Dilbert, Skynet and the latest from the transparency front

Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) and I have both agreed and disagreed about transparency, for years. In his posting, Crime and Privacy, he has opined, for example, that “Ironically, the more the government clamps down on individual privacy, the more freedom the residents will have. When the government can detect every sort of crime, it will be forced by public opinion and by resource constraints to legalize anything it can detect but can’t stop.” 

Hm, well, that’s right in the general gist, though wrong in the specifics. What Scott is fumbling around — and that I made explicit in The Transparent Society (1997) — is that universal and pervasive surveillance can take us in either of two directions.  One is toward Big Brother, if elites monopolize the omniscience and can surveil in secret, without accountability or supervision.  In that case, you get what Vernor Vinge called “ubiquitous law enforcement.” And if the cops can’t arrest everyone?  Then they’ll cherry-pick and arrest those whom they don’t like.  In the specifics, Adams is dead wrong.

But Adams is floundering in the right direction when he holds “that a lack of privacy would lead to fewer activities being against the law. The only reason law enforcement can afford to act against drug users, or prostitution, or gambling, for example, is because only 1% of those crimes are detectable. If police could magically know every time someone violated a drug or prostitution law, the volume would be so high they would end up ignoring the entire class of crimes for purely practical reasons. And that’s where we’re heading.”

Still wrong! But almost there. What is missing from his vision is… citizenship. Let us assume that we remain sovereign voters and citizens, not just legally but empowered by omniscience of our own. By “sousveillance” — the ability and fierce determination to look BACK at the mighty – of government, oligarchy, corporatcy, criminality – in effect, watching the watchmen. (I portray this in my novels, EARTH and  EXISTENCE and it is very likely. ) Suppose we get used to applying reciprocal accountability and even inserting cameras of our own – or at least trusted witnesses – even in the authorities’ surveillance chambers and control rooms. In that case:

1) Cherry-picking and other abuses will be caught and deterred.

2) We will argue, debate, deliberate and change some of the laws ourselves.  Some will be abandoned, as Scott Adams describes, only by our choice, not because of some cop-laziness.

For example, if you are caught every single time you break the speed limit, and if the fine every time is $400, then you will join millions of your neighbors demanding that the system of fines be changed!  You currently pay $400 because the law assumes it is missing 99% of the speeders.  If it catches 100% of them, then rational people will negotiate a shift to a tariff system, where you pay by the mile… and by the mph… each time you hurry above the limit, but are not putting folks at risk. Deterrence that’s reasonable and flexible. Um…. duh?

Here is what I find depressing. People just don’t get this! Not even smart, out-of-the-box thinkers like Scott Adams. They seldom look at the society of citizens around them and see it! We never notice that 99% of the stuff… even the rules… around us is working! (Just stand at a 4-way stop sign intersection and watch a miracle at work.) Sure, complain about the wretched 1% that isn’t!  I got a list of complaints that rolls out the door. But this tendency to only notice what’s wrong seriously undermines our belief that we can fix things.

No wonder negotiation has broken down, in this era of dismal culture war.  We all assume the worst. We never ponder… is there a solution that we could negotiate, among ourselves, so that these trends won’t rob our freedom, but enhance it?

== The matter at mean ==

The best and smartest of the topical web comics is Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC), by Zach Weiner. A recent strip illustrates the psychological state that drives elites — even well-meaning ones — to proclaim a need for asymmetric information flows… to know everything about us while letting us know very little about what they are doing.  In fairness, such asymmetries can be necessary at a tactical level. But you can count on the rationalizations always getting pushed beyond sense, extending secrecy as a convenience, as job security, and an expression of self-importance — a tendency that winds up endangering citizenship and freedom.

(Another dollop of transparency wisdom from SMBC.)

We shouldn’t get angry about this fundamental trait of human nature — it is likely what you or I would do, to some degree, if we found ourselves in a position of power. But human nature is a challenge, a foundation we had no part in shaping, a hand we are dealt that can and must be improved. When it comes to surveillance by those with power we simply have to keep up a steady counter pressure, to find innovative methods for applying transparency upward (sousveillance). Watching the watchers, in ways that do not prevent them from doing their legitimate jobs.  It turns out there are such methods, just waiting for a concerted effort on our parts. Here is one example: Free the Inspectors General.

Oh, lest this focus solely on government, note that the same psychological drive affects elites of all kinds, from finance to business to social or international or criminal. Only (a slim majority of) scientists regularly practice transparency as a schooled habit. We are all human. But we must stop this old habit from destroying us. We can’t afford to indulge it anymore.

== Skynet now has lasers ==

Our friends the HST (High Speed Trading) or HFT (High Frequency Trading) algorithms are at it again. A single hacked/prank tweet on the Associated Press (AP) account, declaring that the White House had been bombed and Obama injured, sent the market into an instant freefall for three minutes, far too quickly for human traders to have been involved. “That goes to show you how algorithms read headlines and create these automatic orders – you don’t even have time to react as a human being.” See also: Skynet and the Flash Computer Trading Monster.

As if we didn’t already have enough reasons to dread this particular path to artificial intelligence (AI) now they are planning to equip Skynet… I mean Goldman Sachs HST systems… with lasers! Laser beam technology originally developed for the military is being rolled out to shave time off trades. It will compete with new microwave networks that are increasingly being used by traders. Ah, humans.  Marx was right about capitalists, they will sell the new overlords the rope used to hang us all.

== Transparency-related Miscellany ==

I consulted with Qualcomm about this, amid my decades long campaign to change the design of our cell phone system, so that it will continue to be useful when we’ll need it most, when some disaster (local or national or global) brings down the cell towers!  Implementing one of these resilience concepts, Qualcomm hopes to boost mobile coverage with a cell phone service that uses small cellular base stations installed in homes to serve passing smartphone users.

And along similar lines, adding to our potential resilience… Ushahidi aims to build the world’s most simple, reliable, and rugged Internet connection device, but with sophisticated cloud-based features. Its BRCK hub is rugged and can connect 20 devices  with any network in the world, providing eight hours of wireless connectivity battery life

- Smart dust computers, no bigger than a snowflake, will scavenge power from their surroundings, and monitor your world. Clearly a huge predictive hit for my friend Vernor Vinge in his novel — A Deepness in the Sky — which explores the possibilities.  Big potential upsides await… or else downsides far worse than Orwell. Raging against such things won’t stop them from being abused.  Embracing them just might.

- Hitachi Develops World’s Smallest RFID Chip.  Nicknamed “Powder” or “Dust”, the surface area of the new chip is a quarter of the original 0.3 x 0.3 mm, 60µm-thick chip developed by Hitachi in 2003. And this RFID chip is only one-eighth the width of the previous model.  Already the hand-wringing has begun… while clueless over  how to deal with such a world.  Clue: moaning about this won’t stop it.  Elites will have it. We have one option.  Give it to us all and ensure the elites are watched with this stuff.

- How easy is it to scam the Internet with a fake persona? “Santiago Swallow” skyrocketed from a nonexistent made-up name to a Kred social influence score of 754 out of 1000, within days of being “born” online… midwifed by British technology expert Kevin Ashton (who coined the term “Internet of Things.”)  For example: It didn’t take long for Mr Ashton to purchase Swallow some 90,000 followers, all for the price of $50. An automated tweeting service was used to broadcast his thoughts to the world. Image manipulation software created Swallow’s look and Mr Ashton finished his experiment by writing a fake Wikipedia entry and setting up Swallow’s own website through WordPress.

In fact, there are business opportunities for a pseudonymity-reputation conveyance service that would be an instant hit, allowing tools to overcome scams like this. Alas, the general response is hand-wringing and “what’cha gonna do?”

== Past, present and future shock ==

In his book “Present Shock: When Everything Happens NOW,” Douglass Rushkoff contends we must get used to the the world arising out of Alvin Toffler’s prophetically accurate “Future Shock“… a coming era when everything is happening all at once and the present becomes a cacophony of unbearable complexity. One in which the nostalgic reactions of left and right differ — the Occupy Movement seeks an endless present of confrontation while the right wallows in apocalyptic dreams of an ending that would relieve one of having to think about complexity. And yet, both of these bickering twins express a common, underlying personality trait: anomie toward the future.

Borrowing from some of the best web-philosophers, Rushkoff calls digiphrenia – digitally provoked mental chaos.  One of many overlaps in his book with near-future problems that I portray in Existence. Such as how corporate investing in new goods or services has been replaced by relentless — and ultimately futile — efforts to game the markets in real time, betraying the confident foresight that is supposed to lie at the root of capitalism. The motivator (in that case) appears to be less greed than a pervasive unwillingness to grapple with the gyrations of a rapidly shifting target called the near future.

Rushkoff is a savvy writer and perceptive in his attempt at a big picture.  Alas, temporal chauvinism happens to the best of us and the tendency in “Present Shock” is to fall for the very thing he describes happening to others.  Assuming that the present is the only topic here – the only subject worthy of myopic focus.  In fact, history teaches a sobering lesson – that every major new communication medium triggered disruption alienation and pain, before eventually becoming a net force for good.

Movable type, glass lenses, radio, loudspeakers, mass media. Each time this happened, some — like the Luddites of 18th Century Britain — would cry fore-tellings of gloom: that commonfolk would be overloaded, their ability to process overwhelmed, or that people would drift aimlessly without the anchor of tradition. Meanwhile others — from Giordano Bruno to Benjamin Franklin to Teilhard de Chardin — proclaimed ecstatic joy over the prospect of expanding human powers, predicting that the process might culminate in almost godlike omniscience. Every time, the grouches proved right in the short term and wrong over the long run.

Today’s Internet and media-blasted world shows every sign of passing through a similar era of confusion. A confusion well-documented in Present Shock – though alas, without as big or deep or wide or as calming a perspective as Douglas Rushkoff claims that he is offering. That is no indictment. It is all right to be a meta-example of the very thing that you are describing. And he describes it all very well.

== More Transparency Miscellany ==

- A cool and informative Scientific American article about Google Glass… and my sci fi augmented reality “specs” in Existence… and other takes on how we’ll move through a world of many layers and textures.

- An almost completely plastic pistol, made in a 3D printer. It’s heeeeere.  What a world.

