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Embarrassing Stories Shed Light On US Officials' Technological Ignorance
colinneagle writes "Speaking at the SXSW Conference recently, Dr. Peter W. Singer, director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, recalled one U.S. official who was 'about to negotiate cybersecurity with China' asking him to explain what the term 'ISP' (Internet Service Provider) means. This wasn't the only example of this lack of awareness. 'That's like going to negotiate with the Soviets and not knowing what "ICBM" means,' Dr. Singer said. 'And I've had similar experiences with officials from the UK, China and Abu Dhabi.' Similarly, Dr. Singer recalled one account in which Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of the U.S. Homeland Security Department from 2009 to 2013, admitted that she didn't use email 'because she just didn't think it was useful.' 'A Supreme Court justice also told me "I haven't got round to email yet" — and this is someone who will get to vote on everything from net neutrality to the NSA negotiations,' Dr. Singer said."
I've heard that government moves slowly, but having high-power officials 20 years behind the times seems a bit outrageous.
The guy who had to learn what an ISP was, or the guy who didn't know and didn't ask and made government policy on it anyway?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
There are state Supreme Courts, and other countries have them too, so unless you are going to type out the entire thing, SCOTUS is more specific. Are you opposed to all acronyms, or just this one for some reason?
Okay, the cybersecurity negotiator ignorance is bad, the rest less so.
I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I'd used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime.
Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don't have time for such study.
- Donald Knuth
The role of Supreme Court Justice is also "to be on the bottom of things". It is possible to understand enough about email to make good judgements about it without using it on a daily basis. The justices have to make weekly about subjects which they have absolutely no interaction with in their normal day-to-day life. From technical to finance to agriculture, no one can possibly be an expert on all the issues they hear. It is their job to constantly learn enough about a subject to know what is important from a legal and constitutional point of view. If they are failing to do this, then that is a legitimate complaint. The fact that they weren't familiar with "common knowledge" technologies before encountering them in court, or haven't chosen to incorporate them into their life isn't.
Actually this is why you should be very concerned about the NSA. The people doing NSA surveillance know what they are doing. The oversight does not. That is the scary thing.
You know of an IQ Test that can measure corruptibility? I don't think the problem with our elected officials is generally a lack of intelligence; it's a lack of character and responsibility to their actual electorate, rather than the highest bidder.
The hard drive *is* memory. It's non-volatile memory (as opposed to volatile memory, like RAM). It's also a hard disk (as opposed to floppy disks). It's also magnetic storage (as opposed to optical, etc). It's also electro-mechanical storage (as opposed to solid-state).
It actually bugs me more that RAM is referred to as "memory" which is and should be a very generic term.
If anything the harddisk is probably a better candidate for the term "memory" than RAM is. A harddisk is what ultimately must store the data permanently and recall it. RAM exists to make certain frequently used data quicker to access, and it "forgets" when the computer is powered off. Granted this is basically equivalent to short-term memory, but I think long-term memory is more what people think of when they think of the generic term "memory".
Why did we get a comment containing a link to a blog post about a news article elsewhere on the internet?
I mean, holy crap, Slashdot, can't you even bother to give us a link to the actual article anymore? We have to go on a link-to-a-link goose chase?
but I thought most people on slashdot wouldn't know what they were
/. is a place wherein denizens brag about using their acoustic couplers, or bbs'ing at 300 baud or computing in the snow, uphill both ways while editing inodes by hand with a magnet. You take a pretty big leap when you guess that "most" people don't know about an outdated technology.
Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of the U.S. Homeland Security Department from 2009 to 2013, admitted that she didn't use email 'because she just didn't think it was useful
No, she knew how every email was scanned, so there was no way in hell she was going to use plain ol' email. She is just using the "I'm old so I don't use computer stuff" excuse to cover the real reason.
it is completely outrageous...the people who make the laws about a thing not knowing the essential function of how a thing works...that's the definition of legislative incompetence!
the problem is there is so much impoetence & misunderstanding about Tech that the relative measure for 'competent' is frighteningly low...
here's who to blame:
1. Politicians themselves. They're idiots if they don't try to understand what they're making laws about plain and simple. But it doesn't end there....if we're trying to diagnose this problem we have to look deeper. Any cursory look at **policy** will show that **Republicans** are by far and away the worst offenders. They wear technological & scientific ignorance like a badge of honor They're always against Net Neutrality.
2. Tech industry. Your Google's, M$, and even facebook.com's...they all throw money around to accomplish their *corporate* goals. They flood the conversation with PR & drown out any dissenting voices. They make anti-user moves, including monopolies, then lobby congress to avoid any anti-trust accountability. This all causes intense confusion in the literature!
3. Us...tech people. We do a shit job of explaining ourselves. We give new products idiotic and abstract names that alienate non-techs. We have a culture of **snobbishness** and **superiority** that leads us to be condescending & either *over-explain* or more often **over-simplify**
if you are a US citizen, you can make a difference in ***ALL THREE CATEGORIES*** starting today...stop voting for Republicans...stop giving shit stupid confusing names...and stop acting like knowing something that is confusing & only comes with trial and error makes you inherently superior!
tech is confusing...we helped make it this way...we can fix it!
Thank you Dave Raggett
I think one of the major issues here is that voting has become a joke. "We" (and I mean the collective American people, not just myself and the others responsible for the next statement) vote for these idiots based on the fact that they have someone sending amusing tweets and know how to talk in circles about things. We definitely don't vote for them based on anything reasonable (like experience, previous ACTUAL accomplishments, etc). If we want that to stop, we need to stop voting for prom queens and vote for a leader.
To make people feel superior? You're projecting the insecurity you feel when people who know what they're talking about talk in front of you about things you don't know enough to talk about. Acronyms are used by people with knowledge of a subject to more quickly communicate information about that subject to someone else who is also familiar. If you're reading this site, you can use a search engine to find your acronyms. I bet you threw away every book you ever read when you came to a word you didn't recognize.
Here's a hint for you: if you don't know the meaning of an acronym, and you can't be bothered to find out, move on to the next article! This story is not for you! If you find this happening a lot, it could be you don't have a sufficient vocabulary for participation in this forum. Don't feel bad, it just means you're average!
Here's another hint: acronyms are far more often constructed for the sake of having a clever acronym than ever for the purpose of making an idiot feel like an idiot. Seriously, when it comes to acronyms making one feel inferior, only the guilty are taking offense.
"ROM". You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
first, you posted the wrong link...here's the proper link: http://www.networkworld.com/co...
2nd, You commit fatal false equivalence. These two things:
1. ALL REPUBLICANS in lockstep opposing ***any*** net neutrality policies
2. ONE legislator **writing a letter** that does nothing more than **ask** for **another agency** to consider regulating something
false equivalence all over...1 is way different than 2. 1 is a baseball bat to the head...the other is...
3rd, everyone who understands the issue agrees Net Neutrality is the right course....only corporations & their GOP sockpuppets oppose net neutrality. However, ***regulating Bitcoin is a debatable policy*** Many would want some kind of government resopnse. I'm not saying its a good idea, or that i agree with the letter.
1 is different than 2...your comparison is full of logical error, false equivalence, trolling, and willful ignorance
Thank you Dave Raggett
yeah, the thing you (attempted) to link to was **NOT WHAT YOU CLAIMED IT WAS**
it was a **false equivalence**
again...google searching to find a non-abusive law that a GOP'er co-sponsored does not, in any way, counter or disprove my point...for the same reason as above...
**false equivalence**
you're dead in the water...just accept that things are different than you thought & adapt...take pride of it...only if you refuse to change are you being prideful
Thank you Dave Raggett