From: Dan Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 12 2000 - 23:25:01 MDT
Adrian Tymes wrote:
> Dan Fabulich wrote:
> > Transparency works with IP, not against it. Yes, you can watch David
> > Brin write his next novel as it's being written. But the police can
> > see you performing an illegal observation, and arrest you for watching
> > him.
>
> Sorry, but: if there are such things as illegal observations, then you
> fail to have 100% transparency.
Not at all. There could be 100% transparency in fact, but making use
of this transparency could nontheless be made illegal. (Brin, to the
best of my knowledge, has never said otherwise.) Think of it as an
all-seeing society with its eyes taped shut.
Here's an obvious scenario leading to illegal transparency: if
surveilance technology ever becomes as ubiquitous and cheap as David
Brin thinks that it might be, Congress could pass laws prohibiting
certain kinds of observations or the use of certain kinds of equipment
on the grounds of "protecting personal privacy"; these laws would be
funded by special interest groups with secrets to keep and would even
be supported by a large fraction of the populace, perhaps even a
majority. (Who wants some pervert watching your every move?)
Of course, for their next trick, the government could completely
eliminate the black market for surveilance equipment by monopolizing
its use, er, I mean, limiting its use to select law enforcement
officials only. It's to keep the streets safer, you see.
> The example you cited is minor; a more
> significant one would be, say, making it illegal for non-police to
> observe an arrest (which means that anyone taping an arrest to prove
> police brutality would have illegal evidence, inadmissable in a court of
> law).
>
> >From the rest of your post, it seems that you agree - except that it is
> not, techncially, transparency, since transparency goes both ways.
Be careful to keep the distinction between "cheap ubiquitous
surveilance technology" and the society David Brin describes clear.
Transparency is merely the former. Transparency is not necessarily
David Brin's utopia.
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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