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Schneier: We Need a Better Way of Regulating New Technologies (schneier.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Last week, when a Brazilian judge shut down WhatsApp, it affected roughly half of the country's ~200 million residents. It's not the first time — or the second, or the third — that WhatsApp has faced legal pressure, and Bruce Schneier says it's clear evidence of a "massive power struggle" between internet companies and traditional companies. Central to this struggle is the inability of our lawmakers to quickly and effectively regulate new technologies. He says, "Traditionally, new technologies were adopted slowly over decades. There was time for people to figure them out, and for their social repercussions to percolate through society. Legislatures and courts had time to figure out rules for these technologies and how they should integrate into the existing legal structures. ... This isn't a simple matter of needing government to get out of the way and let companies battle in the marketplace. ... We need a better way of regulating new technologies. That's going to require bridging the gap between technologists and policymakers. Each needs to understand the other — not enough to be experts in each other's fields but enough to engage in meaningful conversations and debates. That's also going to require laws that are agile and written to be as technologically invariant as possible."
That's a bit disingenuous. The motto of the "disruption" crowd is explicitly 'better to have your lawyers fight for dismissal than ask for permission', particularly when it comes to the structure of laws and regulations that have been put in place to protect the general population from damage and exploitation. How about a commitment by the technology-pushers to obey the law to start with?
sPh
Or too experienced to be seduced by the shiny new new thing without some measured consideration. Your viewpoint may vary.
sPh
We'd just have pre-breakup AT&T combine with MPAA and RIAA in lobbying the government to "regulate" the internet or cell technology.
Do you really want that?
That is the architecture of the Internet:
Dumb 'pipes' (routers) with any application you can think of and build at the edges (hosts).
New things are always on the horizon
...it's a feature.
Let the market decide, and let regulation catch up later (if ever).
We don't need "better" ways to regulate new technologies, we need smaller government that doesn't feel the need to stick its tentacles into every orifice of the body politic.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
We don't need new ways to regulate what consenting adults do with each other, or the agreements they make between each other. We need better ways to regulate the busy-bodies that seek to control everything for their own best interests.
While it is true that youth tends to latch on to what is touted as new and shiny whether it really is new, and really is valuable, or not....
The greater problem is that politicians, specifically, are not technicians and are very isolated from mainstream culture. Technologies which are shaping the culture of millions upon millions of people are completely new and foreign to them, and they don't have the time they need to really get their heads around the tech and what it means.
The recurring theme of needing encryption back doors is a good example. Those in power only see it as "they are keeping secrets from us!" They don't understand the technical landscape enough to realize how their back doors will ruin a foundational element of the emerging digital economy, to the severe detriment of everyone involved. They don't understand this because they didn't grow up with it, don't have the natural technical interest in learning about it, and don't have the time they need to gain a proper understanding. They demand that their aids give them an executive summary (which gives them an incomplete picture) and they run with their instincts (which were honed in a world that lacked these technologies).
That problem on their part overpowers the "shiny new is good" problem on the part of the youth.
Do I hear
We Need a Better Way to Protect Established Players and Corrupt Governments
?
Letter To Iran
funny: http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
This is a fallacy.
No matter what approach is taken, there will always be groups dissatisfied with the results.
Laws are generally reactionary. Just laws are created because entities see injustice and push for statutes to curb those injustices. For injustices to be acknowledged they have to happen, in order to happen, the population or a subset must gain experience with the particular concept or technology or action. To gain experience, if it's a technology, it has to be allowed to exist and to see how it's used, and potentially abused, and often, actual abuse might already run afoul of existing law anyway. When the laws are finally created as a reaction, some people get angry because their abusive actions are curtained. Others get angry because in order to curtail the abusive actions of others, their nonabusive actions must also be affected.
Some regulations are proactionary, being drafted and put into effect before abuses are documented. Persons wishing to use a technology affected by such regulations get upset because they're being prohibited from doing something that they feel that they should be allowed to do. It could be that what they feel should be legal is actually victimizing others, or they might have a poor understanding of the law, or they could even be right in that what they're being prohibited-from is going too far. Either way, they're angry.
