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.

Oberwelt e.V., a German artists collective presents a nice device which can protect you from all the infrared security cameras installed on public roads. It sends out an invisible infrared light that will make your face show up as a white bulb.

I-R.A.S.C is a device giving every citizen a reliable protection from governmental security measures. I-R.A.S.C. is security against security and therefore a response to the dissymmetry of the forces between state and individual.

Instead of showing and interaction among human-beings, or between man and machine, I-R.A.S.C. demonstrates an interaction among machines. This is part of an absurd situation - while the time and effort invested into protection measures aims at the alleged safety of the citizens, the individual looses importance in this safety concept.

I-R.A.S.C is an infra-red device working as a protection shield from infra-red surveillance cameras. Everybody can rebuild this device without special technical skills.

Link via Boing Boing

It is assumed that cameras will not prevent any crime, but will help solve it. In London, at least, this assumption doesn’t seem to be true anymore. London has spent about £200 (close to 300 million Euros) installing 10.000 CCTV cameras. The overall result of this investment is a decreased proportion of crime solved, not increased. There hardly seems to be a relation between the number of cameras and the proportion of crime solved.

• There are now 10,524 CCTV cameras in 32 London boroughs funded with Home Office grants totalling about £200million.
• Hackney has the most cameras - 1,484 - and has a better-than-average clearup rate of 22.2 per cent.
• Wandsworth has 993 cameras, Tower Hamlets, 824, Greenwich, 747 and Lewisham 730, but police in all four boroughs fail to reach the average 21 per cent crime clear-up rate for London.
• By contrast, boroughs such as Kensington and Chelsea, Sutton and Waltham Forest have fewer than 100 cameras each yet they still have clear-up rates of around 20 per cent.
• Police in Sutton have one of the highest clear-ups with 25 per cent.
• Brent police have the highest clear-up rate, with 25.9 per cent of crimes solved in 2006-07, even though the borough has only 164 cameras. cameras.

Link via boingboing.

The MiamiHerald has a good article about the wrongheaded approach the Bush government has taken after 911. The article does a good job in describing my feelings about that situation during the last four years. I even posted a comment on slashdot once, stating “Fear is the reason why people accept this”. This brought down my karma by 1 point (the slashdot readers will know what I’m talking about).
From the article:

One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn’t win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help.

If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden’s attack our president would admit that he broke U.S. law against domestic spying and ignored the Constitution — and then expect the American people to congratulate him for it — I would have presumed the girders of our very Republic had crumbled.

Had anyone said our president would invade a country and kill 30,000 of its people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, then admit he would have invaded even if he had known there was no threat — and expect America to be pleased by this — I would have thought our nation’s sensibilities and honor had been eviscerated.

Link (via boingboing).