Bruce Schneier: It's Time For Technologists To Become Lawmakers (venturebeat.com) 136
Bruce Schneier, a well-known security guru, this week called on technologists to become lawmakers and policy makers so countries can deal with issues such as the governance of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. From a report: "The future is coming," Schneier said, speaking at the RSA security conference in San Francisco. "It's coming faster than we think. And it's coming faster than our existing policy tools can deal with. And the only way to fix this is to develop a new set of policy tools. With the help of the technologists, you understand the technologies." The issues are a lot larger than just computer security. Schneier wants more public interest technologists in all areas.
[...] We saw the policy makers and technologies talk past each other when the FBI wanted Apple to break into an iPhone that belonged to a terrorist shooting suspect, Schneier said. The debate over Edward Snowden's disclosure of the National Security Agency's eavesdropping programs was another flash point. The need for policy makers to understand technology is clear. "This is no different than any other part of our complex world," he said. "We don't expect legislators to be experts in everything. We expect them to get and accept expertise. The second thing we need is for technologists to get involved in policy, and what we need is more public interest technologists" -- those who focus on social justice, the common good, and the public interest.
[...] We saw the policy makers and technologies talk past each other when the FBI wanted Apple to break into an iPhone that belonged to a terrorist shooting suspect, Schneier said. The debate over Edward Snowden's disclosure of the National Security Agency's eavesdropping programs was another flash point. The need for policy makers to understand technology is clear. "This is no different than any other part of our complex world," he said. "We don't expect legislators to be experts in everything. We expect them to get and accept expertise. The second thing we need is for technologists to get involved in policy, and what we need is more public interest technologists" -- those who focus on social justice, the common good, and the public interest.
LOL, no thanks (Score:1)
Politicians are bad, but devs would be far, far worse. Just look how basically every FOSS project eventually ends up splitting because of egos, drama, etc.
Re:LOL, no thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is everyone wants to be the problem solver and the leader.
Our current media shows the super hero leader, the guy who comes up with the creative solution, and then has the power and authority to pull it off.
A good leader isn't the problem solver, there is way too much on his plate, to sit down and work out a good solution to a problem. That is why they have specialists. Their job is to sit back, and work on a solution to the problem at hand and report it back to the leader. The Leaders job is to take a look at all the solutions, try to weigh their benefits and trade offs, pick the best solution and form a team of people who are able to implement this solution.
The best leaders are rarely the smartest guys in the room, and rarely have expertise in what they are leading. The best leaders know they are not the smartest people in the room, and do not pretend that they are. However they are involved, ask questions, challenge assumptions, and put their preconceived ideas aside, to fairly judge what is best.
FOSS project or projects maintained by technologist, have trained Problem solvers and specialists trying to lead a group of diverse people and idea's. And tend to go power mad, because they have their own solution in mind, and they have the power to enforce it. Often with the problem of ignoring better ideas.
This is also a problem with elected politics, we are so polarized on issues (solutions) that we do not vote in good leaders, but people who pretend to be these super hero "Leaders" like we see on TV. And when they get into power, they are stuck to follow the party line, because they were elected to do such.
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The problem is that our society is set up to glorify leaders. Who wants to be the problem solver when your brilliant solution just gets passed up to a leader who takes the credit, gets paid more, and has more freedom?
What we end up with is a whole bunch of "leaders" and a few poor suckers who got stuck being problem solvers... too few to actually solve all the problems.
Wow, what an idea (Score:2)
What? Elect public officials with technical competence and aptitude over idiot dumbasses whose only major skill is to run a successful mass-marketing campaign?
The level of technological and scientific incompetence in public officials up to and including high offices is frankly embarrassing and at the same time catastrophic in terms of actual consequences.
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I agree with your assessment, but I think the degree of incompetence in non-public leadership is even more catastrophic.
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"We don't expect legislators to be experts in everything. We expect them to get and accept expertise. The second thing we need is for technologists to get involved in policy, and what we need is more public interest technologists."
1) Should technologists become lawmakers? It's Corporate lobbyists who write the legislation pertinent to their interest these days. Legislators don't just accept technological expertise, they let 'em write the bills, word for word. Ipso-facto, technologists,
Re: Ha, ha, ha! (Score:2)
What's most telling is that he's looking for "technologists" (my god what a stupid word, more on this later) who want social justice. Then for good measure, he asks for people who want to work for the common good and public interest.
