The Transparent Society by David Brin

Author:David Brin [Brin, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9780738201443
Google: hsyA7hmDEqYC
Amazon: B004P5O37W
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 1998-07-15T07:00:00+00:00

A more reflective and comprehendible case was made by Michael Godwin, legal adviser to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who eloquently presented a philosophical basis for Clipper enmity in the July 1994 issue of Internet World magazine.

… [T]he government subscribes to the reasoning of Pascal’s wager. Pascal, you may recall, argued that the rational man is a Christian, even if the chances that Christianity is true are small, [since] the consequences of choosing not to be a Christian are, if that choice is incorrect, infinitely terrible….

This is precisely the way the government talks about nuclear terrorism and murder-kidnappings. When asked what the probabiliy is of a nuclear terrorist [using] encryption and managing to otherwise thwart counter-terrorist efforts, they’ll answer, “What does it matter what the probability is? Even one case is too much to risk!”

But we cannot live in a society that defines its approach to civil liberties in terms of infinitely bad but low-probability events. Open societies are risky. Individual freedom and privacy are risky. If we are to make a mature commitment to an open society, we have to acknowledge those risks up front and reaffirm our willingness to endure them.

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