Think of the absurdity of this situation. We all get together and vote to pay one group of people to keep us safe from another group of people, and then cheer for the ability to evade the people we hired.
It sure seems like the overwhelming majority of law-abiding citizens with an opinion disagree with the extent of electronic surveillance (maybe it’s just this echo chamber). So, is democracy working? Are we all grossly misinformed about the terrible things that this prevents? How can democracy work if we are so uninformed?
People talk about abolishing police, and I wonder what would come of that. I believe that the popular will toward some form of community protective services is so strong that it would materialize out of necessity. But in what form? Even the cartels deliver world-class public safety for their territories, but only if you tolerate their own atrocities.
The justification of electronic surveillance is mostly stated in terms of physical crime prevention. This suggests that the forces on the ground are basically incompetent. Any sort of real-world crime that would require large-scale electronic communication, involves a lot of people, and leaves a lot of physical evidence. It just can’t go on within a community that trusts and invites law enforcement.
Likewise in the electronic world, certain levels of surveillance are welcomed. Most people would probably rather use a platform that recovered funds from hacks and scams. But this doesn’t seem to be its purpose. Actually we have no idea what is being watched or why, and the only thing we observe from officials is political shoe-banging against whatever group of citizens are the objects of today’s moral outrage. So it’s pretty easy to become extremely paranoid, and reject all forms of surveillance in favor of accepting the risk of all those terrible things that it may or may not have prevented.
So if this is the wrong idea, it seems pretty easy to fix with transparency. What do we really gain by operating in the shadows? I see this as somewhat similar to the comparison between proprietary and open source models. The Britannica is dead. Transparency allows trust and collaboration from sources that never would have been able to contribute. And what if criminals knew what evidence is being collected on them? My best guess is that 99% of criminals would give up at the first sign of trouble. Transparency is the ultimate force multiplier. The greatest victory is to win without a fight. We forget this. It feels good to fight and win and get a medal at the award ceremony. Transparent power is boring, safe, democratic.
It sure seems like the overwhelming majority of law-abiding citizens with an opinion disagree with the extent of electronic surveillance (maybe it’s just this echo chamber). So, is democracy working? Are we all grossly misinformed about the terrible things that this prevents? How can democracy work if we are so uninformed?
People talk about abolishing police, and I wonder what would come of that. I believe that the popular will toward some form of community protective services is so strong that it would materialize out of necessity. But in what form? Even the cartels deliver world-class public safety for their territories, but only if you tolerate their own atrocities.
The justification of electronic surveillance is mostly stated in terms of physical crime prevention. This suggests that the forces on the ground are basically incompetent. Any sort of real-world crime that would require large-scale electronic communication, involves a lot of people, and leaves a lot of physical evidence. It just can’t go on within a community that trusts and invites law enforcement.
Likewise in the electronic world, certain levels of surveillance are welcomed. Most people would probably rather use a platform that recovered funds from hacks and scams. But this doesn’t seem to be its purpose. Actually we have no idea what is being watched or why, and the only thing we observe from officials is political shoe-banging against whatever group of citizens are the objects of today’s moral outrage. So it’s pretty easy to become extremely paranoid, and reject all forms of surveillance in favor of accepting the risk of all those terrible things that it may or may not have prevented.
So if this is the wrong idea, it seems pretty easy to fix with transparency. What do we really gain by operating in the shadows? I see this as somewhat similar to the comparison between proprietary and open source models. The Britannica is dead. Transparency allows trust and collaboration from sources that never would have been able to contribute. And what if criminals knew what evidence is being collected on them? My best guess is that 99% of criminals would give up at the first sign of trouble. Transparency is the ultimate force multiplier. The greatest victory is to win without a fight. We forget this. It feels good to fight and win and get a medal at the award ceremony. Transparent power is boring, safe, democratic.