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.

Comments

Orwell's vision was true!

[Anonymous Coward]

1984 was not a book that tried to predict the future. It was a description of life under a totalitarian government, such as those of the old Eastern Europe. Many defectors from these regimes commented to Orwell on how accurate his portrayal was.

Re:Orwell's vision was true!

[Floody]

Then why did he timestamp it?

He didn't. The novel's setting was in some future time, however it was not intended to be specific but rather allegorical for all totalitarian regimes. In order to come up with this completely arbitrary future time period, Orwell simply reversed the last two digits of the year he wrote it: 1948.

Re:Orwell's vision was true!

[Ellen Ripley]

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.

Agreed, sort of. It's important to keep the pronouns straight.

I demand nothing of my government except that it mind it's own business. I'm not opposed to the basic idea of government, but my participation is not voluntary and so I'm getting a bad deal. I want my participation to be voluntary so that I can put the forcibly removed 15-20% of my paycheck into medical and dental care. I want government to provide a basic minimum of services (the primary service I expect is providing a nexus for the administration of common property, like land and air), not to control a broad swath of public life. I think I speak for a lot of slashdotters when I say that government is at best a necessary evil, something I put up with rather than genuinely like.

But this is not what "we", in the sense of most people, want. Most people do want government to be more involved. There are studies that show that most people are pro-government. They think the measures to "combat terrorism" are a good idea. They think that free speech rights are a little too broad. They take it for granted that the purpose of government is to take care of people. The desires of the majority are 'obviously' correct. (Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Zeitgeist.) The problem isn't government, it's these vast numbers of people who support government. Those people won't get the long-term picture until it's the short-term picture; they will support government until it's an immediate problem for them.

As always, the only profound solution is education. Until most people understand at a gut-level that government is the atomic-bomb of social engineering, a powerful and dangerous weapon that needs to operated with attention, caution and deliberation, they and "we" -- the smaller "we", the slashdot-type "we" that prefers freedom to comfort and security -- are going to remain under the feet of government.

Re:Oh yeah? I call shovel time...

[goldspider]

"...and forcing me to "sign" draconian agreements to use software YOU force me to use."

So are you saying that jack-booted thugs are forcing you to install and use Windows? Or are you suggesting that quality alternatives to windows like Linux and *BSD are failures?

Trust vs. Security

[lynx_user_abroad]

I guess Gates still doesn't get it, or maybe it get's it and he's just hoping nobody calls him on it.

The concepts of trust and security are often used together, but it's important to realize they are at different ends of the spectrum.

If I ask you to trust me, what I'm really doing is asking you to remove some of the security you may have against actions I take.

Security can be a product; you may want to sell it, and I may want to buy it. But trust is a relationship. I will trust you only if I choose to, and no amount of price cuts will have an effect on that. Anyone who tries to sell trust clearly has other intentions in mind.

Also, you can build a fortress of security on top of a foundation of trust, but it makes no sense offer a fortress of security as a replacement for that foundation of trust, which is what many who offer "security" are really trying to sell. The trust has to be there first, or you have nothing to build the security upon.

I don't know if Microsoft will ever recover enough community trust to make any security they offer worthwhile, but I certainly wouldn't want to accept the "security" they offer without a foundation of trust to place it on.

Re:Similar story at CNN Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

A fundamental theme of 1984 was doublespeak and its use to confuse the public about the policy intent of the state. Let's consider a few recent items from the US Federal government. Note that while this may look like Bush bashing, I could go further back into history and find an assortment of similar cases from Democratic administrations. I am currently confining myself to only the most recent and obvious items of interest.

Tax cuts to "stimulate the economy": Intended to starve entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and public schools that it would be political suicide to challenge directly.

Clear Skies Act: Reduces restrictions on air pollution.

Healthy Forest Act: Cuts down profitable old growth forest.

PATRIOT Act: In the name of security, takes away civil liberties that are fundamental to the nation to which we are "patriotic".

FCC Deregulation: Ostensibly to allow media outlets to compete in the newly diverse environment, though the only outcome would be increased concentration of control of media outlets, which invariably raises barriers to competition.

The only places where I see significant diversion between 21st c. US and Orwell's vision are:

1) I don't recall corporate interests being the prime movers behind the policies of the state in 1984 (though it has been 20 years since I read it).

2) I am technically free to sound off this point of view for a marginalized, largely politically insignificant audience.