The simple trick allowing citizens to bypass gerrymandering

Here is my personal posting of the article that Salon Magazine recently featured: A Modest Proposal to Neutralize Gerrymandering, on how U.S. citizens might, one at a time and each of us, strike a blow against the worst political criminals since the American Civil War, neutralizing (if not ending) a travesty that has long been banned in most civilized nations, called gerrymandering. This also lets me follow up with some addenda remarks.

The death spiral of U.S. political life has yet to see bottom. While most factual indicators suggest optimism, our public addiction to dudgeon and fury intensifies daily. Words like “negotiation,” “deliberation,” and “discourse” sink into quaint anachronism alongside “phlogiston.”

The illness has many causes. Tsunamis of money in politics.  Cable “news” networks push one side, denying loyal viewers any hint of refutation. Glancing at the red-state/blue-state map suggests that “deep culture” is reigniting the American Civil War. These factors aren’t easy to solve.

However, one malignant force could be staunched almost overnight, with a simple trick. It requires no legislation, court action, or leadership from our sclerotic political caste.  Mere citizens – one at a time -- could neutralize gerrymandering.

We all know the scam, inflicted on U.S. voters by both parties, often in collusion. Cynical manipulators have made a high art of crafting bizarrely-shaped, convoluted districts for Congress and state legislatures. We’re told it’s meant to advantage the majority party in a state, letting it eke out extra seats by cramming minority party voters into rigged ghettos of Democrats in (say) Texas or Republicans in Illinois. (See illustrated example.)

But that’s not the real purpose, at all!

Proof came in 2010 when California voters rebelled. Via ballot proposition, they handed district-drawing to nonpartisan commissions. California’s Democratic Party begged the mostly-Democratic populace not to, fearing the GOP might benefit. But lo, post- gerrymandering, Democrats surged to win more statehouse seats.

Democratic politicians still fretted, because many of their personal districts were now more evenly balanced. On average, each might see only a 55% or 60% Democratic majority – an advantage, but not safety.

The California experiment –including open primaries and top-two runoffs – was hugely successful. In heavily Democratic districts, the run-off between two Democrats produced a weird epiphany: “Hey, this district consists 1/3 of Republicans who could tip the balance. Let’s reach out to them!” Minority-party voters got leverage. Their calls were answered. No one expected this.

Voter uprisings against gerrymandering have happened in half a dozen blue states, but not once in a red state, like Texas, where Democrats feel herded and disenfranchised, where gerrymandering has its Michaelangelos. Indeed, political handicapper Stuart Rothenberg says 211 of 234 Republican seats in the House are “safe,” leaving only 23 competitive.

In fairness, some Democratic states like Maryland and Illinois have their own gerrymandering daVincis.

Unforeseen Consequences

Now the iron law of unexpected outcomes takes hold, for gerrymandering’s top malignant effect has been radicalization of U.S. politics. Having engineered for themselves safe districts where the minority party has no chance, cynical politicians have rendered each November general election moot, (except for state-wide or national offices). Yet, safety eluded them, as this only shifted tension earlier, to the party primary; Recent Tea Party insurrections show how a district’s most vociferous five percent can use primary challenges to oust established representatives or bully them into cartoonish agendas.

Now consider: Gerrymandering lumps birds-of-a-feather till each district is “owned” by one party or another. Democratic voters in a Republican-owned district - or Republicans in a Democratic-owned district – will never cast a vote for the legislature in the only election that matters: the majority party’s primary.

Unless…

…unless you hold your nose and re-register with whatever party owns your district.

This holds true, whether you’re a Democrat in a Republican district, or vice versa.

If your district is gerried to contain mostly Republicans, then it should be represented by a conservative person. But, as someone living in the district, you deserve to have some say in which conservative it will be! A Tea Party radical? Or a genteel negotiator, like Goldwater or Buckley?

Conservative radicals will scream that Democrats who attempt this kind of judo must be aiming to sabotage the Republican primary! But any large numbers who switch will have one goal: to recover a meaningful say in a district that had disenfranchised them. They want to vote for candidates they disagree with less; this is a reasonable criterion.

Does a label change a voter’s principles? Remember Republicans of yore: Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower -- and sign the card! 

Then, next spring, you’ll vote when it matters, in the primary between Republican candidates.

The same advice applies to Republicans in Democratic-owned districts! In fact, this tactic has precedence -- generations of Republicans registered as Democrats in the old-time “solid south.” They can hardly complain now.

Reclaim our sovereignty

Picture the majority party primary in each gerrymandered district becoming the de facto general election, with all voters participating. Screaming talking heads would lose their potency overnight. Representatives could no longer pick which citizens to ignore by their party registration. Moreover, their computerized gerrymandering programs would go haywire! That, alone, will be a form of citizen revenge upon a cynical political caste.

