Brin, David.  1998.  The Transparent Society.  NY: Perseus Books.

Tyler Fletcher

• Begins by discussing two fictional stories about cities of the near future, say ten or twenty years from now
• Both cities contain dazzling technological marvels and a few problems seem to be a little better such as children’s education and air pollution
• However, these twenty-first century cities are radically different in the fact that street crime has virtually vanished
• The reasoning behind this change lies in the fact that tiny cameras peer down from every lamppost, every rooftop and street sign
• The only difference in the two cities is that all events caught on camera in city number one are reported straight to the police while events in city number two can be viewed and monitored by all
• Although these two cities are fictional, cameras are actually on their way, along with data networks that will send a myriad images flashing back and forth, faster than thought. In fact the future has already arrived
• In fact the trend began a decade ago in Britain, in the town of King’s Lynn where sixty remote-controlled cameras were set up to monitor the known "trouble Spots"
• The result was an unbelievable reduction in street crime, in fact crime dropped to one-seventieth of the former rate
• The savings in patrol costs alone paid for the equipment
• Many cities soon followed and had similar success rates
• Today, over 300,000 cameras are in the United Kingdom and polls have shown that most citizens like them with the exception of some that say this new snoop technology could be abused and used for bad
• This trend was slower coming to America but it seems to be taking off with cities like Baltimore and New York now using cameras and technology to monitor streets
• No one denies the obvious and dramatic short-term benefits derived from this new technology, however, in the long term people must decide one very important question. Who will ultimately control the cameras?
• For example, in 1995 the Defense Department awarded a $1.7 million contract to Alliant Techsystems to develop a sound pickup device that could pick up on a gun shot and even identify where a person was screaming from; If a person could have the equipment needed to pick up distant sounds like that, what then would keep one from listening in on cries of passion or a family argument? The scenarios of what "One could do" with such power goes on and on
• Two main questions ultimately arise when talking about this subject: Will average citizens share, along with the mighty, the right to access these universal monitors and forms of technology? Will common folk have and exercise a sovereign power to watch the watchers?
• The underlying moral force can clearly be seen pervading our popular culture, in which nearly every modern film or novel seems to preach the same message- suspicion of authority
• Privacy is a term left to ones own definition and can work both ways. For example, a store manager may insist on checking a customers credit before allowing a purchase offending the customer a making them believe their privacy has been violated
• Another question that people wonder is Can Privacy laws keep eyes from getting tinier, more mobile, and clever?
• In every debate about knowledge disputes two parties tend to show up: Party A which believes that another group is inherently dangerous, and that its potential to do harm is exacerbated by secrecy. Therefore, accountability must be forced upon that group through enhanced flow of information. Party B which argues that some vital good will be threatened by heightened candor, and hence wants the proposed data flow shut down.
• Matters of privacy, accountability and freedom are often judged first and foremost on the basis of whose OX is being gored
• Jack Stack, a business legend advocates letting employees view the ledgers because welcoming input and oversight from every level, he claims, managers profit from a much wider pool of criticism and good ideas
• Theory is fine, but in the long run society’s course will be determined by regular folks, whose concern strike close to home
• Cameras are not fool-proof anymore. People can alter pictures with seemingly common computers
• As citizens, we shall deal with this problem the way members of an empirical civilization always have, by arguing and comparing notes, giving more credibility to the credible, and relying less on the anonymous or those who were caught lying in the past

-"Sacrificing anonymity may be the next generation’s price for keeping precious liberty, as prior generations paid in blood." –Hal Norby (p.3)

-In all of history, we have found just one sure for error-a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism.-David Brin (p.10)

-Alas, criticism has always been what human beings, especially leaders, most hate to hear.-David Brin (p.11)

-Whenever a conflict arises between privacy and accountability, people demand the former for themselves and the latter for everybody else.-David Brin (p.12)

-"In the future, new technology will allow the police to solve 100 percent of all crimes. The bad news is that we’ll realize 100 percent of the population are criminals, including the police."-Scott Adams (p.23)

