Sousveillance, Surveillance and Accountability

It's been called "Brin's Corollary to Moore's Law." That cameras get smaller, faster, cheaper, better and more mobile at a rate much, much faster than Moore's Law.  This article clues you in to the latest aspects, e.g. lensless cameras that won't even have that telltale glint. Micro air vehicles (MAV) - drones the size of flies, that will follow you and "go-pro" your life, whether you're the camera's owner or not.  And cameras that see around corners.

The lesson to all this? Stop imagining that you will ever protect freedom and privacy by hiding! 

We can live in this looming future while retaining some freedom, even enhancing freedom! 

But only if we learn to stop worrying and love the drone.

In The Transparent Society I have a chapter titled “The End of Photography as Proof of Anything at All.”  And yes, way back in 1997 there were fears that digital image processing would ruin our ability to trust images. Now see this stunning new product – Face2Face – that uses RGB video data to superimpose expressions and face movements onto a target persona in a video. In the demo, George W. Bush, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are shown grimacing, smiling or mouthing words, exactly mimicking the studio actor… visually plausible at the low resolution of this YouTube example.  But of course easily refuted by any group that analyzes the footage in a modern lab.  The question is: will that suffice in the minds of millions who see such doctored images, then refuse to listen, when those labs denounce the fake?

Public figures will take to recording themselves 24/7, in order to have time stamped refutations, ready at any time.  (Put that one in the predictions registry!)

Meanwhile, Kuwait has become the first country to require residents —1.3 million citizens plus 2.9 million foreigners - to enter their DNA on a national database. 

Slowly at first, then more rapidly, drone surveillance has been entering our skies, with every agency from the FBI and ATF to local sheriffs acquiring unpiloted aeronatical vehicle (UAVs) equipped with cameras and more. The ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation express concern, but how do you draw the line between legitimate uses and Big Brother? 

My dear friends in EFF etc are right to be concerned. But any notion of restricting such powers by law or regulation? Over any extended period? When the drones are getting smaller and cheaper and more numerous and capable at rates vasty exceeding Moore's Law?  

Here's an ultimate irony.  The only way you could ever enforce such restrictions is if citizens and their NGOs (like EFF and ACLU) have extensive powers of sousveillance and supervision over the Protector Caste.  Only then could we know what they are doing, well enough to say "stop looking!"

But think this through, will you? If we have such supervisory power, we won't need to say "don't look!"  Because if we can supervise the drone controllers and their commanders, then their looking will be circumspect and respectful and studiously unintrusive. 

Again and again it must be repeated: Screaming "don't look at me!" is a pathetic whine.   The only way to hold power accountable is to forcefully and effectively say to those with guns: "We are watching you in every detail. So be professionals."  

Only then will public servants nod and say: "Yes, boss."

An example of this process is this current debate over changes in the FBI's rules for accessing the NSA's PRISM program that monitors traffic to and among foreign telephone numbers. Already ethically and legally iffy, "section 702" searches can sweep up information about U.S. citizens who are at one end of such conversations.  Believe me, I am deeply unsatisfied with the current state of affairs, especially the wispy layers of supervision - almost none of them adversarial - that keep these programs from being Orwellian. On the other hand, we are arguing about them. And our officials know that trying to hide it all from us completely will not work. All that will do is result in a phenomenon they'll find deeply irksome.  More Snowdens.

The solution is to negotiate a win-win… a positive sum set of reforms that empower our protector caste to do their increasingly complex and difficult jobs… while submitting to much improved systems of supervision and accountability that will enhance citizen confidence.  The alternative, a steady decay in trust between the protectors and protected, is utterly pathological. Solving that decay should be the caste's number one priority.  How sad that it would be so, so easy to do, except for some unnecessary reflexes and bad habits of thought.

Nor is this just a dichotomy of private folks against the state. Police agencies have been using "stingray" technology to make fake cell towers to sift for target/suspect phones… and now it seems the technology has leaked to major corporations, foreign spy agencies, commercial IP thieves, and even criminal gangs… an all-too familiar devolution of powers that we should worry about when drones start being used in felonious activity.  IMSI catchers - or cell-tower spoofers -- are now available on gadget sites for a few thousand dollars.

