Privacy vs Open Public Data

[Nick Thompson]

It has the best opening chapter of any book  I have ever read. 

 

N

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus G. Daniels
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2013 11:37 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Privacy vs Open Public Data

 

On 1/16/13 11:05 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

Wait a minute, Marcus.  Why would those behaviors be stalking, absent any intent to communicate a threat!?

 

At the gym and I see a particular person from work over and over.   I go for a walk and I see them at St. Johns.  He is following me!  Or am I following him?   

In your example, depending on what was said at the bar or rowing machine, a witness might agree that it was consistent with stalking.  Was it asymmetric precise information about the `victim' pulled out of thin air?  Did it happen several times?

But we see each other and barely find the energy to grunt acknowledgement.  So it's plainly just a similarity.

By the way, have you ever read the book Enduring Love?  Ian McEwen. 

 

...web search..
No, but sounds relevant.

Marcus

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[lrudolph]

Nick avers:

> I guess I am a behaviorist about shame.   If my behavior makes me blush than
> it was shameful.

Alternatively, someone has slipped you a large dose of niacin, which has made you blush, which
you have felt as shame.  

I suggested this several times to Jim Laird as a worthwhile experiment in his framework, but
he never got off his butt to (have his undergradutes) do it.  Now *there's* a crying shame.

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[lrudolph]

Nick speaks for himself:

> We are, by immigration, probably a nation of former thieves,
> cutpurses, embezzlers, for whom the choice was the docks or the stocks.

You, sir, I believe, are from a sub-nation of former religious fanatics.  I am partly that,
but mostly from the (large!) sub-nation of former German-dialect-speaking peasants for whom
the choice was starvation, with an admixture of the sub-nation of former draft-dodgers for
whom the choice was death in some interminable intra-tribal war promoted by German-dialect-
speaking aristocrats and largely suffered and fought by German-dialect-speaking peasants.  And
so forth and so on.

Are you sure you haven't confused the U-S-of-God-fearin'-A with Australia?


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[Parks, Raymond]

<base href="x-msg://671/">

I prefer embarrassed to shamed - perhaps there's a spectrum from proud to embarrassed to shamed to guilty.

Perhaps white lies do not grease your part of the wheels of society - but I'm reasonably sure, based on my experience, that they are in use in many societies including ours.  There's the blatant pretense of privacy that Marcus mentioned exists in Japan.  There's the "white" lies mentioned in books of etiquette.  There's the common jokes about answering one's SO's question of whether they look good (in particular clothing or after getting their hair styled or ….).  These are all proof that we lie frequently in order to grease the wheels of society.

Ray Parks

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On Jan 16, 2013, at 3:01 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

Raymond,

 

I guess I am a behaviorist about shame.   If my behavior makes me blush than it was shameful.  Guilt, on the other hand is something the law determines.  Just my way of talking, I guess. 

 

But why do petty lies grease the wheels of society.  What lies behind that confident assertion? 

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[glen ropella]

Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 01/16/2013 07:17 PM:
> It should be public.   But it is rude to press a person for personal
> facts they don't volunteer.  If someone uses a source, whether it is
> convenient or inconvenient, public or something else, they they then
> have no business making you feel uncomfortable about information they
> acquired out-of-band.  It's polite behavior.  Nothing must change
> because of the Information Age, etc.

The problem with this part of the discussion is that because of the
"Information Age, etc." (aka population density ;-), the composition of
polite behavior changes rapidly within an individual's lifetime.  Add to
that the mobility of individuals, and there are multiple, perhaps
competing understandings of what polite behavior is.

--
glen

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[glen ropella]

Parks, Raymond wrote at 01/17/2013 10:19 AM:
> These are all proof that we lie frequently in order to grease the
> wheels of society.

Isn't it something like a false distinction to call all this "lying"?
After all, we have von Neumann's extrapolation of Tarski's (or perhaps
Goedel's) work claiming that it's impossible to tell the whole truth.
And we have non-well-founded set theory to tell us that it's problematic
to tell nothing but the truth.

