It's not futile! We are making progress.

Often I am confronted with hand-wringing jeremiads, like the following: "In today's Panopticon the power equation is weighted on the side of the watchers, not the people."

My reply? Don’t give up too easily.  We already see around us the methods of transparency and reciprocal accountability.  Yes the tools of Big Brother are coalescing.  But counter-examples also abound.  Compare this event - “Florida police officer resigns after using N-word during exchange with 27-year-old man” - to page 160 of my nonfiction book The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? 

Dig it. It… is… working. More slowly that we’d like, sure. (I predicted that aspect, too.) But it is working, as cities and constabularies around the U.S. desperately seek ways to find and rid themselves of the worst apples, and train the rest of their officers better. Not out of goodness! But because the people are increasingly “armed” with the best of all weapons. Light.

In 2013 we had the best year for civil liberties in this century, so far, when both the U.S. courts (Glik v Cunniffe) and the Obama Administration declared it to be "settled law" that a citizen has the right to record his or her interactions with police in public places. No single matter could have been more important because it established the most basic right of "sousveillance" or looking-back at power, that The Transparent Society is all about. It is also fundamental to freedom, for in altercations with authority, what other recourse can a citizen turn to, than the Truth?

Recently cited in a news article was the following quotation from The Transparent Society. It encapsulates the core concept that (alas) seems so very difficult and non-intuitive, even to some of our finest and smartest paladins of freedom:

"Transparency is not about eliminating privacy. It is about giving us the power to hold accountable those who would violate it." ... (p.334)

The weird thing is that nearly all of those who have snidely derided transparency... and sometimes me, personally, for holding this view... circle back to it, when challenged for an actual solution. The Circle, by Dave Eggers, spends hundreds of pages - and the movie spends 90+minutes - portraying openness and light as bullying fetishisms. Yet, by the end, it turns out that the hypocritical-secretive manipulating moguls get their comeuppance in just one way -- when the people get to apply light upon them.

And not just cheating moguls. Recall the scene in The Circle, where voyeur bullies are aiming cell-cams at a poor, shy fellow who just wants to be left alone? Who are the persons seeking to do harm? Then why isn't the solution to show other folks, aiming cams at the bullies, commenting: "See these assholes ragging that poor fellow who just wants to be left alone? I'm sending this video to his mom!"

Naturally, that doesn't happen in the movie, which is ironic, since that's exactly the reaction the director wants to elicit from members of the audience! Fortunately, it is happening in the real world - as the worst cops are finding out - it is what a rambunctiously fair-minded public will do.

This approach can go bad! If you have a homogenizing society, whose upper clades are immune from light, then yes, the panopticon will destroy all privacy, all freedom and almost all human variability or eccentricity or diversity. Witness the rising "oppression via 'social credit' in China." I know very well the danger!

But there is only one solution that can work. The solution is a rambunctiously fair-minded public, armed with light.

== And here it is again, in action ==

The citizens of Newark gained access to watch through the cameras set up by police.  The Citizen Virtual Patrol, as the program is called, has been hailed by officials as a move toward transparency in a city where a mistrust of the police runs deep, rooted in long-running claims of aggressive enforcement and racial animosity. 

Of course this has provoked alarm among civil liberties groups and privacy advocates.  I’d be disappointed if it didn’t! Ironically, it is only if such systems are constantly dogged by fierce inspection and criticism that it could possibly have more good than bad outcomes. And yes, that, too, is a form of transparency and reciprocal accountability. The deciding factor, I’ve long maintained, is being illustrated here… it all depends on whether people take ownership… and are inclined to use sousveillance for their own community benefit… not against each other.

Moving on... Panda Security created a very informative and useful post about cyber-security. They took nine famous hacking scenes in movies and TV and determined whether they were actually possible or a case of classic Hollywood hacking. For instance Allsafe, the main company in Mr. Robot, uses two factor authentication. Worth a visit.  

How Romans published 'books' just like social media. Or as I am doing right now. Interesting.

A pretty good online article summarizing the case for preventing power-abuse via transparency and accountability, rather than trying (futilely) for concealment.

