On Thursday, February 14, 2002, at 07:43 AM, Eugene Leitl wrote: > On Wed, 13 Feb 2002, Greg Newby wrote: > >> In Brin's world, there would also be cameras in the DC police >> departments for us to watch the watchers. More: > > Shouldn't mention Brin, as his symmetry assumption (re quis custodiet) > is > never true, yet interpreted superficially is very much like public > biometrics apology.
Precisely so. Brin's formulation is flawed from the onset by the monopoly of use of force that the State has. "We'll watch you, and you'll watch us!," except the State has the guns, the tax power, the control, the ability to set up areas where no cameras can legally be placed. Imagine the situation in Iran or Afghanistan if they implemented BrinWorld: The mullahs outlaw televisions, radios, magazines, Western books, and whatever else their theocracy dislikes. Imagine that the mullahs themselves are being watched by video cameras. Would this lessen the oppressiveness of the theocratic, totalitarian state? Of course not. Because the issue is NOT mostly about "whether cops follow the rules," which is where BrinWorld went off the rails. The issue is not really "who will watch the watchers." That's minor compared to the more fundamental issues of state power and coercion, whether watched with video cameras or not. The notion that a Panopticon (everything being watched) is desirable is one of the weirdest mutations of political theory in the past century. --Tim May "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." --Robert A. Heinlein
