The Transparent Society

by David Brin

  And yet, as we saw in earlier chapters, anonymity’s dark side is more than merely troubling. Almost by definition, anonymity is the darkness behind which most miscreants—from mere troublemakers all the way to mass murderers and would-be tyrants—shelter in order to wreak harm, safe against discovery or redress by those they abuse. In fact, it might be hard to name any famous villains—even those standing atop a pinnacle of state power, like Hitler—who did not rely at least in part upon anonymity to enhance their own (or their henchmen’s) power to destroy. The glare of light can be irritating to the honest, but it is devastating to knaves and despots.

  Moreover, the lack of any clear consensus about anonymity is particularly telling. While some think we already have too much, others claim that anonymity’s drawbacks are simply the price that must be paid in order to protect civilization’s unconventional or downtrodden members. Meanwhile, purists extol anonymity as a fundamental right, to be safeguarded no matter how many disadvantages may accrue.

  Does a purist approach ever make any sense?

  Sometimes. When it comes to free speech, the beneficial outcomes—adversarial accountability, plus the empowerment of individuals to enforce their own sovereignty—are overwhelmingly evident. Meanwhile, the liabilities of open expression—shrillness, plus some pornography—are merely irksome, and easy enough for a great commonwealth to endure for the sake of a broad principle. In other words, free speech is protected at least as much by a commonsense tabulation of pluses and minuses as by preaching its quasimystical attributes. Even a pragmatist can see that some things must be defended with the ferociy of a zealot.

  But when it comes to anonymity, even most proponents can envision worst-case scenarios of “too much” sheltering villains so effectively that it tears civilization apart. In other words, anonymity is not a chaste essence, but a tool that can prove useful in service of specific desired ends.

  While a man remains in a country village his conduct may be attended to, and he may be obliged to attend to it himself.... But as soon as he comes to a great city, he is sunk in obscurity and darkness. His conduct is observed and attended to by nobody, and he is therefore likely to neglect it himself, and to abandon himself to every low profligacy and vice.

  ADAM SMITH, REPUTATION

  The Place of Secrecy in Human Life

  Back in chapters 2 and 5, I talked about what appears to be the deep-seated motive driving many strong privacy advocates, a motive that I share down to my core. To all of us, it is a matter of ultimate self-interest that we defend society’s tolerance of eccentricity, the power of individuals to explore corners of the human experience without undue interference, so long as they do not impede or harm others. Where my friends and I part company is over which commodity will best defend this tolerance—shadows or light.

  I have made this point before, but while we are specifically discussing anonymity, let me reiterate with an analogy.

  If you see a person engaged in some bizarre activity in your neighborhood—perhaps performing a strange dance, or erecting a mysterious device, or just mumbling to himself—which of the following two scenarios is more likely to arouse feelings of unease, and possibly a temptation to oppose or suppress that person’s behavior? 1. The person is wearing a ski mask and heavy overcoat. It is a total stranger who refuses to explain anything about his background, motives, or reasons for being there.

  2. It is someone you know. A person whose life history is familiar, who readily answers questions, and whose past quirky episodes turned out to be at worst irritating, and sometimes even amusing.

  Which of the above is likely to provoke tolerant shrugs, as people smile about “our harmless local crackpot”?

  Which one will provoke mothers to call in their children, and fathers to gather in a wary, murmuring crowd?

  Which “eccentric” is more likely to be let alone?

  This provokes a final, rather basic question. Where does anonymity rank in the pantheon of “natural” human qualities?

  Consider the ancient Cro-Magnon tribes of our ancestors, engaged in a life of hunting and gathering back in the late Pleistocene. These tribes were probably varied and sophisticated, each with its own complex internal culture. For instance, one can envisage a range of attitudes toward self-expression, with some clans holding open campfire discussions while others bowed to the whim of priests, or a charismatic chief. All of these are wellrecorded and typical human behaviors that anyone can mentally picture.

  What is hard to imagine is anonymity playing much of a role in those days! Among the human beings that a cave dweller encountered during that long epoch of sparse populations, only total strangers would be anonymous—and then largely in the role of enemies. (I cannot prove this, of course. It is a mere thought experiment, worth contemplating for a while.)

  In our evolutionary background, there was probably a lot of give-and-take that prepared our brains to deal with issues of persuasion, cooperation, competition, friendship, coercion, deception, and many varied kinds of accountability. But when would we have had much practice using anonymity, except as a way to dehumanize enemies, making it easier to justify doing them harm?

  Many of today’s anonymous practices do precisely that. They help people dehumanize others, thus making it easier to dismiss their concerns or harm them.

  The point is especially significant because some of anonymity’s strongest promoters talk as if their recommended path is a natural and obvious one. But in fact it is unexplored territory. No other culture ever encouraged a daily use of hidden or false identities to the extent that we may see in the coming century.

  Even if this new kingdom of masks and shrouds eventually turns out to have all of the advantages that its boosters extol—and none of the disadvantages that worry me—it remains a daunting territory, without clear trail markings, or any prior history of human habitation. It might be reassuring if our guides showed a little humility and caution while urging us down such a road. After all, only time will tell if they are right.

