How to win the new war

[Greg Broiles]

At 01:44 PM 9/14/2001 -0400, Howie Goodell wrote:

>These smart cards don't need to be connectable to your
>identity; just your body and a responsible party's
>signature.  American Airlines and Lloyds put $1B behind my
>biometrics being one of an authorised class of pilots or
>plane cleaners.  Who I am isn't necessary.

No, but what's going to sound more comforting to worshippers at the temple 
of the power trip:

1.      Credentials without privacy violation, which chart a careful course 
between the risks of overidentification and the risks of 
overauthorization/overpermissiveness, a la Chaum -

or

2.      A big centralized database/control center, where serious-looking 
men with guns and uniforms will sit in swivel chairs and look at computer 
screens 24x7, using zoom lenses and database queries to inspect every 
movement or deviation from what's considered normal?

This isn't just a technical question, it's a marketing question, and people 
are learning/have learned to feel safer when someone's monitoring them, and 
others, too.

People believe that their experience as a subject of control and the 
exercise of power makes them safe - and that the feeling of not being 
controlled, or the idea that others are not being actively controlled (or 
at least monitored, to ensure that their internalized controls are 
functioning) is scary to them.

Things aren't going to get better until people learn to abandon the false 
security of the control fetish, and learn to operate in an environment 
where uncertainty and risk are significant factors.


--
Greg Broiles
gbroiles at well.com
"We have found and closed the thing you watch us with." -- New Delhi street kids