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Bruce Schneier: It's Time For Technologists To Become Lawmakers (venturebeat.com)
Bruce Schneier, a well-known security guru, this week called on technologists to become lawmakers and policy makers so countries can deal with issues such as the governance of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. From a report: "The future is coming," Schneier said, speaking at the RSA security conference in San Francisco. "It's coming faster than we think. And it's coming faster than our existing policy tools can deal with. And the only way to fix this is to develop a new set of policy tools. With the help of the technologists, you understand the technologies." The issues are a lot larger than just computer security. Schneier wants more public interest technologists in all areas.
[...] We saw the policy makers and technologies talk past each other when the FBI wanted Apple to break into an iPhone that belonged to a terrorist shooting suspect, Schneier said. The debate over Edward Snowden's disclosure of the National Security Agency's eavesdropping programs was another flash point. The need for policy makers to understand technology is clear. "This is no different than any other part of our complex world," he said. "We don't expect legislators to be experts in everything. We expect them to get and accept expertise. The second thing we need is for technologists to get involved in policy, and what we need is more public interest technologists" -- those who focus on social justice, the common good, and the public interest.
[...] We saw the policy makers and technologies talk past each other when the FBI wanted Apple to break into an iPhone that belonged to a terrorist shooting suspect, Schneier said. The debate over Edward Snowden's disclosure of the National Security Agency's eavesdropping programs was another flash point. The need for policy makers to understand technology is clear. "This is no different than any other part of our complex world," he said. "We don't expect legislators to be experts in everything. We expect them to get and accept expertise. The second thing we need is for technologists to get involved in policy, and what we need is more public interest technologists" -- those who focus on social justice, the common good, and the public interest.
Politicians are bad, but devs would be far, far worse. Just look how basically every FOSS project eventually ends up splitting because of egos, drama, etc.
BullSHIT, dude. The arrogance. Oh!, the arrogance. Silicon Valley needs to be burned to the core with regulation. We came *this* close when Obama had literally invited Google into the White House, it was plenty close enough. These people are freaking deluded.
When lawmakers play at being technologists, we get amazing things like the Australian anti encryption law. So the opposite with surely turn out very well!
He want technical experts to become efficient lawmakers while staying on top of their technical expertise at the same time?
I think he seriously underestimates what it takes to become either one.
And then he says "We don't expect legislators to be experts in everything. We expect them to get and accept expertise.". That is the real problem we need to fix. If an expert tells you that you can't crack encryption because of mathematics, stop fussing like a spoiled kid who's not getting what he's asking for.
#DeleteFacebook
The background of far too many legislators is the law, others are involved in business at a management level.
Relatively few are in medicine, engineering, or even retail.
They are distant and remote from the concerns of the citizenry.
We would be better off with a random lottery.
We need standards of law enforcement before any kind of legislation or the lawmakers who create it have any meaning or relevance whatsoever.
Doing anything else inhibits you from being the best you can possibly be. I have been in the business since 1994. Congress is also a full time job.
Corporatism != Free Market
Okay, so computer battery and some internals crashed and thankfully were fixed, but there's no operating system on my computer, I think not even a bootloader. Apparently the hard drive is safe, so my data is still there.
My computer used to have a windows and Linux partitions, each with data that I want to back up. I don't really use Linux anymore, but I need to recover the data from that partition too.
My question is, if I install windows to the computer, will it overwrite all my data, or is there some way I can just install it to the old windows partition and not have to deal with it overwriting all the Linux and windows data? Or do I have to go in with a Linux rescue disk and backup everything, then reinstall windows and then put all the data back? Normally I'd do the latter but as this was my only computer, I have to borrow friend's computer to make these iso disks, so if I can get away with just making the windows one I'd just do that.
Thanks, and have a great day! :)
Social justice....
Technologists are the last people who should be in charge. I've never meet a group of people who as a whole lacked humanity more than technologists.
Do you really want people like Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos or what's-his-face from Tesla or ESR making policy that has control over your life? These people already have too much control over our lives (mostly because we give it to them, but still).
I'm too honest.
The engineers that make the most money for their firms are the ones that find simple solutions to complex problems.
The lawyers who bill the most money for their firms are the ones that find complex solutions to simple problems.
In a business environment where profit is the driving motive, these two professions have wildly diverging motivations. If you don't believe me, just look at the mess that is patent law.
