Privacy, Accountability and Sustainability

Big names, big changes

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg's vision of the future is one in which people relinquish more and more privacy. With the successive changes that Facebook has implemented and its virtual monopoly over personal networks, he's gradually succeeding in making that a reality. One of the initial groundbreaking aspects of Facebook was its convention of displaying users' real names, as opposed to the fabricated usernames of more anonymous contemporaries, such as AIM and MySpace. That sparked the gradual process of deprivatization that today has culminated in the Timeline feature, which makes Facebook actions - particularly historical activity - more visible than ever before.

Zuckerberg isn't alone in his campaign to open up our online lives. Google's new privacy policy now permits greater sharing of private data across its network of companies.

Encouraging the greater disclosure of private information certainly makes sense for Facebook, Google and other businesses. They're no doubt looking for better indicators of individual preference, in order to make their ad services easier to customize, more effective and more appealing to advertisers.

There are also benefits to reap from the network effects of having more information visible. Tracking and broadcasting users' actions across a site generates more content and makes users more invested. It was the feature I recall as most controversial - News Feed - that transformed Facebook from a social networking utility into an entertainment destination. New features aim to similarly increase the amount of time users are on the site.

One big murder mystery

But what does online privacy have to do with sustainability? One of the obstacles to sustainability - and to any undertaking in a large society generally - is establishing accountability. In a complex, dynamic society such as ours, the volume of actors and interactions enables anonymity, which can undermine accountability.

To understand how anonymity can degrade accountability, destroy trust in society and pose challenges to it, you need only look to con artists. It's the ability to travel to untainted markets that allows the snake oil salesman to continue peddling wares that fail to deliver. If would-be victims could consult Yelp or some other fair assessment of the product or salesman, he would soon be unable to profit from fraud.

Along those same lines, The Economist recently presented a strong argument for why limited liability status shouldn't enjoy anonymity. Among other things, the combination permits entrepreneurs with a record of failures to conceal their past and, quite possibly, their incompetence, and makes lenders generally less willing to lend.

How do I know I can trust you?

Anonymity wasn't a problem in early societies and still isn't in sufficiently small or close-knit ones. Where communities are too big, mobile or loose to base trust on personal experience or communal knowledge, we have had to address the problem of anonymity by establishing alternative measures of reputation: brands, credit ratings, permits, certifications, criminal registries and other signals. In place of direct or second-hand experience, the solution has been to use technology to establish transparency. If current trends in privacy continue, we'll be able to do that much more effectively in the future.

As regards sustainability, the challenge has been in establishing what damages have been inflicted on the environment by whom. One part of this dilemma can be solved through science, by more accurately defining the health implications of a practice or substance. The other must be redressed by linking agents to the often nebulous environmental repercussions of their actions. The environment suffers because of the tragedy of the commons and the only way to resolve it is to establish a clear connection between individual actions and outcomes.

The above examples illustrate the trade-off between privacy and accountability, but it can permeate any sector of life. How can I assess performance if decisions are largely closed-door deals? How can I know whose interests a politician represents if he's funded through a faceless super PAC? And how can I know whether an employee or my kid's teacher is suited for the job if I cannot review and corroborate their past? In spite of these doubts, full transparency is not always desirable.

Challenges to transparency

Even though greater openness can minimize risk and deter crime, there are also justified reasons to oppose it. If you're a law-abiding citizen who doesn't conform to popular norms - if you're a minority in some way - that may be reason enough to advocate privacy rights.

Those reasons become further warranted when transparency is implemented asymmetrically. Imagine a case where potential victims of oppression or exploitation have the details of their lives open to scrutiny while the identities and doings of their oppressors remain unknown. This already happens. Intelligence agencies and secret police in authoritarian regimes are able to uphold the status quo partly because they exist in shadow, inoculating their members against individual culpability.

An Afghan officer using anonymity to her advantage.

