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The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? |  | Author: David Brin
Publisher: Basic Books
Category: Book
List Price: $18.00
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Rating:  32 reviews
Sales Rank: 108474
Media: Paperback
Edition: 0
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.3 x 1.1
ISBN: 0738201448
Dewey Decimal Number: 323.448
EAN: 9780738201443
ASIN: 0738201448
Publication Date: June 1, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
David Brin takes some of our worst notions about threats to privacy and sets them on their ears. According to Brin, there is no turning back the growth of public observation and inevitable loss of privacy--at least outside of our own homes. Too many of our transactions are already monitored: Brin asserts that cameras used to observe and reduce crime in public areas have been successful and are on the rise. There's even talk of bringing in microphones to augment the cameras. Brin has no doubt that it's only a matter of time before they're installed in numbers to cover every urban area in every developed nation. While this has the makings for an Orwellian nightmare, Brin argues that we can choose to make the same scenario a setting for even greater freedom. The determining factor is whether the power of observation and surveillance is held only by the police and the powerful or is shared by us all. In the latter case, Brin argues that people will have nothing to fear from the watchers because everyone will be watching each other. The cameras would become a public resource to assure that no mugger is hiding around the corner, our children are playing safely in the park, and police will not abuse their power. No simplistic Utopian, Brin also acknowledges the many dangers on the way. He discusses how open access to information can either threaten or enhance freedom. It is one thing, for example, to make the entire outdoors public and another thing to allow the cameras and microphones to snoop into our homes. He therefore spends a lot of pages examining what steps are required to assure that a transparent society evolves in a manner that enhances rather than restricts freedom. This is a challenging view of tomorrow and an exhilarating read for those who don't mind challenges to even the most well-entrenched cultural assumptions. --Elizabeth Lewis
Product Description
A respected futurist advances an argument sure to cause debate-in a wired world, the best way to preserve our freedom will be to give up our privacy In The Transparent Society, award-winning author David Brin details the startling argument that privacy, far from being a right, hampers the real foundation of a civil society: accountability. Using examples as disparate as security cameras in Scotland and Gay Pride events in Tucson, Brin shows that openness is far more liberating than secrecy and advocates for a society in which everyone (not just the government and not just the rich) could look over everyone else's shoulders. The biggest threat to our society, he warns, is that surveillance technology will be used by too few people not by too many.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 32
 Fascinating reading October 4, 2008
Dr. Lee D. Carlson (Baltimore, Maryland USA)
How disquieting would it be if you lived in a society where every item you bought, every television show you watched, every vacation you took, in short, every activity you engaged in, was known by everyone else? Even without doing any opinion sampling, one might be confident that everyone would be uneasy about the prospects of such a society. After all, privacy has been thought of as something that cushions us against criminal acts and unwarranted intrusion by "moral" busybodies who want to tell us how to think and act, even attempting to control what we do on our mattresses. But this notion of privacy assumes that these busybodies have information on us but we do not possess any on them. What if we also possessed the same information on them? Would this make the privacy situation any more palatable for us?
The author of this book addresses these types of questions and more in this highly interesting book that should definitely be read by anyone who has an interest in the deep ethical considerations that are arriving with a vengeance as the rate of technological advancement goes into hyperdrive in the twenty-first century. The author does a good job of anticipating for the reader how technology might be dramatically influencing privacy without performing a mere extrapolation of the past.
Indeed, the author's words are sometimes very compelling, and entice the reader into asking questions about the role of government and personal reputation. It is intriguing to contemplate what it would be like to not only have your credit checked when applying for a job, but also have access to the credit files of those who want to hire you. It is intriguing to contemplate what it would be like if the government, when required under the guise of "homeland security" to access information about you, is also required to provide a great deal of information about itself. What happens when those who spy are also spied upon, when the information some obtain about us is also obtained about them?
The author refers to this equal opportunity of privacy invasion as "reciprocal transparency" in the book, and he offers an interesting discussion on its ramifications and its weaknesses. In light of the current situation in the financial markets, the ramifications of requiring senior executives to disclose all information are awesome, especially since the bureaucratic entity that is insuring this disclosure will also be required to disclose information about itself. Regulatory agencies will be required to disclose, as well as those information-robbing institutions called credit bureaus.
Having a transparent society as the author describes might run some companies out of business. Firms for example who collect financial data with the goal of developing software or mathematical models to predict spending patterns or detect fraudulent information will find themselves having to build even more powerful models, since the data they possess is not proprietary anymore. Firms that specialize in genetic information will also have to answer to insurance companies, and vice versa, since both will have information on the other's business (and personal) activities.
Information warfare takes on a new light in a transparent society. With everyone being vulnerable to everyone, the game will become one where one player will need to interpret and analyze the information in a manner that is more powerful than another. Citizens will need to have tools that not only access the information from the government, but also extract interesting patterns from it (as governments currently do their citizens). Data mining will become a 24/7 affair, where both the gathering of information and its interpretation will require the assistance of even more powerful technology, instigating a never-ending information arms race. A disturbing prospect to some, but a source of exhilaration to others.
