From: Eric Rauch <erauch@gmail.com>
  To  : <cpc@emoglen.law.columbia.edu>
  Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 22:20:48 -0400

Eric Rauch, Paper 2: One Way Mirrors Are as Good as Plain Old Glass

Eric Rauch
Paper 2
One Way Mirrors Are as Good as Plain Old Glass

In my last paper I explained why transparency is preferable to
privacy.  Eben conceded that sunlight is the best disinfectant but
insisted that the rich and powerful would employ their greater
resources to avoid the scathing rays.  He imagined that the elite
would stand behind one way glass allowing them to collect everyone
else's personal information without revealing themselves or the
information that they had garnered.  In this world of asymmetrical
transparency Eben thought that there would be two major problems: 1)
private interests would be able to use the information to manipulate
the general populace with highly targeted advertising, and 2)
government would be able to employ similar manipulations or use its
monopoly on force to persecute individuals using knowledge of illegal
conduct.  The prospect of such a dystopia is frightening, but
fortunately I think that market forces would conspire to make a world
of one way mirrors function in the same favorable ways as one with
only clear glass.

Problem 1

The private elite are not a monolithic entity, rather within this
class there are distinct parties that will compete when they have
divergent interests.  The extent to which a party has to compete
depends on a variety of interrelated factors but it seems likely that
the level of competition will increase with advances that allow
businesses to reach consumers more easily and to know more about them.
 In a world where businesses had complete information on consumer
behavior and where they can reach them at anytime there should be
close to perfect competition.  This is the world that Eben thinks will
come to exist if we do not take drastic steps to protect our privacy. 
I hope that Eben and other privacy crusaders do not succeed because in
a world of perfect competition all of our needs would be met for the
lowest possible prices.

At any given moment there is an array of possible actions that you can
take, some of these actions will be to make a purchase.  If a business
is aware of your behavior and has a means of predicting what
possibilities will be attractive to you it will encourage you to
choose the action that results in the greatest profit to it.  Viewing
this situation in isolation it seems ominous because it seems that you
would likely be led astray by a greedy corporation, but now consider
the fact that there will be many businesses all with similar awareness
of your behavior and ability to influence it.  For every possible
action that you would be likely to take that could be exploited for
profit there should be a business encouraging you to make that choice
(as information approached perfect you would only be solicited to make
the most desirable choice because a business would not want to waste
it's resources advertising options that you will not chose, hence the
amount of spam should decrease as information improves).  Accordingly
you will be aware of many possibilities and will choose the option
that is most desirable to you.  This seems vastly superior to a world
where you would have to search out the best available option at your
own expense.  Especially when you consider that in this world of near
perfect competition you will not have to pay more than the business'
marginal cost for any purchase that you chose to make.  In fact if the
above conditions existed the consumer would always make the optimal
decision if the most desirable action for the consumer was in some
group of businesses' best interest and if we assume that the option
that is most desirable to the consumer at the moment is optimal for
that consumer overall.

If we relax these assumptions there are two possible types of
situation in which a consumer would be encouraged to make a suboptimal
choice: A) if the best action for the consumer would not lead to the
enrichment of any business, and B) if the consumer would be better
served by not following his desire at the given moment.  Fortunately,
both of these situations can be avoided by a sort of guardian-angel
business that is paid by the consumer for protection.  This business
would have the same access to consumer information as other businesses
and its sole purpose would be to protect the consumer.  It would serve
two functions.  The first would be as a spam blocker: the business
would block advertisements that would appeal to the consumer's
impulses but would encourage action that did not serve the consumer's
overall goals.  The second would be as an advocate of actions that did
not serve other corporate interests.  So if the most desirable
alternative would not enrich any corporate interests the guardian
angel would advocate it.

Problem 2 

Just as there is not a unitary private elite there is not a single all
powerful government.  While it is the case that governments are mostly
sovereign within the boarders of their territory, it seems likely that
no government will be able to extend its territory to cover the entire
globe.  Accordingly there should be multiple governments and in an
increasingly mobile society these governments will have to compete to
retain their citizens.  A totalitarian government will only be able to
retain those citizens who want to be dominated by the state.  People
who do not like their country will be lured to a country with which
they are more compatible because it seems likely that sovereign
nations will have the same ability that businesses will have to target
and advertise to interested individuals.  Those who fear malevolent
government interference should be able to find plenty of countries
that offer benevolent intervention or laissez-faire treatment.


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