White House Names Dr. Ed Felten as Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer
whitehouse.gov
whitehouse.gov
Anyway, congrats(?) to Prof. Felten. Here's to hoping he can make a difference.
(I know, because I worked there for a year)
If the gov had to excluded Tech people who didn't fit this profile they wouldn't be able to find anyone left to recruit.
Down vote the truth.
If you willingly work for those who torture and murder innocent people you are not a good person, sorry for all those out there who dont like to hear the truth.
I am not claiming that this is justification. I do not think it is right or just. But I will defend the fact that on the other side of torture is expediency and quality of information, which America benefits from. This is not something that justifies the actions in the face of morals. But it is a real world fact.
If there are no incentives to torture, to assassinate, to surveil, to colonialize, to propagandize - is your claim that these things are done out of pure unadulterated evil, wrong done for its own sake? That they are not done for their benefits, despite and in the face of their immorality?
Americans benefited and continue to benefit from America's torture, rendition, murder, assassination, surveillance, propaganda, colonialization, etc in real terms. Again, this doesn't mean it was a good or moral thing to do.
At this point I'm willing to believe that torture by US (or anyone else for that matter) operatives is carried out for revenge or sadistic purposes only.
And 'Americans' as a whole do not benefit from these things. A wealthy and influential elite however, do.
The main objection is to your belief that morally repugnant actions must benefit the American public (and their de facto consent). Neither of those statements hold. There is a long tradition of those with power and no accountability doing many vile things even when it's obviously counterproductive or there is no greater benefit.
Without corrective feedback, political/personal incentives often misalign with larger social good, and there are few corrective measures that can be taken. Just because there is short-term benefit to some does not mean it's any good for the American public. One only needs to look at the history of CIA operations and blowback to see that played out over and over. Even when not explicitly clandestine, these things can flow from pure economic logic - one only needs to follow the development of the military or prison industrial complexes to see that in action.
I'll also take exception to your description of torture. Any reading on the effectiveness of torture will show consensus that not only is it not an effectiveness information collection method, it also makes future collection more difficult both from the source and in strategic/game theoretic terms. The costs far outweigh the benefits.
Torture is great for getting things you want to hear, whether they are accurate or not, which goes a long way towards explaining its use. That and those misaligned personal incentives. And the banality of evil.
Regarding getting the intelligence you 'want' out of torture - we saw that in action as recently as the start of the Iraq war when tortured informants, under duress, gave intelligence (unreliable of course), that the Bush administration wanted to hear - Iraq and Bin Laden were both connected to the 9/11 attacks. This was used, even though the CIA warned the administration that the intelligence wasn't actionable, as some of the key evidence used to justify the war in Iraq that the Administration wanted to engage in anyway.
But from what I can tell and have read, torture is quite effective when there is a means of verifying specifics (location of hideouts, numbers of people, names of those in certain roles, dates of events), which our intelligence apparatus does have in some capacity. No intelligence information is without bias/counterintelligence/deception and in fact all HUMINT (even honest and helpful ones) - intelligence agencies know this most of all and have mechanisms to counter them.
I agree we should be skeptical of torture for a number of reasons. And as other have said, "that torture is effective is KGB argument." Effectiveness is not a justification anyway. But it is my understanding that torture, when used properly, can be effective. Where my belief may not have very good support is probably here. I believe that broadly, the use of torture by America is effective use of torture.
Since it would be naive to suggest that there aren't those in public office or employed by the government who engage in morally dubious behavior, wouldn't it make sense to want more sane, rational, and "benevolent" people working there as well to balance it out?
The idea that nobody should work for the feds or the state because others in power engage in bad behavior would imply that we should just give up and leave it to the "bad guys".
I think that human nature means there will always be either evil or ineffectual individuals in positions of power but this just means the rest of us owe it to ourselves and the rest of our countrymen to push for better options...to stack the deck back in our favor as it were.
Look beyond your self serving and hypocritical narrative, would you equally defend the bureaucratics under Stalin, what of an IT worker for ISIS?
I'm all for improving a system and government which has faults. However it is maddening to watch people continue to lend legitimacy to a government that tortures and murders innocent people -- what is your red line, genocide? The US is quickly approaching in the 21st century that marker as well when applied to Muslims.
I recommend you reflect on your moral views since they currently support the aiding of torturers and murders.
We are doing a deductive (and therefore flawed) analysis of benefits and costs.
Case in point: societies also (feel they) benefit from genocide. This doesn't make it right. But we're not talking about right. We're talking about gain and advantage.
We could have a really interesting conversation about right and wrong. But that's not what we're talking about in this tree of the conversation. So nothing you are saying, as interesting as it is, addresses the conversation points.
My bet is that this is simply Obama showing one of his better strengths. Namely that he is able to assemble a diverse team of people with different perspectives, let them all have their positions heard, and then Obama makes the decisions and is able to control the politics. Obama has never looked for yes men, and his team is unlikely to be prone to groupthink.
The result of this is an effective executive that can get things done. You may not like those things. But he is good on executing on his ideas.
