Open society keeps us honest.
At one point in “The DaVinci Code,” the protagonist ends up at a Swiss bank and the author briefly introduces the traditional number account and the anonymity afforded patrons of particular Swiss institutions. Lately our society has made many moves towards removing anonymity in modern life, all in the name of security. I believe this to be a drastic mistake that may offer short-term advantage in our attempts to improve our security situation but weakens our long term outlook.
The argument against anonymity essentially states that anonymity is insecure because it allows nefarious elements to organize and operate effectively and invisibly. Depriving citizens of the ability to move unmonitored increases security, the argument goes, because they will not be able to do socially unpopular things without the cover of anonymity.
This is a rational and reasonable argument, and one that is thus difficult to criticize because it entails arguing that we are better off preserving terrorists’ and drug dealers’ ability to operate. But this is exactly what I believe. There are a few reasons for this, a couple of which I hope to adequate illuminate here.
Indulge me in a digression as part of my effort to explain this position. The gun control issue in the United States revolves around interpretations of the Constitution’s Second Amendment that establishes the citizenry’s right to bear arms, ostenstensibly to protect the citizenry from the tyranny of leadership and government rule. “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom” is a responsibility of a democratic population. The founders of the United States felt that it was essential (the position as second Amendment attests to the importance they placed on this issue) to create a system that preserved power at the bottom even as it was granted at the top precisely in order to keep the top (the government) honest about what it was doing. If the government tried to overstep its bounds or veer from its assigned course, the citizenry had the means to (and expectation as well) to get it back in line.
This system, will utterly emasculated and ineffective today, is based on rather sound principles. Accountability is essential for creating a just and desirable community, be it at familial or international levels, and the Second Amendment establishes physical accountability to back up the democratic civic accountability established by the voting system. So here we have two fundamental elements to creating a vibrant and not coincidentally free socity: the ability to make one’s voice heard through civic channels, namely voting and accountability on the part of the elected to serve the interests of those below. Failure to be accountable to the civic position granted via the vote results in one of two actions; most likely, the elected individual fails to be reelected as a better (i.e. more accountable) person is chosen for the position or the system as a whole is held in check by physical accountability. Both elements are grounded in the population and serve to keep the system of power at the top functioning in a way that serves the interests of those on the bottom.
The only other element that is missing is transparency in government that permits the governed to actually know what is going on up top. It is absolutely essential that the system be transparent so that actions that are not desired by or in the interests of the governed can be held accountable. Secrets do not a fine society make.
Now what does this have to do with anonymity in modern society? Anonymity’s obvious function is to allow people to operate without oversight from above, oversight that typically is not warranted or deserved. Anonymity enables people to do things that benefit themselves without harming others (in most cases, but admittedly not all). But anonymity also enables accountability. Just as bearing arms assures the government that the people have the power, anonymity ensures that people have the ability to do what needs to be done to keep the system working for them. If the system strays from this obligation, anonymity offers a way to get things done otherwise.
Of course the government’s job is not to make everyone happy all the time, but it does, by definition, have an obligation to serve a majority of the people. If that obligation is not fulfilled, the people have the right, the expectation, the obligation to rectify it by applying the tools available to them in a way that returns the system to its roots of serving their interests. What anonymity does is return this equity to the system and restores accountability. Without anonymity, the government can control so much of modern life and is able to insulate itself from accountability to the will of the governed.
It is true that anonymity can be used for harmful activities as well as harmless ones. But we do have other systemic elements (law enforcement) that provide support in shutting down criminal activity, so it isn’t as though anonymity in a society is the root factor enabling criminals to operate. They can operate without anonymity and can be shut down in spite of anonymity. But the converse is not true. If the government strays from its benign and noble responsibilities of serving the interests of the governed, anonymity ensures that the governed have the ability to organize in opposition to the government. And even if the government is doing an adequate job and is not in need of severe opposition, anonymity helps to preserve freedom and privacy from undue interference and may even facilitate some activities that may be technically illegal but fundamentally do not harm anyone, essentially conferring greater freedom on a society while reducing the risks to the populace.
Security is not absolute. All decisions about security improvements must be seen in terms of trade-offs. Something is always sacrificed for better security and the decision to adopt particular security measures rests first on an accurate evaluation of the efficacy of the security proposal (does it actually improve security or does it just look like it? Fingerprinting and identity cards are good examples of measures that look like they improve security but do not and in fact make the system less secure.) and secondly on an assessment of the costs/ returns from the loss of the sacrificed element and the gain of the secure measures. The law of diminishing returns applies to this evaluation as well, of course.
So the way I see it, although anonymity in a society does make it easier for some criminals to do their criminal thing, it also greatly enhances, augments, and enables free society. And since free society also establishes institutions specifically devoted to the curtailment of criminal activity, the costs of an anonymous society are reduced while the benefits are obvious. Anonymity ensures people can live the lives they want to live and provides an avenue of accountability by the government. Transparency is essential in the public halls of power but not as needed in the private lives of the citizenry.
The opposite scenario is exactly that, an opposite. In a society without anonymity where private lives are transparent and controlled by the government, there is lesser freedom and lesser accountability should transparency become opaque in the functioning of the governing body. There is no way for a citizenry deprived of privacy and anonymity to effect change in a corrupt government. In a system with a transparent government and anonymous citizenry though, institutions and practices can be put into place to reduce abuses of the system, but the inverse does not exist in the latter scenario. So while it may at first glance appear that removing anonymity from society, be it in banking, travel, lodging, communications, or anything else improves our security by depriving criminals of opportunities, this change also deprives the citizenry of many freedoms (an unworthy trade in my opinion, but I accept the opinions of those who believe it to be a fair trade-off), it creates a system full of risk to the future of the populace by removing the accountability of the government to the people and submitting their lives wholly to the altruism of those in power, who, even if we give them the benefit of the doubt and believe that they truly operate with our best interests at heart, inevitably make decisions that only appear beneficial from the perspective of power but not from the views of the governed.
The potential for abuse persists in both systems, but only the system that preserves freedom and privacy (this is all anonymity is) is capable of overseeing itself. Whether one sees this as a desirable system in its own right or the lesser of two evils, it is clear that anonymity in private life and transparency in public governance are essential to freedom, liberty, and the life that we are supposedly fighting for.
You can respond (anonymously of course!) to this issue here.
Posted by Nutrimentia at March 12, 2004 07:33 AM | TrackBack