Staying with the US Digital Service
mattcutts.com
mattcutts.com
I do not believe a Muslim Registry does any good for anyone. Being involved in building one would require formally changing our values which would be visible to everyone in USDS.
Disclaimer: personal opinion, I am currently serving on a USDS team, my term is up in June of '17
The USDS is a taxpayer-funded public entity. The "greatest good..." is determined by the law, written by our duly elected representatives. You don't get to serve the public and selectively reject the law. If the Congress passes a law you disagree with, you must follow it or resign--those are the only options, per your civil service oath.
Those aren't your only options. Your other options are to stay in and leak information. Stay in and try to damage the project etc...
I don't know what I'd do if I were in the position to damage, delay, or stop something as blatantly unconstitutional as a Muslim registration database, but I hope that I'd be able to muster to the courage to do so.
The civil service oath requires you to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic"
I understand that constitutionality is determined by the Supreme Court, but if the government attempts to create a Muslim registration, they've crossed the line and it's time to act.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Entry-Exit_R...
Trump, of course, has suggested a much more aggressive and less subtle program that includes an explicit religious test.
The info about it is all available publicly.
Whichever way it is, the real time to stop NSEERS was when it started in 2002. Since that didn't happen, it didn't stop until 2011. So yes, it is a good time to complain about religious profiling when a new administration is planning to institute it.
"The government" (our government in my case) has crossed the line so many times on so many different issues. The citizens never did anything. If the federal government built camps and starting rounding up Muslims or any group, we would do nothing tangible. There would be all sorts of racket made about it, but nothing would come of it. Any suggestion otherwise is just an attempt to bait some sort of discussion that Donald Trump is either the second coming of Adolf Hitler or the herald of the apocalypse. I don't like the man in any way. But where we all these people when Barack Obama decided he had the authority to execute US citizens?
Snowden pulled the veil on many issues similar to what you're referring to. I'm fairly certain he was a citizen at the time. I'd reference Chelsea Manning, because she acted as a citizen when betraying her oath to the military. I could see arguments against that, though.
The government came down hard on both these individuals. It's a damn shame. And please don't take this to be a pro-oppressive-government stance. I'm simply saying that citizens did do something. And every day there are citizens working in thousands of government jobs across the country trying to make the right decision. There's no reason to slight them.
At any given time, there are more laws to enforce and enact than people and other resources to enforce and enact them. Deciding what exactly to enforce or enact is - in other words, their priorities - is often left up to individual agencies. For example, the Obama administration prioritized immigration enforcement by targeting those found at the border, or those who committed crimes [1]. In another instance, marijuana use is illegal under federal law, but some local laws allow it, and the Obama administration explicitly deprioritized enforcement in such cases [2].
Finally, I think there are valid cases where individuals within government should exercise their own judgement and resist direct orders if they feel they are unjust. One such case is when Governor Schwarzenegger ordered the pay reduction (down to federal minimum wage) of 200,000 state employees until the state legislature agreed on a budget [3]. The person who was supposed to enact this order, state controller John Chiang, resisted.
"Under Schwarzenegger’s plan, the workers would receive their full salaries once a budget was approved. But California had enough cash in its accounts, and, in Chiang’s view, the Governor’s move could violate the Fair Labor Standards Act. Moreover, he thought, it was cruel. It was the height of the financial crisis, and mortgage defaults were up more than a hundred per cent over the previous year." [3]
[1] http://www.npr.org/2016/08/31/491965912/5-things-to-know-abo...
[2] http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/president-obama-marijuan...
[3] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/21/resisting-trump...
You kind of do. If you're ordered to do something that seems in conflict with the law and/or Constitution, you have a responsibility to not leave, to oppose that unlawful or unconstitutional action. That may require you remaining in place. If you leave, all that's left behind are the sort of non-thinking automatons I was surrounded by at one job for the AF who "were just following orders". They will follow the unlawful and unconstitutional orders and our experiment fails.
Your obligation as a public servant in this country is not to the President or to the Congress, but to the People by way of the Constitution and those things which are permitted by it. Orders aren't obligations if they're orders to do things we shouldn't be doing.
For the military, of course, there is no choice: one obeys.
1. Jury nullification.
2. Police discretionary powers.
What's the difference between bureaucratic incompetence and sabotage?
Sure you do. Our "duly elected representatives" are bullshit and have no special standing at all. The State imposes itself on us whether we like it or not, and we are all, as individuals, certainly entitled to oppose its abuses in any way we can.
