Of course, data can be tampered with, but Bill Gates doesn’t have time go fiddling with data traces, and this is exactly why Microsoft got nailed with email traces. The more data we gather, the more people are needed to tamper it, and the more traces you have that you have tampered with the data.
Suppose you wanted to delete all traces you visited my blog… how would you do it? Of course, I could have made up this comment you just added, I could… but then I would need to doctor other traces, like my server logs and so on… it becomes increasingly more difficult to do as more data is being gathered.
So, what you are likely to end up with are conflicting reports… some data is saying something, other data is saying something else… this is a lot better than having no trace of this big check that was offered to your congressman.
Oh, I agree that data and transparency are both important in fighting corruption. They help dissuade people from doing the wrong thing on the basis that they will (probably) get caught.
I guess the idealist in me would rather that people avoid doing the wrong thing because, well, because its wrong!
Put another way, rather then monitoring the system and providing negative feedback machanism to control output, I’d rather it was properly programmed from the beginning!
Of course, data can be tampered with, but Bill Gates doesn’t have time go fiddling with data traces, and this is exactly why Microsoft got nailed with email traces. The more data we gather, the more people are needed to tamper it, and the more traces you have that you have tampered with the data.
Suppose you wanted to delete all traces you visited my blog… how would you do it? Of course, I could have made up this comment you just added, I could… but then I would need to doctor other traces, like my server logs and so on… it becomes increasingly more difficult to do as more data is being gathered.
So, what you are likely to end up with are conflicting reports… some data is saying something, other data is saying something else… this is a lot better than having no trace of this big check that was offered to your congressman.
I think we have to be careful about putting too much faith in data.
Oh, I agree that data and transparency are both important in fighting corruption. They help dissuade people from doing the wrong thing on the basis that they will (probably) get caught.
I guess the idealist in me would rather that people avoid doing the wrong thing because, well, because its wrong!
Put another way, rather then monitoring the system and providing negative feedback machanism to control output, I’d rather it was properly programmed from the beginning!
Vincent-Olivier Arsenault calls this Formal Nakedness if I got him right : http://www.up4.com/archives/000069.html
Great link Robin!