Aiming for lateral accountability: Cameras will either help... or thwart... Big Brother

More and more we are seeing that the enemies of the Enlightenment Experiment Are not just opposing 'western decadence' or even the Rule of Law - though RoL hampers terribly the power and whim that topmost males have always deemed their birthright. 

No, the most fundamental thing that all tyrants, kings, owner-lords and priestly hierarchs have always dreaded was the possibility of accountability, applied upon them by those they rule.

Pericles spoke of this, at the onset of the age when the Athenian Democracy dazzled the world. Thomas Paine crystalized the notion, far more revolutionary than anything by Lenin or Robspierre or Mao. It is the core of every experiment in flat-fair-open-creative and free civilization.

== Is technology going to help... or end it? ==

“Massive camera hack exposes the growing reach and intimacy of American surveillance.” A breach of the camera start-up Verkada ‘should be a wake-up call to the dangers of self-surveillance,’ one expert said: ‘Our desire for some fake sense of security is its own security threat', reports The Washington Post.

I remain appalled that so many very smart people actually seem to think that each year's new tech levels - and menaces - will now freeze and stand still long enough for us to ban them. Cameras get smaller, faster, cheaper, better, more mobile and vastly more numerous far faster than Moore's Law (Brin's Corollary!) 

Consider the recent case of San Francisco's City Council banning facial recognition systems, when keeping them open to public criticism is exactly how we discovered and then corrected many problems like racial and gender bias in the programs.

Anyway Facial Recognition programs won't be resident in police departments for long, where some city council can ban them, but will be cheap apps in phones and AR glasses, available from a thousand directions. Result? Cops who are banned from using versions that are open to supervision will instead surreptitiously use dark web versions, because it might save their own lives.

We need to focus not on uselessly trying to ban tech that might be abused, but on eliminating the abuses. And that can only happen with more light, aimed at those with power.

Oh, the dangers are very real! These techs will certainly empower agents and masters of despotism, if you already have a despotism. And hence the lesson and priority is to prevent despotism altogether! Because these same techs could instead empower vibrant citizenship, if we see to it they are well-shared and that no elite gets to monopolize them.

Which they will, if we try simplistically and reflexively to ban them.

It's not that the ACLU and EFF and EU are wrong to fret! They are absolutely correct to point at problems and to worry that surveillance techs could empower Big Brothers and render citizen privacy extinct. It is their prescriptions that almost always are short-sighted and foolish.

Making a tech illegal will not stop elites form having and using it. 

Let me repeat that.

Making a tech illegal will not stop elites form having and using it. 

What it will do is make them arrange to do it secretly, where the methods won't be appraised and criticized publicly.

As Heinlein said, "the chief effect of a privacy law is to make the bugs smaller."

Need I keep mentioning that both Martin Luther King and Gandhi credited cameras with saving their own lives, as they marched and took on entrenched power?

Meanwhile the thing propelling Black Lives Matter is the proliferation of public access to cameras, spectacularly increasing the number of bad cops being fired. Being convicted took longer and activism helped change the reflexes of juries!But none of it would have happened without the cameras. All of it, BTW, predicted in EARTH (1990) and The Transparent Society (1997.)

== Again and again… HOW to get the internet’s good and repress the bad? ==

Some of these concepts are hard, so let's go over similar concepts from a slightly different angle.

Evan Anderson of the Strategic News Service recently wrote an incisive piece on how the Internet is suffering near lethal harm from swarms of nasty users.  “The Half-Percent: How A Few Awful Individuals Increasingly Threaten Our Future.”

