We tend to be uncomfortable being tracked today because we don’t know much about who is watching us. We don’t know what they know. We have no say in how the information is used. They are not accountable to correct it. They are filming us but we can’t film them. And the benefits for being watched are murky and concealed. The relationship is unbalanced and asymmetrical.
Ubiquitous surveillance is inevitable. Since we cannot stop the system from tracking, we can only make the relationships more symmetrical. It’s a way of civilizing coveillance. This will take both technological fixes and new social norms. Science fiction author David Brin calls this the “Transparent Society,” which is also the name of his 1999 book summing up the idea. For a hint of how this scenario may be possible, consider Bitcoin, the decentralized open source currency described in Chapter 6 (Sharing). Bitcoin transparently logs every transaction in its economy in a public ledger, thereby making all financial transactions public. The validity of a transaction is verified by a coveillance of other users rather than the surveillance of central bank. For another example, traditional encryption used secret proprietary codes guarded closely. But a clever improvement called public key encryption (such as PGP) relies on code that anyone can inspect, including a public key, and therefore anyone can trust and verify. Neither of these innovations remedy existing asymmetries of knowledge; rather they demonstrate how it is possible to engineer systems that are powered by mutual vigilance.
In a coveillant society a sense of entitlement can emerge: Every person has a human right to access, and a right to benefit from, the data about themselves. But every right requires a duty, so every person has a human duty to respect the integrity of information, to share it responsibly, and to be watched by the watched.
The alternatives to coveillance are not promising. Outlawing the expansion of easy tracking will probably be as ineffectual as outlawing easy copying. I am a supporter of the whistle-blower Edward Snowden, who leaked tens of thousands of classified NSA files, revealing their role in secretly tracking citizens, primarily because I think the big sin of many governments, including the U.S., is lying about their tracking. Big governments are tracking us, but with no chance for symmetry. I applaud Snowden’s whistle-blowing not because I believe it will reduce tracking, but because it can increase transparency. If symmetry can be restored so we can track who is tracking, if we can hold the trackers accountable by law (there should be regulation) and responsible for accuracy, and if we can make the benefits obvious and relevant, then I suspect the expansion of tracking will be accepted.
I want my friends to treat me as an individual. To enable that kind of relationship I have to be open and transparent and share my life with my friends so they know enough about me to treat me personally. I want companies to treat me as an individual too, so I have be open, transparent, and sharing with them as well to enable them to be personal. I want my government to treat me as an individual, so I have to reveal personal information to it to be treated personally. There is a one-to-one correspondence between personalization and transparency. Greater personalization requires greater transparency. Absolute personalization (vanity) requires absolute transparency (no privacy). If I prefer to remain private and opaque to potential friends and institutions, then I must accept I will be treated generically, without regard to my specific particulars. I’ll be an average number.
Now imagine these choices pinned on a slider bar. On the left side of the slot is the pair personal/transparent. On the right side is the pair private/generic. The slider can slide to either side or anywhere in between. The slider is an important choice we have. Much to everyone’s surprise, though, when technology gives us a choice (and it is vital that it remain a choice), people tend to push the slider all the way over to the personal/transparent side. They’ll take transparent personalized sharing. No psychologist would have predicted that 20 years ago. If today’s social media has taught us anything about ourselves as a species, it is that the human impulse to share overwhelms the human impulse for privacy. This has surprised the experts. So far, at every juncture that offers a choice, we’ve tilted, on average, toward more sharing, more disclosure, more transparency. I would sum it up like this: Vanity trumps privacy.
For eons and eons humans have lived in tribes and clans where every act was open and visible and there were no secrets. Our minds evolved with constant co-monitoring. Evolutionarily speaking, coveillance is our natural state. I believe that, contrary to our modern suspicions, there won’t be a backlash against a circular world in which we constantly track each other because humans have lived like this for a million years, and—if truly equitable and symmetrical—it can feel comfortable.
That’s a big if. Obviously, the relation between me and Google, or between me and the government, is inherently not equitable or symmetrical. The very fact they have access to everyone’s lifestream, while I have access only to mine, means they have access to a qualitatively greater thing. But if some symmetry can be restored so that I can be part of holding their greater status to a greater accountability, and I benefit from their greater view, it might work. Put it this way: For sure cops will videotape citizens. That’s okay as long as citizens can videotape cops, and can get access to the cops’ videos, and share them to keep the more powerful accountable. That’s not the end of the story, but it’s how a transparent society has to start.
What about that state we used to call privacy? In a mutually transparent society, is there room for anonymity?
The internet makes true anonymity more possible today than ever before. At the same time the internet makes true anonymity in physical life much harder. For every step that masks us, we move two steps toward totally transparent unmasking. We have caller ID, but also caller ID block, and then caller ID–only filters. Coming up: biometric monitoring (iris + fingerprint + voice + face + heat rhythm) and little place to hide. A world where everything about a person can be found and archived is a world with no privacy. That’s why many smart people are eager to maintain the option of easy anonymity—as a refuge for the private.
However, in every system that I have experienced where anonymity becomes common, the system fails. Communities saturated with anonymity will either self-destruct or shift from the purely anonymous to the pseudo-anonymous, as in eBay, where you have a traceable identity behind a persistent invented nickname. There is the famous outlaw gang Anonymous, an ad hoc rotating band of totally anonymous volunteers. They are online vigilantes with fickle targets. They will take down ISIS militant Twitter accounts, or a credit card company that gets in their way. But while they continue to persist and make trouble, it is not clear whether their net contribution to society is positive or negative.
For the civilized world, anonymity is like a rare earth metal. In larger doses these heavy metals are some of the most toxic substances known to a life. They kill. Yet these elements are also a necessary ingredient in keeping a cell alive. But the amount needed for health is a mere hard-to-measure trace. Anonymity is the same. As a trace element in vanishingly small doses, it’s good, even essential for the system. Anonymity enables the occasional whistle-blower and can protect the persecuted fringe and political outcasts. But if anonymity is present in any significant quantity, it will poison the system. While anonymity can be used to protect heroes, it is far more commonly used as a way to escape responsibility. That’s why most of the brutal harassment on Twitter, Yik Yak, Reddit, and other sites is delivered anonymously. A lack of responsibility unleashes the worst in us.