<x-flowed>Bob,
I forwarded your review of Wayner's book to, among others, David Brin. He
sent this reply, asking me to pass it on. Seems to have touched a nerve!
Udhay
Uday, thanks for sharing this.
Could you submit the following reply?
---------------
It is particularly dishonest of a so-called reviewer not only to
misinterpret and misconvey another person's position, but to abuse
quotation marks in the way Robert Hettinga has done in his review of
Translucent Databases By Peter Wayner. Openly and publicly, I defy
Hettinga to find any place where I used the word "trust" in the fashion or
meaning he attributes to me.
In fact, my argument is diametrically opposite to the one that he portrays
as mine. For him to say that 'Brin seems to want, "trust" of state
force-monopolists... their lawyers and apparatchiks." demonstrates either
profound laziness - having never read a word I wrote - or else deliberate
calumny. In either event, I now openly hold him accountable by calling it
a damnable lie. This is not a person to be trusted or listened-to by
people who value credibility.
Without intending-to, he laid bare one of the 'false dichotomies" that
trap even bright people into either-or - or zero-sum - kinds of
thinking. For example, across the political spectrum, a "Strong Privacy"
movement claims that liberty and personal privacy are best defended by
anonymity and encryption, or else by ornate laws restricting what people
may know. This approach may seem appealing, but there are no historical
examples of it ever having worked.
INdeed, those mired in these two approaches seem unable to see outside the
dichotomy. Hettinga thinks that, because I am skeptical of the right
wing's passion for cowboy anonymity, that I am therefore automatically an
advocate of the left wing's prescription of "privacy through state
coercive information management'. Baloney. A plague on both houses of
people who seem obsessed with policing what other people are allowed to know.
Strong Privacy advocates bears a severe burden of proof when they claim
that a world of secrets will protect freedom... even privacy... better
than what has worked for us so far - general openness.
Indeed, it's a burden of proof that can sometimes be met! Certainly there
are circumstances when/where secrecy is the only recourse... in concealing
the location of shelters for battered wives, for instance, or in fiercely
defending psychiatric records. These examples stand at one end of a
sliding scale whose principal measure is the amount of harm that a piece
of information might plausibly do, if released in an unfair manner. At
the other end of the scale, new technologies seem to make it likely that
we'll just have to get used to changes in our definition of privacy. What
salad dressing you use may be as widely known as what color sweater you
wear on the street... and just as harmlessly boring.
The important thing to remember is that anyone who claims a right to keep
something secret is also claiming a right to deny knowledge to
others. There is an inherent conflict! Some kind of criterion must be
used to adjudicate this tradeoff and most sensible people seem to agree
that this criterion should be real or plausible harm... not simply whether
or not somebody likes to keep personal data secret.
The modern debate over information, and who controls it, must begin with a
paradox.
(1) Each of us understands that knowledge can be power. We want to know as
much as possible about people or groups we see as threatening... and we
want our opponents to know little about us. Each of us would prescribe
armor for "the good guys" and nakedness for our worst foes.
(2) Criticism is the best antidote to error. Yet most people, especially
the mighty, try to avoid it. Leaders of past civilizations evaded
criticism by crushing free speech and public access to information. This
sometimes helped them stay in power... but it also generally resulted in
horrific blunders in statecraft.
3) Ours may be the first civilization to systematically avoid this cycle,
whose roots lie in human nature. We have learned that few people are
mature enough to hold themselves accountable. But in an open society where
criticism flows, adversaries eagerly pounce on each others' errors. We do
each other the favor of reciprocal criticism (though it seldom personally
feels like a favor!)
Four great social innovations foster our unprecedented wealth and freedom:
science, justice, democracy & free markets. Each of these "accountability
arenas" functions best when all players get fair access to information.
But cheating is always a problem because of (1) and (2) above. It's a
paradox, all right.
While new surveillance and data technologies pose vexing challenges, we
may be wise to pause and recall what worked for us so far. Reciprocal
accountability - a widely shared power to shine light, even on the mighty
- is the unsung marvel of our age, empowering even eccentrics and
minorities to enforce their own freedom. Shall we scrap civilization's
best tool - light - in favor of a fad of secrecy?
Across the political spectrum, a "Strong Privacy" movement claims that
liberty and personal privacy are best defended by anonymity and
encryption, or else by ornate laws restricting what people may know. This
approach may seem appealing, but there are no historical examples of it
ever having worked.