For example “This March, in its The Disinformation Dozen, the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that in a sample of content posted 812,000 times on social media platforms, just 12 individual anti-vaxxer accounts on Facebook and Twitter were responsible for a full 65% of anti-vaccine content. The report also describes that many of these individuals are doing so simply to encourage skepticism because they have “snake oil” to sell, noting: ‘Living in full view of the public on the internet are a small group of individuals who do not have relevant medical expertise and have their own pockets to line, who are abusing social media platforms to misrepresent the threat of Covid and spread misinformation about the safety of vaccines. According to our recent report, anti-vaccine activists on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter reach more than 59 million followers, making these the largest and most important social media platforms for anti-vaxxers. Our research has also found anti-vaxxers using social media platforms to target Black Americans, exploiting higher rates of vaccine hesitancy in that community to spread conspiracies and lies about the safety of Covid vaccines.’ These 12 individuals account for 73% of vaccine misinformation on Facebook, are personally featured in 17% of anti-vaxx content on Twitter, and regularly feature sales attempts for alternative products that they claim can cure Covid-19.

Okay then. How to deal with badguys and sociopaths and predators? As far back as legends go, sages have preached we should be honest and forthright and honorable to each other. These preachings - on every continent and in every language - had positive effects, but only on those who already valued honesty and honor and decency. 

The sort of folks whom the dishonorable always view as prey.

Some kings and priests sought to apply other methods. Laws, policing, punishments. These deterred bad actors to some large degree by applying accountability. In strong, efficient states, businesses could operate and families had some recourse from gangs of thugs... but only some. And there was no redress from the capricious whims of the King, or lords or priests.

A few nations tried the Periclean approach... supply citizens with the means to apply accountability upward. Always a difficult, fraught and incomplete effort, it nevertheless was the focus of Adam Smith and the U.S. Founders and each generation of Americans has done it slightly better, except this one, as a worldwide oligarchic putsch strives to end the very notion of the idea that Rule-of-Law can apply upward.

In order to weaken us, those oligarchs have subsidized and encouraged the nasty predators that this post was about.  The anonymity that original Internet zealots called liberating has become a curse, as the worst men use it to evade any form of accountability, online.  More and more, we hear calls to banish anonymity... while those worried about Big Brother see what's happened in China, where online anonymity is banned for purposes of state control. 

Elsewhere, I've explored how we were able to harness competitive processes in five great arenas: MARKETS, DEMOCRACY, SCIENCE, COURTS and SPORTS, and in all five, strenuous, unrelenting efforts repress the human tendency to cheat, by applying very different styles of fierce regulation and accountability. In my paper I discuss a method that might let this happen on the Web. 

(For a rather intense look at how "truth" is determined in science, democracy, courts and markets, see "Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competition." 

Okay, here's the key point. This doesn't have to be ZERO SUM! We should be able to get most of the good aspects of anonymity while eliminating most of the bad!  We could do this with a regularized process of formalized PSEUDONYMITY in which you can rent a vetted pseudonym from a fiduciary you already trust for other credentials (e.g. credit or savings)... your bank. (Banks are already well placed to get into this potentially profitable business.) 

If you do bad things under that pseudonym, the "ding" would follow you back and affect your credibility scores without having anyone actually know your name (unless the ding is a felony.)

I go into this elsewhere, too. The crux: the key to reducing the harm done by badguys is accountability. But giving top rulers tools for applying it downward is always dangerous to freedom. 

The answer - as you'd expect from me - is lateral accountability.  And we can do it in a positive sum way.

== Tech as Freedom’s Friend ==

In 2013 I touted maybe the most important step in American civil liberties since the 1960s Civil Rights Bills... when the Obama Administration and the courts ruled that citizens have a right to record the police. As I predicted in The Transparent Society, (especially p.130), cameras became far more of a 'great equalizer' that the six gun, though it took time and phases and a stretch of pain that hasn't ended with the Chauvin conviction. 

But while we rightfully laud heroes in this struggle, let's spare a nod for technology? The thing that will either empower Big Brother forever... or else ensure we'll have Big Brother NEVER.

That choice still lies in our hands.

Privacy will not go away -- but it will evolve

The issue will not go away. But at last the reflexes seem to be fading. The silly reflex - for example - to demand that we solve information age problems by shutting down info flows.  By standing in front of the data tsunami like King Canute screaming "Stop!"  Instead of learning to surf.