- Fortunately, personal firearms will be nowhere near as important in the future as universal access to vision and knowledge. Citizen victories in the Age of Cameras can be among the most important in our time. Recent court decisions in the U.S. have supported a citizen’s right to film and record police activity in public places and the Obama Administration has declared this right to be “settled law.”  No matter could be more important than preserving the one recourse any person must retain, when dealing with authority… our ability to appeal to the truth.

- Now see how the same fight is being waged in Britain by a brave young woman — Gemma Atkinson — whose animated story is brilliant and informative.  Again, most of the time, most police are our good and faithful servants.  But the only conceivable way to keep them that way, is by getting them used to being supervised by their employers.  By us.

- Supreme Court says states may bar Freedom of Information requests from non-residents. Resist.

- An interesting rumination on Yelp! and other crowd-sourced “critic and review” systems… the advantages… and many many disadvantages that must be overcome, before this promising method can truly displace the appraisal of professionals and experts.

== Saving provocative politics for last ==

So you think I am always coming down on conservatism?  (That is, the current-loony Fox-led version; I admired  the intellectual honesty of Barry Goldwater and I tell everyone – left or right – to read Adam Smith;  but neither Goldwater nor Smith nor William F. Buckley would recognize today’s mutant right.)

Well surprise-surprise… I am fully aware of sins of the left, as well!   And I will now  swivel to aim in that direction.

First, bear in mind that moderate liberals are a much larger population than actual leftists, and that liberals do not partake in many of the traits of their more dogmatic allies, nor do they believe almost anything that Sean Hannity claims that they do.  Nevertheless, there truly is a fringe and there are ways in which the far left wing behaves much like fanatics of the far right.

For example, both extremes demand tests of purity and the recitation of rigid, in-group defining doctrines. Neither wing is even remotely interested in applying the genius of pragmatic compromise. At times, the left’s political correctness can seem as brutally intolerant as the know-nothing religiosity we see gushing from the opposite extreme.

One very smart social psychologist who lays out the case in ways that should make left-of-center intellectuals squirm is Jonathan Haidt. If you are one of those intellectuals, and are honest, you’ll give him a look and listen: The Bright Future of Post-Partisan Social Psychology. (Or see his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are divided by Politics and Religion). And perhaps even adapt. Please. We can only afford one half of the American polity going psycho at a time.

And continuing my swivel to cast a wary eye in all directions: a war on whistle blowers? It is much more complicated than this, and there have been other measures that enhanced whistle blowing incentives, of late. Still we need to keep paying attention.

And… the U.S. gives big push to internet surveillance: Senior Obama administration officials have secretly authorized the interception of communications carried on networks operated by AT&T and other Internet service providers, a practice that might otherwise be illegal under federal wiretapping laws.  I see such things as inevitable.  What I demand (and you should) is that we get something in return.  Ever increasing powers of supervision.

There. See?  I am wary in every direction. Remain suspicious! Especially if you have a “side” that you feel is better than its opposition.  It may only be better in 90% of the ways…

…and that 10% could become lethal. Unless we make sure that even our “friendly” elites know.  That we are watching them.

For more on Transparency and our future…

Hidden Offshore Money Hoards Revealed…and Other Transparency News

You may have heard that a consortium of journalists, working on a cache of 2.5 million recently spilled files, has cracked open the secrets of more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts, exposing hidden dealings of politicians, con men and mega-rich the world over. If preliminary reports prove to be true, it would be a revelation ten times larger than last year’s WikiLeaks Affair and vastly more important. Indeed, it could portend the start of a worldwide radical movement for transparency that I forecast (including – for dramatic effect – a world war on Switzerland) in my 1989 novel Earth.    

For starters, see a chart detailing ongoing investigations worldwide. Scan a wide range of reactions, from Russian officials, Europeans and others: 

–Tax Haven Data Leak Reverberates around the Globe

–Tax Havens Cause Poverty

–Release of Off-Shore Records draws Worldwide Response

 This event appears to prove the contention I made back in 1989, in Earth – that even world elites will have to adapt to a world much more filled with light. Specifically, these revelations may have short, intermediate and long term consequences.  In the near term, some cheaters and kleptocrats will be caught and some laws tightened, some cheat-havens hemmed in, public awareness and anger incrementally raised.  

 The intermediate effect will be to cause the kleptos and New Oligarchs to pay more for increasingly clever methods of concealment, evasion and manipulation. Remain cynical, it will take a lot more than this. A whole lot more.

 But over the longer term, a whole lot more is simply inevitable. We will see cascades of sudden revelation as these skulking methods prove inherently unreliable. They will be undermined by defections-of-conscience and by self-serving whistle blowers. By the fallibility of software and by the venality of henchmen. They will crack and leak, in any world that is short of Orwellian. At which point the world will choose. Shall we endure a return to the long, 6000 year era of law-protected oligarchy? Or will this signal the return to vigor of a civilization that is kept healthy by openness and accountability and light?

 Yes, I am putting it in dramatic – even manichean – terms.  And I have probably understated the importance of the coming series of confrontations. In fact, let’s make the prediction even more explicit than I made in Earth. 

FORECAST: This movement may be propelled – soon – by one or more radicalized nations in the developing world. Not radicalized by socialism or religion or dogmatic frenzy, but by the appearance of a new class of honest, grownup leaders at their helms. Imagine the fury that those leaders and their people will feel, when they suddenly realize just how much of their national wealth wealth was siphoned away by their own former kleptocrat lords. 

Vast amounts that those thieves took with them into exile.  Example: The Philippine Presidential Commission on Good Government probe into the disclosure that Maria Imelda Marcos Manotoc, the eldest daughter of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, was a beneficiary of a secret offshore trust of prodigious proportions, in the British Virgin Islands… 

Now extrapolate this and you start to understand why the Swiss and other haven bankers have recently seemed willing – even eager – to strike semi-transparency deals with tax authorities in Europe and North America.  (1) Because those big countries have dangerous klout that must be placated by tossing overboard some merely-rich, sub-billionaire clients. But far more likely – (2) because the real business of lucrative banking secrecy lies in that mountain of klepto-hoards looted from much poorer nations. By striking deals with the IRS and EU tax boards, they hope to prevent alliances between developed and developing nations, in a grand consortium for transparency. 

Only it won’t work. Eventually, some nation like the Phillipines, or Indonesia or the former Zaire will be led by people graced with honesty, imagination and courage. Leaders who figured out, in advance, the pitfall traps such as blackmail. 

There are things that such nations and peoples can do — exceptional, dramatic and boldly effective things — that could transform the world. There are ways. And when it happens, remember where you first heard this.*

==  Pay attention… this is important == 

You Americans out there who actually want a return to a vigorous, problem solving nation, where politics is about negotiation and the Peoples’ will and not regression into feudalism, you must pay attention to this. There is really nothing more urgent you will watch, probably ever! Because the ability of the American Experiment to remain healthy and solve every problem hangs in the balance.

I mean it.  Watch:  Lawrence Lessig: We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim.   

But this next matter is paramount, as well. One issue where I am a flaming, no-compromise radical, is a citizen’s right to record encounters with authority, especially the police. Now the Obama Justice Department has made things starkly and abundantly clear.  It is now “settled law” that anyone is allowed to record or photograph police officers in public.  

A statement of interest – a legal term for when an agency or organization has a stake in the outcome of a trial, but not direct involvement – filed in the case of Mannie Garcia v. Montgomery County, Md., upholds the right of individuals to photograph police under the First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. This is more important than it may seem. Most cops are hardworking and well-intentioned men and women. Their instincts – inherited from ancient eras – are understandable… and must not be allowed to prevail in this matter. 

But even as “settled law” it will be very very hard.  Note these cases:  

The NYPD and Mayor Bloomberg oppose surveillance of police.  See? Even “openness” democrats can’t be trusted in this issue. 

San Diego police attack, arrest man video recording them, claiming his phone could be weapon.  

Dinosaurs. In fact, this new era of omni-veillance will be essential and will help make policing easier! Especially if citizens feel they are partners and not victims. Take this example. NYPD fails to catch mugger for three weeks, but internet commenters catch him in one hour.  My “smart mobs” from Existence, taking form already. 

Then it all moves to a new front. “The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act,” prohibits filming or taking pictures on livestock farms to “defame the facility or its owner.” Violators would be placed on a “terrorist registry.”  Terrorism?  This was prompted by animal rights groups video-recording scenes of horrific sadism and cruelty on farms and in slaughterhouses… going far beyond the normal bloody business necessitated by the carnivorality industry. This was exactly the sort of transparency that the industry ought to want, in order to rid themselves of vicious monsters, the way pedophiles are kept out of schools. When they get used to this and embrace it, the owners will have a cleaner and more efficient – and less Karma-burdened – business. 

And related news —  A judge has blocked Iowa State University from releasing documents about food safety research conducted for the beef-processing company that makes the product dubbed “pink slime” by critics. At the level of details, there are actually reasons for compromise in this case.  At the level of principle, none at all.  

This is not as crucial a situation as the taping of citizen contacts with police.  But it matters and light must be allowed to shine. 

Oh, but sinking lower than slaughterhouses… on a secretly-recorded tape, GOP Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and his advisors are heard laughing and joking about opposition research they had on actress Ashley Judd, who had been considering running against McConnell next year. Many Democratic groups blasted McConnell for the remarks, disgusted by the fact McConnell would potentially use Judd’s suicidal thoughts as a child against her. In reactionn came a firestorm or protest against eavesdropping by “leftist agitators.”  Um, get used to it. Stop being led by crude people. Go back to choosing grownups. It really is that simple. 

Interesting times indeed.

==  Augmented reality… and catching liars == 

Compare these two images of Rome during the election of the last pope in 2005 and more recently in 2013.  Then contrast the images to my descriptions of “tru-vu goggles” in EARTH (1989) and the gel-lens stalks people wear in 2048, portrayed in EXISTENCE. How quickly are we moving toward the world of Augmented Reality (AR)?

Get used to expanded power of video to appraise tiny changes, measure your pulse at a distance and enhance our already tremendous ability to pick patterns out of backgrounds.  These methods developed at MIT will help us all thrive in Augmented Reality… or else prove powerful tools for tyranny.  We’ll get best outcomes from them if we all embrace them.  Openly. 

