in order to enjoy it. Do bad things and you will lose it. Privacy cannot be a shield defending wrongdoing. That's the basis for police search warrants. The same or worse holds in the civil law sphere -- discovery and depositions are frightening things as some will find out.
With respect to governmental authorities, they operate with many legal privileges and immunities which shield punishment and so permit prejudice on their parts. Privacy becomes even more important in those relatively few (but serious) cases where offices are abused for personal gratification.
For those of you unfamiliar with Brin's notion of the "Transparent Society," the first chapter of his book is available for free online, and there's of course the Wikipedia page.
Personally, I think Bruce Schneier is sort of missing the point; if anything he seems to be advocating the same sort of system as Brin. Brin's general thesis is that with ever-increasing technological capabilities, with cameras becoming ever-smaller and cheaper and networks increasingly ubiquitous, this loss of privacy is sadly inevitable. Given the choice of surveillance being solely the domain of government, or the domain of both the people and the government, the latter is preferable, and also has some interesting side-benefits. Balancing power between people and the government is one of the major benefits.
Wow clever. So when do we pass laws to enforce participation on those that don't give a damn now?
We do it at the same time that we're removing taxation laws. It's a re-implementation of the same thing, except you're not insulated from understanding of what's going on, and your contribution isn't abstracted to the point that it can be perverted to a purpose you wouldn't have willingly agreed to.
If you spend a dozen days a month actually working on and with the critical infrastructure that supports your life rather than paying taxes equal to a couple of days worth of work for some private party, you know your hard work isn't going to go up some politicians nose while food supplies dwindle, then see him get first crack at the food supply while people do without. You really don't see an improvement there?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Marx/Hegel says that a limited economic resource creates opposing classes: the Haves versus the Have-nots. Survellience information may be one these dividing resources.
A counter theory says that although a new resouce may appear in one segment of society first (e.g. cellphone internet), demand pushes supply creation to satisfy society.
Someday, at such time as your karma has reached the heretofore unattainable echelon of "godlike" with its +6 automatic bonus, you'll post a cleverly disguised link to "8tubgirls2cups." And then we'll all be sorry.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
Mobs are like bell curves. You're going to have a few rational people and a few completely frenzied irrational people, but the center is going to end up going one way or the other. Will they listen to the emotional ravings of the irrational? Or will they remain calm and cool-headed? Given how emotions are far more contagious than reason, mobs are highly likely to bring the irrational average up.
But, like you said, the society is transparent, and the actions of each of the mob members is going to be known to everyone. Without police, you end up having to send another mob out to take care of the first one.
And mobs are like bell curves. You're going to have a few rational people and a few completely frenzied irrational people
I have to be a bit picky, the song that quote is from is "Dogs" not "Pigs."
Any practical society must be designed with the majority in mind not the vocal minority. Communism would work too, if everyone did what's good for a communist society. We need not pass laws forcing people to participate. We only need laws that reward them for participating. That is - as noted - one of the reasons communism has failed: it requires that people be enlightened and altruistic, both knowing what is best for their society and being willing to do it even at cost to themselves. When people are selfish, the whole thing collapses.
A properly constructed society would channel the efforts of the selfish toward doing the benefit of all, so when the selfish person acts, everyone benefits despite his intentions. That is one of the great benefits of capitalism, as Adam Smith said: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
When people participate in civic life, as shieldwolf advocates, they can personally benefit if there is private property. If I prevent a robbery for example, and thus decrease crime in my neighborhood, I indirectly help everyone. But if I am selfish, I'll only do it if I can protect my own property or raise my own property values in the process.
Private property gives the selfish an incentive to do things that are good for the community.
The example given was of cops. Well, in a transparent society, you don't want cops, because everyone is a cop. If you see someone doing something, and you know they shouldn't be doing it, you rally the people around and take action personally.
That's heretic. I'm going to report this; bloody communist pagans.
Who are you calling a pagan?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Granted, emotions are stronger than reason for many people in many circumstances. And that is, as noted, the driving force for mobs. But alongside that is the fact that as part of a mob, people know that they probably won't be held responsible.
Transparency changes that. They now know that they can be held individually responsible. Even if emotion rules, things are different. Now they are afraid of being caught and held responsible for their actions.
