Qualified trust, not surveillance, is the basis of a stable society

Nearly all of us agree with this opening to the US Privacy Bill of Rights. But our current reality differs from the history outlined above. Peaceful citizens and hard-working taxpayers are under government surveillance. Journalists’ confidential communications are intercepted. Civilians are executed by drones without the chance to prove their innocence. How could our values have changed so radically? And if we reject surveillance practices but accept their security-directed goals, what are alternative measures?

Since September 11, 2001, freedoms have been incrementally restricted in most democracies. Each terrorist threat has delivered new reasons to extend the security infrastructure, which will eventually reach Orwellian dimensions. Thanks to its configuration, every computer has an almost unique fingerprint, which enables our use of the Internet to be monitored, and which has effectively ended privacy as we knew it. In recent years, up to 1500 variables about half a billion citizens in the industrial world have been recorded. In some respects, Google and Facebook know us better than our friends and families do.

Nevertheless, governments have failed so far to gain control of terrorism, drug traffic, cybercrime, and tax evasion. But even if an omniscient state had all the data it wanted, would it be able to create a new and safer social order? That, at least, seems to be the dream of secret services and security agencies. Can it be realized?

Ira ‘Gus’ Hunt, the CIA’s chief technology officer, recently said:

Unfortunately, connecting the dots often does not work. As I and other people who work on complex systems point out, such linear thinking can be totally misleading. It’s the reason why, after aiming to do the right things, we end up making the wrong decisions.

I do believe that our world has become less stable, due not to external threats, but to system-immanent feedbacks that arise from the increasing connectivity and complexity of our world. Trying to centrally control complexity is destined to fail. Rather, we must learn to embrace its potential . Such a paradigm shift requires moving toward decentralized self-regulatory approaches.

Where to begin? Many of us believe, more or less, in Adam Smith’s invisible hand, according to which the best societal and economic outcome is reached if everybody does what is best for him or herself. But when self-interest proceeds unchecked, the result can be market failure, financial meltdown, and other tragedies of the commons, such as polluted skies, denuded forests, and exhausted fish stocks. The classical approach for a powerful state is to forestall those problems through top-down regulation.

Self-interest can also be mitigated though self-regulation based on decentralized rules. The approach has been demonstrated for modern traffic control concepts, but it’s equally relevant for smart energy grids, and will be even more important for the financial system. The latter, for example, needs built-in breaking points similar to the fuses in our electrical network at home and requires additional control parameters to reach and maintain equilibrium.

But there is an alternative both to uncoordinated bottom-up rules and to excessive top-down regulation—and a better one: What I call the economy 2.0 . A truly self-regulating, participatory market society can unleash the unused potential of complexity and diversity, which the authorities are currently trying to fight.

Societies based on surveillance and punishment are not sustainable in the long term. Controlled peoples become afraid to make their own decisions. They self-censor and become less innovative, to the disadvantage of their society and economy. Qualified trust is a better basis of resilient societies. As the US Consumer Data Privacy Bill of Rights states,

But how to establish qualified trust? Reputation systems are now spreading all over the Internet. If transparent and properly designed, they could be the basis of a self-regulating societal and market architecture. Further principles of successful, decentralized, self-regulating systems can be adopted from ecological and immune systems. These, too, could form the basis of a trustable Web, which would protect itself from harmful actions and contain the current explosion of cybercrime.

As Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman pointed out, the huge investments in pervasive surveillance technology are a waste of money; public information is more reliable. Therefore, governments would be better advised to invest tax payers’ money in the creation of self-regulating global information systems and other institutions required for the 21st century.

This shift of resources will be crucial for a successful transition to a new era—the era of information societies, in which individual privacy, freedoms, and self-determination are protected. If we take the right decisions, the 21st century can be an age of creativity, prosperity and participation. But if we take the wrong decisions, we are likely to end in economic and democratic depression sooner or later. It’s our choice.

Dirk Helbing is a professor of sociology and member of the Computer Science Department at ETH Zürich, where he studies pedestrian crowds, vehicle traffic, and agent-based models of social systems. He also coordinates the FuturICT Initiative , which focuses on using large databases to understand techno-socio-economic systems.