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Total FUD. Not sure what you mean by “free range hacking,” but surely it has little to do with the regulations targeting activities of multinational conglomerat

Total FUD. Not sure what you mean by “free range hacking,” but surely it has little to do with the regulations targeting activities of multinational conglomerates (Facebook), or any possible regulations for selling devices. You’re free to do whatever you want on your own devices. I don’t see how reasonable regulation meant to prevent tragedy of the commons (the only real application of regulation) will infringe on your ability to continue “free range hacking.”

closeparen 9y ago
Facebook is doing whatever it wants on its own devices (servers), that’s the whole problem. Regulation is likely to apply to anyone engaged in similar activities (providing interactive services over the internet) although we can certainly dream that it’ll come with a carve-out for small scale operators.
fny 9y ago
To clarify, I have no issue with the government requiring companies to disclose who has paid for advertising, the issue that I have is that its becoming increasingly prudent and attractive the government to regulate how we compute and how we respect private data, and if our voices aren't part of that conversation, we're screwed. Also, I take it you've never worked in a heavily regulated industry. It blows. While regulation is a good thing (PHI protection), it definitely has a chilling effect on innovation, and at times results in ill-informed policy (security via obscurity; pointless protective measures from know-nothing management.)
- confounded 9y ago
  Our voices should be part of the conversation. I completely understand the fear about government regulation with respect to how we compute. For example Section 1201 of the DMCA, the CFAA both scare me, as do periodical “nerd harder” debates about backdoored encryption. But what is it that you’d like to do with people’s private data that you’re worried will be prevented? There are loads of apps right now that exfiltrate your address book, for example, to gather what you know about private individuals, without their knowledge or consent, to be exploited in an unregulated marketplace of personal data. Is that good? Do you think he EFF think it is, or the FSF?
  - fny 9y ago
    I believe people should have the right to whatever they want to do with their own data and no one elses. When I am about to engage with your service and you tell me you're going to mine my data to sell me things or even improve my healthcare, it should be my decision not the governments. Much of the internet today crosses this boundary: when I came to your website, I never authorized you to allow Facebook to track me with that stupid like button. I also disagree with your right to post pictures of me on Facebook or to share my email address and phone number with that new-fangled contacts app you just downloaded without my permission. However, I do believe you have the right to hand your own data to Google in exchange for services like Gmail and Google Maps. Furthermore, I believe in a consumers right to sue if they are harmed by a companies misuse of data (Equifax). Note these policies are very consumer oriented (i.e. it's illegal to put Google Analytics on your site without notifying your users.) What I'm very worried about is when a policy ends inadvertently fostering centralization. For example, the government might require you to store private user information with one of a set of vetted companies to prevent another Equifax situation. A better policy might be to allow consumers to sue firms for damages resulting from negligence and prevent firms from forcing consumers into binding arbitration. > But what is it that you’d like to do with people’s private data that you’re worried will be prevented? In my experience, medical innovation has stagnated because of unreasonable data protection on the part of firms in reaction to government policy. For example, I've had execs get cold feet on a project that would clearly save lives and improve the bottom-line because there's a perceived security loss. While there are good arguments for these protections, my only point is that regulation never comes for free: efficiency is inevitably lost somewhere, and you need to be comfortable with the trade-off.
    - adamsea 9y ago
