The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?

by David Brin

  MIT Professor Gary Marx expressed this unease in a formal way.

  Restrictions on government are not a sufficient guarantee of freedom. Taken too far, they may guarantee its opposite, as private interests reign unchecked. For Orwell, the state and the economy were synonymous, and the threat to liberty was only from big government. But in our age of large and powerful nongovernment organizations, a broader view and new legal and policy protections are required.

  Or, as explained more tersely by Texas businessman Steve Jackson, “Nasty types will avoid whatever branch of human life is under a spotlight, in order to seek manipulative power in the shadows.”

  So the basic question is critical. Do other dangers lurk? Are some freedom lovers so obsessed with defending against one potential enemy that they are leaving the ramparts unguarded against others?

  First, let’s get rid of one common misconception implied by Hal Finney’s remark, that the only likely alternative threat is corporations.

  Surveys certainly do show that people rank Big Business high on any list of obnoxious power centers. In fact, major companies fare worse than government when it comes to popular rating of specific faults like deceit, venality, and pollution. One recent poll showed that insurance companies are trusted less than a quarter as much as Congress! When it comes to personal privacy, corporations are often far more callous at disregarding the rights and feelings of common folk. We discuss many of these matters elsewhere.

  Nevertheless, here we are talking about direct threats to constitutional democracy, and even people who despise capitalist big shots can be pretty skeptical of any notion that the directors of Texaco and Microsoft are about to wage war against Washington, or stage a coup to take over the United States! It doesn’t seem likely to most of us that Procter & Gamble will try to set up an Orwellian state.

  But this dismissal may be much too blithe, for the following reasons: 1. The limited liability stock company is a fairly recent innovation, having emerged at a time when states were already strong.

  2. Corporations have behaved in tyrannical and oppressive ways, for example, when the Dutch East India Company, the British East India Company, and Belgian King Leopold’s private “development” company in the Congo all engaged in profoundly murderous acts of repression. Any visitor to Central America will hear many a local citizen lodge similar accusations against the United Fruit Company, for activities early in this century.

  3. When we think of government as a tool that can sometimes be seized by private parties for their own benefit, it is easy to cite countless examples of corporations wielding undue influence over legislation or the administration of laws, for example, in areas of trade, defense appropriations, “sweetheart” regulations, and “corporate welfare.”

  4. The human storybook is rife with tales about other enemies of freedom, whose past deeds make these corporate peccadilloes look like child’s play.

  Let’s turn the issue around with a simple exercise. Name all the bright moments you can, in the long struggle of humanity. Write them down on a piece of paper. Then, next to each one, describe what brought it crashing down.

  Naturally, such a list will vary, depending on how you define “bright.” Some people admire flashy kings and conquerors, or ages when potentates hired sculptors and had stirring monuments built. I happen to be partial to periods when people were free to argue, create, move about, trade, and even change social classes by virtue of their own accomplishments. Times when leaders were chosen for qualities other than bloodlines or violence. By that standard, bright eras were rare. In chapter 1 I mentioned a short list: pastoral Iceland, a couple of Renaissance city-states, the Iroquois Confederacy, and a stretch or two during the Roman Republic. Let’s add a few brief examples in the Middle East and India, and of course Periclean Athens, brief epochs when individuals competed somewhat fairly, leveraged labor with innovation, tolerated diversity, and spoke their minds.

  Somewhat fairly. At best, these cultures were deeply flawed. But compared with the surrounding tribes and empires, they shone. Until, after a fleeting springtime, each sank back into a winter of tyranny. Occasionally, the cause was external invasion, or plague, or perhaps a societywide loss of nerve. But most often the demise followed a familiar, dismal pattern. A cohort of enterprising leaders would rise (perhaps proud to have done so by their own efforts). Then, once in power, they connived to close what had been open, to change the rules so that newcomers would find the same climb harder. In other words, they formed a conspiracy of power, an oligarchy.

  Examples include the takeover of Florence by the Medicis, or the gradual entrenchment of a few family cliques in the Republic of Venice. There were coups by the Roman patrician class and civil service paralysis in imperial China. Napoleon in France, Porfirio Diaz in Mexico, and countless other dictators betrayed popular assemblies to install a narrow cabal of friends and relatives in power. In later years, despite the liberality of official constitutions, we have seen oppression by the top two thousand families of the Soviet nomenklatura, staunch resistance by the ruling classes in Victorian Britain to the stirrings of social mobility, and the machinations of American “robber barons,” who nearly sealed their grip on power before the turn of the last century.