First: this is too easy to do. "The Justice Department has been building a national database to track in real time the movement of vehicles around the U.S., a secret domestic intelligence-gathering program that scans and stores hundreds of millions of records about motorists."

What is your reaction. Outrage? Want to ban this?  Fool. Yeah, that's gonna work, as cameras get smaller, faster, better, cheaper faster than Moore's law. Endlessly. Think TEN years ahead. Try some imagination, for a change, hm?

Driving this kind of activity underground will only empower elites and make them hire nasty-secretive henchmen to do all this in secret. 

On the other hand, if we stay calm, we can instead be militant for something that works… keeping public supervision representatives and public-access cameras in the control rooms of these systems! Require that operator-henchmen in such systems change jobs after 5 years and go to places where they can be encouraged to tell if there had been abuse. Whistleblower rewards. Lot of them.

These are deterrence vs abuse methods that use sight, which is possible. Deterring sight itself is not.

Can I belabor the point, having learned the hard way just how difficult it is? Worrying about what others KNOW is inherently insane, because you can never verify what someone else does not know! 

But you can verify what others DO with their knowledge. Preventing others from doing bad things is possible -- if we can see.

We became free by saying to elites: "You will inevitably see. But we demand the right and power to see (and supervise) you!" 

Again, there is an addiction to cynically demanding that we solve info age problems by reducing the amount and flow of light. By shouting at others "don't look!"  That approach is not only hopeless, it is illogical. Show me one example, across 6000 years, of it ever having worked. 

 == Shining Light on Anonymity ==

The Troll Hunters: This article shows the dawning of a new and badly-needed type of transparency… the hunting down and holding-accountable of internet trolls. 

“It is generally no longer acceptable in public life to hurl slurs at women or minorities, to rally around the idea that some humans are inherently worth less than others, or to terrorize vulnerable people. But old-school hate is having a sort of renaissance online, and in the countries thought to be furthest beyond it. The anonymity provided by the Internet fosters communities where people can feed on each other’s hate without consequence.”

Follow this Swedish journalist who tracks and exposes Internet trolls on his television show Trolljägarna (Troll Hunter). The author reminds us that “attempts to curb online hate must always contend with the long-standing ideals that imagine the Internet’s main purpose as offering unfettered space for free speech and marginalized ideas.”

“Anonymity online is possible, but it’s frail,” says one researcher who has exposed cryptic neo-Nazis.  

One lesson from this article — perhaps not intended — is to make clear the need for an intermediate, win-win solution that will promote pseudonymity — the purchase of vetted IDs from trusted sources that also convey meta-data about credibility and allowing accountability. This would be easy to accomplish, using some of the same methods as BitCoin.  The resulting billion dollar industry could give us the best of both worlds.

== Mass Surveillance and Terrorism ==

Mass surveillance ineffective at fighting terrorism -- This article about surveillance follows the standard pattern. Starting out informative, it moves on to gloomy dudgeon, and concludes with a general armwave call for unsepecified actions, in directions that cannot possibly work.

“In response to the terrorist attacks in Paris, the U.K. government is redoubling its efforts to engage in mass surveillance. Prime Minister David Cameron wants to reintroduce the so-called snoopers’ charter—properly, the Communications Data Bill—which would compel telecom companies to keep records of all Internet, email, and cellphone activity. He also wants to ban encrypted communications services.”

France has blanket electronic surveillance. It didn’t avert the Charlie Hebdo events. They process vast amounts of imperfect intelligence data and do not have the resources to monitor all known suspects 24/7. “The French authorities lost track of these extremists long enough for them to carry out their murderous acts.”

Good point!  (Though it ignores the likelihood (with real evidence) that many other attacks were staunched by national protector castes. Notice that the possibility is never raised by the writer, that this is a matter of ratios, not black and white.

Only then, alas, the pattern repeats yet again. The author reaches exactly the wrong conclusion: 

“It is statistically impossible for total population surveillance to be an effective tool for catching terrorists.”