  My second fantasy is to make encryption ubiquitous, commonplace, and therefore unthreatening.

  MICHAEL GODWIN

  DEFEATING THE TRICKS OF TYRANTS

  Most of the strong privacy advocates I have cited so far, though profuse in their accusations against state authority, would willingly concede that they are members of a civilization worth defending, and that our debate should be over how to defend it. There are others, however, who would make no such admission—who believe they already suffer under a foul and oppressive totalitarianism. Several of this type were profiled in a gushing article that Fortune magazine ran, in September 1997. Among these self-described “cyberlibertarians,” Walter Wriston, former Citibank chairman and author of The Twilight of Sovereignty, foresees a decline of national governments through the power of technology, especially encryption, which will be key to transferring social and economic power from nation states to the PC-packing populace. “The government can’t do much about it. It’s another thing slipping through their fingers,” Wriston said.

  Others featured in the article—some involved in setting up Internet secrecy services for the rich through banking havens such as Anguilla—have emphatically called for an end to overbearing governments. Making cypherpunks seem like tepid compromisers, these neo-anarchists alternate between fiery denunciations against villainous bureaucrats and expressions of serene confidence in their own inevitable triumph.

  Earlier, we discussed the allure of the underground, a proud, romantic righteousness that lets some people have the best of both worlds—living as coddled Brahmins in a gentle, fun society, while at the same time ranting against the culture that subsidized and spoon-fed them lessons of indignant individualism in every movie they saw or novel they read. Although such attitudes may seem churlishly ungrateful, let me emphasize again: ingratitude is largely irrelevant. Society’s anti-error immune system requires that some individuals be doped on irate pique. Alas, outrage endorphins can also foster profoundl
y inaccurate mental impressions of the world. T-cells become useless if their subjective visions are detached from objective fact.

  In this case, it all boils down to a two-part question. 1. Are we presently living in a tyranny? If so, what methods will best combat it and offer hope for eventual freedom?

  2. If we are not presently living in a tyranny, what methods will best prevent one from coming about?

  Now I’m not going to get into a raging argument over whether the current situation in the neo-West, or America in particular, is already one of wretched despotism as some contend, or if instead it is an awkward-butpromising adolescent phase along the way from a wretched past to a better, more liberated tomorrow. What matters here is whether encryption truly does offer the liberating power proclaimed by its most radical promoters, or if that technomystical belief is just more hogwash, distracting them (and us) from the grownup work that will make oppression forever impossible.

  Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we are already living in a tyranny. Or that the basic institutional tools are already in place, simply awaiting a coup, tomorrow or the next day, that will put us under some dictator’s thumb. What are the methods of control used by despots, and will encryption help against them? At first sight it seems obvious that an ability to mask our electronic exchanges in static will demolish a despot’s ability to govern. But first impressions aren’t always accurate, nor will simply saying something over and over again make it so.

  Turning our gaze to the past, we see that nearly all forms of tyranny have counted on the same ultimate methods of control: indoctrination, subornation, terror, surveillance, and informers.

  By controlling state institutions of indoctrination—media, religion, and education—dictators and kings would cast propaganda spells to instill loyalty in the populace. This did not have to be perfect in order to create a situation in which the resentful would have to be careful and keep their voices low, lest an indoctrinated neighbor overhear and report them.

  Subomation involves using secret police methods to trick individuals into situations where they suddenly find they are already working for the Master, with no choice but to continue. A good example would be several United States Marine Corps guards at the American embassy in Moscow, during the 1980s who, having broken regulations by having affairs with Russian women, gradually found themselves drawn into a web of blackmail and forced to engage in ever more serious levels of espionage against their own country. East German spymaster Markus Wolf was expert at using this technique, sending eighty or more “Romeos” to West Germany in the 1960s, targeting lonely divorcees who worked for sensitive agencies.

  Terror is the use of state power to torment individuals and make them crack. Torture is one method. Another uses threats against family members. There is a long history of underground cells being discovered and cauterized because the police broke just one individual and began unraveling an ornate skein of intrigue.

  Encryption offers no relief whatsoever against these first three methods.

  As for surveillance, Wriston and his compatriots claim to have a magic shield against being spied on, just because their data and telephone conversations might be safely encrypted into undecipherable noise. Of course, this is pure cybertranscendentalism—that syndrome where technophiles mistake a machine (or code) for the real world. As we shall see in chapter 9, encryption would have stymied hardly any of the surveillance techniques used by the Gestapo, or Beria’s NKVD, let alone the far more advanced abilities that will be available in an age of gnat cameras, data ferrets, and spy satellites. The sole exception is the power to scramble telephone conversations—and how long do you think the masters of an overt dictatorship will let that continue before they make it a capital offense?

