by nomo » Thu Aug 10, 2006 5:36 pm
Oldie but goodie, from back when Wired was still a geek mag:<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/brin.html">www.wired.com/wired/archi.../brin.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong><br>Privacy Is History - Get Over It</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>Issue 4.02 | Feb 1996<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong><br>The issue isn't privacy</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->, according to science fiction writer David Brin, <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>it's equality of exposure.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br><br>By Sheldon Teitelbaum<br><br> Wired: In your introduction to The Blinding Fog, you project two disparate visions. One foresees police cameras on every lamppost. In the other, average citizens can access universal tools of surveillance. Is this our choice - Big Brother, or a world of Peeping Toms?<br><br> Brin: Make no mistake, the cameras are coming. Already a dozen British cities aim police TV down scores of city blocks. Crime goes down, but how long before those zoom lenses track faces, read credit card numbers, or eavesdrop on private conversations? You can't stop this Orwellian nightmare by passing laws. As Robert Heinlein said, the only thing privacy laws accomplish is to make the bugs smaller. In a decade, you'll never know the cameras are there. Those with access to them will have devastating advantages. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>The only alternative is to give the birdlike power of sight to everybody. Make the inevitable cameras accessible so anyone can check traffic at First and Main, look for a lost kid, or supervise Officer McGillicudy walking his beat. Only this way will the powerful have just as much - or little - privacy as the rest of us.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br> Members of the cypherpunk movement have been promoting encryption as a safeguard of personal privacy. But you don't buy it.<br><br> Foremost among reasons why encryption won't work is that secrecy has always favored the mighty. The rich will have resources to get around whatever pathetic barriers you or I erect, while privacy laws and codes will protect those at the top against us. The answer isn't more fog but more light: transparency. The kind that goes both ways. You think privacy will become extinct? Like the dodo. But there is a way to limit the damage. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>If any citizen can read the billionaire's tax return or the politician's bank statement, if no thug - or policeman - can ever be sure his actions are unobserved, if no government agency or corporate boardroom is safe from whistle-blowers, we'll have something precious to help make up for lost privacy: freedom.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br> You wrote Earth in 1988 before the Web became a media catch phrase. As a science fiction writer, where did you get it right? And wrong?<br><br> I thought Earth would get attention for the ecological speculations and such. Surprisingly, my depictions of a future infoweb raised the most interest. My WorldNet seemed to me a natural outgrowth of what people do with new technology. Some waste time. Others try to elevate the human condition. But most use it as simply another tool, a necessity of life. A routine miracle, like refrigerators and telephones. What intrigues me is how society's contrary interest groups might use infotech - first to mobilize, but then to argue, expose lies, and hold each other accountable. Mutually enforced accountability is the key to running a complex society that can no longer afford big mistakes.<br><br> What do you mean by mutual accountability?<br><br> In all history, humans found just one remedy against error - criticism. But criticism is painful. We hate receiving it, though we don't mind dishing it out. It's human nature. We've learned a hard lesson - no leader is ever wise enough to make decisions without scrutiny, commentary, and feedback. It so happens those are the very commodities the WorldNet will provide, in torrents. Try to picture multitudes of citizens, each with access to worldwide databases and the ability to make sophisticated models, each bent on disproving fallacies or exposing perceived mistakes. It's a formula for chaos or for innovative, exciting democracy - if people are mature enough.<br><br> There's been buzz comparing your 1985 novel, The Postman, to statements from the militia movement.<br><br> One of a writer's greatest satisfactions comes from inventing interesting villains. But the American mythos always preached suspicion of authority, a basically healthy social instinct that helped keep us free. But the message turns cancerous when it turns into solipsism - the notion that an individual's self-righteous roar has more value than being a member of a civilized society. Solipsism is a rising passion as we near the millennium. In countless popular books and films, the individual protagonist can do no wrong, but every institution is depicted as inherently corrupt. Yet, despite this pervasive propaganda, many resist the sweet lure of self-centeredness. Instead of rage, they offer argument, passion, criticism, even cooperation. The Postman was about choosing between solipsism and rebuilding a living community. We all choose each day, in less dramatic ways. <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <p></p><i></i>
