January 19, 2005 | (Open) Society Pages

Dennis Bailey, author of the new book Open Society Paradox, kindly noted my almost-rant on the FBI and DOJ's unwillingness to speak to the public about its methods of investigating terrorism.

Bailey writes: "For the few of us out there who think that most people in the law enforcement and intelligence business are doing their best to protect America while guarding civil liberties, the FBI and the Justice Department are making it extremely difficult on us. [...] Time after time the Justice Department uses legal exceptions to withhold information from FOIA requests.Perhaps if the Bush administration hadn't created such a culture of secrecy, they wouldn't be targeted by their critics as much."

I didn't know that Bailey had a blog (which seems to have been up for some months now) and it will be added to the blog roll pronto.

Bailey, influenced by David Brin's vision of nearly ubiquitous surveillance leveling the playing field between citizen, corporation and government, is an advocate for more surveillance, but only if it comes with more transparency.

I have a review copy, but have yet to find the time to sit down and fully engage with it.

That's not laziness, mind you. It's that I know I'm in for a good grapple.

From what little I've read, I know I will have much to argue with in Bailey's book -- in particular, I'm already mentally preparing to throw a half-nelson on his positive take on the usefulness and appropriateness of Total Information Awareness-like systems (given enough safeguards and protections).

But I look forward to the engagement, as it will force me to articulate thoughts that feel clear now, but that I know will turn out to be only half-finished and in need of reinforcement, once I have to write them down.

Posted by Ryan Singel at January 19, 2005 09:02 AM

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