The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom

Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1998. First edition. First printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good in very good dust jacket. Black mark on bottom edge. DJ has slight edge wear and soiling.. vi, 378 p. Notes. Index. A respected futurist advances an argument sure to cause debatein a wired world, the best way to preserve our freedom will be to give up our privacy. In The Transparent Society, award-winning author David Brin details the startling argument that privacy, far from being a right, hampers the real foundation of a civil society: accountability. Using examples as disparate as security cameras in Scotland and Gay Pride events in Tucson, Brin shows that openness is far more liberating than secrecy and advocates for a society in which everyone (not just the government and not just the rich) could look over everyone elses shoulders. The biggest threat to our society, he warns, is that surveillance technology will be used by too few people not by too many. In New York and Baltimore, police cameras scan public areas twenty-four hours a day. Huge commercial databases track you finances and sell that information to anyone willing to pay. Host sites on the World Wide Web record every page you view, and smart toll roads know where you drive. Every day, new technology nibbles at our privacy. Does that make you nervous? David Brin is worried, but not just about privacy. He fears that society will overreact to these technologies by restricting the flow of information, frantically enforcing a reign of secrecy. Such measures, he warns, wont really preserve our privacy. Governments, the wealthy, criminals, and the techno-elite will still find ways to watch us. But well have fewer ways to watch them. Well lose the key to a free society: accountability. The Transparent Society is a call for reciprocal transparency. If police cameras watch us, shouldnt we be able to watch police stations? If credit bureaus sell our data, shouldn't we know who buys it? Rather than cling to an illusion of anonymity-a historical anomaly, given our origins in close-knit villages-we should focus on guarding the most important forms of privacy and preserving mutual accountability. The biggest threat to our freedo.