NSA and Privacy

Thanks to Edward Snowden, the continuing and almost continuous drip of NSA revelations over the last few months has starkly revealed the massive erosion of privacy that has taken place in the last 10 years. This is a major and in my view massively negative development.

Our societies are built on an expectation of a reasonable amount of privacy. While all of us recognize that communal living precludes total anonymity, we don't expect all our conversations, messages, emails, thoughts, whatever to be accessible to total strangers. The expectation is that whatever aspect of our personal and family lives we choose to share is done on a voluntary basis. The freedoms that Western societies take for granted and that people in many parts of the world aspire to are contingent on this  minimum expectation of the levels of privacy available to us. When these levels are breached, people feel betrayed and violated. So why is this notion of privacy so important? The answer lies in the kind of society we want to live in.

Democratic societies have massive flaws. They can be paralyzed and even hijacked by determined special interests. It is a pure myth that they are by nature peaceful. Some of the most destructive wars seen on the planet have been launched by democracies. However, they are also inherently robust and stable. When they largely function as they are supposed to, they tend to allow space to the people living in them to develop their own opinions and be able to voice them in reasonable safety. There is a level of trust present between citizens and between citizens and the state that translates into all areas of social, political and economic life. This trust is present because citizens in such societies have reasonable expectations of privacy.

Quasi democracies, absolute monarchies, dictatorships etc. on the other hand are much less robust and stable. As a result, they are also largely paranoid. This paranoia results because the man at the top of the heap always fears for his position. These societies tend to to be intrusive and try to minimize or ideally eliminate all notions of privacy for their citizens. As a result, there is a much lower level of trust between citizens and between citizens and the state. This lack of trust is reflected in turn in all areas of social, political and economic life.

The actions of the NSA have breached this level of trust. Granted that all nations have a duty to protect their citizens from external threats and in today's society, these threats also emanate in the digital realm. But the response to perceived threats is totally disproportionate to its magnitude. The type of violence that most countries in the world face is not sufficient to threaten their existence. So when governments behave as though all threats are existential - in other words when they become paranoid - they act to reduce both the level and the expectation of privacy amongst their citizens. Inevitably, this will result in lower levels of trust among the citizenry which will ultimately impact all aspects of society. The paradoxical effect is that efforts designed to preserve cherished freedoms and a hallowed and traditional sense of society and of one's place in it will result in undermining those same freedoms and that sense of self.

Related articles

• NSA's Secret War Against Online Privacy Seekers (sgtreport.com)
• Edward Snowden and NSA (rihara09.wordpress.com)
• Privacy Matters! (singingsanoritta.wordpress.com)
• The Internet: The NSA Circumvents User Privacy (guardianlv.com)

Exponential Growth and Trends

Two trends started at roughly similar times and fed on each other: the dawn of industrialization and the beginning of formalized pursuit of scientific knowledge. Not only these two trends fed on each other, they were also propelled by an ever faster internal dynamic which in turn fed into the interactions of both. This means that both the process of industrialization and the increase in scientific knowledge are on an exponential curve. Both started slowly and then rapidly increased. Thus we see that the time taken for a scientific discovery to make its way into the classroom is becoming shorter and shorter. Similarly the time taken for a product or process or service to move from the lab into the hands of consumers is also becoming shorter and shorter. This is a blistering pace which is rapidly kicking up in gear as the effects of exponential growth kick in.

Where will this take us? At this point it is hard to say. The past is no longer a guide to the future and indeed has not been so for over 50 years. Each new discovery and technology has had enormous repercussions that have in some fashion radically broken from the past. The light bulb, for example, has enabled us to carry forward daytime activities well into the night. Not only that, it has encouraged new forms of activities and businesses that simply were not possible before. Night clubs are an example. No one will dance late into the night in candle light on a regular basis. High rise buildings are dark, dingy places without the lighting made possible by the light bulb. Without it, the number of high rise building that exist would be much lower. This has obvious repercussions for businesses and individuals.

The light bulb in turn depends on the reliable generation of electricity which requires an understanding and theory of elctro-magnetism. Thus a scientific discovery holds the key to an invention that other inventions and forms in turn depend on. A good example is computers. These machines have revolutionized business and personal interactions. Email for example is an integral part of the lives of large numbers of people. Email cannot exist without computers.

The TV is another example. Coupled with the light bulb, it made possible a new form of entertainment and information dissemination. Before the TV, people made their own entertainment which was essentially local. Now a vast industry exists for the sole purpose of entertainment. A new form of story telling has been invented that is immediate and compelling. Previously, information was also harder to disseminate. Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth would not be possible without the kind of mass dissemination that TV offers.

Airplanes have woven a web around the world that has made travel cheap and convenient. Not only that, it has made possible new types of businesses specially in perishable products. There is a thriving export market of flowers from African countries into Europe and the US. This is a type of business that is impossible without airplanes; flowers are simply too perishable.

As these few examples show, over the last 50 years or so, new discoveries and inventions have ever rapidly made the journey from discovery to the class room to the market. Each has caused a disruption in the fabric of our lives. Their collective impact has been such that our current activities and the things that we take for granted would have seemed incomprehensible and magical to our ancestors living just a 100 years ago.

What will our lives be like 50 years from now? What kinds of activities will we be engaged in? What will be our concerns? These and similar questions are pondered upon by futurologists. The scenarios they conjure are fascinating and often illuminating. Their analysis however has a fundamental problem. We tend to project the present into the future. We identify existing trends and project them forward. No matter how radically different the analysis may seem, it is at its heart a projection of current trends into the future. However, if the recent past should teach us anything it is this: the future is going to be completely and unexpectedly different. New discoveries can easily and very quickly stop current trends in their tracks and kick-start new ones. It is impossible to predict what these new discoveries will be like. What we can be sure of is that there will be big disruptions in our lives and possibilities will exist that we cannot even imagine today.

Related articles

• Big Idea: Technology Grows Exponentially (bigthink.com)
• Kevin Kelly's What Technology Wants: and regulation (clubtroppo.com.au)
• FutureMed: Healthcare & Medicine Migrate From Linear Growth to Exponential Growth (downtheavenue.com)

Society's Priorities

A free market economy is a grand social experiment in societal priorities. The products and services we purchase, the types of jobs that are rewarded and the types that are not rewarded, the level of trust in personal and business interactions are all indications of the priorities that we have as a society. Our actions show what we value and what we don't. Rhetoric is cheap. It is easy to say anything specially if one feels that the words spoken will not come back to haunt them. Actions are what count.

Take education. Something that is vital for society's future prosperity. Without an educated workforce, many of the techniques and processes that are routinely discussed in the business community would simply not be possible. Most R&D in the public and private sector depends on the continuous infusion of young researchers who bring in a fresh perspective on old problems. So given that education is so important, teaching should be among the most highly paid of professions. The fact that it isn't specially at the primary and secondary levels says that despite our rhetoric, as a society, education is actually not considered very important.

Finance on the other hand is seemingly vital to an economy's health and success. The work that financial managers do is far more important to society than all other sectors of the economy despite the fact that finance is in essence a service industry which needs other sectors in order to exist. That is why the financial sector routinely hands out multi-million dollar packages thereby attracting the best talent and starving other sectors of the same.

Given our spending patterns, it seems that as a society, we care more about consuming in the present than preserving and adding for the future. As a group, our priorities are geared more towards enjoyment of the present despite the warnings that we have been given in the shape of various economic crises that have arisen from time to time.