Ironically, the most effective solution to the privacy problem may be something that most privacy defenders fiercely resist: a highly secure identification system, perhaps linked to two or three different biometric measures. True, this would give a great boost to ubiquitous monitoring, but it would also make it possible to track precisely who taps into databases. This seems essential if access to databases is ever going to be properly controlled.

Fun with Dick and Jane:

JANE remembers her parents saying they spent a lot of time getting the kids off to school and then fighting their way into work through rush-hour traffic to sit at a desk in front of a big square box that would often "crash". Thank heavens life is so much easier now. Rush hours were eliminated years ago: Jane works when it suits her, and carries her office around in her pocket. The files she needs from work fit on a square-inch memory chip. Anything else she wants, including the three dozen newspapers and magazines she likes to skim regularly, she can get anywhere from the web. Sometimes she still meets her colleagues in the same room for "face time", but she thinks this is overrated. Usually three-dimensional video does just as well.

....Certainly he doesn't agree with Jane that everything is perfect. Yes, travel is much easier than it used to be, because everything is arranged instantly on the web. But there are parts of the world he cannot visit any more because the political oppression there is just too frightening. And life at home is such a treadmill. Dick's boss is demanding live access for more and more hours of the day, and video messages are always piling up. To escape these pressures, Dick spends too much on entertainment, but to pay those big bills he has to spend yet more hours at work. He deeply resents Microdisneysoft charging for absolutely everything, and Timesonywarner isn't much better.

Our old pal copyright:

Ever since its foundations were laid in Britain and America in the 18th century, copyright law has tried to strike a balance between offering an incentive to writers and publishers to create and disseminate works, and guaranteeing public access to the flow of ideas. The thought behind this is that "intellectual property", as published work and inventions have since become known, is different in kind from tangible property. Economists call ideas, and their expression, "non-rivalrous" - for example, if I take your car, you are left without a car, but if I borrow or steal your idea, we can both use it. As Thomas Jefferson famously put it: "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." Whereas all tangible property is scarce, ideas or their expression are not. Copyright is the grant of a temporary monopoly, through a ban on copying, to offer those who generate ideas a chance to garner a profit.
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