On Corruption

 On Corruption

In a great many ways corruption is something like a cold virus. A cold virus might be any number of differing viruses which share a set of symptoms which are widely known. Corruption also might be of many similar types and share symptoms which are widely known. A common cold virus is easily spread and might use a large number of vectors to find a host and become implanted. So too does corruption find its host using a large number of vectors to spread itself withing the sample of host availability. And finally, once a host is infected, or corrupted, the issue must run its course; there is little we can do to stop it without some abnormal treatment is found. Lets drop the virus analogy at this point and focus on corruption within any system.

Corruption is defined here as some factor of a system becoming deliberately misused to further an intrusion uninterested in the purpose of the system being targeted at it's onset. This can be simple. A small bribe might be offered to a doorman so that he will allow passage into a secure facility an information or further access is granted, while the building system, including the doorman, is designed to keep such intrusions out for specific reasons.

• These prohibited intrusions might be innocuous:

  • Such as a sports fan wishing to get a rare autograph.

• The corruption may be minor:

  • Such as a photographer wishing to confirm some rumor by photographing the actions of others without permission.

• The Corruption might be politically or morally positive in its intention:

  • The photographs show clear evidence of wrong doing by a corrupt person.

• Or corruption might be decidedly negative:

  • The photographs create evidence for blackmail of some person who himself is corrupt.
    

In these many ways corruption spreads, for the good, the bad, and the ugly purposes it finds. The Doorman is the object of the corrupter, he too may have good or bad purposes and intentions, the least of which are achieving the bride he receives. In the blackmail or positive versions above the corrupter spread corruption in a good or very bad cause, the Doorman might engage his services in hopes his actions bring about the end of the corruption being photographed because of his actions, and the money might be needed to fund other good causes. But the fact remains that no matter the cause, or effect, the corruption is spread, embeds itself in the host, and is frightfully difficult to remove without destroying the system under corrupt intent.

People who have been corrupted are often open to further corruption and few become immune from it, having been corrupted. More likely is that a person who has successfully corrupted another person will reinfect that person for further aims at later point, even if this is to find another victim with good or bad desires. The subject of a corrupting re-introduction is more likely to comply since the previous corruption is still a liability and undiscovered (no matter how minor).

The only way out might seem to be by taking care against corruptions, but this is nearly impossible, so we invent laws which levy stiff penalties when corruption is called out. These penalties offer opportunities for corruption if the corrupter finds a potential host which is not yet corrupted but can be made to look that way. Some minor slip up, omission, or misinterpretation that can be converted to a corrupting purpose can spread the corruption and make it difficult to remove. The corrupted, facing stiff penalties, but otherwise not a willing participant, may aid the corrupter further in an effort of self preservation. Again, this leads to a system built to handle corruption becoming corrupted. It is possible to corrupt the system until it no longer represents the reasoning behind creating the system in the first place and the laws protecting it.

The simple fact about corruption is that moral training and character building within a society is the best way of prevention. Teaching people right from wrong, and the voluntary nature of social contracting, allows a person to not become corrupted because becoming corrupted is anathema to the subjects themselves. A right thinking and un-corruptable person has no need of participating and the down sides of becoming involved are too dire. (Though even in the Amish community, with all of its moral safeguards and isolation from corrupting influences, corruption abounds.) The interior feeling of becoming a bad person, even if never found out by others, would drag on the subject and so the action being proposed that would corrupt the system would never take place or would become exposed. This is a straight arrow approach, something which the entire society must value and maintain. This is no silver bullet for corruption, though it is the simplest form of prevention.

Secondary guards and guideposts, things which protect the system by checking the parts for corruption or availability for corruption are expensive to build and maintain, but this is how intelligence systems usually protect themselves from corruption. Policing, policy checking, and immediately removing corruption when found might slow corruption possibilities, but no system can be free of the possibility inside or especially outside of the system in question.

A tertiary system assumes that corruption will happen to some extent. Knowing where corruption will most likely occur allows closely targeted monitoring of the system and contingency replacement of corrupted component parts before the system breaks down entirely under the weight of it's corruption. These systems set goals for lowering the amount of corruption opportunities available in a modular fashion. Wartime spy programs often allow some measure of corruption into their system to use in spreading corruption to the corrupter. Double agents are useful and can be monitored and checks placed upon the outcomes. Once no longer viable vectors, the double agents can be removed without further corruption of the system since the removal is implied at the onset. This third way is useful when a system is built to allow it, but stopping the corruption entirely usually is not practical, just delayed.

