Dear Congress, It's No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works | Hacker News Reader

Dear Congress, It's No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works

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389 pointsnextparadigms77 comments

We're talking amongst ourselves, agreeing with each other. This letter is targeted at us, not congressmen.

I am almost certain every letter any MPAA lobbyist sends to any congressman does not call the congressman a "jack-ass" in the second paragraph. Or any paragraph at all. I tentatively suggest we might have more success if we do the same.

What do congressmen want? Influence, votes and praise. What are we doing? Criticising ("stupid", "jackass", "corrupt", "ignorant") and telling them how to do their jobs. ("They should X, they should Y"). Naturally any congressman will feel defensive as soon as they read our "internet engineer" writing.

I propose a three point plan, to ensure the long-term security of our internet:

1. Tell congressman how important they are, because our personal freedoms and privacy are at risk, and they are the only ones who can protect us.

(Rather than important because they protect content owners from piracy, or being important because of some potential job at Universal when they retire)

2. Offer congressman the choice of being "Defender of personal freedom/privacy" vs "Distributor's stooge".

(Rather than champion of artists' rights vs protector of pirates)

3. Educate public of SOPA and tell congressman how many votes they are going to get by defending the public against the SOPA law that cracks down on small businesses on the internet, many of which are operated by your everyday man.

I'm sure every congressman, when first elected, thought to themselves about how they are going to change the way the government works and always represent the best interests of the people. I suggest we re-ignite this vision that exists in every congressman.

EDIT: I just realised I'm republican, with all my talk of "freedom", "privacy" and "small businesses". :)

Lobbyists have an easier time doing messaging. Because they represent only a few people who let them do all the talking, they rarely have to worry about someone on their side making them look bad.

In other words, you're right.

It bothers me how, when writing my congressman, the advice is almost always to write in terms of how business will be affected. Sure, that's important, but what about freedom? It's as if citing freedom as a reason to do or not do something is too "abstract" when compared with a predicted effect on business.

You sound sensible, not republican. Even sensible right-wing isn't republican.

Maybe mention something about lobbying, it shouldn't cover over people's voice/rights.

I just wish they'd stop thinking of it as a funny, cute, or self-deprecating bit of humor to stand up and say "I'm no tech wizard, I can't even set my (vcr|alarm clock|mobilePhone).

Its not funny.

It should be as shameful and troubling as getting up and saying "I'm no 'student' and I don't know how to do this 'reading' thing, but here's what I think about books."

You could say the same about "techies" who have the same or less knowledge of how politics works.

I don't see techies wearing political ignorance as a cute badge of honor. When they want to restrict the rights of politicians, they learn about politics.

Do we not have a standardized org structure for the support staff of each politician:

Who is in the following roles as an aide to each congressman?

* Technology Consultant

* Foreign Policy

* Energy

* Agriculture

....

etc.

We should be able to reach out to EACH layer of aides for all of congress and say "To all the congressional technical advisors, as silicon valley reps, this is our stance on issue X"

These aides should then go to each congressman and say "this is what the tech on the street is saying" and inform them of opinion and reality.

The current system is DESIGNED to keep stupid.

No they assume whatever half baked idea they make up recall from reading Ayn Rynd will work in the real world.

take the widely held view that companies should have "all" their rights removed - the debate about personhood.

Do you realy want to end up with a system where any company could be taken over or shut down by political fiat - hint threes a reason Russian companies list in the UK its so they are perceived not to have the political risk.

"Techies" who relish their own political ignorance are not making laws that regulate the lives and jobs of other citizens.

Many still vote, though.

Wow. I thought we ran the world, through our devices, code, networks etc.

In fact, the politicians are mostly concerned about reigning US in, right? That means we have the real power.

So, as many important scientists in history have mentioned, isn't it irresponsible of us to remain politically ignorant?

SO, a congressman has to be an expert on:

  The Internet
  Farm policy
  Arms control
  Abortion and medicine in general
  Debt, finance and sustainable economic growth
  ...

I'm not sure we can find even one Congressman to fit the bill (and with that elipsis I can guarantee it).

Strawman. A congressperson ought to either be an expert in those things, or listen to those that are.

SO, a congressman has to be an expert on:

Thats kind of exaggerating the parent post's position, the congresspeople were flat out admitting they have no knowledge on the subject. He didn't say they had to be domain experts.

They _should_ have good domain knowledge on everything relevant to the proposed legislation. Its their full time job to legislate. We pay them so they can have time to focus on understanding the issues instead of treating it as secondary to their real job.

The congressman does not have to be an expert, they have to be able to become WELL INFORMED on anything in which they have policy directing power.

As an IT director I dont have to be an expert in python, ruby, networking, exchange admin, etc... That's why I hire staff who are experts in their areas. They inform me as the best direction to take.