Hence, if we follow your setup to its logical conclusion, then everyone
is always lying.

--
glen

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[Parks, Raymond]

Yes, we lie frequently.  Yes, it is lying - we are either stating a falsehood or omitting the truth (the atheist example upthread).  Human beings are social animals - we constantly try to manipulate our social situation for our personal optimum - it's built into us.  Some of us are better at it than others.  Some (Aspergers?) are downright incapable.

Ray Parks

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On Jan 17, 2013, at 11:29 AM, glen wrote:

Parks, Raymond wrote at 01/17/2013 10:19 AM:

These are all proof that we lie frequently in order to grease the

wheels of society.

Isn't it something like a false distinction to call all this "lying"?
After all, we have von Neumann's extrapolation of Tarski's (or perhaps
Goedel's) work claiming that it's impossible to tell the whole truth.
And we have non-well-founded set theory to tell us that it's problematic
to tell nothing but the truth.

Hence, if we follow your setup to its logical conclusion, then everyone
is always lying.

--
glen

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[glen ropella]

Parks, Raymond wrote at 01/17/2013 10:34 AM:
> Yes, we lie frequently.  Yes, it is lying - we are either stating a
> falsehood or omitting the truth (the atheist example upthread).
> Human beings are social animals - we constantly try to manipulate our
> social situation for our personal optimum - it's built into us.  Some
> of us are better at it than others.  Some (Aspergers?) are downright
> incapable.

OK.  Well, if we're all always lying, then it seems like "lying" is a
useless term.  In order to make progress in the discussion, we'll have
to come up with a taxonomy of qualifiers.  We've covered "white".  It's
ubiquitous, and hence also useless.  What other types of lying are
there?  Specifically, which lies are indicators of legally relevant
internal states like shame versus which lies are merely facilitators of
the type of information control advocated by Eric and my lurker's use case?

--
glen

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[Douglas Roberts-2]

Even I can detect a willful argumentative bent here.  Ray said, and I quote: "Yes, we lie frequently."

You said, "OK.  Well, if we're all always lying, [...]"

Now now, you know better...

--Doug

On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 11:42 AM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

Parks, Raymond wrote at 01/17/2013 10:34 AM:

> Yes, we lie frequently.  Yes, it is lying - we are either stating a
> falsehood or omitting the truth (the atheist example upthread).
> Human beings are social animals - we constantly try to manipulate our
> social situation for our personal optimum - it's built into us.  Some
> of us are better at it than others.  Some (Aspergers?) are downright
> incapable.

OK.  Well, if we're all always lying, then it seems like "lying" is a
useless term.  In order to make progress in the discussion, we'll have
to come up with a taxonomy of qualifiers.  We've covered "white".  It's
ubiquitous, and hence also useless.  What other types of lying are
there?  Specifically, which lies are indicators of legally relevant
internal states like shame versus which lies are merely facilitators of
the type of information control advocated by Eric and my lurker's use case?

--
glen

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--
Doug Roberts
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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 1/17/13 11:19 AM, Parks, Raymond wrote:

There's the blatant pretense of privacy that Marcus mentioned exists in Japan.

It was Bruce that made this point.  This article elaborates..

    http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/ar/libros/raec/ethicomp5/docs/htm_papers/52Orito,%20Yohko.htm

<< Within the context of these socio-cultural and linguistic circumstances, insistence on the right to privacy as "the right to be let alone" indicates a lack of cooperativeness as well as an inability to communicate with others. The right to privacy, understood as “the individual’s right to control the circulation of information concerning him or her", is considered a shameful excess of mistrust in relation both to a cooperative society and to those who collect, store, share, and use personal data. Consequently, the sense of a right to privacy is foreign and less important to Japanese society than it is in Western societies. >>

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[glen ropella]

No, I asserted that if we follow Ray's claim to its logical conclusion,
it means we are always lying.  He responded "Yes", but then went on to
ignore the flaw in his argument.  So, I'm reinforcing my point that his
argument is flawed and he hasn't refuted it.