  This pattern grows out of a very strong human impulse to grab any opportunity to be a ruler. In fact, the aristocratic will has opposed open societies in nearly all epochs. As time passed in Rome, for instance, imperial law required that all men stay rigidly in their social class of birth, no matter what their talents or abilities. An edict promulgated by the Japanese Shogun Hideoshi forbade any peasant from rising to samurai rank by merit, as Hideoshi himself had done. Caste rules in Egypt, Persia, India, China, Indonesia, Meso-America, Africa, and countless other civilizations all had the same aim: hindering those who were low on the vast social pyramid from sending up their brightest sons and daughters to compete fairly with the heirs of the mighty. Above all, tyrants passed rules ensuring that people could not vigorously hold their rulers accountable.

  In contrast to past brief glimmerings, our own recent run of freedom is impressively long and deep. For instance, the United States has managed for two centuries to prevent takeover by a true ruling class—one able to enforce its whim without constraint by due process, or the need to negotiate with other social classes. And yet, a heritage of dark suspicion seems justified when one looks across six thousand years at all the betrayals that brought down other hopeful beginnings.

  Now it is possible to argue that conditions are different today. We live in an era when most power seems to be held by formal social structures such as governments and corporations, which makes it seem a bit quaint to talk about “conspiratorial cliques.” This book, however, is about dramatic changes in the world that may transform all the rules. (See the section at the end of chapter 9, “A Withering Away?”)

  Lessons from the fall of liberty in Florence, Rome, and Athens may be irrelevant. Those days may be over, and good riddance.

  And yet, who bears the burden of proof? Those who would still worry about liberty’s age-old enemies—aristocracies, oligarchies, and mobs? Or those who say, “Don’t worry, those bad old guys are long gone.”

  We should stay wary of dangers in all directions, until it is demonstrated for a fact that the historic perils are no more. The burden of proof is on those who say that now we can leave those ramparts undefended.

  This topic deserves much more thorough discussion than we can go into here. But a few pertinent points merit repetition. • Freedom had enemies long before nation states or modern corporations were invented.

  • Those enemies gave themselves many names—from Communists to nobles to merchant princes—but their techniques were remarkably similar: form a tight-knit “in group,” conspire in secret, manipulate the system, choose the right moment to stir up the rabble, take over the reins of state authority, and then clamp down.

  • If “government” is a tool, we have seen that tool all too often taken ove
r by one party, then used against others.

  The last point is important. An essential difference between freedom and tyranny is who controls state power. The very same bureaucracies can be brutal or benign, depending on whether they are in the grip of a cliquish party or supervised and wielded by a diverse, confident, and pragmatic citizenry. We shall talk more about this later. But for now let me suggest that the instrumentalities of government should be carefully watched, but not reflexively or unthinkingly crippled.

  We own these tools. We may need them, trim and well oiled, in order to deal with other ancient, but still dangerous, foes.

  PART II

  MINEFIELDS

  In my course I have known and, according to my measure, have cooperated with great men; and I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

  EDMUND BURKE

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HUMAN NATURE AND THE DILEMMA OF OPENNESS

  Every society imposes some of its values on those raised within it, but the point is that some societies try to maximize that effect, and some try to minimize it.

  IAIN M. BANKS

  Well sure the government lies, and the press lies, but in a demoeracy they aren’t the same lies.

  ALEXIS A. GILLILAND

  THE FAILURE OF EXHORTATION

  There is a lesson to be learned by listening to some folks who claim to have been abducted by UFOs. Many of these people solemnly insist they got a parting gift at the end of their nocturnal ride. A benefaction of wisdom from the alien visitors.

  What wisdom? What sage advice do “abductees” report receiving from little silver savants? Here is the great insight that some proclaim after their cosmic encounters: Be nice to one another.

  Now I have no objection to that admonition (even if it does sound hypocritical when purportedly coming from secretive outer space kidnappers). In fact, all by itself, the message sounds pretty good. There are a couple of problems, though. 1. We’ve heard the same thing preached innumerable times before.

  2. It doesn’t work.

  At least, it doesn’t work all by itself. Anyone who has dealt with groups of twelve-year-old boys can testify that author William Golding had it right in his classic novel Lord of the Flies. Pleading and preaching do little good unless accompanied by keen-eyed, pragmatic guidance. Against the urges of emotional, self-interested, conniving human beings, exhortation is futile if not backed up by other elements such as persuasion, example, and accountability.

  In fact, great teachers—from Moses and Confucius all the way to John Lennon and “the famous Bill and Ted”—have always urged us to “be excellent to each other.” But in most cases the message was also accompanied by lists of prescribed (and proscribed) behaviors, meant to fill in the details, regulating tribal activities and laying down sanctions to oblige compliance. In very general terms, the list often went something like this. • If you are a properly anointed leader, take care of your followers. See to their needs, and don’t abuse your privileges—at least not very much. At least not enough to make the peasants rebel. Above all, safeguard your inheritance and never let upstarts threaten your power.

  • If you are a follower, be respectful to those above you. Give them loyalty, obedience, plus a share of your crops. And your sons, of course. For war.