Every presidential administration since time immemorial begs to differ.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article...
Also, it would be silly to assume that we didn't have a database of "country from" for immigrants or visitors. "Muslim" is not a country, it's a religion, so you'd need some serious behavior profiling for that -- probably FB/Google are ones you should be after. (Disclaimer: am immigrant, am minority.)
Permanent residents too (no retinal scan but digital fingerprints and photo every time you pass through immigration at an airport).
However, no religion attribution there.
I'm well aware of amp's purpose, function, intent, implementation, and effect. I strongly prefer not to have third parties mediating and obfuscating my browsing.
So please use direct urls rather than 3rd Party aggregators. Thanks.
Name and country of origin goes a long way towards determining it
Of course it's not 100% correct, but should be enough to give a pointer
Why can't a hypothetical Muslim registry enthusiast use AirTable, FieldBook, at least a dozen of similar database-in-a-box offerings, or just a managed instance of some open source database management system?
I don't support Trump or the unconstitutional American deep state, but you realize there is already a Muslim registry right?
In fact there are probably several competing implementations in various intelligence agencies, with substantially overlapping contents. Probably almost every agency has the capability to run
select first_name, last_name, home_address from us_residents where religion = 'muslim';
And get largely right answers. Similarly, there is already a border wall with Mexico.
Heuristic searches for muslims definitely exist - but they aren't as simple as you make them out to be.
On the other hand, if you're in favor of a Muslim registry and fear that he might oppose it, then it makes total sense to ask him this question at this time. In fact that's the only reason it makes sense to ask him this question at this time. Hence downvoters, assuming that the majority of HN is against a Muslim registry.
I hope that if I were to be given a task so clearly violating rights, I would follow through with what my first reaction now is: sabotage it, using means usually considered illegal if necessary, up to and including property damage.
edit: I'm not at USDS, nor anything similar, nor a US citizen. So the above is pretty cheap talk – nobody would ever ask /me/ for their illegal Orwellian IT project. I was just trying to express an attitude that I hope exists where it actually matters.
You grossly overestimate the reach and importance of HN
I concede that we cannot prevent some software from being created. But there is a great qualitative difference between any software and effective software. And if there isn't, and our creativity/labor doesn't matter in creating such a difference, then what is all this talk on HN about?
besides...
"The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."
Not sure what the top 500 vote totals were on this, but when Snowden's documents revealed existence of a massive domestic surveillance program that included large amounts of data collection, parsing and analysis, most people were surprised at the breadth, depth and sheer amount of data.
Worth noting that it was developed without any significant leaks either, which spells doubt on the idea that top 500 were even invited to express their stance on the subject, which nevertheless did not force the project into derailment. For all we know, some might have participated, through a government or a third-party contract that did not specify exact goals of the project and provided limited view into the overarching theme.
One thing that's hard to judge from the outside is the quality and efficiency of that code. It could be very bad indeed.
I've had the opportunity to work with a few ex-NSA software engineers. One in particular was among the smartest and most capable colleagues I've ever had. If, as is the impression I gathered, he's at all typical of the talent NSA has at its disposal, I would expect the limiting factors to be the volume and accuracy of the data available, rather than the quality of the software built to analyze it.
Also, I can't resist, but:
> Worth noting that it was developed without any significant leaks either
...until is wasn't
BBC called it "extensive internet and phone surveillance by American intelligence" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-23123964
Wired described "the vast scope of the government’s domestic surveillance programs" in reference to Snowden leaks. https://www.wired.com/2014/08/edward-snowden/
EFF refers to NSA's access to "large streams of domestic and international communications" https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/how-it-works
Assuming that journalists tend to sensationalize I'd agree to apply a grain a salt for these statements, but is there an argument suggesting NSA's operation was fairly small scale and is not indicative of their capability to build large systems?
> if not this person, someone
> else will
1. We'd treat drug using employees really seriously
2. Therefore you must not do drugs
3. Because we're so serious about this this becomes a major blackmailing vector.
4. So we need to make really sure you're a drug user.
It's an entirely manufactured problem that could be solved overnight by them just saying "hey, don't show up high on the job, but what you do in your own time is your own business, and we won't pro-actively investigate it anymore than any other citizen".
Don't seem to recall being blackmailed for drugs coming into it
Applying to 18F didn't require a drug test for me. The application process asks this question in the background check part (details at "security clearance" at the bottom of https://pages.18f.gov/joining-18f/how-to-apply/ for anyone curious), but answering yes to the "have you ever done federally-illegal drugs" question is not an automatic disqualification. It can be a disqualification depending on the details of the drug use.
