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Gates and Security
An anonymous reader writes "Orwell was wrong about Big Brother! Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates told a homeland-security conference on Wednesday afternoon that Orwell's dystopian vision of the future, in which Big Brother used technology as a form of social control, 'didn't come true, and I don't believe it will.'" Other tidbits about this security conference: Gates had his own troubles with security (Drudge is copy-and-pasting from a subscriber-only Roll Call story). Gates is apparently trying to sell interoperability to HomeSec. Meanwhile, Microsoft viruses continue unchecked.
Bill's a serious threat to democracy now that he's finally old enough that politicians listen to his money.
Buy guns and prepare for the first Corporate War...
"This technology can make our country more secure and prevent the nightmare vision of George Orwell at the same time," Gates said. "Orwell didn't anticipate how technology can be used to protect privacy. The fact that technology can protect both security and privacy by protecting the computer systems and the information on them is a positive thing."
Dear Mr. Bullshit Artist Premiere:
Explain to me how the technology you are pushing for will protect my privacy? Your current pushes seem to be towards forwarding my information about EVERYTHING on my computer (including what hardware I am using when XP shuts itself off), stopping me from running what I want in my fucking house, on my fucking computer, and forcing me to "sign" draconian agreements to use software YOU force me to use.
So, not only is my privacy signed away, my freedom to use software *I* want to use is toast, and you get to dictate the OS of the future by allowing companies to see the "benefits" of developing for your shit.
Once your pushes for these "protection schemes" goes away I will again feel a bit safer running your systems.
Please refrain from future attempts at dictating to me what I can and can't do with software and hardware I purchased.
Thanks for listening,
The fact that I have to read the BBC to get some of the news that don't make the cut in US media isn't really worrysome? Or that most US radios won't play more than a dozen songs all day long? Or the fact that several laws and regulations are enacted without the public being aware of them? Cases in point: DMCA, UCITA, new FCC rules, etc.
Maybe there's no Big Brother, but I'm convinced there's a Big Brotherhood.
Microsoft is doing what corporations do-- They make money by whatever means they can. If that means setting up Orwelling controls for overzealous LEOs, then so be it. Is Microsoft doing that? Probably not intentionally, but they're putting the infrstructure in place to make it happen regardless.
Reading about Sobig.E this morning made me start to think about the positive effects of viruses and computer problems.
One of the most changing impacts is that anyone who spends any time around computers at all gains a healthy respect of what kind of effort is needed to keep your personal information on your computer and out of the hands of malicious crackers. I upset my mother deeply a few months ago when I demonstrated to her that her computer was infected by one of the CodeRed variants. It was most disturbing for her to have me read the contents of her 'My Documents' directory off to her over the phone. She immediately installed firewall software and the kind of virus scanning software I recommended.
It's becoming more and more likely for people to want to protect themselves and their computers from informational damage, wether it comes from malicious information vandals or belligerant, mammoth-like corporations.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Both 1984 and Animal Farm were an attempt to highlight the evils that Stalin & the Soviet Union were inflicting on its people in the name of "communism". While Orwell supported the concept of Communism, he was appalled at the way in which it was being bent and twisted into Stalinism, and in particular the historical revisionism of the Soviet revolution E.g. labelling Trotsky as an enemy of the people.
1984 was a scare story, essentially in an attempt to show people what had happened and what would continue to happen if Stalinism was allowed to continue in the name of Communism. As you say, he was pretty damn close to the truth.
That said, many people (Myself included) would say that what we see now from our own, non-Communist Governments approximates pretty closely to the totalitarian regimes of 20th century communist states, and uses a few tricks that are used by INGSOC & Big Brother throughout 1984.
He might not have been trying to predict the future, but it does sometimes seem that the future is trying its hardest to copy Orwells imagination..
Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates told a homeland-security conference on Wednesday afternoon that Orwell's dystopian vision of the future, in which Big Brother used technology as a form of social control, "didn't come true, and I don't believe it will."
Is it just me, or is the view when you're worth bookoo bagallions just a little bit different than from when you have to worry about finances more? Maybe it's just me, but it seems that Gates, being in the stratosphere as far as powerful men are concerned, doesn't have to concern himself with Orwellian government because he is above the fray.
"Class warfare" and yadda-yadda, but having that much money and influence simply has to affect how you view the world. This is a classic example of this in play. *I* worry about government intrusiveness and civil liberties because I am almost completely powerless - as an individual - to prevent it. Sure I got a couple of guns, but what good would that do against a government?
Blaming Bill Gates for Microsoft Worms is about the same as blaiming Henry Ford for drunk driving deaths.
Just replace "drunk driving" by "exploding gastanks" and your analogy will work fine.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
> Is it just me, or have 'Gates and Security' become another oxymoron term, like 'Microsoft Works'?
For Gates and other MS execs, "security" is just another marketing buzzword.
And that's exactly what they're selling.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
My mother was working on on such system for tracking survielance calls. You would see observations like "Sounds black" or "Probable Prostitute". The place was run by Ex-law enforcement types, and they really thought these sorts of things were appropriate to store in a database.
If I have learned anything running databases at my current job, and for a volunteer organization, its that bad data is like a disease. You get folks who don't understand what goes where, or what is appropriate to store, you find yourself doing a whole lot of cleaning up later.
