Identity and Transparency: The politics of information

In physical life, I go out for a walk. I stop at the bank. The bank knows certain things about me; my accounts, my Social Security number, my phone number (one of them), etc. They don't know what breakfast cereal I like; they don't know my health history; they don't know my preferred news sources.

I leave the bank and go to the bookstore. They might know my credit card number (unless I pay in cash). They might have one of my phone numbers if I give it to them. They might keep a list of the books I've bought (if I filled in their "customer survey"). They don't know my bank account number or Social Security number. They don't know a lot about me; I mean... it's only a bookstore. They might not even know my "legal name."


I leave the bookstore and go to the coffee shop. Those people don't know anything more than (perhaps) I like sugar twists, I like double milk for my coffee and I usually come in at a certain time (providing the same person is on shift at the same time daily). They don't know any of the preceeding information. Why do they need it, when all I want is coffee and a doughnut?


No one thinks this is unusual. No one thinks I am "hiding" anything. No one thinks such behaviour is "shifty" or "suspicious." No one thinks I am "concealing my identity behind a first- name-only relationship."

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Why should I provide an X-ray and proctoscopic detailed report on everything I do in my life to, basically, shopkeepers? Because that's what a lot of this internet jazz is about, isn't it? A bunch of shopkeeps, who want me to buy stuff. Just... store clerks. Yet they want information I do not give to my bank or my doctor all at one time, let alone some random store owner like K-Mart or the local deli.

It's been shown hundreds of times that these people, who really have no business in my business, are unable to secure their information. Unlike many, I actually investigate and study these breeches of information. Like most who do, the figures are clear: more than 3/4 of these breeches are inside jobs and sheer negligence, as they always have been. Sony got "hacked" not for monetary gain but to demonstrate their failure to meet the requirements of data handling and security to which they are legally responsible.

So, it is somehow "suspicious" of me to be wary of turning over sensitive data, which has no bearing on my purchasing some widget from a store, to people who have shown time and again their inability to protect such information? Don't give me that jazz about "hackers" or I will have to inundate you with links to statistics and charts on the last 100 high-profile data losses. Google them yourself. As an old professor of mine used to say, "do your own homework."

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"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." This seems to be the huge mantra being pushed these days. It is used as a justification to require me to submit to a data examination that would put an IRS audit or OB-GYN exam to shame. This is a classic straw man argument.

Am I "hiding" when I don't tell the bookstore my SSN? Hiding when I don't tell the bank I like Cocoa Crispies? Hiding when I don't tell the coffee shop what I bought yesterday and what medicines I am taking? Sounds ridiculous when you put it that way, yes?

And this vaunted transparency does not work both ways. It is a one-way mirror, which is not transparency at all. When police installed cameras in all their squad cars, they did it with great hoopla. Yet now... those cameras are being quietly removed. Why? Because they showed things the police don't want shown or subpoenaed. Malls can film me; I can't film in a mall. I can't take photos of public buildings, yet those buildings can train cameras on me.

The TSA can stick their fingers in my genitals but I cannot take a photo of them doing it without the threat of my camera being confiscated, my name put on a "hassle list" and the chance of a nice cosy interrogation in some small room. I can't film a cop tasering someone, even if I am standing well out of the "area of conflict."

The proponents of this one-way transparency crap use "violation of civil rights" as a cover for denying the filming of a public servant (police) doing the job I trust them to do and pay for with my taxes. They throw up unnecessary roadblocks and delays to deny information requests they are legally required to answer. In fact, they do everything they can to hide information from me.


So who is it that has "nothing to hide, nothing to fear"? Who is it that wants to stick alien probes into me and suck out and coordinate every single scrap of data I produce in my entire life, and yet will not let me access public information under legal requests? Who is it that fears cameras and accountability? Who is it that pushes "transparency" on me under the cover of fear-mongering (terrorism, 'think of the children') and yet fears transparency on the other side?

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I have nothing to hide. But I refuse to get naked and allow the jellied finger to probe me simply because I want to talk or shop. Just because "it's the internet!!!" doesn't make common sense nor common practice suddenly "strange" or "suspicious."

It's a lot more suspicious to me, this push towards "total accountability" and "total transparency" on my part when I can't get the same from public agencies that use my money for funding. When my bank makes me jump through hoops to get my money but has a website "hackable" simply by reading the URL (which is a complete failure on their IT team's design; this "hack" has been known since pre-web days).

When I do not have to hack to get your info; there are many companies that will simply sell me your info in bulk. Don't believe me? Do some quick research. Yep, they'll sell me everything you filled in on their little forms (banks, insurance agencies, you name it) in bulk, for pennies a name.