That's not argumentative.  It's good argumentation. ;-)


Douglas Roberts wrote at 01/17/2013 10:46 AM:
> Even I can detect a willful argumentative bent here.  Ray said, and I
> quote: "Yes, we lie frequently."
>
> You said, "OK.  Well, if we're all always lying, [...]"
>
> Now now, you know better...


--
glen

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[Douglas Roberts-2]

Clever.  Objection overruled. (We watched the Lincoln Lawyer last night).

On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 11:59 AM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

No, I asserted that if we follow Ray's claim to its logical conclusion,
it means we are always lying.  He responded "Yes", but then went on to
ignore the flaw in his argument.  So, I'm reinforcing my point that his
argument is flawed and he hasn't refuted it.

That's not argumentative.  It's good argumentation. ;-)


Douglas Roberts wrote at 01/17/2013 10:46 AM:

> Even I can detect a willful argumentative bent here.  Ray said, and I
> quote: "Yes, we lie frequently."
>
> You said, "OK.  Well, if we're all always lying, [...]"
>
> Now now, you know better...

--
glen

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[Nick Thompson]

<base href="x-msg://671/">

Sorry.  I wasn’t asking whether we lie or not.  Or even whether it eases some social situations.  I was asking for a theory of why lying greases social situations.  Why is the NET effect of small lies positive?  I can think of some reasons.  Like chimpanzees, we live in a fision-fusion situation.  The size of the lie that one can “honestly” tell probably depends in many cases on the frequency with which one sees the person one is lying to.   And then there is the distinction between speech as stroking and speech as conveying of information.  I get that wrong, a lot. 

 

I am having a hard time thinking how this is related to my original question about whether there should be a law against using public data to track individual behavior.  I know that I opened up the subthread about shame and guilt, so I stipulate that it is my fault that we are talking about it.  And I actually think it is related.  I just can’t state the relation.   I am thinking we might be moving toward a belief that truth is like arousal … life goes best when one has a moderate level of it.  There was a wonderful study done some years ago about he relation between truth and the best marriages.  Married folk were asked to play The Dating Game together …. i.e., guess what spouses answers to personal questions would be, preferences, what have you.  Three categories of respondents were identified: spouse pairs that had an unrealistical enhanced view of one another, spouse pairs that had an unrealistically jaundiced view of one another, and spouse pairs that had a realistic view of one another.  As you might expect, the first group maintained the most enduring marriages.

 

But this just brings me back to the need for a theory of why a society is better is there is just a bit less truth in it.  A pragmatic notion, but not, I fear, a Pragmatic one. 

 

Nick  

 

 

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Parks, Raymond
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2013 11:19 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: Privacy vs Open Public Data

 

I prefer embarrassed to shamed - perhaps there's a spectrum from proud to embarrassed to shamed to guilty.

 

Perhaps white lies do not grease your part of the wheels of society - but I'm reasonably sure, based on my experience, that they are in use in many societies including ours.  There's the blatant pretense of privacy that Marcus mentioned exists in Japan.  There's the "white" lies mentioned in books of etiquette.  There's the common jokes about answering one's SO's question of whether they look good (in particular clothing or after getting their hair styled or ….).  These are all proof that we lie frequently in order to grease the wheels of society.

 

Ray Parks

Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager

V: 505-844-4024  M: 505-238-9359  P: 505-951-6084

NIPR: [hidden email]

SIPR: [hidden email] (send NIPR reminder)

JWICS: [hidden email] (send NIPR reminder)

 

 

 

On Jan 16, 2013, at 3:01 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

Raymond,

 

I guess I am a behaviorist about shame.   If my behavior makes me blush than it was shameful.  Guilt, on the other hand is something the law determines.  Just my way of talking, I guess. 

 

But why do petty lies grease the wheels of society.  What lies behind that confident assertion? 