Indeed, after reading that article, ponder my 1980 novel Sundiver in which vision-based lie-detectors (inescapable, wherever there is light) utterly transform politics. 

I predict that by 2016 there will be lurid claims from “experts” on all sides, claiming to catch fibs by opponents talking in public or on TV… experts who are then “shown” to be lyingI It will be chaos, at first.  Then this stuff will become an App. And by 2020 or 2024? A useful tool> Possibly a sieve for psychopaths and monsters? Can you see yet why – for so many reasons – the clade of already-powerful psychopaths is growing desperate?

== And more transparency crux-points ==

Perching: Video, released by the Air Vehicle Directorate, shows a pigeon-like drone that can draw power from an electrical wire while its camera watches a target. These and other new-style drones are part of a fascinating and problematic future. Stay alert. 

In a fascinating article, Technology Review explains how a huge black market has developed for “zero-day” systemic flaws in programs and operating systems, especially in mobile devices.  These can be exploited by governments or corporations of criminal gangs, especially in mobiles, that get infrequent security updates.  A cottage industry of hackers now swops in to find flaws and back doors and chinks in security and then sells them at high prices.  The article raises this as a scary scenario… but in fact I am not so sure.  Isn’t this how an immune system functions? T Cells that discover an invader and ways to neutralize it are rewarded within your own body; they are given resources to reproduce.  Is that any different from a government agency saying: “Come to us with your clever discovery of a flaw.  We’ll pay better than the criminals do… and you won’t risk jail.”  See: the Malware industrial complex and the trade in zero-day vulnerabilities.

A multinational security firm has secretly developed software called RIOT capable of tracking people’s movements and predicting future behavior by mining data from social networking websites. Riot can display on a spider diagram the associations and relationships between individuals online by looking at who they have communicated with over Twitter. It can also mine data from Facebook and sift GPS location information from Foursquare, a mobile phone app used by more than 25 million people to alert friends of their whereabouts. The Foursquare data can be used to display, in graph form, the top 10 places visited by tracked individuals and the times at which they visited them.  

Curious whether a prescription or medical device your doctor is recommending comes from a manufacturer who has been paying your doctor? Good news, then: The federal government has finally developed a plan for how the Physician Payments Sunshine Act will work. The Sunshine Act, made federal law as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, was designed to allow anyone — patients, doctors, journal editors — to look up which doctors are getting how much from which companies.   

== And yet MORE transparency news… == 

See the stunningly huge number of new top level domains that are under consideration by ICANN.  

These guys consulted me. Koozoo envisions a world where a network of smartphone cameras will anticipate your needs and offer streaming video that fills them. But that’s future talk. For now, it will just put up cameras anywhere it can. 

In the wake of the famous WikiLeaks events, a large number of emulation sites popped up around the world, aiming to blow the whistle on corruption from Bulgaria to India to Nicaragua. Most of these clones never got very far and appear to have all but shut down. Balkanleaks seems to be just one of a handful still actively receiving and publishing new documents. (Note, I long supported Witness since 1990 or so, a more robust model that does not rely on inherently fragile encryption methods.) As I described in The Transparent Society, maintaining methods of aggressive accountability, threatening the dark secrets of powerful men, is a dangerous game and secret codes are only the tip of what’s required. 

States are pondering or passing laws to restrict the use of drones for camera use in the skies over public realms like highways. This is not where we should be concentrating our freedom and privacy protecting efforts.  All such laws will do is hamper the good aspects of drone use while compelling elites of government and wealth to make their surreptitious drones smaller.  More like birds and insects and harder to detect. The failure of imagination of these people….  

The thing we need is not to try to blind elites… that has never ever worked. (Show me one historical example. One.)  What we must pursue is sousveillance, our ability to look back at power. to see with our own drones etc.  And, above all, to make fresh, agile deals every time an issue like this comes up.  

“You say that you, our protectors, need more vision to better protect the public?  Fine.  But in return you must undergo more supervision.  Citizens in the control rooms.  Citizens on the panels that issue licenses. Webcams in boardrooms.  You may see better, in order to serve us better.  But you are a watchdog, not a wolf! And here is your choke chain. Accept it – and your role as a public servant – or else we will hire others.”

== And more! ==

Brad Foster puts into perspective the ever-rising tsunami of information and how crushing is the hypersonic waves of… bullshit. Just a few small examples:  Netflix consumes a THIRD of all internet traffic. Four billion shares on Facebook every day.  Eric Schmidt of Google says 5 exabytes of information were created by humanity till 1980.  We now create that much every two days.  Frost goes a bit over the top in his denunciations and diagnoses, but he concludes there has never been a better time for people to find ways around the BS and slim down, in order to be creative, or useful, or focus on what you can do that does (or is) some good.  

Political note: The FCC and Obama Department of Justice appear to be leaning toward favoring smaller mobile phone companies in releasing more cell tower spectrum, in order to encourage more competition with Verizon and AT&T. This may be a crucial sign of sentiment as the FCC also decides whether to release spectrum for major citizen-access use of WiFi type systems anywhere in the continent. 

== Brin on Beck? Via Penn Jillette? The strange world of Transparency ==

 

I was mentioned on Glenn Beck! In a “surprisingly cordial discussion” between Glenn Beck and Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller). Penn mentioned me twice, citing The Transparent Society (about 34 and 41 minutes in). I consider Penn to be a true paladin of freedom, worthy of my greatest compliment… that he and I would both have been quickly burned at the stake under any tyranny. (You, too, should strive to be burnable!) But in this wondrous civilization he and I are instead well paid to provoke and stir the pile, joyously yelling at each other and in all directions. Progress indeed.  

Beck? Well, he was courteous and calm on this occasion.  Go watch a discussion between a sane-openminded (though rambunctiously provocative) true-libertarian and a tendentiously delusional faux-libertarian shill for the new lords… but still a good mind-stretch for those of you who need to wallow now and then, in smart perspectives that challenge you. 

== Coda == 

A final set of sad notes. I have spoken elsewhere of the terrible news that both Jay Lake and Iain Banks are in desperate fights against cancer. I will speak more of that later. (They are great writers and let’s all send our best vibes.) Now comes news that the son of eminent science fiction author Dave Wolverton – AKA David Farland – suffered a terrible accident recently. Past fans of Dave’s work – or folks interested in trying something new – might have a look at his novel Nightingale… or else, if you are a would be writer, consider Million Dollar Outlines, in which Dave offers would-be best-sellers advice how to analyze an audience and outline a novel so that it can appeal to a wide readership. 

————

* Oh, but by then I may have been bribed into denying it all! No serious offers so far.  You – the smart public – should feel insulted by that! Think about it.

Questions I am frequently asked about… (Part V) Transparency, Privacy and the Information Age

I’ll now complete my compilation of questions that I’m frequently asked by interviewers. They can all be found online on my web site and press kit. This final section is about… 

== PRIVACY AND TRANSPARENCY==  

Note that my tenure as an expert in these matters arose from the 1997 publication of The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?  which won the American Library Association’s Freedom of Speech Award and the McGannon Public Policy Prize.  It revealed many surprising aspects to a vexing and complex set of problems that we must negotiate and navigate in the coming decades, with nothing at stake… other than liberty, survival, and all the things that make life worth living.

For more detail, see a compilation of some articles and interviews  about transparency, freedom and technology .

–Do you worry about the loss of privacy as both the government and amateurs have more and more access to surveillance?

I got some of my nicest letters based on Chapter 9 of The Transparent Society, where I disassemble my own theory, appraise and talk about all sorts of ways that a transparent society could go wrong! For example, you could have a really nasty version of majority-rule, such as Ray Bradbury shows in Fahrenheit 451. Even if transparency prevents Big Brother, will that mean we’ve traded top-down tyranny for the lateral kind? Oppression by hundreds of millions of judgmental Little Brothers? 

Serious concerns, Still, real life offers reason to hope. If you look at the last 50 years, whenever the public learns more about some eccentric group, it judges that group on one criterion: Is this group mean? 

Are they harmful and oppressive to others? When the answer is yes, the more we learn about the group, the less they’re tolerated. If the answer is no, the more we learn about the group, the more they’re tolerated. Look back. More exposure and information about others reduced racism, sexism, homophobia… but increased our aversion to groups like the KKK or Stalinists.  No other criterion explains this. 

If that’s true and if it holds in the future—if people continue to defend others’ eccentricities because a) they think it’s cool to live in a world of harmless eccentrics and b) for the sake of their own protection—then you would likely see a 51 percent or 60 percent or 70 percent dictatorship by a majority that insists on crushing just one thing… intolerance. Okay, that’s still group-think majority-imposed will. But the least harmful one you can imagine. 

As far as privacy itself is concerned, I have a simple answer to that. (It makes up chapter 4 of The Transparent Society.) Human beings want it. We naturally are built to want some privacy. Moreover, if we remain a free and knowing people, then sovereign citizens will demand a little privacy, though we’ll find that we must redefine the term for changing times. 

The question really boils down to: Will tomorrow’s citizens be free and knowing? Will new technologies empower us to exert reciprocal accountability, even upon the mighty? It may seem ironic, but for privacy and freedom to survive, we’ll need a civilization that is mostly open and transparent, so that each of us may catch the would-be voyeurs and Big Brothers.  So that most of us know most of what’s going on, most of the time. 

It can happen!  The proof is us.  Because it is already the method that we’ve used for 200 years. And to see this all laid out, have a look at one of the only public policy books from the 20^th Century that’s still in print and selling more each year.

–What do you foresee as tiny cameras proliferate? 

Essentially, this is the greatest of all human experiments.  In theory… sousveillance (looking at the mighty from below) should cancel our worst fears about the surveillance state, if we get into the habit of stripping the mighty naked. 

If that happens, we should eventually equilibrate into a situation where people – for their own sakes and because they believe in the Golden Rule, and because they will be caught if they violate it – eagerly and fiercely zoom in upon areas where others might be conniving or scheming or cheating or pursuing grossly-harmful deluded paths… 

… while looking away when none of these dangers apply. A socially sanctioned discretion based on “none of my business” and leaving each other alone… because you’ll want that other person to be your ally next time, when you are the one saying “make that guy leave me alone!” 

