Rating: 
Summary: Provocative!
Review: (Note: I read the manuscript shortly before David finished the book.) Brin takes a fresh look at privacy and freedom, arguing that strong, healthy societies depend on open debate, the power of criticism, to decide who and what is right. If you've read "Earth," you may recognize some of his ideas from its characters; after reading "Transparent Society," a re-read of "Earth" is worthwhile, as its characters practice some of what Brin preaches in the new book.If you're interested in this argument about the role of free speech, Jonathan Rauch's "Kindly Inquisitors" tackles the same issue with a focus on institutions rather than technology.
Rating: 
Summary: A thought provoking and sometimes scary look at privacy...
Review: Anyone who follows digerati publications such as Wired magazine and reads novels by Neal Stephenson already knows all about cryptography- that protective suit of armor that is supposed to keep all our private data safe from the thugs that would exploit it, whether they be the government, the megacorps, or the mob. In a future of ultra-surveillance, heavy crypto is the only way to hide. David Brin throws this notion in the trash. In "The Transparent Society", David Brin suggests that to embrace heavy crypto is to embark in an "arms race" of secrecy that lowly private citizens can't possibly win. The age of ultra-surveillance, universal wiretapping, and data regulation is upon us, and there's only one true way to avoid a scenario that seems straight out of Orwell- universal transparency and accountability. In Brin's view, the technologies of data retrieval and surveillance should be made available to anyone who would make use of them- neighborhood watches could monitor their streets, parents could keep track of their children, and, while governments and agencies would have the ability to spy upon citizens, citizens and watchdog groups would have the power to spy back- and thus hold the powers that be accountable. While we'd lose the anonymity provided by modern society, we would gain safety, not only from crime, but from abuse of authority. We'd be able to form new community bonds that utilize distributed computing to keep tabs on each other. And, most importantly, we'd gain peace of mind. In theory, anyway. While Brin's thesis is unique, formidable and provacative, it does seem to fall short in places. For instance, there would still be a huge division between technological haves and have-nots- between the people who know how to utilize this technology and those who lack the skill, the patience, the time, the resources, or the simple will to use it. Brin is more than a bit of a technophile (not insulting technophiles, I'm one too), and seems to assume that everyone in the neo-West is on the same page as him. Also, despite his numerous appeals to pragmatism, the book is extremely idealistic, and runs counter to the trends we're seeing today, in both the increased scope of government surveillance powers, the increased intrusion of companies into our lives, and the ever-escalating privacy arms race being fought on the internet and in the courts. The world is going the way of Orwell, and not the way of Brin. Yet, in the end, would there be any difference? In addition to public apathy, the sheer amount of data created by a surveillance infrastructure would be daunting to an individual attempting to make use of it. We're already facing a massive "information glut" today, both in terms of the internet, and in terms of government agencies who, despite their increased powers in the wake of 9-11, lack the ability to sort through all the data they're recieving. Between these problems and the haves-have nots gap, Brin's vision seems to fall short. Also annoying was Brin's obsession with Plato-bashing, which seems to be a popular hobby among political philosophers ever since Karl Popper tackled "The Republic" in his book "The Open Society and It's Enemies". Last year, however, my government advisor gave me a different view of the Republic- that the book is actually a satire, meant to show how and why totalitarianism never could work. This flies in the face of these Popperians, who seem caught up in the idea that Plato was a proto-Nazi. However, weaknesses aside, The Transparent Society is an excellent read. I'd suggest that, for an alternative (fictional) view, anyone with an interest in this title also pick up a copy of Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon".
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating exploration of the future impact of technology
Review: Brin begins with a compelling comparison: should we allow technology to rule us -- or rather, should we concede the right of rulers to control technology -- or should we as citizens take seriously the egalitarian implications of technology. Brin defends the latter option with great conviction, but he's no congratulatory futurist. He concedes that we may be forced to reconceptualize how we think about privacy, but at the same time he offers compelling reasons to believe that technology may open an emancipatory door to more genuine freedom. Beware the cameras, for they are coming, is Brin's mantra. Far better that we collectively decide where they should be pointing.
Rating:
Summary: Mandatory reading for *everyone*
Review: Brin doesn't flinch in the face of privacy issues and the downside of privacy: lack of accountability. The book takes a pragmatic approach, presenting all side of the issue with ideas on each. Don't be fooled by the inflammatory and shallow subtitle about "choosing between privacy and freedom". It's clearly a device the publishers added to sell books.
Rating:
Summary: This book is absolutely mandatory reading
Review: Brin has taken some of the concepts explored in his science fiction, fleshed them out and provided a compelling rationale and background for them. He gives a fair and balanced analysis of all sides of the multitude of debates regarding privacy, censorship, freedom, access to information and the future of our society. And then he steps back and has the courage to do what so few people seem to do in modern debate--argue that the answers lie not in the extremes, but in a pragmatic center. Perhaps "center" isn't the right word, instead he seems to have moved the entire argument from two dimensions into three. If you have any interest at all in privacy (computer or otherwise), censorship, government power, encryption, or what our world may be like in ten or twenty years; you definitely need to read this book. You may not agree with it, but it's going to shape the coming debates.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent at provoking thought.
Review: Brin's book challenges several reflexive views held by cyberthinkers -- most significantly that strong encryption is the key to liberty. (He's clearly right about that. Encryption always fails. Look at ULTRA, MAGIC, cellphone encryption, DES, etc.) His occasional efforts to prove to readers that he really is a good liberal (anti-gun, anti-Limbaugh, etc.) and not some sort of nasty cyberlibertarian are a bit annoying and out of place, but aside from that I find little to criticize. As he freely admits, Brin may be wrong about many of his assertions, but he's clearly right that there needs to be far more discussion and far less groupthink than there has been on the subject of privacy and surveillance.