Why is that?
I mean, this would be a case of "shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted" except that Snowden would pretty clearly have passed a more thorough background check. His background wasn't the problem.
The only thing I can think of that might actually have preemptively filtered him (or those like him) out would be some sort of psych test biased toward authoritarianism.
Background checks are obviously a necessary and useful tool, I am just not sure I understand which dotted lines (regardless of their logic or illogic) connect "Snowden" to "more background checks" in a knee-jerk reaction.
1: https://www.google.com/search?q=SF-86+breach+opm&ie=utf-8&oe...
Second question: What level of clearance do your direct reports require? Secret? TS?
There is a background check process as part of joining USDS, but we keep looking at ways to make signing up easier, e.g. trying to make the process faster.
Why is it good to make it easy to enlist in the military?
That seems like a problem in and of itself, and certainly a more pressing one.
I think a volunteer force is preferable to a conscripted force.
If there was a lottery, pushback from casualties would come from more people in upper classes that could cause real problems for politicians and generals. Could even be their own kids sent there. Switching to a "volunteer" military in an increasingly-shitty economy sweeps lots of their problems under the rug. ;)
How do you weigh that against the risk of injury, death, or PTSD, as well as the civlian casualties of US wars?
To be specific - do you believe Iraq Body Count or the Lancet surveys, and how many civilians would have to have been killed in the second Iraq war for you to think it would be a net ethical negative to make it easier to enlist?
In the U.S., the decision to go to war is made by civilians: the President and (ideally) Congress. Below the President, the top military decision-maker/administrator -- Secretary of Defense -- is also a civilian. All the people in the country could sign up and join the military and yet have no authority to actually go to war.
But I'm not naive: the decision to go to war is made easier when the commander-in-chief has a capable and willing army to command. I teach a programming class and I like to talk about "real world" algorithms, such as the Vietnam War draft and lottery [0], a tragicomical example of how hard it is to generate random numbers. But the algorithmic thinking is not just the details of the lottery, but why the lottery was the needed algorithm in the first place. The answer: because not enough people want to volunteer for war. And random selection seems to be the only way to raise an army without angering the citizenry.
Now that we have a volunteer army, there are new algorithms in play. Such as where to focus recruitment efforts based on demographic makeup of people who currently volunteer. This is all to say that as bad as the draft was, a volunteer army doesn't make things hunky dory. And why should we settle for anything less than the quip, "What if they gave a war and nobody came"?
So yeah, I see the rationale for not making the military easy to join. OTOH, I still think that the prospect of war -- and the use of military force in matters of diplomacy -- is a reality we have to live in. Making the military more smoothly administered does not necessarily correlate with an increase in horrors of war. If the military attracts good people, then that means there is the chance of having good people in the chain of command.
To go off on a tangent, better military technology hasn't always resulted in more war. The atomic bomb was used to wreak horror; on the other hand, the prospect of nuclear war seems to have stifled the kind of "great" wars we've had since Hiroshima.
So to answer your question: I think it's too simplistic to think of a better military as being a net negative, if we accept the realities of the current world.
Certainly making enlistment harder will decrease the number of troops (absent a draft) which has a non-zero probability of decreasing military adventurism, yes?
Discouraging a single enlistment seems to me like it has the same order-of-magnitude impact as casting a single vote.
> If the military attracts good people, then that means there is the chance of having good people in the chain of command.
How does making enlistment easier increase the percentage of volunteers that are good people?
> I think it's too simplistic to think of a better military as being a net negative
Do you think more recruits means a "better" military?
Until then, you'd be tightening the freedom of the military to turn people away, which means lowered standards. There is a case to be made that you want the best possible people to join the military. Because you need a certain level of intelligence and moral integrity to, for example, refuse unlawful orders.
In fact, that mechanism used to be the top argument for the draft in my country (Germany). "Pacifists make the best soldiers" so-to-speak (although pacifists were in reality exempt from service).
I have no statistics, but I imagine the combat duty to total enlistment ratios make it a very calculated risk.
Best of luck as your journey there continues.
Personally I've judged the quality of incoming political appointees, and I would chafe at working under leadership I could not respect.
In my worst imagination, I would be holding down a desk until it could be filled by the employees of well-connected contractors.
