“In the struggle for freedom of information, technology, not politics,
will be the ultimate decider.” -- Arthur C. Clarke
We’ll
start with one more news item showing the futility of “hiding from elites”: The U.S. high court approves a rule change to expand FBI hacking power by interpreting
search warrants broadly.
It happens almost weekly - expansions in elite powers to see. And these are "normal" times! Imagine what new powers of vision will be granted, the next time the public is scared? Hiding is no solution.
It happens almost weekly - expansions in elite powers to see. And these are "normal" times! Imagine what new powers of vision will be granted, the next time the public is scared? Hiding is no solution.
Nor is it just government. “The Google-owned artificial intelligence company, DeepMind, is
in deep water after it gained access to the confidential health data of more
than 1.6 million National Healthcare Services patients in London,” reports Futurism.com. The data
feeds an
app called Streams, which would help hospital staff
monitor kidney disease patients, markedly improving patient care. But also sent were non-kidney-related data including HIV test results, details about abortions,
and drug overdoses.
One of you wrote in asking whether this is sousveillantly good or bad?
One of you wrote in asking whether this is sousveillantly good or bad?
My
response. And you are surprised? If you yowl and make them back off today, it
won’t work next year, or the next. The stunning myopia of imagining top-down
vision can be stopped is simply amazing.
But there is good news! The fact that we do now know about this and can discuss it is an example of something called sousveillance. Of course we need more, much more.
But there is good news! The fact that we do now know about this and can discuss it is an example of something called sousveillance. Of course we need more, much more.
In The Transparent Society I begin with a tale of two city-states. In both of
them, eyes are everywhere: cameras that proliferate across the landscape, from
towers to streets to parks to the electronic realm. Oh, but the two cities are different where it matters most. And we are seeing both kinds emerge now, in the real world.
Singapore Is Taking the ‘Smart City’ to a Whole New Level. The Wall Street Journal
reports on how government-deployed sensors will collect and coordinate an
unprecedented amount of data on daily life in the city.
“As
part of its Smart Nation program, launched by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in
late 2014, Singapore is deploying an undetermined number of sensors and cameras
across the island city-state that will allow the government to monitor
everything from the cleanliness of public spaces to the density of crowds and
the precise movement of every locally registered vehicle.”
“Officials
say the program is designed to improve government services through technology,
better connect its citizens, and encourage private-sector innovations. For
instance, sensors deployed by private companies in some elderly people’s
publicly managed homes will alert family if they stop moving, and even record
when they use the toilet in an attempt to monitor general health.” Any decision
to use data collected by Smart Nation sensors for law enforcement or
surveillance would not, under Singapore law, need court approval or citizen
consultation.
There's your City Number One. Oh, citizens are assured that the top-down surveillance is beneficent and paternally protective. But citizens have no way to verify this, or to enforce that promise.
So let's look at City Number Two from The Transparent Society, coming alive as we speak.
There's your City Number One. Oh, citizens are assured that the top-down surveillance is beneficent and paternally protective. But citizens have no way to verify this, or to enforce that promise.
So let's look at City Number Two from The Transparent Society, coming alive as we speak.
I’ve
met the President of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who has overseen the
country’s transformation into “e-Estonia,” where every citizen participates in a single, modern database that handles all health, income, insurance and
government benefits records, relating them seamlessly so that paying your taxes
“takes 90 seconds.”
No one denies that Estonian citizens have garnered many benefits in time saved, efficiency and eliminating the shadows wherein corruption thrives. Estonia has the highest web involvement and business startup rate on the planet. Moreover, the information is two way. Except for the most sensitive things like defense matters and imminent (time limited) police investigations, citizens have unprecedented real-time ability to supervise and comment on public officials, including those managing the computer-data systems.
And that is the difference. Not whether technology will shine light into every dark corner; there is no "whether." Rather, our choice will be either to trust the assurances of paternalistic authorities... or demand the power to enforce their good behavior, by relentlessly looking back at power.
== Can E-Stonia lessons be applied elsewhere? ==
The article is interesting. Though it leaves many quandaries unanswered.
No one denies that Estonian citizens have garnered many benefits in time saved, efficiency and eliminating the shadows wherein corruption thrives. Estonia has the highest web involvement and business startup rate on the planet. Moreover, the information is two way. Except for the most sensitive things like defense matters and imminent (time limited) police investigations, citizens have unprecedented real-time ability to supervise and comment on public officials, including those managing the computer-data systems.
