A core lesson for our era. Don't give up on all privacy. Nevertheless -- live and work as if anybody might be watching now, or at a recording that's decrypted and published ten years from now. Always act as if there's a chance what you're doing will be revealed. That's the take-home lesson from...
Mr. Transparency on Life After the Sony Hacks: I was interviewed by David S. Cohen in VARIETY — on the implications for a dawning Age of Transparency.
Follow that up with a thoughtful rumination -- On Fear of Surveillance Technology -- by Emrys
Westacott, about three things we
fear from the tsunami of cameras -- a
Frankenstein world, loss of privacy, and the likelihood that elites will use these new
powers to dominate us. Transparency can prevent all these bad things, but only if it is done right.
== Those cop-cams... ==
...that I forecast in EARTH (1989) and in The Transparent Society, are arriving in a tsunami. Resulting in...
An Israeli police officer was indicted
because camera footage disproved his story about the teenager he shot. Yet
another demonstration that cameras will be key to an evolving age of
accountability.
And researchers from the University of Cambridge's Institute of Criminology have published the first scientific report showing that police body-cameras can prevent unacceptable use-of-force.
Smile, you're on video camera...Super-futurist Virginia Postrel offers an
interesting thought experiment about the future spread of cameras and
omni-veillance in our lives. The upside
potential is vast... providing we remain calmly reasonable about negotiating
carve-outs and exceptions. And - above all - if we demand that the light spread
"upward" - at least as much as downward.
On the other had... have you ever seen a techno trend that didn't have a deeply lowbrow-crummy side? Creepy website streaming from thousands of private cameras: Insecam has access to more than 73,000 cameras
all around the globe which includes more than 11,000 cameras in the United
States, 6500 in Republic of Korea and almost 5000 in China. By streaming the
footage… without permission of the owners, Insecam claims it is teaching a
simple lesson for folks to change their passwords and do minimal security. Sure, good advice. Meanwhile… um… you benefit from advertizing
to the voyeurs who flood to your site because other fools tell the world about…
oh… oops. (Send me my cut, by the usual dropbox.)
== ... and speaking of creepy... ==
“After six years and over one billion dollars in development, the
FBI has just announced that its new biometric facial recognition software system is finally complete. Meaning that, starting soon, photos of tens of
millions of U.S. citizen's faces will be captured by the national system on a
daily basis.” Sound terrifying? Then chill.
Breathe. Inhale and exhale. As
usual I must point out that there is absolutely nothing you or anyone else will
accomplish by whining and railing against this.
If we panic and ban the databases, they will simply go underground. As happened when TIA (Total Information Awareness) fled to the NSA.
Elites will have them. Elites will see us. Name a counter example across all of the annals of time. But that does not automatically mean Big Brother.
Elites will have them. Elites will see us. Name a counter example across all of the annals of time. But that does not automatically mean Big Brother.
The one and only way to keep this
from becoming an Orwellian nightmare is to insist — with ferocious militancy — on our
ability to look back at elites. That is
not only possible, it is exactly what gave us the freedom we already have.
A woman in Monterey Calif. is alleged to have intercepted communications, including sensitive law enforcement communications, by means that included “spy software” that the defendant secretly installed on the mobile phone of a police officer. The information also alleges that during the same period she illegally possessed interception devices, namely spy software including Mobistealth, StealthGenie, and mSpy, knowing that the design of those products renders them primarily useful for the purpose of the surreptitious interception of wire, oral, and electronic communications. Clearly this is not the same thing as 2013’s milestone civil rights breakthrough declaring an absolute right of citizens to visually record their interactions with police. I am one of the biggest and earliest proponents of “sousveillance” to look back at authority for purposes of accountability. But do you think this is within the bounds of reasonable? Perhaps in that cooked county of movie lore.
A woman in Monterey Calif. is alleged to have intercepted communications, including sensitive law enforcement communications, by means that included “spy software” that the defendant secretly installed on the mobile phone of a police officer. The information also alleges that during the same period she illegally possessed interception devices, namely spy software including Mobistealth, StealthGenie, and mSpy, knowing that the design of those products renders them primarily useful for the purpose of the surreptitious interception of wire, oral, and electronic communications. Clearly this is not the same thing as 2013’s milestone civil rights breakthrough declaring an absolute right of citizens to visually record their interactions with police. I am one of the biggest and earliest proponents of “sousveillance” to look back at authority for purposes of accountability. But do you think this is within the bounds of reasonable? Perhaps in that cooked county of movie lore.
Privacy/transparency issues involved in GamerGate? It is a
horrid thing, with trolls and nasty-boys going after women gamers, protected by encrypted anonymity.
Will Wheaton comments about the need for methods to strip anonymity from online trolls: “Anonymous trolls have made the gaming community toxic — especially for women — and upended the industry at a time when the games we play are finally being recognized as the incredible works of art that they can be. While I don’t believe bad actors represent gaming culture’s mainstream, I feel sure they wouldn’t issue rape and death threats, or harass other gamers, if they would be held accountable for their actions.”
Again, my point about The Transparent Society. It is only pure-anonymity that lets bastards like this operate. (There are versions of pseudonymity that would be win-wins, letting us have all the good-liberating aspects of anonymity, while eliminating the worst; a huge business opportunity, for the right innovators.)
Will Wheaton comments about the need for methods to strip anonymity from online trolls: “Anonymous trolls have made the gaming community toxic — especially for women — and upended the industry at a time when the games we play are finally being recognized as the incredible works of art that they can be. While I don’t believe bad actors represent gaming culture’s mainstream, I feel sure they wouldn’t issue rape and death threats, or harass other gamers, if they would be held accountable for their actions.”
Again, my point about The Transparent Society. It is only pure-anonymity that lets bastards like this operate. (There are versions of pseudonymity that would be win-wins, letting us have all the good-liberating aspects of anonymity, while eliminating the worst; a huge business opportunity, for the right innovators.)
The imbalance of power between
trolls/stalkers and their victims is increasingly a topic of concerned
discussion. Again and again, the talk
turns to finding ways to shield the IDs of victims… which never works… rather
than outing the harrassers, which will inherently work, but is presently difficult to achieve. See: YouTube and Patreon have allowed harassers to turn their abuse into a paid profession.
Again. Accountability is the light that sears most kinds of bad guys, whether they operate in criminality or in high places.
Again. Accountability is the light that sears most kinds of bad guys, whether they operate in criminality or in high places.
== Policy matters... and Misc Universe... ==
An exceptionally cogent explanation and run-down on the vexing issue of "net neutrality"... and why you should care: Say Hello to the Ubernet in the Economist.
An unusually thoughtful rumination on what the information age does for our abilities to think, to be aware, to engage in new literacies and to collaborate.
Are evil corporations or evil.gov already using “sock Puppets”
to manipulate user feedback data and skew the Internet? Making some interest groups or policies seem
way-more popular than they really are? (Or less?) Sock puppets also up viewership ratings and
inflate the number of comments under a thread to give it buzz.
“Reddit expects people to try and game the system,
so has many defences in place. Still, Thinkst managed to breach those defences
easily.” Also -- “…new
technologies promise freedom, but then get subverted by the powers-that-be and
actually end up working against you.
Can something be done? In fact, yes. I have the outline of a
business… a whole industry … in pseudonymous reputation conveyance/management…
that would entirely change this entire landscape, allowing both more freedom
and more accountability. Alas, VCs are only interested in clones of same-old ideas
from the 1990s.