  • Treat your immediate neighbors with courtesy. Follow ordained rituals and traditions in order to keep friction in the village at a minimum level.

  • Conform. Do not deviate from accepted social norms.

  • Bribe the sage or witch doctor. Propitiate unseen powers.

  • Be wary of strangers. Watch out for deviants in the tribe.

  • Work hard. Respect your elders.

  • Try to be nice. Cooperate. Get along.

  Now, human beings surely are imperfect rascals. In any clan or hamlet the rules were often broken when people thought they could get away with it. Nevertheless, members of almost any culture I am familiar with would recognize the list of adages given above and call most of them pretty obvious.

  To a contemporary neo-Westerner, on the other hand, the list provokes mixed feelings. We want to ask questions, define terms, pick and choose among the rules, propose an amendment or two, and maybe reject some items altogether. Especially when it comes to that business about conformity. And regarding leaders, we think it only fair that the guy on top should earn his spot, account for how the taxes are spent, and then get out of the way when his turn is done.

  Moreover, unlike nearly every prior culture, we believe that the leader can be a “she.”

  Modern people take for granted countless attitudes that would seem bizarre to our ancestors. After all, isn’t it only human nature for leaders to resist being brought down to the rank of commoners? In most cultures there were major advantages—in health, wealth, and reproduction—to staying on top and making sure your kids stayed up there, too. Today, the often shameless way that many politicians squirm to hold slivers of power reflects this ancient pattern.

  The “Paradox of the Peacock,” which I briefly referred to in chapter 1, illustrates this point with an example from nature.

  In their native forests, peafowl are best able to move around—seeking food and avoiding predators—if they are small, fast, and camouflaged. Those are exactly the traits adopted by the sensible females. So why is the male peafowl so garishly colored? Because, despite the risk, inconvenience, and metabolic cost, his plumage offers one overpowering advantage to any single peacock. It demonstrates his own particular fitness, enabling him to win mates and reproduce. Only peacocks who possess those garish traits get to have descendants.

  In other words, what benefits the individual leader nearly always prevails over what is good for the group. So it is for peafowl—and so it has been for human civilizations through most of history.

  What is healthy for a nation? Accountability. Many minds and talents working to solve problems through a market of ideas. Since no single ruler can ever spot all errors, especially his own, open criticism helps a nation evade disasters.

  What is healthy for a king, high priest, or tyrant? The exact opposite! Criticism is inherently dangerous to those perched at the privileged top of a pyramid. It can undermine absolute authority, and even lead to rebellion. So it was seldom allowed.

  Countless examples illustrate this tragic paradox between the needs of the one and of the many. By suppressing dissent, Stalin ensured that tens of millions of his countrymen and -women died for his cumulative blunders. But from his point of view, it was still a good idea. Because by crushing dissenters, he got to stay in power. Nor was Stalin an exception in the dreary litany of human dictatorships. What was good for the leader nearly always triumphed over the collective health of the commonwealth.

  One factor that exacerbates this situation is the problem of lying.

  Recent ethological studies of apes and other animals show we aren’t the only creatures who practice deceit. Conniving members of other species—apes, dogs, and monkeys, for example—have been observed pretending, feigning, and misleading others of their own kind, while seeking some advantage having to do with sex, food, or hierarchy. Nevertheless, as Robert Wright points out in The Moral Animal, natural selection must have especially rewarded this trait in humans in order for us to become such excellent liars. “We are far from the only dishonest species,” explains Wright, “but we are surely the most dishonest, if only because we do the most talking.”

  Moreover, one of the most fascinating and effective kinds of lying is self-deception. As humans, we are gifted with strong egos and remarkable imaginations, a combination that makes it all too easy for a person to see exactly what he or she already wants to see. We construe the remarks of other people, up or down, depending on which interpretation best suits our predisposed leanings, generally choosing whatever version makes us feel better about ourselves, and contemptuous of our foes. So-called
logic is used to craft ornate ideologies that defy all science and common sense, yet still hypnotize millions.

  Unless restrained, this triumph of the subjective has especially noxious effects on leaders. Tyrants seldom see themselves as oppressors, often justifying their absolute rule as a beneficent reign, essential for good order and decency to prevail. Since they punish disagreement, despots get a warped view of reality, seldom receiving clear accounts of problems until it is too late.

  Matters are a little different now. After millennia of hard experience, we have learned some practical lessons.

  If criticism is the best known antidote to error ...

  and leaders naturally hate criticism ...

  then clearly a society is best served by ensuring that

  leaders cannot suppress or evade critical appraisal.

  In other words, free speech should be viewed as sacred and inviolable not simply for its own sake, but for utterly pragmatic reasons. Only through an active, vibrant, noisy ferment of criticism can blunders be discovered before they bring nations crashing down. Moreover, we can never tell in advance which criticism will later prove right; therefore, we must allow, foster, and even encourage all the criticism we can get.