And that is the difference. Not whether technology will shine light into every dark corner; there is no "whether." Rather, our choice will be either to trust the assurances of paternalistic authorities... or demand the power to enforce their good behavior, by relentlessly looking back at power.
== Can E-Stonia lessons be applied elsewhere? ==
The article is interesting. Though it leaves many quandaries unanswered.
These include scalability… is this approach best suited to a small and highly
educated nation? Or might the benefits be transferred – ‘turn-key’ – to some
poor country like Botswana? Then, of course, there’s the worry that almost
certainly vexes you – might Estonia’s
universal database approach, for all of its clean efficiency, turn into a tool
for permanent oppression by governmental Big Brothers?
To these fretters, I have
one question; do you honestly believe big nation elites won’t have all these
tools anyway, in the next decade or so, no matter how many times you invoke
Orwell? Indeed, would you bet your life they don’t, already? Estonia’s innovation is to make the database transparently
accountable. Any time a citizen’s
records are accessed, he or she is told who did it, and officials are
required to answer questions about why.
That, alone, does not guarantee safety, privacy and freedom, of course; it will be a never-ending struggle. But that arrangement makes plausible further activist efforts to keep big brothers under reins.
Moreover, it ingrains in citizens an expectation and a habit of supervision. And a willingness to get angry when that expectation gets thwarted. And a willingness to reward whistle-blowers, in that event. Not only is this a (somewhat) plausible way to protect liberty, it is how our ancestors (with cruder methods) got theirs. And it is the only way - even theoretically - that freedom can be preserved in the future.
Seriously. Name another approach that's even remotely plausible. I have been demanding this for three decades.
That, alone, does not guarantee safety, privacy and freedom, of course; it will be a never-ending struggle. But that arrangement makes plausible further activist efforts to keep big brothers under reins.
Moreover, it ingrains in citizens an expectation and a habit of supervision. And a willingness to get angry when that expectation gets thwarted. And a willingness to reward whistle-blowers, in that event. Not only is this a (somewhat) plausible way to protect liberty, it is how our ancestors (with cruder methods) got theirs. And it is the only way - even theoretically - that freedom can be preserved in the future.
Seriously. Name another approach that's even remotely plausible. I have been demanding this for three decades.
In contrast, what is the
pragmatic recommendation of the West’s most stalwart paladins of info liberty? Almost always they propose the normal-reflex “solution,” to scream at elites: “don’t look at us!”…
...without ever getting specific about how the demand might even be enacted, let alone enforced. Take the problem of identification.
== You exude and ooze ID ==
...without ever getting specific about how the demand might even be enacted, let alone enforced. Take the problem of identification.
== You exude and ooze ID ==
New biometrics abound and they get ever-creepier! Skull echoes could become passwords: SkullConduct uses the microphone already built into augmented-reality glasses, such as Google Glass, Meta 2, and HoloLens, and adds electronics to analyze the frequency response of sound after it travels through the user’s skull. Individual differences in skull anatomy result in highly person-specific frequency responses that can be used as a biometric system. It’s not as accurate as the CEREBRE biometric system (you can now be identified by your ‘brainprint’ with 100% accuracy), but it’s low-cost, portable.
Binghamton University scientist
Sarah Laszlo talks in this interview about an experiment which suggests that
biometric "brainprints" could replace fingerprints in the future. “Brainprints may carry some potential advantages over fingerprints in
identifying people. For instance, if a person’s fingerprint is stolen, there’s
virtually nothing that can be done because fingerprints are “non-cancellable,”
Laszlo said. “Brainprints, on the other
hand, are potentially cancellable,” she said. (Many different styles of brainprint can be recorded and the old, compromised ones publicly canceled as ID.) “So, in the unlikely event that
attackers were actually able to steal a brainprint from an authorized user, the
authorized user could then ‘reset’ their brainprint.””
Dreamy “cypherpunks” talk of shrouding their online
activities with encryption and wearing dazzle masks on the street, to stymie
all the cameras. But to what end, when each of us fizzes with biometric
identifiers? Your unique walking gait might be altered (for a short time) by a
pebble in your shoe. But can you change the specific ratio of lengths of bones
in your hand? Or the speckles on your iris, or the pattern of blood vessels in
your retina?
How about the oto-acoustic tones that many humans emit from their own eardrums, and that can be uniquely identified by sensors? Some time ago I mentioned how your farts will betray you, revealing a very specific spectrum of micro-biota from your gut.
