David Brin: We’d better get used to watching the watchmen

Total Information Awareness?   NSA (the National Security Agency) is building a mammoth electronic spy center in Utah. The $2 billion Utah Data Center, to be completed by Sept. 2013, will be five times the size of the US Capitol. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher and analyze torrents of information flowing through the world’s communications databases— with an ability to handle yottabytes of data. Much of it international but a fair amount obtained by sifting intra-U.S. phone and email traffic.

What does this have to do with transparency and freedom and all that?Only this.Our protectors of online liberty, ranging from the ACLU and EFF and Privacy NGOs all the way to European Privacy Bureaucrats, are all very well-meaning – but clueless if they think laws, regulations and procedures will prevent elites (over the long run) from seeing anything that they want to see, or knowing whatever is within reach to know. Why? It’s simple and basic. We’re monkeys!  And a powerful monkey will not let you prevent him from seeing. Name one nation in all of human history where the elites allowed this to happen.  One.On the other hand, we can prevent the mighty from becoming tyrants by looking back!  If we master the arts of sousveillance or watching the watchers, then no matter what they know about us, there will be limits to what they can do to us.

The chilling thing about the new NSA facility is not how much better it will let government “protectors” see, in order to better protect us.  The scary thing is that there won’t be officers of a uniformed and independent Inspectorate, roaming the halls on our behalf, making sure that protection is the only thing going on.  Or better yet, dozens of randomly chosen citizens (with security clearance) whose universal-access badges give them the right to poke their heads in any door and ask any question.

Inconvenient?  Irksome?  Will the protectors complain?  Tough. We need to demand that price! In exchange for their omniscience, they must surrender any chance of omnipotence, by letting us wrap them in chains of accountability. A chain we can yank, to remind our watchdog THAT he is a dog… lest he start thinking like a wolf.

An App for Reporting Crime

Want to report a crime, terrorist alert…or just snitch on your neighbors? The new Suspicious Activity Reporting Application, a crime-reporting app for your Smartphone, lets you snap a pic, and anonymously voice your suspicions to authorities. Developed by the West Virginia Division of Homeland Security, the free app is available through iTunes.

“The longer you wait the less accurate eyewitness information becomes and evidence fades,” said Thom Kirk, Director of the West Virginia Intelligence Fusion Center. “Enabling the information to be sent at the time the activity is taking place will not only improve the accuracy of the report, but also improve the ability of the authorities to respond quickly.”

Is this an aid to community policing or a way to harass your neighbors; a powerful tool against terrorism or the next step toward Big Brother?

Or rather… clearly if we all have this, then Big Brother becomes impossible!  But (as I explore in The Transparent Society) might this lead to a nation and world filled with oppressive little brothers?  With nosy neighbors bullying each other, or tyranny by a perfectly democratic 51%?  I show good reasons to believe we may evade this pitfall too!  But not if we remain mired in civil war.

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