The Age of Knowledge

• Many modern thinkers predict a life of wonder in the years to come involving electronic conduits that will unite home, factory, and school to the digital assistant on your wrist as well as other wonders involving databases, telecommuting, etc.
• With appropriate software it is simple to point and click your way across the sea of information on the World Wide Web. Anyone can learn to navigate this ocean, whose exotic offerings range from ridiculous to the truly sublime
• While its origin, core elements, and philosophical basis are American, the Internet has swiftly transcended national boundaries
• Issues of privacy, openness, and accountability were already on the agenda, with or without the advent of computer networks. But the internet has clearly multiplied the pace of change, bringing matters to head much more rapidly
• As the number of users grows geometrically, some anticipate that by 2008 the Net might encompass the entire world population
• Some pundits emphasize transitional features of an electronic world, predicting the end of the nation state. Others proclaim the Internet a modern oracle, enabling simple folk to query libraries, databases, political organizations, or even corporate and university researchers, at last breaking the monopoly of "experts" and empowering multitudes with the same information used by the decision making class.
• History certainly does warn us to be wary whenever a new communication technology arrives on the scene. While some seek to uplift humanity, others skillfully seize each innovation, applying it to the oldest of all magical arts- manipulating others (Ex. Gutenberg’s working printing press and the fax machine in China during the Tian an Men uprising P.40-41)
• Despite justified continuing public angst over poverty, crime, and external threats, our day-to-day fear level is arguably the lowest experienced by any mass polity since humans first strode upright. Most historical accounts show that citizens of other days were accustomed to far greater level of daily disorder and death
• Without doubt, the new media-saturated world will have some traits that will increase citizens’ exposure and acceptance of different cultures. Other features of the twenty-first century Net may foster fear and the creation of intolerant new tribes
• Almost no one foresaw the personal computer. Certainly not the big shots at IBM or Burroughs. But society acquired the PC and other wonders because a cohort of young minds were indoctrinated to seek novelty where standard organizations never looked
• If eccentricity is to be a factor in preserving an open society it can’t be limited to the rich, the talented or any other elite. The new attitudes must encompass millions
• A few decades from now there will be ten billion people on the planet, and computers as sophisticated as today’s mainframes will be cheaper than transistor radios. If this combination does not lead to war and chaos, then it will surely result in a world where countless men and women swarm the data ways in search of something special to do-some pursuit outside the normal range, to make each one feel just a little bit extraordinary
• Great preservation won’t be accomplished by some haughty ministry of cultures, but with strangely chaotic efficiency by countless private individuals probing each dimly lit corner of human knowledge, seeking some small niche where even a "nobody" might have a world class expert. A big fish in a small pond
• The next one hundred years may come to be called the "century of amateurs." If so, it will happen because we made it possible for many hopeful new trends to continue. Because we unleashed the full range of human potential into a transparent society

• "But all the conservatism in the world does not afford even a token resistance to the ecological sweep of the new electronic media." – Marshall Mcluhan (p.32)
• Assuming that I am right, and the pessimists are mistaken, almost nothing of recognized value that is now known about the humans past or present will ever again be lost. – David Brin (p.50)

• Certain factors may prove critical in determining our future, for instance, whether people can maintain their spirit and morale in a technological age that keeps thrusting challenges their way
• More than 1,500 employers of the U.S. Internal Revenue service have been investigated or disciplined since 1989 for using government computers to browse through tax returns of friends, relatives, neighbors, enemies, and celebrities
• Reacting to spy scandals, such as the Aldrich Ames affair, the administration and congress collaborated on legislation that may subject up to three million people with access to government secrets to snap inspections of their bank statement, credit histories, and foreign travel records
• Fingerprint systems are being used in many locales to prevent welfare recipients from filing under multiple names. Escrow and credit companies, along with many banks, now demand thumbprints to prove identity
• Simply clicking on a site on the World Wide Web man wind up creating a "biography" about you. A new mother is besieged by baby magazines and advertisements from infant-care goods, etc.
• According to Carol Lane, author of Naked in Cyberspace: How to find Personal Information Online, "Most people would be astounded to know what’s out there…In a few hours, sitting at my computer, beginning with no more than your name and address, I can find out what you do for a living, the names and ages of

• Your spouse and children, what kind of car you drive, the value of your house and how much in taxes you pay on it."
• A study of credit bureaus by Consumer Reports magazine found that half of all files examined held some inaccurate information. One out of five files contained major mistakes that could "ruin a person’s credit rating."
• Computerization has resulted in a quicker and vastly more knowledgeable core delivery system-even if it sometimes feels les human. But standards and procedures have not kept up with this speedy availability of information
• One needn’t delve too deeply into the past to find rampant and repeated abuse of power by public authorities: for example, during the "idyllic" American 1950s and 1960s. Hoover’s FBI reportedly sent tapes of Martin Luther Kings infidelities to his wife, in a conspiratorial effort to drive him to suicide
• Although the constitutions of many nations explicitly contain such a right, the word privacy is not mentioned even once as such in the oldest and most famous modern national charter, the Constitution of the United States of America
• When Judge Robert H. Bork was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, some journalists obtained his video rental records, presumably to learn if he had any kinky tastes. Outraged by this intrusion, Congress passed the Video Privacy Act, outlawing this narrowly specific invasion of privacy
• While archives might be restricted in many other nations, the basic principle behind open access in America is accountability
• If we cannot count on jurists to define privacy for us, or legislators to supply realistic protections for it, those tasks will largely be our responsibility during the decade and generations to come
• This chapter talked about modern quandaries and threats to privacy in our turn-of-the-century world. A careful reappraisal shows that most of these examples show two common traits: The Reflex Response and Reciprocal Transparency

