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Congress's Techno-Ignorance No Longer Funny
pigrabbitbear writes "Since its introduction, the Stop Online Piracy Act (and its Senate twin PROTECT-IP) has been staunchly condemned by countless engineers, technologists and lawyers intimately familiar with the inner functioning of the internet. Completely beside the fact that these bills, as they currently stand, would stifle free speech and potentially cripple legitimate businesses by giving corporations extrajudicial censorial powers, there's an even more insidious threat: the method of DNS filtering proposed to block supposed infringing sites opens up enormous security holes that threaten the stability of the internet itself. The problem: key members of the House Judiciary Committee still don't understand how the internet works, and worse yet, it's not clear whether they even want to."
if one is receiving insane amounts of money and political clout to deliberately ignore severe problems in a proposed bill, is it still ignorance?
The opposite of Progress is Congress.
I don't think they are as willfully stupid as people make them out to be, but tend to let lobbyists and industry representatives do a lot of their thinking for them - in all areas, we're just focused on SOPA and Protect-IP because they are closer to our hearts.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I mean, I would much rather having accomplished scientists, engineers, and other professions representing me than someone who majored in law in college with the sole intention of being a politician. There is a breakdown in the system, and it was completely intended - when individual senators represent and are elected by up to 60 million people (Cali) they have no connection to their constituents at all.
I mean, the process to fix it is an arduous process. We need to take money out of politics, take it out of campaigning, and we can easily use technology to develop a mutually agreed upon open platform on the internet to market representatives. Like, say, each county could host a site called elections.XXXX.gov and it would allow people to apply and run for the office. Probably have a tiny $10 running fee to keep people from flooding the sites, but besides that make it open to all constituents and all it takes is the ability to type in ones positions and appear at public debate. And then outlaw the spending of money on political advertising, because once we have an easy to access platform for knowing all the candidates where they can respectively give their standings on different political topics, we can move away from the grossly unintended 2 party system and more towards electing people and not parties that don't work in the publics interest.
Problem is, the entrenched powers have absolutely no desire to move towards a system where anyone but the in crowd of each party could ever get nominated and handed to the public. They want 2 partys because they are easier to control and mutually benefit from the status quo.
My congressman, Rush Holt, is a former rocket scientist and beat IBM's Watson supercomputer on Jeopardy. I did my part and voted for someone intelligent. You get the government you deserve, not the one you need.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
the backlash against usage-based billing as a consequence of network neutrality
The only acklash against usage-based billing I've ever seen is from proponents of network neutrality who point out that usage-based billing without neutrality is asking for the system to be gamed (eg your provider drops every other packet and bills you for twice the data).
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
You're right. But if in the event that a professional is lacking knowledge in a certain area it is their ethical duty to consult someone who does. In their case they're plugging their ears and whistling tunes while the experts cite facts that go against the opinion of the corporations backing the bill. Its not even fair in this case where the experts are coming forward in droves to lend knowledge to the matter and they're being silenced in favor of half-baked opinions loosely tied to anecdotal events that may or may not be actually true.
I recall an interview with Sandra Day O'Connor on PBS when she was asked out of the blue, by Margret I believe, if she browsed the internet. I thought it was kind of dumb question at the time and was totally floored when she answered: "No, no I don't." Completely shocked my head was almost spinning as I came to the realization that we have serious problems in government. These people do not take in new information, in fact they avoid it. I suspect most of Washington's elite make no effort to educate themselves on things they know nothing about. It dawned on me that these people are not using the internet and that they most likely view it in a contemptuous light. In my naivety I assumed everyone was immediately running Google searches whenever their mind tripped over an unknown factor pertinent to an important decision. Boy was I wrong. These people in Washington do not need to be curious; they are already taken care of and they have no incentive to rock the boat or even look over the side.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
There used to be the Office of Technology Assessment, a highly respected (so much so that it has been imitated by other governments) body whose function was to advise Congress on science and technology matters. Newt Gingrich lead the Republicans in killing it off as a part of their Contract with America back in 1995. The OTA would have denied Congress the cover of ignorance when it came time to vote on this SOPA monstrosity.
To be more specific, their supposed ignorance allows them to allow the (paying) lobbyists to write the bills in the manner that most benefits our purported representatives true constituency - the corporations and their owners who aren't satisfied with the majority of the pie, but who want the whole damn thing.
Some time ago the topic was our (US's) winner-take-all election laws, and its tendency to produce only two parties and similar candidates. I took issue with someone who thought that proportional election laws would solve all that. Now that you've posted this comment I'm gratified that perhaps more people agree with my way of thinking that I had first thought.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Despite all that is politically fucked in California, or maybe because of it, we're taking baby steps towards weakening the grip of the two party system.
Citizen Redistricting Commission - The legislature no longer gets to gerrymander districts in their favor. Instead, redistricting is done by a citizen's commission drawn from multiple parties and independents. Both the Republicans and Democrats are mad about the recently released maps, which is probably a good indicator that the commission is doing good work.
Nonpartisan Primary - All candidates from all parties compete in the same primary, and the top two candidates advance to the main election. The initial effect should be to eliminate hyperpartisan extremists, but getting more moderates into office will only bode well for passing future changes to the election system.
Instant Runoff Voting - Some cities, most notably San Francisco and Oakland, have switched to IRV. IRV is basically the next step after nonpartisan primaries, so hopefully it will move statewide if it's seen as successful in city elections. Unfortunately, Jean Quan, Oakland's mayor, only won because of IRV and is now coming under fire for mishandling Occupy. The fear is that people may equate IRV with producing bad politicians, even though the traditional voting system has created more than its fair share of horrible politicians.