Then you have the condition where something newish is starting to show signs of abuse, and regulations and/or law is put into effect in a minor way that serves to remind participants that they could be subject to regulation or rules, and they get upset. Some don't understand that they might be violating the rights of others or violating the rules that exist to protect all parties involved. Things like Uber versus taxis and how taxi regulations came to be. Things like how RC aircraft are coming under increasing regulation. Things like software that shares files in less-direct means. These are all technology changes that can be abused, and also can have legitimate benefits without abuse, but people get very, very passionate when their designs are questioned, even if they're ignorant of the law or the effects of their actions or choices.
There is no magic bullet. Someone will always be upset.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Translation? Censorship.
I hope out hope that "new technology" will make it impossible.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Most of the people who are in power and makes laws are too old to even begin to comprehend how things work and how much they are a part of modern society.
Oh, FFS, stop blaming it on age. You want to argue it's because they are politicans, not techies? Sure, I'll buy that. Or that they haven't bothered to learn new things and keep up with changes to the world? Sure, I can buy that too. But age itself?
I am in my early 60's, at least as old as the average politician. Am i "too old to comprehend how things work"? I've designed parts of modern CPUs, and written C++ compiler optimizations targeted to them. I was on arpanet in 1981, and I wrote my first assembly language program in the late 1960's on a computer that filled a room and whose user interface had moving parts which could physically injure the careless.
You blame age, but I see young people cheerfully giving up every shred of their communications to companies like Facebook and Google. I see them preferring curated computing over free computing so that the former succeeds in the marketplace and the latter is dying out. I see them having NO awareness of whether their data is held on their own device or transmitted to a hundred unknown companies. I see them being increasingly unable to use computing systems with UIs more complex than I see as appropriate for grade-school children. I see them manually repeating trivial actions a hundred times in a row because they lack any ability to automate the task with a device invented to automate tasks. I see blank looks if I ask them to copy this file to that directory, because a grid of canned icons to launch the Facebook app and "like" selfies is the only way they are able to interact with a computer.
"Digital natives", my senile geezer ass.
My generation has legions and legions of technically clueless people, I will grant that. So does every generation. But the so-called digital natives are not exactly shining examples of wise decision making, taken as an entire group. I'm just along for the ride at this point, watching in abject horror.
Please, give the ageism a break.
Lawn. You know what to do.
I think it's somewhat telling that the example was WhatsApp. Even if we stretch the idea of "new technology" to include a chat service, it's just that: a chat service. It's a product that literally cannot affect anyone unless they consent by instructing their device to accept these messages. What regulation could possibly be necessary?
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
The Whatsap crisis has nothing to do with "New" technology. A company ignores a judicial order, they get slapped down. We want to avoid making new tech a special situation, as that leads to situations like the police can tap your internet without a warrant, but tapping your phone needs a judge.
I second all this and would also add that this attitude has much worse repercussions than just to insult parent poster's "senile geezer ass." It also lulls people into a sense of complacency, with the thought that once the old guys retire and new blood gets in everything will be all better. That is certainly not true. For example, as pp points out, the Facebook generation isn't going to fight for open and interchangeable standards, since they hardly even know what those are. And one of my favorite /. sigs is the Woz quote about the cloud that ownership is what made America different than the USSR during the cold war.
Clipping the wings of WhatsApp very neatly solves two problems for the Powers That Be(tm): it protects a de facto, if not de jure, monopoly on the one hand, and enforces censorship on the other. Only a chump would think that the judge issued this order merely because WhatsApp didn't play bureaucratic ball. The PTB feel a threat to their entrenched power, and have employed the judiciary to strike out at the rebels.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
We need to regulate moron judges instead.
I don't remember the phone system ever shut down, even when thousands of kidnappers anonymously called their victim's loved ones for money.
Nor the postal system when people sent anonymous hatemail or ransom notes.
That's also going to require laws that are agile and written to be as technologically invariant as possible."
"Agile" laws are invariably going to product badly written laws. It's beyond stupid to expect lawmakers to adopt a software development method to writing laws.