Vegeta, What's his power level?
a little contracting of privacy rights here, a relaxing of it there. such as during world war ii. but to drift an inch towards fascism and hysterically misinterpret that as an unstoppable march a mile down the road towards fascism is different. it is in fact exactly the kind of fear based thinking that so many privacy fundamentalists point at as spurious when people worried about security pass laws that limit privacy
in other words, privacy rights are valid. so is security. and a rational discussion must be had. and plenty here have pointed at the fear based hysteria that launches people towards fascist destruction of our privacy rights
i got all of that. but here's soemthing more:
an equal amount of fear and hysteria crowds the other side of the aisle. and that, in the defense of privacy rights, people appeal to these "the sky is falling" approach towards any law that even remotely infringes upon privacy rights is not an effective defense of privacy rights at all. that there is false alarmism, and false complacency. and we are not marching towards fascism at an unstoppable clip. have a little more faith in your fellow man
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You answer an example in a hypothetical world with a counter-example in the real world, therby implicitly ignoring the hypothesis.
Please consider the hypothesis at hand: that in a transparent society all actions are visible. Would mobs still act the same if each member knew that he could be individually held accountable?
> "But this mechanism fails utterly if you and I have different power levels to begin with."
The argument of the transparent society, however, is that information is released to everyone. No one is exchanging only with those with less initial power (which might allow them to maintain advantage), they're also exchanging with the people of equal power, where the loss of privacy does level the playing field.
Yes, I think so. Living in a transparent society has nothing to do with living in a society where everybody acts rational. If you are in a mob, you are pretty sure you are acting right, even though you still act irrational.
My respect for Bruce Schneier increases every time I read one of his articles. I'd previously been ambivalent about the "transparent society" notion. Part of me felt uncomfortable with the video cameras going up in so many public places, but I also found it difficult to put my finger on what is wrong with such police surveillance. By defintion, whatever is done in public is there for everyone to see and record if they want. What's the difference between a policeman standing on a corner, watching a public street, and a policeman sitting in an office watching that same street via a surveillance camera?
As Schneier points out, the degree of power wielded by the observer gives an asymmetric value to information gained by that observation. Surveillance technology greatly increases the ability of the police to know about our actions and movements—one cop can watch many cameras, and those cameras can permanently record everything they "see". Moreover, reciprocity is never an issue when public surveillance is discussed. The debate is always about whether the government has the right to watch us—whether we have the right to watch the government is never brought into that discussion.
It seems to me that if the government has a right to record what goes on in public precisely because it is public, then we have a right to watch the government for that very same reason. Are police interrogations not a matter of public interest? Of course they are. Consequently, it should be an absolute requirement that every interaction between a police officer and a member of the public must be recorded. To extend this principle, is it not true that every meeting of public officials, every communication of such officials with one another is a public matter? Absolutely: everything must be recorded! I understand that not everything can be broadcast live. For example, there may be good reasons not to broadcast police interrogations—after all, even the police might decide a suspect is innocent, so there's no point in broadcasting the humiliation of an innocent citizen. And of course, deliberations of the National Security Council can't be put into the public domain immediately, lest the terrorists win. But such events must be recorded, and the conditions under which they become public must be strictly codified. For example, it should be cause for mandatory dismissal of charges if the government cannot produce a recording of the accused's interrogation during a trial. And I think after a couple of years, the need for secrecy of National Security Council deliberations expires. I'd like to watch the meetings at which Mr. Bush became convinced that the invasion of Iraq was necessary, if you please.
If you think these suggestions are unrealistic, then you get the point. The point is that the government is always willing to watch the public, but it is never willing to make its own actions public. And that's not right, is it?
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
With a less corruptable form of democracy, in which you are able to vote on every issue, or just the ones that you feel competent to speak to.
To deal with the fact that every person cannot know everything, you should be able to assign your vote to any other individual whom you trust to do a good job, and have their vote carry the weight of yours.
So, you can vote for your mom, your mom can pass your vote and her vote to the town doctor, the town doctor can pass half the towns votes to a clever responsible guy he knows in the big city, and that guys opinion carries a lot of weight because a lot of people trust him.