That is where it should wind up.  If we’re capable of calm, or rationality and acting in our own self-interest.  It is stylishly cynical for most people to guffaw, at this point, and assume this is a fairy tale. I can just hear some readers muttering “Humans aren’t like that!” 

Well, maybe not. But I have seen plenty of evidence that we are now more like that than our ancestors ever imagined they could be.  The goal may not be attainable.  But we’ve already taken strides in that direction.

-What do you see as the major problem in achieving a more transparent society?

When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else.

-How will greater openness affect our society?

We already live in the openness experiment, and have for two hundred years. It is called the Enlightenment — with “light” both a core word and a key concept in our turn away from 6,000 years of feudalism. All of the great enlightenment arenas — markets, science and democracy — flourish in direct proportion to how much their players (consumers, scientists and voters) know, in order to make good decisions. To whatever extent these arenas get clogged by secrecy, they fail.

But the next step in people empowerment is even more impressive — those burgeoning “smart mobs” Howard Rheingold and Clay Shirky and Vernor Vinge talk about. (Also shown in my latest novel, Existence.) It’s agile. It’s wired. Every generation innovates, or the Enlightenment dies.

- In EARTH (1989) you forecast that a huge world issue in the 2010s and 2020s would be international banking secrecy. Now, daily revelations seem to be bearing that out.  Do you still foresee something like a “Helvetian War”?

An actual, physical war, waged by nations of the developing world against the great banking havens?  Well, not really.  That was an exaggerated metaphor for a novel that achieved dramatic effects. But I do still expect increasing radicalization and pressure from many newly rising nations, when they realize that their former, kleptocratic lords stole literally trillions that might save and give hope to millions of children back home, if the money were recovered.

This issue won’t go away. Just recently (April 2013) a cache of 2.5 million files has cracked open, spilling the secrets of more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts, exposing hidden dealings of politicians, con men and the mega-rich the world over. In my novel, Earth, I predicted this would be the core issue of our times.  I still think things will play out that way.

See: more articles about Transparency and Openness

Or:

Return to Part 1: Questions on Writing and Science Fiction

Part 2: Questions on Science Fiction and Fantasy

Part 3: Questions on Brin books and The Postman

Part 4: Questions about Prediction and the Future

 

From Glass-shattering Asteroids to Transparency…

Yesterday morning I was diverted to serve a stint as astronomy pundit – on BBC – regarding or planet’s double encounter with asteroids.  Wow.  As one asteroid about 50 meters across zipped by earth, closer even than our communication satellites, another (probably just ten meters in size) gave up more energy than an atomic bomb … gradually, thank heavens, but right over a city in the Russian Urals… briefly outshining the sun and shattering hundreds of windows.  My job on-air was to reassure that there would be no dangerous radiation… that in fact, bolides like this one seem to strike our planet once or twice a decade or so, but always till now over open ocean or deserts or countryside. (In the 1970s one such event, off Japan, almost triggered a rise in DEFCON alert level at the US NORAD!)

LATE UPDATE: It appears to have been a swarm, as much smaller fireball-entries were reported near  San Francisco and Cuba. 

I mentioned that asteroids appear less fearsome than they were twenty years ago. Since then, we’ve catalogued all of those near the size of the one that finished off the dinosaurs, at least those that might ever pass near us.  (Including one listed as 5748 davidbrin.) But down at the 50 meter (Meteor Crater) or 5-meter (atomic bomb) range?  Well, that’s for another generation of NASA spacecraft to find for us.

Anyway, we still aren’t “safe.”  Comets (my area of scientific expertise) could swoop down from almost any direction, almost any time.  So let’s become more capable of living and working out there!  Our proper path is vigorously forward.

I also mentioned Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, companies looking into ways to harvest vast wealth from asteroids.  Of course that quest is described both in my new novel Existence and in detail in Heart of the Comet.

All told, an exciting day… though I feel for the folks in Chelyabinsk.  Most of the 1000 injuries happened because people rushed to windows to gawk at the spectacle… then a shock wave hit, shattering the windows.  Folks are probably very cold in Chelyabinsk tonight.  Hey, it’s winter in Russia.

We should send a cargo plane of plywood and another of window glass.  In exchange for some chunks. Lovely scientific chunks.

How does this relate to transparency? Beyond the window glass metaphor? Interestingly, the large number of videos that captured this rare cosmic event came about due to “an epidemic of road mayhem” across Russia. Automobile video dashcams are commonplace in Russia — used to document the all-too-frequent driving accidents and incidents of road rage …or to record inept (or corrupt) police officers.  Of course, this is precisely from one section of The Transparent Society and from Earth.

== More from the Transparency Front ==

Face recognition systems have been long-expected… and are now arriving in droves. Authorities will soon be able to pick  almost any person out of a transient crowd… as I have depicted in novels going back to EARTH (1989).  This article is a good review of the technology companies in this field and where they stand… but the sub-surface preachy tone is unhelpful, because it implies there is a scintilla of possibility that anything can prevent society’s elites from using these techniques.  Or that we should even complain.  There is one option, one way to prevent this from turning into Big Brother and it is not to panic or try futilely to “ban” it. The only thing that can work is to grab it for everybody. Get used to being gods who can see and recognize anybody… and use it to force accountability upon the mighty.

MeCam may soon be on the market for $49: a tiny helicopter-camera follows you around and streams video to your phone. Aya-tollyah so.

Japanese activists have invented a pair of high-tech glasses that emit a near infrared light to block face recognition cameras. It was their goal to counter what they call the “invasion of privacy caused by photographs taken in secret. Uh huh.  That’s gonna work for about a year.

A few months ago, the startup tech firm Silent Circle (Global Encrypted Communications Service) introduced  a “surveillance-proof” smartphone app to allow people to make secure phone calls and send texts easily. Now, Silent Circle has come out with a groundbreaking encrypted data transfer app that will enable people to send files securely from a smartphone or tablet at the touch of a button. Now… I am all in favor of empowerment of the lowly individual!  Anyone who reads The Transparent Society knows that. Still, for twenty years I have pointed out the foolishness of over-reliance on encryption.  The mighty have methods going back 4000 years. And it is simple to bribe or blackmail or coerce  or steal back door keys.  This endeavor might be one of the few that the NSA does not “own.”  In that case, huzzah.  Just don’t stake your life on it.

In China, Beware a camera may be watching you. NPR reports: “In recent years, the government of the world’s biggest country has installed more than 20 million cameras across a country where a decade ago there weren’t many.”  Actually, that number surprises me by seeming on the low side. An interesting article showing how difficult it is to maintain high ideals, when tempted by modern tools.

DARPA workers want tomorrow’s military hardware to literally cease to exist at a predetermined point… to self destruct. “Welcome to the age of suicidal sensors…. Sometimes the hardware will be pre-programmed to self-destruct. Other times a human should be able to step in and signal to the device that the cold grasp of oblivion beckons.”  In fact, this has been a priority topic for many years.  Why do you think airliners haven’t been tumbling from the sky, shot down by shoulder-mounted missiles from back when the US supported radical guerillas fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.  Can anyone doubt that, when their ire turned westward, militants found that the electronics failed to work anymore?  It is so nice to know some one was competent out there.  Thanks, whoever you were.

Or take the Unattended Ground Sensor, a monitoring device designed to look like a rock and recharge with a solar battery, to collect and transmit data on a warzone for decades after most U.S. troops there have packed up and gone home. From descriptions, this item seems a lot like devices I portray in Existence and that Patrick Farley showed a decade ago, in his epochal web comic “Spiders.”

“Stop and Frisk Watch” is a free smart phone ap that empowers New Yorkers to monitor police activity and — according to the NYCLU “hold the NYPD accountable for unlawful stop-and-frisk encounters and other police misconduct.” Now mind you, I am an extreme radical against any moves by the police to arrest or restrict citizens’ rights to record encounters with authority. Recent court cases have upheld our right to defend ourselves against abuse of authority with the only recourse we can ever count on — The Truth.

Having said that, let me add that nothing is gained by using this right in an aggressive, in-yer-face style and attitude.  90% of cops are decent, hardworking and unbelievably brave folks who are trying hard to help transition a job that used to be officially sanctioned thuggery into a supremely skilled, accountable and reliable profession. They are doing this while saddled with human hormonal systems more appropriate to caveman days, while wiping spittle off their faces from crazed idiots they must deal with daily.  Come on, guys.  Record it… but with courtesy. It’s what you want from them.

== Other Notes ==

In 2012 I attended (remotely) the Humanity+ conference near San Francisco and gave a talk that is now posted online: “The Rise of Science Renunciation.” The sound is tinny, but the ideas flow rich and fast. How do we talk our fellow citizens against supporting the rise of a new Dark Age?  How do we get them not to burn us at the stake?  Practical advice for those pushing the Rapid Agenda.

Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120 million to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change.  Yawn.  It is openly admitted on the right that the anti-science campaign is financed by Big Coal and Big (foreign) Oil.  The real difficulty arises when our neighbors and crazy uncles respond that the “other side is worse!” Proclaiming that liberals are similarly polemical and illogical and oligarchy-driven. Alas, they are never specific. Um, how about some details? We all know how the Koch brothers and desert sheiks benefit by delaying solutions to climate change.  But who, exactly, is pushing the “global warming myth”?

Big… er, um… Big Efficiency?  I’d love to see how that is spelled-out.

The mythology is insidious.  Especially to a guy like me, who does not consider himself to be a leftist or democrat or even a classic liberal… but rather a style of competitive libertarian.  What am I then to make of Rand Paul’s reply to SOTU (President Obama’s State of the Union Address)? Alas, Paul – a the latest darling of the Tea Party – is part of the new tradition of fabulating history with a concoction of true statements. For example:  “What America needs is not Robin Hood but Adam Smith. In the year we won our independence, Adam Smith described what creates the Wealth of Nations.”

Hm, well, it happens that I agree with that sentence!  But Sen. Paul goes on to promote the fabulous notion that the American Revolution and Adam Smith both saw “government bureaucrats” as the chief problem stifling freedom and enterprise, and that is pure malarkey.  Sighing, let me once again ask you to name – across 6000 years – the eras of bright promise that were spoilt by meddlesome civil servants.  There were some!  And I favor smaller government when possible.  But pick dates and locations at random, and 99% of the time freedom and markets were ruined by conniving inherited oligarchy.  Like King George and his lords.  The ones Smith despised as the enemies of capitalist competition and the foes the American rebelled against. Inheritance aristocracy is THE great enemy of capitalism and always has been.  And any “libertarian” who ignores that blatant historical fact is no true libertarian.  He is a shill for the enemy.