      > What I'm very worried about is when a policy ends inadvertently fostering centralization. But massive centralization in the private sector (Google, Amazon, Facebook) doesn't concern you? Or you don't think it's the purpose of government to regulate that?
      - ms22 9y ago
- narrator 9y ago
  The regulation is going to get really bad with self-driving cars. There are so many bad things you can do with an autonomous vehicle. Regulators will demand that code must be carefully vetted by government agencies before it can be installed on any of these platforms. Advanced robots will likely be in the same situation. The trend for drones has been foreshadowing this with more and more locking down of who is allowed to program them and what they are allowed to do.
  - nradov 9y ago
    Unlikely. Regulators really aren't interested in doing code auditing. They don't have the technical ability to find code problems, and the code by itself (separate from hardware and data) is mostly meaningless. They're more likely to impose an additional functional safety test suite on all autonomous vehicle manufacturers, which would be a good thing.
- nradov 9y ago
  In what sense does PHI protection chill innovation? Health IT seems to be one of the more vibrant and innovative sectors right now.
  - fny 9y ago
    I work in Health IT, and I'll tell you the industry is at least a decade behind every other industry in part because of how paranoid CIOs are about letting researchers play with their data, even when the use cases are perfectly legal. The reason Health IT seems vibrant is because health systems are only now waking up from their stupor.* Also many providers still avoid the cloud (despite proven PHI compliance) and run their own inefficient, in-house server farms with thousands of tech staff because of this irrational fear. This causes a number of problems: - It assumes a hospital system is better at infrastructure security and maintenance than Amazon or Microsoft - Server costs per project are stupidly expensive. A VM that goes for $10/mo in the cloud ends up costing $200/mo to whatever department that foots the bill. - You can't deploy a VM or app with a click. Instead you need to file a demand, then someone needs to make sure they have the resources available, then someone needs to manually spin up a VM for you... - You can't build services that dynamically scale: this ends up being a problem for computationally expensive ML work - Tech spending on a hospital is overwhelmingly spend on maintenance and uptime rather than innovation or purchasing solutions I could go on forever. * This is also complicated by the fact that the industry isn't really incentivized to improve your health. Why run a predictive model and intervene to reduce your need for a stent when I make money from that operation?
    - greenyoda 9y ago
      "This is also complicated by the fact that the industry isn't really incentivized to improve your health. Why run a predictive model and intervene to reduce your need for a stent when I make money from that operation?" The healthcare industry has two sides: the providers and the insurers. A hospital may not have the incentive to steer you away from unnecessary surgery, but your insurance company definitely does, since they'll be the ones paying for it. And your insurance company may have even more information to base its models on, since it knows about all the procedures you've had at any provider. So I'd expect insurance companies to be pioneering this kind of health-improvement software, not hospitals.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > if our voices aren't part of that conversation, we're screwed Have you ever called your Congressperson or U.S. Senator about your views on this? I have, and I'm usually the only one in my Manhattan Congressional district talking about tech issues.
- underwoodley 9y ago
  I take it your tax money has never been used to repair the widespread damage to society caused by a too lightly regulated industry. It blows.
wolco 9y ago
The problem is you do not own anything you are only given a license to use in a certain manner.
smsm42 9y ago