Can’t stomach registering as a (pick your poison) Democrat/Republican? Get over it. Partisan labels made this mess. Grin at your friends’ shocked reactions. Then recruit them, rebelling against a political scam.

If fifty million Americans do this, we’ll show the politicians: “you can’t take us for granted, nor fool all the people, all the time.”

-  Follow-up after the Salon article -

First See  my earlier, more extensive appraisal-in-depth of gerrymandering: American Democracy: More Fragile Than We Think. 

AFTERWORD NUMBER ONE:

Sam Wang in the New York Times Sunday Review used a seat-discrepancy criterion to find which 10 states are the most “out of whack. Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were worst, plus Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Illinois and Texas. Of this ten worst gerrymandered states, Arizona was redistricted by an independent commission, with Republicans the beneficiaries of all distortions. Texas was a combination of Republican and federal court efforts, but with a notoriously pro GOP warp. Illinois was controlled by Democrats, who benefited. Republicans designed the other seven maps.

Nine out of ten were home runs for the Republican Party, helping to explain why, despite winning 1.4 million fewer votes for Congress in 2012, the GOP still controls the House of Representatives by a comfortable margin.  As Mr. Wang put it: “Both sides may do it, but one side does it more often.”

An interesting note: Arizona had supposedly joined the ranks of states that eliminated gerrymandering in favor of design by neutral commission, making it the one Red State to do so. Yet its districts wound up so twisted in the GOP’s favor that it became a laughable embarrassment.  One excuse offered, that large Native American reservations had to be given special treatment and that the Hopi and Navajo wanted to be kept separate.  Um, right. How about an alternative hypothesis.  That the "neutral" commission simply isn't.

ADDENDUM NUMBER TWO

After the Supreme Court struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act, certain states are no longer bound by the Act’s requirement that they pass new voting regulations by the federal government. As a result, Republican legislators in these states are moving forward with new voter ID laws.  Attorney General Greg Abbott announced that Texas will proceed with a law requiring photo ID before voting. since it is no longer required to obtain pre-clearance from the Department of Justice.

This is about more than just racism and turning away young people. It gets even better, keeping aware that American women have been swinging ever more strongly toward the Democratic Party Think Progress reports that as of November 5, Texans must show a photo ID with their up-to-date legal name. It sounds like a small detail, but according to the Brennan Center for Justice, only 66% of voting age women have ready access to a photo document that will attest to proof of citizenship. This is largely because young women have not updated their documents with their married names, a circumstance that doesn’t affect male voters in any significant way. Suddenly 34% of women voters are scrambling for an acceptable ID, while 99% of men are home free.

Now let me surprise you! In fact, I would have nothing against gradually rising voter ID requirements, even though almost no Election Day false voter fraud has been reported in 30 years. When you approach it logically, there is no reason why proof of ID should not IN PRINCIPLE be part of the process of exercising a right as valuable as voting.

There is only one test to see if it is a "reform" or if it is blatantly partisan voter suppression:

"Has the state accompanied the new voter ID law with substantial funding to help under-documented but legal US citizens to get the ID they need, and to become registered? Is the state effectively helping people to meet the new burden that it has required?"  

If a state has sincerely done that, then I will admit that the demand for voter ID might be honest and due to the rationalized and declared reasons.

Alas, not one red state that has passed such laws has gone on to allocate a single penny to help poor citizens of the state, or the elderly or the young or women, to comply with onerous new restrictions on their franchise. Let me repeat that. Not one has done so. Not even fig-leaf funding.

In other words, they are exposed as lying-hypocritical, outright-cheating election thieves. And the same goes for anyone who defends this foul crime against democracy.  When you make excuses for cheating, well, we all know what you were like on the playground, as a kid. A cheater and a bully.  Character. It all-too often continues into adulthood, unchanged. Alas.


Addendum #3:  See this variation on my theme, by Morgan Draper Kauffman, whose Interlock Project might also be of interest to you centrist policy wonks out there, sifting to prepare a chart of how our myriad modern issues are tied together in vexing ways.  

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150 years after Lincoln at Gettysburg… Can we maintain our resolve? Our Union?

Drew Gilpin Faust, the president of Harvard University, is a historian and author of “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War.” In her recent article - 150 Years after the Gettysburg Address, Is government by the people in trouble? - Dr. Faust offers an eloquent and quite moving exploration of the context in which Abraham Lincoln transformed his earlier "hopeful" rhetoric into the more hardened sense of passion that spoke to his contemporaries' aching hearts about "dedication" and "resolve" -- a determination that something more must come out of all their shared sacrifice than mere preservation of a national union.

