The Transparent Society

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The Transparent Society is a non-fiction book by the science-fiction author David Brin in which he forecasts social transparency and some degree of erosion of privacy, as it is overtaken by low-cost surveillance, communication and database technology, and proposes new institutions and practices that he believes would provide benefits that would more than compensate for lost privacy. The work first appeared as a magazine article by Brin in Wired in late 1996. In 2008, security expert Bruce Schneier called the transparent society concept a "myth", claiming it ignores wide differences in the relative power of those who access information.