Revisiting transparency, tracking, & resilience

Although Facebook's facial recognition software has identified and archived more than a billion user faces, its latest incarnation - Meta - has announced that it will stop automatically tagging people's faces in uploaded photos and videos, and will delete the data it has gathered - although users can continue to manually tag friends in their photos. Yet... Meta will continue working on facial recognition systems for future purposes, as in its upcoming smart glasses or augmented reality.

I reiterate: No amount of screaming will stop this tide from coming in. Your phone and doorbell and digital assistant will recognize faces and if you ban the tech, all it will do is give a monopoly on such systems to secret elites. Instead of trying futilely to ban technologies of light, we must focus on preventing the harms. And the way to do that is with light.

Another example? Surveilling students: Big Teacher is Watching: How AI Spyware took over schools: Especially in the wake of online learning during the pandemic quarantine, a web app called GoGuardian increasingly tracks what students do online, not just at school, but at home as well: "For kids that means their every keystroke, click and search is recorded and analyzed..." Educators can view students' web search histories, know if a kid is playing a video game, watching Netflix or Youtube - or especially viewing porn. Some programs also monitor for potential signs of emotional distress among the students. Many of these machine learning algorithms process nearly everything that students do online, even outside of school hours, and some of these companies sell student data.

And again, if you focus on accountability that might prevent harms, then you may do some good. Banning this simply won't happen.

The latest controversial weapon against theft: What happens when individuals use bluetooth tracking technology - such as Apple's AirTag - to track down stolen items, such as gaming systems, laptops, bicycles, scooters... and, especially cars? Such products are "testing the limits of how far people will go to get back their stolen property and what they consider justice."

== Increased powers of vision ==

See: “From Macy’s to Ace Hardware, facial recognition is already everywhere: Facial recognition is popping up at our favorite stores, but customers are largely unaware.” And whatever is loose in the commercial world, you can be sure elites of all kinds – bad and good – have got it.

The latest: a winged microchip the size of a grain of sand - swarms spread by the wind could be used to monitor the environment - or for civilian surveillance.

It's called Brin's Corrollary to Moore's Law: The cameras get smaller, faster, better, cheaper, more moble and vastly more numerous at a far greater pace than Moore's Law. This has huge implications, by the way, regarding so-called UFOs. But ever more (or moore) so, it means we all will be seen. But sousveillance could make a world where we catch any snoops and watchers and effectively shout "MYOB!"  (Mind your own business.)

And it goes on. Take this headline from The Guardian: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance. 

On and on, it’s always the same. Our paladins and pundit defenders of freedom and privacy point at event after event that appear to portend a loss of both… and they are utterly correct to fretfully worry about looming technologies of surveillance, which could genuinely lead to the control-by-telescreen that Orwell chillingly portrayed! Yes, technologies like those Snowden revealed, or the latest “Pegasus” Israeli spy program that allowed agencies around the world to listen in on iPhones, or Moscow promulgated ransomware, or ubiquitous, unmonitored state face-recognition, could very well be part of the path to that hellscape… 

...though I think the “social credit” systems established by some authoritarian regimes are even more insidious and dangerous, siccing neighbors upon neighbors. 

So why am I shrugging about this latest furor? Because it’s always the same thing: screams of outrage followed by calls for impractical and futile "solutions." Ever since around 1994, the same clade of worriers - from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to the ACLU (join them both! Your dues will help!) are spot-on in reporting the latest travesty… 

...and maybe 5% right re: HOW to respond to it.... 

... and 95%+ just plain wrong, in demanding that technologies be 'outlawed' or that high level elites of law or government or wealth or criminality or despotism be somehow blinded. 

To those pointing at technologies and surveillance and shouting warnings, I say "yes! That could lead to Big Brother, so what's the plan?" To those who cry: "Ban it!" I always answer. “Um, how? Show me a moment in human history when elites have let themselves be blinded. Or when “Don’t look!” privacy laws did anything but (as Heinlein put it) Make the Spy Bugs Smaller.

