Disparity of Powers – Redux

Posters at this space have linked to what has now become a debate between two contributors to WIRED. David Brin has responded to Bruce Schneier’s article, “The Myth of the ‘Transparent Society” with his article entitled, “David Brin Rebuts Schneier In Defense of a Transparent Society.” Sadly, neither author hits the right mark.

The major failing in Brin’s response is the petulance he exhibits in response to an imagined attack on his book, The Transparent Society. Brin overstates Schneier’s assessment of societal transparency, characterizing it as a “major departure from our present social contract” even as he correctly quotes Schneier merely saying it would be “different than before.”

Brin’s pique continues when he accuses Schneier of suggesting “that transparency would end privacy, making everyone walk around naked.” Schneier does, indeed, say that under a system of mutual disclosure of information “[w]e both have less privacy,” but less privacy is not the same as no privacy. Further, Schneier never even implies we’d all be walking around naked, literally or metaphorically. Brin is clearly misusing Schneier’s doctor’s office example to create a “caricature” of Schneier’s position. The hypocrisy of this rhetorical maneuver is stunning because it comes in the very line of the article in which Brin accuses Schneier of caricaturing the argument in Brin’s book.

Perhaps these inaccuracies stem from a misunderstanding Brin brings to the table. He seems to think that Schneier has criticized The Transparent Society on the basis that it “doesn’t address ‘the inherent value of privacy.’” Brin quotes Schneier’s words accurately, but ignores the context. While Brin is busy being offended that Schneier missed the “several chapters” in his book that do address the value of privacy, he ignores the fact that Schneier wasn’t criticizing the book for this lack, but rather was criticizing the concept itself for not addressing the value of privacy. That may seem like a small distinction, but the fact that Brin misses it and doesn’t address the actual argument Schneier makes only makes it clear that Brin’s is a personal beef.

What Brin does very well is provide a wonderful analogy for his vision of a transparent society. Brin gives us the “restaurant analogy” that demonstrates the privacy to be found in a crowd and the resulting transparency of any efforts to eavesdrop on our conversations. It is only when we erect barriers between the tables, Brin says, that we allow others to listen in with impunity. In making this point, Brin seems to think he is shattering Schneier’s case when, in fact, he is supporting it. This unfortunate misunderstanding is the result of Schneier’s own inability to clearly articulate his point.

Schneier argues that transparency is ultimately an ineffective and perhaps unattainable goal because of “the crucial dissimilarity of power” that exists between “the governors and the governed.” He illustrates this point with an example of a police officer demanding to see your identification. A similar demand on your part for the officer’s identification, Schneier argues, “gives you no comparable power over him or her. The power balance is too great and mutual disclosure does not make it OK.”

Schneier is right to suggest that the power imbalance is a determining factor in the value of transparency to this situation. He misses, however, the flaw in his example. Not only is the power imbalance present, but there hasn’t actually been equal disclosure. While you may be in possession of the officer’s name and badge number, you also don’t have access to the wealth of information about the officer that he is privy to about you. It is not only power that is an issue in this example, but access to information.

Schneier opens himself to Brin’s attack because he fails to connect the dots. Schneier’s argument is quietly premised on the current power imbalance. His argument sounds as if he believes, as Brin accuses him, that “light should shine in one direction, from masses onto elites, not the other way around.” In fact, Schneier’s argument is that it should shine in both directions and as equally as possible. As he says, “All aspects of government work best when the relative power between the governors and the governed remains as small as possible – when liberty is high and control is low.”

Ultimately, though, Schneier’s argument is weakened because he does not state explicitly that because of the growing inequities of power, the light is becoming more unidirectional, shining from the government on the governed because bidirectional transparency is effectively being blocked by the use of the government’s power. As Brin might say, the government has erected “shoji screens,” the better to “press their ears against the screens and peer through the slits with impunity.”

This is clearly the case when the government seeks to gather information about its citizens through, as Schneier says, “Ubiquitous surveillance programs that affect everyone without probable cause or warrant” but refuses to submit its actions to any kind of review. Certainly, there are legitimate national security concerns in an open, transparent society, but when national security is used as a shield for blocking any attempts at transparency, the power imbalance is only exacerbated. This is ultimately Schneier’s argument, that “no one is safer in a political system of control.”

About that, he is correct, Brin’s accurate statements about our “openness experiment” and its imperfections notwithstanding. While he criticizes Schneier’s argument on all the wrong points, even Brin concludes, “All of the great enlightenment arenas – markets, science, and democracy – flourish in direct proportion to how much their players (consumers, scientists, and voters) know, in order to make good decisions. To whatever extent these arenas get clogged by secrecy, they fail.

That is the danger with which we are currently faced and the one about which Schneier is trying to warn us. Despite his misunderstanding of Schneier’s point, it is clear Brin essentially agrees with Schneier about the value of transparency. They just can’t seem to agree about whether or not we have a sufficient amount of light shining in both directions at the moment.