Personally, I don't know of any lawmaker who doesn't think that they aren't doing the latter two, including the ones that ultimately work toward their own benefit. Furthermore, social justice is mutually exclusive from the other two. The idea behind it is to pay lip service to m
Re:Perfect (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather have them join forces. Technologists could explain why laws can't work on a technical level, lawyers can explain why they won't work on a legal level and if they work together, there's a chance that the result is a law that DOES actually work on both levels.
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I'd rather have them join forces. Technologists could explain why laws can't work on a technical level, lawyers can explain why they won't work on a legal level and if they work together, there's a chance that the result is a law that DOES actually work on both levels.
The fact a law won't work on any level is in no way an impediment to its passage.
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No, but an impediment to it working as planned. Of course you can pass all sorts of ridiculous laws, but all you get that way is a useless legal body that eventually nobody takes serious anymore.
Wrong problem (Score:1)
You're solving the wrong problem. The issue isn't that policy makers don't understand the technology. The issue is that they don't care how the technology works.
To use the iphone example - the FBI has very smart technical analysts. They are fully aware of how hard it is to break strong encryption. That's why they want Apple to make phones that are easy for them to access. Not because they misunderstand encryption. Because they value their ability to access suspect's data more than the public's abi
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Who will explain why a particular law is a bad idea in the first place?
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Anyone identifying it as a bad law. Then a discussion about it can start.
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Sounds great - in theory. Do you know if it's ever been successfully tried in practice?
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No, of course not, who cares if a law is good or bad? All a law has to do is please the ruling party or parties, that has nothing to do with its quality.
Double duty (Score:4, Interesting)
He want technical experts to become efficient lawmakers while staying on top of their technical expertise at the same time?
I think he seriously underestimates what it takes to become either one.
And then he says "We don't expect legislators to be experts in everything. We expect them to get and accept expertise.". That is the real problem we need to fix. If an expert tells you that you can't crack encryption because of mathematics, stop fussing like a spoiled kid who's not getting what he's asking for.
Bill by the hour (Score:5, Interesting)
The engineers that make the most money for their firms are the ones that find simple solutions to complex problems.
The lawyers who bill the most money for their firms are the ones that find complex solutions to simple problems.
In a business environment where profit is the driving motive, these two professions have wildly diverging motivations. If you don't believe me, just look at the mess that is patent law.
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Troy: What's wrong with me?
Zaius: I think you're crazy.
Troy: Want a second opinion.
Zaius: You're also lazy.
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He want technical experts to become efficient lawmakers while staying on top of their technical expertise at the same time?
I think he seriously underestimates what it takes to become either one.
And then he says "We don't expect legislators to be experts in everything. We expect them to get and accept expertise.". That is the real problem we need to fix. If an expert tells you that you can't crack encryption because of mathematics, stop fussing like a spoiled kid who's not getting what he's asking for.
Lawmakers are used to lying and being lied to so of course they assume that the experts are just trying to handwave the issue by saying "it's unbreakable because of math" in order to avoid helping the government.
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This is probably what we'll end up with, or at least something along those lines, since it's the only way to satisfy both requirements: privacy rights against corporations and thieves and lawful access for governments.
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He want technical experts to become efficient lawmakers while staying on top of their technical expertise at the same time?
I think he seriously underestimates what it takes to become either one.
I would have to agree with you, and question Bruce's logic here, since he's not exactly ignorant of either technology or law.
I often have to explain to non-IT executives the importance and challenge every IT professional faces throughout their career to simply maintain proficiency. I often equate it to an accountant being forced to take the CPA exam every 3-5 years, or a lawyer being asked to do the same thing for the Bar.
You can automate both of these professions only so much. Asking a professional to ma
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question Bruce's logic here, since he's not exactly ignorant of either technology or law.
That happens once in a while. He's one of the foremost information security gurus in the world, but he still backs paper ballots as if they're magic. He won't even have a conversation about systemic problems in proving paper ballot integrity, in the lack of auditability of paper ballots, and so forth.
When such experts speak, people follow. That gets us HR1, the Black Box Voting Act, which threatens to cripple our democracy by expanding vote-by-mail not just to those with disabilities and other accessib
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question Bruce's logic here, since he's not exactly ignorant of either technology or law.
That happens once in a while. He's one of the foremost information security gurus in the world, but he still backs paper ballots as if they're magic. He won't even have a conversation about systemic problems in proving paper ballot integrity, in the lack of auditability of paper ballots, and so forth...
