The Future of Free Speech - and Privacy

In an era when we have "weaponized narrative" and open warfare against every single knowledge or fact-based profession, my role as "Mr. Transparency" has mutated into fighting for the very concept of objective reality. And hence a break from our usual topics - science, science fiction and politice.

The Future of Free Speech: Trolls, Anonymity and Fake News Online: Pew released a report on social media and negative political trends with quoted bits from (among others) Brad Templeton and me. 

Yet, another Pew report  - The Future of Free Speech Looks Grim - dismally wrings its hands and declares there will never be a solution to the plague of trolls infesting the Internet. But you know me.  I find cynical gloom to be the surest sign of dullard minds.

How has awful human behavior been mitigated in the past? This report utterly ignores the lessons of 4000 years of human history, that the deterrent to abusive behavior is accountability. And sure, accountability that is pounded onto people from above -- by priests and kings -- became tyranny. Probably 99% of our ancestors suffered under either chaos - beset by bullies  around them - or else feudalism - repressed by king-lord-priest-bullies from above. But eventually we found -- (or stumbled into) -- a better way. Making accountability reciprocal so that it shines on everyone, including the mighty. 

In The Transparent Society - and in novels like Earth - I talk about how light is the great cleansing agent. Almost all harmful people - from industrial moguls to criminals to terrorists to trolls - are fatally allergic to it. On the first order, our solution is attributability, ending the cover of anonymity.

Oh, but there are second order effects. Much of the internet's charm and effectiveness comes from our ability to post or say some things safe from "being known as a dog." Must we lose that, in order to have accountability?

There are ways to get both... to have our cake and eat it, too. E.g. via mediated pseudonymity. But these solutions must start with rejecting the dour doomcasting of articles like this one.

== Spy fetishism... and a solution ==

Say hello to the camera; goodbye to privacy: A cogent article in the San Diego Union Tribune explores how Americans' compulsion to share everything online - especially video - collides with our concerns about privacy. I was interviewed for this piece, which features glimpses into our transparency-related anthology, Chasing Shadows. My co-editor of the anthology, Dr. Stephen Potts, and I were on radio (KPBS) discussing the book.... and the problem.

And you didn’t expect this? As if I haven’t warned you for night on 30 years? A hidden spy camera in an innocuous looking AC to USB wall charger plug.

And yet....   Founded by one of the fathers of the Internet, Vint Cerf, and MeiLin Fung, one of the pioneers of CRM software, People Centered Internet aims to assure that the Internet, and the data it creates, deliver economic, social and political empowerment, and permission-less innovation, for all humanity.  Envision a world where everyone is connected, and those connections, enriched by dialog and data, empower humanity’s thriving.

== Hazards & Worries ==

Charles Stross is a brilliant science fiction author, who also runs a cogent blog. Charlie combines these roles in a posting  that could make you laugh and cry at the same time. It takes the form of a rejection letter that he (supposedly) received for a novel proposal based upon the recent “WannaCry” ransomware exploit. The reviewer dismisses as implausible every single step along the path of this insanely hard-to-credit tale, from the NSA carelessly losing hold of its most precious tools, to the stunningly bizarre way that the thing mostly-ended, with the apparent discovery of a strangely unlikely deus ex machina off-switch.  And yes, life can be stranger than fiction!

What Charlie doesn’t mention is that those two cappers, the beginning and the ending ones, might have been intentional, all along. That opens up a whole 'nother realm of layers to the “real plot” of the story. Just sayin…

Still, have a look at this amazing way the WannaCrypt malware got substantially stopped by one white-hat fellow. An amazing tale and a prime example of why the default method for dealing with information age problems can only be transparency.

Meanwhile...

Facial recognition has progressed to a point where "dysmorphology" - the diagnosis of rare diseases - can be accomplished (initially) by computer analysis of a child's or adult's features.  This could be a valuable addition to the tools that were pioneered in the Tricorder XPrize contest, enabling quicker diagnosis and care in the field.  

Of course, it also raises chilling awareness of how far facial recog tech has come... and how utterly useless will be any vain efforts to ban or restrict the technology.  Especially when it becomes capable of some degree of lie detection.  These tools will either be monopolized by elites (leading to Big Brother forever) or else used by all of us to hold accountable lying politicians and so on (Big Brother never.)  You decide.

Tools to fake news: Reported on CRACKED… which is not The Onion, but should still be treated warily… “In November, Adobe demonstrated an experimental project they've been toying with called Voco. Voco allows you to "Photoshop" speech, changing what the speaker said to whatever you care to type. Based on a 20-minute sample of me speaking, someone could fabricate a pretty damn convincing facsimile of me saying, "I hate children" or "Earth should have a self-destruct button" or maybe even things I've never said.”  Oh, but if this is fake news it's cheap stuff, based on what we'll have next year. Or the next.

In chapter One of The Transparent Society, I talk about “The End of Photography as Proof of Anything at All: With sophisticated image processing, we may never again be able to rely on photos or videos as perfect evidence, but this may not be as calamitous as some fear.”  

