The future of proof

One of my favourite authors and bloggers, Bruce Schneier, recently posted an interesting blog on "The Future of Ephemeral Conversation". Essentially, the premise is that conversation, as it increasingly occurs over electronic mediums, is becoming less ephemeral, meaning that it is now lasting for much longer periods of time than we have previously experienced. This has complex ramifications on privacy as, due to the nature of storage and retrieval that electronic mediums provide, "private" conversations can potentially come back to haunt one years later.

There is another part to this. Electronic mediums provide not only a longer lifetime for communications, but also a wider spread. We no longer just experience direct conversation with our friends or colleagues, but we also experience the conversation they are having with their other friends or colleagues. It is now much more common to 'carbon-copy' communications, to post notes or details on (semi-)public and aggregated mediums like blogs, facebook, myspace or twitter, such that our conversations reach a much wider audience than in the past.

The effect of this is facinating and concerning. Firstly, it leads to the "information overload" that I believe our society is currently grappling with. There is much more information available, especially of a more personal nature involving our friends and colleagues, and we need to be more rapid in our consumption of it. There are many ramifications of this, which are all worthy of their own discussions, but I believe one direct result is that we have, or will, become increasingly less critical and more trusting. We will no longer critique each item of communication for it's accuracy or it's authenticity. This is result of necessity, as we will need to be more efficient at processing information and reduce wasted time. With so much more information available, and the barrier to dissemination of it so much lower, the vast majority of the communications we are privy to will be both accurate and authentic, so the assertion of this naturally become a task to compromise on.

The ramifications of this on our systems of law will be profound.

One ramification will be on the nature of "proof". Currently, a person cannot be held responsible for a written letter unless it is proven in some way that they wrote it. In an electronic world, this proof is almost impossible and yet we can already see that we no longer look for it or think of it as required. There are many legal cases already that are premised on emails sent and yet email is both trivial to forge and has no identifying traits like a writing style or signature to authenticate on. It is incredibly hard to prove who was sitting at the keyboard, or even which keyboard. But our increasing implicit trust will (if it hasn't already) sway people away from this sort of critical thinking. If the overwhelmingly majority of communications they have been privy to are authentic, then they will likely a have greatly reduced level of scepticism when it comes to proof.

The second ramification will be on due process and the burden of proof. Under our existing process, it is required that reasonable proof be supplied before a person is considered responsible for their words or actions. In addition to lowering the expectation for proof, the rapid and wide dissemination of information will result in a great potential for consequence to be enacted before proof has been offered. We are already starting to see this in media, when reporting influences the opinion of the public on an issue before it has been determined in a court. Whilst our existing system has mechanisms to prevent this perversion by the official media, there is no such mechanisms in place for the myriad of alternative information channels that are now becoming available. Combining rapid, wide and personalised dissemination of information with an increased trust in the accuracy of it creates a risky new landscape in which we all tread.

I do believe that electronic communications, with all their ramifications, are overwhelmingly a good thing for our society. The value they provide is massive. But we must consider the consequences in terms of (reduced) privacy, increased visibility into the past opinions of an individual that may no longer be correct or even relevant, the nature and burden of proof and legal due process. We just have to consider the effect these consequences will have on our systems and adjust them accordingly. Ignoring the changing environment and assuming our systems are, and remain, perfect would be a failing for all of us.

XDR-TB: A preventable pandemic

[This blog post will be off-topic, but I feel inspired to write it.]

It saddens me to see that there is so much more we could achieve in this world, if we weren't confounded regularly by politics and greed. And it makes me angry when I see real problems, the sort that could destroy our world as we know it, that could easily be stopped if we put politics and greed aside and co-operated as a race of human beings.

I recently learnt, courtesy of a TED talk, about Extremely Drug Resistant Tuberculosis. TB is a horrific and dangerous disease, but one that we barely give a real thought to in the modern western world - because it's totally treatable and preventable. However in the rest of the world it still kills 4400 people every day.

This, unfortunately, is not the real problem with the current state of TB. Due to lack of funding and co-operation, especially with poorer countries, TB has been mistreated on a large scale - usually by supplying insufficient courses in the antibiotics that treat the disease. Because of this under-treatment, TB has evolved into a new form that is resistant to the antibiotics. This new form of human-made TB, known as Extremely Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (or XDR-TB) is not preventable or treatable with most current drugs.

It's heart breaking to see how easily the west can ignore poverty and other problems in poorer nations. In this case, however, the "problem" isn't going to stay out of sight forever. There is absolutely no reason for this disease to have been created, other than through politics, greed and ignorance. And it needs to be stopped now, or a global pandemic will threaten the population of the world.