Not sure about lawmakers but lawyer for sure. They are called smart contracts that will automate many things in finance and insurance thanks to API's and IOT.
Bruce Schneier, may well be very smart but, Bruce (and the rest of these headline stealers) just needs to shut the f up. No MR RSA (who got owned out of lameness) security morons like you should be kept well away from our legal system.
Sorry but categorically NO.
Technologists canâ(TM)t solve shit. All theyâ(TM)ll do is bring about dystopia faster. Privacy? Freedom? Thatâ(TM)s only for the elite, not the peasants. Conform or weâ(TM)ll ruin your life with Technology!âï
How about we just stop making pointless laws created by people that know nothing about the subject.
Lets take a look at this week alone...
If you read/vote for a bill/amendment from the opposing party, you will be put on a list to be "primaried" and removed from office.
Declaring anti-Semitism as being wrong is unacceptable for a lawmaker now.
Having a stance that a live born baby should be protected is unacceptable.
You have to support KKK member Northam in VA.
You have to support serial rapist Fairfax in VA.
You do anything they don't like, they will investigate you and anyone who has ever helped you to attempt to jail them.
ICE now performs pregnancy tests on all 9+ year old girls coming across the border illegally, and if you think this might be a problem that should be fixed your party will attempt to remove you from office.
You would have to be literally insane to want to be a Congressperson in DC at this point.
Every one of those fuckers SWORE to uphold the constitution.
"Talk past each other". What a fucking crock.
In my country, technologists typically try to influence via alternative or liberal parties. The issue seems to be that the agendas technologists push are at odds with the established norms, or such that the voting majority doesn't care much about. The technologists can't just stay as activists forever. A real change requires persuading the masses even if it was about protecting their existing natural and legal rights, which sounds absurd when said out loud. And no, it doesn't require giving up capitalism, or making some other equally silly proclamations.
Voters are distrustful of politicians, and laypeople are distrustful of technologists. In both cases it's because politicians and technologists have power, whether through the legislative and bureaucratic processes or whether through application of uncommon knowledge. Layer on top of that the fact that there's a broad segment of the US electorate that is distrustful of educated "elites", which for obvious reasons technologists tend to be, plus the fact that technologists rarely have the sort of people skills needed to win elections.
I think technologists-turned-lawmaker-wannabes are going to have a rough time getting elected.
I think it would be great to have technologically-savvy lawmakers... but I think it's better to focus on electing politicians who know how to find and take good advice about things they don't understand.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
What's worse?
Lawyers writing laws about technology they don't understand
OR
Technical people trying to write legal documents that become laws?
Either way, the result is sub-optimal.
Remember, there is a legal difference between "shall" and "will"; and lawyers are a necessary evil, just like politicians are.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Sad to say, but Tech people are in general, unloved, unelectable, ugly realists.
The few insanely rich ones, wish to push regulation and politics to protect their existing business position, not to further technical goals or dreams.
Perhaps if some country, such as Iceland, Serbia, or somewhere peripheral decided, they could promote STEM companies and people with Tax advantages or funding.
Ireland previously did something similar for Creative Art people: no income tax.
But short of building an artificial island, ruled by Techs, for Techs, ... there is little chance of Tech sitting at the Big Table.
Hey! Build it in the Atlantic off the coast, in International waters, then call it: Atlantis!
(R)ule in Hell or (S)erve in Heaven [R]?
You cannot force idiots not to be dumbasses.
Luckily, Americans have More scientists getting elected to public office every election cycle.
I prefer to become a lawnmaker, thank you.
and HELL NO! We DON'T need more Silly Valley-type incursions into government. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. People whose working lives are centred on technology tend to think technology has or is the solution to all problems. The sorry fact is that technology is the rampant source of many of our problems. Facebook, Google and the like need to be controlled and brought to heel, not egged on by tech-savvy fanbois who gain legislative power and try to realize their juvenile tech-topian visions. And AFAICT the tech sector has jack shit of relevance to say about the challenges we face as a result of increasing automation and the advent of true AI. That's a whole other discipline (or set of disciplines) that needs to be developed - tech definitely needs to be at that able, but they sure as shit shouldn't be anywhere close to running the show.
I'd be really interested to read what Cory Doctorow says if he decides to weigh in on this.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
“Corporations have basically control over free speech and censorship regardless of laws,” he said.