  The final method used by tyrants, informers, is by far the most important and effective. The long history of human despotism has refined a system of carrots and sticks—lavish rewards for those who turn in their friends, combined with insidious methods to make people fear they are about to be informed upon and conclude, “I’d better do it first.” Saddam Hussein is a master of this art. A typical Iraqi officer—call him Captain Ali—will be approached, perhaps once a year, by a close friend offering to bring him into an anti-Saddam conspiracy! Nine times out of ten, this will be a deception, arranged by the secret police. All had better report the contact at once, or be arrested as a traitor. Even his best friend, who hates Saddam, will do this to Ali, because it is a routine duty of Iraqi officers to take part in such ruses. (When Ali’s turn comes, he will be wired for sound, and sent to try and lure a comrade into treason. Failure to act convincing is punished.) This means real enemies of Saddam can scarcely get organized. Even if you know your friend shares your anti-Saddam attitudes, you cannot be sure this particular overture is not a trap. You must hand him over!

  Such techniques are the result of many centuries of development by “leaders,” applying human ingenuity to support a long tradition of domination. In their appalling ignorance about these details, cyberanarchists demonstrate that theirs is a doctrine of faith, not knowledge or pragmatism.

  Will encryption avail at all against such dire techniques of enslavement and repression? I am going to surprise some readers by answering yes. Even under the gaze of the efficient Gestapo, Angelos Evert, who served as police chief of Athens during its World War II German occupation, saved many Jews from arrest and deportation by issuing them identity cards with Christian affiliation. Many other heroes of that time performed similar miracles using tricks of deception and false identity. Even in the United States, this practice has sometimes served the greater interests of justice, as during the blacklisting era in Hollywood, when some film writers used noms de plume to evade McCarthy-era witch hunts.

  Positing for the moment that we may face some hypothetical future era of high-tech repression, I have no doubt that secret codes would be valuable to any underground movement. There are clever tricks, for example, “steganography” (see chapter 9), that could help conspirators contact each other without it being easily known that encryption is used. Such techniques would allow extremely savvy hacker-rebels to communicate without knowing each other’s identities. In fact, I hope and pray that if we ever do face a true tyranny, the most brilliant hackers will go to work. Operating with subtlety, patience, and utter practicality, they may save us all.

  But in order for these insurrectionary techniques to be effective, they will have to be executed by true geniuses. You aren’t going to defeat a major state security apparatus by using an off-the-shelf package of Pretty Good Privacy (whose designers will be tortured into revealing any weaknesses in the program). Nearly all of the “anonymizers” will be police fronts. In fact, the brilliant methods used against such an Orwellian state will have to be original, innovative—exactly the sort of tricks that truly splendid hackers will be toying with throughout the coming age of amateurs, exploring the techniques just for the fun of it.

  But this will not be a job for impatient or self-righteous zealots. Those who today proudly extol the “ghost shirt” armor of ciphered communications will not be part of any future underground movement, because they will be the first targets of any new secret police. Subornation, terror, and the use of informers will shatter the cells of romantic transcendentalists—those who fool themselves into thinking that encryption is anything more than a tool, one of many that must be used sparingly and delicately during the long struggle, if we ever find ourselves oppressed by ruthless tyrants.

  In fact, though, we do not presently live in a dictatorship. No proof of this could be more decisive than the existence and popular-hero status of cypherpunks! Moreover, a strong state that is carefully watched by a confident and diverse citizenry is far less likely to become despotic than a weak one that is unable to serve as a flexible tool for delivering justice and a fair competitive playing field. As we discussed earlier, Weimar Germany, Romanov Russia, and China in 1948 are just a few examples of weak states that transformed, almost overni
ght, into systems of overwhelming control.

  The job we face is far more complex and grown-up than the cyberromantics’ cozy fantasy of a brave resistance movement. We must take a culture that is already moderately free, and ensure that liberty increases, at a steady rate.

  Now, assuming we are not presently living in a tyranny, what methods will best prevent one from coming about?

  Here is where arguments for accountability become paramount. This entire book is based foremost on one premise, that government is only a method of using power, a tool that can be seized and abused by any number of self-justifying cabals. Despite simplistic slogans cherished by those who say utopia will emerge if we all start babbling in indecipherable tongues, the future is going to be a lot more complicated than that.

  First they came for the hackers. But I never did anything illegal with my computer, so I didn’t speak up. Then they came for the pornographers. But I thought there was too much smut on the Internet anyway, so I didn’t speak up. Then they came for the anonymous remailers. But a lot of nasty stuff gets sent from anon.penet.fi, so I didn’t speak up. Then they came for the encryption users. But I could never figure out how to work PGP anyway, so I didn’t speak up. Then they came for me. And by that time there was no one left to speak up.

  WIDELY COPIED INTERNET APHORISM, A PARAPHRASE

  OF PROTESTANT MINISTER MARTIN NIEMOLLER‘S

  STATEMENT ABOUT LIFE IN NAZI GERMANY

  THE DEVIL’S OWN DICHOTOMIES

  Just one more point to raise, before moving on to the next chapter. In our foregoing discussions, we’ve seen a lot of people talking about trade-offs. While some take ideological positions of starkly righteous purity, most others, from FBI agents to EFF activists, have based their arguments on a single shared notion. This common belief is that we must skirt our way along a knife blade, delicately and cautiously seeking just the right balance between the needs of society and what is good for individual citizens.