The Transparent Society - Inverse Transparency and Bi-directional Transparency

Inverse Transparency and Bi-directional Transparency

Transparency is sometimes confused with equiveillance (the balance between surveillance and sousveillance). This balance (equilibrium) allows the individual to construct their own case from evidence they gather themselves, rather than merely having access to surveillance data that could possibly incriminate them. Sousveillance therefore, in addition to Transparency, assures contextual integrity of surveillance data (i.e. a lifelong capture of personal experience can provide "best evidence" over surveillance data to prevent the surveillance-only data from being taken out of context).

Somewhat more nuanced than simply being "against privacy," Brin spends an entire chapter exploring how important some degree of privacy is for most human beings, allowing them moments of intimacy, to exchange confidences, and to prepare - in some security - for the competitive world. Nevertheless, he suggests that we currently have more privacy than our ancestors, in part, because "the last two hundred years have opened information flows, rather than shutting them down. Citizens are more able to catch violators of their rights - and hold them accountable - than commonfolk were in the old villages, that were dominated by local gentry, gossips and bullies."

This might seem counter-intuitive at first. But he uses the song "Harper Valley PTA" as a metaphor for how people can protect their eccentricities, and even some privacy, by assertively "looking back." Brin also points to restaurants, in which social disapproval keeps people from staring and eavesdropping, even though they can. Enforcement of this social rule is possible because everybody can see.

From this perspective, a coming era of "most of the people, knowing most of what's going on, most of the time," would only be an extension of what already gave us the Enlightenment, freedom and privacy. By comparison, he asks what the alternative would be: "To pass privacy laws that will be enforced by elites, and trust them to refrain from looking at us?"

Brin participated in the opening keynote panel discussion at the 2005 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference, where 500 sousveillance devices were also created to contextualize and explore this debate further. (Each attendee was given a wearable camera-dome bag which created, in effect, an inverse panopticon.)