 

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[Steve Smith]

Nick -

<base href="x-msg://671/">

Sorry.  I wasn’t asking whether we lie or not.  Or even whether it eases some social situations.  I was asking for a theory of why lying greases social situations.  Why is the NET effect of small lies positive?  I can think of some reasons.  Like chimpanzees, we live in a fision-fusion situation.  The size of the lie that one can “honestly” tell probably depends in many cases on the frequency with which one sees the person one is lying to.   And then there is the distinction between speech as stroking and speech as conveying of information.  I get that wrong, a lot. 

To expand the argumentation without being (hopefully) argumentative, I defer to Glen's aphorism:

  "The problem with communication is the illusion that it exists."

and also offer the analogy to "tolerancing" in mechanical systems.

To the extent that communication (as we idealize it) is an illusion, then everything we say (or hear?) is inaccurate in the way that "all models are wrong, some are useful".   Since what we say (and hear) is intrinsically inaccurate, everything is, in that sense a *lie*.   We bias and expand these inaccuracies to our convenience and they become lies in the traditional sense of the term.  

These *lies* are useful to more than optimizing our personal situation in the way that two parts fit together with a deliberate *tolerance* work better over the long run than those fit as precisely as possible and then allowed to "wear in".  Among other things, a broken part cannot simply be replaced by another one identical to the original, it must be custom fit  to match the wear on the broken part.  The wear patterns on the part have become part of the system.  By introducing some well-controlled and deliberate error (aka tolerance) into the parts of the system, they do not need to wear as much to "break in" and as a result replacing a broken part with a new "unworn" one is more effective.  

More formally trained engineers here may correct me of course.

The effectivity of interchangeable parts in mass production was heavily dependent on this kind of tolerancing.  I submit that in human exchange, proper tolerancing is like the use of "white lies".   There are limits to the accuracy of our communication (fit of our parts) so we might as well bias the (mis) fit toward leaving room for the social machine to continue to function.  A hand-fit machine can have higher performance and efficiency than one designed with suitable tolerances to not require careful break-in and to optimize replacement of parts down the line.  Or to extend the metaphor of social engagement as mechanical system, humans are like gears with teeth that engage.   If gears were not designed with "lash" (a specific form of tolerance), they would bind.  If humans are not allowed a little bit of error in their communication (biased to their own needs) then they will bind. 

Tolerancing also helps to manage "degrees of freedom".   Gears must be co-linear (or orthogonal in some case) to work properly.   A gear which "wobbles" too much on it's axis can bind, but a little bit of that "wobble" can also prevent binding in an otherwise overly closely toleranced system.  In human discourse, it might be the equivalent of changing the subject or giving evasive answers. 

Q: "Do you like my new hat honey?"
A: "It is really unique!"

 

I am having a hard time thinking how this is related to my original question about whether there should be a law against using public data to track individual behavior.  I know that I opened up the subthread about shame and guilt, so I stipulate that it is my fault that we are talking about it.  And I actually think it is related.  I just can’t state the relation.   I am thinking we might be moving toward a belief that truth is like arousal … life goes best when one has a moderate level of it.  There was a wonderful study done some years ago about he relation between truth and the best marriages.  Married folk were asked to play The Dating Game together …. i.e., guess what spouses answers to personal questions would be, preferences, what have you.  Three categories of respondents were identified: spouse pairs that had an unrealistical enhanced view of one another, spouse pairs that had an unrealistically jaundiced view of one another, and spouse pairs that had a realistic view of one another.  As you might expect, the first group maintained the most enduring marriages.

 

But this just brings me back to the need for a theory of why a society is better is there is just a bit less truth in it.  A pragmatic notion, but not, I fear, a Pragmatic one. 

 

Nick  

 

 

 

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Parks, Raymond
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2013 11:19 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: Privacy vs Open Public Data

 

I prefer embarrassed to shamed - perhaps there's a spectrum from proud to embarrassed to shamed to guilty.

