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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
...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/
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
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.
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.
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
Dumb 'pipes' (routers) with any application you can think of and build at the edges (hosts).
And yet the typical user uses it mainly for Netflix and Facebook on their iPhone. So while "permissionless innovation" is one model that the internet supports, it also supports the "government enforced copyright monopoly" model and the "ask permission from big corporations" model. There is an old saying that democracies like capitalism, but capitalism doesn't necessarily like democracy. The relationship between the internet and corporations is somewhat similar.
So no privacy regulations about your data (health, purchase history, financial, browsing, etc) either? No regulations to prevent Apple and Alphabet from deciding to collude with the developers of the top messaging apps to block all other messaging apps from Android and iOS?
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.
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.
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
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.