On one form we ask volunteers for Emergency Medical information and Allergies. I had to explicitly instruct people to stop submitting hayfever or dairy products we only want to know what to tell the Paramedic if you are unconcious.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
That said, many people (Myself included) would say that what we see now from our own, non-Communist Governments approximates pretty closely to the totalitarian regimes of 20th century communist states, and uses a few tricks that are used by INGSOC & Big Brother throughout 1984.
Specifically, those tricks are
I never said we were living in an Orwellian nightmare, or that Bush was Big Brother. Orwell was not trying to predict the future and Big Brother does not exist. We are still free to dislike the Government, we are still free to think what we like, we are still free to post comments such as this one, and for the most part we still live in a Democracy. Thats all good.
All I am trying to point out is that some parts of 1984 have made their ways into our lives, and we should be damn sure that we don't end up with even more of it.
However, I believe that it is a GROSS over-exaggeration to say that our non-Communist governments approximate the totalitarian regimes of the past.
If we do indeed lack some fundamental rights, it is due to our own laziness. We seem to demand so many things of our government. Yet, simultaneously, we are too damned lazy to get off our asses and work for those things that we want.
Those victimized by Statin and his ilk suffered under the yolk of oppression imposed by a militarisitic police state.
However, we suffer only under the yolk of our own ignorance, laziness, shallowness, etc. You get the idea.
For all you people who missed it (especially the moderator who marked it as "insightful" rather than "funny"), that was irony.
Calling the dictatorships in the middle east "international terrorists" is an attempt at thought control.
So is calling our actions there "liberation."
Thinking about it, you can easily see that the issue is not so cut and dried as "good guys" versus "axis of evil."
Recognize, analyze and decide for yourself, and such things will have no power over you. Otherwise, you may be violently for or against the things that you would do better to think about logically, as I believe that many of both the strong pacifists and strong agressors in this past war have been before even seeing the facts.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
You FEEL like it's a democracy because you've been TOLD it's a democracy.
You hear News from the press but really it's the 'what they want you to hear' kind of news.
How come the so-called PRESS is all over the news when it comes to Iraq and finding clues to WMD's when, right here in the US, There is no coverage of how BASIC CIVIL RIGHTS are being taken away by the misnamed PATRIOT Act ?
Or how come Americans never got to see Iraqi people being shot by American soldiers during the invasion when every body else in the world saw ?
Or how, I never saw on the CNN's from page Greenspan's initial objections to the Bush administration's plan on tax cuts for the rich ?
But really you shouldn't pay attention to any of that. Those car chases and that dog rescued by the firemen from some rooftop is more interesting. Nothing for you to see here.
The future isn't over yet. There's still plenty of time.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
"This technology can make our country more secure and prevent the nightmare vision of George Orwell at the same time," Gates said.
Blah blah yes it can but Orwell wasn't questioning the technology, he was writing about its use by the state. Technology's just a tool, any visionary realises that in primary school. The technology doesn't prevent a tendency away from trust, towards control of a populace, that's the job of people. Maybe if Billy was ranting on about how he was setting up technology focus groups to teach misuse of data, then he might have a point, but he's not.
To be fair, it's a difficult position. On one hand, all the little government agencies need to be responsible for something nationwide, and the general populace is way too lazy to bother abut protecting themselves, so something needs to get a handle on it. On the other hand... well, there'd be a good bit of ol-fashioned choir-preaching going on if I went on about state mis-use of data. Fortunately, being the largest home-user software house and one of the largest corporate influences fits Microsoft into both camps at once - hey, if it gets them money, then it must be good.
Yes, there's a hell of a long way to go in terms of getting users to respect their own privacy, and to respect the importances and influences of the gargantuan amount of data that is accessible these days.
However, what we really need for this is more education, not more technology. The latter is useless without the former. People will still be vulnerable if they don't understand what the system's doing, and the new wave of privacy technology isn't designed to do that. Just as the only secure machine is an off one, so the most private individual is a dead one.
Networking is ubiquitous, it affects us all, and as such we all take responsibility, not place it into the hands of a few people out to cash in on it. The sooner we realise that as a society, the better.
He's more of an arsehole than most give him credit for.
Look back through history and it's littered with good ideas put to nefarious uses. The problem is that no matter how well meaning technolgists are you are still left with the problem that cabinet level politicians are, generally speaking, not the most trustworthy and ethical persons on the planet.
For example, nuclear power. Possible clean and long lasting fuel source (if it was done properly), could improve everone's lot. First practical use - frying people and destroying whole cities and then threatening to destroy the planet from then on. Luckily the balance in power during the cold war means we are still here.
Example 2 - Gunpowder. use it to make pretty patterns in the sky, then adapt it to shoot lead balls through people and blow things up.
Give politicians the tools and they will always pour money into discovering the best way to use it to their own advantage whether it's for kicking the shit out of foreigners or keeping the populace in check at home.
The only trouble is that with computers and IT in general there's no mushroom cloud to let you know it's going on if they do it in secret Remember how long the governments involved denied Echelon's existence before finally owing up.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
Combine the visions of the Disney, FBI, RIAA, Microsoft, stupid senators and SCO, makes Big Brother seem bearable in comparison :)