"He who has access to information controls the game."
April 10, 2015 7:23 AM   Subscribe

1966 BBC documentary predicts challenges of electronic privacy. BBC's 1966 documentary "California 2000", besides being a fascinating flashback in itself, features an amazingly prescient interview with internet pioneer Paul Baran, in which he warns of the risks of government centralized use -- and misuse -- of state-run digital surveillance, 24 years before the EFF was founded.

"Well, he who has access to information controls the game. This is very dangerous. I think both your country and mine have never trusted the government completely. We do so for good reason. Here we have a mechanism that could be abused. Here we have a mechanism that would allow the creation of a dictator. . . I've yet to see an expression by anyone in Congress about this new type of danger. In fact, we see proposals for centralizing information, we see proposals for rushing ahead into new, more efficient computer information systems, and very little thought is being given to the dangers of the misuse of these systems. . . I ask a lot of people about privacy, why they valued it, and I was surprised by the number of people who said "Well, I don't do anything wrong. Why should I worry about privacy?" And then, on the other hand, I think there's a more wise group that says, 'Privacy is really the right to be wrong, then go on and live the rest of your life, without having it mark you forever.' I tend to think this latter view is the view we should hold."
posted by markkraft (24 comments total) 37 users marked this as a favorite
 
'Privacy is really the right to be wrong, then go on and live the rest of your life, without having it mark you forever.'

So we're really talking about the likes of Google, Facebook, and anyone else that makes private information available.
posted by Brian B. at 7:33 AM on April 10, 2015


1966?
You mean, sometimes futurists are RIGHT?
That's amazing.

Also, that quote in bold? Bang on the money.
posted by Mezentian at 7:36 AM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


"So we're really talking about the likes of Google, Facebook, and anyone else that makes private information available."

Not really, but it does certainly apply.
posted by markkraft at 7:39 AM on April 10, 2015


"Also, that quote in bold? Bang on the money."

Eh, not for me. I mean, your financial information is private. Like your credit card number and stuff. Also, your medical history and your sexual history is private. But none of those things are private because they're "wrong".
posted by I-baLL at 7:41 AM on April 10, 2015


"You mean, sometimes futurists are RIGHT?"

Yeah, but his ideas about "hot-potato routing"? "Message blocks"? That crap would never work.
posted by markkraft at 7:42 AM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


But none of those things are private because they're "wrong".

No, but they are private because they can be used against you.
posted by Mezentian at 7:47 AM on April 10, 2015 [7 favorites]


Baran’s Wired Interview was very good:
There was another crazy thing that occurred at Rand. Somebody was doing a study on termination of wars. How the hell do wars stop? Interesting problem, but Congress got all pissed at the idea. They even passed a law forbidding government-funded defense researchers from studying surrender. They were afraid that somebody would think our study of surrender would indicate that we were exhibiting weakness. So the study of surrender continued, but you didn't call it that. We didn't emphasize that communications was important in cooling things off; we did emphasize getting the word around to go fire your missiles.

Sometimes certain terms take on a meaning of their own and become real. One was "minimum essential communications." The military said all they wanted was "minimum essential communications," and I believed them. So I thought data rate would take care of everything - get the word out, calm things down if necessary. You don't need a hell of a lot of communication for that.



I figured there was no limit on the amount of communications that people thought they needed. So I figured I'd give them so much communications they wouldn't know what the hell to do with it. Then that became the work - to build something with sufficient bandwidth so that there'd be no shortage of communications. The question was, how the hell do you build a network of very high bandwidth for the future? The first realization was that it had to be digital, because we couldn't go through the limited number of analog links.
posted by migurski at 7:58 AM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


Here's an interview with Paul Baran done six years before he died. Very interesting if you're interested in the Cold War era history behind the internet.
posted by markkraft at 8:02 AM on April 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


I am not so sure this is as right as it first seems. Dictators don't need information on people to be in power. Having a cache on your personal habits is a very new invention, but even a couple of hundred years ago, it did not exist, but dictators have always been around. People with those tendencies will always look for an opening.

