Snowden, Sousveillance and Social T Cells

==Another look at Snowden==

Wired has a long form interview with Edward Snowden: The Most-Wanted Man in the World. A must-read... as far as it goes. Only keep ahold of your ability to parse complexities and contradictions, because my reflex is always to point out aspects that were never raised. I refuse to choose one "side's" purist reflex.  So should you.

Let's start by stepping waaaaaay back.  I speak elsewhere* in terms of social T Cells — preening bachelor males who (in every known society, across recorded time) are seen doing risky things to get noticed — it's darwinistically advantageous for a non-alpha male! Because it has (across millions of years) elevated some of these risk seekers to alpha status. To do this requires a kind of daring, prideful ego and a willingness to throw the dice. 

Many harmful men do this… but also heroes. Indeed, it was best parsed in a song: “Every hero was once… every villain was once… just a boy with a bad attitude!” — or so sings Meat Loaf (brilliantly)

 in Bad Attitude. 

And just to be clear, we all have known young women who also fit this pattern, throwing caution to the wind, tilting at a windmill or plunging ahead to explore some darkness. Their courage is even greater, in fact, because Darwin is not standing behind them, pushing.

Ah, but different societies have chosen to harness this very human tendency in varied ways.  Most filled the ranks of their armies and navies with these adventurers, and made sure there would be enough fighting or exploring or risky trading to keep them busy, far from the capital. (Perhaps ravaging some other nation's capital.) We cannot afford such waste, in a nuclear age. And yet, our Western Enlightenment (WE) society - and especially America - have engendered a strong mythology of ego, anti-conformity and individualism, amid a population in which most of these young folks are frightfully well-educated. A combination that any other culture would have deemed very dangerous.

Now why would we do such a thing?  Ponder it a bit. Then combine it with the relentless memes that pour across almost every Hollywood film or popular novel or song... Suspicion of Authority, reverence of eccentricity, individualism, fascination with diversity and the other...  Can you even count the number of recent YA films that scream contempt at conformity, calling it a fate worse than death? 

These messages are so pervasive that nearly all of us have absorbed the memes into our bones. They are so taken for granted that we no longer even notice the relentless propaganda for these values, and instead concoct a notion in our mind that we invented these things.

Combine all of that and you get something so perplexing and counter-intuitive that almost no one has noticed or commented on it -- that our society seems almost perfectly tuned to engender brash, eager critics who avidly zero in on anything they can possibly find to criticize about their own society! 

YOU -- in your avid political opinions and suspicions toward some conniving elite or another -- you exactly fit into this pattern.  Indeed I say that with utter confidence that it applies (whatever your simplistic position on the lobotomizing left-right axis) to nearly all of you reading these lines, right now. Half of you are convinced you are heroic resisters against an oppressive establishment that is supported by the other half.  And vice versa.

 To be clear, across the entire span of our species, this has never happened before -- for a society to preach: "you, our children, grow up eager to criticize your own tribe and all its elders!"  Name another example! It may never happen again.  It may have happened this time only by accident. There are many cultures around the planet who believe this meme-complex is insane.

 Or else, it is crazy... like a fox.

== Applying T Cell theory to Snowden ==

To be clear: we need these 'T Cells' as we rush into a technological future.  There are so many pitfalls, snake pits, quicksand pools, mine fields and failure modes, between us and Star Trek, that the only conceivable way that we can evade the killer errors is by unleashing millions of avid, immune-system "cells" to sniff and hunt down every possible mistake.  Even when they prove wrong -- or to be exaggerating -- the light they shine is cleansing.  

This is not a fault-free process. In many cases -- like anti-vaccination fetishism or cretinous climate denialism -- the result is very real harm.  But the price is worth it, because in some other cases, this pattern saves us. And the alternative tried in 99.9% of other societies -- top-down hierarchical control -- nearly always resulted in horrific statecraft and inevitably lethal blunders.