Across 30 years denouncing and trying to ban technologies of vision - including face recognition - are there any such technologies that your shadow-seeking tactic ever stymied for long?

== A simple test ==

Again and again I have assigned the same experiment. Go to the nearest zoo's baboon enclosure. Climb inside with a pointed stick. Go right up to the biggest alpha baboon and stab out his eyes so he can't look at you!

 Here's a clue. He... won't... let... you. 

He will, on the other hand, grudgingly allow you to look back at him.

The same is true of all animals, let alone the alpha elites we hire to protect us. Any power of vision we try to deny them will instantly become the locus of paranoia and a desperate (and sometimes justified) felt need to bypass restrictions on their ability to see. All you are doing is driving any Good Guy elites into criminality. 

On the other hand, the last 250 years shows that we can seize and hold some powers of supervision and transparency and apply then to elites, the innovation responsible for all our current freedom and - yes - privacy.

Imperfectly? Then make that the focus of our activism! And yes, there are dozens of ways to do that in The Transparent Society.

I say this not out of complacency. I fear Big Brother more than almost any of you do! And that is why my prescriptions are less about raging futilely at the next example of elite spying and the next, and the next forever… 

... and more based upon things that have actually worked at creating this rare island of relative freedom and privacy across humanity’s dismal history.

The method that works - assertively stripping elites of their own shadows, instead of absurdly trying to hide in our own - should be obvious to our paladins… 

...but apparently it is so counter-intuitive that they never, ever grasp it, no matter how many times their screams of "Shadows! Give us shadows!" utterly fail. They always, always fail.

Yet, still, they reflexively rail against light (the only tool that ever preserved freedom), calling for bans on things that cannot be banned, succeeding only in clouding the vision of those elites who are on our side, while empowering those bent on re-establishing 6000 years of feudalism.

Finally.... 

A talk I gave for the Foresight Institute on transparency, reciprocal accountability and pyramidal vs diamond-shaped societies is well-summarized here.

And, here's an interesting article from Edge re: "reciprocity altruism" and prisoner's dilemma.

Transparency, talk of tradeoffs - and pseudonyms

Returning to the topic of transparency...

An article about “Our Transparent Future: No secret is safe in the digital era” - by Daniel C. Dennett and Deb Roy - suggests that transparency will throw us into a bitterly Darwinian era of “all against all.”  What a dismally simplistic, contemptuous and zero-sum view of humanity! That we cannot innovate ways to get positive sum outcomes.   

Oh, I confess things look dark, with some nations, such as China, using ‘social credit' to sic citizens against each other, tattling and informing and doing Big Brother’s work for him. That ancient, zero sum pattern was more crudely followed in almost every past oligarchy, theocracy or kingdom or Sovietsky, where local gossips and bullies were employed by the inheritance brats up-top, to catch neighbors who offended obedient conformity. 

Indeed, a return to that sort of pyramid of power, with non-reciprocal transparency that never shines up at elites – is what humans could very well implement, because our ancestors did that sort of oppression very well. In fact, we are all descended from the harems of those SOBs.

In contrast, this notion of transparency-driven chaos and feral reciprocal predation is just nonsense.  In a full oligarchy, people would thereupon flee to shelter under the New Lords… or else…

 

…or else, in a democracy we might actually innovate ways to achieve outcomes that are positive sum, based on the enlightenment notion of accountability for all. Not just average folk or even elites, but for  those who would abuse transparency to bully or predate.  If we catch the gossips and voyeurs in the act and that kind of behavior is deemed to be major badness, then the way out is encapsulated in the old SF expression "MYOB!" or "Mind Your Own Business!"

Yeah, yeah, Bill Maher, sure we have wandered away from that ideal at both ends of the political spectrum, amid a tsunami of sanctimony addiction. But the escape path is still there, waiting and ready for us.

It’s what I talked about in The Transparent Society… and a positive possibility that seems to occur to no one, especially not the well-meaning paladins of freedom who wring their hands and offer us articles like this. 