 == Again and again, trying the futile approach ==

Look, I send money to the ACLU and the Electronic FrontierFoundation. They are crucially important paladins for freedom and responsible development of the digital age.  You should join! They are among the heroes who know very well how close we are skating to an Orwellian future, in which despotic elites will be empowered by technology to impost Big Brother, forever. And yet…

And yet, I remain forever puzzled by the tendency of most such paladins – including every single “privacy advocate” in Europe I have ever met, or even heard-of – to prescribe exactly and diametrically the wrong medicine. A notion that has absolutely zero historical record of ever having worked, ever, even once, across the history of our species. 

Every single time it is tried, it always fails. Yet these sincere freedom fighters always, always double down to prescribe the same “solution,” ever-harder.

The solution of hiding from elites, blinding the mighty, screaming at them “don’t look at us!”  Instead of ever glancing at the method that actually works. The one responsible for all of our freedom. Every last bit of it.

See the latest rave against an unstoppable wave, demanding that the tide… that a tsunami … not come in. When instead we could learn to surf: 

‘Amazon Rekognition is primed for abuse’: ACLU asks Amazon to stop selling facial recognition tech to local governments.”  

Um right. That's gonna work. Not.

Encryption is not the answer

Veering back into the real issues... those we can still hope to steer. Let's start with a cool, fun interview: I answer questions about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and why it is possible that these new, genius offspring of humanity may decide not to treat us badly.

== Snowden and surveillance ==

Matt Novik really tears into Edward Snowden, exaggerating a bit, but raising good points.  My own complaint is more nuanced: that while Snowden did a service by forcing us to converse more vigorously about surveillance, he has since contributed very little to solutions. Sure, he’s joined with thousands of other paladins-for-freedom by pointing at various Orwellian traces and signs, yelling “Lo! Big Brother looms!”  

But then, his prescriptions tend to be the same, lame-arm-waved appeals for technological miracles and hiding from elites.

Look, I send money to the EFF and ACLU and I love that they are out there, yelling! But it’s also frustrating, because not one of these heroes ever explains how hiding from authorities is even remotely possible, over the long run. There are no examples from the history of our species when the blinding of all elites was accomplished by average people. Not one. 

What Snowden and his fellow paladins offer, when challenged, is vague assurances that encryption will take care of it. 

Ooh, a magic word! As if each decade’s ciphers aren’t child’s play to the next decade’s crackers. As if supposedly secure systems don’t topple every day. As if human error doesn't always offer a way in, even when there aren't trap- or backdoors, (And there almost always are.) 

As if the average Joe or Jane can sleep well, knowing for a fact that others don’t know something – an epistemologically crazy and unverifiable notion.

Alas, not one of these brave dreamers has apparently read the history of cat-and-mouse oppression by secret police, dating back to Hamurabi. There are standard Gestapo-Okrhana-Stazi tactics and only three or four - out of a dozen - categories, would be even slightly inconvenienced by crypto stuff.

You know where this is going.  There is only one method that will work, that can work.  That has worked, and it is not hiding from elites.  It is not depending on an epistemologically impossible reassurance that others do not know something. It depends on us knowing, maximally, and - in aggregate - supervising all elites. Because if we cannot verify what they know, at least we can watch and know what they do. 

As I discussed in: The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?

== Algorithms that lobotomize us? ==

From The World Post:  “Wael Ghonim is the internet activist who helped spawn the Arab Spring in Egypt with his Facebook posts. During those heady days in Cairo, as he explains in an interview with The WorldPost, Ghonim came to realize that, "the algorithmic structure of social media amplified and abetted the turn to mobocracy" because it is designed to bring together those with common passions and sympathies irrespective of whether the information they share is truth, rumor or lies.

In our present moment, says Ghonim, "Donald Trump is the living example of the damage mobocratic algorithms can do to the democratic process." The challenge has thus shifted, he says. "While once social media was seen as a liberating means to speak truth to power," Ghonim argues, "now the issue is how to speak truth to social media."

Since "people will be as shallow as platforms allow them to be," he explains, Ghonim proposes that the big social media companies focus on creating a "meritocratic algorithm" that rewards credible information and dialogue, not just the broadcast of "sensational content" to the like-minded. See his TED Talk: Let's design social media that drives real change.