Sorry, but this article, while informative and important, is also wrongheaded… the way nearly all earnest and sincere journalism on the topic of surveillance tends to ultimately swing wrongheaded. Always, we see the same pattern, almost every time: a smart person, knowledgable and committed to enlightened civilization, bemoaning some trend that appears likely to empower Big Brother — some Orwellian nightmare of top-down control by elites of government, of wealth, of corporatcy, criminality or tech-wizardry.

Always, these alarums are spot-on correct — till we get to the end of each piece, when the pundit recommends… 

... nothing useful, whatsoever. 

Either the article dissipates into hand-wringing that someone oughta do something, or else vague notions that we should STOP the encroachment of cameras and data sifters, somehow, despite the unstoppable trend (sometimes called “Brin’s Corollary to Moore’s Law”) that cameras get smaller, faster, cheaper, more numerous and more mobile every year.

For nigh onto 20 years I have pointed out that nothing can stop this tsunami of eyes, swarming across the world. Those who try to stand, in the face of this wave, shouting “halt!” reveal nothing but their own myopia.

== Reiterating till the year 2050 ==

Elites will see — name one counter example across recorded history, when they willingly gave up a method of intelligence gathering.  If we panic, passing laws to forbid surveillance, all we will accomplish, in the prophetic words of science fiction legend Robert Heinlein, will be to “make the spy bugs smaller.”

There is another approach, a trend that is happening all around us and one that may save freedom, despite the fact that our pundits refuse to look at it.  The trend is “sousveillance,” or assertively using these new technologies to look BACK at power.  The effects are already being seen in police departments across America, as lapel cameras become standard on cop uniforms and as citizens get used to applying their now-entrenched right to record authority.  This is the trend that will save us…

…yet the hand-wringers cannot glimpse anything that doesn’t fit their narrative.

==  Privacy Dead or Alive ==

Speaking of smart dopes… “Privacy as we knew it in the past is no longer feasible… How we conventionally think of privacy is dead,” said Margo Seltzer, a professor in computer science at Harvard University. Said her colleague Sophia Roosth: “We are at the dawn of the age of genetic McCarthyism,” “It’s not whether this is going to happen, it’s already happening… We live in a surveillance state today.”

Notice, yet again, the mental block. The inability to even turn the brain and mind toward sousveillance and the tech empowerment of the individual as a phenomenon or even as a possibility to be refuted with facts or logic. It seems plainly impossible for most such mavens to wrap their heads around the possibility that light might punish abusers and invaders of privacy – precisely that effect that we have seen for the last 100 years. So much for Harvard.

Privacy will not go away -- but it will evolve. 

== Miscellany ==

A "warrant canary" is a method by which companies like Google can - in theory - let you know when the government has served a warrant for your information under a gag order.  If the company sends you daily messages "We have not been served any warants for your data… today."  Then when the notifications stop… You get the idea. And I would count on it about as far as I can drop kick an NFL linebacker.

How should the FTC have responded when Google was found to be using ad-tracking cookies that circumvented Apple’s Safari web browser? Or when Amazon’s one-click technology allowed children to make in-app purchases too easily? Or when Uber’s staff was caught using the company’s so-called “God View” application to surreptitiously track people’s comings and goings? This report gives regulators a four-part analytical framework to evaluate infractions and determine what types of penalties are called for based on a sliding scale of intent and resulting harm. — A sensible offering from folks who still believe in something called “middle ground.”  Offering some persuasive charts reminiscent of The Transparent Society.

== Untraceable Money ==

See where we're heading, if we don't fight for transparency: Loopholes in U.S. Laws allow billions in untraceable foreign funds to pour into N.Y. C. Real Estate: "Behind the dark glass towers of the Time Warner Center looming over Central Park, a majority of owners have taken steps to keep their identities hidden, registering condos in trusts, limited liability companies or other entities that shield their names. By piercing the secrecy of more than 200 shell companies, The New York Times documented a decade of ownership in this iconic Manhattan way station for global money transforming the city’s real estate market.