 

Perhaps white lies do not grease your part of the wheels of society - but I'm reasonably sure, based on my experience, that they are in use in many societies including ours.  There's the blatant pretense of privacy that Marcus mentioned exists in Japan.  There's the "white" lies mentioned in books of etiquette.  There's the common jokes about answering one's SO's question of whether they look good (in particular clothing or after getting their hair styled or ….).  These are all proof that we lie frequently in order to grease the wheels of society.

 

Ray Parks

Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager

V: 505-844-4024  M: 505-238-9359  P: 505-951-6084

NIPR: [hidden email]

SIPR: [hidden email] (send NIPR reminder)

JWICS: [hidden email] (send NIPR reminder)

 

 

 

On Jan 16, 2013, at 3:01 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

Raymond,

 

I guess I am a behaviorist about shame.   If my behavior makes me blush than it was shameful.  Guilt, on the other hand is something the law determines.  Just my way of talking, I guess. 

 

But why do petty lies grease the wheels of society.  What lies behind that confident assertion? 

 

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[Parks, Raymond]

Humans lie but not everything a human says is a lie.  If your sample size is conversation rather than word, then you can safely say humans always lie.  Otherwise, you're straying into politician lying joke territory.

Ray Parks

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On Jan 17, 2013, at 11:42 AM, glen wrote:

Parks, Raymond wrote at 01/17/2013 10:34 AM:

Yes, we lie frequently.  Yes, it is lying - we are either stating a

falsehood or omitting the truth (the atheist example upthread).

Human beings are social animals - we constantly try to manipulate our

social situation for our personal optimum - it's built into us.  Some

of us are better at it than others.  Some (Aspergers?) are downright

incapable.

OK.  Well, if we're all always lying, then it seems like "lying" is a
useless term.  In order to make progress in the discussion, we'll have
to come up with a taxonomy of qualifiers.  We've covered "white".  It's
ubiquitous, and hence also useless.  What other types of lying are
there?  Specifically, which lies are indicators of legally relevant
internal states like shame versus which lies are merely facilitators of
the type of information control advocated by Eric and my lurker's use case?

--
glen

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[Parks, Raymond]

<base href="x-msg://671/"> Nick,

  My point is that there are things we do not want to be public that are not illegal nor shameful.  An example of such a thing is a behavior or statement that seems to contradict one's relationship with another human.  It's perfectly reasonable, but that other human can and frequently does feel emotional pain if they find out about it.  Another example was brought up in the thread of how humans manipulate their social environment to prevent social pressure or improve their social situation.

  BTW, I find it interesting if not ironic that the very systems that allow for ubiquitous surveillance are the same systems that allow for indiscriminate self-exposure - computers.  Here's a prediction - someday there will be an app that will turn off surveillance cameras as one passes by them.  That may be a black-market app - but it will exist.  It's harder but not impossible to do the same for UAVs/RPAs/regular aircraft.  The hardest type of surveillance to turn off is satellite - but it's also the easiest to predict.

Ray Parks

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On Jan 17, 2013, at 12:12 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

Sorry.  I wasn’t asking whether we lie or not.  Or even whether it eases some social situations.  I was asking for a theory of why lying greases social situations.  Why is the NET effect of small lies positive?  I can think of some reasons.  Like chimpanzees, we live in a fision-fusion situation.  The size of the lie that one can “honestly” tell probably depends in many cases on the frequency with which one sees the person one is lying to.   And then there is the distinction between speech as stroking and speech as conveying of information.  I get that wrong, a lot. 

 

I am having a hard time thinking how this is related to my original question about whether there should be a law against using public data to track individual behavior.  I know that I opened up the subthread about shame and guilt, so I stipulate that it is my fault that we are talking about it.  And I actually think it is related.  I just can’t state the relation.   I am thinking we might be moving toward a belief that truth is like arousal … life goes best when one has a moderate level of it.  There was a wonderful study done some years ago about he relation between truth and the best marriages.  Married folk were asked to play The Dating Game together …. i.e., guess what spouses answers to personal questions would be, preferences, what have you.  Three categories of respondents were identified: spouse pairs that had an unrealistical enhanced view of one another, spouse pairs that had an unrealistically jaundiced view of one another, and spouse pairs that had a realistic view of one another.  As you might expect, the first group maintained the most enduring marriages.