I set the policy, understand to a certain level (rather technical, but not for example CCIE level - thats why I hire CCIEs) what each person does.

But I would never stand up at a company meeting and say "I have no clue how our firewall is configured - but I think we should block all traffic to ports 22, 80 and 25 because that seems to be where all our attacks come to. (blah blah blah port knocking blah blah blah)

Most of us perceive this huge aberration because we are in tech, but the average person is completely oblivious to that and probably thinks that legislators know what they are reasoning about.

The scary part is when you realize that they are statistically just as uneducated in many other areas that they take decisions in (especially those that might touch on scientific issues and require rigorous analysis: ecology, medecine, etc.) and there's not much done to prevent that.

Actually looking at the latest approval ratings for congress I don't think the average person is oblivious. They just feel powerless to do anything about it.

In all fairness, "knowing how the internet works" is a gargantuan task. I doubt even many HN members could comment without making a mistake at the SOPA hearings as well.

The fact remains that something like congress (a group of people to vote on literally everything we do) is required in a democracy, and "a group of people" is never going to know everything there is to know about everything.

There are probably a million farmers out there as well who strongly believe that congress should understand the genetic modification of seeds, for example.

I don't think knowing how the internet works is a gargantuan task. The basic concepts, though abstract compared to the physical world, are rather simple: addressing, routing, name resolution...

The tough part is knowing how unpredictable humans and their demands will affect network performance at any given point at any given time. What's worse is mixing in geography and politics, corporations and "peering agreements," etc.

Fair enough, as my grandfather wouldn't consider learning seed germination and modification techniques a gargantuan task either, it's quite simple in his eyes.

To fully understand a new topic every day enough to vote on is the gargantuan task I should have been referring to.

And with that, I agree.

Isn't that why there are committees responsible for coming up with specific legislation? You shouldn't need all the members to understand all the topics.

I thought that this is what aids are for, congressmen hire young hopefully smart ideologically compatible aides who reasearch topics and write good summaries explaining the issues involved.

I disagree with the necessity of having them vote on everything we do being required for democracy. The only case where that is required is if we can't think for ourselves. And honestly if we can't think for ourselves we got no business electing people.

All we need are a few simple rules which limits/prevents the initiation of aggression, courts to enforce contracts and a a small army to prevent invasions. It doesn't require much work -- at most a weekend a month.

You aren't convincing me that this is a great idea.

The problem you've raised is one that actually is addressed by the way that bills become law in the US (whether it works or not is a whole different question...). Congressional bills go through a committee process where in theory people who've dealt with similar laws before learn about the particular subject matter, hear from experts and then decide on whether the bill should proceed: http://www.whitehouse.gov/our-government/legislative-branch#....

From a sufficiently conservative point of view, SOPA outlaws piracy. Of course they're not interested in the pirates explaining technical details of pirating. They know it when they see it.

From a sufficiently lucrative point of view, SOPA outlaws potential businesses. Of course, they're not interested in the entrepreneurs explaining technical details of more businesses. They know it when they see it.

Piracy is already illegal.

From a point where you take bribes (don't call it lobbying) from companies that would profit from SOPA and consequently vote for something you have no idea what it is, it's immoral and should get your ass fired!

I wonder how far we should take this. TCP/IP training for all Congressmen? How about including detailed briefings of how MPLS works as well?

Actually the tubes metaphor is closer (particularly regarding MPLS backbones) than people are willing to accept both because of the pipe metaphor (a socket being two pipes) and the use of label switching (which acts logically as a big series of pipes).

And along these lines, bandwidth was originally a technical term in plumbing.....

The complaint here is not so much that they don't know, but that they're unwilling to consult anyone who does before making a decision.

And 'bandwidth' is a technical term from electrical engineering that refers to the width of the frequency band that is usable in a communications system, to which the information rate is directly proportional. There is no way it originally came from plumbing.

Maybe GP meant 'throughput'?

Perhaps they should exercise their right to abstain from voting if they're being asked to weigh in on a subject they don't, can't, or are unwilling to understand.

Actually, I have no problem with Congress lacking knowledge about how the Internet works, as long as they keep their hands off of it.

They can't. Congress is responsible for regulating interstate commerce and creating intellectual property laws. Even a blanket statement that US laws don't apply to the Internet would have a detrimental effect. In the long run, the only way for Congress to not harm the usefulness and freedom of the Internet is for legislators to understand the Internet and specifically craft laws to avoid negative side effects.

> Congress is responsible for regulating interstate commerce and creating intellectual property laws.

They're not obligated to do either of those things - they merely have the authority to do so.

> In the long run, the only way for Congress to not harm the usefulness and freedom of the Internet is for legislators to understand the Internet and specifically craft laws to avoid negative side effects.

Was that true for electricity? How about railroads or telephones?

