IP: Do you trust your government

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

This was an input to a discussion started on one of the EFF lists re
Distrust in Government. While the thread has expired the subject arose yet
again in talking about the "breakin" at the DOJ.


Dave


Subject: Re: "Why distrust government" thread 
Date: Thu, 01 Aug 96 09:43:30 PDT
From: "Willis H. Ware" <willis () rand org>


YES, Stanton, much of this discussion is tangential to the purpose of this
list but there are points to be made that are quite on target. Let me try a
couple.


1. As you know, but other readers may not, I was a member and vice chairman
of the Privacy Protection Study Commission in the mid 70s.  The PPSC evolved
a point of view that is very pertinent to the cause of personal privacy (and
I use that term as indicative of the use of information about people, not
as a synonym for confidentiality).


     Namely, if the country ever finds itself in an unpleasant or
     uncomfortable position with respect to privacy, it will not be the
     result of a grand collusion executing a master plan.  Rather, it will
     be the end point of a series of decisions, each made by a bureaucrat;
     and each having been seen, at the time, as a valuable thing to have
     done and serving a commendable social cause.


Example: the use of SSNs to index (for example) driver records as an effort
to locate delinquent parents who have failed to pay legally imposed child
support.  It illustrates a common aspect of such actions; namely, to
identify and locate a few, an entire large population is put at risk of
invasion of privacy.


My current addendum to our PPSC principle: just look around you and see how
often an intrusion on personal privacy meets the conditions: (1) serves a
commendable social cause, and (2) is made by some part of the bureaucracy
for (3) a cause that is in the interests of, or the glory of, the agency.


This observation is relevant not only to privacy as a social cause, but it
is also a form of distrust, distrust in the sense of having to be on guard
against improper actions by government.


2. In the technical considerations for information systems, a basic maxim
is that any entities (e.g., two computer systems) that intend to communicate
with one another must start out with mutual distrust, and then take
affirmative action to establish mutual trust so that interaction can safely
and securely proceed.  Often, the affirmative action is in the nature of
cryptographically based events.


In my philosophy, so it is with democratic government.  The People have to
start out mistrusting government, and government must then behave in such a
way that it earns and establishes the trust of the People.  In general, I
think that people would prefer to trust the government, which is different
from liking everything that it does.  The government, any government -
federal or state or local, is bound to do many things for many reasons and
not every member of society will like or support every action.  But with
every action, there is an expectation that government will be implemented
according to some set of rules.


Everyone expects government to behave according to the rules that go with
the (legislative or regulatory) actions that have been adopted.  We live in
a democracy and generally speaking, we believe that the rules pertinent to
some action have evolved to a set that most people agree with and accept.
But the glitch is that governments are made up of people; and people or
oganizations have motivations that sometimes transcend the rules.  But,
liking or disliking does not equate to trust/distrust.


But things get out of hand; we have over zealous personal behavior; we have
organizations overstepping the bounds.  And unfortunately it happens just
often enough to keep the People on edge and biased toward distrust.  It
isn't that some one or few persons are not trusted -- although that can be
so; but rather, it is that the behavior of the totality of government and
the People's expectations of proper behavior can neither be predicted with
certainty or guaranteed.  So the People must be vigilant and alert; that
translates into, or can be seen as, distrust.


So, it seems to me inherent in a democracy that people have to err on the
side of distrust of government; the attitude comes with the turf.  The
People always have to be on guard to deter inappropriate behavior according
to the rules.  It adds up, does it not, to distrust in principle?  And
sometimes, to distrust in fact and specificity.


So, my view would be that the allegedly widespread and (probably)
over-hyped mistrust of government is not an evil thing; but rather a
valuable evolutionary step to a sounder democratic people/government
relationship.


                                        Willis H. Ware
                                        Santa Monica, CA