• "Individuals are sacred. The world, the state, the church, the school, all are felons whenever they violate the sanctity of the private heart." – Bronson Alcott (p.55)
• "Little in life is as precious as the freedom to say and do things with people you love that you would not say or do if someone else were present." – Janna Malamud Smith (p.55)
• "Life in urban society, with extensive interactions with strangers, requires that we rely on factors such as uniforms, licenses, credentials to establish identity, resulting in great potential for fraud…There may be more than 500,000 Americans with fraudulent credentials, diplomas, even questionable medical degrees." – Gary T. Marx (p.60)
• "Our private health information [is] being shared, collected, analyzed and stored with fewer federal standards than video store records." –Donna E. Shalala (p.65)

• Katz v. United States – established the right to be secure in one’s private conversations as part of the interest protected buy the Fourth Amendment
• Doe v. City of New York – Supreme Court unanimously declared that it recognizes two kinds of privacy. The right to make fundamental decisions and to cover an individuals rights, authority, and obligations when it comes to avoiding the disclosure of personal information

• Privacy is not the only reason that people are frantic to control information. An even stronger motive stirs bitter efforts to dominate streams and reservoirs of data, not only on the Internet but wherever else the tributaries lead. That motive is revenue
• It has become fashionable to call information the "money of the future," a new take on the old adage that knowledge is power
• Corporations are claiming rights to things such as facts, words, bits, sounds, etc.
• According to Pamela Samuelson, professor of law and information management at the University of California, Berkely, "These examples show how the ongoing revolution in information technology is affecting older views of intellectual property, in ways that are being felt far beyond the computing field."
• It is time to take a fresh look at the rules that society uses to coordinate the ownership of informational property
• Some form of Copyright Laws have been established dating back to The Statue of Anne, enacted in Britain in 1710
• Almost eighty years later, after some further evolution of thinking on the subject, the United States Constitution empowered congress to pass laws "to promote progress of science and useful arts."
• Today we can see signs of immense strain in this traditional structure of law, originally designed as one of the greatest tools for openness (Pg.94-96)
• The recent General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) achieved concessions from nations such as Taiwan and Thailand, which had formerly served as havens for illicit duplication
• The big "content owner" media companies-from movie and recording studios to book and software publishers-worry about the new era ahead
• The Creative Incentive Coalition (CIC) is a powerful trade group whose greatest success so far has been persuading the Clinton administration to support the National Information Infrastructure Copyright Act (NIICA), whose aim is to plug some of the leaks before they become a hemorrhage of lost profits
• In response to what they see as draconian proposals in the NIICA, the Digital Future Coalition (DFC) was formed, drawing membership from the Computer and Communications Industry Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the

• The abstract purity of property rights now comes ahead of the practical goal of maximizing openness
• Lee Daniel Crocker, a member of the Extropians futurist society believes that true accountability can take place only if "tag commentary" is taken to its logical conclusion
• People who criticize a specific work on the Web should be able to "tag" that site with a compulsory "back link" that will notify and future visitor about the critic’s censure-whether or not the author wants his Web page to carry any disparaging tags
• This notion-a level of transparency so radical that even Brin himself found hard to swallow-would be fundamentally thwarted by existing copyright laws, which protect the cohesive integrity of a creator’s work
• CIC lawyers insist on criminalizing so many harmless traditional behaviors, they are following an ancient and discredited path-one that will only foster disdain for the law and drive the real information economy underground
• A much better approach would use positive measures to attract society toward a system based on fair payment (6 ideas on p.103-104)
• Socially and psychologically, the phenomenon of shareware depends on two things: relative wealth and a sense of shared citizenship.
• If we do manage to preserve and enhance the requisite sense of wealth and citizenship, expanding them to include a worldwide polity, there may yet be a chance to see something both strange and marvelous-a culture where people pay royalties to creators because it seems the right thing to do