This isn't a simple matter of needing government to get out of the way and let companies battle in the marketplace.
Yes it some ways it could perhaps ought to be exactly that. You can't regulate that which you can't control and perhaps some things where there is very very broad public agreement about them.
Either the Internet gets less global (I think this might be the best answers) or it will do what its always done and route around the damage. As Joe Public does not see what is so wrong about an app, well they will go elsewhere to get it and you will only produce more scoff laws.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Or more accurately, the problem is that politicians have the power to inflict the consequences of their misconceptions on the world, whereas the young "new and shiny" lovers are basically powerless except in terms of mass cultural shifts (aside from the few who are actually involved in creating new kinds of shinys)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
It also lulls people into a sense of complacency, with the thought that once the old guys retire and new blood gets in everything will be all better. That is certainly not true. For example, as pp points out, the Facebook generation isn't going to fight for open and interchangeable standards
Same senile geezer here.
You make an excellent point. Without understanding and awareness, it's difficult for people to make good choices even when they are well intentioned. Without wisdom, the situation is not likely to improve just because my generation dies off. Your point about open standards has been a peeve of mine for many years, but I've found it difficult to even have the discussion with non-techies (of any age), because it's a bit abstract. People don't intuitively see how open standards are critical to avoid lock-in and centralized control.
My irked post probably came across as more hostile to younger folks than I really am. I've met plenty of aware, highly intelligent, and hugely curious people all across the age spectrum, from children on up. The difficulty is that those people tend to be drowned out by the ones who don't much care to think, observe, and learn.
Hear, hear! You said it, brother.
on a computer that filled a room and whose user interface had moving parts which could physically injure the careless.
OK, I must know. Exposed tape reels from before the cool vacuum chamber tape drives? Carelessly designed card punch or printer paper output path?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
How about, in the US at least, Congress brings back the Office for Technology Assessment so maybe, just maybe, our elected officials wouldn't have to "figure it out" but be able to ask a whole group of people who's job is to explain these kinds of things? I still can't believe that in 1995, the arguable year of the WWW explosion, the OTA was nixed.
I see them preferring curated computing over free computing so that the former succeeds in the marketplace and the latter is dying out. I see them having NO awareness of whether their data is held on their own device or transmitted to a hundred unknown companies. I see them being increasingly unable to use computing systems with UIs more complex than I see as appropriate for grade-school children. I see them manually repeating trivial actions a hundred times in a row because they lack any ability to automate the task with a device invented to automate tasks. I see blank looks if I ask them to copy this file to that directory, because a grid of canned icons to launch the Facebook app and "like" selfies is the only way they are able to interact with a computer.
That's the most depressing thing I've read all month.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Bruce Schneier is 52. Is that too old to understand technology?
WhatsApp is just a messaging application. Messaging is hardly new; both SMS on cell phones and text messaging on computers are over 25 years old.
Most of the people who are in power and makes laws are too old to even begin to comprehend how things work and how much they are a part of modern society.
40 is too old to comprehend how computers work? I'd bet money that there are plenty of members of Congress in their 30s and early 40s who lack the logical thought processes required to form an opinion on how technology affects society beyond thinking that the NSA needs to spy on everyone in order to stop all the terrorists who want to hurt your children.
Lawn. You know what to do.
Who got your punch cards out of order?
While I am a lot more digital libertarian than Schneier, I tend to agree with him on this. Social Media corporations are not going to reign-in their data collection abuses on their own, instead they will weasel into official status so it is no longer possible to avoid their clutches. Not unless, we the people, write some laws disallowing this and that and threaten to send the worst abusers to the federal PMITAP.
I've met plenty of aware, highly intelligent, and hugely curious people all across the age spectrum, from children on up. The difficulty is that those people tend to be drowned out by the ones who don't much care to think, observe, and learn.
How could you claim this is not true for any generation? Sure, you have decades of experience, and based on your writing and arguments I can see that you "care to think, observe, and learn". This ability is not based on your age, I bet if you were born in 90s you'd still possess ability to "care to think, observe, and learn".