You should be able to revoke your attribution at any time, instantly. Therefore, there is no possibility of corruption.
That is how I plan to organize society to operate without currency. By having it work on trust and leadership instead of systematic compulsion, ignorance and powerlessness.
Oh, and most animals, including humans, aren't particularly lazy. If they were, recreational pursuits would not exist. You've just spent too much time in the company of people who have been forced to work too much on things that have no importance, and your perspective has been skewed accordingly.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
And in the UK this was codified by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act in 1984 which was a reaction to some pretty extreme cases of police abuse and malpractice in the 1970s. Like, police knowingly covering up evidence which proved that people in prison with life sentences were innocent. So it's a good thing that now interviews and taped (audio & video) and available to both sides but it only came about through a rare moment of political clarity.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
While that may seem to be a logical continuation of this line of reasoning, the problem is that you're thinking there are only two levels - companies and employees. There's a third level - citizens. Society is ultimately "the boss" over companies that exist within that society. Sot it goes citizens > companies > employees. We can pass labor laws, including limitations on working hours, maternity leave, and even employee monitoring. It boils down to the citizenry deciding for itself what kind of society they want to live in.
Much like the logic goes "if the employee doesn't agree, they can quit the job", the logic also says "if the employer doesn't agree, they can leave the country."
I thought the point of monitoring the government while they montior us wasn't so much because it's right, but because it's the best we can do.
If the only alternatives are "The government knows everything, and so do you" and "The government knows everything, and you don't" then I'd go with the first option.
Yes, the first option sucks, but it may very well be that the option "Keep stuff secret from the government" isn't available.
-- Should you believe authority without question?
GP didn't say 'lynch'; he said 'act'.
Large groups of people under stress act irrationally, and "act" turns into "lynch" in a jiffie. Examples and literature abound.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
All you've done is restated your initial opinion. So I'll restate mine.
Reason states the mob members should act knowing their actions will be known by everyone else.
Emotions circumvent reason.
Most people in mobs believe, at the time at least, their actions to be moral.
It really comes down to this. Saying we should do away with cops and instead let groups of people voluntarily take matters into their own hands is the idea I'm arguing against. Even if those people are aware that their actions will be known to everyone else, that's insufficient to ensure that they will act more responsibly than cops do now, which is what the original statement was.
Once the mob is formed, it takes very little to turn it into a lynch mob. Complete transparency may reduce the number of mobs that turn into lynch mobs, but it's not going to be enough to bring the mob -> lynch mob conversion rate low enough to be socially acceptable. We're not talking about mobs of people who are merely gathered together to make a point, protest against some wrong, we are talking about mobs of people *explicitly* gathered to bring justice to someone deemed a criminal (by the mob itself, no less, not by a court). Such a mob is already pre-disposed to bringing harm to the person in question.
It's a monumentally stupid idea. I can't believe someone as coherent as you seem to be is actually defending it. I think it's more likely you are trying to defend a small point (that such mobs won't turn into lynch mobs, excepting the random one-off here and there), and taking that defense far beyond its scope. I think if you take a step back for a moment, you'll see the reason it's leading to such an absurd end is that it's wrong itself. I'll grant you that the OP didn't use the word "lynch mob", but that's exactly what he's promoting, *unless* you can truly expect all members of the mob to be level-headed, not get caught up in the excitement, and *not* take matters further than reason dictates.
After all, imagine the criminal in question killed some member of that mob's child. Do you think that person isn't going to be seeking blood, even knowing full well to do so would bring a mob after him (a mob that, most likely, won't be blood-thirsty for him, but will be more likely to just take *him* to jail)? That's why we have cops. Cops don't have the same emotional investment the members of the mob will have. That's not to mention the type of person who will be attracted to the mobs that form. The rational people are going to stay home. To join that mob already implies a predisposition to irrational acts.
Well, Brin does have the tenancy to present the two worlds in his book as a distopia where the just the government knows everything, and a utopia where everyone knows everything. He does point out some flaws in the later system, but in general it is a bit whitewashed.
