The Transparent Society

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The Transparent Society (1998, ISBN 0-7382-0144-8, ISBN 0-201-32802-X) is a non-fiction book by the science-fiction author David Brin in which he forecasts the erosion of privacy, as it is overtaken by low-cost surveillance, communication and database technology. He argues that true privacy will be lost in the "transparent society"; however, we have the choice between one that offers the illusion of privacy by restricting the power of surveillance to authorities, or one that destroys that illusion by offering everyone access (including the ability to watch the watchers).

He argues that it would be good for society if the surveillance is equal for all, and the public has the same access as those in power. He bases this argument upon the claim that the most dangerous and corrupt abuses of power go hand-in-hand with a lack of accountability and transparency.

Brin also has a novel, Kiln People, placed in a future where cameras are everywhere and everybody can access the public ones and, for a fee, the private ones.

The collation of all publicly and privately available personal data in the United States by the Information Awareness Office is viewed by some as a move towards the more pessimistic of the possible futures envisaged by Brin in his book.

David Brin with sousveillance "maybecamera" at the Association of Computing Machinery's (ACM's) CFP conference where such a sousveillance device was given to each attendee. Brin participated in the Opening Keynote on the "inverse panopticon".

1 Inverse transparency and bi-directional transparency
2 See also
3 External links
- 3.1 Reviews

[edit] Inverse transparency and bi-directional transparency

Transparency is sometimes confused with equiveillance (the balance between surveillance and sousveillance). This balance (equilibrium) allows the individual to construct their own case from evidence they gather themselves, rather than merely having access to surveillance data that could possibly incriminate them. Sousveillance therefore, in addition to Transparency, assures contextual integrity of surveillance data (i.e. a lifelong capture of personal experience can provide "best evidence" over surveillance data to prevent the surveillance-only data from being taken out of context).

Recently Brin participated in the opening keynote panel discussion at the 2005 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference, where 500 sousveillance devices were also created to contextualize and explore this debate further. (Each attendee was given a wearable camera-dome bag which created, in effect, an inverse panopticon.)