== Talk of Tradeoffs ==

Ever since I wrote The Transparent Society (1997) and even my novel, Earth (1990) I’ve found it frustrating how few of today’s paladins of freedom/privacy and accountability – like good folks at the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) – (and I urge you all to join!) – truly get the essence of the vital fight they are in. Yes, it will be a desperate struggle to prevent tyrannies from taking over across the globe and using powers of pervasive surveillance against us, to re-impose 6000 years of dullard/stupid/suicidal rule-by-oligarchy.

I share that worry!  But in their myopic talk of “tradeoffs,” these allies in the struggle to save the Enlightenment Experiment (and thus our planet and species) neglect all too often to ponder the possibility of win-wins… or positive sum outcomes.

There are so many examples of that failure, like short-sightedly trying to ‘ban” facial recognition systems, an utterly futile and almost-blind pursuit that will only be counter-productive. 

But I want to dial in on one myopia, in particular. I cannot name more than four of these activists who has grasped a key element in the argument over anonymity - today's Internet curse which destroys accountability, letting the worst  trolls and despotic provocateurs run wild. 

Nearly all of the privacy paladins dismiss pseudonymity as just another term for the same thing. In fact, it is not; pseudonymity has some rather powerful win-win, positive sum possibilities. 

Picture this. Web sites who are sick of un-accountable behavior might ban anonymity! Ban it... but allow entry to vetted pseudonyms. 

You get one by renting it from a trusted fiduciary that is already in the business of vouching for credentials... e.g. your bank or credit union, or else services set up just for this purpose (let competition commence!)

The pseudonym you rent carries forward with it your credibility ratings in any number of varied categories, including those scored by the site you intend to enter. If you misbehave, the site and/or its members can ding you, holding you accountable, and those dings travel back to the fiduciary you rented the pseudonym from, who will lower your credibility scores accordingly. ...

... with no one actually knowing your true name!  Nevertheless, there is accountability.  If you are a persistent troll, good luck finding a fiduciary who will rent you a pseudonym that will gain you entry anywhere but places where trolls hang out. Yet, still, no one on the internet has to know you are a dog.

I have presented this concept to several banks and/or Credit Unions and it is percolating. A version was even in my novel Earth. 

Alas, the very concept of positive sum, win-win outcomes seems foreign to the dolorous worrywarts who fret all across the idea realm of transparency/accountability/privacy discussions. 

Still, you can see the concept discussed here: The Brinternet: A Conversation with three top legal scholars. 

== Surveillance Networks ==

Scream the alarms! “Ring video doorbells, Amazon’s signature home security product, pose a serious threat to a free and democratic society. Not only is Ring’s surveillance network spreading rapidly, it is extending the reach of law enforcement into private property and expanding the surveillance of everyday life,” reports Lauren Bridges in this article from The Guardian.

In fact, Ring owners retain sovereign rights and cooperation with police is their own prerogative, until a search warrant (under probable cause) is served.  While the article itself is hysterical drivel, there is a good that these screams often achieve… simply making people aware. And without such awareness, no corrective precautions are possible. I just wish they provoked more actual thinking.

See this tiny camera disguised in a furniture screw! Seriously. You will not not-be-seen. Fortunately, hiding from being-seen is not the essence of either freedom or privacy. 

Again, that essence is accountability! Your ability to detect and apply it to anyone who might oppress or harm you. Including the rich and powerful. 

We will all be seen. Stop imagining that evasion is an option and turn to making it an advantage. Because if we can see potential abusers and busybodies...

...we just might be empowered to shout: ...MYOB!

Face-Recog is loose. Adapt to this new world (You can!)

For years - ever since The Transparent Society (1997) - I've urged awareness of how new vision technologies will expose our lives, as never before. On the very first page, I compare two cities where citizens are under equal amounts of light and observation… only in one city they are free and safe from oppression or harm, while City #2 has descended into Orwellian hell, without adding any extra surveillance. We are seeing these two cities take shape now, before our very eyes. What makes the difference?