You bring good points here (I did read your entire post), but I have a feeling Bruce was merely defending the lesser of two evils (ironically not unlike the candidates). If you think we have less accountability with paper ballots, we are marching towards no accountability with e-voting machines that have proven to be insecure as hell. At least a paper ballot tampering process takes real human effort. History has shown that all it takes is one hacker to manipulate millions of records in seconds once a dat
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we are marching towards no accountability with e-voting machines that have proven to be insecure as hell.
Current systems are broken. It's possible to establish something more-secure than paper (a lot more secure); and the primary attacker isn't hackers (we can trivially exclude hackers), but the electoral authority (extremely difficult to exclude). It's a big effort, though [google.com].
Sadly, I worry more about the selection of idiots we're putting on the ballot than the voting system itself
It's up to the people to decide; and that gets manipulated by the broken electoral systems we use, notably party primaries and single-vote systems. IRV is also easy to manipulate (it's a lot more effort and strategy than plurality, bu
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You don't need to be the best there is, but you need to be proficient in both to be able to evaluate correctly what an expert is telling you and whether it's a fact, a well-funded professional opinion (out of many possible), or just plain BS.
It's not exactly like you don't need to spend every day in court as a lawyer, *and* spend every of your nights debugging as computer programmer. Knowing one discipline well enough to make it your main occupation while having a solid foot in the other is possible, suffic
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The problem isn't whether or not crackable consumer-grade encryption can be made - of course it can. The legislature could mandate that any consumer device sold with encryption capabilities must be crackable by authorized law enforcement, and companies would have the choice of complying or losing the total market in that jurisdiction. The problem, and the question, really is, is this a good idea?
It's a fundamental conflict between those who believe
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized
is an absolute, and those who are so concerned about "safet
We need mandatory diversity in government. (Score:1)
The background of far too many legislators is the law, others are involved in business at a management level.
Relatively few are in medicine, engineering, or even retail.
They are distant and remote from the concerns of the citizenry.
We would be better off with a random lottery.
IT people need to be great IT people (Score:2)
Doing anything else inhibits you from being the best you can possibly be. I have been in the business since 1994. Congress is also a full time job.
Being lawmaker is worthless (Score:2, Interesting)
Lets take a look at this week alone...
If you read/vote for a bill/amendment from the opposing party, you will be put on a list to be "primaried" and removed from office.
Declaring anti-Semitism as being wrong is unacceptable for a lawmaker now.
Having a stance that a live born baby should be protected is unacceptable.
You have to support KKK member Northam in VA.
You have to support serial rapist Fairfax in VA.
You do anything they don't like, they will investigate you and anyone who has ever helped you to attem
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Re: Being lawmaker is worthless (Score:1)
No one is talking about DOA births. Stop with the bulkshit deflection. The left voted that it is ok to actively murder a child who survived an abortion attempt and is now outside the womb. Post-natal abortion is murder. How old are you? Maybe we should extend the law to cover 12 year olds so you can be aborted for your stupidity.
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No, we were calling the NY law that passed horrific.
Followed by the Senate vote that the DNC refused to protect live born infants because their definition of being born is "When you take the baby home" -Feinstein.
But thanks for the strawman, I bet you thought you were effective and didn't expect someone to call out your lies.
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I have met lawyers. I have met technologists. I can say in good faith that on average the latter have more humanity in them than the former.
I wouldn't want Zuckerberg to run my country. Then again, I wouldn't want a lot of what now runs the country to run it either, so... I honestly can't say what's worse.
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You certainly have a good reason why, too, right? You just didn't present it so far because ... reasons.
Double distrust (Score:4, Interesting)
Voters are distrustful of politicians, and laypeople are distrustful of technologists. In both cases it's because politicians and technologists have power, whether through the legislative and bureaucratic processes or whether through application of uncommon knowledge. Layer on top of that the fact that there's a broad segment of the US electorate that is distrustful of educated "elites", which for obvious reasons technologists tend to be, plus the fact that technologists rarely have the sort of people skills needed to win elections.
I think technologists-turned-lawmaker-wannabes are going to have a rough time getting elected.
I think it would be great to have technologically-savvy lawmakers... but I think it's better to focus on electing politicians who know how to find and take good advice about things they don't understand.
What's worse? (Score:2)
What's worse?