This has ALWAYS been true. Technology does not change this, it just makes it easier to do. Restricting speech and controlling behavior have been activities that corporations have ALWAYS done.
Look at Monsanto and how they prosecute farmers that want to re-use seed that is spilled on the ground. Monsanto claims that is theft.
Look at John Deer and other manufacturers that prosecute people who try to repair their tractors and claim intellectual property theft.
Technology did not introduce a new set of behaviors. Technology did NOT create a legal vacuum. You have a legal system that defers to corporate interests. This was not brought about by technology. This attitude is a philosophical one. It only changes when people challenge it.
One does not need to be a technologist to do so.
Now there are a lot of bad things about China but the growth over the last decade is phenomenal , jumped the country from 3rd world to 1st world
https://gineersnow.com/leadership/chinese-government-dominated-scientists-engineers
At the risk of deviating too far from topic, how about replacing politicians with AI's in the not-too-distant future? Not a new idea, though. I recall an Isaac Azimov short story that implied that an automation could be a more fair judge than a human judge. And, I believe a human/AI combo could do much greater justice than the current norm. Certainly, an AI politician could be designed to be more honest, and in many situations, more rational. In these times of perpetual political lies and stupid impulse decisions at the top, the AI concept is starting to look more reasonable, and safer, to me.
Trying to compete with lawyers (and yes, most politicians are lawyers) in their field is not easy. As soon as you become a threat, and since you don't know how to cover your ass against a legal onslaught from them, you will be gone.
Not to mention that I have real work to do. I can't sit on my ass and do nothing, leave that to the lawyers, as long as they do that, at least they don't cause worse harm.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'll settle for someone who doesn't think they're above the law and doesn't write the law to exclude themselves from inconveniences or lifestyle changes.
That by itself would be a massive change from what we have right now.
I write software for a living, as many of us do, and I think this is a terrible idea.
Our first implementations are almost always buggy. They're also often blind to myriad scenarios that we disparagingly call "edge cases" (since we're usually unwilling to admit we didn't think it through enough). We all like doing iterative approaches where we tweak things to see what happens, and which things break. If something is not working perfectly, we tend to throw the whole thing out to start over from scratch. We can often obsess about a narrow range of things, while completely missing the larger picture.
That's not a good approach when dealing with human lives.
In my estimation, a good compromise would be a great politician who also has nerdy hobbies/interests. I'm thinking of someone who was able to program the VCR for his/her parents as a child/teenager. I want someone who understands the technology enough to use it well, and enough knowledge of the underlying principles to not view everything as magical black box.
Too many comments here miss the point of what Bruce says:
Regulation is coming!
If technologically savvy people do not get engaged then technologically illiterate people will make the rules.
You could become a politician, but you can also support lawyers, politicians and (the right) lobbyists.
But no matter what, regulation is coming!
The internet and technology play a bigger and bigger rule in our daily lives and that makes regulation inevitable.
I am sorry if this offends your belief in freedom, libertarianism, small government, or whatever. Where many people become engaged there need to be rules that govern those social and economic relationships.
Wasn't "bureaucracy" an achievement in Civilisation or some similar game? Letâ(TM)s create small and few rules.
Regulation is coming ! (thank you game of thrones)
He shouldn't be referring to them as technologists.
He's talking about technocrats. Why there is still stigma around that, when society is rewriting language as fast as socially possibly is baffling.
Aside from that, yes. We do need technocrats in the electorate. The time for carnival barkers and sycophants needs to come to an end. I however, am not the one who needs convincing.
"We saw the policy makers and technologies talk past each other when the FBI wanted Apple to break into an iPhone that belonged to a terrorist shooting suspect"
So we keep the privacy of a potential terrorist? Or do we use the technology to convict them? Which one is it? The technologist would always choose privacy most likely. You could easily run against this terrorist loving idiot and get them voted out pretty quickly. Technologist back home after one term.
I cannot believe that politicians and police don't have qualified technical advisers to consult with on highly techical subjects. What I do believe is that they are not listening to them! They need to start listening.
He's a technologist, right?
And he already knows what we want. And everything else about us too...
You're solving the wrong problem. The issue isn't that policy makers don't understand the technology. The issue is that they don't care how the technology works.
