Description
Book SynopsisIn 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, won''t really preserve our privacy. Governments, the wealthy, criminals, and the techno-elite will still find ways to watch us. But we''ll have fewer ways to watch them. We''ll lose the key to a free society: accountability. The Transparent Society is a call for reciprocal transparency. If police cameras watch us, shouldn''t we be able to watch police stations? If credit bureaus sell our data, shouldn''t we know w
Table of ContentsA New World * The Challenge of an Open Society * The Age of Knowledge * Privacy Under Siege * Can We Own Information? Minefields * Human Nature and the Dilemma of Openness * Lessons in Accountability * The War Over Secrecy Road Maps * Pragmatism in an Uncertain World * Humility and Limits * Global Transparency * The Road of Openness
