<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
On 2016-04-03 12:22, John Clark wrote:<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAJPayv0WpsrZJeRccKWdMsT440StTtjHfGf2=Jvy7ndGf3obcg@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">On Sat, Apr 2, 2016
Anders Sandberg </span><span dir="ltr"
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><<a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:anders@aleph.se"
target="_blank"><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:anders@aleph.se">anders@aleph.se</a></a>></span><span
style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"> wrote:</span><br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_quote"><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">
> </div>
My own view is basically that (1) Brin is right:
transparent, accountable open societies for the win.</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font
size="4">I presume that wouldn't include the entire
world knowing my credit card number.</font></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
The problem with credit card numbers is that currently we use
security by obscurity: much of your protection comes from me not
knowing your number, rather than restrictions on how I can use it. A
good authentification system would make knowing your card number
useless to me, just as me knowing your email address doesn't allow
me to hack your mail server (some extra authentification needed to
ensure that I don't forge emails from you). Now imagine a 100%
surveillance world. In this world there would not be a need for a
passwords or codes, since in principle whenever you wanted to use
your card the system could just trace you back to the moment you got
the card at the bank years before. Personal continuity makes for a
great authentification system. <br>
<br>
Being accountable means that if you do something, others can respond
appropriately to it. The tricky part is of course the appropriate
part: this is where the tolerance, and secondary levels of
accountability comes in (the legitimacy of enforcement). Open
societies are all about having rules that can be changed and the
ability to add new functions as desired. This also matters on the
private level: allowing people's roles in our life change flexibly,
and allowing us to change the norms we run our social lives on. <br>
<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAJPayv0WpsrZJeRccKWdMsT440StTtjHfGf2=Jvy7ndGf3obcg@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div> </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">
> </div>
But (2) to really work they need to be tolerant.<br>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<font size="4">Yes, if the NSA knows all there is to know
about me then I should know all there is to know about the
NSA, and if they have a surveillance camera watching me
then I should have a equally good surveillance camera
watching them. But for laws that transparency must be
reciprocal to be enforced X would have to prove that Y has
a secret he is not telling X, and governments are likely
to have more resources to conceal things than individuals
have to reveal them. So in the real world Brin's
"Transparent Society" is unlikely to be symmetrical; not a
plane of clear glass
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">
but </div>
more like a one way mirror. <br>
</font></div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
This is exactly what he discusses in the book, and argues for
strategies to get one way mirrors out of the way.<br>
<br>
Note that a transparent intelligence agency in a less than 100%
transparent world doesn't necessarily have to reveal all it knows.
It can reveal that it monitors the world, but not the information it
has gathered. It can show what routines are in place to figure out
bad activities worth taking action against without saying what bad
guys it currently looks for - but leave ways to verify by current
oversight and the future that it acted within the bounds of the law.
(Yes, revealing this can in principle help bad guys, but I think
Kerckhoffs's principle applies here to - you cannot make a
cryptosystem/intelligence system much safer by hiding the principles
of its operation, and the lack of critique and checking means
vulnerabilities become deeper). <br>
<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University</pre>
</body>
</html>