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From: randolph@cognito.Eng.Sun.COM (Randolph Fritz)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: The end of privacy... and so what comes next?
Summary: The spectrum of openness
Message-ID: <11197@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 6 Apr 91 18:21:43 GMT
References: <10777@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> <1991Apr1.180311.5557@eff.org> <63565@bbn.BBN.COM> <1991Apr5.213419.1489@eff.org> <1991Apr06.060552.29814@looking.on.ca>
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Organization: St. Dismas Infirmary for the Incurably Informed
Lines: 42

Brad, your observation that life is now being wrenched between
near-total publicity and deep, dark secrecy is a good one.
Historically, I propose that social openness varies; I'd mark some of
the variations like this:

Police state -- the gov't tries to collect as much information about
you as possible so that they can control behavior they dislike, or
maybe just brutally invade people's lives.  Society becomes a network
of snitches, and personal information is jealously guarded.  Travel
and communications are restricted so that you are kept in the web of
police control.

Urban mercantile -- major businesses collect information relevant to
behavior in their markets.  There are no central files, but there is a
vast amount of personal data floating around in local files and in the
minds of shopkeepers.  Society as a whole is suspicious of secrets.
Monitored communication is encouraged; truly private communication
discouraged (think of the NSA censorship of cryptographic research).
Travel is likewise encouraged as long as it is public.  Members of
unpopular groups have the choice of staying in their place somewhere
on the margins of society or subjection to heavy social pressure
(bigotry) and inconsistenly enforced laws.  This, of course, is the
contemporary USA.

Feudal bourgeois -- society is mainly rural, and communications among
the majority of population is mainly by word of mounth.  In the
small cities, information is jealously guarded.  A city is not one vast
open social network; rather the cities are heavily divided by guild
and tribal loyalties.  Architecture reflects this: spaces are designed
in a hierarachy of privacy; only the markets are truly public and
these are heavily controlled -- a historical model for this is the
streets of the old Arab cities.

The only one of these models that I am sure survivies in cyberspace is
the police state.  Are the others even possible?  And are other models
possible?

   nd t
 ou    ui
R Press  T  __Randolph Fritz  sun!cognito.eng!randolph || randolph@eng.sun.com
 ou    ui     Mountain View, California, North America, Earth
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