This is just more of the same. No method other than openness and transparency can possibly solve it.

== Reality TV with a better than average premise ==

 Contestants try to drop out and hide, as if being hunted… and they are!  By retired or profession cops and such, on HUNTED. Of course science fiction has been there.

While I find so-called “security expert” Bruce Schneier vastly overrated, and often flat-out wrong, I will gladly avow when he says something wise. In this article, he criticizes the way that market forces and laziness and cheapness have combined to make our rising Internet of Things horribly susceptible to hacking, botnets and such: “Regulation might be a dirty word in today’s political climate, but security is the exception to our small-government bias. And as the threats posed by computers become greater and more catastrophic, regulation will be inevitable. So now’s the time to start thinking about it. We also need to reverse the trend to connect everything to the internet. And if we risk harm and even death, we need to think twice about what we connect and what we deliberately leave uncomputerized.”  

Alas, as usual, Schneier is very good at raising scary alarums… and stunningly vague in his recommendations.  Which basically amount to “get government to solve it!”  Riiiight. 

Encryption based security systems fail almost weekly, but this is a big one. A clever new way that hackers take over whole systems. “A rash of invisible, fileless malware is infecting banks around the globe.”

== Threats to Democracy ==

Daniel Dennett used to at least contribute value to the conversation, but that was years ago. This time (oh go read it!) -- Fake News Isn't the Greatest Threat to Democracy. Total Transparency Is -- his chain of assertions - any one of which is diametrically opposite to true - shows that the fellow's truly gone bonkers.  

Take this paragraph.: "Staying afloat in today’s flood of information means understanding the subtle relationship between transparency and trust. And it is not what you might think ― the more transparency, the more trust.The reality is the opposite: when everything is exposed, all information is equal, and equally useless. When no one knows things that others don’t know, and there are no institutions or practices that can establish and preserve credibility ― as is threatened today with the new dominance of peer-driven social media ― then there is no solid ground for a democratic discourse."

What a towering loony! Each and every assertion is patently false, and I mean every one! We already live in a largely transparent world, compared to our ancestors, and we have developed many systems for separating wheat from chaff, pearls from swill. In fact the whole "fake news" phenomenon and the deliberate lobotomization of the American Right depends utterly upon sabotaging all those systems. Systems that let us grant credibility to the credible and subtract is from the wrong or wrongheaded.

Fox-ism and Trumpism are part of a deliberate putsch to undermine the greatest tools humanity ever had, and the fact-using professions who wield them.  And those fact-professions -- from science, teaching and journalism to entrepreneurs and civil servants -- depend utterly on open flows of information.

Now as de-facto "Mr. Transparency" you might think I decry all secrecy, but that would be dumb. In The Transparent Society I repeatedly show that the few secrets that governments, businesses and private individuals really need - including privacy in the home and intimacy with loved ones - are far better protected if we live in a generally open world, wherein the skulks and voyeurs and spies and peeping toms are better caught! And where we can relax about abuse of power because the mighty face more light than the rest of us. 

Even when members of the Protector Caste are engaged in legitimate secrecy, there are ways to supervise and ensure that it stays legit.

Again and again, Dennett ignores the plain fact that we achieved almost all our modern miracles, including science, freedom, accountability and a cornucopia of wealth, because we are already more than halfway toward a transparent society, compared to every single other culture or tribe that ever existed.  He blathers that accountability and gradation of information is impossible, while ungratefully ignoring how much he has always depended on exactly those things, fostered and amplified by light.

Okay, I accept the sermon that he (unintentionally) preaches. That people who were right in the past won't always be. And pomposity is one of the warning signs.  So go to a mirror and tell that guy!  It's what I am about to stand up and do.

===========

Political addendum:

Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to help the legal case against the outrageously treasonous cheat called gerrymandering. He’s teamed up with Common Cause to help Crowdfund legal fees for the court case, and he’s matching every donation!  

Among all the fervid money and action calls out there, I can think of few as important as this one. Other than recruiting women ("She Should Run"), scientists (314.org) and retired officers to run, this is the biggie. If Alito and Roberts weasel out of this decision, then we'll know that they aren't Americans, anymore.

Fairness on the Public Airwaves

In a previous political posting, we ran through a long list of political addictions – nostrums and catechisms that believers return to decade after decade, despite their having been relentlessly and decisively disproved. Like the notion that a seventy year Drug War can cure chemical dependency, or that a fifty year trade embargo on Cuba ever did a scintilla of good. Or an utter insanity called Supply Side (Voodoo) Economics, or SSVE, that never made a single successful prediction, not even one, ever...

...or – indeed – some of the almost-as-absurd incantations nursed by the much-smaller but still dangerous very-far-left. Like anti-vaxxing and other hostilities to science, that approach 5% as silly as climate denialism; (yes, that silly.)

Normally, even the most obstinate human would start to shift away from such disproved nonsense. That is, if they were exposed to the disproof!  Alas, so many of us scrupulously avoid looking in directions that might offer up such evidence we’re wrong!  And there are evil men who cater to this weakness in human nature.