Does your experience affords you better perspective and let you recognize cyclical trends? Absolutely! Still you don't need to be a graybeard sage to see that existing walled garden trends are problematic. Barbarians are indeed at the gates! But they have always been there, and the good people will fight them off this time as well.
Please don't confuse general public apathy, that always been there, with inter-generational difference.
on a computer that filled a room and whose user interface had moving parts which could physically injure the careless.
OK, I must know. Exposed tape reels from before the cool vacuum chamber tape drives? Carelessly designed card punch or printer paper output path?
OK. In my youth (early 70s) I worked on a computer in which the logic was all carried in the doors. They swung open and, being full of vacuum tubes, probably weighed in at around 100 Kg. Get hit in the head by one of these and you might wake up next week (or you might not).
To turn on the computer, you had to open the door (see above as a risk to others), reach past the exposed + and - 100 VDC buses, grasp the rubber grip on the drum memory drive shaft with your right had and spin the drum. Then you immediately turned on the power (remember the exposed power buses) with the left hand. If you didn't spin the drive, the electric motor generated too much torque for the system to handle and you got to spend a half hour replacing the sheared pin in the link between the motor and the drive shaft. See how many ways you can get hurt just turning the monster on.
If you find this hard to believe, visit either the Smithsonian in D.C. or the Computer History Museum in Mt. View, CA and looked at the Bendix (or CDC) G15 computer from the 1950s. Both had G15s on exhibit last I knew.
This is just the case of one small computer from the dark ages. You could also look up the IBM Photostore (which stored high density data on film) or the Datacell (both IBM and CDC made similar ones) for examples of computer hardware that could seriously hurt you. And these don't touch the more common risks from IBM Hollerith card hardware.
Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
The ability for an unlicensed hobbyist to program arbitrary software on their home computer == "unregulated technology".
" I see them manually repeating trivial actions a hundred times in a row because they lack any ability to automate the task with a device invented to automate tasks." This got a genuine guffaw. So sad, and so true. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, is how they go.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
The digital natives believe themselves to be mechanics because they know how to drive cars.
END
It is a pity moderation doesn't go to 10. (or 11)
Gems like this prove that /. isn't completely sold out to Dice.
-- /. in 2015
Summary of
MS/Apple/Google/Linux Monday
Bitcoin Tuesday
more-stupid-SJW-shit Wednesday
Stupid-Tech-Question "Let me Google that for you" Thursday
Fuckerberg Friday
Slow news Saturday
Slow news Sunday
The real problem with the WhatsApp affair is that it was even possible for the judge to shut it down. The Internet was invented as a decentralized system, and it would be extremely disruptive to shut it down for the whole country. But all these new technologies are designed for asymmetric computing, where the thing you have is only a terminal into someone else's computer.
Yeah, I know, there are technical reasons of battery life and network connectivity, why mobiles are not full peers on the Internet. Still, new applications should be designed so you can choose where it is hosted, even on your own home computer, not some centralized system that can be shut down.
Have a nice time.
How could you claim this is not true for any generation?
Same geezer here again.
That's true; I agree with you. Every generation has its share of people who think and learn.
The difference I perceive between today, and (say) the 1970's, is that in the 70's the only people interacting with computers "for fun" were people into the technology for its own sake. Today, it's everybody. Which is fine, and probably good in many ways. The side effect though is that the people who really grok technology were a high percentage of those dealing with computers and networks in the 70's and 80's. Today, they're a very low percentage, so their effect on the market and direction of the world is diluted.
That's has a good side and a bad side, I suppose. But I agree with your thesis that there are many smart, curious people around today, among the younger set. I absolutely don't wish to paint everyone with the same brush.
