On 7/25/13 2:24 PM, glen wrote:
Legislation and individual ethics do compare nicely because _some_
people know the "public secret" while others do not, in the same way
that the infidel husband's secretary might know of his infidelity (as
well as the person with whom he had the affair), even though his wife
does not know. The point being that both cases, the public secret and
the infidel husband, are compartmentalized in the same way. The one's
who notice the _potential_ are "in on" the public secret, whereas the
oblivious ones are not.
While the wife is on her deathbed, it seems unlikely to me that a
secretary, buddy, or mistress barges in to report the affair. That
could have happened, but it was described as not occurring because that
was the thought experiment. It was really up to the husband to confess
or not.
My point is not about the structural similarity of information leaks in
various realms (yes I see your point), it's about their relative
consequences. Exposing problems with organizations is more important
that exposing problems with individuals, simply because of the number of
people it impacts. If the Catholic church tolerates sexual abuse of
children, or a DA tolerates homicides based on racial profiling, or a
government takes actions that promotes violent blowback from other
organizations, these are qualitatively different than instances of crime
by individuals. Unfortunately, what often happens is that organizations
are good at what I'd describe as "internally negotiating the truth"
amongst themselves, such that a critic can't pin down any one fault.
But, Zimmerman and Martin, that's easy to form an opinion about.
But putting paranoia aside, the self-described "nerds" who know lots
of flat technology would write off my suspicions until/unless I (and
they) took the time to dig in a little deeper. Those people, the
non-paranoid "middle tier" civilian, were not in on this particular
public secret any more than the guys who played golf with the infidel
husband might not have been in on the secret of his infidelity,
whereas his secretary might have been.
A basic sketch of a suspicion may have diffused around, at least
notionally, to paranoid and cynical technology types. The scale of the
metadata effort was obvious to me back as far as 2003 or so, and the
intent was absolutely clear with the Patriot act right after 9/11. Of
course it takes government quite a long time to convert intent in to
anything. I would guess the NSA had production tools by 2008 or so.
More alarming to me is the collusion between corporations and between
governmental organizations. Not merely cleverly intrusive (I can
respect the technical capability), but heavy-handed too.
Normal people that put most importance on getting along with their
neighbors and peers and the powers that be will tend to be dismissive
until it absolutely smacks them in the face and there are enough "middle
tier" civilians to form a new consensus. Without that critical mass,
change won't occur.
Marcus
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