Transparent society

Bryn argues that the basic level of privacy that protects the most intimate part of our lives can be maintained, despite the rapid technological progress of surveillance cameras, which are becoming less and less, cheaper, all the spread, progressing at a rate exceeding Moore's Law . He believes that basic privacy can be maintained simply because people deeply need it. Based on this, Bryn explains that "... the main question is whether a person is capable, independent and knowledgeable to the extent to pursue his basic desires."

This means that people should have not only rights, but the ability to exercise them, as well as the ability to determine when their rights are violated. Ironically, this is only possible in a world that is as transparent as possible. A world in which citizens know almost everything that happens at almost any time. This is the only condition under which citizens will be able to identify violators of their freedoms and privacy. The inviolability of private life is possible only if the rights and freedoms (including the right to knowledge) are already secured.

Thus, Bryn characterizes privacy as a “derivative right,” which derives from more basic rights, such as the right to know and the right to speak. He recognizes that such an open world will seem more demanding and straining; it is expected that people will have to find solutions that balance privacy and knowledge. There will be a desire to issue laws that limit the power of the authorities to observe, ensuring their activities in the direction of protecting privacy and the comfortable illusion of privacy. In contrast, in a transparent society, this illusion will be destroyed because everyone can access the vast majority of available information.

Bryn believes that it will be useful for society if the powers of observation are shared with citizens, allowing for so-called backward observation ( enabling Sousveillance ) and giving society the opportunity to observe the observers. According to Brin, this simply continues the direction that Adam Smith , John Locke , the founding fathers of the United States and the Enlightenment philosophers and philosophers of the Enlightenment, who were of the opinion that any elite (commercial, domineering or aristocratic) should experience and there is no better equalizer of power than knowledge. ^[four]

Transparency is often confused with equilibrium observation ( eng. Equiveillance ) (the balance between observation and reverse observation ). This balance (equilibrium) allows individuals to build their own system of evidence collected by themselves, in contrast to the calculation of access to records of observation systems that may possibly contain evidence against them. Thus, reverse observation, in addition to transparency, provides contextual integrity of the data obtained by observation systems. For example, a permanent record of one’s own life events ^[5] may be “better evidence” than data from surveillance systems and protects against the ability to use data from surveillance systems in isolation from context.

Being more detailed than just a “privacy denier”, Brin devotes an entire chapter, discussing how important it is to maintain some level of privacy for most people, giving them opportunities for intimacy, sharing confidential and preparing, in some security, for competition. At the same time, he assumes that at the present time, we have a greater degree of personal inviolability than our ancestors, in particular, because “the last two hundred years have been characterized by the opening of information flows, and not their closure. Citizens have more opportunities to expose violators of their rights and bring them to justice compared to how people lived in old villages, being dominated by the local nobility, gossip and hooligans. ”

This may seem, at first glance, illogical. But it should be understood that while walking on a dark night along a dark road, we constantly look around precisely in order to be able to protect ourselves. Bryn also points out restaurants in which social disapproval limits people's ability to spy or eavesdrop, despite the fact that they can do so. And the implementation of this limitation is possible precisely because everyone sees each other.

From this point of view, the coming epoch, when “the majority of people know most of the information about each other most of the time,” will simply be a continuation of what the Enlightenment has already given us - freedom and inviolability of personal life. For comparison, Bryn argues about an alternative, “when will privacy laws be implemented in a way that benefits the elites and we have to believe that they don’t watch us?”

Bryn participated in the 2005 opening of the panel discussion of the Computer Engineering Association (ACM) at the “Computers, Freedom and Privacy” conference, where 500 reverse observation devices were provided to participants to update the debates that took place. Each visitor received a portable panoramic camera, which reproduced the idea of ​​the reverse (reverse) panopticon .

Brin used versions of this concept in his writings.

In the novel Earth , describes the history of the future, in which the war took place between most of the Earth and Switzerland , which arose from the fact that Switzerland allowed generations of kleptocrats to harbor their stolen wealth in Swiss banks . The war led to the abolition of banking secrecy and the destruction of Switzerland as a nation. Also in the future, it was an increasingly common practice for elderly pensioners to wear special glasses equipped with video cameras and communication systems.

His novel Kiln People describes a future in which cameras are common everywhere and everyone can access public cameras for free and private ones for money.

• Tacit observation
• Transparency (behavior)
• Transparency (social)
• Rekonism

• Brin, David. The Transparent Society (English) // Wired : magazine. - CondéNet, 1996. - December ( no. 4.12 ).
• Articles on Brin's official page .
• The pitfalls of privacy .
• Text snippet
• Blog on reverse observation
• Computer Engineering Association (ACM) Computers, freedom and privacy (CFP) Opening of the conference in which Bryn took part
• Book overview for RAND 's List of 50 books for understanding the future of mankind
• Russian-language resource dedicated to the description of a social system based on mutual transparency.

Reviews

• Gross, Neil . Everyone Is Living in a Fishbowl , BusinessWeek , The McGraw-Hill Companies (1998). The appeal date is March 14, 2008.
• Frye, Curtis D .. Review of The Transparent Society , Technology & Society Book Reviews , Curtis D. Frye (1998). The appeal date is March 14, 2008.
• Finnern, Mark . Future Salon blog Transparent Society Update , Acceleration Studies Foundation (15 August 2004). The appeal date is March 14, 2008.