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Bruce Schneier (of Schneier on security) posted an essay on wired about what he calls:
The Myth of the ‘Transparent Society’. In his essay he tries to explain why the ‘Transparent Society’, as defined by David Brin, is a failing concept:

When I write and speak about privacy, I am regularly confronted with the mutual disclosure argument. Explained in books like David Brin’s The Transparent Society, the argument goes something like this: In a world of ubiquitous surveillance, you’ll know all about me, but I will also know all about you. The government will be watching us, but we’ll also be watching the government.

If I disclose information to you, your power with respect to me increases. One way to address this power imbalance is for you to similarly disclose information to me. We both have less privacy, but the balance of power is maintained. But this mechanism fails utterly if you and I have different power levels to begin with.

An example will make this clearer. You’re stopped by a police officer, who demands to see identification. Divulging your identity will give the officer enormous power over you: He or she can search police databases using the information on your ID; he or she can create a police record attached to your name; he or she can put you on this or that secret terrorist watch list. Asking to see the officer’s ID in return gives you no comparable power over him or her. The power imbalance is too great, and mutual disclosure does not make it OK.

You can think of your existing power as the exponent in an equation that determines the value, to you, of more information. The more power you have, the more additional power you derive from the new data.

Very interesting is David Brin’s reply.

The Kill Bill’s Browser site is trying to get people to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox. It features a cool and well known design plus 13 reasons to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox:

1. YOU’LL ONLY SEE PORN WHEN YOU WANT TO.
Sick of seeing pornographic pop-ups all over your computer while you’re helping your daughter with a research project? Since Firefox blocks pop-ups, you won’t get tons of porn in your face when you’re least expecting it. On the flip side, since Firefox stops spyware from taking over your computer, there will be nothing to slow you down when you go and look for porn.

2. YOUR KIDS WILL ONLY SEE PORN WHEN THEY WANT TO.
Sorry, buddy… the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

3. YOUR COMPUTER WON’T SPEND ITS FREE TIME TELLING THE WORLD ABOUT VIAGRA SOFT TABS.
Experts say 80% of spam comes from hacked PCs. Firefox has much better security, so your computer will get hacked less. Do it for the children, the children! (caveat: reducing Viagra spam may also reduce total number of children.)

4. MOZILLA DOESN’T INFLATE PRICES AND USE THE MONEY TO VACCINATE CHILDREN IN AFRICA.
Uhh… wait a second. Maybe Microsoft’s monopoly hasn’t been all bad. Better donate to Oxfam. Seriously, you should.

The site even states that if you own your own site you can get $1 from Google for each Soul you save from the IE hell (I wish more of my friends were still using IE now…). They also have a script that can tell each IE user to switch to firefox.

Link (via Boingboing).