Seared by fire and blood, the newly emerging version of the United States of America would have to be something finer. In the spirit of a "new birth of freedom," it must forever aspire to be better, then better still.

That sense of resolution is currently at stake, as we confront the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address -- widely considered to be the most impactful speech -- (certainly on a per-word basis) -- in the last several centuries. Greatly noted and long remembered, it has been compared by some (including myself) to the inspiring "funeral oration" of the great Athenian leader, Pericles. (As conveyed to us by Thucydides.)

Only with this vital difference.  Both men died before completing their tasks.  But, unlike those who followed Pericles, we appear to have been ready, after Lincoln, to forge ahead in victory and determination. His words, burning in our hearts, continued making a difference at crucial moments for six succeeding generations, so that the Great Experiment thrived and survived every intervening crisis.

Across the succeeding four score and seventy years, each of those generations found itself disturbed, provoked, challenged not only by foreign dangers, domestic ructions or tsunamis of both immigration and seismic technological change, but also by torments of conscience, as each generational wave gradually matured enough to recognize what its parents could not…

… such as the litany of crimes that had served as bloody mortar, sealing the nation's foundation in a gritty blend of both hope and sin.  Or the waste of human potential that (across more than 6000 years) had dogged and hampered every society that ever pre-judged vast numbers of distinct individuals, based on accidents of birth or gender, class or race.  Or how to deal with the alluring drug of empire, when Pax Americana faced the same temptations that turned earlier great powers into tyrants...

...a dilemma that we handled - if not perfectly - then less-horribly than any other nation that was ever so-tempted.  In part because of the moral ember that Abraham Lincoln sealed into our hearts, smoldering there to remind us that democracy and wealth and power and even freedom become meaningless, unless they accompany a fierce ambition. To aspire. To become better. Together.

That is my brief rumination upon this 150 year-old epochal masterpiece of sadness and solace, of courage and resolve, of dedication to our common project, our shared experiment, our unfinished work called America.

== Oh, but it is always in danger ==

Only there is more… there is always much, much more.  Such as how Lincoln's Gettysburg Address relates to this time. More than ever, it is pertinent to our present set of crises.

For, now we Americans are engaged in a new phase of civil war.  Not yet violent to any significant degree and we can pray to almighty providence that things will stay that way. But there is no question that forces are at work upon this continent, testing whether this nation, or any nation so conceived, can long endure.

Look at the political map of our bitter, partisan divide, and just try telling yourself that it's not the very same struggle. Not over slavery or freedom or states' rights, which -- for all their importance -- were surface matters of dispute, symptoms of a fissure that plunges deeper than even those great matters. So deep, because America and Americans seem divided by differing, incompatible dreams.

One side of our national character hungers for change and tomorrow. To treat the future - the range of possible futures -- as ambition-attracting terra incognita, across which our children will explore and stride, better than we are in every way, even if that means repudiating many of our now-unclear assumptions and errors! Preparing those much-better generations for a boundless future is our dedicated proposition. Our mission.

But there is an opposing passion -- the temptation to wallow in nostalgia, romanticism, sanctimony, authority and the comforting rigidity-of-caste that dominated nearly every other civilization, across 6000 years.  It was called feudalism and humanity's greatest heroes fought to liberate us from that beastly, limiting and dismally stupid way of life.

Those who would restore the feudal yoke have always been with us, gathering forces, conniving, aiming persuasive dogma-incantations at both extremes of the vile "left-right political axis." These would-be lords (whether aristocrats or commissars) are spurred by deeply human impulses, arising largely out of male cojones. Impulses that whisper - "You could be a lord, build harems, dominate. Your wealth and power were all self-earned! They arose from inherent superiority! Never imagine that mere luck might have played a role. Or the coordinated creativity of a great nation, or the brilliance of a whole people and civilization. You owe nothing back. The sheep owe you everything."

Boringly predictable, heard in every ancient palace, this rationalization propels ingrate-lords who call themselves "job-creators" while creating few jobs, except for the propagandists that they hire en masse to rail against Abraham Lincoln's high aspiration. Or against scientists, teachers, professors, civil servants, journalists, economists, skilled laborers, law professionals, diplomats, medical doctors -- every profession of ambitious, forward-looking knowledge and skill.

But one core thing is under attack, more than any other. That is the very idea of shared endeavor, of joint action, of common projects that are mediated-by and consensus-chosen through the process of politics that we call "government"… this very idea is denounced as anathema, as repulsive, as inherently evil.

How far has this mania gone? So far that even members of the United States military officer corps  are experiencing real fear for the republic that they love. To which they dedicated their full measure of devotion.