"Two years ago, China shut down two dozen factories that were manufacturing illegal IMSI catchers. The devices were being used to send text-message spam to lure people into phishing sites; instead of paying a cell phone company 5¢ per text message, companies would put up a fake cell tower and send texts for free to everyone in the area." 
And: "By 2010 senior (Indian) government officials publicly acknowledged that the whole cell network in India was compromised. “India is a really sort of terrifying glimpse of what America will be like when this technology becomes widespread,”"  

To some, the 'obvious solution' is ever more encryption, a race that average people intrinsically can never win. I prefer self-erecting mesh systems, but those will require better hardware than the cell companies are willing to sell us, and we'd still have to trust one mesh-organizing consortium over others.

In the long run, what all this proves is that we will never be able to base our safety and freedom on some illusion that others do not know something. Concealment may have practical aspects, here and now, but its sanctuary is temporary, at best and ultimately delusional. We can still have safety and freedom! But only if we realize that freedom and safety do not depend upon preventing others (who are much mightier than you) from seeing.  

It comes from being able to see them, well enough to deter what they might DO to you.

== a canny metaphor ==

A member of this community came up with the following illustration of this key point:

“Our collective folklore contains a story about belling the cat. 

Not one about blindfolding the cat.”

Wow… cool metaphor! 

Note that a cat can easily remove a blindfold, but can't do much about the bell on the collar.

Is it easy to bell a cat?  Find for me where I ever said this was easy.

== Block Chain and BitCoin ==  

Interesting. For those of you who have been following the development of block-chain based, autonomously validated currencies like BitCoin, there have been many, many questions. Such systems “mint” new coins not from a central agency or cabal of secret managers, but rather by a system of “mining” in which you can (for example) create a new BitCoin by computer-solving a difficult mathematical puzzle or problem. Setting up such a system so that no government or bank can ever take charge of it was immensely clever.  And yet, quite predictably, BitCoin mining has come to be dominated by a few savvy, well-equipped players. 

And let’s be clear about what’s inherently vague. We have no way to know whether those miners happen – by now – to overlap with certain, well, agencies, who have all the computational power they would ever need. Seriously, you doubt that a system designed to bypass government is not, by now, almost wholly run by government? Truly? There's a bridge I know that's for sale....

But never mind that aspect. Across the last half-decade, innovators have put forward variants on the block-chain cash model. One of the more interesting alternatives is CureCoin, which asked: “shouldn’t all that computational power that is poured into coin mining actually accomplish something?”  CureCoin miners win new units by solving problems in protein folding that are brutally complex and essential for advances in organic chemistry and cancer research. They hope thus to amplify the all-voluntary system already in place, called Folding@home, which in turn was based on SETI@home, the first voluntary distributed computational network.

The CureCoin system leans also toward philanthropic applications and donations, but the coins themselves are negotiable currency, like BitCoin. Do I know anything more about it?  Nope, and I certainly cannot vouch. In fact, those among you who are experts are invited to report back here, after giving it a try. 

== How Transparency makes a difference ==

And you didn’t see this coming? New lip-reading technology could help solve crimes by deciphering what people caught on CCTV are saying, researchers have claimed.  Along with lie-detection and personality profiling, these techs will either ensure that we have Big Brother forever… or else Big Brother never.  One word will make the difference.  Transparency.

A cache of leaked emails appears to reveal that billions of dollars of government contracts were awarded as the direct result of bribes paid on behalf of firms including British icon Rolls-Royce, US giant Halliburton, Australia’s Leighton Holdings and Korean heavyweights Samsung and Hyundai, all of it funneled through an obscure petro company called Unoil and Dick Cheney’s Halliburton.  As author of The Transparent Society I have to ask… you are surprised that stuff leaks?  

Finally, see this: How Mickey Mouse evades the public domain -- with lobbying and ever-changing copyright law.