The prospect of change and the imperative to forgive

Perhaps the most compelling reason to resist the dismantling of privacy, however, is its implications for the capacity to change one's life. Transparency already limits opportunities for ex-cons, which serves at least theoretically as a deterrent to would-be criminals, but consider apparent law-abiding citizens or victims of circumstance.

In The Road to Serfdom, economist Friedrich Hayek argues that one of the most crippling aspects of living in a communist society for both the individual and the economy is the lack of prospects, the virtual inability to alter one's position. Could extensive transparency in a free market democracy similarly limit the capacity for self-reinvention and sentence individuals to their fates earlier in life? It's a consideration that forces one to wonder at which point we're best equipped to make decisions and whether weighing earlier ones will make our lives more a function of our initial environments.

The need for feedback

There exists an optimal balance between privacy and accountability and it will hinge on delineating between what details are of import and which are not. Should it matter that I'm a Mormon? Should it matter what I download?

When it comes to material impact on resources, however, which is what public health and sustainability are fundamentally based on, I cannot conceive of an instance where that information should be kept secret. There's no justification for the Soviet Union delaying the news of the Chernobyl disaster or for private enterprise to underreport their resource use. Similarly, entities should get credit for improving quality of life where it is due.

I'm not a robot

But information on its own isn't enough. Many of us - including myself - often operate according to what's in our immediate interest, what we can get out of the system for ourselves with the least input, if at times at the expense of others. I shouldn't expect greater visibility on its own to compel people to act in the best long-term interests of what they hold dear.

At the same time, we often make decisions based on emotions and unexamined desire. I contend here, as I have before, that people are a social animal, willing to do that which will elevate their status in the eyes of those whose opinions they value. At that point, it's no longer about the environment as much as it is about sharing a common identity and showcasing accomplishments within that framework. I may not actually care about sustainability, but may care only about the approval of others who profess that they do. By necessity, there will also be circles that define themselves by being anti-environmental, regardless of whether they genuinely care.

In order to propagate the sustainability mentality then, it is necessary to establish it as an esteemed lifestyle and leverage humanity's social apparatus to encourage people to pursue it. Luckily, I don't think that behavior is founded exclusively on competition for social status. People are capable of reason as well and I believe it is this that will decide the conflict with those who define themselves in opposition to sustainability.

Data drowning

The issue remains of how best to convey information in a world drowning in data. Science and education can impart us with a sense of what's better for health and the environment, but the key will be conveying information in a conveniently digestible and meaningful packet.

That's been the aim of the new environmental rating system for cars, which permits comparisons across electric, hybrid and conventional models. The ranking is communicated according to a grade letter system that consumers are already familiar with.

I envision that products in the future will universally carry an assessment of their ecological footprint, in much the same way foods already display nutritional information. I also wouldn't be opposed to wearing some indicator of my sustainability on my sleeve. If that proves too much sensory overload, then perhaps in the same way technology is helping generate and disseminate data, it will one day improve our ability to process that information.

But don't rely on it. A few professions that you're overwhelmed by the complexities of today's world can easily double as an admission that you're not fit to make decisions in your own interest.

Occupy Wall Street

Like many movements, Occupy Wall Street inspires me with its level of civil engagement but leaves much to be desired. I won't be the first to point out that it could benefit from narrowing its scope to a concrete, productive goal. Indeed, if it doesn't its sole legacy may be disillusionment. My main goal here though is to address a couple aspects of the discourse unraveling around it.

I got around to checking out OWS's declaration and what really drew my attention were the characterizations, both from the side of the protesters as well as their critics.

Who are the corporations?

Corporations are made up of individuals. Just like any organization, they're heterogeneous, consisting of people whose views vary widely. Just as there are individuals who don't have the interests of society at heart in these settings, there are also individuals who share the values embodied by this protest in certain respects. I am one of them.

Any view can dominate at a given level in an organization and thus inform the direction corporations take. Even in their capacity as legal entities corporations differ. I'll give just a couple examples of how corporations don't hold to how they're being portrayed here.