== The passing generation of heroes ==

As happened in 1861, a major fraction of our countrymen have been talked into suckling nostalgic future-rejection and caste-romanticism. Enraged, they'll fight for New Confederacy lords whose "plantations" now span Wall Street, cyberspace and ten million secret accounts in foreign private-banking havens.

How ironic, for this coincides with the passing of the Greatest Generation -- men and women who fought down the curse of Hitlerism, who overcame the First Great Depression, who embraced the plan of Marshall, Truman, Acheson and Eisenhower to contain communism peacefully until its fever broke… without nuclear annihilation. All so that their unique nation might live.

A generation that created the mighty American middle class, amid a burst of entrepreneurial productivity so fantastic that their children could afford to take on ancient evils that all others had taken for granted, like racism, sexism and environmental blindness.  The brave men, living and dead, who struggled in those mighty causes shared one trait more common than any other.  The Greatest Generation adored Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- once compared lovingly and in all ways to Lincoln -- but who now one third of our fellow citizens have been talked into equating with Satan Incarnate.

How long until the same thing is done to Honest Abe?

This ongoing struggle is not (despite propaganda) about 'left-versus-right.'  Not when entrepreneurship, small business, federal fiscal responsibility and the middle class always do far better under democrats than under the Republican Party. We could fill page after page with clear evidence that the father of capitalism and the "First Liberal" -- Adam Smith -- would today be a democrat.

No.  When the rhetoric has devolved into a universal and blanket spite toward all government, in principle, and when the greatest sin  -- as perceived by one third of our fellow citizens -- is to even speak of compromise, negotiation, deliberation or an agile freedom from constraining dogma, then we have come full circle.

== For we, the living… ==

One hundred and fifty years after Abraham Lincoln urged our predecessors to advance the unfinished work which the heroes of Gettysburg so nobly advanced, we should read his words again, letting them roll in our heads and off our tongues. And then we must rise to our feet, in similar, steely resolve that the epochal achievements of those who came before us shall not have been in vain.

Oh, this phase of the American Civil War will end as the others did, with victory for Union and moderation and freedom, plus continuation of our ambition to forge ahead.  Mostly as individuals and families and self-formed teams…

...but also with great projects that we choose by "governmental" processes that -- even when filthy-political -- still often launch us forward.  To conquer polio and build internets. To educate one and all. To create the world's finest universities. To span the continent with highways and dams and electricity… then to preserve much of the rest for future generations. To probe ahead, with the tools of science, for mistakes to catch and solve in the nick of time. To keep the world's longest and greatest peace. To step onto the surface of the Moon.  To aim for the stars.

But first, it will take resolve -- stopping those who would end the Experiment amid dogma and rage. We intend to welcome them back, with charity for all, when this latest fever breaks!  Abe Lincoln showed us how.

But till then, it must simply be stopped.  The oligarchy-financed attempted putsch. And the nostalgic-romantic lunacy that makes so many citizens of a great and free republic screech their hateful vow --

-- that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall perish from the earth.

Deep insights on info-age problems -- without solutions...

Here and there, we see glimmers of some folks out there starting to get it.  What this era is about.  What it needs.

For example, Josh Klein, on Slate, offers a thoughtful rumination, Privacy isn't a Right; It's a Commodity, on how big companies are accessing and using our meta-data… and that this is only truly unfair if it remains a one-way street.  He suggests that "privacy" isn't the issue.  It is how to enforce our rights and interests in benefiting from our own data.

Far more often, you find cases in which fine insights and great erudition culminate in… the most dreary of unimaginative conclusions, alas! Still, you take what you can get, these days, so let's  have a glance at one recent article that starts and continues brilliantly - laying down insights about the dilemmas of our age -- before a disappointing end, where the reader had hoped for cogent suggestions.

In the transcript of a speech,  "Tradeoffs in Cyber Security," Dan Geer - a computer security analyst and risk management specialist - offers up a paragraph redolent with insight and meaning, even extracted from his overall context:

"The essential character of a free society is this: That which is not forbidden is permitted.  The essential character of an unfree society is the inverse, that which is not permitted is forbidden. The U.S. began as a free society without question; the weight of regulation, whether open or implicit, can only push it toward being unfree.  Under the pressure to defend against offenders with a permanent structural advantage, defenders who opt for forbidding anything that is not expressly permitted are encouraging a computing environment that does not embody the freedom with which we are heretofore familiar."

(Sharp readers may note this echoes a particular scene in EXISTENCE.)

Geer goes on to show the fundamental problem faced by anyone aiming to exert control, even control that aims for the safety and protection of the public:  "Moore's Law continues to give us two orders of magnitude in compute power per dollar per decade while storage grows at three orders of magnitude and bandwidth at four.  These are top-down economic drivers.  As such, the future is increasingly dense with stored data but, paradoxically, despite the massive growth of data volume, that data becomes more mobile with time."