Or the serious injury from your boss if you didn't turn off your Burroughs L-4000 terminal in the correct order to keep from destroying the 32K word hard drive.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Yes, in a perfect world, you would have technologists (whose motivation is a close variation of "design stuff that will benefit all people, make society safer and allow us all to reap the benefits of technology") and politicians (whose motivation is a close variation of "partake in an informed debate which leads to the drafting of laws and statutes that provide protection for all individuals and allow the evolution of society into a more enlightened state") getting to better know how to communicate effectively with the other, so that technologists and politicians can better understand the technology of today, how it will be used by the people of today, and how the peoples' best interests can be served by drafting new laws or amending existing ones. :/
However, in the world we have, the technologists almost always haven't got the slightest clue how the technology of today will be used in the next 5 minutes, and most of them are more interested in making money for themselves than they are in "benefiting all people". Similarly, most politicians (and I refer mainly to the politicians in the US and Europe now, but I am sure that a depressingly high percentage of them world-wide would fit this description) are primarily interested in keeping themselves in office to safeguard their own place on the gravy train, and are only interested in "change" or "progress" until that message gets them into office, at which point they become a drop-in for the one they replaced.
So the goal for politicians, unfortunately, seems to be the maintenance of the existing status quo. If one of them gets voted out of office (being replaced by, as mentioned before, one with a vested interest in not rocking the boat), they typically get a job as a lobbyist or back-room power broker, with even more incentive to maintain the existing status quo - they are now earning more money, and probably have more personal influence than they had when serving as a politician, as well as less public oversight or need to campaign for re-election. To these people, technology is not something they need to understand (they have experts for that, earning quite a bit less than they do) - technology is something they need to control.
"Ah", you say "technology is not something that you can control, because many different people developing and driving technology in all sorts of different ways!", and this is true. But behind the politicians at their pig trough/gravy train, there are the lobbyists financed by wealthy business and industrial influences. If those individuals or small companies driving technology are being too much of a potentially disruptive nature, then one of the larger industrial players can either buy the company or hire a few strategic people from them to halt or slow the development, engage in litigation, or various other practices to control the smaller player.
Any individual, whether technologist or politician, who seems to be too much of a danger to the stability of the current setup can be sidelined - the technologist through acquisition or competition, the politician by not giving them any oxygen of publicity.
Time for me to go and make a new tinfoil hat... I sat on the old one while writing this and broke it
Politicians (I'm assuming you're talking about US legislators here) don't have time to do _anything_ but fundraise. That consumes their entire workweek. Often they can't even make it to floor votes because of it. The more influence a legislator has, the greater fundraising requirement that is placed on him or her by the party leadership. They don't understand any particular issue because they simply have more pressing stuff to do. They rarely even read bills they vote on, because they rely on contributors to tell them how to vote. If you want to influence Washington, get together with a bunch of people and pool a big wad of cash, then contribute some of it to a candidate and wait for the next round of fundraising calls. When they call you back asking for more money, then you talk about your problem. That's how it works. Forget all of that advocacy stuff. Totally meaningless.
What's amusing is that they don't realize that we old people are the ones who built the infrastructure or developed on it. That same one that they're using to post the message is the one we watched, helped, and nurtured. You know, when we used our own hardware to do things like host a BBS. When we spent our own money to enable complete strangers to dial in and added extra phone lines so we could have more users. When we spent gobs of money to buy hardware (when a computer was the price of a car) so that we could enable more users... But no... They know it all. Us old people don't know a damned thing about computers.
(Assuming they're in the US and have been on an Interstate Highway there's a damned good chance they've ridden on something I've helped optimize and, even if they haven't, there's still a good chance of it - done, of course, on a computer using things like nearly a TB of data as early as the late 1990s, clustered computers, and fiber optic connectivity.)
Nope... I don't know a damned thing about computers or technology because I'm nearing the age of 60. It must be my feeble mind. That there newfangled tech stuff is just plain confusing.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Any technology that even slightly threatened the new would be shut down and tied up in red tape for whatever amount of time it took for the upstart companies to die. Skype, gone. Drudge, gone. Youtube, gone. Netflix, gone. Ebay, gone. Paypal, gone. Cellphones, gone. mp3 players, gone. Amazon, gone. Online grocery ordering, gone.
Look at Uber. Local taxi companies are proving which cities have corrupt city councils and which don't.
"Central to this struggle is the inability of our lawmakers to quickly and effectively regulate new technologies."
That inability is what keeps new technology useful, cheap, and powerful. As soon as the lawmakers catch up, they manage to screw it up.