 Do not be fooled June 30, 2007
Dana (USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This author steeps his product with an endorsement of our loss of rights, privacy, and freedom. Read 'No Pleace to Hide' by Robert O'Harrow, Jr. if you want substance and details. O'Harrow's work gets a good review from William Safire.
Important perspective on the threat to privacy posed by our technology May 17, 2007
Will Tanizaki (New York, NY)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The cameras are coming. The question is what we are going to do about it.
I bought this book because I had read some of Brin's science fiction and I was intrigued by the idea of a science fiction author taking a serious look at how our society might deal with the threat to privacy posed by coming technology. Brin demonstrates his knowledge of technological issues (videocameras, cryptography, copyright, etc.), but it was his sensitivity to social issues that impressed me.
This book really stimulated my interest in the relationship between privacy and freedom. Before reading "The Transparent Society" I had a simplistic sense that privacy was something we needed to preserve as much as possible in the face of whatever technology may come. Like many people, I've grown uncomfortable with the prevalence of surveillance as we go about our lives. I wouldn't say this book has led me to welcome the sacrifices we need to make regarding privacy--it just made me realize that we may not be able to go back to some mythical time when everybody was left alone. To use Isaiah Berlin's distinction, we may need to think more in terms of positive liberty (things we have the power to do) rather than simply negative liberty (restrictions on our actions). We need to be smart about how we navigate these waters. Brin adopts an intelligent position I have not seen put forth by anyone else. Instead of arguing that we need to shut down the flow of information gained through surveillance, Brin says we need to open up the flow of information to make it available to more people.
Brin asks which of the following two societies you would rather live in: A world where video camera surveillance is ubiquitous and all of the information is overseen by a secret elite who have the power to monitor the actions of anybody they choose. Or a "participatory panopticon" (not Brin's phrase) where everybody can watch everybody else, including regular people being able to watch the watchers? For Brin these are the two options. After all, the cameras are coming. When everybody can easily record every second of their lives, and surveillance cameras are ubiquitous (to say nothing of gnat-sized cameras), we will need to rethink what levels of privacy we are willing to accept. Right now, it seems we may be, to use Charlie Stross's phrase, "sleepwalking into a police state". It could be that what we need is not less surveillance but more "sousveillance" (watching the powerful from below).
Brin says we must answer the following questions:
"Can we stand living exposed to scrutiny, our secrets laid open if in return we get flashlights of our own that we can shine on anyone who might do us harm--even the arrogant and the strong?"
"Or is an illusion of privacy worth any price, even the cost of surrendering our own right to pierce the schemes of the powerful?"
For what it's worth, though, I can't help but think that Brin is too sanguine about opening up so much personal information from our daily lives. It is scary to think of the way things could go. Jeffrey Rosen in The Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious Age has a critique of Brin along these lines. Rosen also disputes Brin's claim that crime dropped precipitously in areas where surveillance cameras were installed.
Whatever happens, it is clear that sousveillance is something that should be pursued; we need to know more about how information about us is being used by the government, and, more importantly, by corporations. This is a position Brin advocates, and it is one in which I am agreement.
 Good book a little outdated now March 22, 2007
Mr. Nicholas R. Bundy (Topeka Ks)
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Reveals how transparent society is. Most of it we dont realize but is already in place.
 Puts NSA Wiretapping in Context July 8, 2006
Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
It is helpful to return to this book, from 1998, and to a follow on book, "the digital person" published in 2004, as context for the recent bru-ha-ha over NSA wiretapping without a warrant, and the loss to theft of tens of thousands of social security number and other personal information of veterans. Oh yes, somewhere in there, the FBI was hacked and companies like First Data are making fortunes compiling actionable profiles of individuals from disparate sources that were never approved for sharing.
This book focuses on the value of transparency and considers the key issue to be the war between secrecy versus accountability. The author directly confronts the issue of "who controls" information about YOU.
The author draws a useful comparison between the Internet, which sacrificed security for robust sharing, and the intelligence community, which chose security over sharing as its primordal principal.
The author observes that the Internet is having one undesireable effect, that of fragmenting communities that become less amenable to compromise and consensus. He points out that reality and locationally based discussion can lead to more effective consensus and compromise.
There is a useful discussion of "tagging" and how citizen truth squads and public commentary can serve as a useful antidote to corporate messages. The idea of "culture jamming" is picked up and treated at length by another excellent book, "NO LOGO."
Overall this book remains a standard in providing a detailed revoew of the issues and the capabilities surrounding digitial information about individuals. It is the author's view that WHO controls information, rather than WHO is elected, will determine the future of democracy.
In passing the author makes two points that I find important:
1) A liberal education, rather than the current trends toward immediate specialization, is essential if the public is to be able to think critically.
2) Law enforcement under the current government model, does not work. The author gives the example of 100 felonies, of which only 33 are reported. Of the 33, 6 are caught, 3 are convicted, and 1 goes to prison.
The author ends with a reference to genius savant John Perry Barlow, one of America's more notable commentators, and suggests that we are entering an era of individual collective intelligence against organized government intelligence (and secrecy).
I recommend this book be read together with "the digital person" because the latter book focuses on the degree to which government and corporate mistakes--"careless unconcerned bureaucratic processes" can undermine privacy and good order.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 32
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