Re: Transparent Society

CurtAdams (CurtAdams@aol.com)
Thu, 6 Nov 1997 16:21:32 EST


In a message dated 11/6/97 4:12:21 AM, Holger.Wagner@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
wrote:

>Unfortunately, it turned out that the wrong people DID read SOME of my
>private mail, and got a completely wrong impression. Now I have to say
>that anybody who writes anything not adressed to a public (like in
>mailing-lists) unencrypted is simply naive. The problem is not that much
>revealing something about your personality, but people who only get parts
>of the information and misunderstand it - without you having control over
>that. The greatest 'threat' I see is simply being quoted out of context
>by people with prejudices - and not even getting the opportunity of
>straightening such things out.

Of course, if the discussion of you were public, you *would* have the
opportunity to straighten things out. The problem arises not so much from the
loss of privacy as from imbalances in privacy - the more public individual is
at a disadvantage when faced with hostile conspiracy. In this case, the
hostility is unintentional.

I find publicity serves as a substantial disincentive to unethical behavior.
Secrecy lets people get away with things.