On privacy

Yeah. I'm listening to Glenn Greenwald on TED in Brazil. I quite thoroughly disagree with him though I suspect it's a different kind of disagreement than he's used to.
I value privacy but I value it not as itself (that is, being private from the rest of the world) but as information. Let's face it. In the 'Information Age,' or whatever the hell they're calling it now, privacy is the gold in Fort Knox. The internet and the computing systems we, as a world of people, have built have effectively leveled the walls and we're desperately trying to patch them while yelling and screaming at the looters to stop.

It won't work. The walls can't be rebuilt (and they shouldn't be) and the looters will never stop because, really, who would? People are making money by the boatload on our information. There isn't a force on Earth that can stop them. Look at any pre-digital major corporation; they're all still making money, pretty much the same as they always have.

I have a different proposition. Let the NSA do all their petty spying. Let Google, Faceplant.... er, book, LinkedIn, et al do their tracking. Let them have our webcam feeds. Let everyone correlate to the big 3 credit bureaus if they like and perform statistical analysis with all our Amazon purchases. I frankly don't give a damn. BUT. Not because I have nothing to hide. But because I have one simple stipulation for all the data whores. It's incredibly simple in word (implementation is another story but we're all of us blue-skying here because it's still very new discussion). Let your data free. Publish it; let the public search it (using the same internal mechanisms you use).  Scary? No.

What people fear isn't that the NSA knows you bought a dildo or whatever. It's that you have nothing on the NSA (other than they're a bunch of lying, spying, sneaky creeps). You're worried that your nosy neighbor can search through your ... search queries? But you could look at theirs too in such a world. Because the real value of information to an individual or entity is inversely dependent on how many other entities know that information. Let's look at this side for a bit longer. If everyone knew what was in the diplomats' emails that the NSA snooped (which everyone does now, sincerest thanks Mr. Snowden) then the value of that information to the NSA is roughly nil. Similarly in the reciprocal world I envision (and reciprocity is the key here) the same memos are worth just about nothing to any government because all their emails are public also. Before anyone mentions the 'chilling effect' allow me to say that the full effects global freedom of information won't be apparent until the second generation. The same way nobody grokked the internet until people grew up with it. Global freedom of information will force everyone to realize and accept that everyone is human, that everyone makes gaffes, has some opinions we disagree with, that everyone gets naked, and nearly everyone has sex sometimes. It's only when there's an imbalance of information that privacy matters.

Any schoolchild can tell you this about secrets.
Value = Information/(how many people know it)

Bringing this monologue back to Mr. Greenwald's talk let me address his very valid point about black and white. There are, indeed, no Good people. There are people that are good, but everyone has 'dirt'. Everyone is, when considered completely, Grey. We are imperfect, flawed, weak, and corrupt in our own individual ways. When everyone is forced to acknowledge that about themselves and everyone else then knowing someones weaknesses ceases to be something of value. Indeed, it becomes a strength because we would no longer need to guess which politician is the most corrupt.

Mr. Greenwald goes on at some length about passwords but I'm afraid he's missed the point there. Passwords are not privacy. Passwords are authentication. No, you may not have my bank password; not because i wouldn't want you to see my purchases (again assuming reciprocity, I will not give you an imbalance of power either) but because I don't want you to make purchases in my name. Ditto email. That whole section of his talk made my head ache and if I'd been in the audience I'm afraid I would have gotten thrown out for screaming at him that he's an idiot.

However he was trying  to make the point that people who claim privacy is dead are hypocrites. He does make that point effectively about Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg. However I stand by my view. But it is a reciprocal view and cannot be implemented by one individual. To give away my privacy while others refuse to give away theirs (and every entity with the wherewithal is spying on us all and hoarding the data to themselves) is ludicrous. Yes, I make some small measures to maintain my privacy. Not because I don't believe my own rhetoric but because nobody else is willing to reciprocate and freedom doesn't work unilaterally

Meh. I'm tired of properly composing my thoughts, and I've other things I need to do as well. I'm not a journalist either. So I'll just jot down some oneliners during the rest of his talk as I listen to it.

Shame? Judgemental eyes of others? Reference the above about humanity becoming more understanding (even compassionate? O.O ) when everyone can know everything about everyone else.

So there's a correlation between being observed and the actions that one is willing to take. But is the mere observation the cause? If you video yourself (you, observing yourself) do you act differently? I submit that it is the imbalance of being observed while making a choice but not being able to observe the other while the other makes that choice that is the root cause of the behavioral change. But then, I'm not a [psych|soci]ologist.

Panopticon? Holy hell. Can we say imbalance of power and observation? My point still stands.

Oh, yes. The Abrahamic god. Still. Every example he gives posits an imbalance of observation.

I do agree about the destructive lessons in the phrase "only people with something to hide fear surveillance."

Dissidents. Yes, they could be tracked by the government. He follows that immediately with the measure of freedom of a government by how it treats its dissidents. Treatment that, if everyone was watched by everyone else, everyone would know. Catch22.

I will take the 1 or 2 generations of suppressed freedom of choice due to mass observation in order to break through to a more idealized humanity that accepts itself for what it is. Sadly, such informational freedom is unlikely to ever happen for emotional, political, and admittedly practical reasons.

I dislike the ad hominem agains Snowden as well. However the mirror accusation is scathing and probably isn't as universally applicable as it's stated. Of course, it feels as good in my gut as it apparently did to the majority of the audience but one has to vomit those feelings out of the gut and examine them thoroughly or you're going to have a hell of a lot of indigestion when those ideas curdle later.

Closing with a pair of personal definitions:
observation: knowledge of events shared among all entities
surveillance: knowledge of events kept secret by one or a few entities

Meta-volution

Evolution is truth. However we don't evolve in our bodies anymore. Other animals still do of course but post-humanity won't differ dramatically in physical makeup (unless we go deeply into body shaping or human-machine integration, but that's just an outgrowth of the main point here).

We evolve in our minds. Our bodies are rapidly becoming immaterial except as a support substrate for our minds. Our evolution now molds the social constructs we create for ourselves to live within; our evolution grows with and empowers our ability to find accurate meaning large data sets; our ideas are what spur our future growth and drive our advancement as a species. Vast wealth and power have sprung from the well of innovation but that innovation did not spring from our DNA. It sprang from the brains the DNA created and even more it sprang from the combined effects of social interaction of many or those brains well rehearsed in the workings of the vast computing devices that were envisioned and built by the brains that came before them.

Historical evolution enacted its course through the buildup of physiological and organizational changes that drove competitive advantage. Future evolution will enact its course through the buildup of changes in society, psychology, and mental prowess (either unaided or reinforced by artificial mechanism) that drive the human species into a successful future. Our bodies, if they evolve at all, will largely evolve only to support more powerful or adaptive minds. So if our bodies decay or are poorly adapted to our environment, or happen to exist in a difficult environment the next evolutionary step is to adjust society to better support those bodies. Building up every body leads to more and better functioning brains which further drives evolution forward. Evolution demands comprehensive and effective welfare. Because the mind of every child is our evolutionary future, regardless of that child's family history or the present outlook of its future. Every child's future is malleable regardless of the capacity of their body. If they get sick, they should be made well. Because it can be done, because evolution no longer relies on our bodies, because that child's contribution should not be unnecessarily undercut by physical malady. Every human in need should be lifted up because every brain has the capacity, given the opportunity, to contribute something to society regardless of the circumstances of the life of the body.