Bruce Schneier: It's time for technologists to become lawmakers
venturebeat.com
venturebeat.com
> “Today, technology makes de facto policy that’s far more influential than any law,” he said. “Law is forever trying to catch up with technology. And it’s no longer sustainable for technology and policy to be in different worlds.”
Isn't that something of a misreading of late 19th and 20th history?
Just about every decade in the late 19th and the 20th century was part of an ongoing telecoms, media, and IT boom. There were the telegraph, telephony and the fax, satellite communications, the internet, usenet, mobile telephony and SMS, internet forums and chat; radio, TV, streaming and social networks; typewriters, mechanical counting machines, transistors, microchips, mainframes, PCs, smartphones; etc. It's just wave after wave after wave after wave, with every decade or two adding some major development in one form or another.
Sometimes what was happening required lawmaker attention. Laws and regulation followed every single time -- if only eventually.
It's not entirely clear to me, apart from scale, how the problems we face today are that much different than, say, those that were on a would-be legislator's mind when radio became mainstream or when TV news became a thing.
Bruce's points are most welcome and valid, but I wouldn't be surprised if a historian were able to dig up people making similar points (at least) since radio has been around. (Edit: And possibly since Gutenberg's printing press became mainstream.)
Heck, the specific technologies that Schneier cares about (related to communication and privacy) have been tightly coupled with policy for like 600 years. Way back when postal routes where just becoming a thing you already have state leaders and bureaucrats writing about how technologies like ciphers cause problems and enacting policies to ensure that states had the power they wanted over private communications.
The main way to do that is for you to get involved. If you do not, someone else who might not see that as a problem will, and the problem you despise will continue.
Edit: It's not even hard to do, if you're dreading to meet people. There's an app out there that (exclusively) helps conservatives organize grassroots movements and increase their voter turnout. Last I checked there still wasn't any liberal or libertarian equivalent. If you're into either of the latter, you can get involved and help your favorite political flavor build an equivalent app.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Research_Servi...
Having an independent and impartial think tank that can brief law makers on the issues they are facing is more important that having people with STEM degrees in the lagislstive branch.
Add: Sorry don't mean to add so little. Just feel it's a case of someone standing on the sidelines who makes a living writing (and that is what Bruce does, right) pushing others to do what they don't want to do. And to those who say 'well it's good that he brings the issue out in the open' sure that is the case. But it might be better if he is actually willing to carry through on his suggestions or at least talk about someone who he convinced to follow his idea.
But that’s not the goal. He’s advocating for lots of candidates, many of whom will likely need to start running at local levels first.
If Bruce were to run for candidacy it could signal to other technologists that they don’t need to do anything — which is the opposite of what’s needed.
Instead, I’d like to see Bruce offer to act in an advisory/mentoring role for the technologists/engineers who do run.
As I understand it, Schneier's idea is to ask technologists to work on systems solving - even partially - problems which we see today in the society. Even partial solution can help those whose job is to, in general, govern, i.e. politicians - as well as hired bureaucrats.
I agree — and a place technologists can make an impact with a little more obscurity is in the infrastructure for politics.
The problems with politics aren’t merely a technical solution, but it does seem like the advent of mass media and computers has changed some things about politics — which means that a change in the technical mechanisms can change the process and outcomes.
If you think about the math, each represenative stands for about 750,000 people on average. About half to three quarters of their constituents will be working aged, so 375,000. About 1 in 100 will be motivated enough to put a few hours into helping now and then, so 3,750. You figure “now and then” really means “once a year”, but you need help once a month — 375. Maybe 1 in 10 really has something useful to say, so 38.
But the point is when you’re talking about major legislation, it seems like you should be able to recruit a few dozen to a few hundred people to put eyes on the text. By hosting a public repository across districts, you can probably reliably get a few hundred to a thousand volunteers to mark up legislation (or help with ML based scanners).
I’ve long thought a website which joined law markup/comments, vote tracking, and candidate writing would be largely effective — it drops the amount of effort required for a citizen to express effective oversight, and collates information back to you during elections.
The way to change the politics is to jump in and participate. If you don't, someone else will. Probably not in a way you like. And possibly by someone who is catering to the lunatics you're fearing.
The caveat of this is that your average non-tech worker will hate tech. This will be 'robots stealing our jerbs' x10.
Tech workers wont be able to get into office.
As little of five years ago tech had a lot more goodwill than it does now. In democratic societies we techies probably have more of an uphill battle than others, because the few of us in charge of companies cannot behave properly
We can do something similar. Remember, say, how Skype was created? Or WhatsApp? Or Paxos? BitTorrent?