We are also overlooking another problem with personal data: we have too much of it, and it's value will rapidly depreciate. We are in this peculiar vacuum of transitional anarchy right now and much of the value of data depends on how much you care. The more secure you are with yourself, the less effective the information becomes.

'Privacy is really the right to be wrong, then go on and live the rest of your life, without having it mark you forever.'

Better yet: you don't need privacy because you not only have the right to be wrong, but you *are* wrong in absolutely everything you say, think, or do. No one is right or universally or eternally so. Life goes on.

We have too much shame and judgement, not enough bravery. It is the fear that makes dictators, nothing else.

Freedom comes from bravery as you embrace truth and are courageous enough to love your own truth with looking for constant validation and vindication. When you are brave enough to say what you really think and not look to others to dictate the contents of your soul, that's when the big, scary dictators lose their power. They can know everything about you, but if you don't have fear, they lose both power and control.

I don't know why people are always looking for an excuse to be scared so that others can take advantage of it. When you can say, so what?, all the power comes right back to you...
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 8:38 AM on April 10, 2015


Eh, not for me. I mean, your financial information is private. Like your credit card number and stuff. Also, your medical history and your sexual history is private. But none of those things are private because they're "wrong".

You are confusing privacy with secrecy re: credit card numbers. For the rest, yes, mistakes (whoops, I defaulted on a loan; whoops, I'm pregnant) create stigma that can haunt you for the rest of your life, and without privacy, that haunting could easily come in the form of social and economic ruin.
posted by Sys Rq at 8:39 AM on April 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


Dictators don't need information on people to be in power.

History suggests otherwise.
posted by Sys Rq at 8:41 AM on April 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


When you are brave enough to say what you really think and not look to others to dictate the contents of your soul, that's when the big, scary dictators lose their power. They can know everything about you, but if you don't have fear, they lose both power and control.

Perhaps I am missing your larger point, but as long as the big, scary dictators control the resources and the guns and the tanks, they're going to keep their power no matter how little fear you have.
posted by jbickers at 8:43 AM on April 10, 2015


Indeed, I'd say that information on people is an absolute necessity to be a tyrant. But then, I'm just back from Berlin.
posted by Devonian at 8:44 AM on April 10, 2015



Perhaps I am missing your larger point, but as long as the big, scary dictators control the resources and the guns and the tanks, they're going to keep their power no matter how little fear you have.


As the Peshmerga frequently prove, it takes more than tanks and guns to hold on to power.
You need to know where to aim them, and the Pesh are less than cooperative with that.
posted by ocschwar at 8:45 AM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


But none of those things are private because they're "wrong".

No, but they are private because they can be used against you.


more to the point -- who's defining what is wrong? I've said and/or done any number of things over the years that I don't feel were wrong in any way, yet I'm paranoid enough to imagine them being used against at me at some point by somebody who does. In the same interview clip as the privacy line, the guy says "he who has access to information controls the game". Sort of a cliche by now but that doesn't make it any less true.

I am not so sure this is as right as it first seems. Dictators don't need information on people to be in power

It sure worked for a certain guy in Germany about eighty years ago. One of the very first things they did there post-WW2 was enact legislation that put limitations on how local police forces could share information with each other, because they knew that the Gestapo (the state police) were instrumental in helping the Nazis and gain and hold their power.
posted by philip-random at 8:47 AM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]



It sure worked for a certain guy in Germany about eighty years ago.


Note the contrast with Denmark. When Germany invaded, the Danes went on a frenzy of generalized records destruction. Even records of perfectly innocuous information are a threat when they fall into the wrong hands.
posted by ocschwar at 8:51 AM on April 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


For the rest, yes, mistakes (whoops, I defaulted on a loan; whoops, I'm pregnant) create stigma that can haunt you for the rest of your life, and without privacy, that haunting could easily come in the form of social and economic ruin.