If things continue progressing in California, this bodes well for the nation as a whole. We were ahead of the game on having completely dysfunctional hyperpartisan politics. Term limits and other measures didn't make things better, and perhaps even made it worse. If these new steps lead to a more civil and productive legislature, hopefully the trends will get picked up nationwide.
Actually, regulatory ignorance is exactly why many automobiles available in Europe and Asia with vastly better MPG than current hybrids and compacts are not available domestically.
You see, in order to actually maintain higher levels of fuel consumption, the EPA NOx emission requirements have been tweaked so low, that ultra high efficiency automobile motors can't be sold in the US. NOx requirements are the number one reason we have more high displacement V6 and V8 motors in vehicles that would have higher fuel economy, drivability and more horsepower using small 4 and 6 cylinder turbo charged motors. Example, anything VW sells in Europe with a Blue Motion drivetrain (Scirocco).
Similar reason for the 1UZ 4.0L V8 powered SC400 back in the 90's from Toyota/Lexus, when the 1JZ-GTE 2.5L Turbo was a vastly more advanced and better output engine.
So yes, ignorance of technology on the part of legislators and regulators is a very serious problem and NOT acceptable.
No, no, you have it wrong. Lobbying is a good thing. It's the way that the public can express their opinions to their elected representatives. The reason lobbying appears to be a bad thing is that only big corporations can afford to lobby in any useful way because our Congress stays in Washington D.C. all year around, and they barely set foot in their actual legislative districts.
If you really want to improve the situation, change the law so that Congress must do their job over the Internet from their districts. This means that your representatives will be accessible to you. This also means that corporations that want to lobby Congress will have to send someone all around the country to lobby instead of just all around a building. This will effectively end the corporate dominance of lobbying and bring the voice of the people back into our government.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
You can't just pass a law saying that all cars must get 100 MPG, and then leave it to the engineers to make your law so. It would obviously lead to disaster.
This is business as usual, and not just in the US.
Dilbert, while funny, is depressingly accurate.
The vast majority of marketers, executives, etc. really do think they can just order the engineers and IT department to "make it so". When the IT department comes back and says, "You are asking us to violate the laws of physics and alter reality to create a floating Unicorn that is as "smart" as Suri, and shits out candy corn", they get branded as "Not Team Players".
Part of the reason why IT is hated so much, is that we are telling them what they can't do more often then what they can do. It's not pessimism either, which really gets under my skin, but just reality.
When IT has no clout either, they end up having to break systems to get to them to do what they were never intended to do, or do things that clearly make the system itself unstable.
Happens all the time. Rarely, do you see a system that is a harmony of perfection. The ones that come close..... have upper management made up of IT people. I kid you not, some of the most advanced platforms I have seen recently in some industries have been developed by engineers and IT people leaving companies to make new ones.
The Internet is far worse. Let's not kid ourselves here either. While I have a superficial understanding of BGP routing, and the complexities involved in DNS, secure DNS, etc. I am not an expert either. So when most of IT out there does not really understand the core workings of the Internet, you can't expect the PHB's in Congress to have any clue, and it becomes perfectly understandable that they would expect it "to just work". Corporations and engineers waive their hands and do their Matrix thing in the backrooms, and it get's done.
What is missing are the middle men. The people that can explain to the Congress Critters in terms they can understand, "It's bad. Can't be done like that, Mkay".
Where are they experts here? What really surprises me is that the telecoms are not screaming their heads off through their purchased channels at their paid for politicians that it's a bad idea.
Must be because Big Content is paying more right now for influence than the telecoms......
Well. Either you allow no one to make signs, commercials, hold rallys, or do anything that will cost some amount of money or you do.
If you choose to allow no one to spend a dime of their own money to support or oppose a cause or candidate then you are definitely running into a free speech area.
If you allow any amount to be spent you get some problems.
If you allow certain amounts to get spent in certain ways you get loopholes.
I say fuck it.
Allow any US citizen or corporation spend as much as they want.
Then all contributions of any type must be put into a publicly accessible database within 48 hours.
All contributions must be stopped within one week of the vote.
All failures result in prison.
Easy and cheap to implement. Easy to follow. People can make informed choices.
If people want to vote in a politician that takes $450,000 from Wal-Mart and the people know that this is the case then they get what they deserve.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Or do what England does and have a "register of member's interests" which lists every gift any politician has received, and prevents them on voting on an issue where they have bias due to having received a "gift"
A big step in fixing the problem would be to filter out a lot of the noise that goes through Congress.
Just taking a look at some of what was introduced yesterday:
Why does any of that require time in Congress? That's time that could be spent better investigating and analyzing *real* issues.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
How about we just outlaw all bribery of officials? It's not free speech, it's BRIBERY. It's not free speech if it's a crime. I can't call "free speech" if I say to you, "hey fucker, give me your wallet or I will shoot you and fuck your pretty wife", that's ROBBERY. I look at lobbyists as criminals that we should have lynched a long time ago. If you want to influence your Congressman, you write him and letter and plead your cause. Anything else should be considered a bit of intimidation or influencing of our legal system and should be considered a capital punishment crime. Not only for those to try to influence our politicians and officials but those same politicians and officials if they take the bribes, it should be capital punishment.
Only then will we be rid of career politicians who spend millions of dollars to get a job that pays little in contrast to what they spend to get there. Only then will we have a nervous representative system that fears and respects it's masters and works for our interests. Public servants, not public masters. We must assert our freedom or it will be taken from us, that is the nature of the world. The Constitution isn't magical, we have to do the damn work, lately we have slacked off and it's becoming void and nil.
Take the Red Pill.