Which brings us to Edward Snowden.  Perhaps you can see now why I approve of him much more than I do Assange or Manning whose revelations - when you look closely - were mostly boring minutia that did not rise to the level of "whistle blowing." Snowden actually shook things up… though frankly -- if you can get past your purist reflexes -- it becomes clear that he is a very mixed deal. Possibly a Russian spy from the start, certainly an egomaniac without much sense of proportion.

Indeed, his revelations showed us very little that was actually illegal at the time...

...though he did us a  great service, by prompting us to re-examine what should be legal!  A conversation that I have pushed hard -- in The Transparent Society  and elsewhere -- for two decades.

In fact, I do not care much about Edward Snowden's two-bit, sophomoric rationalizations (unctuously presented to us in WIRED as sagacious wisdom) or his “big picture” perspectives, which tend toward the cartoony, simplistic, exaggerated and banal.

What I care about is civilization learning the right lesson from all this. Which is that SNOWDENS WILL HAPPEN!

They may often be individually obnoxious. But they are also - in general - the overall a sign of a healthy civilization that is creating enough whistle blowers and exposing itself to frequent doses of cleansing light. These T Cells are manifestly like a necessary, recurring fever — one that saves us from far worse illnesses.

1) The lesson to citizens is to find ways to encourage the T Cell phenomenon by supporting whistle-blowing protections... but at the same time not to get carried away in every individual case.  If a climate researcher is exposed fudging data, that does not discredit all of science; it chastens scientists to watch their peers. There are many bad cops, doing bad things opn the streets -- so enhance transparency with cameras... while remembering that the majority of decent cops will be our best allies against the bad ones.  And if the NSA has gone too far, remember that's what we asked them for, when we panicked, earlier.  So let's correct that Snowden-revealed error by cranking up supervision.  On the other hand, calling this country "North Korea" only torpedoes your credibility.

But there's another constituency that needs to understand the T Cell phenomenon.  They must learn this lesson well.

2) The lesson to bureaucrats and sincere civil servants and members of the Protector Caste is not: "how can we prevent the next Snowden?"  You can't.  The real lesson is: 

"How can we create so much trust that citizens will still work with us and let us do our jobs, even when (inevitably) our files leak some embarrassing things?"

Even better: 

"How can we encourage a worldwide secular trend toward openness, because that is the sole condition that would bring true Victory."

What’s key is to make society so robust and honest and trusted that it can deal with such fevers calmly, without institutional panic or reflexive vengeance, or turning millions against their own, freely elected institutions.  That is how to play to our strengths.  But it requires almost un-human levels of maturity.

== Offending everybody ==

Yes, I am  the best-worst example of all.  In my militant moderation and ornery contrarianism, I side with no sides!  No matter what your political stance, I have doubtless offended every last one of you at some point, in this missive. And I am about to do it, once more, by yet again pointing at middle ground.

In this case, Snowden cannot get off scot free — a true civil disobedience hero and follower of Gandhi would not expect to! If the issues really are as profound as he preens -- and if he truly did this out of love of country -- then the consequences to himself should be his last concern.

 On the other hand, I look at him as an example of intemperate adolescent courage… the kid who screams “you fools, can’t you see?” and spills a corporate filing cabinet onto the street. (We've all seen the movie plot, a zillion times.)  

If Snowden isn’t punished at all, there will be chaos. But “making an example of him” can also go way too far.  And if that happens -- (listen carefully, bureaucrats) -- then the system will lose, badly.

He needs to serve some time.  

But I want him out by Christmas, next year. All right, the year after that. Maybe one more, during which someone ghost-writes him a book.  And do not pity the rest of his life, preening on the talk show circuit. This is a brash T Cell who already has it made.  He'll be an alpha at parties for five decades.

Come on home, Eddie.  It's what King and Gandhi would have done.  And how you're treated will either prove my point... or show us flames on the horizon.

.

== Lagniappe: What Government knows vs What Government Does==

We should ask which is more important: what government knows, or what it might do to us? Intrinsically, you can never be certain what elites see or know. But actions can be observed and held accountable, by insisting that all watchers be supervised, answering top-down surveillance with "sousveillance," the habit of a brash citizenry monitoring from below. Only category three seeks this precious win-win: preserving both freedom and safety. See my article: Check NSA Surveillance with Citizen "Sousveillance."