The only reason that makes sense to me about this "call to transparency" and "accountability" is a bunch of shopkeeps that want to buy and sell me as a commodity. The information they glean from me is not for my benefit; it's for them.

Oh, and there might be one other reason: there are laws pertaining to the gathering of intelligence by the State and the Government. However... when the State and the Government are merely buying information from these companies... they're just another customer. It's only business. See how slick that is? A nice way to route around such unpleasantness as the laws and Constitutions that are held up to us as guidelines.

Transparency? Sure! Quit hiding the backroom negotiations and text of the P.R.O.T.E.C.T.I.P. Act! Stop hiding the deals to turn a public utility (the data transmission lines we paid for) into a private enterprise. Stop seizing domain names without a warrant which I can access. Show me the budget breakdown for the TSA. Quit hiding the medical reports about backscanner radiation exposure levels...

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This is not "transparency;" this is an interrogation in a room with one-way glass.

Racism in a virtual world

Well, since I am the poster-child for fuming posts this week, I might as well make good use of that for something that has offended me deeply and to the core.


A friend in a VW (not SL) and I have just had a conversation in that world. This person is a person of color; I wouldn't have known this except that I met them in RL. And to me, in RL, such things are minor artistic details as far as I am concerned; as relevant to me personally as hair or eye color, height or weight, age or sex or gender. A detail of a surface shape that is mere wrapping over a human soul.

Now I am not blind to the political repercussions of these things. Such things affect how people are treated, which affects their outlook and their beliefs; they are part of their political reality I will never be able to encompass.

Like the following, as told to me:

My friend had a partner inworld (The Builder) who she has generously given free land, workspace and tier to for months and months. She has supported his business. She has supported him at her own cost through her generous spirit. And they were personally involved.


The Builder was in contact with someone who is supposedly "a big name" in sim owners inworld. This Big Name had for weeks been expressing nasty racism to the Builder about his partner, my friend. He let that go on for weeks without telling my friend about it because he was courting the business opportunities that Big Name could give.

This Builder packed up his stuff from my friend's sims in the middle of the night and went with the business opportunity after informing my friend of all these previous conversations and IMs to him littered with these racist comments. He's stupid too, because now Big Name wants him to pay 50% of the tier fee monthly. Good. My concern is not with Mr Builder but Big Name.


Pixels have no color (or all colors)

Big Name was reportedly making racist statements for weeks, cultivating Builder for her own purpose; to snatch him away from my friend as a moneymaker. Big Name actually had one of the Big Cheeses of the World move her sims so they wouldn't be next to my friend's.

As if that matters in a virtual world. Physical locality. Does Big Name realize that they may still be on the same server? Probably not; this Name is such a low mind that a complex realization like that may be beyond her.

I cannot express my outrage, distaste, horror and fury at such an attitude or conduct from a pesron supposedly intelligent enough to use a computer to access virtual worlds better than I did in a notecard sent to Big Name inworld:


[BIG NAME],

I am a friend of [my friend]. What she has told me regarding your conduct, your words to her and your blatant racism is an affront to any person with intelligence. It is also insanity to believe that gender, sex, color or orientation mean anything in a world made of pixels.

I do not believe people like you belong in these new worlds. I don't care who you are, what pitiful power you think you wield in a virtual world or what you think of me; your opinion would be less than useless to me given your own narrowminded and provincial views.

I've never encountered you inworld and I thank God for that.

Don't bother to respond; you are blocked and muted as suitable to one of your low mentality and ugly personal views on race.

Miso Susanowa
Artist


I will never rent a shop on her sims or allow her to purchase a single piece of my own work no matter what incentives are offered. I will never buy a product from any merchant on those sims. Yes, it is unfair to the merchants who may have no idea of this type of behaviour and outlook. But I will in no way give or funnel a single penny to such a person nor take a single spacebuck from such a person. I do not care what such a person will say about me, my work or anything else. My reputation will not be built on tacit aggreement or approval of such bigotry and ugliness, no matter what it might cost me in sales, talk or anything else tangible. If I sell my soul for such material gain I am nothing.


What is more insane to me is that Big Name is in a world made of pixels. There are no colors here. There's no height, weight, age, skin color, racial background or any of the other surface shapes of life. All that is here is your mind and what you bring with you.

And narrowminded bigotry has no place here.

The New Grids - Cui Bono?

I am taking pity on Soror Nishi and making a post here to spare her my post-long mini-essays on her own blog, this one "My Virtual Future." Soror is always a good read and stimulating to thoughts and issues, hence this posting.