Not just that.

If I have a particularly high opinion of a car's make and model, I certainly want that information to stay private when I walk into a dealership. I don't want the (say) Susita dealer to know that I'm a prolific poster on the Drooling Susita Fanboy message board.

If I have a child age 5, that's nothing to be ashamed of, but if I am selling my house at the time, I don't want the buyers to know or they'll think "school panic" and lowball their offers.

If I have weak kidneys, I'd rather not let anyone know that because then they know they can have their way with me just by stalling things.

You have to negotiate with people as you go through life, and the less they know about things like this, the better off you are.
posted by ocschwar at 8:57 AM on April 10, 2015 [5 favorites]


Again, though, that's secrecy, not privacy. (But, yeah, the distinction is purely semantic.)
posted by Sys Rq at 9:12 AM on April 10, 2015


"more to the point -- who's defining what is wrong?"

The question we should ask ourselves regarding this interview is how he would've perceived the threat, based on his own background, rather than trying to apply our own judgments after the fact and rather out of context.

Obviously, he's someone who had top secret government clearance, and was significantly investigated as a result. It would only be natural that he would think in terms of that kind of thorough going over being available on a searchable government database. He would also filter this through his identity as an Eastern European and as a Jew, who, quite possibly unlike family friends and relatives, was spared the twin evils of the Nazis and of Cold War state surveillance.

He would've thought about McCarthyism -- which disproportionately targeted both Jewish and highly educated people -- and how a demagogue could rise to power and abuse centralized government databases, using them as a tool of oppression and a way to target dissidents, intellectuals, etc.

In many ways, he was foreseeing something akin to the Patriot Act, where the government centralized its databases on things such as police notes and investigations, the FBI, personal information on citizens, their friends and known associates, financial and employment records, political and societal group involvements... etc.

So, when he talked about "being wrong", it was likely a matter of "being wrong" in the eyes of a dictator, or a repressive, overbearing state. It was basically winding up on a digital "blacklist" as a dissident, free thinker, intellectual, socialist, labor supporter, Jew, etc. Flagged as untrustworthy, and treated accordingly. Wrong in the eyes of the state. Maybe even wrong in the eyes of the majority of the public... but not wrong in the sense of having actually done anything wrong.
posted by markkraft at 9:50 AM on April 10, 2015 [4 favorites]


Also, it's probably natural for someone back then with a security clearance to have a natural fear of possibly doing or having done something wrong.

For top engineers and scientists who wanted to work, and were very rigorously investigated as a result, there already was a chilling effect from the Cold War paranoia. You were already being judged, and didn't really know what things might accidentally hurt or even destroy your career.
posted by markkraft at 10:02 AM on April 10, 2015


No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald discusses the basic concepts of privacy in a political context quite a bit in Chapter Four.

It's pretty clear that a politically healthy state has a transparent government and private citizens, and that the opposite is characteristic of fascism.
posted by ovvl at 10:08 AM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


It's pretty clear that a politically healthy state has a transparent government and private citizens, and that the opposite is characteristic of fascism.

I would add that fascism stems from corporatism, and when it is commonly recognized as a state function, it is likely already the social state of anti-democracy.
posted by Brian B. at 8:42 AM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


This is a fascinating time capsule and the whole thing is well worth watching. The Baran interview, panders to modern concerns but is only part of the theme of the programme as a whole which finishes by wondering whether all these technological marvels will (and I paraphrase) actually produce a fair and just society, or if strong, rich white people will be the only ones to benefit.

In 1966 I lived in a poor part of Manchester in the north of England, my experience seems positively medieval compared to what was shown here.
posted by epo at 10:36 AM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


Just tangentially related : Dealing with the digital afterlife of a hacker
posted by jeffburdges at 9:19 AM on April 17, 2015


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