== More warnings ==

Mark Anderson's Strategic News Service (9/2016) carried a frightening warning: Is The Internet at Risk? from Jeff Hudson, the CEO of Venafi, the inventor of The Immune System for the Internet™.  Dig the following excerpt:

“We have proof that the algorithms used in encryption are not perfect, and as they age they become more vulnerable to hacking and attacks. The MD5 hash algorithm was used for a number of years before subsequently being cracked. SHA-1 is another algorithm that is in wide use and was recently judged to be vulnerable. 

"Attacks such as Heartbleed, DROWN, and FLAME all prove that encryption programs, techniques, and algorithms are not perfect; given enough time and computing resource, many popular encryption tools can be compromised. The logic here is inescapable: Trust is created by establishing tunnels. Tunnels are created by using certificates. Certificates rely on encryption. 

“Encryption is accomplished using an algorithm, or a program, that has been written to create a key that can be used by both ends of the tunnel to communicate in private. These algorithms are designed to create encryption keys that are difficult to reverse-engineer. The most widely used algorithm is called the RSA algorithm. Named after its creators - Rivest, Shamir, and Adelman - the RSA algorithm was patented in 1983.

“Most encryption uses the RSA algorithm. Therefore, maximum accumulation of digital trust is based on the RSA algorithm, but we know that no algorithm is perfect. All will fail at some point.

"To date, the encryption vulnerabilities that have been discovered have been remedied in a number of ways. Most involve introducing the next, more secure generation of encryption algorithms. There are two factors affecting encryption software that have changed recently. First, the amount and cost of computing resource available to apply to compromising programs has increased almost exponentially. This means that many more people today have access to the same capability that was available only to the NSA and other similarly talented and funded organizations just five years ago. Second, quantum computing is getting closer to being useful in compromising encryption.

"Couple these facts with an order-of-magnitude greater use of tunnels and encryption, an exponentially greater amount of valuable data in the digital economy, and our collective reliance on the Internet to maintain a functioning society, and we have a very critical situation.

"If - or, with a high degree of certainty, when - this happens, it will mean that uniformly across the Internet nothing can be trusted. Everything will be vulnerable to attack. Then what happens?

"Financial transactions will be put at risk. The monetary system will begin to fail.
Transportation will slow to a crawl.
Health and safety systems will be taken offline.
Communications systems will be disrupted.
Power availability will be intermittent, at best.
Emergency response will fail.
Government and law enforcement will function in only the most rudimentary ways.
In major metro areas, severe food shortages will begin within three days.
Water stops flowing.
It will be deadly serious."

== You can't fight what's coming ==

A  Berlin-based hacker-artist unveiled his scariest work -- an entirely boring-looking Hewlett Packard printer that also secretly functions as a rogue GSM cell base station, tricking your phone into connecting to it rather than your phone carrier’s tower, effectively intercepting your calls and text messages.  … Since it sits indoors near its victims, Oliver says it can easily overpower the signal of real, outdoor cell towers. But instead of spying, the printer merely starts a text message conversation with the phone, pretending to be an unidentified contact with a generic message like “Come over when you’re ready,” or the more playful “I’m printing the details for you now.”

“Security contractors recently discovered preinstalled software in some Android phones that monitors where users go, whom they talk to and what they write in text messages. The American authorities say it is not clear whether this represents secretive data mining for advertising purposes or a Chinese government effort to collect intelligence.” -- from The New York Times.

It’s been called “Brin’s Corollary.” That cameras get smaller, faster, better, cheaper, more mobile and numerous at rates faster than Moore’s Law.  Now meet the Piccolissimo -- the world’s smallest self-powered controllable drone. It comes in two sizes, a quarter-sized one weighing less than 2.5 grams and a larger, steerable one that’s heavier by 2 grams and wider by a centimeter (.39 inches). As brought to you earlier by sci fi (including my own.)

Ban this?  Hide from them?  Yeah. Right. There is another way.