The Latin phrase 'cui bono' renders as, "who profits?" It's a good maxim to use in any situation. Who profits from multiple grids, the expansion of the grid technology, the diversity of grids?


We do of course. That is, the 'we' who identify not with some brand-name, some virtual equivalent of Abercrombie & Fitch snobbishness, Microsoft/Apple fanboi fever, Novell 'we're going to rule networking so get with us or die' myopia... in short, people with open minds and the intelligence to think outside the proscribed or trendy view towards the future of the entire network.


I remember when Novell and Token Ring ruled networking, despite awkward structures, deadly custom partitions which, if disturbed, would lock you out of your data and applications and cause untold misery and loss. I remember having to call the High Priests of IBM, doing everything short of sacrificing two cows and a flock of doves to petition for a moment of their mighty time to this unworthy enduser. Same story with Cobol, Fortran and proprietary transmission protocols and disk schemes. I remember being told that TCP/IP was a fringe technology, not really 'ready for business' and that I was wasting my time with this new protocol...


And what was the result? The future blew those technologies and stances away and the unemployment lines were full of those fully-invested in the entrenched wisdom of the past.


Lucky for me that I was on the net so early, in contact with people mostly older and wiser than me, who gave me a thorough grounding not only in the tech prevalent at the time, but in thinking about the future. The most valuable tech lesson I picked up from these people and the one which has continually served me well is that being invested in one single approach, technology or platform is not only foolish but short-sighted and dangerous.


The same principle applies in the arts. I remember the snobbishness that accompanied electronic music's debut into mainstream music; the nose-turning and sniffing against synthesizers and digital recording. Sure, there are good and artistic reasons to use real saxaphone players or analog tape machines even now; the point is that you use the best tool for the job, for what you wish to accomplish, and having a variety of tools at your disposal gives you more options.


The current tussling over "who's grid is da best grid" is a good example of clannish and isolationist thinking which will only hurt those invested in it. If life teaches you anything, it is to be flexible to changing circumstances, to know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em, to know when an Oblique Strategy or lateral thinking is called for in a situation.


The internet itself was designed to be flexible, to have multiple routes and multiple access points, to be resilient and changing in response to structural problems or obstructions. "The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" is very applicable here; censorship of ideas and a willingness to embrace or at least explore new ways and means can be considered damaging to your own thinking, forcing you into an intellectual and stagnant backwater while the future merrily rolls onward, leaving you behind to play with your Token Ring and curse your Novell partition for locking you out of your data.


The work being done by Pathfinder, soror, Wizard Gynoid and others is a laudible example of forward-thinking, net-centric investigation into the burgeoning technology of the grid and hypertransport. The political (because let's face it, that's what it is) wrangling over "why you should go with X grid and not the others" is provincial and indicates an investment in some ideological approach, stance or philosophy that is entrenched and backward-looking.


I'm not urging anyone to commit to a choice of grids; some grids serve an individual or organization's needs better than others, just as some libraries excel in technical reference sections while others concentrate on English Literature or architecture. The point is, we all benefit from the multiplicity of libraries and approaches. We all benefit from being able to access multiple sources and options in almost everything we involve ourselves in in life.


I am part of a community - the network. I do not care if you use Windows, Mac or Linux to get there (although I do have my own preferences). Saying "I will only talk on the net to people using Linux" would be stupid, yes? Because the method of achieving online presence is an irrelevant issue to your presence on the net and your ability to be part of a community. I don't care if your website is hosted by GoDaddy, Yahoo, private host or a university. I don't care if you have an incredibly-detailed technical blog or an enthusiastic independent music site; it's irrelevant to me that you may spend your time chatting away on IRC or building virtual coliseums. What is important to me is that you are present; you are part of the community of the internet. Everything else, all the other issues, are background to this simple awareness of what I am involved and invested in.


So, who profits from the expansion of the grid; the multiplicity of the worlds, the explosion of boutique and specialized grids and the beginnings of the hypertech transport tech that has the importance today that the birth of HTML did in 1990? You do. I do. We all do.



I urge people to remember what they are involved in and what they invest a large amount of time in - a community. Try to see the bigger picture. Try to think of yourself as a netizen first, a gridnaut second and after that, you can be as partisan as you like about which football team er I mean grid you root for. But don't sit back in your comfy armchair and pontificate about something you have no experience in; go out and explore a variety of these grids and open your mind to the experience of them and the meaning of them in the larger picture.


"To explore strange new worlds... to seek out new grids and new civilizations... to boldly go where no avatar has gone before..." This is the continuing mission of the Starship Miso, although it's been longer than 5 years ^_^ I hope it will continue for the rest of my life, and I hope it will for you too.