Instead of railing against that fact that there will be more Edward Snowdens, let's revamp whistleblower laws, in order to encourage in-house correction of bureaucratic errors. This would also let us calibrate where future Snowdens fall in the wide range from traitor to hero.

Sousveillance isn't just a response to surveillance, it is the wellspring of freedom.

* T-cells in The Transparent Society

 "The vital thing to note... is that the new style-social immune system thrives on passion, and even large doses of overwrought ego, but that hatefulness and self-righteousness are less beneficial. Viewed over the long turn, they  are often early signs of metastasis by a promising T-cell. Its transformation from potential savior into a virulent kind of predatory parasite. That's probably all right. As long as we live in a relatively transparent society, other T-cells will often swarm in to neutralize the danger....Is it too much to hope that someday perhaps all the angry young men and women will finally see how valuable and integral they are to a society they claim to despise? Would we spend so much time, effort and money training them to be rebels, if that were not the case?"

Everything leaks - get used to it. Use it. Also: is Skynet coming?

== Will Wall Street give us Terminator? Others weigh in ==

 A few years ago, I posed a chilling hypothesis, that AGI — or “artificial general intelligence” that’s equivalent or superior to human — might “evolve-by-surprise,” perhaps even suddenly, out of advanced computational systems. And yes, that’s the garish-Hollywood “Skynet” scenario leading to Terminator.

Only I suggested a twist — that it would not be military or government or university computers that generate a form of intelligence, feral, self-interested and indifferent to human values. Rather, that a dangerous AI might emerge out of the sophisticated programs being developed by Wall Street firms, to help them game (many might say cheat) our economic system.

Indeed, more money is being poured into AI research by Goldman-Sachs alone than by the top five academic centers, put together, and all of it helping to engender systems with a central ethos of predatory opportunism and parasitic amorality.Oh, and did I mention it's all in secret?  The perfect Michael Crichton scenario.

 Now comes a book by documentary filmmaker James Barrat — Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era — reviewed here on the ThinkAdvisor site -- Are Killer Robots the Next Black Swan? — in which Barrat discusses a scenario sketched out by Alexander Wissner-Gross, a scientist-engineer with affiliations at Harvard and MIT, that seems remarkably similar to mine. Opines Wissner-Gross:

“If you follow the money, finance has a decent shot at being the primordial ooze out of which AGI emerges.”

Barrat elaborates: : “In other words, there are huge financial incentives for your algorithm to be self-aware—to know exactly what it is and model the world around it.”

The article is well-worth a look, though it leaves out the grand context — that “emergent-evolving” AGI make up only one category out of six different general varieties of pathways that might lead to AI. To be honest, I don’t even consider it to be the most likely.

But that has not bearing on what we — as a civilization — should be doing, which is taking reasonable precautions. Looking ahead and pondering win-win ways that we can move forward while evading the most obviously stupid mistakes.

Secret schemes of moohlah masters — that’s no recipe for wisdom. Far better to do it all in the light.

== Everything leaks ==

Heartbleed: Yes It's Really That Bad.  So says the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Heartbleed exploits a critical flaw in OpenSSL, which is used to secure hundreds of thousands of websites including major sites like Instagram, Yahoo, and Google. This article in WIRED also suggests that you can redouble your danger by rushing to trust fly by night third parties offering to fix the flaw… and meanwhile, "big boys" of industry aren't offering general solutions, only patches to their own affected systems.

