What do the people who develop and implement the policies of our Government read to inform their decisions?
I’m sure of one thing – they should be reading the latest paper by Ross Anderson called:
Privacy versus government surveillance: where network effects meet public choice
The initial issue that Anderson draws on is the revelations provided by Edward Snowden’s release of classified information on the scale of NSA, GCHC and other intelligence services interception and monitoring of the electronic communications of most of us.
Anderson’s field of interest is Security Economics. I’ve had my 30 seconds and you are about to move on and I can understand why. I, too, have done so – but not this time.
The paper takes three concepts from economics:
network effect
marginal cost and
technological lock-in
Anderson then begins to tackle the problem of privacy and surveillance and the way he does so takes him to international relations via John Rawls and how at least some policy flows from mass social change.
Civilisation becomes the focus of his suggested solution where nation states will or must submit to global demands that might, just might, begin to rise from the general population.