"Many of the owners represent a cross-section of American wealth: chief executives and celebrities, doctors and lawyers, technology entrepreneurs and Wall Street traders.

"But The Times also found a growing proportion of wealthy foreigners, at least 16 of whom have been the subject of government inquiries around the world, either personally or as heads of companies. The cases range from housing and environmental violations to financial fraud. Four owners have been arrested, and another four have been the subject of fines or penalties for illegal activities.

The foreign owners have included government officials and close associates of officials from Russia, Colombia, Malaysia, China, Kazakhstan and Mexico."

As an indication of how well-cloaked shell company ownership is, it took The Times more than a year to unravel the ownership of shell companies with condos in the Time Warner Center, by searching business and court records from more than 20 countries, interviewing dozens of people with close knowledge of the complex, examining hundreds of property records and connecting the dots from lawyers or relatives named on deeds to the actual buyers.

Pseudonyms, Algorithms and Problems of Human Control

A couple of interesting items from the near future, this time.  But first... Does the Murdoch Hacking Scandal Signify the End of Privacy? - Scientific American interviews 'one of the world thought-leaders on transparency, whistle-blowing, hacking and our future as an "enlightened" civilization.'  (Their words. In fact, the “thought-leader” happens to be me. Gosh.)

Should Facebook and Google offer pseudonymic membership?

Consider the issue of real names: pseudonymity vs identity.  Just like Facebook, Google+ insists that people use their real names. They've already suspended many accounts found to be in violation.

Complains one blogger: “Allowing pseudonyms could be a way for Google Plus to distinguish itself from Facebook, particularly since Google contends that Google Plus emphasizes personal control over information and sharing. But as it stands, that control is limited to those who choose to go by real names.” Some users, no doubt, merely want to separate their public and private profiles.

Some take their objection even further:  Google+'s "No-Pseudonyms" Policy is Homophobic, Not Just Anti-Social. A snip: “Forcing people to use their real names can be directly damaging to people, especially people who are persecuted for their political views, or persecuted just for being who they are. Like LGBT people — who still face execution in at least three countries.”

A good point.  But Google and Facebook have legitimate counter-points of their own.  First, anonymity and unaccountable pseudonymity are proved to foster some very unpleasant types of online behavior, ranging from predatory to deliberately harmful to just plain nasty. Second, anonymity can open the door to automated personas that sift and collect data for hidden masters, or that might replicate endlessly, clogging the system with multiple, non-real  entities. 

Sure, there should be realms where identity is as open and wild as the old west! But when it comes to those domains that offer themselves up as central fora, where we'll all feel obliged to join and where our children feel they "must" have a presence? These should be subject to norms of accountability, backed by a reputation that rises and falls according to one's deeds - as it always did for our ancestors. 

There are other problems too, described in my book The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom.

The perennial key question: Must we make an either-or choice? Our civilization made most of its real strides by looking for the win-win, the positive sum game. I have been consulting for some folks who believe they see a terrific business offering two items desperately needed online, both reputation management and portable but accountable pseudonyms... 

...pseudonyms that come certified and therefore offer some defense  against abuse, with “follow me” reputations that ensure accountability for specific misbehaviors... but still provide safety from retribution for political or other views.  In fact, the outline for such a system seems remarkably clear, with some surprising added benefits! 

Somebody is going to make a lot of money, providing a win-win-win solution to this problem.

Are Algorithms Going to Take Over? Too late - they have!

Kevin Slavin argues that we're living in a world designed for -- and increasingly controlled by -- algorithms. In this riveting talk from TEDGlobal, he shows how these complex computer programs determine: espionage tactics, stock prices, movie scripts, and architecture. And he warns that we are writing code we can't understand, with implications we can't control...

Watch the video, then ponder the microsecond trading that he reveals in Wall Street. Stock markets should be driven by people who study a company's details and choose to invest... not by computer programs that detect the ordering patterns of those studious investors and automatically buy up whatever stock they want, before they can type "return."