Phew… and settling down a bit…  Here’s a cool example of re-apportionment.  How the 50 US states would look if the states were all redrawn to contain equal populations, Even the names are cool & fun.

Science Fiction author Hayden Trenholm is raising money for Strange Bedfellows: a science fiction  anthology all about politics.

Want an unusual gift: put your favorite images or  loved ones on decorative wood. Have a look at Jason Land’s Wood Craft Kickstarter to print high quality photographs on wood.

Terrafinity site has produced a range of ideas on their Towards 9 Billion blog exploring humanity, ecology and ideas for a sustainable future.

…and that’s plenty for now….Thrive on.  And keep an eye on each other and the mighty.  And keep watching the skies!  (But stay away from glass.)

The end of ID and credit card safety? Must e-commerce be destroyed?

Want a scary story about the near future of you and your money on the internet… and the future of e-commerce? Try this from Mark Anderson, one of the top tech business pundits around, in the newsletter of the Strategic News Service:

Another level of chaos has come to us through the use of credit cards on the Net, linked to our digital IDs. At first, everything was great: the system worked, fraud was present but offset by fees, and the world had a new payments system. That was yesterday. Today, ID theft and card fraud are apparently out of control….

 Not long ago, I was told by a gas pump to check with personnel inside; I had driven my little sports car too quickly from the last gas station, and the system had rejected my card because it didn’t think I could be me. Soon after that, the anti-fraud system on a different card allowed me to fly to Washington, DC, and charge something there, but not to charge something in New York, where I often travel. When I called the issuing bank, the implication was that I had failed the burden of duty of calling to inform the card company.

 I am used to informing these folks when I travel internationally, but -  “Do you mean I now have to call you every time I move from state to state?” I asked. “Because I am definitely going to shred the card before that ever happens.” 

 A friend reported having had her card fraudulently used, so she canceled it and had another issued from the same New York bank. That, too, came back soon with fraudulent charges. My response: she wasn’t a victim of ID theft; she was a victim of a bank that was lying to her about having been penetrated, with the thief getting card data access. Someone else at the table had also had bad charges on a card from the same bank.

 “Simple,” I suggested. “Don’t change cards; change banks.” Can a whole bank be neutralized by a single attacker?  You bet.

Scary stuff from a fellow who knows.  But nothing compared to other items in Mark’s highly respected newsletter: like when he gives us all chills, explaining about the back doors that have been designed into most chips originating in Taiwan, allowing outsiders who have a secret key to simply walk into your system. Those chips are everywhere, including all U.S. defense machinery. Now what could those back doors be for?

== The end of credit cards and passwords? ==

Mark Anderson paints a daunting picture of our future Internet, fraught with viruses, worms, moles, backdoors and a bestiary of other ways that our secrets — from passwords to credit cards to life histories — can and will be betrayed.  The “cypherpunk” dream is to prevent all of this by encrypting everything behind  layers of shrouds — the biological analogue: fighting viruses by thickening your cell walls and making them less permeable.  One can only take that so far before the cells become incapable of interacting with each other. And then die.

Despite an admitted romantic allure, such cypher methods can never be verified, they defy auditing, and they can be suborned or backdoor penetrated by elites. Indeed, the system’s opacity makes it hard to detect or repair mistakes. All of which I detailed in The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force us to choose between Privacy and Freedom?

Face it, we in the Western Enlightenment will never excel at skulking and shrouds and games of deceit.  Oh, I’m sure our paid protectors have done many clever things: perhaps those “backdoors” that exist in Taiwanese chips and codes contain DOUBLE back doors, that were counter-scammed by the NSA. Our spymasters doubtless have many layers and ingenious processes afoot… and so do some of the “anonymous” hackers… and it will all be for naught over the long run, as education and sheer numbers bring our adversaries (national, corporate, criminal etc) into greater technological parity.  At which point their cultural comfort with such cryptic games will turn to their advantage.

As I’ve sad in places like The Transparent Society, there is another way.  We in the Western Enlightenment have a tool that suits our cultural leanings, our talents and our creative bent.  That tool is light… openness.  The transparency that for 200 years turned competition into the greatest creative force ever seen.  Markets, democracy and science all work better in light, when the participants (voters, customers, researchers) can make informed- Hayekian decisions.  These arenas clog, choke and start to die when secrecy reigns.

I’m not proclaiming we should drop all efforts in the skulking war of worms and counter worms.  In fact, the looming failure of password-based systems (credit cards etc) can be solved with new, transparency-based methods.  Google plans to emphasize the obvious – biomentrics – but there are other techniques even simpler and great business models that could be built from them.

This cyber-era replicates a billion years of evolution, when parasites ravaged, then reached balance with the immune systems of metazoan life forms. We are replicating all of that in a few dozen years, praying we can fine tune our info-immune systems in time.  Fine, let’s invest.

But over the long run, what ambient conditions favor our kind of society?  A future that grows steadily less secret and more light-filled is the only one that inherently advantages the Enlightenment West, whose very name contains the key ingredient.  All of our adversaries are allergic to such conditions.  In an open world, they will have to become more like us, not less.

Transparency in 2013: A Followup

I had considerably more transparency-related news than could fit in one posting. So now let’s get into a series of micro-snapshots of this most-important front in the fight for tomorrow.

First: we failed to generate the needed 25,000 signatures for a petition at Whitehouse.gov requesting the Obama Administration to look into my “no-losers” proposal for how to simplify the tax code without much political pain. (Thus making it somewhat possible, at all.) Thanks Thomas Benson, for trying.

== Has Obama betrayed the promise of openness? ==

Professor Jack Goldsmith is a smart fellow, expert in the field of rights, freedom and privacy. His new book Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After 9/11, suggests that those liberals who are angry at President Obama for retaining some Bush Era powers have not looked closely enough.  Obama has cooperated with the establishment a significant limits and oversights to those powers that had been lacking before.  “Conventional wisdom holds that 9/11 sounded the death knell for presidential accountability. In fact, the opposite is true. The novel powers that our post-9/11 commanders in chief assumed—endless detentions, military commissions, state secrets, broad surveillance, and more—are the culmination of a two-century expansion of presidential authority. But these new powers have been met with thousands of barely visible legal and political constraints—enforced by congressional committees, government lawyers, courts, and the media—that have transformed our unprecedentedly powerful presidency into one that is also unprecedentedly accountable.”

That is not to say that I am without disappointments.  In fact, several Obama Administration lapses and measures have me seething!  I will be so-pleased when conservatism wakes from its fever dream and can serve as a proper foil, to keep democrats accountable and honest.  Alas, till then, we are stuck with a choice between flawed and corrupt-crazy.  I’ll choose flawed.

== Transparency Miscellany ==

We the people… A step toward more open government: See how GitHub uses open source to allow citizens to access, interact with, hack and edit government documents, data and software.

You really need to watch this, showing the amazing psychic at work… and his secret… (the multiple tents should be a clue.) 

A growth in anonymity…The online anonymity network Tor claims that 36 million people have used the system since it was first deployed about a decade ago. The system conceals its users’ identities by encrypting communications and routing them at random through a set of servers. This ensures that the sender and recipient cannot be identified by an eavesdropper along the way. What’s more, the last node in the route always appears as the originator of the message, at least as far as the recipient is concerned. That protects the location and identify of both the sender and receiver. Now Cal Berkeley researchers claim to have fixed a problem in this method by utilizing social networks to avoid malicious nodes. Me? I don’t trust such systems an iota and only a fool would. We have one route to freedom.  Strip the mighty naked. 

Ah, progress… A drone of your very own..if you have 990 euros.  Definitely a unique way to remotely keep an eye on the kids, a dad in the Northeast modified a quadcopter to watch from afar.

Mohammed Ibrahim is a strange sort of philanthropist, in that he doesn’t do handouts. The problem in Sudan and the rest of Africa, Mr. Ibrahim says, isn’t lack of money. It’s “governance—the way Africans govern themselves.” So Mr. Ibraham has a different idea: He gives directly to individuals—specifically to political leaders—who have to earn the money. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation, begun in 2006, tracks the quality of governance across Africa and awards cash prizes to leaders who leave office with relatively uncorrupt records.

The Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership offers a tidy $5 million over 10 years and then $200,000 annually for life. You might call it offering payoffs to leaders who don’t take payoffs.

Westerners no longer ignore what African governments do for—and to—their citizens. This shift “really helped democratize Africa a lot,” Mr. Ibrahim says. The leaders there are hardly perfect, he adds, “but they’re moving in the right direction.” He is only too happy to dangle a gold-plated carrot to keep them moving that way.

Federal officials can apparently use a “stingray” to locate a mobile phone even when it’s not being used to make a call. The Federal Bureau of Investigation considers the devices to be so critical that it has a policy of deleting the data gathered in their use, mainly to keep suspects in the dark about their capabilities.  Read the WSJ article… but bear in mind the implicit myopia.  That whatever federal agents can do, criminals and corporations will have access to, in a few years… and then your nosy neighbors.  Again, ironically, the solution is not to pass laws against such things; the laws won’t work. It is to make it all above-board.

== More Transparency snippets! ==

1. California takes a step toward free digital, open source text books for college students.

2. Undercover cops spying on protesters via cell phones.

3. Using statistics to sniff out science that’s too good to be true.

4. While definitely one-sided and politically driven (it’s hard to imagine anyone standing up for the other side) this essay about the fall of Chilean socialist president Salvador Allende in 1973 is primarily about an experiment in internet-like cyber-governance that was attempted during Allende’s brief tenure in office.  Completely aside from the tragic history and our own Nixonian shame is the fascinating tale of a utopian experiment in connectivity, way before its time.

5. In a fairly simpleminded theoretical model, some physicists report that there is a natural inertia and momentum to fanaticism of belief… that moderation of opinion suffers from disadvantages when confronted with powerfully-held memes.  From the descriptions of the model, I am not terribly impressed.  But it does continue to show what I described in my paper to the National Institute on Drugs and Addiction… that we face a difficult task becoming a nation and world of pragmatic negotiators and and practical, calm listeners and innovators in making a better world.

