The World At Large Has Eyes

Kipling re the Internet

Now Jones had left his new-wed bride to keep his house in order,
And hied away to the Hurrum Hills above the Afghan border,
To sit on a rock with a heliograph; but ere he left he taught
His wife the working of the Code that sets the miles at naught.
 
And Love had made him very sage, as Nature made her fair;
So Cupid and Apollo linked, per heliograph, the pair.
At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise–
At e'en, the dying sunset bore her husband's homilies.

He warned her 'gainst seductive youths in scarlet clad and gold,
As much as 'gainst the blandishments paternal of the old;
But kept his gravest warnings for (hereby the ditty hangs)
That snowy-haired Lothario, Lieutenant-General Bangs.

'T'was General Bangs, with Aide and Staff, who tittupped on the way,
When they beheld a heliograph tempestuously at play.
They thought of Border risings, and of stations sacked and burnt–
So stopped to take the message down - and this is what they learnt–
  
"Dash dot dot, dot, dot dash, dot dash dot" twice. The General swore.
"Was ever General Officer addressed as 'dear' before?
"'My Love,' i' faith! 'My Duck,' Gadzooks! 'My darling popsy-wop!'
"Spirit of great Lord Wolseley, who is on that mountain top?"
 
The artless Aide-de-camp was mute, the gilded Staff were still,
As, dumb with pent-up mirth, they booked that message from the hill;
For clear as summer lightning-flare, the husband's warning ran:–
"Don't dance or ride with General Bangs—a most immoral man."
 
[At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise—
But, howsoever Love be blind, the world at large hath eyes.]
With damnatory dot and dash he heliographed his wife
Some interesting details of the General's private life.
 
The artless Aide-de-camp was mute, the shining Staff were still,
And red and ever redder grew the General's shaven gill.
And this is what he said at last (his feelings matter not):–
"I think we've tapped a private line. Hi! Threes about there! Trot!"
 
All honour unto Bangs, for ne'er did Jones thereafter know
By word or act official who read off that helio.
But the tale is on the Frontier, and from Michni to Mooltan
They know the worthy General as "that most immoral man."
    (Rudyard Kipling, A Code of Morals)

Jones was using the electromagnetic force to transmit messages. So are we. The bandwidth of a heliograph, the 19^th century technology for transmitting messages, was less than that of the internet but one problem was the same: What felt like a private conversation wasn’t. Jones’ morning and evening messages to his wife were public to anyone who know Morse code and happened to be in a position to see them, including the snowy-haired Lothario he was warning his wife against.

I made the same mistake as Jones more than a century later¹ in a conversation on Usenet: I gave my honest opinion of an acquaintance, a fellow academic. It should have occurred to me that people other than those participating in the conversation could read what I wrote, including friends of his who could pass on my comment.

I discovered my mistake when he messaged me asking if I had really written that.

Current communication technology is often immediately public, as in that example. An email message is private when it is sent but copies remain in the possession of sender, receiver, and possibly others, who may be compelled to release them if sender, receiver, or the employer of either becomes involved in a law suit or criminal prosecution. What are the consequences?

One is to make communication more difficult; if you are corresponding via a public medium, arguing with someone on Facebook, it is prudent to avoid making any argument that could be quoted out of context to make you look bad. If you don’t you are likely to regret it. You may even find it prudent to avoid arguing for unpopular positions that you believe in; I can think of examples but will (prudently) not give them.

Another effect is to make company executives more guarded in internal correspondence. We would like someone who spots a potential problem with his firm’s plans to feel free to point it out to his colleagues. But if the potential problem becomes an actual problem and the company get sued, the email raising it can be disclosed in discovery used as evidence of a deliberate tort, grounds to claim punitive damages.

Suppose the response from the executive’s superior is to concede that the problem is real, could injure or kill someone, but the precautions to prevent it would cost more than the additional safety is worth, tens of millions of dollars to save, probabilistically speaking, one life. Federal regulatory agencies are required to do cost-benefit calculations for regulations to judge if they are worth doing; the value of life used in the calculations is large but not infinite. But when a car company is being sued, jurors told that the company traded off dollars against lives, chose not to change the design of their vehicle to make it safer because it would cost too much, may have a different view of the subject, as Ford discovered. It might be more prudent, if you spot a possible problem, to avoid discussing it in email or anywhere else subject to discovery.

The same is true outside of companies at well. If I am trying to decide whether to do something that might be illegal I might want to ask advice from friends, both about whether it would be illegal and whether I should do it. But not friends online.

The problem is worse for us in at least one respect than it was for Jones — the number of eyes. Jones’ message to his wife was seen by the general and his aide and staff, perhaps a dozen people. One of them could, did, pass the story on, “from Michni to Moltan,” but after a couple of repetitions it would be not a fact but only a story, some of the details, possibility including the identity of the sender, lost or changed.

If I expressed a sufficiently unpopular belief online, the first person offended could pass the link on to others, he to others and they to still others, all able to check the original to confirm my heresy. I could end up with a thousand strangers hating me, perhaps more. Jones did not suffer any consequences from the interception of his message. People in the modern world have gotten canceled that way.

Larry Niven has a story set in a future America with instantaneous transport, phone booths replaced by transporter booths. Step into one, dial the number for where you want to go, step out of the booth at your destination.

Something interesting happens somewhere. The news story is read by ten million people. One in a hundred wants to go see.

The title of the story is “Flash Crowd.” Our version is a flash mob.

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1. The story is fictional, as Kipling informs the reader in a preliminary verse, but I take it to be set in the late 19^th century.