To use the iphone example - the FBI has very smart technical analysts. They are fully aware of how hard it is to break strong encryption. That's why they want Apple to make phones that are easy for them to access. Not because they misunderstand encryption. Because they value their ability to access suspect's data more than the public's ability to protect their information.
IOW it's a clash of values. One side values privacy above crime fighting, the other doesn't. No amount of technical knowledge will resolve the problem.
There is no way I want current technologists to be lawmakers. At least not the ones currently leading the charge. That would be Twitter, Facebook, Google.. All who are left leaning, some in radical ways. Google was helping China build it's social networking system. That is treason, and yet they were allowed to do it.
Look at all the stuff going on now with Twitter and Facebook banning conservatives left and right. All of the tech CEOs lied to Congress, and now Vijaya Gadde from Twitter is making statements on Joe Rogan's podcast that are completely false, and Tim Pool destroying them.
And then here's the other thing I didn't see (though haven't watched all of it).. When Joe said that there's hundreds of examples of white people getting mocked, she said mocking isn't the issue. Harassment is. Then he says okay well there are tons of examples of white people having racist tweets hurled their way. She says "Racism isn't the issue, again it's harassment" .. and then she applies the rules across the board. This is a LIE.
There are countless tweets, many probably still in existence where a bunch of liberals said things, for example, that Covington high school should be burned to the "mother f***** ground" with the kids locked inside. At the same time I tweeted something like "If anyone believes something like that they need to be slapped" .. I got slapped with a 12 hour suspension and was forced to delete the tweet in order to start the jail time and then get back on Twitter.
It's just absolute bunk and there is no way we can let them make the laws. They've turned the Internet into an authoritarian's dream by having a monopoly over the public square of the Internet.
And by the way, she kept repeating "targeted harassment" "targeted misgendering" ... Saying "Men aren't women" isn't targeted and neither is what I said.. I didn't tell anyone YOU need to be slapped.. Nor was I harassing them.. Vijaya accurately defined harassment as targeted, continued unwanted attention.
So saying your opinion is not harassing someone. Asking a woman out or giving her a compliment is not harassing someone. This was the slippery slope of 5-10 years ago with the Hollaback movement where they were saying that a guy asking a girl out is harassment and then basically saying it's cat calling. And basically everything is cat calling now. Ben Shapiro asking AOC to debate him is cat calling. Yes. An orthodox jew who is 100% practicing and is married with two children is cat calling another woman when the ten commandments expressly prohibits adultery. And Ben Shapiro is not a douche bag. So no. He's not cat calling you. but I digress.
I have always said that lawmakers need to learn the tech but the reason they need to learn the tech is because the tech people are lobbying for stuff that they want which is basically corruption. They want to do things to hijack the rights of developers or hackers or what have you, and law makers don't know a toaster oven from a Gigabit router. At least they didn't.
The solution though is not to have people like Vijaya Gadde or Jack Dorsey become lawmakers. That is taking the middle man out of corruption.
To be honest I think that other things are much more important right now than AI.
- Alex
"those who focus on social justice, the common good, and the public interest"
This is so much New England socialist crap. Everyone needs to get a life and stop trying to push every person in the world into your perceived politically correct mold.
Did he mean: "Theologists will have to become lawnmowers?"
I'd be happy with a lawmaker that just read their own flipping emails, instead of having them printed out and laying on their desk each morning.
The average age of congress is 59 (House 58, Senate 62); this means that these people were forming their basic political ideas/views during the Cold War, the mid 70s oil crisis, post-Vietnam malaise as well as economic stagnation in the US, if not earlier.
FWIW average age of UK's house of commons is 50. House of lords is 70. Curiously this puts parliament OLDER than the US Congress at avg 61 due to the crazy number of eligible lords (800).
Germany's bundestag is avg 50.
France's parliament is 49.
-Styopa
Seriously, Xi is the model technologist. Waste no time with internal politics, just kill the opposition. Efficient, effective, and really prevents wasting time.
The last thing any technologist wants to do is answer the tech support phone all day long. You get nothing but demands from the stupidest of people. Being a politician is that, all day every day. And you want us to volunteer for this, Bruce? Are you mad?
And what is a law but documentation of procedures. Do we do that? I mean I know we're supposed to, and we say we will, and we really do intend to write those header comments. Any day now. But let's get real. A brief survey of Github will show you that most code isn't commented, and half of those that are have a doxygen comment that's nothing more than repeating the name of the function with some spaces in it.
