From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Fri Oct 18 2002 - 12:38:26 MDT
> (Samantha Atkins <samantha@objectent.com>):
>
> So how are you going to get to the place where you have
> symmetric transparency? How will it be insured? I keep asking
> but I don't see much in the way of answers.
It's one thing to be stubborn, but don't be disingenuous; we've
answered many times, you just don't accept the answer. Mutual
transparency is self-reinforcing: the other side can't be
secretive because you can catch them trying. And how we get
from here to there is mostly a matter of culture: we simply
have to create an ethic among the people that the government
and its agents do not have a right to privacy in their official
duties; once that's understodd and accepted, the technologies
of surveillance (all of which are /created/ by the people,
remember, not the government) will be turned first upon those
for whom secrecy is seen as unethical.
It will be difficult to change the culture that way, because
we have all grown up in a society where "privacy" was a useful
tool to protect ourselves from an overly intrusive government,
and our initial knee-jerk reaction to surveillance technologies
will be negative (we also have Orwell to thank for much of that
misperception--but like all sci-fi writers he gets the future
completely wrong).
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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