It is a very rich speech - idea-wise.  Here's another pungent paragraph:

"We are ever more a service economy, but every time an existing service disappears into the cloud, our vulnerability to its absence increases.  Every time we ask the government to provide goodnesses that can only be done with more data, we are asking government to collect more data. 

"Let me ask a yesterday question: How do you feel about traffic jam detection based on the handoff rate between cell towers of those cell phones in use in cars on the road?  Let me ask a today question: How do you feel about auto insurance that is priced from a daily readout of your automobile's black box?  Let me ask a tomorrow question: In what calendar year will compulsory auto insurance be more expensive for the driver who insists on driving their car themselves rather than letting a robot do it?  How do you feel about public health surveillance done by requiring Google and Bing to report on searches for cold remedies and the like?  How do you feel about a Smart Grid that reduces your power costs and greens the atmosphere but reports minute-by-minute what is on and what is off in your home?  Have you or would you install that toilet that does a urinalysis with every use?"

These snippets merely sample an extremely thought-provoking speech that merits close reading. Another example: "It is not heartless to say that if every human life is actually priceless, then it follows that there will never be enough money.  One is not anti-government to say that doing a good job at preventing terrorism is better than doing a perfect job."

Where Geer fails is toward the end.  Having assembled many parts and perspectives of a daunting future, he disappoints with suggestions that amount to shrugs of "what'ch gonna do?"

Above all, Geer fails to seek out the intrinsic ways in which these zero-sum or negative-sum problems can be turned positive sum, by turning away from the paternalistic protection model, and back to one that worked for our predecessors, stretching back 300 years, who also had to deal with their own crises of expanding information. They resolved the problem by relying primarily on the robust resilience of distributed systems, especially those consisting of a knowing and empowered citizenry. In other words, lateral stability and resilience, versus vertical fragility.

That is intrinsically the basis for our enlightenment and every aspect of our social contract, and yet it is the last approach that most people -- even smart ones -- ever turn to.  Least of all smug "heroes" like Julian Assange, who claim to have the Peoples' interests at heart. Fundamentally, the message preached by Hollywood has taken root: do not expect anything from your fellow citizens. The only ones you could possibly rely on, over the long run.

Geer does refer glancingly to this possibility of a positive sum outcome from synergies of reciprocal and isotropic transparency… alas, only to dismiss it from mind.  He starts by citing an old debate in this topic...

"David Brin was the first to suggest that if you lose control over what data is collected on you, the only freedom-preserving alternative is that if everyone else does, too.  If the government or the corporation can surveil you without asking, then the balance of power is preserved when you can surveil them without asking.  Bruce Schneier countered that preserving the balance of power doesn't mean much if the effect of new information is non-linear, that is to say if new information is the exponent in an equation, not one more factor in a linear sum."

== What does it all mean? ==

It was honest of Geer to give this two-sentence nod to the alternative approach, the only alternative to his insightful, yet suggestion-free pessimism.

Alas, he goes on the cite Bruce Schneier's shallow and refutable dismissal of sousveillance -- the "exponent" incantation, an arm waved nostrum that Schneier has never once backed-up with actual research -- while ignoring the obvious answer…

… that individual citizens can cluster. 

 That they can join non-governmental organizations, like the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation, pooling their dues and enabling such groups to hire top quality lawyers, top technical people.  

(Have YOU done this yet? It is a season when many folks start organizing their year-end giving lists. I urge you to have a look at this description of how you can help to make a better world, while barely lifting a finger.  If you can't even do this much, then don't look in the news for the root problem in the world; look in a mirror.)

 Moreover, such NGOs can also coalesce efforts and expertise from even wider arrays of volunteers, activists and tech-empowered smart mobs. (As I and some other authors portray happening ever-more in our future.) Indeed, such clusters can often rally support from foundations, companies… and even portions of government that are institutionally separated from the portions undergoing scrutiny.

One great way to enhance this effect might be to enact more substantial whistle-blower protection laws, plus philanthropist-funded "henchman's prizes" that lure the revelation of heinous schemes. Worth noting -- such methods could put an upper limit on the crucial product that gives conspirators their power -- secretiveness times nastiness times monetary resources times the number of underlings doing their bidding. If that product is kept small enough, by suppressing some factors, then those NGOs will have a real chance, and Schneier's entirely made-up "exponent" effect will be shown to be the chimera that it always was.