 

But this just brings me back to the need for a theory of why a society is better is there is just a bit less truth in it.  A pragmatic notion, but not, I fear, a Pragmatic one. 

 

Nick  

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[Nick Thompson]

<base href="x-msg://671/">

Ah.  The equivalent of the bank Robbers mask.  Jam the camera.  N

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Parks, Raymond
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2013 3:26 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: Privacy vs Open Public Data

 

Nick,

 

  My point is that there are things we do not want to be public that are not illegal nor shameful.  An example of such a thing is a behavior or statement that seems to contradict one's relationship with another human.  It's perfectly reasonable, but that other human can and frequently does feel emotional pain if they find out about it.  Another example was brought up in the thread of how humans manipulate their social environment to prevent social pressure or improve their social situation.

 

  BTW, I find it interesting if not ironic that the very systems that allow for ubiquitous surveillance are the same systems that allow for indiscriminate self-exposure - computers.  Here's a prediction - someday there will be an app that will turn off surveillance cameras as one passes by them.  That may be a black-market app - but it will exist.  It's harder but not impossible to do the same for UAVs/RPAs/regular aircraft.  The hardest type of surveillance to turn off is satellite - but it's also the easiest to predict.

 

Ray Parks

Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager

V: 505-844-4024  M: 505-238-9359  P: 505-951-6084

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On Jan 17, 2013, at 12:12 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

Sorry.  I wasn’t asking whether we lie or not.  Or even whether it eases some social situations.  I was asking for a theory of why lying greases social situations.  Why is the NET effect of small lies positive?  I can think of some reasons.  Like chimpanzees, we live in a fision-fusion situation.  The size of the lie that one can “honestly” tell probably depends in many cases on the frequency with which one sees the person one is lying to.   And then there is the distinction between speech as stroking and speech as conveying of information.  I get that wrong, a lot. 

 

I am having a hard time thinking how this is related to my original question about whether there should be a law against using public data to track individual behavior.  I know that I opened up the subthread about shame and guilt, so I stipulate that it is my fault that we are talking about it.  And I actually think it is related.  I just can’t state the relation.   I am thinking we might be moving toward a belief that truth is like arousal … life goes best when one has a moderate level of it.  There was a wonderful study done some years ago about he relation between truth and the best marriages.  Married folk were asked to play The Dating Game together …. i.e., guess what spouses answers to personal questions would be, preferences, what have you.  Three categories of respondents were identified: spouse pairs that had an unrealistical enhanced view of one another, spouse pairs that had an unrealistically jaundiced view of one another, and spouse pairs that had a realistic view of one another.  As you might expect, the first group maintained the most enduring marriages.

 

But this just brings me back to the need for a theory of why a society is better is there is just a bit less truth in it.  A pragmatic notion, but not, I fear, a Pragmatic one. 

 

Nick  

 

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[lrudolph]

Why stop at "jam the camera"?  *Spoof* the camera (feed it false but plausible data, perhaps
inculpating someone else, or perhaps just showing an uppity empty Naugahyde `:chair): a real-
time, animated analogue of the photoshopped stills we now have learned to expect everywhere.