6. Creative Barcode is a nonprofit organization that allows members to share new ideas without the risk of unauthorized copying. It was founded in 2010. Members embed digital codes in creative works to indicate usage permissions. Private disclosure is made to other members who agree not to publicly disclose the idea or use the idea without permission of the original creator.

7. Another audio interview podcast, this one on the subject of “Funding the Dream: The Future of Crowds.”  Interesting sub-topics around the notion that creativity will have all sorts of new avenues available to all of us in the future.

8. Saudi women’s male guardians began receiving text messages on their phones informing them when women under their custody leave the country, even if they are travelling together. Denied the right to travel without consent from their male guardians and banned from driving, women in Saudi Arabia are now monitored by an electronic system that tracks any cross-border movements.

9. Adolf Hitler’s infamous book ‘Mein Kampf’ will be published again for the first time in some 70 years. Bavaria, Germany has held ownership of the book’s copyright since the end of World War II, but those rights are due to expire in 2015. Perhaps the intent is to publish a fully annotated – and critical – version that then floods the market so that the 2015+ editions put out by Nazis and others will not stand alone.

10.  At least a fifth of all embedded computers that are accessible online – including possibly your printer or modem – still have their factory default passwords, meaning just about anyone can waltz in (digitally) and compromise them, and thus enter your main computer. Printers can even be taken over by coding contained in a doc file! Read Charles Choi in Scientific American on secret electronic wars in our embedded computers. There are positive developments too… that are starting to look more and more like the multi-layerings of an immune system learning to combat the ferocity of viruses and other parasites.

11. Text messaging on contact lenses. Vernor and I depicted it in science fiction.  Stuff keeps arriving faster than we anticipated!

12. Meanwhile, dig it: black boxes required in cars by 2014.  Only if they go in squad cars and limousines too!

13. Andy Kessler provides us with a summary-snapshot of the current balance of power between government surveillance and the rise of citizen-level sousveillance. For example: Already a third of large U.S. police forces equip patrol cars with automatic license plate-readers that can check 1,000 plates per hour looking for scofflaws. U.S. Border Patrol already uses iris-recognition technology, with facial-recognition in the works, if not already deployed..

14.  Then there is the matter of IP… Intellectual Property. Having filed suits against Samsung for “slavishly copying” its products and selling them around the world, Apple now has developed a history of winning in places where people invent things (Germany, the U.S.) and losing in places where they steal them (South Korea, Japan).

The real meaning of Apple’s legal, and marketplace, struggles is cast into sharp relief by this schism in how various legal systems treat the question of copying others’ work. For this reason, Apple has done the world a terrific service by bringing a problem front and center which has been known to everyone, but not properly discussed until now. When it turns out that the thieves’ courts say stealing is OK, and the inventors’ courts say it is not, then what?

LATE BREAKING: The Aron Swartz case is sad. Tho somewhat unsurprising — he was a hothouse depressive type — I am also very angry that prosecutors tried to high-ball their preliminary plea charges at 35 year… for what was in effect a civil offense that should have been dealt with in civil court.

Onward.  What interesting times.  Spread light.

Transparency 2013: Good and bad news about banking, guns, freedom and all that

== Bank Secrecy ‘ending’ at last? ==

“Bank secrecy is essentially eroding before our eyes,” says a recent NPR article. ”I think the combination of the fear factor that has kicked in for not only Americans with money offshore, countries that don’t want to be on the wrong side of this issue and the legislative weight of FATCA means that within three to five years it will be exceptionally difficult for any American to hide money in any financial institution.”

In one sense, this would appear to be vindication of my forecast, in EARTH, that banking secrecy would become a major issue by the second decade of the 21st Century and that it would go extinct soon thereafter, propelled via anger by the rising worldwide middle classes plus the basic needs of democracy and true capitalism. Do I feel predictive vindication?  Sure.

But at another level all of this is far less substantial than I depicted. The banking havens are retreating in good order, making deals and protecting what has become their core business – sheltering lucre stolen from developing nations by their kleptocratic leader-castes. Those klepto-depositors aren’t American or European citizens and hence need not be reported. Moreover, the amounts involved — especially if you include so-called “sovereign wealth funds” — vastly outweigh the deposits of a few U.S. and Euro mere-billionaires. Indeed, Western governments have been complicit, so eager to reclaim tax revenues from their own citizens that they have given assurances not to go after more general transparency.

The real scenario from EARTH, has yet to be played out. When citizens in Congo and the Phillipines, in Myanmar and Mexico and Malaysia and so on become radicalized and start demanding true international transparency of ownership…

… that is when we’ll see such a crisis as I portrayed in the “Helvetian War.” This ain’t over by a mile.

== Tentative Good News ==

In September, with most members out on the campaign trail, the House of Representatives approved final passage of the long-awaited Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (S. 743), a set of 10 reforms intended to clarify the difference between policy disputes and whistleblowing. Sponsored by Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, it would expand the types of employee disclosures of violations of laws, rules or regulations that are protected and beef up employee rights. It also would broaden coverage to employees of the major intelligence agencies and the Transportation Security Administration, prohibiting the revocation of a security clearance in retaliation for a protected whistleblower disclosure. And it would expand the rights of the Office of Special Counsel to file friend-of-the-court briefs.

The bipartisan bill would strengthen authority for reviews by the Merit Systems Protection Board and provide whistleblowing employees with more access to their agency’s inspector general. It would establish whistleblower protection ombudsmen to educate agency personnel about whistleblower rights. The bill now returns to the Senate, where it is up for consideration in a November lame-duck session. In the previous Congress, a version of the bill died in a December session.

* Someone out there please report to us all — what’s the status on the legislation? *

This could be almost as important as last year’s victory for transparency and civilization, when Illinois courts struck down a law banning the taping of police. No civil liberties matter was more important to our future. On this – no compromise, ever.

== Transparency in The Central Kingdom ==

As we speak, openness advocates are struggling for basic press freedom at China’s Southern Weekly. This is not something I mention out of hostility but in hope that the rulers of that rapidly developing nation will come to see the benefits of light – the only possible corrective medicine for corruption – and find the courage to return to their earlier plan.

What earlier plan? Why, to let freedom at the local level clean up corruption where it does the most damage, in exchange for a social contract to leave top national power alone (in oligarchic hands) for a generation. It was a highly plausible plan and would have derived the top benefits of freedom — accountability and prevention of abuse, crime and errors — while still managing overall development from above — the neo-Confucian solution. (Note: I disagree with all forms of oligarchy, but that version could have worked.)

Alas, it was a compromise they found inconvenient in countless ways (freedom often is) and so it fell aside. Overcome by the impulse, imbedded in human nature, to try to control everything.  I hope they will prove their vaunted high intelligence and go back to it, because, in reality, it is their only hope.

== Then there’s Big Brother on the Bus ==

According to Wired: “Transit authorities in cities across the country are quietly installing microphone-enabled surveillance systems on public buses that would give them the ability to record and store private conversations, according to documents obtained by a news outlet. The systems are being installed in San Francisco, Baltimore, and other cities with funding from the Department of Homeland Security in some cases, according to the Daily, which obtained copies of contracts, procurement requests, specs and other documents. The use of the equipment raises serious questions about eavesdropping without a warrant, particularly since recordings of passengers could be obtained and used by law enforcement agencies.”

Again, how will you prevent this? By banning them?  So that (as Heinlein said) the bugs simply are made smaller? Better have these things in the open… and insist that WE can zoom into the control room and watch the watchers.

== SMBC Rocks transparency and philosophy! ==

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal captures much of the essence, how look-back “sousveillance” is our only recourse.

Then an oldie…but excellent explanation of the Prisoner’s Dilemma.

How many of you know someone who has done this? Used this cop-out? I know several.

Impressive theology.

== Update re HFT or High Frequency Trading ==

I’ve spoken of calamities far worse than the multi-billion dollar “oops!” mistakes already made by HFT systems… leading all the way to “terminator” problems with emergent AI… by far the most likely way the Singularity could go very badly wrong.

Now Greg Trocchia: “One of the about high frequency trading concerns I voiced, as a Software Quality Assurance (SQA) professional, is that even a rigorous software development process could not preclude emergent pathological behavior on the part of the algorithm that might occur in unpredictable sets of circumstances.  It now seems that things are even worse than I had realized.  In certain cases, at least, even the most elementary software engineering precautions were absent: Chicago Fed Study Blasts lid off of High Frequency Trading.  I am aghast that software of such critical importance should be treated with such cavalier disregard of the hard-learned lessons of SQA.”

== Transparency and Guns ==

Finally… Jon Stewart’s riff on gun control touched most of the bases. Especially (and incredibly) he paid attention to the deep-underlying  motivation of gun enthusiasts.  One that needs to be addressed, if we are to calm them down enough so that the moderates join us in conversation.  That may demand some mental adjustments on our part.  Watch his episode then see my nuanced and careful logic about this: The Jefferson Rifle: Guns and the Insurrection Myth.

Here’s Stewart’s bit: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-8-2013/scapegoat-hunter—gun-control

Alas, the Gun Lobby devotes far too much faith in the protection of the Second Amendment, a slender reed that will bend at some point, when, amid some future crisis, a Court will turn to the “well-regulated militia” part of the 2nd and interpret it in ways the gun fellows will not like.  I say this not out of hostility… indeed, I support core gun rights! Rather, I point it out as a futurist who knows his game.  You guys need another amendment. And my essay offers you one that liberals would help you to pass! It would be a shoo-in, if you’d stop panicking and negotiate. (And that holds for you lefties, too.)

How does transparency relate to gun control?  Simple.  As I point out in The Transparent Society – almost all of the advantages and almost none of the disadvantages of personal firearms are available to us if we all go around armed (as we will!) with cameras.  All of the ability to hold others accountable… plus little of the ability to wreak tragic havoc the instant we fall prey to Homo-erectus rage.  Rage that – with cameras – one might later apologize for.  With a gun, it can bring regret for the rest of your life.

I am not for banning all personal weapons!  Read my proposal, which is logical and preserves a certain level with safety. But try being openminded, and know that the new era will depend less on gunpowder and more on light.

And now pause… I’ll have more transparency-related news, next time.