• "Hey, buddy, I have a documented life…I can play back anything I’ve ever said. So don’t play games with me." –Bill Gates, The Road Ahead
• There are some things man was not meant to know.-H.P. Lovecraft
• Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.-Alexander Hamilton

• Free speech should be viewed as sacred and inviolable not simply for its own sake, but for utterly pragmatic reasons
• Only through an active, vibrant, noisy ferment of criticism can blunders be discovered before they bring nations crashing down
• Are ideas inherently dangerous?
• Perhaps more than any other question, this one is crucial to determining whether humans can or should maintain privacy-and indeed, whether we can or should remain individually free
• Rare dissenters have argued that a confident, enlightened person cannot be harmed by mere words
• According to their minority belief, children can be raised with critical reasoning skills so that, as they mature, they will be able to evaluate new ideas with a mix of curiosity and skepticism, culling what is wrong or harmful while incorporating the rest into an ever-expanding intellectual panoramas
• On the other hand, the very notion of a liberal education is aimed at creating just the sort of thoughtful, curious, aware, and judicious person who can operate as a sovereign, independent-minded citizen of a free commonwealth
• These two views of the toxicity of ideas have been battling for a long time, though in most traditional cultures the contest was one sided toward the views of human nature
• Closely related to the issue of toxicity is another long-running dispute over whether evil manifests itself only in what people do, or in their thoughts as well
• The debate between frailty and maturity continues today in confrontations over public policy issues exemplified by the Communications Decency(CDA)
• When the CDA was argued before the United States Supreme Court, one aspect in dispute was whether Internet-based services such as America Online should be viewed as "common carriers," which are not responsible for content, or whether their role is more that of "publishers," answerable if some client uses their channels to pander or commit libel
• Deputy Solicitor General Seth Waxman held that adults could access offensive content by joining private chat groups with pass worded entry
• The American Library Association(ACLU) responded by saying it was the adults and guardians jobs to install supervisory software in their homes and schools to keep children from viewing offensive material
• One side put the burden of assertive effort on would-be users, requiring adults to perform a complex act of violation in order to see
• The other side contended that the Internet’s default condition should be openness
• Despite all the moral posturing and charges of "censorship" and "immorality" flung at each other, what the disputants fall back on is an endless stream of anecdotes
• In social terms, our contemporary neo-Western civilization already throngs with the human equivalent of T-cells, independent-minded persons who are well educated, skeptical, and driven by pumped-up egos to the point where their most devout goal is to find and reveal some terrible mistake or nefarious scheme
• In the United States, a typical voter who is politically right of center worries about accumulations of undue power by officious academics or faceless bureaucrats
• From the viewpoint of voters who are somewhat left of center, the transfixing danger is accumulations of undue power by conniving aristocrats and faceless corporations
• In the United States there is the ever growing murmur of sullen suspicion that often seems to drown all common sense
• For instance, a third of those surveyed believe that FBI agents "deliberately" set fire to women and children at the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, Texas
• 51 percent of respondent believe the FBI were either "likely" or "somewhat likely" to have had direct responsibility for the assassination of President Kennedy
• The great strength of neo-Western civilization rests not on its ethereal ideals and justifications but upon its foundation of hard-as-stone pragmatism
• In the long run, efficiency is not urgent. What counts is that every important decision should get sniffed, argued over, and poked at from all sides before it can be put into effect, thus hopefully preventing yet another major tragedy of unintended consequences

• For an open society to be flexible and error-resistant, it must deal with all kinds of messy or harsh problems that face people in daily life. And not just normal people, but those who are angry, alienated, or on the edge
• Accountability is a tried-and-true technique for minimizing disaster in a complex society
• The old days of sharing common land buy coming to a consensus among farmers is over
• Companies are known to pay pennies on the acre to lease federal lands in the western United States, exploiting the General Mining Act of 1872 to plunder a region’s minerals and the departing, often leaving spoilage in their wake
• People probably do shrink inward when surveillance is pervasive and relentlessly "top down" in orientation, such as in a true dictatorship, or in oppressive corporations that spy on their employees
• Conformity is a classic survival reaction when people live in ambience of terror and observation by unaccountable authorities
• It seems that people internalize the perceived risk in any situation-whether through prim statistics or overheard anecdotes-and then multiply in a factor having to do with how much control they have over the situation
• What the risk assessment experts have concluded is that people feel better when they can see what’s going on, and have some sovereign mastery over decisions that affect their lives
• In an effort to "Guard the Guardians" in July 1997, the San Diego County sheriff’s Department began equipping all deputies with pocket tape recorders, requiring them to turn on the devices during encounters with the public
• It shouldn’t be forgotten that many is society worry about the police, often with cause
• Race relations in several American cities have been harmed by rogue officers who use their badges to mask brutality
• Hackers are individuals who use extraordinary skill (or dogged persistence) in manipulating software to infiltrate restricted computer systems
• Today’s Internet is plagued by countless individuals who seem intent on making nuisances of themselves, flying into abusive, self-righteous tirades known as "flames"
• In the world outside the Internet, we give "news" told to us by a known snoop or scandalmonger less weight than what we see reported under the byline of a respected journalist
• People who sling mud will learn that they must either back up their accusations or else face ignominy. Like the proverbial boy who cried wolf, they will find themselves isolated
• Just as competition generates wealth in a fair market, opposition over policy appears to have resulted in a society that is, on the whole, better run and fairer than most other mass cultures
• So far, the new media have served mostly to enhance centrifugal forces in society, tearing us further apart and encouraging an age of heightened radicalism. But new techniques wait in the wings

