[On a rooftop ..! ‘t Spant, Bussum]
Yeah, it’s a post on double secrets again. Not just because I haven’t seen any conclusive research on what to do with it; how to handle oversight (what is warranted, , etc.), what limits to justifications there would be, how to close the recursive secrecy gap, etc.
Not even because of stuff like this.
But because another issue was pointed out yesterday/today in a post at Bruce Schneier’s blog: Where double secrets may exist, trust is lost, and (theoretically and practically) impossible to regain.
Which is a problem not only for ‘current’ (big) companies relying on the trust of ‘consumers’ (who are in fact drone suppliers of almost completely free raw materials) and other business partners on the receiving end, as their business model will crumble to nothing when (not if) those cheapoo supplier leave in massive numbers.
It also spells trouble for the not-yet-big, almost-not-yet-companies. As defined in this slide deck, those new companies rely on distributed power, which is based on trust. The said (not sad) companies can grow only to the point where the base of trusting counterparts in exchanges (~facilitated) still grows. If at one end, trustors still flow into the system, but trustors on the other end flow out at a faster pace, the base will be ever narrower; the house of cards becomes more fragile and will collapse as some business wind (if only draft) comes along.
So, in order to really ‘disrupt’ as if that would be a lofty goal of any business [I am very much opposed to such thinking! ‘Disruption’ invariably leads to massive job losses and ever so many more family members’ life dreams ruined. No, the new industry will be of (relatively) jobless growth and yes, at some scale one has to take the macro effects into account], one would need to have a pre-emptive way to deal with double secrets, so the trustor trust base may grow in breath and depth.
My feeling is now that this sort of issue may also be the foundation of the inevitable-collapse-of-any-democracy issue. As predicted toungue in cheek, and shown practically throughout history. Are we at the verge of such a (Schumpeterian?) collapse, dinosaur extinction phase, in the way societies manage themselves? Utopian or distopian visions of what’s next for the coming era (remember the ‘Mayan calendar’ prediction of such a ‘new era’ ..?) may both be overblown, or … does reality always play out a bleak version of what could have been?
All in all, it seems rather important than someone [preferably someone more intelligent than me – regarding these issues, that is] would have a look at this all…
Is there really nothing out there in the intersection of sociology-, trust-, legal-, and economics- research that has pointers on how to resolve this issue ..? If the NSA or other TLA(s) are listening in and would have some Confi stuff, that’s good, too …!