In China, Russia and other state monoliths, light flows upward to those in power, as control then stretches its talons downward. That condition - normal in almost every society for 6000 years - could be our fate, if we make mistakes. But not yet. So far, the opposite trend is in the lead. Why?

I relentlessly urge folks to join NGOs like the ACLU and EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) - our paladins in opposing Big Brother. Alas, though, they waste fully half of their efforts in a futile belief they can safeguard freedom by blinding elites, something that has never been accomplished on any major scale across those 60 centuries. It is the other half of their efforts that actually accomplishes good things — stripping elites naked, so that we can look back at power. Answering surveillance with sousveillance.

Here’s the recent NPR podcast of "To the Point" featuring me and a brilliant, heroic and (in this one case) misguided ACLU attorney, in a debate over privacy matters and whether we should deal with a tsunami of new technologies by shouting “stop!”… or else by learning to surf.

== The counter-intuitive secret of our success ==

Now comes the latest example, in the news, from The New York Times:

“Clearview AI, devised a groundbreaking facial recognition app. You take a picture of a person, upload it and get to see public photos of that person, along with links to where those photos appeared. The system — whose backbone is a database of more than three billion images that Clearview claims to have scraped from Facebook, YouTube, Venmo and millions of other websites — goes far beyond anything ever constructed by the United States government or Silicon Valley giants.”

Oh, there are dangers and reasons for hand-wringing: “The weaponization possibilities of this are endless,” said Eric Goldman, co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University. “Imagine a rogue law enforcement officer who wants to stalk potential romantic partners, or a foreign government using this to dig up secrets about people to blackmail them or throw them in jail.”

Very real dangers! But the answer is not to scream for the technological tide to stay back. This new app only does what I predicted three years ago, when well-meaning privacy mavens strove to ban governments and Facebook from using face recognition. The genie - out of the bottle - would only go elsewhere.

The answer to Eric Goldman and others should be obvious. You prevent abuses - like those he describes - by ensuring stalkers and 'rogue' abusers will get caught! Is that so hard to imagine? Or what must be done, in order to catch the mighty - of government, wealth, criminality or tech-elites - if they abuse these new and inevitable powers? Is it truly, truly so hard?

Yes. Apparently it is. After 25 years talking till I am blue in the face, I will testify, it’s very hard. Nothing seems more counter intuitive than the exact tool - reciprocal accountability - that gave us the enlightenment and every tool and joy of freedom.

== From the ridiculous to the obstinate... ==

Now selling: bizarre-looking masks that are printed to resemble the face of the wearer underneath it. “The idea is to protect users from infection, while still allowing them to unlock their iPhones using FaceID — or be recognized by Big Brother facial recognition systems in public.” Oh, but what if you swap masks?

Alas, the wave of myopic foolishness continues. This one in the New York Times also misses the point, top to bottom. Read it. Then ask what all the whining and hand-wringing accomplished? Not addressed at all:

1. The writer only knows about the flaws in Face Recognition (FR) precisely because it is being done in the open and subject to rapid critical discovery of those flaws, which - by the way - are being addressed with stunning speed, because of that transparent discovery process.

2. Of course laws against such tech are utterly futile, since they only drive the tech underground, where flaws will not be discovered and where elites can use those techs, but we can't. As Heinlein said, "Privacy laws mostly make the spy bugs smaller." Whereas we can safeguard some privacy - an essential human want - by empowering folks to catch the voyeurs and peeping toms and even elites, in the act.

3. Banning FR "systems" is like banning buggy whips, because it won't be resident in isolated "systems" at all. The rate of tech advancement means we'll all have FR in apps and these well-meaning folks will have wasted their anti-Orwell energies screaming at the wrong targets.

4. Again, in all of human history, no restrictions on elite access to any type of information has ever been successfully blocked for more than a short time. Especially by a "law."  Show me one example. These guys are worried about important things! Big Brother. Asymetires of power. And their prescriptions of obscurity and hiding are always insane.

