Hm. This was a hodgepodge. I really sympathized with many criticisms, but others lacked focus.
Specifically, I'm frustrated with the author picking on the idea of police officers wearing cameras. I'm interested in how we can decentralize and unpackage law enforcement services, so this hit home for me. I'd like to expound on (de)centralization, community and transparency for a sec, if I can be indulged.
Democracy and society today implies distributed power (citizens) mediated by necessary centralized power (law enforcement, elected representatives, judicial systems). This was a choice we made as our societies grew, as it was the only one that technology (postal service, telegraph, horse, guns, etc.) allowed at the time we were working through our options.
The small, manageable communities of our past were ones where everyone knew everyone else. There was gossip. Secrets were hard. But this was bundled up with the security we had in these communties. We're being dishonest if we become nostalgic for that security and community, and yet conveniently deny the nakedness that is implied.
Democracy has been the only way we've known stability in recent history. But it doesn't mirror these small communities of our past. We trusted centralized powers to mediate the trust relationships the we lost when we grew up. This allowed us to live in a world where we didn't need to ask transparency. So we got used to that being a norm in a society where we felt security and stability.
But if we want to build more decentralized a robust societies, we need to accept that sometimes radical transparency is needed for certain institutions to lose their corruptible centers. We need radical transparency for any institution that operates at the scale where we can't know and trust one another through the nakedness of personal relationships. We CAN build a decentralized society that has privacy, and we should demand that privacy for situations where it need not be sacrificed. But we can't always demonize all forms of radical transparency, as this is the crucial element that will allow the most corruptible of our institutions to be reimagined.
OK, sorry, this was perhaps a bit of a rant. If you're thinking in similar areas, perhaps the words above will resonate with you. Otherwise, it might sound like an abstract rambling :)