>From: "Billy Brown" <bbrown@transcient.com>
>
>But its worse than that. Unless really draconian privacy measures get
>enacted before the market for online personal information gets going, I'd
>expect just about anything that isn't actually secret to be easily found.
>That means credit history, purchasing history, most of the paperwork you've
>ever given the government, and probably a lot of other info I'm not
>thinking
>of. Won't that be fun?
Get used to it. Privacy is a thing of the present, but not of the future.
I'm a firm believe that information (*all* information) wants to be free.
Security and privacy are mutually exclusive when you think about it and in
the battle between the two I'm sure security will win out in the end. I
foresee a future where all information is available about everyone.
I know this can be shocking to our 20th Century sensibilities, but really it
won't be such a bad thing to be so totally exposed when everyone is equally
exposed. The fact that you inhaled, or cheated on a test, or posted an
embarrassingly inane rant in alt.erotica.bestiality, or fell behind in your
Visa payments will not really matter much when it becomes a matter of public
record that everyone else has done the same things. There is certainly a
skeleton or two in my closet, but I wouldn't mind showing you mine if you
had to show me yours too.
In fact (aha! The lightbulb flashes), this may be just what we were looking
for. A way to allow Joe Q. Public access to a near-anything-box, without
having to fear that he will cause the dreaded gray goo problem. By Jove
I've got it! All surveilance all the time!
Every act, every conversation (heck every thought, if possible) digitally
recorded forever and accessible to everyone. Based upon a lifetime's worth
of such data it would probably a fairly easy matter to determine who could
and could not be trusted to have their very own near-anything-box ("NAB").
If we can come up with a reliable Halperinesque truth machine, our fears
about our neighbors having NAB's could be eliminated.
So what do you think, would you be willing to give up all privacy in
exchange for the privilege of having access to a NAB? Would such a
transparent society necessarily resolve our nano-related security concerns?
-Zero
"To infinity and beyond!"
-- B. Lightyear
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