Reasonable regulation, by definition, is reasonable. But absolutely nothing guarantees that the actual regulation that will be enacted will be in any way reasonable. If anything, experience suggests that the regulation will be written by people who have very shallow grasp of the topic they regulate and are driven more by misconceptions and latest headlines than rational consideration of the costs and benefits of regulation and decision taken only after benefits clearly exceed the costs. In the best case. In worst case, they'll be just acting as a proxy of some special interest trying to get some money flowing their way. Given that, any regulation should be assumed to be horrible at the start, and only with overwhelming proof should it be deemed to be "reasonable", and even then should be under constant suspicion - since regulations tend to change, and away from public eye and scrutiny, usually not for the best.
- jorvi 9y ago
  .. what? Have you not followed anything the EU has done? They have abolished roaming within 28 countries. They have created a solid net neutrality law, upon which members (of the EU) are allowed to expand but not reduce. They have stared down the likes of Microsoft, Intel, and soon Google. That the USA does not have an effective government does not mean the rest of the world is the same.
  - ahartmetz 9y ago
    Well, regulatory capture usually works best for domestic companies. The EU is just "lucky" to have few important IT companies. Attitudes are of course also different. I am not sure what is the larger contribution.
  - smsm42 9y ago
    > They have stared down the likes of Microsoft, Intel, and soon Google You are saying it like there's something good in extorting money from foreign companies because we own the territory, so damn it if you're going to do business here without paying us protection money. Likes of Microsoft, Intel and Google created the Internet as we know it today. Surely, they are not ideal and have their faults, but they has also been a huge force of improvement and technological advancement. EU has been nothing but sand in the gears in the meantime. When IE seemed to be monopoly, EU did very little to deal with it. When Firefox and Chrome came, IE is no more. See for yourself who is effective here and who is money-sucking, foot-dragging, obtuse and overweight bureaucracy. > That the USA does not have an effective government does not mean the rest of the world is the same. USA has way over-active, busybody, annoying and wasteful government. But compared to euro-bureaucrats which obsessively regulate everything from size of holes in cheese to search engines, they are indeed much better. Thanks for reminding about it.
tdy721 9y ago
We are not free to provide services to other devices on our own devices. We can "do whatever we want" if we buy into the consumption paradigm. If we start to distribute content, we find ourselves liable... I really hope I'm wrong here. But try installing an HTTP server on your phone. The network does not provide the required environment to make this possible. Why? It's not the hardware.
- tdy721 9y ago
  It's not the government either...
- cabaalis 9y ago
  > We are not free to provide services to other devices on our own devices. Of course you are. I'm speaking from an American perspective, but this is the very foundation of liberty. > The network does not provide the required environment to make this possible. Why? It's not the hardware. I do not own the network that my phone operates on, and the people that do have decided to control what they allow on it. I can start my own network and attempt to compete.
  - gowld 9y ago
    In USA those networks were built largely by government granted monopolies to right of way
- chatmasta 9y ago
  You can run an http server on your phone. If it’s not reachable from the internet, the problem is the limited number of IPv4 addresses, not some conspiracy against computing freedom.
altstar 9y ago
What do you mean by 'tragedy of the commons' in regards to regulating Facebook?
- chatmasta 9y ago
  I was referring to the sort of IoT regulation discussed in the linked Schneier blog post.
bigger_cheese 9y ago
This may be a touch hyperbolic but regulation has positively impacted things like lead based paint, asbestos, DDT, CFC's etc. People opposed to regulation somehow expect companies to "do the right thing" unfortunately history provides many examples of companies behaving like bad actors as long as it is in their financial interests to do so.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- amelius 9y ago
  Also, regulations allowed competition on the telephone networks, which is the reason why you can now call anybody, and not just people at your provider.

