7 ms·

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 increas

by 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
      I am more concerned about fake news, targeting misguided people, taking advantage of their fears/insecurities/weaknesses at speed and scale never seen before. It's having serious consequences in so many aspects of life and society. I have been working with journos and they are getting overwhelmed trying to counter/verify/investigate the tsunami of bullshit they wake up too every morning. People are living in a dreamland. This stuff is increasing exponentially across the world and the only solution is to control the flows. Delay the misguided validation people get out of their likes/upvotes/retweet counts. There is a whole professional class of people now, that spend their entire day promoting an "us vs them" mentality cause it's highly lucrative. It does not matter if they are on the left or on the right. They are causing serious irreversible damage and their influence must be checked.
      - intended 9y ago
        >control the flow Probably the nightmare authoritarian governments had to deal with, at the advent of the internet brought them to that same conclusion. And since they realized that, from their perspective, the "information" they were receiving was suspect, all they needed to do was just seed information that was also suspect - just in their favor. (thats a confusing sentence - from the perspective of a Machiavelli, the naive belief that information is freedom is broken down into a more fine tuned model of information, delivery, reception, uptake and understanding. Their realization is that you can use the internet to hack people, instead of having the internet just hack their regime)
        ms22 9y ago
        > just in their favor It's a fools game. When everyone does it, and everyone is doing it, no one wins. One day Obama thinks he has mastered the hack. Another day Trump does. End of the day, there are no great outcomes. Just herds of "hacked minds" stampeding and crashing into one another. What we will get, if this keeps on is more Vegas type shootouts as more people loose their minds.
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.

by fny 9y ago

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
    I am more concerned about fake news, targeting misguided people, taking advantage of their fears/insecurities/weaknesses at speed and scale never seen before. It's having serious consequences in so many aspects of life and society. I have been working with journos and they are getting overwhelmed trying to counter/verify/investigate the tsunami of bullshit they wake up too every morning. People are living in a dreamland. This stuff is increasing exponentially across the world and the only solution is to control the flows. Delay the misguided validation people get out of their likes/upvotes/retweet counts. There is a whole professional class of people now, that spend their entire day promoting an "us vs them" mentality cause it's highly lucrative. It does not matter if they are on the left or on the right. They are causing serious irreversible damage and their influence must be checked.
    - intended 9y ago
      >control the flow Probably the nightmare authoritarian governments had to deal with, at the advent of the internet brought them to that same conclusion. And since they realized that, from their perspective, the "information" they were receiving was suspect, all they needed to do was just seed information that was also suspect - just in their favor. (thats a confusing sentence - from the perspective of a Machiavelli, the naive belief that information is freedom is broken down into a more fine tuned model of information, delivery, reception, uptake and understanding. Their realization is that you can use the internet to hack people, instead of having the internet just hack their regime)
      - ms22 9y ago
        > just in their favor It's a fools game. When everyone does it, and everyone is doing it, no one wins. One day Obama thinks he has mastered the hack. Another day Trump does. End of the day, there are no great outcomes. Just herds of "hacked minds" stampeding and crashing into one another. What we will get, if this keeps on is more Vegas type shootouts as more people loose their minds.

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.