You describe it as "incredibly frustrating" now. How do you think you can keep that work "deeply important and inspiring"?
I think the mission of the US Digital Service is fundamentally non-partisan: we want to make government work better for the American people. When a veteran can apply for health benefits online, they have a better experience. But it also saves the money from them driving to see someone in person. There's so much work like that to do that everyone agrees will make the government better, more responsive, and more efficient.
I also think the USDS has built up some reputation and trust because of the good work that it's been able to do so far. I'm heartened when folks like Kevin McCarthy (majority leader in the House of Representatives) tweet things like this: https://twitter.com/gopleader/status/796823547343736837
At Google, I didn't always agree with what the CEO decided to do, like shutting down Google Reader. Sigh. But there was a ton of important work to do, and concentrating on the common ground made it possible to do really good things.
Couldn't most agencies claim the same?
Sadly I don't think this is a non-partisan goal these days.
And there it is. One of many reasons I'll never work for the government again. The government is so PC-sensitive that dude can't even post on HN without a mildly disguised form of legalese. When I was in the Air Force, everything I said had to be prefaced with
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Air force, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
One might think this is a minor complaint but after years of death by 1,000 cuts, you just can't take it anymore.
I wonder, in retrospect, if causing that backlash would still not be seen as a mistake.
While I've got you, are there 2-3 things that you would most like to see on vets.gov in the future?
I'm proud of what we accomplished in building cloud.gov. I think 2017 will be a big year for the platform.
Edit to add this link to a place in a video explaining more about compliance.[2]
[1]: https://www.digitalgov.gov/resources/negotiated-terms-of-ser...
Considering the government and tech got me wondering: what software do our leaders regularly use? What measures are taken to ensure it's as safe? How much of this information is readily available? Hopefully this won't land me in an FBI watch-list :).
They also have different funding mechanisms that lead to different operating models. USDS funding comes out of a budget called ITOR and we can represent a source of "free" engineers for an agency. 18F operates on a cost-recoverable model where an agency is paying for help or services.
There are other, smaller differences too. For example, it's typically easier to work remotely for 18F than for USDS.
From a distance, the organizations both look like "tech in government," but I think they operate better separately. I have enormous respect for the folks in 18F, and the two orgs have collaborated on things like the US Web Design Standards: https://standards.usa.gov/
Plus I remember at one point Obama was talking about duplicate agencies/programs and consolidating them. Then Trump talks about "cutting the fat", but I do see how being separate in this case actually seems like it helps.
I think the press articles that sometimes lump it all together can be frustrating at times and I like Matt's descriptions above. Another important difference: when USDS attends a meeting it's the "White House" in the room, whereas 18F sitting in GSA (which does other things like support government real estate) gives us a different context.
We both, though, benefit immensely from strong civil servants that partner with us. There's a narrative out there that "silicon valley" people have come to DC to "rescue" all of the government, when many people in both orgs have government experience (or come from the non-profit sector). Our work is impossible without partners throughout government who know a policy space and are ready to benefit from different tools and processes, and I wish those folks (or even just the tools and processes such as http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-681) got more attention than the "hero narrative."
"I also spoke to a number of former team members. Publicly, almost all of them expressed optimism that the work would continue: The transition was proceeding cordially, the efforts to reform government IT were bipartisan, and Congress would back their efforts, which had already saved money for taxpayers and delivered services for citizens. But lurking behind every statement was an existential dread that Donald Trump would either pull the plug on one of the great achievements of the last eight years, or worse — he might order the best and brightest to work on projects that violated their moral codes. If those fears were confirmed, it would mean the end of one of the most inspiring developments in government in years — and a backwards step for a bureaucracy that had for too long ignored the nation’s most powerful tools."
Certainly there are other people who have had the same concern that President Obama, Mr. Bush, Mr. Clinton, Mr. Reagan, Mr. Carter and so on all the way back to Mr. Washington would order them to work on projects which violate their moral codes?
For that matter, surely any employee must have at least some concern that his employer will order him to do something unethical?
That sums up the mood in the media: existential dread.Not real. Not tangible. Not verifiable. Existential.
I doubt the Donald is going to mess with making the awful process of dealing with government easier. Existential is non-tangible for a reason I guess.
Edit: Also, as a programmer and DC person, I love the work USDS does and I hope you guys keep working indefinitely.
Watching that video will make you understand why someone like Matt would feel the call to service he clearly does. USDS is a true example of everything that is right about civil service and has nothing to do with partisan politics despite being part of the Whitehouse.
