From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: 7da5c285a3445e0da2cfb0697c32e68a7b73156b558fdca4dccd4b4d300c01b6
Message ID: <199806202043.QAA00585@dewdrop2.mindspring.com>
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UTC Datetime: 1998-06-20 20:44:02 UTC
Raw Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1998 13:44:02 -0700 (PDT)
From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1998 13:44:02 -0700 (PDT)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: The End of Secrecy
Message-ID: <199806202043.QAA00585@dewdrop2.mindspring.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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From: "The End of Secrecy," by Ann Florini, Foreign Policy,
Summer, 1998:
http://jya.com/teos.htm (39K)
IMF managing director Michel Camdessus has explained, openness
and transparency are now economic issues, not solely political
ones:
As more and more evidence has come to light about the
adverse consequences of governance problems on economic
performance--among them, losses in government revenue,
lower quality public investment and public services,
reduced private investment, and the loss of public
confidence in government--a broader consensus has
emerged on the central importance of transparency and
good governance in achieving economic success.
Most officials in Asia seem to have accepted the virtues
of transparency, at least in the economic field. Singaporean
senior minister Lee Kuan Yew, stressing the importance of
transparency in a country's financial system, recently told
Vietnamese prime minister Phan Van Khai: "In an age of
information technology, instant communications and computers,
if you try to hide, you are in trouble."
[And:]
The Entomopter Cometh
One of the most unusual MIT designs on the drawing board is a
four-inch-long, insect-like craft dubbed "the entomopter,"
equipped with legs for crawling through buildings or ventilation
ducts, and flapping wings for airborne reconnaissance.
Nevertheless, no matter how small, efficient, or cost-effective
surveillance hardware becomes, there will always be limits to
what technology can accomplish. Indeed, it is a double-edged
sword--witness the polemics in Washington and on the Web over
who, if anyone, should regulate electronic encryption. From
untappable communications to pixel-by-pixel photo and video
editing, technology is often as good at hiding secrets as it
is at revealing them. Without a norm of transparency, technology
will continue to protect private information as well as ferret
it out.
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