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This parable from 1993 sums it up nicely. > There was once a far away land called Ruritania, and in Ruritania there was a strange phenonmenon -- all the trees

This parable from 1993 sums it up nicely. > There was once a far away land called Ruritania, and in Ruritania there was a strange phenonmenon -- all the trees that grew in Ruritainia were transparent. Now, in the days when people had lived in mud huts, this had not been a problem, but now high-tech wood technology had been developed, and in the new age of wood, everyone in Ruritania found that their homes were all 100% see through... > One day, a smart man invented paint -- and if you painted your house, suddenly the police couldn't watch all your actions at will... > Indignant, the state decided to try to require that all homes have video cameras installed in every nook and cranny. "After all", they said, "with this new development crime could run rampant. Installing video cameras doesn't mean that the police get any new capability -- they are just keeping the old one." [...] https://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/04/msg00559.html https://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/04/msg00559.html

notRobot 6y ago
This is incredible!
- surround 6y ago
  I owe it to this comment for finding the parable https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22758407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22758407 With the author’s name (Perry E. Metzger) I was able to track down an archive of the original Usenet post.
gorgoiler 6y ago
This story didn’t make enough sense to really nail the issue. I’m surprised this parable is popular. Why would you build houses out of wood if the wood is transparent? It would make more sense if it were discovered years later that the police had special polarizing binoculars that let them see through the wood, which no one knew they had until it was too late and all the old mud huts had been phased out. Also, describing someone as a “paint technologist” when they are anti-paint is a confusing decision for a parable: a story intended to make a complex issue easier to understand. I initially assumed they were going to have a role analogous to a cryptographer, not an anti-privacy provocateur. Perhaps having the police attempt to foil insidious flower thieves or dastardly rebel plots to undermine the government controlled potato cartel would also be more in spirit with a parable. The use of awful real life crimes (against children, even) make this a difficult one to share.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Because it's cheap. Because transparency may at times be useful to the owners. Because construction costs are lower. Because it's the fad or fashion. Because building regulations require it. Because of convenience. Because the transparency was an unanticipated side effect. Because it gives houses capabilities previously unattainable. Because the wood-house vendors have driven (by competition, monopolistic methods, patent and IP restrictions, superior lobbying, advertising) all the mud-house vendors out of business. Because .... A parable is, by definition, metaphoric language. "Mud" and "wood" and "paint" and "tranparency" are metaphors for analogue physicle vs. digital electronic data, crypto, and surveillance. Why do people choose, or find themselves with no alternative than digital data systems? There are numerous reasons. Many resemble, in some fashion, the list I've given above. Reading parables overly literally is a category error. All metaphors melt if pushed loudly enough.
  - gorgoiler 6y ago
    It feels like you are responding to a point I didn’t make. It’s not so much that the metaphors break down under scrutiny, it’s that they didn’t really make much sense to me in the first place.
- surround 6y ago
  > The use of awful real life crimes (against children, even) make this a difficult one to share. But that’s just it. Every time someone wants to put limitations on encryption, they cite child exploitation.

notRobot 6y ago

This is incredible!

surround 6y ago
I owe it to this comment for finding the parable https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22758407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22758407 With the author’s name (Perry E. Metzger) I was able to track down an archive of the original Usenet post.

gorgoiler 6y ago

This story didn’t make enough sense to really nail the issue. I’m surprised this parable is popular. Why would you build houses out of wood if the wood is transparent? It would make more sense if it were discovered years later that the police had special polarizing binoculars that let them see through the wood, which no one knew they had until it was too late and all the old mud huts had been phased out. Also, describing someone as a “paint technologist” when they are anti-paint is a confusing decision for a parable: a story intended to make a complex issue easier to understand. I initially assumed they were going to have a role analogous to a cryptographer, not an anti-privacy provocateur. Perhaps having the police attempt to foil insidious flower thieves or dastardly rebel plots to undermine the government controlled potato cartel would also be more in spirit with a parable. The use of awful real life crimes (against children, even) make this a difficult one to share.

dredmorbius 6y ago
Because it's cheap. Because transparency may at times be useful to the owners. Because construction costs are lower. Because it's the fad or fashion. Because building regulations require it. Because of convenience. Because the transparency was an unanticipated side effect. Because it gives houses capabilities previously unattainable. Because the wood-house vendors have driven (by competition, monopolistic methods, patent and IP restrictions, superior lobbying, advertising) all the mud-house vendors out of business. Because .... A parable is, by definition, metaphoric language. "Mud" and "wood" and "paint" and "tranparency" are metaphors for analogue physicle vs. digital electronic data, crypto, and surveillance. Why do people choose, or find themselves with no alternative than digital data systems? There are numerous reasons. Many resemble, in some fashion, the list I've given above. Reading parables overly literally is a category error. All metaphors melt if pushed loudly enough.
- gorgoiler 6y ago
  It feels like you are responding to a point I didn’t make. It’s not so much that the metaphors break down under scrutiny, it’s that they didn’t really make much sense to me in the first place.
surround 6y ago
> The use of awful real life crimes (against children, even) make this a difficult one to share. But that’s just it. Every time someone wants to put limitations on encryption, they cite child exploitation.