In what way does that make "markets more efficient?"  How does it allocate investment capital better?  In fact, it deters intelligent investment in promising companies because the system has parasitic organisms sucking gradient energy and flattening opportunity curves.

I never thought of this before.  These awful parasitic trade-programs are the biggest argument FOR insider trading!

You know how I feel about this!

The Securities and Exchange Commission approved rules Wednesday that could make it highly lucrative for Wall Street whistleblowers and other corporate insiders to alert the agency to securities violations. Under the rules, whistleblowers will be entitled to receive 10 percent to 30 percent of the money they help the SEC collect through enforcement actions. Corporations had lobbied intensely for rules that would impose constraints on whistleblowers.  

And this...

Dozens of police departments nationwide are gearing up to use a tech company’s already controversial iris- and facial-scanning device that slides over an iPhone and helps identify a person or track criminal suspects. The so-called “biometric” technology could improve speed and accuracy in some routine police work in the field.  The smartphone-based scanner, named Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System, or MORIS, can be deployed by officers out on the beat or back at the station.

An iris scan is significantly more accurate than results from other fingerprinting technology long in use by police, BI2 says. When attached to an iPhone, MORIS can photograph a person’s face and run the image through software that hunts for a match in a BI2-managed database of U.S. criminal records. Each unit costs about $3,000.

Can we get the benefits without paying a steep cost?  Sure... providing we get these things, too!  And we always, always have the right to aim them back at authority.

Briefly back to politics... and murdochs vs eloi...

Got the literary reference? Now dig this.

Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal - Rupert Murdoch’s top partner and co-owner of Fox News - said that he wants oil prices to drop so that the United States and Europe don't accelerate efforts to wean themselves off his country's supply. Ask your favorite Fox-watcher what he or she makes of all the facts contained in that sentence.  First get them to read it aloud.  Watch cognitive dissonance and denial go to work. 

And to show who Barry Goldwater or William F. Buckley would be voting for, today? President Obama announces push to train 10,000 engineers yearly.

Science Miscellany

Some black holes may be older than time. 

And the campaign against Uplift begins -- with fear-mongering. See also "Rise of the Planet of the Apes."  This is going to be a hard struggle, with BOTH the right and the left lined up against what could be humanity's greatest and most noble accomplishment.

And more misceallaneous cool/weird science? Can eating “probiotic” bacteria extend health and life? Long considered a beneficial side effect of eating certain types of yoghurt, these “good bacteria” have been studied and even refined a bit by science. Indications are that there’s some truth to it. But do researchers have any literary background? Aldous Huxley wrote of gut bacteria bringing immortality in “After Many a Summer Dies the Swan.” (1939) You only learn it’s scifi on the last page! 

An interesting attempt to create a nonprofit to improve discourse by holding public figures accountable for conflicts of interest.  I’m not at all sure it is well-designed or executed, but some folks should look it over and report back. 

With support from President Barack Obama, NASA’s budget is at an all-time high. Over the next four months, the  division is due to launch three major missions: to the Moon, to  and to Jupiter. And the heliophysics division plans to send a probe plunging into the blistering atmosphere of the Sun, closer than ever before. But because the overall NASA science budget is relatively flat, something had to give. Since 2008, astrophysics funding has plunged relative to other NASA science -- and relative to physics and astronomy funding at other agencies.  Stung by spiraling costs and charges of mismanagement, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) -- Hubble's long-awaited successor -- is now seen by some critics as too expensive to fly. And the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), which would hunt for exoplanets and probe the poorly understood phenomenon known as dark energy, may take too long to develop to be worthwhile. 

Don't be like these stupid engineers!  

Water appears to be abundant in the universe -- even where we least expect it!  Caltech researchers recently found an immense cloud of water vapor near a quasar  surrounding a black hole. This distant (and ancient) site - the super-blasting center of an ancient galaxy - indicates that water was around from the earliest stages of the universe...

Now to find intelligence... anywhere! Far from Washington, I presume...