Indeed, my approach hearkens to the one, fundamental trick of the Smithian branch of the enlightenment.  To break up concentrations of power and to sic powerful elites against each other.  If civil servants and corporations and the varied branches of the wealthy, and NGOs and the press and academics and so on can be kept from colluding -- and incentivized to compete with each other warily, then the powerful will leap upon each others' malfeasances FOR us.  

This is not naivete, it is precisely the formula of three centuries. Moreover, snarkers who disdain this as utopian are not only unhelpful, they prove that they know nothing of the roots of their own civilization.  The factors that enabled them to sit where they now reside, mostly-free, mostly knowing -- empowered to grouse and complain.

We can argue forever over details, e.g. whether agile, analytical and deliberative tools will actually produce smart mobs as capable as I portray in EXISTENCE.  But the core point is this… not one of the grouches out there, whether brilliant as Geer or as sadly reflexive as Schneier, have ever once presented us with an alternative suggested recourse anywhere near as potentially effective as sousveillance and (near) universal transparency.

Indeed, whenever they try, a funny thing happens.

Grudgingly, half-heartedly, they wind up proposing that we use the cleansing, invigorating tonic of light. Amid much grinding of teeth, they suggest revelatory moves of reciprocal accountability that more and more resemble…

...a Transparent Society.

.
== But then… signs of hope! ==

Oh, but one sees glimmers all over! After years of misquoting my works and attributing to me positions diametrically opposite to those I clearly stated in The Transparent Society (thus proving that he never even cracked open a copy of the book), it seems that at last security maven Bruce Schneier is starting to get the need for an open and accountable world.  He still believes shrouds and secrecy can work for the common man, a charming naiveté.  But in another recent piece, it seems that at last he now accepts we must aggressively look back at power.

In The Battle for Power on the Internet, Schneier discusses how cloud computing and tighter vendor control over operating systems is forcing users into constraints that were much looser in old PC days.  "I have previously characterized this model of computing as "feudal." Users pledge their allegiance to more powerful companies who, in turn, promise to protect them from both sysadmin duties and security threats. It's a metaphor that's rich in history and in fiction, and a model that's increasingly permeating computing today."

And: "It's not all bad, of course. We, especially those of us who are not technical, like the convenience, redundancy, portability, automation, and shareability of vendor-managed devices. We like cloud backup. We like automatic updates. We like not having to deal with security ourselves. We like that Facebook just works -- from any device, anywhere."

-- Solid stuff… that I have been saying for years. Schneier goes on to describe how technological advances first are exploited by the nimble -- say "Robin Hoods" -- but eventually become power-multipliers for the already ponderous but mighty entities like nation states and corporations.

Bruce  then rises to exceptional cogency: "Transparency and oversight give us the confidence to trust institutional powers to fight the bad side of distributed power, while still allowing the good side to flourish. For if we're going to entrust our security to institutional powers, we need to know they will act in our interests and not abuse that power. Otherwise, democracy fails."

Will wonders never cease?  Welcome back toward the light.

== And finally ==

Margaret Atwood provides a thorough and nuanced review of "The Circle" by Dave Eggers - a dystopian/utopian novel of the near future when a super version of Facebook collects all lives - mostly willingly - into a version of a Transparent Society.  Mind you I don't think things would work this way.  Humans - if empowered - would insist on an equilibrium with more enforceable zones of privacy than the toilet and bedroom. Eggers is not describing humans.

Above all, and key to my argument, is that citizens empowered by transparency would be ABLE to push for such consensus reserves -- realms to be left alone. Still, exaggeration -- such as we see in "The Circle" -- is a common and effective literary technique.  (In avoiding it, I may have hurt my commercial success!) I hope some of you will report back here what you think of this book. It is at-minimum a rumination that offers much for discussion.

The Coming Transparent World

Having just returned from the huge ICT2013 conference on digital futures, run by the European Union in Vilnius, Lithuania, I ought to weigh in a little about transparency, again.  I was on right after the President of Lithuania welcomed the 6000 delegates. I got to meet Eben Upton, innovator of the Raspberry Pi, and many others who are eager to show European dynamism in the fast-changing digital age.  Speaking of which…

The European, a top policy journal, ran one of my best summaries of the argument for a Transparent Society - one in which we are all empowered to see and to hold accountable those who might harm us. I argue that this is the only way we can possibly defend freedom, safety, science, justice and - ironically - some privacy in the rapidly unfolding 21st Century. 

On the same topic, here is a very intelligent and well-written appraisal of how we might use increases in light to improve our societal health, instead of giving in to the temptation to cower and hide from the mighty:  How to Get Positive Sousveillance, an analysis from the University of Oxford.  I liked many of the bullet points (naturally.)

And see this intelligent discussion with some unusual insights, by Evgeny Morozov, in MIT's Technology Review.