Heck - I'd argue that the only thing that Congress has ever "understood" is alcohol, and they've botched that at least twice.

Dear Congress,

It's no longer okay (and never has been) to listen to people who are paid to convince you to pass a law that benefits only them. Instead, you should listen to the people who know what they are talking about and aren't being paid.

I understand the author's frustration that Congress does not understand how the internet works. But does anyone know of any simple article or books that would be able to teach non-tech savvy Congressmen how the internet works? The material would probably need to be short enough for them to digest in 1 full day at a maximum. If anyone has any great suggestions, I would be happy to pass them along to my Congressman.

They don't seem to care about learning any of it, in fact seeing how a lot of those congressmen were against having technical experts comment on the bill, I don't see why they would care about reading anything on how DNS works and why securing it from tempering is important.

This is the important thing. Would it be useful if they read some Wikipedia entries before they started writing legislation (or, perhaps more accurately, accepting legislation written for them by the MPAA)? Yes. Do they have to? No. They just need to accept that they should bring in experts, and have the experts sit and explain everything to them. They can ask questions and find things out. This is actually accepting that you are not knowledgable with everything, and this is OK.

What they have done is said "No, we don't understand this stuff, because we're not socially-inept nerds like you chortle chortle and if we have you sit here, we'll have you say one thing, the guy from the MPAA say the opposite, and then we'll be right where we started and not know who to believe. So why bother?"

This is amazingly unacceptable. What I find particularly galling is the idea that any single opinion has the exact same weight as any other. The other thing that frustrates is that if, for some reason, you don't trust the private sector to tell things to you straight, there are countless government entities that do know how this all works and are theoretically more impartial. Have a guy from the NSA sit down with you and tell you what's up.

But they haven't done any of this. It's quite amazing that they don't even bother to do any of the song and dance just to give the impression of any due process. It's just "voters don't pay for my new kitchen, but these lovely donations do."

I don't agree.

It's quite acceptable to me for Congress not to know how technical stuff works. But they do need to pay attention to the input of their constituents and experts in the field. They also need to make sure constituents get enough information, in a timely manner, to allow them to advise Congress appropriately.

P.S. Why the endless mockery of the late Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens? (Because he said "tube" instead of "pipe"?)

Dear Congress, it may be okay to not know how the Internet works. "Math is hard!" and all that. However, your oath of office dictates that you uphold the Constitution, including and especially the Fifth Amendment.

rather than post lists of ip addresses somwhere (which, btw, won't work on virtual servers that have multiple sites on one ip) we need something the rest of the world can link to if we expect Americans to use the links on our site, so we can write for example href="

      http://uncensoredsite.de/redirect?siteiwant=thepiratebay.org

which returns http-equiv refresh; url=194.71.107.15

-- essentially a web-based, but trustworthy dns service.

there are sites like

http://baremetal.com/cgi-bin/dnsip?target=thepiratebay.org

but they're presumably just doing a lookup on a us-based nameserver, we need a site that uses an uncensored server and that provides an http redirect.

Is there to be direct blocking of ip addresses at all? Will everyone nerdy in America just be able to change their OS DNS settings to something outside the US?

Frankly, it's about time Google gets into politics, and starts throwing their weight(and money) around.

Google makes more money than the entire opposition combined. Create a internet freedom pac, fill it with a few hundred million, hire a few lobbyists, and buy back the government.

For what it is worth, Google has begun throwing its weight around in politics, although not to the tune of a few hundred million dollars:

This article [1] in the San Jose Mercury News from September reports that Google has ramped up its lobbying spending and notes that 14 lobbying firms have now listed Google as a client:

Google has also ramped up its spending on lobbying, with the company spending $3.5 million in the first half of 2011, according to U.S. Senate records -- a pace that if continued over the course of the year would boost Google's lobbying spending this year by more than a third over 2010.

Google has hired well-connected lobbyists, both on the Democratic and Republican side of the aisle, including the Gephardt Group, the firm founded by former Democratic House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt, and a firm headed by the son of Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar.

[1] Google's Schmidt to Testify Before Senate Panel

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_18938739

Replacing Satan with Lucifer isn't really going to help us in the long run. I'd prefer no corporation running the government.

Yes Congress it is perfectly OK to not know how the Internet works.

If congressmen/women can pass all manner of legislation without knowing how Medicine or Medical care works, How Car manufacturing works, How basic economics works, How Basic Science Research works, How Global climate works, etc, etc - Why should the Internet be a special case?

Face it Median Age at which Senators take office is 51* years (with a few exceptions) Ignoring all the special interests, Politics, etc etc - How many 51+ year olds (non -IT) are really comfortable with the Web?

[*]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_United_States_S...

Actually, it's 100% OK to not know how the Internet works. What is NOT OK is to have no idea, but still vote on Internet exclusive issues.