And then there is...  More deeply perceptive than today’s crude polygraph “lie detectors,” fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) can zero in on the brain’s decision-making centers, appearing to achieve 90% accuracy at nailing falsehoods… though I’d lover to see the results with sociopaths. A combo approach had a perfect score. Though fMRI requires lots of infrastructure and cooperation by the subject.  

The crux? We will not resist tyranny by lying. The elites who get this power must be subjected to it!

Guns vs Cameras - which are "equalizers" that can prevent tragedy? Plus transparency news

The most recent mass-shooting tragedy sets into stark contrast two national misfortunes.  At surface, they seem similar -- crazed gunmen opening fire on citizens and lethal misbehavior by a minority of bad cops. But in several important ways, the trends are diametrically opposite.

First - random shooting sprees by deeply sick civilians seem to have no end in sight. Over half of the world's deadliest mass shootings that have occurred in the past 50 years were in the U.S., whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations.  Limiting easy access to weaponry by psychopaths is one blatantly obvious path. So would be courageous investment in education and mental health...

... but the top Roseburg police official mentioned another option we should add to our list of responses. Said the local Sheriff regarding this shooter: 'You will never hear me mention his name.’  Indeed, soon after, the community at-large responded by adopting this approach. 

At last! I have only been proposing this for 20 years.  See my article on the Erastratos Effect: "Names that live in infamy. Killers want notoriety. Let's not give it to them."

But to be fair and honest, all of this will just nibble at the edges. In one of the most sad-but-clever satirical gambits, The Onion simply re-posts its gun violence article with updated locations and dates, each time this occurs, with the same title: "No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens." Go read it and laugh while you cry, knowing you will read it again and again, in the future....

== Commentary ==

If I may offer a few of my own spins on our most recent tragedy?

-- First, an extra bit of sadness for me, as Roseburg featured in my novel The Postman. If you know the topic of that book, ironies redouble.

-- Second: across all of these morbid tales, it's worth noting that in not a single case has the perpetrator been brought down by an armed civilian bystander... not once. Ever. Though that is precisely the incantation that the NRA uses, while promoting the Campbellian notion of a gun-lugging population. Voodoo, only surpassed by Supply Side "Economics."

In fact, many mass-shooters have been brought down by heroic  un-armed bystanders - like those three young Americans aboard that French train, a month or so ago - who bravely charge the lunatic, usually while he is changing clips. Of all the NRA's insane positions, their fierce opposition to limits on clip and magazine size is the most criminally culpable, without a single justification in defense of normal gun owners. Only... let me swivel and point out that they do not have a monopoly on craziness here.

-- Supporters of Gun Control share some blame! Dismissing their opponents as "gun nuts," they show no inclination to study the deep underpinnings of the "slippery slope" argument that motivates Second Amendment supporters to oppose even the most reasonable reforms.  This despite the fact that political victories are best won by peeling away moderate pragmatists on the opposing side.

If you take the time to dig deep, you'll find a possible way to get around this obstinacy - and peel off moderates - by offering a fair trade. (Especially since any fool can see that the 2nd Amendment - as currently worded - is by far the weakest in the Constitution. Some day the phrase "well-regulated militia" will be interpreted more strongly! Gun fans need to start negotiating now, for a better amendment.)

But someone has to drop simplistic sanctimony first -- getting practical. And you know it will not be them. See this laid out in detail... along with a pragmatic proposal to give all sides what they deeply need. 

In sharp contrast... the apparent wave of cop-on-black violence on our streets, while tragic, is not an acceleration of the problem, but a sign of good trends taking hold! Because the spread of cameras in the hands of civilians -- protected by recent declarations by the courts and the Obama Administration -- is now giving the poor and minorities... and good cops... at last the 'ammo' they need to start getting rid of bad ones. 

Cameras are proving to be the Great Equalizer that guns were supposed to be... but never were.  (See this forecast on p. 160 of The Transparent Society (1997) and in EARTH (1989).)

One of these trends - while tragic in each case - offers hope for the future. 

The other makes us all want to tear our hair out.

== What's your rating? ==

And... the transparency wars continue!