Here's an interesting and insightful review of The Transparent Society. Can we thrive in the info age by embracing, not fearing the power to see?

Let's put it plainly. The opposite approach, pushed by almost everyone, simply cannot work.  That prescription -- finding ways to control and limit information flows and protect the databases from leaking -- has never once been demonstrated in practice to be effective.  Not once… ever! Instead, every couple of months another tsunami spilll takes place… from one company then an agency then a nonprofit then another trusted company... and no one learns the obvious lesson.  Take this latest example:

The company that mainstreamed desktop publishing -- Adobe -- admitted in a statement that hackers gained unauthorized access to 2.9 million customer accounts and stole part of the source code for at least two major consumer-facing products.  And you are … shocked?  How many times must this happen before we all realize that Everything Leaks?  That locks and keys and shadows will fail fundamentally and in principle!

No need for despair. There is another approach, one that works.

(Oh, for those wanting an even broader perspective, grab a PDF of my extensive talk on the future and transparency for the Potomac Institute in early 2013.)

== The NSA News just keeps coming ==

NSA internet spying sparks a race to create offshore havens for data privacy.  Yeah.  That's gonna work great.

Here's a spark of background history. The basic legal justification for the NSA and FBI tracking meta-data  on millions of phone calls came from a 1976 case against a purse-snatcher. As Wired reports: " In a rare declassified opinion (.pdf) from the FISA court released August 29, Judge Claire V. Eagan addressed the key point: If it’s legal to spy on a single purse snatcher without a warrant, then it’s legal to spy on literally everyone."

This case, Smith v. Maryland,  is highly relevant to today’s Supreme Court. When the justices ruled last year that authorities need a court warrant to affix GPS devices to vehicles, Justice Sonia Sotomayor seemed to side with privacy activists, when she mentioned Smith in a concurring opinion, noting: “it may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties.”

=== How to let them do their (supervised) jobs ===

I am frequently asked how we citizens can use transparency to stay in control over the government we own. Things are made more complicated by the fact that many of our public servants need tactical secrecy in order to do their jobs. Everyone from CIA snoops to undercover cops… they can only serve us if they can operate in shrouds and shadows to some degree, like the villains or adversaries they are investigating. It often surprises folks to learn that I - "Mr. Transparency" - have no problem with tactical secrecy, both in practice and in principle... so long as we have accountability systems in place to ensure it remains only temporary and only tactical.

Alas, this need is often pushed - as it was with the Patriot Act - as a reason to keep shadows  permanently, and thus to evade accountability. That distinction is important to keep in mind.

Here's the thing about scandals like the overweening excesses in surveillance that we are learning the NSA and others indulged-in.  Attempting to - and believing that you somehow can - shut them down is insane.

It will never work. As we saw in 2003 when John Poindexter's "Total Information Awareness" (TIA) was "stopped," amid crows of victory by the ACLU and privacy activists, with only a few of us shouting "this victory is an illusion." In fact, whenever you seem to succeed at squelching some elite power of vision the ever rising power of surveillance will only crop up elsewhere like a whack-a-mole game, as TIA re-surfaced at the NSA. Recent revelations like the NSA phone tracking system and PRISM have shown that the mighty will see. Hand-wringing over this is ineffective and -- well -- essentially stupid.

Moreover, blinding our protectors seems to be a counter-productive tradeoff, when theirs truly is a big and important job.

What we really need are better ways to supervise.  And to supervise not so much what they can see, but what they do.  Please read that sentence again.  And again until it sinks in. If you own a watchdog, what matters to you is having utter control over his actions, not (futilely) restricting what he can smell or see.

No, I am not recommending a tsunami of Edward Snowdens… though it appears that Snowden has been vastly more capable and effective than Julian Assange could ever dream of being.  And, indeed, that whistle-blower tsunami is coming, whether our public servants like it or not.  Their only options are to (1) reduce the number of secrets to a manageable number that can be curtilaged and (2) limit the number of trusted henchmen far below the absurd half a million the government security apparatus now admits they have as contractors.

Oh and one more thing… build trust. Submit to supervision by your bosses (the citizens)… or at least by our delegated and trusted ombundsmen, who are security cleared and discreet, but also answerable to us, and not to the agencies they are surveilling.

== The Inspectorate ==

Is that even possible?  Well, it has been discussed and partially implemented many times.  For example, in 1911, Sun Yat Sen, the first President of modern China, set up a constitution with a fifth branch of government -- the Inspectorate -- which would be completely independent of the executive and judicial and so on.  It did not work so well for China, because of primitive and violent circumstances. But we in the West already have virtually the entire system in place already!  All it would take is a reform that could be implemented with a one page law.