• There is a modern obsession with secrecy that appears to have transfixed an alliance of pundits, intellectuals, and activists all across the political spectrum, leading to the widespread acceptance of a bizarre consensus: that liberty can best be protected with masks and secret codes
• Encryption is the art of disguising meaning within a message, so that only the intended recipient will understand its significance
• Codes, ciphers, and cryptograms have been used for diplomatic and military purposes since at least Babylonian times
• The official response of the Clinton administration was not to try to prevent private or commercial encryption, but instead to propose a standardization of coding technology that would still meet the needs of justice professionals
• The clipper chip might seek to limit the use of cryptography in daily life
• The Clipper chip would let users encrypt their voice or digital communications so that almost any outsider would have a hard time listening in
• Whether conspiracy fans are right in their direst suspicions, or paranoid, or somewhere in between, the important point is that in the long run, transparency offers the best hope of preventing such behavior by government agencies (3 ways it will do so- p.194)
• The Clipper proposal was always ill fated, because a third force, the media, came down with almost total unanimity on the side of the apparent underdogs-the romantic, freedom-loving crypto advocates
• We are learning that too many blunders and betrayals were perpetrated in secret by U.S. officials during the Cold War, from deceptive nuclear tests and careless waste disposal to obscene contagion experiments on unknown objects
• Organized crime is turning high-tech; When Colombian police and U.S. drug enforcement agents recently raided the Cali headquarters of one narco-mob, they discovered sophisticated signal-scanning equipment capable of intercepting telephone calls throughout the region
• Although freedom and privacy are logically separate subjects, there is no dichotomy between those two highly desirable virtues
• Tom Maddox contrasts contemporary America with the island republic of Singapore, where $500 fines for spitting, or failure to flush a public urinal, have reduced the incidence of certain unappealing behaviors, but at the cost of dramatic restrictions on personal freedom (Michael Fay, an American citizen, was whipped across the buttocks for spray painting cars, brining much controversy)
• A major question concerning many American citizens is, can we prevent some future panic or security crisis from alarming the public so much that it willingly surrenders some or all of its freedom, in hope of escaping mortal danger?
• The natural drives of self-interest and human nature tend to cause those involved to push, or drift, toward ever-increasing amounts of secrecy
• Anonymity has a long-standing role in demagoguery, as when Senator Joe McCarthy claimed to have scores of independent sources to verify his wild accusations of Communist infiltration into the U.S. government
• It is the Citizens job to take a culture that is already free, and ensure that liberty increases, at a steady rate
• Anonymity, secrecy, and privacy are never mentioned anywhere in the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights. These were not rights set aside for pure protection
• They are given only a weaker shield deriving from the Fourth Amendment’s ban against state thugs barging into people’s homes
• From a practical standpoint, let us set about doing what our civilization is best at-solving problems

• "I think I ought to be able to go up and whisper in your ear, even if your ear is 1,000 miles away. If we install Clipper, then we can’t do that, because the government will have a back door into our encrypted communications." – Philip Zimmerman (p.191)
• We’re not ultimately more safe if we’re absolutely safe from the government, but not safe from private violence. – Akil Amar
• "How much chaos are you willing to endure in the name of liberty? Or how much liberty are you willing to forfeit in order to secure a more orderly society?" – Tom Maddox
• "I believe the more there is terrorism, the more pressure we’re under to find systematic ways to solve it." – Newt Gingrich
• Anonymity on the Internet has an important benefit. It can enable those who fear political or social reprisal to speak out. – Jamais Cascio