AT&T, through Bell Labs, tried to be indispensable to the US Govt throughout the Cold War so that it would allow its monopoly to continue to exist. Google is following the same game plan. The problem with this game plan is that by Google seeming too cozy with USG it makes it harder for it to operate in foreign markets. AT&T did not have this problem as foreign markets during the Cold War were much smaller and more closed.
For the USDS engineers on the thread--does the work really require 5+ years of work experience? Is there really no place for a passionate and moderately-experienced junior engineer in the organization? I would quit my job in a heartbeat if I got an offer.
Edit: wow I don't recognize Jobs with a beard.
Unedited version: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ydp6bR5HXw
Just a heads up that the above is on your HN profile: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Matt_Cutts
Neither 18F or USDS existed when healthcare.gov launched.
Sounds like you think you can some how make bad less bad.
*18f employee
The projects in which we are most successful are also not projects where people can easily contribute remotely. Some agency teams allow remote work but the jury's still out in my opinion as to whether these people are as effective as others.
How is the USDS getting around the hiring freeze?
What technologies are common?
Apply on usds.gov -> Your resume is scored -> Technical interview (akin to Goog/twitter/amazon) -> EQ interview (can you handle the super weird work and environment?) -> technical interview (similar to first to follow up on any missing info) -> Interview feedback is reviewed by hiring panel to make sure folks are minimally qualified -> Agency team leads compete to make offers to qualified candidates -> candidates accept one of the offer(s). You can be dropped at any step and not proceed. Everyone on staff hates turning people down, because people only apply if they care deeply about helping others. We are forever grateful for folks who throw their hat in the ring.
Technologies run from COBOL (not kidding) to node. At 18F you will get to work exclusively in a modern stack, at USDS we're looking for people who are willing and able to scrub in to fix X, no matter what tech is in the way. The work is always oriented around solving a problem for humans, regardless of the stack.
If the greatest python dev ever applied, but couldn't creatively solve problems for a system that was built in powerbuilder 5.0 (lol/sob), we couldn't use her.
*USDS employee
My rent here in Baltimore with utilities is 2k ... if I moved to D.C. A lot of the additional salary would be absorbed by the doubling or tripling my cost of rent.
Thus I wonder why remote positions and or a mix of remote and on site one day a week is not being offered?
So yes the salaries are not comparable. You would make less even if you got Step 10 of GS-15 (which you definitely would not). You might be able to make on your W2 at USDS what you make in Baltimore. Maybe a little less. If you work for the government in DC you are doing so out of a sense of service.
It's part of why it's so hard to get good tech people to work for the government. You have to be a Matt Cutts and have made your money already, or come from money, or have that inner drive for public service. It's hard to make $115k in one of the most expensive cities in the country when you could live almost anywhere else and make more each month and pay less to live there.
I'd definitely consider if there were opportunities to work remotely each week a few days and commute in other days.
I think I'd be a good candidate with my interesting startup journey stories(a sad meet up story with Google re: a buy out, reality TV and other stories)and my experience working for govt. agencies here in Baltimore. But that would be up to those at the USDS to decide if I'm a good candidate or not.
Depending on a person's life experiences, it causes them to draw the line at different places. So I don't think it's fair to say those people display "feigned outrage and pearl clutching," while _this_ specific way is the adult way.
You've got one thing right, which is that not all of the outrage is feigned, and some peoples view of the world is so distorted that they would place their "struggle" under Western democracies with that of the some of the most oppressive societies on Earth.
Of course they're completely mistaken, and you try to cover for this cognitive failure with this feeble argument from "life experience" which can be used to justify nearly any kind of ridiculous behavior. Think about it: Our experience of the world is fundamentally subjective, so who are we to say that one way of acting is better than another? Fine, enjoy your postmodern intellectual paralysis if you want but I'm not playing that game.
The facts are what they are, and Donald J Trump may be a formidable political opponent but he's not the god damn Chinese Communist Party.
Look at that. Russia and Poland are almost exactly the same. Czech Republic looks somewhat better, Romania somewhat worse but all are similar shape.
I guess Putin is a pretty amazing president! Or maybe there is something else going on...
Or was your use of the word "inarguably" some kind of code?
I guess those same people will have a lesson on what it's like to have a leader most of the world doesn't like/respect/understand :)
I wish more of the big tech players would encourage leaves of absence to partake in these important tasks.
Pretty easy thing to say when you already have millions in your bank account.