:)
Schneier is just pointing out that the transparency society is no utopia - that it is, by nature, worse than the system we have now. As to whether it is inevitable - you're right that Schneier failed to counter it, but frankly I also think that Brin failed to demonstrate it to begin with
I do know that if we decide it is inevitable, then it most assuredly will be. There is no reason to accept it's inevitability - doing so now does not put us in a better position to create the least offensive kind of transparent society, and could cause us to settle for unnecessary intrusions into our lives.
The government currently only punishes. They do not reward, and they do not forgive. They take our money and they whip us in line. They are not our friends.
This is why privacy to us is important. If someone is out to get us, then any information we give the only works to their advantage. We feel we have more to lose.
Well, I think it is fairly certain that Bruce Schneier is smarter than most of the people here, probably including you and certainly including me.
I'll grant that that doesn't preclude him being an idiot as well, but not in this case. It is wise to be a bit skeptical about the possibility of putting a utopian scheme like a transparent society into effect. It's all very well to say that we give up our privacy and the people with power give up their power, but they can verify that we're giving up our privacy a lot more easily than we can verify they're giving up their power -- at least until its too late.
It's the Achilles' heel of most utopian schemes; even if you can imagine them working, it's hard to believe the transition from the status quo could take place without the whole thing running off the rails.
In any case, anybody who's seriously talking about a transparent society outside the context of a philosophical thought experiment is either a fool or a liar, often a bit of both. When the idea we can get along without privacy comes out of the mouth of business or political leaders, it's never followed by a shout of "and I'll be the first!" In fact, it tends to be defending some loss of privacy by somebody else that particularly benefits them is in reality good for everybody.
Right.
I think you've grasped the essential point: privacy is tied up with power. We can imagine a transparent society, and I think if it were not a dystopia, it must necessarily be a radically egalitarian one. However, there are a number of significant dystopic scenarios to be considered in a transparent society, such as the tyranny of a majority over a minority. One might argue that these scenarios are in fact impossible, but it's a purely theoretical argument. I believe I'll remain skeptical of any plans to put such a utopia into effect for now.
However, our society is based on restraining the powerful -- at least the politically powerful. More transparency, I do not doubt, would be better when applied to the workings of power.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Brin wants a level playing field, but Schneider's arguing that we should slope the field heavily away from the government. If they have all the guns, we should at least have a monopoly on the data to preserve the balance of power.
Brin also comes down fairly hard on crypto-privacy advocates because he claims in essence the right to obfuscate and hide personal data winds up helping only those with the technical abilities and interest in hiding their data. The average Joe Sixpack will never have such capabilities or interest, so according to Brin, giving anyone the right to hide their data is in practice only giving a small tech elite the opportunity to hide what they are doing.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The guy who wrote that article is an idiot...
The last thing Bruce Schneier is, is an idiot. He might be wrong in this case. I must admit I can't see a better solution that Brin's transparent society, and I can see much worse case outcomes. But he's not an idiot. You only have to read Applied Cryptography to figure that out...
The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker
Transferable vote, interesting.
You should be able to revoke your attribution at any time, instantly. Therefore, there is no possibility of corruption.
How the hell does that make corruption impossible? All that would do is decrease lag time, increase instability, and make unpopular options impossible.
That is how I plan to organize society to operate without currency.
Great, now the charismatic people have all the power, and everything I do is directly controlled by others. Sounds wonderful.
Oh, and most animals, including humans, aren't particularly lazy. If they were, recreational pursuits would not exist.
Playing all day is one way to be lazy - you still aren't getting the work done.
They act very public, every member of a mob feels proud to be a member,
Actually, they don't. This was just about universally assumed to be the case, and most police courses still teach this idea, but a number of recent studies (1990's and up) have shown that only about 25% of a given mob really want to be there. Larger percentages try to move towards the fringes and hang back, but are afraid that if they make a sudden break, the mob will turn on them. If the small percent that organize a mob make good choices in direction and pick up new people on the leading edge fast enough, the mob tends to hang together, whereas if it stays in one place, or avoids routes that let it pick up lots of new members, it dissipates.
Mob organizers can make people more afraid of leaving by appointing assistants to watch the edges and challenge hangers-back, or by announcing sudden changes of plan so that people caught up are more afraid to risk leaving, but these techniques may backfire. Most, probably all, mobs have an organizational core member set which has mastered at least some techniques to keep the mob going, has a plan to trigger a mob event before hand, and is willing to manipulate people in an at least semi-skilled fashion.