One to five stars for you? Of course this had to come. Launching soon:  Yelp for people: You will soon be able to rate anyone you have interacted with on this new app: with reviews and star ratings assigned to "your exes, your co-workers, the old guy who lives next door. You can’t opt out — once someone puts your name in the Peeple system, it’s there unless you violate the site’s terms of service. And you can’t delete bad or biased reviews — that would defeat the whole purpose," reads a review in the Washington Post. The launchers of Peeple say they will ban racist and sexist comments, as well as profanity and hateful comments. Yet, announcement of this app has raised a storm of protest on the internet, with potential legal woes down the road.

The good news? This will light a fire under creating real reputation mediation services, a potential billion dollar business – and don’t let anyone tell you that reputation companies already exist. Currently, they are jokes.

== Your data: Sold ==

Want an entertaining jeremiad? Then swing over to the latest from Gregory Maus:  How corporate data brokers sell your life, and why you should be concerned: 

“For nearly two years, media coverage of the NSA has been near-constant, over concerns about the extent of their data collection on people around the world. But, there’s an even larger behemoth in the shadows gathering information about you. Unlike the NSA, they are accountable to few laws, very little accountability, and no oversight, laughing off investigative inquiries at even the highest levels of government. This is a massive ecosystem, with an insatiable desire to learn every detail of your life and then sell it to those who would use it to persuade you. In effect, it’s a sprawling black market—and as one would expect with a black market, many of the purchasers of this information are criminals who are using it to steal the identities and valuables of many. We can only hope that they’re the worst of the buyers.”

Without any doubt, this is an industry meriting application of searing light and scrutiny.  For example: “MEDbase 200 was selling lists of rape victims for 7.9 cents per name, as well as similarly-priced lists of those suffering from HIV/AIDs, genetic diseases, addictive behavior (conveniently broken down into sub-categories like gambling, sex, alcohol, and drugs) and dementia. The listings were taken down soon after Dixon’s testimony.”

But… isn’t that the point? It was sufficient for such behaviors to be seen for them to be stopped.  To whatever degree they continue, it is precisely proportional to the degree they can get away with it, in secret.  Indeed, that is the only anodyne or answer. It is wholly necessary and wholly sufficient.  Well, almost wholly sufficient. What is not needed is panicky legislation to shut info flows down, with the best of privacy-protecting intentions.  Those selfsame laws will inevitably be used to shelter the very miscreants they are meant to stop.

We need to empower people (or their NGO pallidins) to see better, so they can perceive patterns of info abuse and bullying and apply deterrence upon those who would do such things with our information.

== Vanishing your data ==

And finally... Xerox PARC engineers have developed a chip that can explode into teensy little pieces as part of DARPA's Vanishing Programmable Resources project. Yes... explode.

Who’d want that?  Self-destruction of chips is central to the goal of securing data from thieves — criminal or national. Someday, this chip could be used to keep, say, encryption keys needed to access sensitive data. The self-destruction process can also be triggered not just by a laser, but also via radio signals or a physical switch.

Does this conflict with my goals as “Mr. Transparency”?  Nonsense.  Anyone who thinks that simply has not bothered to read or understand.  

Black Lives Matter! So demand TECH!

Again and again, I try to point out that dogmas are seldom our friends.  Take the trend, in our civilization, toward expanding our horizons of worry, opportunity and (above all) inclusion. That moral arc has been historic and important and it must continue!  Indeed, passionate agitation for reform has its vital place. Though as I show, the advances we’ve made (and must keep making) have also happened because of economic and psychological and pragmatic reasons. 

This should make fans of progress happy! It means that our moral march forward, toward inclusiveness, tolerance and diversity, has strong support from traits other than just indignation. 

Shall we test it? I am about to say something about the “BlackLives Matter” movement -- something that is utterly friendly and supportive… and I hope this pragmatic suggestion will be well-received.

Yes! Absolutely, almost-weekly tales about tragic victims-of-racism like Eric Garner and Walter Scott (shot in the back), Samuel DuBose (shot in the face) and Sandra Bland have rocked America, revealing what black activists have been telling us for years.  About the danger they face – each day – from that percentage (even if it is small) of police officers who are thugs in uniform. It has to be frustrating for the righteous activists.

