From: Heather Schneider <hms2103@columbia.edu>
  To  : <cpc@emoglen.law.columbia.edu>
  Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 07:46:26 -0500

RE: Paper 1: A Transparent Future

Eric - 
Eric - 

Unfortunately, your idea of total transparency really scares me. Instead
of fostering a liberating world where people are more tolerant and
open-minded, I fear it will just give people more ammunition for
prejudice and hatred, especially against unpopular minorities

Let's take the example of race. That's a pretty "transparent"
characteristic, one that you can't hide in the normal physical world
(although you can hide it in cyberspace). But many people are still
racist.  Does a white racist really look around and say "look there are
so many blacks I will stop hating them"? 

Why do you think it will be any different if homosexuality or other
characteristics become as "transparent"?  It's true, that if a homophobe
finds out one of his friends is gay he may say "Wow, I never knew gay
people could be normal people like me. I will try to be more open and
understanding." Or more likely he will say "Oh no. I thought you were
one of 'us' but you aren't. Now I hate you, too."

You may not be afraid of total transparency because you may not have any
unpopular or uncommon traits. Maybe your biggest secret is that you look
at porn and you think that majority of the population does too. But
those of us who are in the minority and have unpopular
social/religious/political/sexual beliefs and habits may fear that we
will not gain acceptance in a world of total transparency. 

-Heather




-----Original Message-----
From: owner-cpc@emoglen.law.columbia.edu
[mailto:owner-cpc@emoglen.law.columbia.edu] On Behalf Of Eric Rauch
Sent: Friday, March 11, 2005 12:30 AM
To: cpc@emoglen.law.columbia.edu
Subject: Paper 1: A Transparent Future


                Spam, identity theft, shameful exposure, and
warrant-free surveillance are all products of the boom in information
mining and weakening privacy protections.  They are just a few of the
horribles paraded before us by privacy advocates.  Should we be
persuaded?  Should we aspire to a society where all conduct is
shielded by reactionary legislation, lead walls, and 128bit ciphers? 
These solutions might remedy some of our present day problems but they
will fail us in the long run.  So we would be better off giving up on
privacy and liberalizing restrictions on the collection and transfer
of information.  If we move in this direction, the problems cited
above might get worse before they get better because they are all
caused by incomplete or inaccurate information, but eventually we will
reach a point where total transparency is optimal.  Transparency in
conjunction with the inexorable progress of technology will insure
that we can pull what we want from the world, the world can push us
what we need, that government will be able to deter dangerous conduct
without infringing our on civil liberties, and that problems of
inaccuracy or incomplete information will be eliminated.
	The convergence of several technological trends will push
society
towards this information utopia.  Data storage media get cheaper and
smaller every year, and computer processing power continues to grow
geometrically.  These developments increase our capacity to record,
archive, and evaluate conduct such that future behavior may be
predicted, and so that information about past occurrences is
ascertainable.  Impairing data collection will decrease the
availability of information and will lessen the value of predictive
software, and search software that use data as an input.
	These types of software will improve our ability to pull what we
want
from the world.  Effective searching will enable us to learn about our
world and locate people or groups that supply things we demand and
demand things we supply.  By things I don't just mean consumer
products, I use the word in its broadest sense, and mean to include
romantic love, companionship, intellectual collaboration, political
opinions etc..  Search software would incorporate predictive tools
that would save the user the time of contacting a potential lover who
would probably not find the user attractive, sending a job application
to a company that would not employ the user, or soliciting a consumer
who lacks the ability to purchase the user's merchandise.  In effect
these technologies will facilitate friction free interaction on a
world wide scale.  Restricting access to information creates friction,
i.e. transaction costs.  These costs inhibit effective communication
and limit the access of those with limited means.  Accordingly as long
as there is friction, wealthy individuals will have an advantage in
business and will dominate public discourse.
	Switching perspective, it should also be clear that transparency
will
maximize others' ability to push us what we need.  If people know what
we want and what we have to offer it should be trivial for those who
can meet our demands or require our services to contact us.  As long
as publicly available information about us is accurate and search and
predictive software is effective, we might realize all productive
interactions without initiating any action.  It would also be possible
for malevolent individuals to contact us, but predictive software
would enable us to block these individuals or even predict their
behavior so they can be avoided in the first place.  Spam would cease
to exist, as the powerful software we hypothesize would enable
companies to perfectly target their solicitations.  Communicating to
uninterested individuals would not be profitable and it might give a
company a bad reputation such that future communications would be
blocked.
	A transparent world would also lead to superior governmental
control
of dangerous conduct.  More crime would be prevented because of
superior capacity to monitor and predict conduct, and a higher
percentage of criminals would be caught so criminals could be deterred
by lesser penalties.  Deterrence is proportional to awareness of the
penalties, chance of getting caught, speed of apprehension and
punishment, and severity of the penalties.  In a transparent world the
first three factors will approach a maximum so that the same level of
deterrence that the government maintains now with draconian
punishments could be achieved with much more humane sanctions.  These
sanctions would only need to exceed the benefit of committing the
crime by a small amount to be effective.  More mild penalties would
have a less disruptive effect on criminals lives and so more of them
could be effectively rehabilitated.
                 In this hypothetical utopia there would be no
identity theft as misidentification is ultimately a problem of
inaccurate or incomplete information.  Many of the other problems that
are linked to information availability would disappear because they
are also caused by incomplete or inaccurate information.  For example,
the two problems that are most often cited as justifications for the
maintenance of privacy, public embarrassment and governmental
surveillance, would be resolved by more complete more accurate
information.
                 Public exposure of a shameful secret can be used to
discredit an enemy, and the threat of exposure is the most common form
of blackmail.  Embarrassment is usually caused by the revelation of
past behavior that is considered to be shameful.  For behavior to be
shameful it usually must be atypical or misunderstood, as society
usually condones common conduct, or behavior that seems to be
rational.  If all information was public it would become clear to most
that a very wide range of behavior was normal and information that was
formerly shameful would no longer be stigmatized, and would no longer
have power as a weapon.  Furthermore, all behavior would be better
understood, so even those who don't practice a behavior would be more
likely to understand and accept it.  Even if a particular behavior did
not achieve mainstream acceptance those who would have lived in
private shame would be able to form a community consisting of all
likeminded individuals.  People have similar impulses so it is likely
that anyone no matter how bizarre could make friends with kindred
spirits in a world of perfect information.  Surely this is superior to
the life of forced solitude that is imposed by an unaccepting culture
where privacy is possible.
	Governmental surveillance is problematic now because it can be
used
to unearth the embarrassing secrets of government opponents or to
generate evidence of unlawful conduct.  As described above, the former
use of surveillance will be eradicated.  The latter possibility is
problematic because so much common conduct is currently illegal and
violators are rarely penalized.  This allows the government to
selectively enforce the laws against its enemies, effectively
controlling conduct that could not otherwise be regulated.  In a
transparent society the laws would be more likely to be enforced
against everyone, because it would be cheap to do so, and laws that
criminalized common behaviors and impacted empowered groups would not
be allowed to stand.  Thus the government would lose its other
improper use of surveillance.

-Eric Rauch


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