From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sun Aug 03 2003 - 12:28:48 MDT
Samantha correctly observes
> As long as people, individually or in political groups, have the desire and
> power to control and force others to their idea of "what is right", full
> transparency will be equivalent to full oversight and control.
How would you outline the progress you anticipate (that is,
if you're simply not full of despondency over our prospects)?
How does our "desire" ever diminish to the point that groups
and individuals *never* initiate the use of force (except in
the defense of private property)? On first reading, one might
think that you were calling for a spontaneous change in human
nature.
> Also, "full" is not so full as long as there is no real way
> to force the powers that be into such transparency. All
> government groups to date do not agree that their operations
> and proceedings should be transparent. Again, full oversight
> and control of the citizens by the government becomes the
> price of transparency. Again, No, thank you.
I don't understand. Why would you be unwilling to pay
this price? I think that we should indeed aim for government
to be *fully* transparent first.
The two may have to go hand in hand. The western
governments will (rightly) refuse to be transparent
so long as formidable enemy societies have huge
nuclear arsenals aimed at them, or so long as
terrorists and criminals can strike fear into the
hearts of millions. (The U.S. appears to have made
great progress on the issue of the former.)
When the U.S. is just a bit more powerful, perhaps
it can be persuaded to become completely open at the
same moment that universal surveillance is possible.
So, yes, Ashcroft is watching all of us to see who
is building basement nukes, but we are all watching
him to make sure that there are no non-public midnight
arrests.
> > > Would you really like your Mother, Boss or neighbours
> > > to be able to watch while you improve your prostate
> > > health (as described in a recent post) ?
> >
> > I have overcome, at great cost and difficulty, the
> > notion that I am or would be especially interesting
> > for people to observe.
>
> Such trivial irrelevancies in the face of potentially creating
> a complete Big Brother situation are utterly amazing to me.
Oh for God's sake. You always surrender to some internal urge
to harp about something. One of the issues (recall Natasha's
input) has always been---in this thread---how one would *feel*
about complete transparency.
Lee
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