> Ah.  The equivalent of the bank Robbers mask.  Jam the camera.  N
>
>  
>
> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Parks, Raymond
> Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2013 3:26 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: Privacy vs Open Public Data
>
>  
>
> Nick,
>
>  
>
>   My point is that there are things we do not want to be public that are not
> illegal nor shameful.  An example of such a thing is a behavior or statement
> that seems to contradict one's relationship with another human.  It's
> perfectly reasonable, but that other human can and frequently does feel
> emotional pain if they find out about it.  Another example was brought up in
> the thread of how humans manipulate their social environment to prevent
> social pressure or improve their social situation.
>
>  
>
>   BTW, I find it interesting if not ironic that the very systems that allow
> for ubiquitous surveillance are the same systems that allow for
> indiscriminate self-exposure - computers.  Here's a prediction - someday
> there will be an app that will turn off surveillance cameras as one passes
> by them.  That may be a black-market app - but it will exist.  It's harder
> but not impossible to do the same for UAVs/RPAs/regular aircraft.  The
> hardest type of surveillance to turn off is satellite - but it's also the
> easiest to predict.
>
>  
>
> Ray Parks
>
> Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager
>
> V: 505-844-4024  M: 505-238-9359  P: 505-951-6084
>
> NIPR: [hidden email]
>
> SIPR: [hidden email] (send NIPR reminder)
>
> JWICS: [hidden email] (send NIPR reminder)
>
>  
>
>  
>
>  
>
> On Jan 17, 2013, at 12:12 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> Sorry.  I wasn't asking whether we lie or not.  Or even whether it eases
> some social situations.  I was asking for a theory of why lying greases
> social situations.  Why is the NET effect of small lies positive?  I can
> think of some reasons.  Like chimpanzees, we live in a fision-fusion
> situation.  The size of the lie that one can "honestly" tell probably
> depends in many cases on the frequency with which one sees the person one is
> lying to.   And then there is the distinction between speech as stroking and
> speech as conveying of information.  I get that wrong, a lot.
>
>  
>
> I am having a hard time thinking how this is related to my original question
> about whether there should be a law against using public data to track
> individual behavior.  I know that I opened up the subthread about shame and
> guilt, so I stipulate that it is my fault that we are talking about it.  And
> I actually think it is related.  I just can't state the relation.   I am
> thinking we might be moving toward a belief that truth is like arousal .
> life goes best when one has a moderate level of it.  There was a wonderful
> study done some years ago about he relation between truth and the best
> marriages.  Married folk were asked to play The Dating Game together ..
> i.e., guess what spouses answers to personal questions would be,
> preferences, what have you.  Three categories of respondents were
> identified: spouse pairs that had an unrealistical enhanced view of one
> another, spouse pairs that had an unrealistically jaundiced view of one
> another, and spouse pairs that had a realistic view of one another.  As you
> might expect, the first group maintained the most enduring marriages.
>
>  
>
> But this just brings me back to the need for a theory of why a society is
> better is there is just a bit less truth in it.  A pragmatic notion, but
> not, I fear, a Pragmatic one.
>
>  
>
> Nick  
>
>  
>
>

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[Parks, Raymond]

I don't have any real information nor the inclination to do the research, but odds are that huge surveillance camera rollouts (as in city-wide) are IP not analog cameras.  Since running cables is so expensive, they probably use either wireless (GSM) to the monitoring center or at least wireless to a collection point with fiber or ISP connection back to the monitoring center.  Sooner or later, someone will steal one of the cameras, RE it, and find some sort of common password, backdoor, or other vulnerability.  Most IP cameras use H.263 for the video - not all H.263 stacks are secure against fuzzing.  Since most smart phones have GPS, wifi, and bluetooth, an app could be written that takes advantage of the vulnerability to point the camera away (if it's PTZ) or simply turn it off temporarily (no monitoring center can look at all cameras all the time).  Sure, evidence of the turn-off would be evident in the Network Video Recorder (NVR) but there would be no evidence of why.  Replacement of video is not as easy as it seems - simple lack of video is just as good for privacy.

The point is that as more and more of our information is managed by computers, more and more opportunity exists to change that information to suit our purposes.  Paper records require physical access - virtual records require virtual access which can be much easier.

  Here's another example - a while back some ID thieves discovered that all they had to do to get access to a credit rating agency like TransUnion, Experian, or Equifax is be a business and pay some money.  They used that access to steal identify information and were caught when their volume rose to the wholesale level.  If, instead, they used their privileged access to those company's networks, they might have escalated their access and changed the information in those networks.  Maybe they could have made as much money offering a credit rating relief service as they did through ID theft.