And finally, have you looked at politics in the world today? Why would anyone, nevermind a technologist, volunteer for that shit show? When the media in the country will see to it that you will be outright hated by 30% of the population the moment you open your mouth, and viewed with suspicion by another 30%, I can't imagine participating. That sort of thing really wears on a person (except for sociopaths and psychopaths, and we know how this turns out don't we...).
What? Elect public officials with technical competence and aptitude over idiot dumbasses whose only major skill is to run a successful mass-marketing campaign?
The level of technological and scientific incompetence in public officials up to and including high offices is frankly embarrassing and at the same time catastrophic in terms of actual consequences.
An attorney, cross-examining the local coroner, queried, "Before you signed the death certificate had you taken the man's pulse?"
"No," the coroner replied.
"Well, then, did you listen for a heart beat?"
The coroner answered, "No."
"Did you check for respiration? Breathing?", asked the attorney.
Again the coroner replied, "No."
"Ah," the attorney said, "So when you signed the death certificate you had not taken any steps to make sure the man was dead, had you?"
The coroner rolled his eyes, and shot back "Counselor, at the time I signed the death certificate the man's brain was sitting in a jar on my desk. But I can see your point. For all I know he could be out there practicing law somewhere."
at last, we now know who and what we are... Technologists.... whoever came up with that one back in 1940s is one smart cookie.. oh wait.. his name is Winston Purvine, Oregon State System of Higher Education applied it to graduates of Oregon Institute of Technology, Klamath Falls Oregon https://www.oit.edu/libraries/... http://digitallib.oit.edu/digi... . PDF - Page 5 (attribution) good stuff. more to come..
I'm under the impression that 314 Action is out there to work on this effort, and had some successes in the last election.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
SOCIAL JUSTICE? Rly? Fucking lol that is mate, DO NOT WANT...
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ex+sjw
Is not enough to just keep bribe them? I know that is cheaper becoming the middle-man but technologists just as entrepreneurs don't really care about anything beyond their own interests and people and society is not one of those, actually they want just enough society to keep profit from it.
We let the merchants and bankers to use the temple and they ruined it.
There is intelligence, there is knowledge, and there is wisdom. Wisdom is required for leadership. And probably a lot of other characteristics, but fundamentals of wisdom and good leadership are unchanging--that's what makes them fundamentals.
Wisdom is now, as always, in short supply. Just look at some of the comments below--from intelligent, capable people, but people whose expertise is not in leadership, and who are, frankly, too young in most cases to have acquired much in the way of wisdom, which necessarily takes time to acquire.
"Politicians are bad": This is another chestnut that I saw in the comments below. Well, politicians may not be perfect, but neither is democracy. If you want a better government, what are you doing about it? In a democracy, just like in an open source project, you have the option of taking some action. It is easier to complain, so that is what most people do.
We have tried politicians with 'classical' educations. They lumbered our system with Greek and Latin. They derided us for being ignorant of what they considered important and took pride of their own ignorances.
We tried lawyers and ended up with appalling legal loopholes everywhere.
We tried ones who work in the media and ended up with the media taking over society.
We tried TV "personalities" and ended up with Trump and Brexit.
Now it is suggested we get politicians who understand aspects of the modern world. Based on past selection criteria, we need to be careful...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
This is also a problem with elected politics, we are so polarized on issues (solutions) that we do not vote in good leaders
Unlike the rent-seekers in our congress, China has technologists as its lawmakers.
They end up with a super-techno surveillance state, in which no one can escape the watching eyes of the big brother !
That "public interest technologists" is defined as "those who focus on social justice, the common good, and the public interest", is, once we ditch the recursive loop, half neutral but also half partisan-buzzword.
As only one party wastes time promoting that meaningless bit of vacuous twaddle, it seems Schneier only wants one party to benefit from technical expertise. An honest call would have been couched in non-partisan, non-ideological terms. This is partisan.
Finnish government was dissolved today. PM Juha Sipilä was known as an engineer who wanted to lead the country as if it were a tech business, with little regard to constitutional law.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
That's not how it works. What we need is rich, good technologists to lobby politicians to do the right thing. Finding good, incorruptible people is the real problem that needs to be solved, and it's hard to do that when step 1 is to bribe a politician.