The crux? (1) change your passwords on sites where financial or other vital info is dealt-with, then gradually work your way through the rest, as each site offers you assurances. (2) try not to have the passwords be the same. (3) help ignite political pressure for the whole world of online password security to have a rapid-response component (not dominance) offered by a neutral agency… one that is totally transparent, neutral and separate from all law or espionage "companies." And…

…and (4) might I ask if you've noticed that this kind of event happens about twice a year? And it has been that way since the 1980s? Each of the events a scandal in its own right… hackers grab half a million Target card numbers… or Microsoft springs a leak… or Goldman Sachs… or Equifax… or Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange and Edward Snowden rip off veils of government secrecy… and pundits howl and the public quakes and no one ever seems to draw the correct conclusion --

- that everything eventually leaks! And that maybe the entire password/secrecy model is inherently flawed. Or that there is another, different model that is inherently far more robust, that has only ever been mentioned in a few places, so far.

Here is one of those places.

Meanwhile, whistleblowers remain a vital part of reciprocal accountability. I would like to see expanded protections that simultaneously expand reciprocal accountability and citizen sousveillance… while allowing our intitutions to function in orderly ways.

Now this announcement that the Project of Government Oversight (POGO) install SecureDrop… a new way for whistle blowers to deposit information anonymously and shielded from authorities trying to root out leakers. As author of The Transparent Society, I sometimes surprise folks by straddling this issue and pointing out that the needs of the bureaucracy should not be discounted completely! Or by reflex. Whistle blowing falls across a very wide spectrum and if we are sophisticated citizens we will admit that the revealers of heinous-illegal plots deserve more protection than mewling attention junkies.

Still, there is a real role to be played by those pushing the envelope. Read more about Pogo here.

Then again... Facebook can now listen in on your activities with a new audio recognition feature for its mobile app that can turn on smartphones’ microphones to “hear” what songs or television shows are playing in the background. Sounds cool… um, not.

== What does it all mean? ==

Everything Leaks.  It boils down to:

"Can you name any month, in the last 25 years, when there wasn't a major information leak in the news?"

Every few months it is some massive loss of customer information from a major bank or retail outfit... or government agency.  And every time, there are shouts of outrage and demands that info-gatherers be more careful.  Do you ever hear anyone mention another possibility?  That Everything Leaks?

One definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over, while expecting different results.  Sure, in the short term we should all - individuals, companies, governments - strive for better security. (Are YOU certain your home computer or laptop or tablet is not a taken-over portion of some hacker-botnet? You may be part of the problem.)

But over the long run, the real trick will be to create a world in which even leaked info cannot harm us.  An open and increasingly tolerant world might achieve that, as I describe in The Transparent Society.  It might not succeed -- the odds have always been stacked against our Enlightenment Experiment.  But it is the method that got us here, the the only glass-half-fill civilization.  And it is the only method that stands the slightest chance of working.

== Brandeis the Seer ==

The famous dissent in Olmstead v. United States (1928)To , by Justice Louis Brandeis, is a vital mirror to hold up to our times. Take the most famous part of eloquent dissent, regarding a seminal wiretapping case:

“Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher,” Brandeis concluded. “For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means — to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal — would bring terrible retribution.”

Which brings us to Andrew O’Hehir’s article on Salon, recently, using Brandeis as a foil to discuss – and denounce – some recent polemics against Edward Snowden and his journalist outlet, Glenn Greenwald. To be honest, I found O’Hehir tendentious and sanctimonious, but there were some cogent moments that made the article worthwhile, especially when he shone some light on the incredible prescience Brandeis showed, in his 1928 dissent:

“If Brandeis does not literally predict the invention of the Internet and widespread electronic surveillance, he comes pretty close," for Brandeis wrote, “The progress of science in furnishing the Government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wire-tapping ...Ways may someday be developed by which the Government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home.” Brandeis even speculated that psychiatrists of the future may be able to read people’s “unexpressed beliefs, thoughts and emotions” as evidence. O'Hehir notes, "...as far as I know we haven’t reached that dystopian nightmare yet. (But if that’s the big final revelation from the Snowden-Greenwald trove of purloined NSA secrets, you read it here first.)”

== Transparency media ==

Anyone care to review this for us? Post-Privacy and Democracy: Can there be Moral and Democratic Development in a Totally Transparent Society? by Patrick Held. It provides arguments why the end of privacy or at least secrecy might be inevitable given our individual demand for technology.