What elites DO to us is more important than what they know

Again and again we see what works... and what almost-never works.  So why is the utterly futile prescription almost always the one promoted by security and privacy "experts," by pundits of all stripes and by supposed defenders of freedom and privacy?

Two Philadelphia cops accused of savagely beating a man without provocation and then lying about it have been indicted following a thorough investigation — by the victim's girlfriend. “After Najee Rivera was given a beating that left him with a fractured bone in his face and one eye swollen shut, girlfriend Dina Scannapieco canvassed businesses in the area and found security footage that led to Rivera's exoneration on charges of assault and resisting arrest and to the arrest of the two officers involved.”

The lesson? Again and again, twits declare that the only way to save freedom and privacy is to pass laws restricting information flows, and then trusting elites to enforce or obey those laws. 

“Brin is naive!” they declare “to imagine that *increased* information flow can ever hold elites accountable or benefit common folk.” Then they call for laws without the light that can enforce them.

What stunning drivel. Any information flow restriction will be far easier for elites to evade, while we are rendered blind by those very same laws. Every attempt to use ciphers etc to “secure” databases eventually fails, with the Anthem leak only the latest in a relentless chain of spills that now come almost weekly.  

In contrast, the only good news in our info wars is happening on our streets, where the spread of cameras is now steadily (if unevenly) making power more equal, not less. 

In both EARTH and The Transparent Society, I portrayed citizens empowered with cams, learning to apply reciprocal accountability (RA)… the once, and past, and present, and only methodology of freedom.

Oh, here's another -- “Brin thinks citizens can be equal to elites in the use of info-tech.”  

No I do not think that and have never said that.  

But the last 200 years… and especially the period since Rodney King and DNA testing… have shown that we don’t have to be equal to elites, in vision or in might, to start applying RA.  If we can see just well enough then our greater numbers will have leverage. 

So what if they can see us better than we see them! If we can see them well enough, then we can deter them from doing stuff to us. 

I cannot fathom why it is so hard to grasp this simple point: What elites see and know will matter a whole lot less than what they cannot do. And while it is logically impossible to police what others know, we are capable of deterring open, physical actions.

Only, in order to accomplish that, light must flow, so we can see.

== False Dichotomies == 

Simply tragic. This “renowned security expert” is simultaneously extremely knowledgable… and disastrously clueless. In this brief video he proclaims that we face a “stark choice” — a dichotomy that’s black and white. Either or.  Either empower state and corporate powers to spy on all of us (and yes, I agree such one-way surveillance could lead to Big Brother)…

… or else provide “security” for all communications so that no one can spy on anyone’s data streams. 

How stirring and romantic. And stunning hogwash. 

I would love to see Bruce’s plan (and I have been asking, for 20 years) for how option #2 is possible. with technology advancing and cameras getting smaller, faster, cheaper, more mobile and numerous faster than Moore’s Law. When your ceiling can contain a hidden gnat-cam or your walls an EM key-logger, tracking everything you type or say… 

...when face reading will not only ID you anywhere but track your mood and (soon) whether or not you are lying? Will hiding somehow equalize the disparity of power between elites (state, corporate, criminal, foreign, technological) and common folk?

Worse than drivel, such talk is actively and deliberately harmful distraction. Again and again, I defy anyone to show me how you can reliably blind all elites! Show us one example of that every having happened, across all of history. How any such “solution” would be robust, across decades of rapid technological change, including the arrival of quantum computers. 

There is another option. A “door number three.” And yes, I understand that zero-sum thinkers have a hard time comprehending positive-sum solutions that extend out of the plane of simple, black and white dichotomies. Still, I made it plain enough in The Transparent Society  — were Bruce Schneier ever — even once — to crack open a copy.

Again and again, until it sinks in: we can stop Big Brother by worrying less about what elites know and more about what they can DO.  And we can curb what they do to us with only one tool. Reciprocal accountability. Stripping them naked so that they can be held accountable. 

That is where I am militant.  And even though few in the punditocracy seem able to wrap their minds around the possibility, it is happening anyway.

As constabularies all across the U.S. reverse a decade of resistance and instead are embracing cop-cams… 

...and ghetto youths start using live-feed cams of their own (exactly as portrayed in both EARTH and The Transparent Society), reciprocal accountability is spreading. We’ll gain accountability and justice and peace on our streets. It is the only way power can ever be curbed and watchdogs reminded that they are dogs, not wolves.

And so it matters little that bright fools peddle addictively silly dichotomies.

== And yet... it has a cool title! ==

Nevertheless, I will tout Bruce's new book... "Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World."  See it reviewed in Slate: How to Mess with Surveillance. Though obstinately zero-sum, he certainly knows and relates an awful lot of facts.  You'll learn plenty!  Just know that the either-or dichotomies that he presents are no "solutions." They bear no resemblance to actual, pragmatic and sensible paths to emerge from the problems that he lays down, so well.

Evade surveillance?  Avoid surveillance? There are hundreds - it appears - born every minute.

Look-back.