One of my longstanding suggestions for how to navigate this critical time -- maintaining freedom and empowered citizenship while allowing civil servants to do their jobs -- has been to establish the office of Inspector General of the United States,  or IGUS.  All of the inspectors in government agencies who now are trapped in conflict of interest, owing their jobs to the folks they inspect, would be transferred under the authority of a separated and uniformed service, under command of an august and utterly respected neutral… national busybody. Trained under a code of simultaneous nosiness and discretion, this corps would know how to parse a sophisticated spectrum.  How to tell legitimate tactical secrecy from borderline over-reach (meriting soft warning)… all the way to actions that break both law and honorable loyalty to the People.

Indeed, the topic is already up for discussion. As the Washington Post reported: In January, Senators Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) sent a letter to the White House co-signed by 14 other senators that urged President Obama to fill the vacant Inspector General positions at six government agencies: the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Interior, Labor and State. Some positions, such as State’s, have been vacant for as long as five years. “Inspectors General are an essential component of government oversight” and “occupy a unique role,” the senators noted. They specifically pointed to the IGs’ authority for “speaking truth to power” in addition to their “dual reporting obligations to their agency head and to Congress.”

(Unusual cogency from Mr. Coburn, I might avow.)

Still, they miss the point.  As long as the IGs are subject to cabinet officials, instead of separate from them in their own, highly-protected agency, they will not be the agents of sousveillance accountability that we need.

Indeed, even if they ever ARE so separated and empowered, it will not suffice!  

I could name a dozen other measures to ensure upward and downward reciprocal accountability while allowing our officials to do their jobs! Some are discussed in The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force us to Choose between Privacy and Freedom?

IGUS is but one of many ways that we could impose supervision… or "sousveillance"… while also getting the win-win of effective/perceptiveness by those who need to perform tactically secret tasks on our behalf.  But it is a pragmatic measure, easily and swiftly implemented. And vastly more effective than all hand-wringing re see nowadays from wailing privacy advocates.

In any event, the key point is:

THIS is where our radicalism should be pressed!  Not handwringing jeremiads and denuciations of the surveillance from above that will absolutely happen, whatever our complaints. We cannot stop the eyes above us from seeing.  But we can look back and insist that the mighty be (almost) naked. Our radicalism should not be resentful or try to blind others, it should insist upon reasonable and pragmatic tools of sousveillance and supervision. It is the only way.

== Transparency News ==

This extended article provides a look at Chicago's police-run surveillance system that deploys 1200 cameras equipped with facial recognition capabilities. I found the system itself shrug-worthy… welcome to the 21st Century. The Powers will see.  But what stirs anger and fear is the description of how secretive the Chicago Police Department has been, avoiding accountability, supervision or even queries from press or public.  That is the half we must not allow.  Alas, it is the half that the ACLU virtually ignores.

This is significant. California law to give journalists five day warning before government can access their records. California Governor Jerry Brown signed a law on Thursday to give journalists in the state five days' notice before government agencies serve subpoenas on their records held by third parties, such as phone companies and internet service providers.

Using light to skewer scoundrels!  Fake reviews are a known problem online—but New York has managed to crack down on them using an equally fake yogurt shop. After a yearlong investigation, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman this week announced that the state has reached settlements with 19 companies; they'll stop with the bogus reviews and pay $350,000 in fines. Those companies fall into two buckets: businesses that are unhappy with their review ratings on sites like Yelp, and businesses that help those companies by delivering fake reviews.

But in the long run, we need better credibility-rating services that rank order (for example) our Yelp! posting by our credibility scores. A billion dollar industry awaits the first VC who talks to me about this!

==  HFT strikes again ==

And finally… You've seen me inveigh before about how dangerous High Frequency Trading is and how vastly more dangerous it may be destined to become.  Now this. The mystery of $600 million traded in 7 milliseconds after Federal Reserve announcement.

As reported on NPR: A couple of weeks ago, the Federal Reserve announced it would not be tapering its bond buying program. The announcement came at at 2 p.m. ET. The news takes seven milliseconds — about the speed of light — to reach Chicago. But before the seven milliseconds was up, a few huge orders based on the Fed's decision were placed on Chicago exchanges. "According to trading data reviewed by CNBC, they began buying in Chicago-traded assets just before others in that city could possibly have been aware of the Fed's decision. By one estimate, as much as $600 million in assets changed hands in the milliseconds before most other traders in Chicago could learn of the Fed's September surprise.

Sound fair?  Sound like an open and flat and competitive "market"?

Mystics who think we can gain the benefits of markets without constant fine tuning and aggressive regulation are religious fanatics who never read Adam Smith and who do not give a damn about gritty reality.