How about the oto-acoustic tones that many humans emit from their own eardrums, and that can be uniquely identified by sensors? Some time ago I mentioned how your farts will betray you, revealing a very specific spectrum of micro-biota from your gut.
Our civil liberties defenders at the EFF and ACLU etc have the right instinct to fret about Big Brothers and asymmetric surveillance. But they always draw the wrong conclusion -- to resist the Orwellian nightmare by crying out "don't look at us!"
Over any extended time, you will not preserve safety or freedom by hiding. You’ll not. Dare I repeat? You... will... not... prevent elites from knowing you and knowing where you are and what you do.
And besides, hiding from them is a cowardly, self-centered approach.
Over any extended time, you will not preserve safety or freedom by hiding. You’ll not. Dare I repeat? You... will... not... prevent elites from knowing you and knowing where you are and what you do.
And besides, hiding from them is a cowardly, self-centered approach.
What you can
do… perhaps… is unite with a couple of billion other world citizens and demand
that big folk behave themselves. That they not use the info to harm or oppress us. Because billions of us are watching them.
Unafraid of what elites can see, we will curb what they can do.
Unafraid of what elites can see, we will curb what they can do.
== What about
encryption? ==
Yes, yes. The grand, always-invoked magic word. I shared a stage with a (skyped-in) fellow named Edward Snowden who - while impressive in some other ways - offered up this tiresome cliche, despite the fact that much-touted crypto-methods topple each and every year. And that any year’s cipher-breakers can, at minimum, dissolve the protective coats of encrypted material from ten years ago… always have and always (likely) will.
Yes, yes. The grand, always-invoked magic word. I shared a stage with a (skyped-in) fellow named Edward Snowden who - while impressive in some other ways - offered up this tiresome cliche, despite the fact that much-touted crypto-methods topple each and every year. And that any year’s cipher-breakers can, at minimum, dissolve the protective coats of encrypted material from ten years ago… always have and always (likely) will.
The
glaring fact is that even if such methods worked permanently and
perfectly – (and I use some myself, for pragmatic reasons) – cypherstuff will
only stymie elites (governmental, commercial, oligarchic, criminal and so on…)
regarding three or four of the dozens of methods used by oppressors across the
last several thousand years, since Hamurabi’s time. As well-expressed in a famous XKCD cartoon, why
spend millions cracking a suspect’s secret cache if a two-dollar wrench can
wrest the password, when you bring him in?
I
have yet to meet a cypherpunk activist who has read up on millennia of
spycraft, before proclaiming “crypto is the solution!” Point out the other secret police methods that encryption does not touch? Or the sheer number of biometrics that spew
from them, whenever they walk down the street? All you get is angry
glowers.
And
they call me ‘naïve’ for
recommending that, instead of
trying to shroud ourselves in e-burkhas, cowering from Big Brother’s minions, we
instead act vigorously, while we are still somewhat free, to strip all elites
naked! That is militance. It is how
we got what freedom we do have – hundreds of times more than any of our
ancestors.
Moreover, in the most important civil liberties advance in a generation, our right to aim cameras at the police is now established and making a bigger difference than all the raving jeremiads of both left and right.
Moreover, in the most important civil liberties advance in a generation, our right to aim cameras at the police is now established and making a bigger difference than all the raving jeremiads of both left and right.
And
sure, we can negotiate with our officials and the Protector Caste how to
supervise in ways that still let them do their jobs.
The choice is inevitable, between City Number One, whose best and most benign-confucian example is Singapore but more likely Oceania...
...or else the e-Estonian solution of utterly empowered citizenship, in which the skull-echo and fart-tracking and lie-detection and personality profiling methods help us to reduce the power of psychopaths and keep civil servants accountable.
The transparent city is coming, so let’s take a hand in its design, so that it reveals more about the mighty than about us.
If so, then instead of Big Brother forever, we might have Big Brother never.
...or else the e-Estonian solution of utterly empowered citizenship, in which the skull-echo and fart-tracking and lie-detection and personality profiling methods help us to reduce the power of psychopaths and keep civil servants accountable.
The transparent city is coming, so let’s take a hand in its design, so that it reveals more about the mighty than about us.
If so, then instead of Big Brother forever, we might have Big Brother never.
== Addendum ==
Envision contact lenses that are also tiny cameras, recording and storing whatever you see, and even playing it back before your very eyes. Sony has patented such a system – though we’ve portrayed this in science fiction, for ages – using blinks to command the unit (again, as I depicted in Existence.) Oh, but what if it is hacked? We can and will adapt, provided every advance is competitively and vigorously criticized and open-tested.