Re: Long and Not Much to the Point: Re:HM.applications-Profiling-Level of Details/Abstraction

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Long yes, but quite to the point or points in several instances.

At 4:32 PM -0700 9/7/01, Kurt Cagle wrote:
>  > Public safety systems already have all of that
>>  information.  If it is abused, that is already a
>>  problem.   But it is much worse if that is not in a
>>  standard form because then when it can be used for
>>  the right thing, it is much harder.
>
>This is one of those domains where the ethics of the situation becomes very
>unclear, something that seems to happen within increasing frequency the more
>interconnected we become. At what point does surveillance for the public
>good become surveillance for public control?

O my, indeed. A later point may help us set up a fence around the 
latter with a specific profile.

>One concept that I've found more and more relevant is the notion of the
transparency of information interfaces.

><snip the electrical engineering metaphor and the superconductor>


>Each time you turn an opaque system transparent, you induce a phase shift -

<snip>

>  The transparencies introduced here (and by most such technologies) 
>mean that the
>normal restraining effects that are induced by opacity in the system are
>lost. I'm not by and large that concerned about governmental intrusion
>(though I have to admit being very alarmed by what I'm seeing done lately)
>but I do worry that we need to balance the needs of transparency against the
>needs of privacy.

me, too.

>* To be human means having the ability to manipulate symbols, but to be
>human also means the we are very manipulated by symbols in turn.*
>
>>  A second problem is knowing if the driver
>>  is the owner.  And so it goes until enough
>>  facts are established to get a probable certainty
>>  which really means "legal certainty".  Consider that
>>  your city may already be using photographs to catch
>>  you running a red light.  Because we are "accuser
>>  must prove" society, your lawyer gets you out of that
>>  by inferring (doesn't have to prove) you weren't
>>  the driver.  Comes down to the judge.

Legal Certainty is concept that comes into play when we think about 
the level of detail in base Human Profile.

>For now. Circumstantial evidence is a funny thing. There is a very common
>misconception in our society that a case which has only circumstantial
>evidence is one that can be thrown out. In fact, most cases ultimately rely
>on circumstantial evidence rather than on anecdotal -- eyewitness --
>evidence, because it is far easier to fool people than not.

<snip>
and...

>  It is perfectly possible to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that
>the wrong person committed a crime.
>
>Okay, I'm way off topic here.

>He was. Then came...



>  Transparency of data access means that the number of databases that 
>can communicate with one
>another grow exponentially.  I see this with UDDI, I see it with Hailstorm
>and Passport. I recognize full well that most of us already have extensive
>public dossiers, but the one saving grace in all of this is that there are
>currently barriers due to semi-opaque semantic/ontological barriers that can
>effectively only be handled by human intervention. I worry that as we create
>HumanML standards, we tear down those barriers, make the larger system
>extremely transparent to those parties that definitely do not have our best
>interests at heart.

I vote to take out the unintentional barriers and introduce safeguard 
barriers. It's the how and the when I'm looking to thrash out soon.

>Unfortunately, I'm not sure I see a solution here. We need to be cognizant
>of the issues,

<snip>

>
>I am not arguing that identity and authentication are two very different
>things. This is a natural consequence of the fact that we are creating
>virtual or semantic models to represent real world objects. Real world
>objects have uniqueness as a central characteristic. Virtual models do not
>have uniqueness, but can only simulate uniqueness to some arbitrary level.

<snip> Yep, we have to be arbitrary, but we also have to be grounded 
in the practical, commonsensical.

>  There is very much a distinction between a "real" person and his or
>her legal entity. A legal entity is a model, albeit one that in theory
>should have a key that defines it as being "unique". However, in practice,
>that uniqueness is fairly arbitrary, and typically is not in fact due to
>obvious representational characteristics.

<snip> Okay, take a dollop of public interest, a heaping helping of 
transparency, sufficient privacy to absorb the dry ingredients, make 
authentication acceptable and certifiable, and declare a base level 
of information to build a legal HumanML ID. That's a second level ID, 
right after name and vital stats, rising to the obligatory level of 
electronic signature.

>
>Thus one of the key distinctions that needs to be enunciated in any HumanML
>document is that a legal entity has an authority granting it "uniqueness",
>whereas a non-legal entity does not. To get back to the driver model here
>for just a second, if I create an HumanML avatar to represent the driver of
>a specific car, should the model be such that the avatar is perforce a legal
>entity as well? What is more important to the car -- that the authorized
>people are allowed to drive the car, or that the car can configure itself to
>a virtual dummy, a non-legal avatar, that retains characteristics but not
>legal identity. I think this is where I was going with the scenarios
>earlier, though I'm still articulating the concept even to myself.
>
>Put it another way -- should HumanML include, either explicitly in its core
>or implicitly via extension, a mechanism for creating legal identity?
>
>Okay, this was way overlong (and I've spent far too much time writing this
>when I should have been doing more productive work) but I think that it is
>an issue. Comments?
>
>-- Kurt Cagle
>
Thanks, Kurt, Len, et al. That's two levels, what's next?

Ciao,
Rex
-- 
Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com
Email: rexb@starbourne.com
Tel: 510-849-2309
Fax: By Request