“Oh, now you’re finally starting to believe us?  Now that cameras are catching the bastards in the act?”

Well… um… yes?  Many of us believed you before the current wave of video revelation began with Rodney King. But of course the balance of credibility shifted dramatically when cameras spread even wider. And yes, visual proof is sure gonna help. Which raises the central question here –

Why aren’t you making the cameras themselves more of an issue in all this?

Think. What is making the biggest difference today? Technology! The phone-cam is turning into a Great Equalizer, even more than a Colt 45 was in the old west.  Every year cameras get faster, cheaper, better, more numerous and more mobile, at a rate faster than Moore’s Law. And so far, the chief result has not been Big Brother! It has been empowerment of average citizens. Cameras - and other tech - are helping people hold elites accountable.

== This was inevitable ==

All right, I predicted this way back, via a 1989 novel Earth, portraying ghetto youths and the elderly defending themselves this way, in the 2030s. It’s happening quicker in real life. 

Even closer was the forecast in my nonfiction book -- The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? (1997).  There I described a scene of the near future, when each cop would be wearing a recording device… and every person stopped for a traffic violation would step out of the car asking “what’s the problem, officer?”… with a blinking shoulder cam of his or her own.

Can you honestly doubt that day is far away, any longer? Which brings up again that core question.  In addition to hands up! and Black Lives Matter! Why aren’t you also shouting “We want more tech!”

Why aren’t you focusing on what has actually made the biggest difference, so far – getting more and more cameras out there, into the hands (better yet, onto the shoulders) of youths and others who are in danger?  Perhaps demanding pertinent tech classes in minority area high schools? Or asking your nerdier kids to help equip the others with tools they need to save their lives? 

Here’s where a couple of billionaires might be approached for grants, financing the development and distribution of hands-free (that’s important!) shoulder-cams that upload directly to free storage in the cloud. Flood some problematic city with these things, as a test… and watch how quickly the balance starts to change.

A balance between bad cops and the more numerous good ones, who now will feel empowered – and highly motivated, with active citizen help -- to rid their ranks of bullies and thugs.

Sure, "Black Lives Matter!"  But if you really want to leverage the trend that is practically changing everything, you will add another cry:

"Give us more tech!"

==You have the right to film ==

Following up. This Slate report gives detailed background to the growing legal consensus that you have a right to record your interactions with police, a right that has been declared "settled law" by both the Obama Justice Department and four federal circuit courts. This abstraction gained fiercely palpable pertinence in the case of the recent arrest of Sandra Bland, which was captured by the arresting officer's dash cam.

"Dashcam footage of Sandra Bland’s arrest is disturbing for a number of reasons—including trooper Brian Encinia’s apparent use of excessive force in subduing Bland. But for civil liberties advocates, a less dramatic moment of the footage is nearly as disquieting. When Bland attempts to film the encounter on her cellphone, Encinia demands that she “get off the phone.” When Bland insists that she has “a right to record,” Enchain repeatedly barks, “PUT YOUR PHONE DOWN!” Eventually, she does. It’s clear she had no choice."

And there you have the reason why we need special Shoulder Cams (as I portrayed in The Transparent Society). Autonomous and automatically uploading to the Cloud. So that you can emerge from the car with completely open hands.

Demand this tech. Work with a Good Billionaire. Choose a city and distribute these things en masse. Do the test now.

== An inexcusable omission ==

Sorry, but the point must be belabored. What activist or pundit seems willing to emphasize the role that technology has played in this ongoing revolution, transforming and shifting power on our streets? That omission is bizarre… and somewhat culpable… since our main goal should be a pragmatic one. The practical ending of these abuses! 

It is time to add a new slogan.  One that may offer less opportunity for righteous rage, but that promises a stronger chance to actually solve problems.

Give us more tech!

====

SINCE POSTING THIS:  From yesterday's NY Times on the Cincinnati case: "She (Dubose's mother) and other family members said that if it were not for the body camera worn by Officer Tensing, his story would have been accepted and he would have gone unpunished. Choking back tears, Terina Allen, a sister of Mr. Dubose, said, “Every day now, I’m going to be marching for video cams."

Right on.  Turn em on.