closeparen 9y ago

Facebook is doing whatever it wants on its own devices (servers), that’s the whole problem. Regulation is likely to apply to anyone engaged in similar activities (providing interactive services over the internet) although we can certainly dream that it’ll come with a carve-out for small scale operators.

fny 9y ago

To clarify, I have no issue with the government requiring companies to disclose who has paid for advertising, the issue that I have is that its becoming increasingly prudent and attractive the government to regulate how we compute and how we respect private data, and if our voices aren't part of that conversation, we're screwed. Also, I take it you've never worked in a heavily regulated industry. It blows. While regulation is a good thing (PHI protection), it definitely has a chilling effect on innovation, and at times results in ill-informed policy (security via obscurity; pointless protective measures from know-nothing management.)

confounded 9y ago
Our voices should be part of the conversation. I completely understand the fear about government regulation with respect to how we compute. For example Section 1201 of the DMCA, the CFAA both scare me, as do periodical “nerd harder” debates about backdoored encryption. But what is it that you’d like to do with people’s private data that you’re worried will be prevented? There are loads of apps right now that exfiltrate your address book, for example, to gather what you know about private individuals, without their knowledge or consent, to be exploited in an unregulated marketplace of personal data. Is that good? Do you think he EFF think it is, or the FSF?
- fny 9y ago
  I believe people should have the right to whatever they want to do with their own data and no one elses. When I am about to engage with your service and you tell me you're going to mine my data to sell me things or even improve my healthcare, it should be my decision not the governments. Much of the internet today crosses this boundary: when I came to your website, I never authorized you to allow Facebook to track me with that stupid like button. I also disagree with your right to post pictures of me on Facebook or to share my email address and phone number with that new-fangled contacts app you just downloaded without my permission. However, I do believe you have the right to hand your own data to Google in exchange for services like Gmail and Google Maps. Furthermore, I believe in a consumers right to sue if they are harmed by a companies misuse of data (Equifax). Note these policies are very consumer oriented (i.e. it's illegal to put Google Analytics on your site without notifying your users.) What I'm very worried about is when a policy ends inadvertently fostering centralization. For example, the government might require you to store private user information with one of a set of vetted companies to prevent another Equifax situation. A better policy might be to allow consumers to sue firms for damages resulting from negligence and prevent firms from forcing consumers into binding arbitration. > But what is it that you’d like to do with people’s private data that you’re worried will be prevented? In my experience, medical innovation has stagnated because of unreasonable data protection on the part of firms in reaction to government policy. For example, I've had execs get cold feet on a project that would clearly save lives and improve the bottom-line because there's a perceived security loss. While there are good arguments for these protections, my only point is that regulation never comes for free: efficiency is inevitably lost somewhere, and you need to be comfortable with the trade-off.
  - adamsea 9y ago
    > What I'm very worried about is when a policy ends inadvertently fostering centralization. But massive centralization in the private sector (Google, Amazon, Facebook) doesn't concern you? Or you don't think it's the purpose of government to regulate that?
    - ms22 9y ago
narrator 9y ago
The regulation is going to get really bad with self-driving cars. There are so many bad things you can do with an autonomous vehicle. Regulators will demand that code must be carefully vetted by government agencies before it can be installed on any of these platforms. Advanced robots will likely be in the same situation. The trend for drones has been foreshadowing this with more and more locking down of who is allowed to program them and what they are allowed to do.
- nradov 9y ago
  Unlikely. Regulators really aren't interested in doing code auditing. They don't have the technical ability to find code problems, and the code by itself (separate from hardware and data) is mostly meaningless. They're more likely to impose an additional functional safety test suite on all autonomous vehicle manufacturers, which would be a good thing.
nradov 9y ago
In what sense does PHI protection chill innovation? Health IT seems to be one of the more vibrant and innovative sectors right now.
- fny 9y ago
  I work in Health IT, and I'll tell you the industry is at least a decade behind every other industry in part because of how paranoid CIOs are about letting researchers play with their data, even when the use cases are perfectly legal. The reason Health IT seems vibrant is because health systems are only now waking up from their stupor.* Also many providers still avoid the cloud (despite proven PHI compliance) and run their own inefficient, in-house server farms with thousands of tech staff because of this irrational fear. This causes a number of problems: - It assumes a hospital system is better at infrastructure security and maintenance than Amazon or Microsoft - Server costs per project are stupidly expensive. A VM that goes for $10/mo in the cloud ends up costing $200/mo to whatever department that foots the bill. - You can't deploy a VM or app with a click. Instead you need to file a demand, then someone needs to make sure they have the resources available, then someone needs to manually spin up a VM for you... - You can't build services that dynamically scale: this ends up being a problem for computationally expensive ML work - Tech spending on a hospital is overwhelmingly spend on maintenance and uptime rather than innovation or purchasing solutions I could go on forever. * This is also complicated by the fact that the industry isn't really incentivized to improve your health. Why run a predictive model and intervene to reduce your need for a stent when I make money from that operation?
  - greenyoda 9y ago
    "This is also complicated by the fact that the industry isn't really incentivized to improve your health. Why run a predictive model and intervene to reduce your need for a stent when I make money from that operation?" The healthcare industry has two sides: the providers and the insurers. A hospital may not have the incentive to steer you away from unnecessary surgery, but your insurance company definitely does, since they'll be the ones paying for it. And your insurance company may have even more information to base its models on, since it knows about all the procedures you've had at any provider. So I'd expect insurance companies to be pioneering this kind of health-improvement software, not hospitals.
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> if our voices aren't part of that conversation, we're screwed Have you ever called your Congressperson or U.S. Senator about your views on this? I have, and I'm usually the only one in my Manhattan Congressional district talking about tech issues.
underwoodley 9y ago
I take it your tax money has never been used to repair the widespread damage to society caused by a too lightly regulated industry. It blows.

