The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom

by David Brin and G. David Brin

Book Overview

In New York and Baltimore, police cameras scan public areas twenty-four hours a day. Huge commercial databases track you finances and sell that information to anyone willing to pay. Host sites on the World Wide Web record every page you view, and "smart" toll roads know where you drive. Every day, new technology nibbles at our privacy.Does that make you nervous? David Brin is worried, but not just about privacy. He fears that society will overreact...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0738201448
• ISBN13: 9780738201443
• Release Date: June 1999
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.6" x 8.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Puts NSA Wiretapping in Context

It is helpful to return to this book, from 1998, and to a follow on book, "the digital person" published in 2004, as context for the recent bru-ha-ha over NSA wiretapping without a warrant, and the loss to theft of tens of thousands of social security number and other personal information of veterans. Oh yes, somewhere in there, the FBI was hacked and companies like First Data are making fortunes compiling actionable profiles of individuals from disparate sources that were never approved for sharing. This book focuses on the value of transparency and considers the key issue to be the war between secrecy versus accountability. The author directly confronts the issue of "who controls" information about YOU. The author draws a useful comparison between the Internet, which sacrificed security for robust sharing, and the intelligence community, which chose security over sharing as its primordal principal. The author observes that the Internet is having one undesireable effect, that of fragmenting communities that become less amenable to compromise and consensus. He points out that reality and locationally based discussion can lead to more effective consensus and compromise. There is a useful discussion of "tagging" and how citizen truth squads and public commentary can serve as a useful antidote to corporate messages. The idea of "culture jamming" is picked up and treated at length by another excellent book, "NO LOGO." Overall this book remains a standard in providing a detailed revoew of the issues and the capabilities surrounding digitial information about individuals. It is the author's view that WHO controls information, rather than WHO is elected, will determine the future of democracy. In passing the author makes two points that I find important: 1) A liberal education, rather than the current trends toward immediate specialization, is essential if the public is to be able to think critically. 2) Law enforcement under the current government model, does not work. The author gives the example of 100 felonies, of which only 33 are reported. Of the 33, 6 are caught, 3 are convicted, and 1 goes to prison. The author ends with a reference to genius savant John Perry Barlow, one of America's more notable commentators, and suggests that we are entering an era of individual collective intelligence against organized government intelligence (and secrecy). I recommend this book be read together with "the digital person" because the latter book focuses on the degree to which government and corporate mistakes--"careless unconcerned bureaucratic processes" can undermine privacy and good order.

Hard to accept, but he may be right

The entire book is basically one giant argument: That in order to be safe and maintain some form of privacy, we have to in fact give it up and become an open society.If we try to preserve our privacy through laws and such, he says, then we fall into the trap of who watches the watchers, because to some degree law enforcement and businesses will need access to private information.His ideal society, that he puts forth, is one where all information is available, with this caveat - that none of it open to just any priviledged group. So, though the police may be able to see that you're standing on the corner, you can see them sitting at their desk. While someone might know you read some newsgroup, you'll know which ones they read.He sees personal accountability, through openness, to be a great regulator of behaviour.Before I read this book, if someone suggested this to me, I'd call them crazy. But after reading his arguments, and considering the reasons why I'm an open-source software proponent, I find myself considering that Brin may be right to a degree.

Highly Topical, Particularly after 9-11-01

Suppose that the cost of surveillance technology continues to fall. What are our options?(a) try to ban certain types of surveillance technologies altogether(b) try to restrict surveillance technologies so that "we" have it but "they" don't(c) try to escape surveillance technology by using encryption(d) try to encourage broad access to surveillance technologyDavid Brin argues persuasively that (d) is the least problematic solution. The other strategies are both more difficult to execute and less likely to produce a desirable outcome. For example, with (c) you have the problem that encryption may not be perfectly reliable. Moreover, even if you can encrypt your bits, you cannot encrypt your atoms. So you still may be subject to surveillance by a network of cameras, by centralized databases, etc.The greatest strength of the book is the way that Brin analyzes the situation from the perspective of different opponents to his position. The greatest weakness is that he rarely delves into details about how to implement his overall recommendation. What incentives need to be created? How do laws need to be changed, etc.? He offers hints, and occasional examples, but leaves a lot out.The relevance of this book has increased dramatically as a result of the terrorist attacks of September 11. For example, on p. 320 there is this passage:"Terrorists operate under cloaks of anonymity and secrecy...This is especially true of their concealed finances...the real impulse to force them open may only come after some band of terrorists manages to kill thousands..."What Brin advocates is not a stronger police state but a more open system that allows any citizen to trace how money flows. Thus, although he would agree with the national security establishment that secret bank accounts are a problem, he would part ways with the establishment in that he would not give the police special privileges to examine bank transactions. Instead, he would expose such transactions to anyone.This is just one of many interesting ideas in this provocative book.

Provocatively Entertaining

David Brin has a lot to say and says it discursively, but he's done his homework--dipping into an impressive range of social science, philosophical, crytographic, and technical literature--thought carefully, marshalled compelling arguments seasoned with humor and bright metaphors, and, as a result, is worth listening to, arguing with, or simply pondering. The Transparent Society works out, with much supporting detail, ideas about secrecy and privacy first raised in Brin's magisterial novel, Earth, and does so in a civilizational context. I risk doing Brin and his book grave injustice by oversimplifying, but let me say Brin views "accountability" and "criticism" as central to the progress of neo-Western civilization (fight the power!) and further posits that criticism works very like T-cells in an immune system, providing (to a greater and greater extent as the collective grows in knowledge) autonomous and impersonal correctives against all manner of "error." Brin argues for greater informational transparency--almost total disclosure--observing that, if universal surveillance cameras and other snoop technologies are inevitable (and they almost certainly are), then a generalized oversight capability, or a mutual surveillance capacity (in other words, my ability to watch the government with the same technologies that the government can watch me) is the answer to the classic question, quis custodiet ipsos custodes (who shall guard the guardians?)? In short, we all will. Brin's ingenious argumentation may strike some readers as cavalier or reductionist. It's not. It's serious and is, moreover, and a serious response to flamewar proponents of "encryption as the answer" to the privacy dilemmas of the wired age.

Important, flawed, nearly as readable as his sci-fi

Note: I reviewed the book in draft form.Based primarily on rampant, uncontrolled growth in visual surveillance, Brin argues that the technological imperative is irresistible; and that privacy protections are futile. He believes that privacy can only be sustained by focussing instead on freedom of information for everyone: to achieve privacy, rely on freedom, not secrecy.Brin's argument can be most succinctly expressed as a question-answer pair: Q: Who will keep a watch on the watchers? A: The watched. His antidote is ubiquitous openness, with the powerful just as subject to visual and data surveillance as everyone else. Policemen will be judged by the viewers who, on the Internet, watch them watching others.Brin's argument is based on the premise that the watchers will not exercise political power in order to preclude others from watching them. The history of societies suggests that there have always been uneven distributions of power, and that the powerful have had incentives, and in most cases the ability, to exercise their power, and to resist diminution of their power. It would appear that Brin's transparent society can only be achieved if the patterns repeated across millenia of human experience are able to be overturned in short order.So his argument is undermined by the implicit presumptions that the less powerful are more powerful than the more powerful, that no-one will succeed in establishing enclaves of privilege, and that the actions of all will really be able to be monitored by all. Brin's counter-argument (private communication, 30 June 1998) is that the powerful will be only as successful in avoiding observation as they already are in resisting privacy laws that offend their own interests.