Is Law Enforcement Going Dark? Dilbert’s Dilemma and other Transparency Crises

First a pair of announcements:

* I’ll be in Los Angeles to help politicians, movie stars, family members and writers dedicate Ray Bradbury Square at 2pm on December 6.

* My “No Losers“ proposal  to simplify the tax code without rousing intense opposition may get traction if you sign a petition to the White House. Take the time!    

== Is Law Enforcement going blind? Or getting X-Ray Vision? ==

In Going Dark vs. a Golden Age for Surveillance, Professors Peter Swire and Kenesa Ahmad, discuss the assertion made by some law enforcement agencies that their ability to see, surveil and protect us is “going dark” because of some new methods of encrypted communication that are widely available to non-gevernment entities, including criminals and terrorists.

This complaint goes back to the Cypher Wars of the 1990s that led to my book: The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?

Swire & Ahmad respond by showing that we are, instead, entering a “golden age of surveillance” in which agencies have access to vastly more information about everybody, including location data, contacts, interactions and rapidly searchable databases.

“The loss of agency access to information, due to encryption, is more than offset by surveillance gains from computing and communications technology. In addition, government encryption regulation harms cybersecurity.”

They later add: ”The evidence suggests, furthermore, that the degradation of wiretap capability has been modest at most, and—at least statistically—wiretaps have become more useful over time. The number of wiretap orders implemented in the U.S. has grown steadily the last two decades.” 

Their basic conclusion is that there exists no panic-level need to rush to expand beyond the Patriot Act’s already aggressive  domain of permissible surveillance methods and permissions. All correct so far, and wise.

Alas though, I might have asked for more from these scholars. Swire is a friend and  one of the best minds around in this area. Still, he and Ahmad should have at least mentioned two added points:

1) Such calm-down missives as theirs will be like failing dikes in a tsunami, the next time something terrible happens. As I explain on p.206 of The Transparent Society  (the infamous page where I seem to foretell both the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath) there will be a Ratchet Effect whenever public panic allows officials to claim “we might have prevented this, if we had better abilities to see and detect threats.” In such an aftermath, those powers will be granted.  And will almost never be withdrawn.

2) The protective agencies can be expected to continue pressing for better surveillance methods, both in pursuit of a professional ability to do their jobs and as a natural outcome of human psychology.  They will never give up because we monkeys need to see and powerful ones won’t be denied. If forbidden, they will simply peer at us surreptitiously.  Robert Heinlein said: “Privacy laws make the spy bugs smaller.”

The answer over the long run is not to try futilely to hold back the inevitable ratchet, but to demand a price for every increase in their ability to surveil.  That price should be reciprocal accountability, transparency and “sousveillance” - the power of citizens to look back, to supervise their paid guardians, to watch the watchmen and hold them accountable.

There are many ways to do this, some venerably traditional and others innovative, for a new century. All are based on the realization that it matters less what elites know about us (they will know it all anyway: elites of government, corporations, money or even criminality) but rather what they can do to us.  Adverse action against private citizens by potential Big Brothers can best be prevented by turning the Telescreen so that it peers in both directions.  This is the only proved method; it is the way that we have had the win-win of modern society so far.  It is the only scenario that can possibly continue to work.

== Dilbert — too — misses the point! ==

Scott Adams – creator of the Dilbert series of comic strips about the ironies and shenanigens of life in business and engineering – has published an essay, The Privacy Illusion, about the futility of trying to conceal personal information, especially from the government.

As far as he goes, Scott Adams is right.  It is delusional and futile for any modern citizen to imagine that the “government” or any other elite will lack ways of finding out about you anything they want to learn.  His recommendation that we drop silly notions of hiding information about ourselves is correct… up to a point.  Only then, alas, Adams stops!  Making the same error as Swire and Ahmad, he does not continue and thus completely misses the point. That there is a Part Two… a vital “therefore let’s do what works”… a next step that is behooved upon us all.

Look, I have to repeat because no one ever seems to absorb it. Yes, the government (or other elites) will have powers of surveillance to peer at our lives.  But we have a reciprocal power that can prevent the elites from becoming Big Brothers.  At risk of belaboring – the mighty in this world will know whatever can be known. We can’t stop that.

Again, what we can do is influence what they can do to us. That will be affected – above all – by whether the watchmen are being watched.

== Other Transparency-Related Matters ==

( I’ll get even more repetitious in here! These compiled potpourri-postings sometimes present material gathered across months, that then get strung together in an hour.  And each time, I would mention my book!  Ah well, sorry about that.  Such is our modern age.)

Google released its sixth Transparency Report on Tuesday, showing what it believes is a clear trend: around the world, government requests for user data is on the upswing. “From time to time, we receive falsified court orders … We do examine the legitimacy of the documents that we receive, and if we determine that a court order is false, we will not comply with it.” Google has been issuing semiannual Transparency Reports showing government requests received by the company since early 2010.

Eye Am a Camera: Surveillance and Sousveillance in the Glassage: Professor Steve Mann on transparency and the shifting boundaries between surveillance and sousveillance in the new age. He predicts: “Digital Eye Glass will mark the end of McVeillance (surveillance without sousveillance). As a result, veillance will be two-sided and that alone will transform society far more profoundly than augmediated reality itself!”

Quad  copters have so revolutionized, with auto-stability systems, that any derp-citizen can fly one right out of the box… the ARDrone lets you fly a camera-equipped drone that transmits back home, a real step toward sousveillance!  That’s looking at the bright side.  The dark side? Well.  Buy two.  One to experiment with and one to hide in the closet, in case they’re made illegal.

Names of Infamy: Deny Killers the Notoriety They Seek: Apparently, my essay on changing the names of heinous mass killers got a lot of attention.  Almost as many viewers in Canada alone as in the U.S. and a rather large number in Norway.  Might we see an effort there to pass legislation changing (for example) mass killer Brevik’s name? Given the cushy nature of his imprisonment, that might be especially called-for,

Blinding or turning off your cell phone camera? A patent application filed by Apple revealed how the technology would work. If an iPhone were held up and used to film during a concert infra-red sensors would detect it. These sensors would then contact the iPhone and automatically disable its camera function.  The method describes the use of new infra-red sensors, which could theoretically make their way into a future iteration of the iPhone, to detect if an iPhone was held up during a concert with the intent to take footage. These sensors would first be able to detect infra-red light entering the iPhone’s camera lens from the stage, then shutting off all video recording capabilities. Buy up lots of cheap and used digital cameras now! Before they are all connectable from afar and capable of being hijacked by the mighty.

== The power of busybody gossips ==

I have spoken before about how the classic form of human governance is a top-down hierarchy of inherited oligarchy — some variant of feudalism – a pyramid-shaped social order in which a few at the top lord it over the masses and make sure that their sons will rule likewise.  It was the pattern in 99% of human history and nearly always was accompanied by delusion, bad statecraft and lack of corrective criticism or wisdom.  Still, that pattern is woven into our genes and manifests when millions who should be loyal to the Great Exception — our democratic enlightenment – yearn for fantasy or religious arbiters or “kings.”

Still, the real pattern was a bit more complicated than just caste dominating caste.  The rulers had help!  First, the lords got assistance from a clade of priest/wizard/shaman/bard-types who wove incantations or spells or stories to convince the masses that it was GOOD for the lords to rule!

Then came a layer of thugs – brutal men willing to enforce that rule with truncheons, whips and nooses.

Finally, and seldom remembered or portrayed, we had a fourth layer of control over the masses. Busybodies and gossips.  Yes, they could be found in every hamlet of neighborhood.  Women or men whose joy lay in nosiness and whose satisfaction lay in bullying manipulation.

We are familiar with images of Big Brother, surveillance, the KGB and Gestapo.  What folks forget is that the real eyes and ears of every secret police system consisted of the local biddies and crotchedy farts who knew everyone’s failings, lapses and stories. Who served as the system’s eyes and ears.  You think those days are behind us? Have a look at this method being used in China, in service of protecting order during an important Party Congress.  It is an ancient method, as I describe in The Transparent Society.

== Let the government use your router? ==

I am involved in emergency management from many directions, often consulting for departments like Homeland Security, DARPA and DTRA.  I’m also a member of CERT (my local Community Emergency Response Team) and recently upgraded to California Disaster Corps.  So I have great sympathy for the problems our first responders face, preparing for future calamities.  Still, proposals like this one raise my hackles from a different direction – in my role as “Mr. Accountability” and author of  The Transparent Society.

Will emergency responders (and possibly other agencies) be able to turn a switch and access your home WiFi router … in a crisis?  Should they?

“Well-meaning proposals sometimes have a way of raising troubling questions. Case in point: A team of wireless researchers in Germany proposed a way to improve the communications abilities of first responders, the brave people who rush into disastrous situations to help save the victims. But the proposal hinges on something many private citizens and privacy or security advocates will likely find uncomfortable: creating an “emergency switch” that lets government employees disable the security mechanisms in the wireless routers people have set up in their own homes. This would allow first responders to use all the routers within range to enhance the capabilities of the mesh networks that allow them to communicate with each other.

“The residents’ wireless traffic would still remain private, in theory. Wireless routers already support a technology that might make the idea feasible—the creation of guest networks that home owners can use to grant visitors access to the Internet…” though this guest status would be remotely switchable by authorities.  All told, it is within reasonable range of possible compromises, but with one problem….

…these concessions they ask from us should always be matched by concessions that we win from government.  Transparency sousveillance concessions that incrementally increase our ability to supervise and inspect the authorities, to ensure these powers are never abused.

Where is the NGO or ombundsman or agency that applies pressure in this direction, on our behalf, whenever the ratchet turns?

== Yet more transparency miscellany ==

Want a possibly better telescreen reference? Dig it.  The possibility that camera sensor elements are actually in between the pixels and thus are indistinguishable to the naked eye even if the device is dissassembled.

Ex-cop Marc Goodman runs through a list of ways that new technologies can and do empower criminals, terrorists and bad actors. His TED talk gets a bit scary… till the end when he calls for exactly the sort of openness-based solutions that I recommend in The Transparent Society … and illustrate vividly in Existence.