Which brings us to today’s topic.

== Should we hear any disagreement… at all? ==

Probably the most destructive administrative act in the last 50 years, and the root cause of almost all of America’s current problems, was based in a Reagan era action: 

“It was called the "Fairness Doctrine" created to prevent the American people from receiving misinformation in the guise of fact. Over 60 years later, the Fairness Doctrine is a thing of the past and the American people are worse off because of it.” 

Take a look at: The Repeal of Fairness: How Ronald Reagan gave us FOX News and other Bias Sources from the Examiner.

This history of the doctrine shows that its elimination led to today’s utterly polarized media, in which our fellow citizens stare at hate-drenched lie-festivals … rallying the faithful… without ever catching even a glimpse of another side.

While the Left has its own echo chambers that strive to copy the lucrative Fox – captive audience – business model, there are no masters of propaganda better than the crew led by Roger Ailes.  Indeed, MSNBC teeters on bankruptcy, because dedicated leftists are only a small minority of the Blue Constituency. 

The larger portion — moderate liberals — get bored by constant uniformity and wander off to find a variety of news sources. Indeed, their guru - Jon Stewart - swivels and skewers assumptions in all directions, while welcoming smart opponents on his show.

They are the ones who do not need a Fairness Doctrine.  They feel an itch on their own, to sample from a range of perspectives. 

But the far-left and entire-right are dogma junkies. Those portions of the populace need to be exposed to occasional rebuttals, lest they become shambling zombie-marrionettes to the hypno-lobotomizing propaganda puppet shows they stare at, endlessly nodding as stoked-up hate and fear levels just keep on rising.

There is a reason that the merchants of fear-and-loathing despise any talk of a restored fairness doctrine. Indeed, they would fight against it more furiously than anything else, even fair tax rates for oligarchs...

...because even just one minute of rebuttal per hour… would destroy their scam.  

Oh, we would still disagree, debate and fuss… there would still be liberals and conservatives and libertarians and such… but the purity of utter spite might give way to argument, comparison of evidence, some concessions in both directions, and even the horrible thing that the puppet-masters fear most. 

Negotiation. 

== How bad is the lie tsunami? ==

A new survey by the Tampa Bay Times’ PunditFact, looking at the veracity of cable networks, found that Fox News won (or lost) first prize for having the most falsehoods studied.  According to PunditFact, Fox News’s on-air talent were mostly-false, false, or “pants on fire” 60% of the time.  

MSNBC ranked second in falsehoods, at 46% of the time.  

And CNN ranked a lowly (or uply) 18% level of falsehoods – meaning, CNN did a pretty good job getting it right.  

As validation, the Economist, also a generally conservative journal, did its own survey of truthfulness, coming to very similar ratings. 

And hence this open challenge. Do you doubt I could do that one-minute rebuttal, myself?

I’m quite serious. Give me one minute per hour on Fox… or one per three hours… hell even one minute per week… and I would leave the Fox lie machine a smoldering ruin. You know I could do it. So could many of you. 

Want an equal chance at liberal media? Well, rebuttals already happen over there. Even on MSNBC. But sure… have at!

Alas, the masters of propaganda will fight to the death against any “fairness” on publicly owned airwaves, even though the principle was deemed totally righteous by our parents, in the Greatest Generation. The puppeteers know that the Ailes-heimers sickness they impose on millions would dissipate like a bad dream, and so would this phase of our re-ignited Civil War...

...setting us back on the path of non-demonizing, practical negotiation and vigorous, but reasonable argument. 

On that day when the fever breaks, we will regain a conservatism of intellect (I want it back!) and on that day, Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley can stop spinning in their graves.

== Don't even pretend that truth evasion is equal ==

Oh, for those of you preaching the cynical line that “the parties are just the same, equally captured by Wall Street and equally corrupt,” dig this well.  

Democrats have long supported the Fairness Rule… meaning that they do not fear rebuttal...

...while Republicans sought to destroy it, and would go into actinic fury if they saw any hint of its return.

 Let's reiterate: one side does not mind its partisans hearing contradicting views and evidence.  The other side desperately dreads it.

Think about that. WHY is the right terrified of letting their troops hear any rebuttal at all?

Nothing better shows that the matter now is not “left-vs-right”... but honest/sane versus dishonest/insane.

Go on, spin out the rationalizations! It’s “freedom of speech” to keep half of a country hypnotized and hate-stoked with relentless, easily disproved lies. Just like the way southern whites, before the Civil War, had only newspapers to read that were owned and run by the plantation caste, having burned-out every other voice, loyal to Union and reason.

Go ahead and cry out “it’s simple competition and supply and demand!”  As you defend the same monopoly-oligarchy that was the top enemy of flat-open-fair enterprise for 6000 years. The exact and diametric opposite of "competition."

Sorry, these flailings may reassure you. But deep inside you know. 

This deliberate lobotomization of American political discourse is nothing less than treason.