Lawyers writing laws about technology they don't understand
OR
Technical people trying to write legal documents that become laws?
Either way, the result is sub-optimal.
Remember, there is a legal difference between "shall" and "will"; and lawyers are a necessary evil, just like politicians are.
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How about technical people designing legislation and having a lawyer then making it airtight?
There's no reason for either-or.
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Remember, there is a legal difference between "shall" and "will"; and lawyers are a necessary evil, just like politicians are.
Yes and that is handled just fine in technical documents. Go read and internet RFC.
In fact we probably should be using something like structured english to write laws.
Dreams of Z10n (Score:2)
Sad to say, but Tech people are in general, unloved, unelectable, ugly realists.
The few insanely rich ones, wish to push regulation and politics to protect their existing business position, not to further technical goals or dreams.
Perhaps if some country, such as Iceland, Serbia, or somewhere peripheral decided, they could promote STEM companies and people with Tax advantages or funding.
Ireland previously did something similar for Creative Art people: no income tax.
But short of building an artificial island
Moar Scientists (Score:2)
Not my job (Score:2)
That's called a technocracy, (Score:4)
and HELL NO! We DON'T need more Silly Valley-type incursions into government. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. People whose working lives are centred on technology tend to think technology has or is the solution to all problems. The sorry fact is that technology is the rampant source of many of our problems. Facebook, Google and the like need to be controlled and brought to heel, not egged on by tech-savvy fanbois who gain legislative power and try to realize their juvenile tech-topian visions. And AFAICT the tech sector has jack shit of relevance to say about the challenges we face as a result of increasing automation and the advent of true AI. That's a whole other discipline (or set of disciplines) that needs to be developed - tech definitely needs to be at that able, but they sure as shit shouldn't be anywhere close to running the show.
I'd be really interested to read what Cory Doctorow says if he decides to weigh in on this.
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This ecological atrocity finally
Caves in on itself...perhaps it's
All for the better
Lock your doors and say goodnight
As toxins leach out of sight
We're living in the new age
Of electronic security
Technocracy probable cause
Technocracy bending some laws
Living in fear making something
Of yourself is making fifty grand a year
The technology that spawned
Our every convenience
Creating more and more po
Technology Changes Nothing! (Score:3)
“Corporations have basically control over free speech and censorship regardless of laws,” he said.
This has ALWAYS been true. Technology does not change this, it just makes it easier to do. Restricting speech and controlling behavior have been activities that corporations have ALWAYS done.
Look at Monsanto and how they prosecute farmers that want to re-use seed that is spilled on the ground. Monsanto claims that is theft.
Look at John Deer and other manufacturers that prosecute people who try to repair their tractors and claim intellectual property theft.
Technology did not introduce a new set of behaviors. Technology did NOT create a legal vacuum. You have a legal system that defers to corporate interests. This was not brought about by technology. This attitude is a philosophical one. It only changes when people challenge it.
One does not need to be a technologist to do so.
How About Replacing Politicians with AI's? (Score:1)
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I recall an Isaac Azimov short story that implied that an automation could be a more fair judge than a human judge.
This is already happening.
There is judicial software used by the courts in some districts that recommends whether someone should get parole or not.
Judges and courts are already using this. And there have been instances of regrettable early releases of violent offenders.
Be careful what you wish for.
Good luck (Score:3)
Trying to compete with lawyers (and yes, most politicians are lawyers) in their field is not easy. As soon as you become a threat, and since you don't know how to cover your ass against a legal onslaught from them, you will be gone.
Not to mention that I have real work to do. I can't sit on my ass and do nothing, leave that to the lawyers, as long as they do that, at least they don't cause worse harm.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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"ur first implementations are almost always buggy. They're also often blind to myriad scenarios that we disparagingly call "edge cases" (since we're usually unwilling to admit we didn't think it through enough). We all like doing iterative approaches where we tweak things to see what happens, and which things break. If something is not working perfectly, we tend to throw the whole thing out to start over from scratch. We can often obsess about a narrow range of things, while completely missing the larger pi
Regulation is coming. Lets have good regulation (Score:3, Insightful)
Too many comments here miss the point of what Bruce says:
Regulation is coming!
If technologically savvy people do not get engaged then technologically illiterate people will make the rules.
You could become a politician, but you can also support lawyers, politicians and (the right) lobbyists.
But no matter what, regulation is coming!
