The transparent society
The Transparent Society is a call for "reciprocal transparency," If police cameras watch us, shouldn't we be able to tune into police stations? If credit bureaus sell our data, shouldn't we know who buys it? Rather than cling to an illasion of anonymity - a historical anomaly, given our origins in close-knit villages - we should focus on guarding the most important forms of privacy and preserving mutual accountability. The biggest threat to our freedom, Brin warns, is that surveillance technology will be used by too few people, not by too many.
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What Hacker News says
- What is terribly wrong with it? Society needs more transparency, not more closedness. Closedness breeds mistrust. Corruption grows in darkness.
Most companies have open internal directory services, you can see who works there and contact them easily. Why should that not be the case for entire societies?
David Brin was on to something with "The Transparent Society".
- > Bodycams that feature face recognition: Not OK, whether it's law enforcement or some weirdo at a night club.
Ok, but... you know it's inevitable, right? Shops are already doing it, the first weirdo doing it at a nightclub is probably going to be the doorman (transferring the old "do not accept checks from this man" mugshots to the digital realm), I don't know about other countries but the UK police are doing it (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-use-of-fac...).
One of the advantages of bodycams for the police is that the people they deal with get a bit better behaved when they know they're on camera. I'm saying we should have that advantage too. (This is "an armed society is a polite society" redux - a surveilled society is a polite society?)
Check out David Brin's concept of the Transparent Society. He's been banging on about this for a couple of decades, and he's a deeper thinker and more persuasive than I am. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society
I stress I believe transparency is the least-worst option available to us, not the most desirable option.
- It only chills when the watchers are hidden. See David Brin's The Transparent Society for an example of how sousveillence ought to work.
- You may want to check out David Brin's work, he covers the implications of this idea extensively in The Transparent Society: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society
I found it really interesting he frames privacy, surveillance, and power through the lens of information asymmetries.
- see the novel kiln people and the transparent society essays by David Brin
- A good read on the topic is David Brin, The Transparent Society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society
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