No more hiding behind anonymity? YouTube is fighting against idiotic and often nasty/racist/sexist commenters by requesting full names when you upload or comment on videos.  We seem to be caught between a rock and a hard place.  Anonymity protects free speech… and unleashes the most vicious instincts from truly awful people.  Is there any way we could get to hold onto some accountability and feedback loops that encourage maturity and decency… while still keeping the most important benefits of anonymity?

It turns out that I discuss this very issue in great detail… you know where.   Moreover, I describe a win-win-win scenario.  Millions could be made by a new kind of business offering mediated-pseudonymity.  And about half of the idea is right there, in that cojoined, hyphenated word!  (Ah, but the rest… how to make money at it? There are some cute tricks. ;- .)

The First Synthetic Organism: Our Victor Frankenstein moment?

Remember where you were when you heard or read about this. It’s important. 

In a breakthrough effort for computational biology, the world’s first complete computer model of an organism has been completed, Stanford researchers reported last week in the journal Cell. A team used data from more than 900 scientific papers to account for every molecular interaction that takes place in the life cycle of Mycoplasma genitalium, the world’s smallest free-living bacterium.

Why is this a whole lot more than your run of the mill bioscience breakthrough?  Until now, knowing the ways and means of a bazillion sub-reactions and gears and wheels did not combine into a clear model of a whole organism. This is a true Frankenstein moment… in the best meaning of the term!  In that before, all we had were countless non-living pieces on the work bench.

Now… we know how to put them together.  Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha.

No, seriously.  Bwa-haha.

In related news: Caltech researchers have created an artificial jellyfish from rat cells and sheets of silicone polymer. It can mimic the swimming motion of natural jellyfish via electrical stimulation which causes rapid contraction of the rat heart muscle cells.

“A powerful demonstration of engineering chimaeric systems of living and non-living components,” says Joseph Vacanti of Massachusetts General Hospital. The team hopes to reverse-engineer other marine lifeforms.

==Science forges on! (Now to get politics to come along)==

Do you wish it were possible to transform American politics enough to calm down the “war on science” and transform it – instead – into a debate about science?

That’s one goal of the good folks at Science Debate, who urge that matters of science and technology and the future be put on the agenda of candidates for high office, especially during the looming presidential debates. If we could get just one evening when the focus would be on the very forces — from energy to innovation, climate change to the internet –  that drive change and propel so many challenges? Front and center? Exposing the intelligent cogency – or lack – in the men seeking to guide us into uncharted waters?  Please visit the site. Even better, sign the petition and viral it.

Barring that brilliant – but alas, unlikely, event – the folks at ScienceDebate.org have polled dozens of top scientific groups to come up with The Top American Science Questions in 2012 — the most important science policy issues facing the United States.  Whatever your affiliation, this year do spend the time to look them over and then do send them on to your local candidates for Congress and assembly and so on.

Try it.  Then note who actually bothers to answer.

==On the Transparency Front==

BikeCams: Cyclists have long had a rocky coexistence with motorists and pedestrians.  Now some cyclists are wearing helmet-mounted cameras to record their encounters, exactly as portrayed in The Transparent Society.

From baby monitors to closed circuit television, 2.4 GHz video transmitters are in many consumer products these days. And yet, most owners of these video devices don’t realize they’re transmitting an unencrypted video signal that can be picked up by anyone.

See how one activist is offering these feeds on lamp post boxes to increase public awareness… in stunning correlation with scenes in my new novel EXISTENCE.  In a project, From Surveillance to Broadcast, Benjamin Gaulon has posted boxes on street corners, recording video feed that can be accessed, to increase public awareness of the capabilities of this technology.

No more hiding behind anonymity? YouTube is fighting against idiotic and often nasty/racist/sexist commenters by calling for full names when you upload or comment on videos.  We seem to be caught between a rock and a hard place.  Anonymity protects free speech… and unleashes the most vicious instincts from truly awful people.  Is there any way we could get to hold onto some accountability and feedback loops that encourage maturity and decency… while still keeping the most important benefits of anonymity?

=== A Miscellany of Science News ===

Two shock waves in space, intersecting, might create a “regularity singularity” – interesting general relativity.

The National Ignition Facility completed a 500 terrawatt laser fusion shot. Wow.

Move to Kansas City right now!  Google announced plans to build the gigabit network back in February of 2010 and thousands of municipalities competed to be the future home of the planned network. In March, it selected Kansas City as the first  test of a network running fiber-optic cables directly to homes, and delivering Internet speeds roughly 100 times faster than the national broadband average. Watch for details next week.  (In Existence I briefly describe a completely unused, potentially fecund “right of way” into nearly every home!)

Watch an impressive and inspiring film about cetaceans and research into whales – with unbelievable photography – by Fabrice Schnoller and a team of French researchers.

Yes… science marches on.  Let’s stay worthy of it.

Accelerating Dangers & Opportunities from Transparency

The future comes rushing upon us so quickly, already I worry that the world portrayed in my freshly minted novel will be old hat long before the time it is set, 30 years from now. (Meaning that we need futuristic and open-minded thought experiments now, more than ever.)

Try these items on for size…

With new laser technology, hidden government scanners will instantly know everything about you from 150 feet (or 50 meters) away, detecting traces of drugs, explosives, bioweapons or gunpowder on your clothes or luggage — even recording your adrenaline levels. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will install these scanners (a million times more sensitive than current systems) at airports and border crossings across the country — as early as 2013. The Russians are developing a comparable system.

Now… if this reduces our exposure to x-rays and allows the TSA to tamp down the aggravation at airports, you can expect the new systems to have their upside. On the other hand, this sort of thing could be Big Brother’s most delicious dream.  (More on that aspect.)

…then there’s this. Cell phone providers received 1.3 million cell phone snooping requests last year from law enforcement agencies seeking information on locational data and calling records. There is little oversight over who can make such requests, or what is done with the information.

Way back in ’97, in The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force us to Choose between Privacy and Freedom, I made it clear that we’ll not stop any of this with whining, moaning or by trying to ban these technologies.  Our only chance? If government – and other mighty elites – are absolutely fated to know everything about us anyway, our sole option is to know everything about them.

This is the important distinction between surveillance and sousveillance — looking down vs. looking back.

And though I’ve covered it at-length from many directions, I expect to be doing so repeatedly, for the rest of my life.

Is it even remotely possible for sousveillance to work?  For citizens to shine enough light upward to remind our civil servants that they are servants?  To keep a choke-chain on our guard dogs, so they never see themselves as wolves?  To remind corporations that they are constructs, and oligarchs that they are not feudal lords, with droit du seigneur?  As it happens, there are dozens of techniques that might help… providing we nurture the calm, rational… but militant… determination to make this practically happen

Let’s start simple. See just one practical approach that – with a very simple slip of legislation that could be written on one piece of paper – and maybe cost 20 million dollars – we might suddenly and smoothly add a layer of safety and accountability to help let us sleep at night. It’s no panacea!  But by simply changing how government inspectors general function, we might follow the sage advice of Sun Yat Sen and stymie the bad in government, while aiding the good.

Let’s hope that this election cycle someone actually listens.

And another Transparency related item.  This one not only forecast in The Transparent Society  but also in EARTH…

…the tendency of humans to filter out news or opinions or views or even sensory input that we don’t like or agree with.  (Yes, one side of the political “spectrum” is currently doing it to psychotic degrees… but the other end does it too!)  We’ve been finding out that our brains naturally pass disagreeable info and opinions and input through emotional centers rather than those devoted to reason.  But as predicted, electronic “filters” are making things even worse for some, even while opening up vast universes of wonder and possibilities for others.  See “Are we stuck in a filter bubble…hearing only what we want to hear?” Then see how this very issue was dealt with, in Earth (1989).

Indeed. And then comes the new world of “augmented reality.”

Patricia F. Anderson wrote: “Graffiti goes virtual with an augmented reality app for your cell phone, called LZRTAG  Shades of @DavidBrin1 ‘s early scenes in Existence.”  Indeed, the layering of virtual surfaces over our world has already begun. Still images, animations and video can be tagged to real world surfaces, so your smartphone can interact with media, billboards, lampposts or landmarks. Vernor Vinge and I do – however – show where it must eventually lead. That is, where it must lead if we are lucky and do smart things!

To see where it will lead if we drop courage and brains?  Try Nineteen Eighty-Four.

=== Fascinating cases of watching the watchers at work ===

Think I am naive? Teams at Harvard and the University of Hong Kong have been using new software that allows them to watch the censoring of posts on Chinese social-media sites more closely than before. Monitoring the Monitors summarizes their report in The Economist:

The team found that, overall, 13% of all social media posts in China were censored. Yet their most surprising result is that posts critical of the government are not consistently censored. On the other hand, posts urging people to assemble in protest, are generally removed from the internet within hours. Harvard professor Gary King writes, “Clearly the goal is actually to repress people gathering.”

Rebecca MacKinnon, author of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom, comments. “The goal has never been total control. The goal is to keep the Chinese Communist Party in power.”

The researchers analyzed the posts that had been censored to determine exactly what had made them objectionable to the government. What they found was a constantly changing list of keywords and sensitive topics, resulting in “a cat-and-mouse contest between people and censors.”

=== Keep the dream alive ===

On the recent American Independence Day… with a marathon of the eponymous film playing in the background … I was reminded of the ways that our revolution has affected the world.  Sometimes for ill – though less than any other great “pax” power across time. And sometimes for profound good.  That may be viewed as biased (though in fact, I am more of a Californian than a yankee).  So I suggest steeping in points of view that might be considered neutral and yet poetically insightful.  Such as this account, by the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, of how a remote Circassian mountain tribe once sat at his feet, demanding stories about … Abraham Lincoln.

Are we made of lesser stuff than our parents, or the heroes of the first phase of the American Civil War?  We are in phase three now. Wake up and end it.  By winning it.

=== Science Miscellany ===

We need to discuss what to do about nuclear waste.  It never made the slightest sense for us to abandon the Yucca Mountain site on account of some supposed small chance that the depository might leak a little in 10,000 years.  Say what? So these people are now willing to talk about sci fi levels of time, when they won’t even discuss a decade from now, on any other issue?  Dig it. In 10,000 years, the stored radionuclides are far more likely to be more valuable as stored “gold”, than they are to leak into a desert aquifer.  Read up.

Dinosaur sex! Scientific!  With feathers, yet.  And facial expressions.