I'll be happy to provide some links on this if needed, but if you doubt it, try watching some mob video footage that captures the mob still en route to the location where it begins to destroy property or clash with the police, and see how easy it is to spot people herding stragglers, encouraging the reluctant and organizing the overall behavior. Also, count the numbers of these who are equipped with gear, such as handkerchiefs tied over their faces, disguising masks, or even gas masks, and figure these people came prepared to form a mob in advance.
Who is John Cabal?
I believe you, and I find your point pretty interesting. :)
I still think that transparency does not force rational behaviour, as stated by the parent.
Bruce sold his company Counterpane to BT some time ago, and is now a BT employee.
BT is going to sell it's DSL users clickstream data to an advertising company.
This sort of thing seems to be a huge invasion of privacy, and part of the march of "inevitability" that this Brin guy seems to be selling books about.
So I wonder what Bruce has to say about Webwise, and if BT even asked him for his input on its implementation.
Hello all. David Brin checking in. Author of The Transparent Society and the target of Bruce Schneier's article. I have (naturally) a few quibbles and downright snorts at things that my friend Bruce said -- and blitheringly misunderstood -- in his piece. I am submitting a response to WIRED. It will eventually run at: http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/ .. . . .
A few quick responses.
. . . .
First to "Inevitability" who said: "If you haven't read (Brin's) book, basically the argument that Brin makes is that the complete loss of privacy is inevitable given technology, and thus we shouldn't delude ourselves in thinking we can preserve it, but rather embrace it and fight for transparency on both sides. I don't buy the inevitability argument..." .. . . .
Well, um, neither do I. In fact, "Inevitability", you are wrong and clearly never read The Transparent Society. The book contains a long chapter about how important privacy is to human beings and necessary! Though freedom must come first. .. . . .
My point is that freedom, and thus privacy, cannot be defended by people who are disempowered... or who have handed all protection duties over to some secretive elite. The enlightenment is an experiment in empowering citizens to make their own minds about market and political matters and to thus argue them openly. But in order for this to happen, most of the people need to know most of what's going on, most of the time.
. . . .
That still leaves room for some privacy... yes, it will be more narrowly defined in a transparent society. But in an open society, we will better be able to defend what's left.
. . . .
Supersnail makes a key point. The parts of the Patriot Act we should be fighting are not those parts letting the government see better. What, you plan to blind the mighty? When did THAT ever happen? HOW do you think you'll blind the mighty?
. . . .
No, the parts of Patriot we should be battling against are where our "protectors" get to do it all in secret, unsupervised. I am not harmed by what the NSA knows, but I could be harmed bigtime by anything they might DO to me... and preventing that means supervision. It means "sousveillance" (look it up!)
. . . .
See http://www.davidbrin.com/suggestions.html where I discuss the "Inspector General of the United States" and other means of stripping the veils.
. . . .
Geoff Landis (hi Geoff!) gets it. Watch for my response to Schneier (either on WIred or my blog). Poor Bruce veers and reverses and ultimately shows us an example of transparency evening the odds! Already police are much more careful, since the Rodney King episode. We can keep this trend going, WHILE not impeding the good cops from doing their jobs.
. . . .
Nine-times, the People CAN be organized! That's what NGOs are for. Join the EFF or ACLU and your dues help watch the cops. Have clear evidence you were abused? Any tort attorney will gladly help you "get organized." We need more equalizers, but the precedent is there. and some exist.
. . . .
redelm, privacy is dear and needed, but it is a secondary right, after freedom to know and speak. Without those, all other freedoms are useless. That is why freedom to know and speak are fiercely spelled out in the US Constitution.
. . . .
Shieldwolf get that a transparent society will demand that at least a critical mass of citizens... maybe a third be truly mature and active and connected with events and technological change. In contrast, node3 is blind. We can all participate without becoming a lynch mob. on 9/11, citizens did a myriad great things, on the day when the Professionals all Failed.
. . . .
BTW Marx was a great science fiction author and changed the world by scaring the West into reforming. (He'd hate that characterization.) But Hegel was simply a monster.
