Re: data, governance and argument for the elimination of police torture

From: Paola Di Maio

Some of the points below, the way I read them,  are an invitation to reflect on the role that development of egovernance policies can play to contribute to further the plea of  the international civil society against torture and other forms of institutional violence, as well as access to knowledge of such issues.

In some countries, this is more serious and more sensitive than others.
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some personal thoughts and links.

1. The opposite of the argument from Human Rights is a National/International Civil Society Firewall.  This firewall could enumerate goodness (Police and Civil Order) or enumerate badness (Torture and Institutional Violence).  This is what firewalls do, and at times do badly[1].  There is a best practice (choose enumerating goodness).
2. Wikipedia and Wikileaks are perhaps two sides of same generalized firewall[2].  The web of data has a dim view of sovereignty in the Public Sector[3] and has a good feeling about commercial monopoly in the Private Sector.  The cognitive dissonance presents  a dilemma for non-intelligent systems.  There is a best practice (avoid cognitive dissonance because until apps think, there is no app for it).
3.  Social Networking is a Selection not an Election.  If given a web page on a controversial topic, one can press or fail to press the "Like" button.  Data with vanity and Democratic Government are distinct communities of interest.  Tyrannical institutions are stupid [4] and data silos risk irrelevance [5].  There is a best practice {Cultural Agnosticism} (data is not inherently good or bad (untethered perhaps) and transparency is not a firewall (the enumeration of goodness or badness).).  Relative to national culture, transparency is always at least identifiable.

related: In today's Wall Street Journal, there is an editorial by the first head of US Homeland Security Michael Chertoff which makes the point "In the cyber age, privacy and security are two sides of the same coin."  Sorry, it is behind a paywall[6].  My points 1-3 above may Darn me to Heck, and worse, it's only Monday, but briefly, when the Asian Human Rights Commission, Mr. Michael Chertoff, and Mr. Jimmy Wales are saying exactly the same thing it might be a good time to broaden the conversation on the methodological best practices, not to produce specifications but to find areas of consensus. 


--Gannon

[1] http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/dumb/
[2] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1780519
[3] https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html
[4] [ASIA:Basic argument for the elimination of police torture]
[5] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/wikipedias-jimmy-wales-on-internet-laws-the-threat-of-apple/2012/07/10/gJQATsf1aW_blog.html
[6] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303933704577532572854142492.html



[6] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303933704577532572854142492.html