>From: "Michael S. Lorrey" <retroman@turbont.net>
>
>Zero Powers wrote:
> >
> > Well the transparency I advocate is mutual, two-way, transparency.
>Meaning
> > that the individual would be no more subject to surveillance than the
> > government. In fact my suggestion is "power equivolent surveillance,"
>such
> > that the more power you have to meddle in others lives, the *more* you
>are
> > subject to surveillance. In this scheme, the President and members of
> > congress would live in a virtual fish bowl and we the people would be
>able
> > to know virtually *everything* about their political, business and
>personal
> > affairs.
>I share your enthusiasm for accountability for our elected and appointed
>leaders, however your proposal that they have more surveillance than the
>average person runs counter to every security protocol of any leader
>security detail that ever kept its subject alive for more than 5
>minutes.
Not really. In fact this sort of power-proportional transparency is already
in effect in some ways. Right now we can know much more about President
Clinton than he could ever know about you. I know where and when he travels
abroad. I know why he has gone there and whom he talked to and what they
talked about. If I wanted to I could, in a matter of minutes, find out what
his agenda is for next week, where he'll be and what he'll be doing. In
fact its probably fair to say that Clinton is the *most* surveilled person
on the planet, as it should be. And he has been kept alive by his security
detail for a little more than 5 minutes.
> > When we have gotten past national sovereignty and moved on to
>cooperative
> > democratic global governance, there will be no need for such things as
>state
> > secrets and national security. At that point we will only be concerned
>with
> > (1) individual security and (2) global security. Both of those types of
> > security would best be served by ubiquitous transparency.
>
>Once, and if, national sovereignty ends or wanes, there will still be
>other forms of corporate organizations (a government is actually nothing
>but a corporation with a monopoly on setting the rules of the market and
>use of overwhelming force) that will gain pre-eminence. Private
>corporate structures, which owe no allegiance to national governments,
>bills of human rights, or philosophical principles other than making
>money and the golden rule (he who has the gold makes the rules). If you
>are going to end government corporations, you must also end the
>formation of other corporate structures as well...
Again, not really. Microsoft would be a likely candidate for your big scary
corporation scenario. But what can Microsoft do to abridge my human rights?
It cannot legally amass an army. The worst it could do is obtain an
insurmountable monopoly in the marketplace such that my choice as a consumer
would be restrained. And as we see in the news everyday, even that ability
is significanly curtailed by antitrust legislation.
>Gun control like you advocate has always led to total confiscation,
>sooner or later, in every country, state, and city in which it has been
>allowed to become law.
Examples, please. Even if that is the case, that is not what *I* advocate
(at least not yet).
> > >Power corrupts, so why give the power brokers more of it?
> >
> > I don't advocate that at all. I propose giving more power to those are
>less
> > powerful. I do propose opening the flood gates of surveillance, but its
>a
> > two-way floodgate, and I'd call for more information about the
>government
> > flowing to the people than the other way around.
> >
>
>Since the powerful will have greater computational resources, they will
>be able to make better use of the intelligence value of this ubiquitous
>surveillance, so even if everyone has the same 'access' (or even if the
>powerful have 'less' access, they will still make better use of the data
>and will be able to oppress people more as a result. Surveillance is
>merely an intelligence gathering channel. Its value is directly related
>to how much you can process in a given amount of time, and how much
>useless data you can filter out. Unless you are going to mandate that
>everyone have exactly the same amount of computing power, no more, no
>less, then your scheme cannot work as you envision it, and it will
>become a tool of repression for the powerful.
Once again, not really. It doesn't take much computing power at all to
browse an efficiently designed and frequently updated database. Each
citizen would not have to bear the onerous burden of creating and
maintaining their own database. The database would be publicly maintained
(of course under the glare of a great deal of transparency). When I wanted
the info, I'd just cruise on over to the database, log in and have a look
around. Not much different than what happens now when you go to google.com.
I would not have much advantage using a 1ghz Pentium III over somebody
using a 66mhz 486 in browsing such a database.
-Zero
"I like dreams of the future better than the history of the past"
--Thomas Jefferson
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:06:41 MDT