Another amazing talk from CCC (2011):
"Cory Doctorow: The coming war on general computation" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYqkU1y0AYc
That one really opened my eyes.
"Cory Doctorow: The coming war on general computation" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYqkU1y0AYc
That one really opened my eyes.
Jesselyn Radack, Thomas Drake & William Binney, "Enemies of the State: What Happens When Telling the Truth about Secret US Government Power Becomes a Crime": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDM3MqHln8U
Cory Doctorow: "The Coming Civil War over General-purpose Computing" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbYXBJOFgeI
This talk assumes we have won the War On General Computation (which seems likely, if we give it enough time. The tech used to win that war (or, "the tech society has to learn to live with, because it's not going away") will bring up some nasty sociological questions as it gets applied to other areas.
The current NSA mess is probably the first skirmish in that Civil War. It gets even nastier when you start adding in, say, medical devices:
* Can the NSA spy on the signal to your cochlear implant?
* What about if it was paid for by an insurance company or a bank, and you haven't paid it off yet - can that company give permission like AT&T does with phone records?
* What about when some company finally gets the "clever" idea to subsidize the hearing-aids so the poor have access to them - if they agree to listen to an advert every hour that you can't shut off.
* Oh, wait, you break the contract by figuring some technical way around the ads? Does that mean the bank can "repo" your hearing?
No great answers to these questions, unfortunately, but I agree with Doctorow that we need to start finding those answers NOW, because the questions are quickly becoming reality.