Re: opinions on book "The Truth Machine"

[Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>]

Tim May <tcmay@got.net> wrote:
> At 7:06 AM 5/31/96, Timothy C. May wrote:
> >It sounds like a "make.money.fast.by.promoting.this.book" scam to me.

If you mean myself, this had not occured to me and I assure you I have
no connections with the author, and no interest in promoting sales of
his book.

There is no charge to read the book on line -- and I for one wouldn't
buy a paper book I have electronic copy for.  I saw the URL posted (by
the author of the book judging by the From line) in
talk.politics.crypto and read it on line.

The only "charge" for reading is to fill in short questionaires as you
read.

> It was truly bad stuff. Terribly written, confusing no character
> development except in a cartoonish way.

The writing style wasn't great, and I'd agree there were plenty of
flaws, but what I was interested in was cypherpunks opinions on the
technology, rather than the quality of the book, or making money for
the author!  This was my reason for making the post to cypherpunks.
Admitedly it was 5am when I made the post (having just finished
reading said book) and I didn't explain myself... lets try again:

The interesting technologies touched on were:

- cheap video used by everyone to record their own lives

This has been talked about in cyperpunks in the past, and from that
discussion I seem to remember that there was talk of a trial with
police in some area of the US wearing mini-cams to protect them from
claims of police brutality.

- the book has video streams transmitted in real time to some database
(state run? I'm not sure it was clear, also no mention of encryption).

If it was an option to have video stored in the device itself
encrypted or transmitted to a data haven encrypted, I don't see
anything wrong with that so long as it's voluntary and nothing to do
with government.

That government might have a go at mandating a "voluntary" video
survielance set up doesn't seem that unrealistic in the current
political climate.  Having just read your post on curfews my response
was what the fuck, are you serious?  It totally amazes me that public
opinion has got to the stage that something like this would be
accepted.  Sounds like a military dictatorship.  Children first,
adults next?  The level of peoples paranoia about reducing crime at
any cost has been severely underestimated.  Surely that's way out of
line constitutionally?

The price and the storage technology for a tamper resistant storage
device linked to a CCD at cheap commodity price hasn't quite come
about yet.  When it gets cheap enough, I think this could become
called for -- children first perhaps as the curfew.  Random police
searches asking you what your business is.

- wide use of accurate lie detectors

the book has everyone wearing a wrist communicator / lie detector /
video recorder.  If someone wants to walk around with a light that
will flash if they tell a lie, again that's there problem.  It would
be kind of fun to see politicians required to wearing one.  But as
Sandy pointed out the `national security' and the need to lie to the
people for the benefit of the people might be bought up as a reason to
defend dishonest politicians.

the book talks about 100% accurate lie detectors with no
qualifications which is obviously nonsense, I'm not sure what success
current lie detectors have, but there would no doubt be lots of
problems.  People are able to fool current lie detectors, and as I
understand it the detectors look for subtle physical signs of
distress, changes in skin conductivity caused by distress, and some
are able to lie without suffering any distress.  It seems reasonable
that use of a wider range of sensory devices as input, and more
sophisticated analysis of the signals could improve on reliability of
the current lie detectors.

Interesting questions arise if they become accurate enough that they
can be used to supplement or even replace much of the legal system.
The state mandated requirement of people to routinely submit to lie
detector tests is of course totally unacceptable, but if you get to
the stage of having curfews (still amazed at that) and the police are
legally allowed to ask you to submit to a lie detector test asking a
few more questions during the random spot check seems likely.

For instance I have been stopped by the police four times late at
night driving home, as I live some distance from the university.  The
questions are basically what is your business (ie what are you doing
so late at night), and then they get you to take in your papers to the
police station within 1 week which is an inconvenience.  Also the
practice over here seems to be to do a spot check on the state of the
vehicle, quick visual inspection of the tires with flashlight, check
on the lights, do they all work -- dip / full, indicate.  Also at the
same time they ask for ID.  On one of the occasions the officer asked
what an object inside the car was (it was on the floor beteen the seat
and the door well and visible with the door open) -- a wheel wrench (2
foot wrench and socket), I said it was a wheel wrench, and he made a
comment that he had thought it was something to hit someone with.
Jeez.  It would have been a pretty good object to hit someone with as
far as that goes, but it has also proved a remarkably useful object
for changing a flat tyre.

I'm not sure where I would stand on this legally, but I have so far
resisted the temptation to tell them it's none of their business.

While we're on the topic of the increase in the police state
mentality: in the UK recently as the result of some nut shooting up a
school, gun laws are due to get stricter yet.  They are I think
talking about making it law that all target pistols must be kept at
the gun club (whereas currently you can take them home to clean (but
not shoot)).

Also they are actually talking about restricting the sale of replica
guns.  What'll they do now recall childrens toys which are too
realistic?  Idiots.

Adam