David Brin's Remarks

Just after I posted "The Opaque Society, Part 2" last Thursday, I dropped David Brin a quick note saying that I was referring to his work. He was nice enough to write back on Friday with an expansion on his thinking and a correction or two to mine. Here's what he wrote:

PK said: “Brin proposed (briefly) that a) governmental and private surveillance technology was eroding citizens’ privacy, and b) one possible cure was to have truly ubiquitous surveillance, including publicly accessible cameras that watched the watchers. Brin wrote that this regime of many-to-many surveillance would tend to counter abuses of the surveillance system by those in power.”

This characterization of my position is better that some of the capsule summaries I’ve seen. Though almost any capsule becomes a caricature, in regards an issue this complex. In essence, I am not urging ubiquitous anything, but rather, continuing fealty to the fundamental bargain of the Enlightenment. Which is this: since no men or elites or groups can be trusted with power, let us arrange things so that men, women, citizens can hold each other reciprocally accountable. That's it. The core.

Reciprocal accountability is the central driver of democracy, markets, science and justice -- the four great “accountability arenas” of our civilization. And these arenas either thrive or fail in direct proportion to the degree that participants know enough to practice economic, political, scientific or legal accountability effectively.

(For a rather intense look at how "truth" is determined in science, democracy, courts and markets, see the lead article in the American Bar Association's Journal on Dispute Resolution (Ohio State University), v.15, N.3, pp 597-618, Aug. 2000, "Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competition for Society's Benefit." or at: http://www.davidbrin.com/disputationarticle1.html)

In The Transparent Society I do not argue for ubiquitous surveillance, nor an end to privacy (human beings need some). Accountability arenas have been proved to be robust enough to operate with a little slack and even some asymmetries. What I do argue is that we must constantly remember THAT reciprocality is the core element. And that widely open information flows and open knowledge are what makes it possible.

“But what if you posit a sudden sharp increase in governmental surveillance, one that the great majority of the population favors, with no countervailing increase in citizen surveillance of the authorities?”

This is, indeed a concern. But the Enlightenment and our Constitution provide an answer. Break up centers of power so that they are not monolithic. So they are mutually suspicious. So that whistle blowers are rewarded. So that non-governmental agencies have some ability to aggregate the citizens’ individual rights to “look-back.”

What you are describing is the “ratcheting effect” that I discuss in The Transparent Society - wherein government powers to see & surveil keep increasing, each time there is a crisis... and those powers are not given back, when the crisis eases. (See page 206 of The Transparent Society for a chilling paragraph in which I ask “what if the trade center towers ever go down? What will the Atty General ask for?” And I go on to predict the Patriot Act. Seriously! See p206.)

That is why I object to the WAY the ACLU and other freedom defenders oppose the Patriot Act. They aim all their ire at new wiretapping rules etc. But the very idea of restricting govt’s ability to see is absurd. All efforts should instead go toward ensuring reciprocality. Making certain that govt cannot USE such power against us, because somebody is always watching them.

See one example suggested at:
http://www.davidbrin.com/suggestion07.htm
There are countless other ways to break up centers of power and ensure that - even if they can see nearly everything, in an effort to stymie crime, they cannot use that power to hurt people, in general.

As for face coverings, I expect such endeavors to occur. They will be countered by other bio-tracking methods that measure walking gait, hand bone ratios, even scent. I portray such tracking games in my novel KILN PEOPLE. It won’t work much. Anyway, I’d be a fool to depend on it working. It’s like the cryptography fetishism of the 1990s. A silly distraction from the key need and goal.

You will never blind elites. But history shows that you can (with difficulty) make them walk naked.

(feel free to post this response.)

With cordial regards,

David Brin
http://www.davidbrin.com

The Opaque Society, Part 1

Besides a certain debt to P.W. Singer’s Wired for War, the scenario below reflects my reading of David Brin’s ideas about the Transparent Society during the 1990s.

Brin proposed (briefly) that a) governmental and private surveillance technology was eroding citizens’ privacy, and b) one possible cure was to have truly ubiquitous surveillance, including publicly accessible cameras that watched the watchers. Brin wrote that this regime of many-to-many surveillance would tend to counter abuses of the surveillance system by those in power.

But what if you posit a sudden sharp increase in governmental surveillance, one that the great majority of the population favors, with no countervailing increase in citizen surveillance of the authorities? The scenario below features a single technology—automated scanning of surveillance-camera footage—that generates two distinct sets of problems for civilian and military policymakers to consider.

Assumptions: Surveillance cameras proliferate throughout U.S. cities. Automated facial scanning by these cameras helps officials track criminal suspects, but citizens in urban areas take countermeasures to foil such tracking. Meanwhile, the U.S. military adopts even more robust versions of this technology for use in war.

Civilian Scenario: In October 2012, U.S.-based terrorists stage a Mumbai-style attack, simultaneously barraging a middle school in San Diego; an elementary school in Newark; a shopping mall outside Chicago; and a pedestrian mall in Atlanta with pipe bombs and gunfire. The low-tech, low-budget attacks, designed to influence the approaching presidential election, cause hundreds of casualties and widespread panic.

Afterward, examination of surveillance-camera footage shows the perpetrators carefully surveilling their targets over a period of months; their ringleaders are even seen visiting all four sites.

To avoid missing these types of patterns in the future, both the U.S. government and private corporations dramatically expand the automated scanning of surveillance-camera footage. Computers sift through billions of hours of footage from millions of cameras, looking for suspicious activities or travel by individuals.

For example, thanks to telephoto lenses and powerful processors, computers can now confirm that a man leading his family to different rides at DisneyWorld is the same man who bought cigarettes at a store in Times Square two days earlier—all with no human sifting through the man’s records, or even knowledge of his name.

Although federal officials downplay civil-liberties concerns, this enormous increase in governmental surveillance power provokes a backlash. While Fourth Amendment challenges percolate through skeptical state and federal courts, citizens begin to conceal or even alter their facial appearance while in public.

Facial covering by Muslims is suddenly a side issue as thousands of city dwellers start covering their faces using various materials and configurations that foil visible-light and thermal imaging. Some even use an ever-changing selection of prosthetics to alter the appearance of the face itself.

While they are barred from concealing their appearance within government offices and businesses such as banks, disguise actually becomes hip in less-regulated settings. Some urban areas start to look like Halloween year-round as Klingon makeup, Elvis sideburns and Emperor Palpatine hoods proliferate among an increasing number of secular veils, fedoras and burqas.

The federal government responds by limiting how and how much citizens may conceal, leading to still other privacy-based court challenges. For the time being, however, hoods, veils and burqas become illegal, as do facial prosthetics, elective cosmetic surgeries, and even certain cold-weather clothing such as balaclavas.


Questions: On which side will the courts fall when there is no immediate national-security concern posed by covering one’s face and otherwise changing one’s appearance? Or does the sheer ability of governments and businesses to electronically observe every urban public space lead courts to conclude that civilians face a “reasonable expectation” that they will be observed?


The above is only the civilian side of this scenario. Stay tuned for the military implications of this CounterStory tomorrow.