> I don't believe the instinct to "hide" is the right approach... (which is why I'm online with my real identity... take it or leave it... here and elsewhere)... As am I, for what that's worth. There were a few high profile cases a while back in which traffic stops escalated to the point where citizens were subjected to colonoscopies in a fruitless search for drugs. I claim that as a society we should hold the right to privacy inviolable. To somehow equate that with a desire to hid is like saying that an objection to being forcibly penetrated with medical instruments is hiding. I am in no way advocating hiding. I'm saying that just because we can monitor a person's every click, every web page viewed, every moment of their day doesn't mean we should. I'm saying that just because we can meter consumption of media down to the word or the second of a stream and allocate payments on that basis doesn't mean we should. I'm saying that just because we can insert surveillance tech into every consumer device and then harvest it for profit without consent or recourse doesn't mean we should. I'm saying that just because we can determine whether someone is price sensitive or not and then charge differently on that basis doesn't mean we should. I'm saying that just because we can vary grocery item prices by the minute to extract more money out of the post-work rush hour doesn't mean we should. These are not hiding. They are asserting privacy as a fundamental human right and then (hopefully someday) voluntarily agreeing to honor it. They are also not attainable individually on their own merits so long as we have to overcome a starting position of having to justify privacy each time in each battle. > privacy must have been very scarce within the hunter-gatherer group. This is flawed on a dozen or so levels. First, it's wrong on its face. Any individual in the group wanting privacy simply walked away from the group. The distance traveled was proportional to the privacy obtained. You want to pee, you walk 20 feet away from the fire in any direction. You want to challenge the leader, you plot that a from kilometer away. Newtonian physics assured that you could obtain privacy by being willing to move your atoms further than the opposition was willing to move theirs. No such limitations apply with bits. Second, it equates privacy to "the ability to be observed" without differentiating among observers. No hunter-gatherer would have had a lot of privacy from their own group but they knew who was encroaching on their privacy and the exposure was reciprocal. If anyone used an individual's lack of privacy for their own gain there were social rules of accountability providing checks and balances. If our notions of privacy are grounded in hunter-gatherer societies, that no application whatsoever in a world where the observers include globally dispersed power elites from "friendly" to not so friendly governments, cybercriminals, and multinational corporations. There is no reciprocity here since you cannot know who is surveilling you and return the favor, there is no recourse or accountability, and the entities encroaching on you do so to their gain and your detriment. You are comparing apples and volcanoes. I could go on and on about how hunter-gatherer privacy and modern privacy differ but I'll leave you one final thought on this aspect. Privacy isn't about whether you have it or not, it's about the balance. On this point, David gets it 100% correct. The notion of "strip all elites naked and subject all of them to accountability" boils down to reciprocity. It is about restoring the balance by subjecting elites to the same level of scrutiny with which everyone else is subjected. In this scenario we are closer to the hunter-gatherer model in that everyone is equally naked and observed. My model and David's both are about restoring balance but at different set points. David seems to have abandoned privacy to focus entirely on balance. I want to restore balance but in my model we are all equally clothed and maybe have a modicum of privacy in our associations, movements, habits and private thoughts. Hence my characterization of privacy as an embodiment of basic human dignity and an inalienable human right, as opposed to a model in which privacy is fungible so long as there is balance. > this may suggest that because of technology we are unavoidably returning to hunter-gatherer conditions... where privacy is scarce and at best is only very temporary and limited. This analogy only holds by focusing narrowly on the degree of privacy and ignoring the balance of power in the tribe, the limited and known number of observers, the social accountability of the group, and the option to obtain privacy by incurring the cost to manipulate atoms. But yeah, if you ignore all that it's *exactly* the same thing. ;-) Kind regards, -- T.Rob T.Robert Wyatt, Managing partner IoPT Consulting, LLC +1 704-443-TROB (8762) Voice/Text From: Tom Crowl [mailto:
] Excellent conversation! Mr. Robb... +1! I hope your'e publishing that essay someplace It's very well written and makes its points beautifully and cleverly. Though with this slight caveat... (agreeing here with Dr. Brin): I don't believe the instinct to "hide" is the right approach... (which is why I'm online with my real identity... take it or leave it... here and elsewhere)... Though (trying to find the common ground)... its may be possible to find meaningful distinctions between privacy and "hiding" that can operate in the real world... and be enforced! (ad blockers?) (a friend suggested this distinction: Hiding implies a desire for privacy... but privacy does not necessarily imply a desire to hide) For myself... I have a tendency to look to our hunter-gatherer infancy... where privacy must have been very scarce within the hunter-gatherer group. My central arguments in many areas are tied to a conviction that many of our 'political' problems and arguments (re relations between the individual and the state) are actually to some extent intellectualizations of scaling problems arising as the social body grew beyond those small group origins. (e.g. I argue that the altruism dilemma is at the root of the oligarchic tendency which afflicts all forms of government over time) As for tech and the scaling problem and its relationship to privacy... this may suggest that because of technology we are unavoidably returning to hunter-gatherer conditions... where privacy is scarce and at best is only very temporary and limited. In this sense... the greater problem we may be faced with is what Dr. Brin referred to as the "Harper Valley P.T.A." problem... can we have reduced or challenged privacy (if there's some agreement that that's where we're heading) while still sustaining broad diversity and avoiding an oppressive drive to conformity and stagnation. Tom Crowl On Sat, Jun 4, 2016 at 10:39 AM, David Brin <
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> wrote: T.Rob points out the obvious... that elites will always adapt. Al Gore's amazing Senate Bill unleashed the Internet on the world and it empowered citizenship and flattened hierarchies everywhere. But 30 years later places like Singapore and China and Russia think they have it sussed as a means of control. See the creepiest and scariest example here So? All this shows is that we must keep innovating more methods of openness and sousveillance and transparency... e.g. cheap cubesat systems that can pass over such territories and allow meshnets to connect to the world outside state control. What will NOT help is frippy-pompous declarations about privacy and "right to be forgotten" and other reflexive poses that accomplish nothing. Seriously? You think human beings will actually get elites not to look? As the cameras get smaller better-faster-cheaper-more-numerous exponentially? All such rules will accomplish is to be used as excuses to blind the citizens. Yes, civil libertarians are right to fear Big Brother! I share the instinct. But then too many of them leap to assume our best recourse is to HIDE!! Yeah. That's gonna work. Our only recourse is to strip all elites naked and subject all of them to accountability. That is militant and assertive and radical and courageous and not timid whining. It also can work... witness how cell phone cameras have empowered citizens on the street. Your instinct to fret about Big Brother is entirely correct. Your reflex how to oppose him is cockeye 100% wrong. and will only wind up empowering him. On Saturday, June 4, 2016 7:51 AM, T.Rob <
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> wrote: > Frankly I don't think people... including the well educated and thoughtful... can really appreciate how fast technology is moving to alter the relationship between the individual and the state… Part of the problem Tom, is the way we framed the changes when the Internet was first invented and the extent to which we love that narrative. It has always been described as this big democratizing force that would empower individuals and redefine the relationships of power. And while it has done that what we failed to recognize is that it isn't biased to function that way. The bias we saw had more to do with the demographics of who was using the Internet in the early days. It empowered individuals and spat unicorns out its butt mainly because the established power base wasn't using it. For the Internet to fulfill the promise of becoming a democratizing force for good would have required the established power base to not embrace it prior to the balance of power shifting past a tipping point. Unfortunately for the species, that didn't happen. Once the established power base was threatened, they began to wield the Internet for their own purposes, except that these were entities that already had massive influence and funding and they can wipe out the advances we've made with the blink of an eye. Furthermore, the crop of unicorns that were spawned now also have significant interest in using the leverage of the Internet to preserve their positions. Disruption is highly asymmetrical and no disruptor wants to be disrupted. Had we framed the narrative correctly we might have seen it for what it was: the Internet doesn't make power fungible but rather amplifies it for all parties. If you start out with a little power you can topple some unsuspecting giants. If you were a giant to begin with you can now crush little people like ants, even as they scurry about democratizing their anthills. In other words, David got all cocky when the Internet gave him a sling. But then Goliath figured out how to use the Internet to make himself 10 times larger and instead of realizing what just happened, David's on hold with Customer Support waiting to tell a human "Hey this Internet thing is broken and Goliath is beating the