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Openness and Privacy Discussion



Here's a good introduction to reciprocal transparency.

James

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In New York and Baltimore, police cameras scan public areas twenty-four
hours a day. Huge commercial databases track your finances and sell that
information to anyone willing to pay. Host sites on the World Wide Web
record every page you view, and "smart" toll roads know where you drive.
Every day, new technology nibbles at our privacy.

Does that make you nervous? David Brin and many others are worried, but not
just about privacy. They fear that society will overreact to these
technologies by restricting the flow of information, frantically enforcing a
reign of secrecy. Such measures, they contend, won't really preserve our
privacy. Governments, the wealthy, criminals, and the techno-elite will
still find ways to watch us, but we'll have fewer ways to watch them. We'll
lose the key to a free society: accountability.

The Transparent Society is a call for "reciprocal transparency." If police
cameras watch us, shouldn't we be able to tune into police stations? If
credit bureaus sell our data, shouldn't we know who buys it? Rather than
cling to an illusion of anonymity-a historical anomaly, given our origins in
close-knit villages-we should focus on guarding the most important forms of
privacy and preserving mutual accountability. The biggest threat to our
freedom, Brin warns, is that surveillance technology will be used by too few
people, rather than too many.

A society of glass houses may seem to fragile. Fearing technology-aided
crime, governments seek to restrict online anonymity; fearing
technology-aided tyranny, citizens call for encrypting all data. Brin
contends that windows offer us much better protection than walls, as the
strongest deterrent against snooping has always been the fear of being
spotted. Furthermore, Brin argues, Western culture now encourages
eccentricity: we're programmed to rebel! This gives our society some
protection against error and wrong-doing, like a body's immune system. But
"social T-cells" need openness to spot trouble and to get the word out.

The inescapable rush of technology is forcing us to make new choices about
how we want to live. Is an open society more robust than one where secrecy
reigns? Is the protection of privacy possible in the face of technological
advances in increasingly undetectable surveillance methods?

These are some of the questions being explored in this Discussion on
Openness and Privacy, and as you will see, opinions are varied and debates
are emotional. But without deliberate examination, answers will not be
revealed.

http://crit.org/http://crit.org/openness/SUMIntro.html