Inequality and Risk

Paul Graham:

Like all illicit connections, the connection between wealth and power flourishes in secret. Expose all transactions, and you will greatly reduce it. Log everything. That’s a strategy that already seems to be working, and it doesn’t have the side effect of making your whole country poor.

I’m reminded of a clever interview in Wired magazine from several (many?) years ago, in which the subject of the interview, a security expert, adamantly and convincingly pushed the idea that if we’re going to cover our cities’ public spaces with surveillance cameras, then we ought to make the footage available publicly as well. Privacy goes away regardless if access to the surveillance footage is limited to law enforcement authorities; but if the footage is available to everyone, then it can’t be abused.

Wish I could find a link to the interview, but, alas, Google is failing me. If anyone can find a link to that interview, let me know. Update: Got it; it was this interview with David Brin. Thanks to everyone who sent the link.

★ Tuesday, 30 August 2005