== Well meant plans need careful followup ==

An Obama program to create and sell cheap android phones for the poor has done a lot of good. But always be alert for predators and parasites who lurk near any good deed, eager for a chance to bite and suck. Over the years, preinstalled malware has been found on a raft of these low-cost Android phones from a variety of providers and manufacturers. 

In fact, subsidizing the development of super-cheap and reliable phones can be of tremendous strategic importance, beyond just helping the poor. Way back in 1991, before the modern cell era, I spoke at a couple of security agencies proposing a cheaper, better way to deal with brutal tyrants like Saddam Hussein. A “volks-radio” might be mass produced capable of basic peer-to-peer messaging or voice, and dropped en-masse into (say) Saddam’s Iraq. An act of war? What? Giving away free stuff is an act of war? Oh, there’d be a button that folks could use (or not) that would send messages to overhead satellites, if any Iraqi wanted to – say – tell the CIA something – say – about movements to Baathist officials. Only if they want to, of course…  Now squint and imagine the same principle applied to the new Starlink System….

In a more general sense, this is just one more way to apply the great advantage of the West… that we generally do well with increases in light flow and transparency around the world and nearly all of our deadly foes are lethally allergic to light.

Alas, I never imagined that paramount among those light-allergic enemies of the American Enlightenment Experiment would turn out to be the Republican Party.

Ban the pesky cameras? Before we all agree, consider what works.

First an update: Like millions, I fret about our calamitous political schisms increasingly resemble civil war. POLEMICAL JUDO, offers many perspectives on our crisis that you’ve never seen. Over 100+ tactics to help defend our Great Experiment. Now in both e-book and paperback.

Get  free sample chapters. Scan the table of contents, for a breadth of modern issues covered in unusual - perhaps sometimes science fictional  - ways! If 1% of the ideas might prove useful, shouldn't some be tried? (Priced super-low, because it’s more important to see these methods get into the right hands than to make a buck.)

Do help spread the word... and Amazon plaudits are welcome.

== Seeing should not be believing ==

Okay, it's a fraught era, all right, and one that some of us predicted. As if straight out of Earth and The Transparent Society — “Google just dropped a trove of visual deepfakes “free to the research community, for use in developing synthetic video detection methods.” The dataset includes 1000 “before” and “after” videos in which the faces of people were swapped with other people’s faces.” In the long run, we will document all our lives for simple self-protection.

Seeing isn’t believing: How to spot manipulated videos. Straight from my chapter* “The End of Photography As Proof of Anything At All…”  The Internet is increasingly populated with false and misleading videos. These researchers set out to develop a guide to label altered videos and hold creators and sharers of this misinformation accountable.

And San Francisco recently banned facial recognition technology. Might the city’s ban on the technology set a nationwide precedent? How is this supposed to work, when both hardware and software get better at exponential rates. And cameras get faster, cheaper, smaller, better and more mobile quicker than Moore's law? There are already face recognition cell phone apps! Nothing will keep all elites from having this, though by law you might prevent average folks, for a while. How is that supposed to help, again?

== Right Diagnosis -- Deadly Wrong Prescription ==

The cause gains momentum. These privacy activists are vigorous and rightly concerned about misuse of surveillance tech -- standing on the Capitol steps scanning 13,000 faces for recognition, wearing signs demanding "Make this illegal!" Oh, these are good folks, with right-on concerns about the coming surveilled world that could easily turn Orwellian. Right problem! ... But absolutely and spectacularly wrong solution! A prescription that is not only technologically and historically clueless, but that plays right into the hands of every would-be Big Brother.

I debated this very topic last week on NPR's "To The Point" with Warren Olney.  The ACLU attorney - Kade Crawford - was smart, cogent, admirable and agile... though she also utterly misses what history tells us -- that it's no use 'hiding' from elites. What works -- the ONLY thing that has ever protected freedom and, yes, some privacy -- is when average citizens can maximally see, thus holding elites accountable.

Why do you think Putin, Trump and Fox desperately seek to preserve al kinds of secrecy? The sole fallback position of today's GOP distills to "Don't Look At Us!" Tax returns, staffer testimony, Trump's bragged-about "Great Wall of NDAs"... when will our paladins of freedom at ACLU and EFF (join today!) ever grasp the core truth of human nature -- that all enemies of the enlightenment are terrified of light?