The internet and technology play a bigger and bigger rule in our daily lives and that makes regulation inevitable.
I am sorry if this offends your belief in freedom, libertarianism, small government, or whatever. Where many people become engaged there need to be rules that govern those social and economic relationships.
Wasn't "bureaucracy" an achievement in Civilisation or some similar game? Letâ(TM)s create small and few rules.
Regulation is coming ! (thank you game of thrones)
Politicians need to LISTEN TO THEIR ADVISERS! (Score:2)
Technologists are too politically biased (Score:1)
There is no way I want current technologists to be lawmakers. At least not the ones currently leading the charge. That would be Twitter, Facebook, Google.. All who are left leaning, some in radical ways. Google was helping China build it's social networking system. That is treason, and yet they were allowed to do it.
Look at all the stuff going on now with Twitter and Facebook banning conservatives left and right. All of the tech CEOs lied to Congress, and now Vijaya Gadde from Twitter is making statements o
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1. Posting as Anonymous Coward. nice.
2. Stating the truth isn't bias. Thank you for showing highlighting your political affiliation by inverting fact and bias/opinion.
See stuff proven by factual evidence. You know like. Stuff that has actually happened, and it can be verified as truth by recorded or corroborated facts, testimonies, videos, etc. evidence.
Bias is like, when you tend to judge things with a strong emphasis using your personal position in either politics, a romantic relationship with the subject
Phht (Score:2)
I'd be happy with a lawmaker that just read their own flipping emails, instead of having them printed out and laying on their desk each morning.
The average age of congress is 59 (House 58, Senate 62); this means that these people were forming their basic political ideas/views during the Cold War, the mid 70s oil crisis, post-Vietnam malaise as well as economic stagnation in the US, if not earlier.
FWIW average age of UK's house of commons is 50. House of lords is 70. Curiously this puts parliament OLDER th
We don't want that job. (Score:2)
The last thing any technologist wants to do is answer the tech support phone all day long. You get nothing but demands from the stupidest of people. Being a politician is that, all day every day. And you want us to volunteer for this, Bruce? Are you mad?
And what is a law but documentation of procedures. Do we do that? I mean I know we're supposed to, and we say we will, and we really do intend to write those header comments. Any day now. But let's get real. A brief survey of Github will show you th
Politicians ==Lawyer (Score:2)
An attorney, cross-examining the local coroner, queried, "Before you signed the death certificate had you taken the man's pulse?"
"No," the coroner replied.
"Well, then, did you listen for a heart beat?"
The coroner answered, "No."
"Did you check for respiration? Breathing?", asked the attorney.
Again the coroner replied, "No."
"Ah," the attorney said, "So when you signed the death certificate you had not taken any steps to make sure the man was dead, had you?"
The coroner rolled his eyes, and shot back "Counselor
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314 Action (Score:2)
I'm under the impression that 314 Action [314action.org] is out there to work on this effort, and had some successes in the last election.
So much wrong with this (Score:1)
There is intelligence, there is knowledge, and there is wisdom. Wisdom is required for leadership. And probably a lot of other characteristics, but fundamentals of wisdom and good leadership are unchanging--that's what makes them fundamentals.
Wisdom is now, as always, in short supply. Just look at some of the comments below--from intelligent, capable people, but people whose expertise is not in leadership, and who are, frankly, too young in most cases to have acquired much in the way of wisdom, which necess
What have we tried already? (Score:2)
We have tried politicians with 'classical' educations. They lumbered our system with Greek and Latin. They derided us for being ignorant of what they considered important and took pride of their own ignorances.
We tried lawyers and ended up with appalling legal loopholes everywhere.
We tried ones who work in the media and ended up with the media taking over society.
We tried TV "personalities" and ended up with Trump and Brexit.
Now it is suggested we get politicians who understand aspects of the modern world
But only one sort of technologist it seems. (Score:2)
That "public interest technologists" is defined as "those who focus on social justice, the common good, and the public interest", is, once we ditch the recursive loop, half neutral but also half partisan-buzzword.
As only one party wastes time promoting that meaningless bit of vacuous twaddle, it seems Schneier only wants one p
Aptly enough (Score:2)
That's not how it works. (Score:2)
That's not how it works. What we need is rich, good technologists to lobby politicians to do the right thing. Finding good, incorruptible people is the real problem that needs to be solved, and it's hard to do that when step 1 is to bribe a politician.
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You cannot force idiots not to be dumbasses.