The fourth way a system becomes corrupted is entirely from the interior of the system. Some part of the system itself works against the goals of the other parts, leading to members taking on corruptions that stabilize the system. In police organizations this is an internal affirs office. A computer system might have exploits to bypass longer pathways to success in its functional routines, set by the designers as a boost to efficacy. An office manager may find that pens and note pads are being used at an unexpected rate because of unknown reasons, or misdirect resources for the betterment of the system improperly. This is the most common manner in which corruptions are introduced into systems, expediency and a willingness to pervert the system for its own good. We find this sort of corruption in police forces where unwritten policy replaces law enforcement policy and legality for the betterment of the system which somehow is insufficient in certain cases. Corruptions of this type are all too common, usually lead to ever increasing modes of unwritten policies which can eventually be indistinguishable from the laws they should pursue. Torture of a prisoner might become the quickest route to finding facts in some area of law enforcement, the torture being a corrupt practice. This practice becomes the system which can then be reinfected with further expedient corruptions, such as harsher treatments which lead into the death of the subject. This in fact does remove the problem, but is unjust and corrupt if the Legal system requires proof of guilt. These murders must be covered up to preserve the corrupted system and maintain the performative aspect of law giving. The law simply does not come into the conversation because all parties feel justified by their own actions. Law enforcement becomes an absurdity and public confidence fails as law enforcement must become draconian to maintain the good intended but corrupt system that it created. These dire outcomes are not necessary in this fourth manner of corrupting a system.

A person may simply be eating a candy bar that should have been included in the inventory to stave off the hunger of missing a lunch break so that the inventory could be done on time. WHile more fficient that stoppoing work and eating lunch as they should, this tax on business is quite a large part of the loss due to corruption. Eventually there will be people all over the place with empty wrappers in their trash receptacles, profits fail, employees are let go, etcetera. If policy and policing fail to provide a manner of prevention, then perhaps a focus on detection and removal is a better route to follow.

Laws, rules, and systems of policing the system under question are expensive, slow, and even slowing to the system efficiency. A fine system of post depression economics once called Keynesian Economic modeling worked very well to “right the ship” of world economies under the pressures of the Great Depression and World War Two; but Keynesian Economics was also thought to have laid the groundwork for “stag-flation” (an unintedned consequence which mimmicked the outcomes of  corruption) thirty years later and these theories were abandoned because government over spending and intermittent debt undermined the system which supported better outcomes. Loop holes were found in the Keynesian system and exploits allowed extravagant spending on military capacity and even thrift,  in an otherwise peaceful and prosperous world. The spending, needing a cause for continuance, drove war making and a need for more increased spending. Keynes never saw this coming in his system and it became corrupted by efficieny and a lack of prescience. Building a better mousetrap worked, the system worked well and easily, but the lack of any system of prevention lead into failure due to corruption none-the-less.

A multi-modal program of systems to keep corruption at manageable levels might be possible, but these are usually ad hoc systems of reaction to failure rather than planning for success. We might find that pens are being pilfered by most employees and put controls on the supply. This may momentarily slow the losses of pens, but also remove an incentive from employees dependent on that supply as a perk. Paying the employees not to steal pens might work until they find that they can indeed have the money and the pens both. Or a system may attempt to control the supply and choke itself in inefficiency, such as issuing bullets to soldiers in tightly controlled numbers too small to handle the threat whil teaching marksmanship, ammunition conversation, and spent case-counting, may help with the problem of spending too much on ammunition; or the system might attempt to restrict the amount of bullets that might go into a weapon in a finite amount of time. Each system layered in may have a deleterious effect somewhere else in the system.

Replacement of a system which has become corrupted seems the simplest means of insuring that corruption does not persist. In American Courts it is possible to replace a jury even during deliberation of a verdict, as juries are seen as only true when the verdict is only based on the evidence presented. A computer system which is open to prying might become corrupted in many ways, but replacing the system is inexpensive and easily accomplished on a routine basis. Data is locked down at a certain point where corruption is not present and then re-introduced at intervals to remove corruption by deletion. These seem very practical in systems where infrastructure is the thing. If a computer system routinely removes all changes to its data occasionally, corruption is indeed removed if never prevented. Changes in the data itself may need interventions and constant updating, but each change in the underlying system means more opportunities for unforeseen corruption. In data systems, efficacy based solutions (such as check sum checking) may aid in corruption or prevention. However, if there is a model for facing the inevitable failure of any system due to corruption, then this is the one. Replace the entire system occasionally and check the data constantly.