Ray Parks

Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager

V: 505-844-4024  M: 505-238-9359  P: 505-951-6084

NIPR: [hidden email]

SIPR: [hidden email] (send NIPR reminder)

JWICS: [hidden email] (send NIPR reminder)

On Jan 17, 2013, at 6:09 PM, <[hidden email]>

 wrote:

Why stop at "jam the camera"?  *Spoof* the camera (feed it false but plausible data, perhaps
inculpating someone else, or perhaps just showing an uppity empty Naugahyde `:chair): a real-
time, animated analogue of the photoshopped stills we now have learned to expect everywhere.

Ah.  The equivalent of the bank Robbers mask.  Jam the camera.  N

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Parks, Raymond

Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2013 3:26 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: Privacy vs Open Public Data

Nick,

 My point is that there are things we do not want to be public that are not

illegal nor shameful.  An example of such a thing is a behavior or statement

that seems to contradict one's relationship with another human.  It's

perfectly reasonable, but that other human can and frequently does feel

emotional pain if they find out about it.  Another example was brought up in

the thread of how humans manipulate their social environment to prevent

social pressure or improve their social situation.

 BTW, I find it interesting if not ironic that the very systems that allow

for ubiquitous surveillance are the same systems that allow for

indiscriminate self-exposure - computers.  Here's a prediction - someday

there will be an app that will turn off surveillance cameras as one passes

by them.  That may be a black-market app - but it will exist.  It's harder

but not impossible to do the same for UAVs/RPAs/regular aircraft.  The

hardest type of surveillance to turn off is satellite - but it's also the

easiest to predict.

Ray Parks

Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager

V: 505-844-4024  M: 505-238-9359  P: 505-951-6084

NIPR: [hidden email]

SIPR: [hidden email] (send NIPR reminder)

JWICS: [hidden email] (send NIPR reminder)

On Jan 17, 2013, at 12:12 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

Sorry.  I wasn't asking whether we lie or not.  Or even whether it eases

some social situations.  I was asking for a theory of why lying greases

social situations.  Why is the NET effect of small lies positive?  I can

think of some reasons.  Like chimpanzees, we live in a fision-fusion

situation.  The size of the lie that one can "honestly" tell probably

depends in many cases on the frequency with which one sees the person one is

lying to.   And then there is the distinction between speech as stroking and

speech as conveying of information.  I get that wrong, a lot.

I am having a hard time thinking how this is related to my original question

about whether there should be a law against using public data to track

individual behavior.  I know that I opened up the subthread about shame and

guilt, so I stipulate that it is my fault that we are talking about it.  And

I actually think it is related.  I just can't state the relation.   I am

thinking we might be moving toward a belief that truth is like arousal .

life goes best when one has a moderate level of it.  There was a wonderful

study done some years ago about he relation between truth and the best

marriages.  Married folk were asked to play The Dating Game together ..

i.e., guess what spouses answers to personal questions would be,

preferences, what have you.  Three categories of respondents were

identified: spouse pairs that had an unrealistical enhanced view of one

another, spouse pairs that had an unrealistically jaundiced view of one

another, and spouse pairs that had a realistic view of one another.  As you

might expect, the first group maintained the most enduring marriages.

But this just brings me back to the need for a theory of why a society is

better is there is just a bit less truth in it.  A pragmatic notion, but

not, I fear, a Pragmatic one.

Nick  

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 1/17/13 6:32 PM, Parks, Raymond wrote:

Sooner or later, someone will steal one of the cameras, RE it, and find some sort of common password, backdoor, or other vulnerability. 

With a firmware update, Linksys boxes that can do 1000mw (about a 35 fold increase in power).   Seems like jamming would be easier (put it in a briefcase, tape it to a out-of-sight post, wall, etc.)

Marcus


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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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