All the time I can afford. If you folks want to see
Sorry to slashdotters for my klutziness with the interface. I hope you were able to see my response to this threa, and Bruce Schneier's article about my book. It is an important topic. I hope you are all part of the solution. Stay knowing and smart. With cordial regards, David Brin http://www.davidbrin.com/
Now, you just said that The Transparent Society "isn't central to the subject of the article," and hence any comments about it means that I am "changing the subject to irrelevant issues."
OK.
Please be aware that what you are apparently talking about has no discernible relationship to what I have been talking about.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
1. Town doctor passes votes to whomever pays him the most. Townspeople trust the doctor, but the doctor is corrupt.
2. Religious leader tells his congregation to pass their votes to him, their deity said so. Some congregations number in the tens of thousands.
3. Random thug goes around telling people "Pass me your vote and don't revoke it, or I punch you in the face/kill your child/release this videotape/get you fired/plant evidence on you and get you arrested". Once he has everyone's votes, he votes the way his boss tells him to. If random thug is captured, the boss replaces him with another random thug. Even better, have a bunch of thugs, and each thug gathers up 100 votes. That way if any one thug is caught, no big deal.
Nope, no possibility of corruption at all.
1) The doctor votes against the interests of the people who voted for him, and they instantly revoke their votes from him, permanently, forever. By his betrayal, he ensures that he has no political power.
2) The religious leader leads his people, and they vote for him because they believe in him. Democracy working as it should.
3) Random thug tells 10 people that they better vote for him, or else. Except, the people he told it to all have recordings of what he said. So they publicize it, and then they refuse to do what he said. If he acts against a single one of them, that is recorded too. So, everyone in town reacts to the threat by banding together and removing his capacity to harm his fellows by whatever means necessary.
Nope, no possibility of corruption at all. Corruption only works when it is secret, or when people are captive to their leadership. By removing secrecy, by removing restrictions of choice, by removing terms of office, corruption cannot take roots, despite the efforts of the corrupt. That is the point.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
The reality is that right now there are already enormous differences in power between employers and obligate employees -- people who must work for a living, and whose skills (whatever they may be) are not readily sold to another employer locally. This power is used now to force asymmetrical disclosures -- everything from details of the employee's personal life to directly observed urinating into sample jars.
Even if one rejects the idea that fairness is a useful -- or even possible -- goal, mandating symmetrical or at least mutual disclosures almost certainly would limit the amount and invasiveness of personal disclosures the more powerful require from the less powerful in the general case.
In exceptional cases there will be powerful people -- including those who are financially independent -- who would willingly disclose every aspect of their personal lives. This will include many celebrities, especially "celebutant[e]s", as well as those who believe that they live exemplarily moral lives.
In the more general case, even financially independent people fear exposure, social disapproval and accusations of hypocrisy over at least some things, mainly because humans are rarely completely socially independent, non-judgemental or unconcerned with their public image.
If voters demand that their politicians live in a goldfish bowl before they support monitoring members of the electorate, there are lots of politicians who probably would be more keen on constraining surveillance, since there is an abundance of them hiding embarassing personal secrets from the public.
On the other hand, if this discourages people with secrets from holding elected offices, they might end up with porn stars and self-destructive musicians as legislators! Or bloggers...
A lot of this depends on how franchise holders (electors or shareholders) organize and use their votes. There is occasional political pressure to introduce things like a Freedom of Information Act or entrenched legal protections for professional investigative journalists and amateur whistleblowers. Occasionally corporate shareholders will require greater openness by executive remuneration committees or individuals hoping to sit on the board of directors.
That these activities do not end a power-imbalance is not surprising, and is not even the point. The issue is preventing abuses by the already powerful against the already less powerful, especially when those abuses increase the existing power-imbalance.
If preventing further exploitation is the point, then the judgement that symmetrical disclosures "fail utterly" appears to be contradicted by the evolution of open government and corporate transparency over the past fifty years in (most) OECD countries (most of the time).
If mutually assured disclosures also "fail utterly" to limit exploitation, then why do governments and senior corporte executives work so hard to keep secrets from voters and shareholders, to the point of redaction, document-destruction, unminuted decision-taking meetings, frequent assertions of privileged confidentiality, and so forth?
