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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.
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.
I'd rather have them join forces. Technologists could explain why laws can't work on a technical level, lawyers can explain why they won't work on a legal level and if they work together, there's a chance that the result is a law that DOES actually work on both levels.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.