Secrets to Transparency

Mae, the heroine of the story, and new champion of the people, has gone transparent.  With this new life, comes many new rules, mainly that she must wear a camera at all times. The idea of transparency is not as clear and concise as the Circle makes it out to be.  This new system may seem like the best way to keep a person honest, there are still many faults to it and ways of using it misleadingly.

Along with Mae's new transparency comes a new job, to show off the Circle to all the people watch her video stream.  Right as the Book II takes off, Mae is in the middle of one of these tours.  In this case, Mae, along with all of her watchers, are watching the mysterious creatures that Stenton found in the Marianas Trench.  Mae then goes on to talk about how her life is mostly showing her viewers the various parts of the circle.

These tours that Mae gives around the Circle may seem innocent, as a way for people to see what life it like inside the circle, but it also has a dark side to it.  All of Mae's videos around the circle are a form of propaganda.  She is only showing her viewers the best parts of the circle.  If a source outside of the Circle was employing Mae to give these tours, they would not contain this bias.

This bias is only exemplified by the fact that Mae is only walking around the Circle all day because she is told to.  The viewers would believe that everything Mae is doing is just part of her regular day at the Circle, but that is not the case.  Mae is being told what to show people at the Circle, through an earpiece, which the viewers cannot hear.

This earpiece is just one of the many ways that the transparency can be bypassed, to still keep secrets.   This earpiece allows Mae to be told what to do, and say without her viewers being able to know.  That means that even though Mae is "transparent" she can still be told secret information.  This is something that completely goes against the meaning of transparency, that the transparent person can't have secret meetings.

Speaking of secret meetings, there are still plenty of opportunities for Mae to meet people without her viewers knowing.  This can be seen when Mae and Annie go to the bathroom to talk.  Now, the camera was never turned off during this time, it looking only at the stall door, but the sound was.  This means that since, Mae and Annie were in side by side stalls, they could talk without anyone knowing, which could be the case with any meetings made.  This is not the only time when meetings could happen in secret.

Each night, Mae is allowed to turn off her camera at 10:00 PM.  This means that Mae can do whatever she wants after this time, without anyone knowing, at least until the next morning.  This gives ample time, when she could secret meets at night, which is something that would be frowned upon, if she was a government official.  Now, there were still SeeChange cameras in her room, but she could have turned them off if she wanted to, and I'm sure not everyone has SeeChange cameras everywhere.  This shows just how much Mae could get around her transparency.

Now, I'm not saying that it's a bad thing that she is able to get some privacy.  I'm just saying that these aspects go against want the Circle says they are doing, by pushing government officials to be transparent.  On the other hand, the officials may have more strict rules for their transparency, but I highly doubt this is the case.  This just shows how much the Circle acts like they are being the champions of openness and knowledge, but their methods can still be walked around.