Information technology changes the balance of power with authority figures. It levels the playing field. See http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2007/12/people-in-authority-sometimes-abuse.html
Benjamin Wright, Dallas, Texas, benjaminwright.us
I can't agree with you more! To suggest that humans can generalize to encompass basic understanding of all things which may affect their lives when the latter isn't a constrained set (Amish life is a constrained set for example) is just not doable.
Instead, I'd recommend that we all (unrealistic, I know) deliberately reduce our set of knowledge to a few skills, then form groups of no more than 60 people and become the master of those skills for that group. Call it tribalism, but I think that's how we evolved. We can't truly know or trust more than a handful of people - at that point, we need hierarchies to keep order instead of being able to rely completely on meritocracy. By forming guilds of sixty (including children and old folks) and not expending our mental resources on anyone outside the group, we can form relationships strong enough to include trust of all these people.
I've been dwelling on this for some time now. Human Hierarchical organizations are subject to abuse and require some subgroup to be in charge of other people. History is riddled with stories of failure of that idea.
Could it be that government at all is a flawed concept?
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Mobs don't act irrationally. Mobs occur when a tipping point occurs in the population. The population realizes that the system acts against them at every turn and they collectively realize that they are ready to actively destroy it. Then they set out to do so.
Mobs are the natural counterbalance to corruption.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
If you're going to have a transparent society, and you don't want to be powerless, you need to bloody participate. You need to break down the ultra-specialization that has become so commonplace in modern society, educate yourself about the various sectors that sustain your life and your society, and participate in each of them actively.
That's impossible. To require people do the impossible in order to make a system work ensures the system won't work.
Agreed. It is beyond impossible because it's likely that in 'working' a system like this you will develop another system quite like the one you replaced. However an active popluation really makes the government weaker since more people are behaving like independant syndicates or mobs. (see below).
The example given was of cops. Well, in a transparent society, you don't want cops, because everyone is a cop. If you see someone doing something, and you know they shouldn't be doing it, you rally the people around and take action personally.
It's extremely disturbing that you think the best form of law enforcement is the lynch mob.
I think this is a bit harse, but is certainly the reality. However we really are not that far away from it now, except most people think they are 'unempowered' and do nothing, as opposed to 'doing something'. The real problem is this. It's more likely for a person to ignore the problem than do something. Besides it's fine to say 'you take action' if you're 6 foot 220 pounds and in good shape and can handle yourself. If you're not and you faint at the sight of blood how would you deal with it? We may not like the 'fact that cops have to exist', but without it we could not trust ourselves. I certainly wouldn't want a return to the way's of the 17th century when if the village decided you were a witch you died. This is the way of the mob, and mobs are untrustworthy and unreliable except in one regard; to become a riot.
Another example, government. Government isn't supposed to "serve" the people, it is supposed to "be" the people.
It's supposed to be both. "By, Of, and For, The People" is the quote.
No, government is to 'serve' the people. What other purpose is there? You need a military? For what? to serve the people's needs and safety. You need government watchdogs, to serve the people to protect them against fraudsters and other obscure criminals. I forgot, the USA has turned it's government into a self-serving interest, you can fix that. Instead the government has fabricated it's enemies to turn the people against their own interests. Now they've convinced everyone that the 'rights' they have can be abused by enemies of the state and that should change. Why? Oh right the invisible enemies need to be stopped and only by treating people as the enemy can we weed them out. It's like the Salem witch hunt trials just grew some technology and changed the theme to account for the times.
People need MORE rights, not less. Don't let your hard earned rights be taken away by self-serving interests. Remind your Government why they exist.
The matters that government are concerned with should be the very first things that are made transparent, not the inside of your refrigerator.
That's quite true, but misses the point. Pretty much *every* aspect of the government should be immediately transparent, and there should be no part of the government that stays opaque longer than something like 50 years (although the argument for military secrets lasting at least as long as the thing they refer to is compelling, and I won't argue strongly one way or the other about that). But the contents of your refrigerator should only become transparent by your choice, and no one else's.
Privacy is one of the most fundamental things about being human. If privacy is to become null, the very definition of being human is going to hav
Jeruvy