Sure. First hold Equifax accountable, then we'll talk about Google.
In an op-ed promoting campaign finance reform, the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, proposed raising the limit on individual contributions from $1,000 to $5,000 and banning all other contributions. No corporate money, no union money, no soft money. It sounds great, except that it would never pass.
Campaign finance reform is so hard to pass because the incumbent legislators who have to approve it are the ones who have the most to lose. Their advantage in fundraising is what gives them job security. How do you get people to do something that is against their interest? Put them in what is known as the prisoners’ dilemma. According to Buffett:
Well, just suppose some eccentric billionaire (not me, not me!) made the following offer: If the bill was defeated, this person—the E.B.—would donate $1 billion in an allowable manner (soft money makes all possible) to the political party that had delivered the most votes to getting it passed. Given this diabolical application of game theory, the bill would sail through Congress and thus cost our E.B. nothing (establishing him as not so eccentric after all).
Consider your options as a Democratic legislator. If you think that the Republicans will support the bill and you work to defeat it, then if you are successful, you will have delivered $1 billion to the Republicans, thereby handing them the resources to dominate for the next decade. Thus there is no gain in opposing the bill if the Republicans are supporting it. Now, if the Republicans are against it and you support it, then you have the chance of making $1 billion.
Thus whatever the Republicans do, the Democrats should support the bill. Of course, the same logic applies to the Republicans. They should support the bill no matter what the Democrats do. In the end, both parties support the bill, and our billionaire gets his proposal for free. As a bonus, Buffett notes that the very effectiveness of his plan “would highlight the absurdity of claims that money doesn’t influence Congressional votes.”
This situation is called a prisoners’ dilemma because both sides are led to take an action that is against their mutual interest. In the classic version of the prisoners’ dilemma, the police are separately interrogating two suspects. Each is given an incentive to be the first to confess and a much harsher sentence if he holds out while the other confesses. Thus each finds it advantageous to confess, though they would both do better if each kept quiet.
From the book The Art of Strategy. Great book.
You remove them from the system. This is why we have a process through which the states can amend the Constitution.
This presumes every politician is equally dependent on outside financing. Self-financed and small-donation financed politicians would be politically incentivized to bunch together and knock the legs out from under the competition's money machine.
Politics is complicated. Condemning campaign finance reform is premature. (Saying it's a tough fight would be accurate.)
The other half, selling proposed legislation to one's own (and one's colleagues') constituents, involves the same process.
i'm not trying to make a political statement here, just an observation that the Democratic party is of two minds when it comes to tech nowadays. it didn't used to be this way. further evidence of an emerging political realignment.
They're both screw-ups. If someone breaks into your house, we don't say "first let's solve peace in the Middle East; then we'll talk about your house."
Something being second (or further down the list) doesn't mean it should be ignored. It's just another reason to look at the issue.
Google is more politically vulnerable than Equifax because more people know what it is. That makes it a better whipping boy for getting public support behind any resulting legislation.
There is a case to be made that tech companies hoarding sensitive data should have heightened disclosure requirements around confirmed and potential breaches. It doesn't have to be a public process. But maybe there should be some process.
Regarding "it's just a bug," I personally disagree. A bug that takes down the video player is different from a bug that could expose data. ("Could expose" isn't language we like to use in technology, but the law is fine with such ambiguity.)
Analogy: we don't wait for bridges to fail before giving a damn about the cracks. Google et al have never been treated as critical infrastructure. This is a discussion about whether that should change.
While I agree that not all bugs are the same level of severity, if there is no evidence of abuse of a bug, and it has been fixed, I see no reason to have them disclose it in any way. It would be akin to forcing companies to disclose when they repremand an employee, or when they change an internal HR process to avoid interpersonal problems.
Oh, and are we going to be mad at Google for purging logs now? I thought our hobby horse was Google retaining unneeded logs, but I guess it's even more fun to be mad at them for both so we can be mad no matter what they do.
Who said mandatory public notices? There are lots of options between staying silent and broadcasting every bug.
One is the known burglary of your hotel room with your items for sale online. The other hotel used locks that could be bypassed, but only has security footage saved for the last month to show you weren't robbed then.
I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just saying these are both examples of privately-owned American digital infrastructure being vulnerable. In one case, we have evidence of a breach. In the other, we do not.
Taken together, these cases don't argue against each other. They argue together. That's why this is getting Congressional attention. The "how dare they ask these questions" tone on this thread, while understandable given how most of us earn our keep, is a bit off the mark.
Nah, first hold OPM accountable then we'll talk about the private sector.