So Ed will get a chance to explain why Hollywood does not need copyright strengthened. However if he fails to change Obama's opinion, he won't be in a position to set policy on that issue. (Given Joe Biden's involvement, I doubt that Obama will budge on that.) But he will be in a position to point out the technical flaws in specific bad proposals and keep Obama from proposing anything which is obviously impossible.
Obama knows his hands are tied by the lobbying efforts of powerful interests that are so strong he can't act as he wishes.
Hiring Felton sounds like he wants someone on his team that can come up with the rhetoric that he'll need to be able to match his actions with his words.
On the other hand, I have no idea how much influence this role actually has; we'll see how it goes over the next few years.
On balance, I feel comfortable classifying DRM systems as "anti-technology": they prevent the further advancement of technology past the vision of what the authors of the DRM system could think of and deigned to allow. More importantly, laws and policies that enforce DRM are anti-technology.
But in any case, a clarification then: against DRM enforced by law, such as via the DMCA, or enshrined into "standards" that are then used by governmental entities. DRM enforced solely by technology, without the backing of laws like the DMCA, is not necessarily a governmental issue, though it's still something to fight against.
Once our government loses its technical ignorance, we won't have to use Hanlon's Razor to excuse them.
The people who have the political cloud and the numbers to drive policy aren't necessarily the ones with the best understanding of the issues.
cloud-based politics? Not yet. It's still clout-based ;)
Act as a stepping stone to bigger positions in the private sector.
The appointment of Shaarik Zafar for example - they needed someone who would be on board with mass propaganda of the Middle East:
https://minerva.dtic.mil/doc/samplewp-Lieberman.pdf
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/07/senators-want-...
http://csis.org/multimedia/combating-violent-extremism
http://csis.org/files/publication/131011_Douglas_EngagingMus...
Or take Sunstein's appointment after his work on systems of domestic 'guidance' of public discussion through 'nudging' and 'choice architecture' through the study of behavioral economics.
It's less of a crowning as it is bringing in those who can transform, with leadership, the mechanisms and operating procedures of a department.
* To provide effective leadership of Federal Government efforts to develop and promote electronic Government services and processes by establishing an Administrator of a new Office of Electronic Government within the Office of Management and Budget.
* To promote use of the Internet and other information technologies to provide increased opportunities for citizen participation in Government.
* To promote inter-agency collaboration in providing electronic Government services, where this collaboration would improve the service to citizens by integrating related functions, and in the use of internal electronic
* Government processes, where this collaboration would improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the processes.
* To improve the ability of the Government to achieve agency missions and program performance goals. To promote the use of the Internet and emerging technologies within and across Government agencies to provide citizen-centric Government information and services.
* To reduce costs and burdens for businesses and other Government entities.
* To promote better informed decision making by policy makers.
* To promote access to high quality Government information and services across multiple channels. To make the Federal Government more transparent and accountable.
* To transform agency operations by utilizing, where appropriate, best practices from public and private sector organizations.
* To provide enhanced access to Government information and services in a manner consistent with laws regarding protection of personal privacy, national security, records retention, access for persons with disabilities, and other relevant law
( lifted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Government_Act_of_2002#Provis... )
But I do not know. Agreed. These are good questions.
True, hundreds of IT departments. But in a central role there is now the US Digital Service (created last year):
Does anyone know where he stands on public policy with regard to IP law, civil law, domestic surveillance and domestic propaganda?
[1] https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall13/cos597G/
I will say broadly that their coverage of information sharing, surveillance law, and intellectual property is rounded down to their specific issues and narrow perspective - and these issues aren't necessarily one-for-one mappings to "what's best for the internet/civility".
One example that comes to mind was their coverage of the recent Obama Administration Executive Order 13694 [1][2] where they dropped the international purpose and nature of the order entirely, as if the sanctions weren't directed towards, and enforced by law, at actors in China and Russia (and Iran and smaller players) overseas.
Following Snowden - who truly did show that the NSA was surveiling hundreds of millions of Americans - the EFF's speculatory, alarmist and misleading coverage of national cybersecurity and civil rights confused and angered a confused and angry group of people we would rather have engaged in deliberate and reasonable debate. Namely, despite how different in kind, scope, purpose and method EO 13694 is, the EFF reported on it with the tone of the Snowden disclosures and its audience associated the two.
I have spoken, too, with the EFF - and was disappointed both by their their inability to use PGP (even after suggesting it to others) and the way they engaged with the material I provided them. [I sent them evidence of a backdoor in popular software and an analysis of a possible convenient backdoor location for a popular hardware brand; they quietly acknowledged these reports but AFAICT did nothing with them - as a comparison when I sent similar material, using PGP, to cryptome they were immediately published.]
I should not have been so disappointed by what they did with the materials I sent to them: I did not understand at the time the scope of the EFF - that even their published matrix of trustworthy communication software was a stretch of their operating scope.
So this isn't to rag so very much on the EFF. I think they have a role in advocacy and journalism and the legal landscape. I'm just not willing to invest my full and unquestioning faith in the reports of any interest group - for even those with good intentions are not infallible.
[Anecdotes only today, I'm afraid. :)]
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/whitehouses-new-execut...
[2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/04/01/execu...
Very anti-surveillance. Did a lot of work finding vulnerabilities in voting machines!