crap out of me." Until David realizes Goliath is just as able to use the Internet, and worse that Goliath will use his superior influence and resources to reshape the Internet in ways that diminish David's ability to use it, then David's going to keep getting his ass handed to him on a daily basis. The leverage of the internet goes to who controls the fulcrum point and that hasn't been us for a while now. The primary beneficiaries to which the power of the Internet now mainly accrues are governments, cybercriminals, and corporate interests - i.e. the entities who held large stockpiles of wealth and influence and who survived the first wave of DIY innovation. It's hard to say whether government or cybercrime benefit most, but corporate interest runs a distant third. People like us, even our higher profile community members, barely register in the equation. But we still talk about how the Internet is this transformative democratizing force and ignore that the established power base is using it more effectively against us than we ever did against them. Now that the large power holders have awakened to the Internet we will never have that shot again. In the technology timeline there's a window within which it is possible to define privacy as a basic human right. Either we say that we get more safety and liberty in the ability to communicate privately as individuals; or we say that we get more safety and liberty by allowing governments, cybercriminals, and corporate interests access to all our communications and tracking. There is no middle ground, no case in which government and corporate interests use it only responsibly, no case in which cybercriminals *don't* get access to the same capabilities and powers, no instance of math working differently for the Forces of Good that it does for the Forces of Evil. But if we fail to declare privacy a basic human right and protect it as such, the trajectory we are on eventually shifts the balance of power to the point that it is no longer possible to make that decision in favor of privacy. At least not short of violent revolution which, in this day and age, would be a species-threatening event. Unfortunately, our distraction in treating this as a continuum with grey areas and fighting on myriad fronts, preserving privacy on a case-by-case basis, having to justify it rather than having to justify violating it, favors the expiration of that window without recourse and that too is a species-threatening event. Problem is, based on the degree to which we are surveilled today, the controlling power that surveillance and tracking bestows, and the demonstrated willingness of those in power to do anything to preserve it, there's a powerful argument that the window may have already expired. Could we, for example, ever again have a modern version of the Underground Railroad? Do we actually believe we'll never need something like that again and if the answer is "yes" how do we get back to that by fighting for net neutrality, VRM, ad blocking and the like without first establishing an absolute right to privacy? VRM gives us leverage which is great, but while we are busy building it the fulcrum is steadily disintegrating. So long as privacy is fungible, everything we build on it is a house of cards. Kind regards, -- T.Rob T.Robert Wyatt, Managing partner IoPT Consulting, LLC +1 704-443-TROB (8762) Voice/Text From: Tom Crowl [
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] Frankly I don't think people... including the well educated and thoughtful... can really appreciate how fast technology is moving to alter the relationship between the individual and the state... (and in my opinion our relationship to the financial sector... money being a tool dependent on belief and a central function for binding, if not unifying, a state). Tech is going to make 'hiding' pretty much impossible. We may be able to limit some intrusion (ad blockers, encryption, etc)... but big brother is coming. A key solution involves what Dr. Brin calls Sousveillance (the ability to watch the watchers). He has a recent post dealing with how two different locations are approaching this problem of government surveillance. I won't belabor it... but I again suggest that the user controlled and owned 'pocket' designed for.. but not necessarily limited to... the micropayment and its network of 'owners' (i.e. everyone) is another needed check (not necessarily an opposition) to state power. Tom Crowl On Fri, Jun 3, 2016 at 7:00 PM, T.Rob <
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> wrote: > We are probably an election cycle or two away from where I worry about the government making use of this Too late. -- T.Rob From: Christopher Herot [mailto:
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] We are probably an election cycle or two away from where I worry about the government making use of this, but the implications of what businesses could do is really scary. Imagine a surveillance network observing you going into a bar or marijuana dispensary and then some time later you find out your insurance rates have gone up, a landlord won’t rent to you, or you didn’t get offered that job? From: Doc Searls <
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> <https://mic.com/articles/144573/an-incredibly-accurate-facial-recognition-app-is-coming-here-s-what-it-means-for-privacy> |
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