Hard programming to keep outsiders from entering the prohibited system may also slow innovations and bring on stagnation or economic disadvantages by making the system inaccessible for necessary change in the shorter terms necessary to maintain an efficient position. In light switches and dispensing machines this works well, the opportunities for corruption become entirely external to the corrupter. Stacking incorruptible systems one before another may offer some protections and modular replacement of system components would allow change over time. But this is a purely machine form of design and so any system designed to perform a single set of functions, even if not corruptible, and even if efficient, will become less useful as new needs and new tastes are found and new systems built to service the next need. Again, modular construction of this sort of machine may stave off completely anachronistic machinery lining the walls of buildings everywhere, but old systems will be hard to take down.

• It seems that corruption will intrude into any system, even if it makes little difference to important systems, and even if the system continues as it should after the intrusion. But restricting motion to stave off corrupting influences may stifle innovation and improvement, adding inefficiency more destructive than some minor or major corruption influence. So what is to be done?
  
  Firstly. Assume corruption is present and spend resources to control it only if the system itself is too valuable to allow corruption to enter into it.
  Secondly. Assume corruption will be introduced and create a system of social conditioning which abhors it, but allow dissent and innovation in treatment of corruption and soft policing and policy enforcement to maintain the status quo of low priority corruption influences.
  Thirdly. Disincentive-ize corruption by making systems open to inspection by other not involved in the system itself. This is the system most use today through password protection schemes even when no sensitive objects might be found within the system being protected.
  Fourthly. Routinely replace systems where they fail rather than patch them against exploitation. If a system proves too costly to maintain, because it becomes corrupted too easily, replace the system with a better model.
  
  Corruption is as it appears, as would a cold virus that might run through the population of any office environment where people meet in a manner close enough to spread a virus. Once corruption gets loose, the intentions of the office to allow close contact must change; removing contact at the onset of planning will be less efficient; allowing contact will become inefficient once the virus gets into the system, so to plan for both scenarios might be the most prudent path even if the virus cannot be stopped. Removing those people from the office who have virus symptoms decreases productivity and rarely will it stop the virus since the virus embeds without symptoms and spreads before symptoms occur. And the best manner for virus protection is the ability to self identify symptoms and take appropriate action, but this may open the door to other forms of corruption, such as malingering, and require other systems of prevention. Or you might simply understand that virulence will occur and act on it in a multi-modal manner:
  
  Do business as usual and monitor for outside and interior signs of infection.

• This is the current mode for information systems protection generally.

• Once identified, remove the infected to safe distance and allow functions to continue remotely as allowed by circumstance, or replace the infected with others, then clean everything of contamination. Continue to monitor and remove infection as necessary, clean again as necessary.

  • This is the enhanced system of backup and replacement in information systems built more robustly.

• If the system becomes widely effected by contamination, close up shop and try to work remotely in planned a fall-back system which negates the losses but is less efficient.

  • This is the model of most who choose not to protect themselves from system corruptions.

You might simply allow the virus to run its course. This is something nobody wants, but is likely the most prevalent. Political corruptions become entrenched until ineffective and replaceable. It is hard on systems and people to allow corruption to rule the day.

Each of the above steps is less efficient than the intended outcomes determined in a plan which does not include the idea of a corruption, but the manager who determines corruption likely will not occur is not building a system based on probability but instead basing assumptions on the mere possibility that a virus occurring in any closed system is very low. Neither are likely to be proven true over time.

Since most corruption is involved in political, economic, and informational, systems, these being the manner in which commerce and interaction occur generally, these are the areas most involved in becoming corrupted and remaining in that state without action. Removal of corruption is best accomplish by those who find themselves corrupted, but this requires self assurance, self-monitoring, and in the event of corruption, self-policing. Corruption itself cannot be avoided so long as advantage is the goal and efficiency very often opens a system up to corruption. Stern measures will do little to stop the corruption, even once it is found, since once established corruption is difficult to extract from the system. As we pursue efficient methods of controlling our lives, we open ourselves up to corruption and these may seem quite small at the onset while allowing further corruptions to occur which we did not expect.

By far the best means of combating corruption is to expose it openly, since most corruption involves attempts at remaining efficient in the effort while the advantages of the efficiency warrant care for others over profit. The potential for loss and fear of the unknown allows systems to be created which are more openly corruptible, or corruption becomes more difficult to slow once it becomes embedded in the system.

Therefore accepting loss, a planned form including some intermediate failure, is the key to removing corruption from the system by removing any motive toward corruption at its closet inception point. Accepting corruption as a likely outcome will negate the need for extraordinary losses, even if shorter termed profit might be foregone. Accepting loss due to corruption and accepting the attendant loss of profit (which is inevitable in any system) will allow a system to be built which fails and recovers quickly when compared to systems built otherwise.