The first is Calvert Investments, which specializes in socially responsible investments and thus helps businesses that don't place profit over people get ahead in the market. The second is Whole Foods, which helps to promote more sustainable lifestyles. Though there's arguably some greenwashing involved in their operations, they're renowned for the treatment of their workers and are certainly an improvement upon the preexisting status quo. Like churches, nations and book clubs, you'll find both good and bad corporations and you should always be wary of letting the whole come to represent its constituent parts and vice versa.

Who are the activists?

There's a tendency in American society to identify a movement with one political extreme or another the moment it strikes the slightest semblance and to caricature its participants accordingly. Critics of Occupy Wall Street and related movements have described their participants as lazy, uneducated, voluntarily unemployed, irresponsible, spoiled and financially supported by their parents. Hippies and hipsters.

There are some to be found who satisfy those definitions, of course. What concerns me though is an incapacity I frequently observe for anything but gross generalizations. I doubt anybody's saying all the participants fall into these categories, but I'm skeptical that even the majority does, in the same way that I'm skeptical that the Tea Party consists mostly of selfish, racist, gun-wielding evangelicals.

To be sure, there are people at the Occupy movements who drive me up the wall, but there's a whole world out there and you can find anything you're looking for. As a case in point, I take myself. I'm interested enough in Occupy Wall Street to at least attend, but I'm educated (I received no funding from my family) and hold a professional job at a corporate entity that I happen to find morally irreproachable.

The Targets

Targeting groups of people whose morals can't be accurately and consistently characterized is bigotry. As I elaborated above, there are both good and bad corporations. There are also both good and bad rich people, with Warren Buffett and Bill Gates immediately coming to mind as examples of wealthy individuals who render a service to society commensurate with their extraordinary affluence.

Even if we can pinpoint the "bad" corporations or the "bad" people in them, is that the appropriate target? There will be exceptions, but I think the main factor behind the frustrations expressed at OWS is preferential treatment of people and organizations that are already so clearly empowered. The enemy here is not big business or the rich, but the mechanisms in place that allow some of them to live with less accountability than their smaller counterparts. It's the arrangement that allows the largest banks to benefit from bad business decisions and taxes billionaires less than the middle class.

As preferential treatment has its roots in political corruption, if the movement is to adopt policy goals, campaign finance reform should probably be one of them.

The Collusion

This movement couldn't have been precipitated without the financial crisis. And the financial crisis couldn't have been precipitated without three culprits, which Raghuram Rajan outlines so clearly in his book Fault Lines: government, corporations (banks), and the consumer.

Government's to blame for pushing better access to credit through Fannie Mae and other organizations as a fix for growing wealth disparity and thus distorting returns in the securities market; the financial sector for responding to those distortions and pursuing unsustainable business models for a quick buck (then pursuing them further to establish systemic importance and thus ensure their longevity despite their decisions); and those consumers who overborrowed to live a life they couldn't afford.

There are improvements to be had in the private sector, as well as in the private sector's relationship to the government and the public. Nevertheless, there are also issues we need to address outside of it, with our government and with ourselves. To be more concrete, I'll advocate here what I have so often elsewhere: leverage what power you have, however small, as an economic actor.

Companies and people don't grow rich on their own; someone has to give them the money. By refraining, or more effectively, opting for or providing a better alternative, people can shape fates and behavior. Disagree with a bank? Move your account to a more responsible one. Keep your money in a sock. Leverage your power as a friend or family member to increase the likelihood that those you come in direct contact with will do the same. Expose wrongdoings and commend good deeds as you see them in conversation and on the internet.

But don't be an imposing jerk because that never works.

It's through this feedback that we can hope to transform an existing foundation into something better, instead of uprooting the establishment with potentially nothing to fill the vacuum. Take the lessons of failed revolutions and shock therapists to heart: it's easy to destroy something, but it's much more difficult to create something better out of it.