Here are a few themes discussed in The Transparent Society:
* Cameras and surveillance devices swarm our technological world,
multiplying and getting harder to spot each day. A "Moore's Law of
Cameras" shows them halving in size, doubling in acuity and movement
capability and sheer numbers, every year or so. Passing laws won't stop
them. Robert Heinlein said: "Privacy laws only make the bugs smaller...
and limit their use to some elite."
But there may be another solution.
* Knowledge is the ultimate drug, and forbidden knowledge is craved above
all. Credit companies, banned from holding bankruptcy records beyond 7
years, now ship the taboo information to offshore 'data havens.' Shall we
create an underground economy in contraband information, as we have done
with drugs? Who will benefit?
* One wing of the Strong Privacy crusade wants Euro-style privacy
commissions with a myriad laws and clerks to police what may be known by
doctors, corporations, and individuals. Dataflow controls may indeed be
needed at times! But this solution should be a last resort, not the first
place we turn.
* Another wing of wing of Strong Privacy likes libertarian techno-fixes --
empowering individuals with encrypted cybernetic anonymity. But scientific
and social flaws may render these panaceas no more effective than 'ghost
shirts'. Even if they can be made to work, it may just empower a new
elite - those who best know-how to use the new masks and armor.
* Is government the chief enemy of freedom? That authority center does
merit close scrutiny... which we've been applying lately with
unprecedented ardor. Meanwhile other citizens worry about different power
groups -- aristocracies, corporations, criminal gangs, and technological
elites. Should 'suspicion of authority' apply in all directions? Can
anyone justifiably claim exemption from accountability?
* Privacy and personal safety are better safeguarded by catching peeping
toms. Freedom thrives when we turn 'henchmen' into
whistle-blowers. Elites will always have some advantages, but we're all
better protected by knowing than by forbidding others to know. (It is far
easier to verify that you know something, than to verify that someone else
is ignorant.)
* Why do our "accountability arenas" work so well? Science, justice,
democracy & free markets are direct products of openness... most of the
people knowing most of what's going on, most of the time. Even individual
eccentricity seems to flourish best in light. Closed societies have
always been more conformist than open ones!
Many of these points may seem counter-intuitive... but so is our entire
rambunctious, argumentative, tolerant, eccentric, in-your-face culture!
The Transparent Society explores underlying issues, from the technological
(cameras, databases and the science of encryption) to the startling (why
all our films preach suspicion of authority), helping foster a new
appreciation of our unique civilization.
Defying the temptations of secrecy, we may see a culture like no other,
filled with boisterous amateurs and individuals whose hunger for
betterment will propel the next century. This will happen if we stick to a
formula that already works... most of the people knowing most of what's
going on, most of the time.
====================================================================
"New tech is handing society tough decisions to make anew about old issues
of privacy and accountability. In opting for omni-directional openness,
David Brin takes an unorthodox position, arguing knowledgeably and with
exceptionally balanced perspective."
- Stewart Brand, Director, Global Business Network
"As David Brin details the inevitability of ubiquitous surveillance, your
instinct, as an individual facing this one-way mirror, is to hope that he
is wrong about the facts. As you follow his argument for two-way social
transparency, you realize your only hope is that he is right."
- George B. Dyson, author, Darwin Among the Machines
"Where, in the information age, do we draw the line between privacy and
openness? David Brin's answer is illuminated by his insistence that
criticism is as vital to eliminating our errors as the T-cells of our
immune system are to maintaining our health. . . . Brin's informed and
lucid advocacy of fresh air is very welcome."
- Arthur Kantrowitz, Professor of Engineering, Dartmouth College
"David Brin is one of the few people thinking and writing about the social
problems we are going to face in the near future as the result of new
electronic media. The Transparent Society raises the questions we need to
ask now, before the universal surveillance infrastructure is in place. Be
prepared to have your assumptions challenged."
- Howard Rheingold, author, The Virtual Community
"The Transparent Society reframes the debate on what our world can
become-and the choices aren't what they may seem."
- K. Eric Drexler, author, Engines of Creation
"David Brin's nonfiction marvel, The Transparent Society, is what Lewis
Mumford or Thorstein Veblen might write, could they contemplate our
increasingly webbed world and its prospects for social change. It's what
Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson would be writing these days about
technology and democracy. Brin's book is full of imaginative, far-sighted
concern for how fluid information is going to transform our civil society.
Knowledge only occasionally leads to wisdom, but here we see some, and the
book is so wonderfully entertaining that it's bound to be widely read."
- William H. Calvin, neurophysiologist and author of How Brains
Think.
For more
information, see: <http://www.davidbrin.com/>http://www.davidbrin.com/
--
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
God is silent. Now if we can only get Man to shut up.
</x-flowed>
--- end forwarded text
--
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
--
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'