Rating:
Summary: Accountability trumps privacy
Review: David Brin explains why the traditional privacy argumets, equating privacy with liberty, and lack-of-privacy with tyrrany, are insufficient when dealing with the coming world of ubiquitous surveillance. What's more important, making sure nobody sees what you do, or making sure everyone can see what those who have power do? Secrecy always favors the powerful, DB argues, and since the technology is inevitable it makes more sense to give it to everybody than to try to ban it altogether. The book addresses many other aspects of the debate, such as the utopian ideal of perfect internet anonymity, and why the modern ideal of privacy is more a side effect of industrialization than a primordial human expectation. One thing I wish the book did better is to address why the rich and powerful won't be able to have a surveillance and shielding advantage over everyone else sufficiently great to counter the popular surveillance movement he anticipates. But this is a small flaw in an otherwise terrific book that will jar you out of any complacent assumptions you may have made on the subject of privacy. To see Brin address these issues in fiction, read Earth and Kiln People too -- both are terrific books.
Rating:
Summary: Provocatively Entertaining
Review: David Brin has a lot to say and says it discursively, but he's done his homework--dipping into an impressive range of social science, philosophical, crytographic, and technical literature--thought carefully, marshalled compelling arguments seasoned with humor and bright metaphors, and, as a result, is worth listening to, arguing with, or simply pondering. The Transparent Society works out, with much supporting detail, ideas about secrecy and privacy first raised in Brin's magisterial novel, Earth, and does so in a civilizational context. I risk doing Brin and his book grave injustice by oversimplifying, but let me say Brin views "accountability" and "criticism" as central to the progress of neo-Western civilization (fight the power!) and further posits that criticism works very like T-cells in an immune system, providing (to a greater and greater extent as the collective grows in knowledge) autonomous and impersonal correctives against all manner of "error." Brin argues for greater informational transparency--almost total disclosure--observing that, if universal surveillance cameras and other snoop technologies are inevitable (and they almost certainly are), then a generalized oversight capability, or a mutual surveillance capacity (in other words, my ability to watch the government with the same technologies that the government can watch me) is the answer to the classic question, quis custodiet ipsos custodes (who shall guard the guardians?)? In short, we all will. Brin's ingenious argumentation may strike some readers as cavalier or reductionist. It's not. It's serious and is, moreover, and a serious response to flamewar proponents of "encryption as the answer" to the privacy dilemmas of the wired age.
Rating:
Summary: A good read on important issues
Review: David Brin is a storyteller whose stories have a meaning. This time he has written a non-fiction book but the text is so fluent to read that you almost forget, how important issues Brin is addressing. As a science fiction author he has the vision to take present information society trends into their probable outcomes. And the choices involved are not always easy ones. And it is us that have to make them.
Rating:
Summary: A honorable follow-on to Orwell's 1984
Review: For perhaps two centuries people living in today's advanced industrial societies have had a modicum of privacy. Before two centuries ago, privacy was nearly unheard-of: you lived in a village where everyone knew everyone else and everyone else's business. Between two centuries ago and the present, people moved out of the village and out to a--relatively isolated--farm, or into a city where the sheer number of people made relative anonymity--and thus privacy--possible. But, at least according to David Brin, the future will be different. In the future privacy as we know it today will be nearly impossible to attain. In the future privacy will be next to nonexistent because of the explosion of audiovisual, communications, andcomputer technologies. Cheap hard disks will allow people to collect massive information about transactions: who did what. Cheap cameras will allow people to collect massive amounts of information about locations: who was where. Cheap computer power will allow the sorting and searching of massive amounts of information in search of those nuggets of data relevant to any one particular person. And cheap computers will allow anyone--or anyone with access codes--to access what will essentially become the stored life history of anyone. From David Brin's perspective, this change is coming. The only question is who will have access to the information that will be contained in the great surveillance databases. Will the information be "secret" and "private"--in which case only governments which may turn thuggish will have access? Or will the information be "open" and "public"--in which case we will once again be back in the village, where nearly everything is done in public and everybody knows everybody else's business: truly a global village. Brin makes a good case that the technology will bring us to one of these two outcomes. And he argues that the first outcome--in which we try to preserve our "privacy" by restricting access to the great surveillance databases--is a very dangerous outcome. It is a dangerous outcome because secret knowledge is power, and if the twentieth century has proven anything it is that governments cannot be trusted with secret knowledge. The great tyrannies of the twentieth century flourished because their surveillance gave them control and their secrecy kept enough citizens from realizing what they were up to fast enough. The advent of modern audiovisual, communications, and computing technologies greatly amplifies the power of surveillance, and greatly multiplies the danger if it is not countered by a greatly amplified power of the people to survey the government. And popular surveillance over the government carries as a side effect a potential loss of privacy. Anything that restricts popular access to information about other citizens restricts popular access to information about the government as well. I believe that Brin's book is not necessarily an accurate forecast. The futures that he envisions will probably never come to pass. And the choice that he foresees may well never be posed in the stark form in which he poses it. Yet the book is useful: the future Brin envisions is clearly one of the possible futures that might come to pass, and the consequences of what he sees as the wrong choice in that possible future could turn the twenty-first century into an abattoir that would make the twentieth century look like a Sunday picnic. If enough people read Brin's book, or are brushed by the currents of thought in represents, then it may turn into a self-negating prophecy: a warning of dystopia that by virtue of the horror it paints helps avoid that horror. That was the function of George Orwell's 1984. That is an honorable role for anyone's book.
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