THAT is just outright stupid!

To that I'll add:

Active refusal to seek out or listen to those who actually do know how the internet works.

I know that this is slightly off topic, but can someone tell me what the site is built with? I looked at the source did not figure it out. Back on topic, I agree that no law should be passed in ignorance and with no intention of expert testimony. The way it is done now makes it seem as if they already made up their mind but they want and go through the motions to make it look like they are debating.

If you trust the response headers,

  X-Powered-By: Phusion Passenger (mod_rails/mod_rack) 2.2.10

  Server: nginx/0.7.65 + Phusion Passenger 2.2.10 (mod_rails/mod_rack)

I don't agree with this. Congress can only know so much, and I would prefer them to understand how health care works, how wars work, and how spending money works way before they understand the internet. In fact, there are dozens of things they should know before the internet.

Actually, if they just outlawed lobbyists that would be a big start.

This is why they have committees.

They don't need to understand it, but they need to know that they don't understand it and that they need to listen to people who do.

Exactly. They keep refusing to listen to the experts in the Internet infrastructure, and even though they say they don't believe them, I think they actually know they might be right, but they just don't care.

Right. I think more than the fact that they didn't know how the internet works was the arrogance that they didn't need to know how it worked or listen to/trust people who say they know how it works to make a decision.

So who do they listen to, the experts from the RIAA/MPAA, or the experts from Google?

Do you guys actually think about this stuff? If you do not know what you are making judgements on (you are the government), how do you find the right experts? You can't. You trust advisers, but everybody has an agenda, including the Universities Professors. This is not a solved problem, and anyone who thinks it is easy is wrong.

I don't know about you, but if I were writing a law about the internet, I'd probably talk to Google over the RIAA. The problem here is that they're writing a law about the internet to solve a problem somewhere else. So, instead of asking the people that are being affected, they're asking the people who they're trying to help.

But yeah, to answer your question? If it's a law about the internet, you ask Google, just as if it were a law about the Billboard Top 100, you ask the RIAA. For expert advice, at least.

Why would you choose Google? Because you are an expert in the field. Once again, you don't seem to understand what it is like for a non expert.

There is more than one congressman. Each congressman has a staff. They can specialize, delegate. The internet is not something people rarely come into contact with, it's something everyone uses every day.

As others have pointed out, it's the apathy that's the problem, moreso than the ignorance. What would people say about Congress if they didn't consult medical professionals on healthcare, the military on wars, and economists on spending before passing laws in those areas? Nothing good can come out of sticking a bunch of people in a room and asking them to vote on laws with no information as to what effects those laws can have; we may as well ask them to vote at random. (Actually, that would arguably be better, as lobbyists wouldn't have any impact. Unless, of course, they write the laws in the first place.)

I feel lobbyists write all of our laws. Our government has been slowly taken over by the lobby and congressmen are just there to make some big bucks for being the middle man. The only reason we still have congressmen is to keep up the charade. http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DgIcq...

"well meaning"

I don't think we can assume that any more. Not with every amendment being shot down with glee and contempt.

I really doubt that they are hell bent on passing this (just) because they are ignorant of how the internet works. I imagine they need to pass this in order to justify certain campaign donors.

I have been thinking about dividing Congress/Parliament into working groups focused on a specific topic instead of political parties focusing on a specific ideology for a while now.

This is what happens when you let companies contribute to the campaigns (i.e. ability to rise to power) of politicians.

The American system is broken, get with the program.

Not that this would solve _all_ the issues raised by this bill, but it's really way past time for a decentralised replacement technology for DNS.

Quite frankly they don't even know how a normal economy works, how manufacturing works, what generates real middle class job growth, how wealth is created (hint: not from insider deals via political connections). They're like captains of a ship that know nothing about how a ship is built or what makes it float.

Or whether or not giving orders to steer it directly into an iceberg is a bad idea.

I would equate democracy to a ship where the captaincy is decided by whomever promises the most goodies out of the ship's rations.

Probably a pirate ship, then:

The captain and quartermaster to receive two shares of a prize: the master, boatswain, and gunner, one share and a half, and other officers one and quarter.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_code

Or like developers that got promoted to management and have no idea how to actually manage.

Actually, if you want to continue the theme, the better analogy would be people managing developers who have no idea how to make software.

Is that a comment about Google or Politicians

"This used to be funny, but now it’s really just terrifying. We’re dealing with legislation that will completely change the face of the internet and free speech for years to come. Yet here we are, still at the mercy of underachieving Congressional know-nothings that have more in common with the slacker students sitting in the back of math class than elected representatives. The fact that some of the people charged with representing us must be dragged kicking and screaming out of their complacency on such matters is no longer endearing — it’s just pathetic and sad."

THISSSSSSS

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