wolco 9y ago

The problem is you do not own anything you are only given a license to use in a certain manner.

smsm42 9y ago

Reasonable regulation, by definition, is reasonable. But absolutely nothing guarantees that the actual regulation that will be enacted will be in any way reasonable. If anything, experience suggests that the regulation will be written by people who have very shallow grasp of the topic they regulate and are driven more by misconceptions and latest headlines than rational consideration of the costs and benefits of regulation and decision taken only after benefits clearly exceed the costs. In the best case. In worst case, they'll be just acting as a proxy of some special interest trying to get some money flowing their way. Given that, any regulation should be assumed to be horrible at the start, and only with overwhelming proof should it be deemed to be "reasonable", and even then should be under constant suspicion - since regulations tend to change, and away from public eye and scrutiny, usually not for the best.

jorvi 9y ago
.. what? Have you not followed anything the EU has done? They have abolished roaming within 28 countries. They have created a solid net neutrality law, upon which members (of the EU) are allowed to expand but not reduce. They have stared down the likes of Microsoft, Intel, and soon Google. That the USA does not have an effective government does not mean the rest of the world is the same.
- ahartmetz 9y ago
  Well, regulatory capture usually works best for domestic companies. The EU is just "lucky" to have few important IT companies. Attitudes are of course also different. I am not sure what is the larger contribution.
- smsm42 9y ago
  > They have stared down the likes of Microsoft, Intel, and soon Google You are saying it like there's something good in extorting money from foreign companies because we own the territory, so damn it if you're going to do business here without paying us protection money. Likes of Microsoft, Intel and Google created the Internet as we know it today. Surely, they are not ideal and have their faults, but they has also been a huge force of improvement and technological advancement. EU has been nothing but sand in the gears in the meantime. When IE seemed to be monopoly, EU did very little to deal with it. When Firefox and Chrome came, IE is no more. See for yourself who is effective here and who is money-sucking, foot-dragging, obtuse and overweight bureaucracy. > That the USA does not have an effective government does not mean the rest of the world is the same. USA has way over-active, busybody, annoying and wasteful government. But compared to euro-bureaucrats which obsessively regulate everything from size of holes in cheese to search engines, they are indeed much better. Thanks for reminding about it.

tdy721 9y ago

We are not free to provide services to other devices on our own devices. We can "do whatever we want" if we buy into the consumption paradigm. If we start to distribute content, we find ourselves liable... I really hope I'm wrong here. But try installing an HTTP server on your phone. The network does not provide the required environment to make this possible. Why? It's not the hardware.

tdy721 9y ago
It's not the government either...
cabaalis 9y ago
> We are not free to provide services to other devices on our own devices. Of course you are. I'm speaking from an American perspective, but this is the very foundation of liberty. > The network does not provide the required environment to make this possible. Why? It's not the hardware. I do not own the network that my phone operates on, and the people that do have decided to control what they allow on it. I can start my own network and attempt to compete.
- gowld 9y ago
  In USA those networks were built largely by government granted monopolies to right of way
chatmasta 9y ago
You can run an http server on your phone. If it’s not reachable from the internet, the problem is the limited number of IPv4 addresses, not some conspiracy against computing freedom.

altstar 9y ago

What do you mean by 'tragedy of the commons' in regards to regulating Facebook?

chatmasta 9y ago
I was referring to the sort of IoT regulation discussed in the linked Schneier blog post.

bigger_cheese 9y ago

This may be a touch hyperbolic but regulation has positively impacted things like lead based paint, asbestos, DDT, CFC's etc. People opposed to regulation somehow expect companies to "do the right thing" unfortunately history provides many examples of companies behaving like bad actors as long as it is in their financial interests to do so.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
amelius 9y ago
Also, regulations allowed competition on the telephone networks, which is the reason why you can now call anybody, and not just people at your provider.