| Full Disclosure, No
Option by Dan Swensen In The Transparent Society, David Brin paints a picture of a future in which surveillance has become the norm; cameras the size of insects are readily available on the consumer market, and anyone can watch anyone, doing anything, at any given time. In Brin's future, there is no such thing as privacy. You are watched all the time, no matter what you do. No encryption programs will protect your data, as microscopic devices inserted in your keyboard will observe every keystroke, or a camera the size of a dust mote will watch you from the ceiling, quite possibly broadcasting your every move. Cameras will survey every street of every city in America, watching for any sign of wrongdoing. Nothing you do will be protected. Though you may or may not be watched, you will never know for certain whether you are truly alone. The media at large already seems to regard this change towards zero privacy as inevitable and just; in the recent Wired article, The Myth of the Pocket Protector, the "wired" community prophesies that "privacy concerns will diminish as full disclosure becomes the norm," inferring that full disclosure is not only inevitable, but will be enforced, be it by new societal norms or outright legislation. Similarly, in the conclusion of the Roger Clarke's article The End of Privacy, the author concludes that our best course of action may be to "get used to it" -- a phrase remniscent of Scott McNealy's now-infamous "get over it" statement. Those media sources who don't react with glee to the new "visible future" react mostly with a shrug of resignation or powerless befuddlement. If we are entering a new age where there are no secrets, why then does the media, and the populace at large, feel so out of control of this turn of events? The unveiling of the Pentium III's IP tracking system, which the company intended as a useful tool for e-commerce, instead unleashed a flurry of privacy concerns, eventually leading to the IP tracking being disabled by default (or so Intel claims). Though the Pentium issue has died down to a certain degree, and the government is becoming more attentive to the problem of privacy, it doesn't seem likely that the status quo is going to change any time soon. Certainly, if the abolition of privacy were of no benefit, it would not develop into a societal norm. It stands to reason, therefore, that someone will profit by privacy's abolition, and odds are it's not the individual. Those who embrace the "transparent society" idea often seem to forget a critical point: that one of humanity's oldest imperatives is the exploitation of his fellow man for personal gain. In the post-Cold War era, information is the most valuable tool, and the most potent weapon, to be exploited. Even in a transitory period between the Transparent Society and the society we live in now, we can expect a flurry of blackmail, exploitation, humiliation, and widespread paranoia. If full disclosure is to "become the norm," its growing pains will have an enormous impact. The society of the future must also consider the role of the government. On one hand, we may rejoice that such powerful surveillance tools have entered into public hands, as it is a sign of diminishing government control over the technology. Fifty years ago, no one would have dared imagine the populace having access to such devices. But the government, for its part, relies on secrets to maintain control -- counterespionage, counterintelligence, military secrets -- and such information will certainly not bear becoming "visible." To this new and burgeoning field of amateur espionage, the government can react in one of two ways -- befuddled ignorance or heavy-handed crackdown. In the former case, we can expect technology to evolve, more or less completely unchecked, as it has been in the latter part of this century; in the latter, we can expect a tighter grasp on technology, regulated only by the amount of lobbying money that rolls in from the corporations. In either case, privacy will be mainly the privilege of the affluent. The government will either remain woefully behind in protecting the individual's privacy, or take the bull by the horns and eradicate it altogether. Comparisons between this new Transparent Society and Orwell's 1984 are inevitable. The thought of constant surveillance and
monitoring calls up visceral images of Big Brother peering from omnipresent television
screens. It may be, as Brin seems to hope, that this new society will indeed rely upon
"good neighborliness" and Polyanna notions of equality to make the Transparent
Society a happier place for all. It is more likely, however, that this transparency will
be nothing more than another tool to oppress, advertise, or exploit at the expense of the
individual. If there is no Big Brother watching us from the governmental seat, we can be
certain that there will be a Little Brother, a friend or a neighbor, who will be happy to
watch in his place. Buy The Transparent Society at Amazon.com Related Links: |