We mustn’t be the ones giving them excuses to blind us, while retaining in secret all the powers we foolishly “outlawed.” Listen to the stimulating debate on NPR.

== They are already watching you... so look back ==

Oh, you ask: "Who is EFF?" The Electronic frontier Foundation (I’m a member and you should join) is an NGO that vigorously gathers information about those who are gathering information about us. That’s the side of modern, e-activism that is utterly essential and it can work. And articles like this one show it, in action, as the authors reveal the depth and breadth of surveillance tech used by law enforcement in San Diego.

Indeed, it is a daunting list, from body-worn copcams to face recognition (FR) to cell-phone spoof “stingrays” to license plate readers and doorbell-cam ‘sharing’ and drones, it’s clear that the sum total could be used by a top-down state to control or oppress, as this very sum of converging technologies is being used today, in China. Most cryptic and mysterious is the Palantir data analysis system, which unabashedly aims to empower mighty elites at the expense of citizens. 

“Between the busiest border crossing in the United States, a large military presence, a major port, a booming tech and cybersecurity industry, and elected officials who campaign on government innovation, it’s a wonder that San Diego has yet to become a Big Brother hellscape. Or has it? Perhaps the process was so gradual that no one noticed.”

And so we come to the point where I always part company with my dear friends and colleagues and paladins of freedom at EFF. For I have never known one of them to look in a mirror, and notice the phenomenon that they are seeing there.

By all means, read this summary! Be aware. Then refuse to panic. YOU go look in a mirror while you are flush with suspicion of authority (SoA) endorphins… and recognize THAT you are reacting that way. 

Good. Nurse that voluptuously urgent sense of SoA militancy! But also know that a majority of your fellow citizens share it. And if we together choose to supervise the elites controlling these technologies… and use them ourselves, then yes, there is a chance. Our only chance, but a real chance to stay free.

== On privacy and cameras ==

Sean Carroll - on his Mindscape podcast - interviews my colleague Ramez Naam (The Nexus Trilogy) about reasons for optimism that humanity can (tho not necessarily will) solve many of the crises that we face. Mez kindly cites me in the final 16 minutes… though I think I’ll give up trying to explain to folks that David Brin does NOT think “privacy is dead.” 

Sure, only one thing will save some privacy for us — along with freedom. We’ll retain both, providing we all get to see nearly everything. Which would mean (and no one ever gets this) that we’ll catch voyeurs and spies and peeping toms who try to barge in on us, and be empowered to hold them accountable with MYOB! (Mind Your Own Business.) It's what all of us do, when we dine at restaurants! Glancing around to ensure no one if leaning/listening in.

But aside from that… Mez gives a truly fine interview that will leave you inspired and motivated to help those good trends save the world.

== Why tech suppression won't work ==

Brin’s corollary to Moore’s Law is in effect, as the cameras get smatter, better, faster, cheaper and more mobile/numerous every year. Now: The “World's smallest camera is size of a grain of sand.” Just the sensor part, which fits at the tip of a thread for surgical uses. But the notion you’ll be able to “hide” is nonsense. You are better off protecting freedom and (some) privacy by letting everybody see.

And sensors can be helpful: when a bicyclist hit his head in an accident, knocking him out, his Apple Watch detected a “hard fall” and called 911 with his location. The watch also sent a text to the man’s son to let him know his father had suffered a fall.

Stop fearing the future! Yes, many daunting problems and even minefields lie in front of us. DO peer ahead and warn! Science Fiction plays a big part of that and I have offered lots of warnings!  But almost every solution that could possibly work will require confidence! Confidence in us and the tools of elightenment.

== Bringing us full circle ==

Which takes us back to my new book filled with tools!  POLEMICAL JUDO - offers scores of tactics potentially useful right now! If only someone out there gets it read by someone in the right position to apply them. 

=====

* in The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?