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A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley

123 points by vogon_laureate 9y ago

leggomylibro 9y ago
I think that a better look at this subject is a recent piece in The Atlantic titled, "Are Facebook, Twitter, and Google American Companies?" https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/11/are-facebook-twitter-and-google-american-companies/544670/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/11/are-f... tl;dr, this back-and-forth is unsettling to a Federalist: >In response to a tough line of questions from Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Twitter’s acting general counsel, Sean Edgett, gave two conflicting answers within a couple of minutes. Cotton pressed Edgett on Twitter’s decision to cut off the CIA’s access to alerts derived from the Twitter-data fire hose, which is provided through a company it partially owns, Dataminr, while the companies reportedly still allowed the Russian media outlet RT to continue using the service for some time. >“Do you see an equivalency between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Russian intelligence services?,” Cotton asked. >“We’re not offering our service for surveillance to any government,” Edgett responded. >“So you will apply the same policy to our intelligence community that you’d apply to an adversary’s intelligence services?,” Cotton asked again. >“As a global company, we have to apply our policies consistently,” Edgett replied. “We’re trying to be unbiased around the world.” >Cotton then turned to WikiLeaks, which the Intelligence Committee has designated as a nonstate hostile intelligence agency, asking why it had been operating “uninhibited” on Twitter. >“Is it bias to side with America over our adversaries?,” Cotton demanded. >“We’re trying to be unbiased around the world,” Edgett said. “We’re obviously an American company and care deeply about the issues we’re talking about today, but as it relates to WikiLeaks or other accounts like it, we make sure they are in compliance with our policies just like every other account.” I guess it is kind of cyberpunk-y. All we need now is for US Marshals to lay siege to some SF headquarters, facing contracted PMCs denying the validity of their warrants.
- sanbor 9y ago
  This is the second time that I read that WikiLeaks is classified as "hostile intelligence agency". Isn't the purpose of intelligence to gather information to gain advantage over adversaries? It sounds to me like a redundant term like "hostile military". And BTW WikiLeaks leaks are public so all other intelligence agencies and citizens can learn while state agencies try to keep things obscure as much as possible. Who's hostile?
  - emacsgifs 9y ago
    The "hostile" framing device is a fairly naked attempt to build an ongoing narrative. I doubt it needs pointing out that the reason WikiLeaks exists is because many (most, all?) organs of "public " service are anything but.
  - skybrian 9y ago
    It doesn't seem that hard to understand? In the context of a U.S. Congressional hearing, "hostile" probably means "hostile to the U.S."
    - sanbor 9y ago
      Good point! But depending on your interests/POW you could consider NSA as "hostile to the U.S." given they're spying on their own citizens.
  - rtpg 9y ago
    If an American spy plane showed up over the Soviet Union, the plane would get shot at. If an American spy plane showed up over France, they wouldn't get shot at. Of course there's an understanding that intelligence agencies are all ultimately looking at everything, but there's a degree of cooperation. Even in the current state of affairs Russian and American intel agencies work together on anti-terrorism stuff. However, if the other group is clearly actively against you, then it's harder to work with them. It's safe to say at this point, given the evidence out ther, that WikiLeaks does work with an objective of embarassing American interests.
    - 9y ago
- pmoriarty 9y ago
  "I guess it is kind of cyberpunk-y. All we need now is for US Marshals to lay siege to some SF headquarters, facing contracted PMCs denying the validity of their warrants." More surreal things have happened... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._United_States_Secret_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._U...
  - leggomylibro 9y ago
    >No compensatory damages were awarded. The judge said that Steve Jackson had little involvement in SJG at the time of the raid, and the company was close to Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and that Jackson's renewed involvement in the wake of the raid had turned the company's fortunes around. Ah, the 'pockets full of fish' defense. "While my client did shove the claimant into a lake, they came out with their pockets full of fish to a net benefit. Therefore, my client is innocent."
  - rrhd 9y ago
    That would put them on par with the right wing crazies who pop up from time to time. Those guys end up dead, imprisoned, on watch lists, etc...
- dcow 9y ago
  But Kumail's point isn't about whether these companies are patriotic, he's saying they lack any ethical framework of operation and presumes it's because people aren't challenging each other with ethical questions preferring to condone any behavior in favor of flexing engineering muscles and proving that, "yes, they can". I don't think it's unrelated, and perhaps your point is that it's doubly clear no one has thought about ethics when you examine Sean's contradictory responses. But I think the lack of patriotism is more of an example. Anyway, at the end of the day we're all people and we are the ones that depend on these companies and services. If you don't believe a company is behaving ethically, stop using their services. Make a damn sacrifice and live your virtue. Sure maybe we could argue that to some extent and in certain cases some companies have crossed the line and are harmfully exploiting customers to the extent that there should be legal ramifications, but the government does not exist to provide you an ethically sterile society. It exist to maintain and protect basic human rights--at least in the US as far as the formal documentation is concerned. As far as I can gather based on armchair political philosophy over drinks.. most people don't actually care about privacy and rank convenience or safety (at the expense of said privacy) higher in their priorities. I find that unfortunate but at the same time I still haven't worked up the courage to totally disband my Facebook account and switch completely over to my proton mail accounts. So it's complicated. If we could all agree that privacy is a fundamental human right which you would think would be supported by the constitution in the US then, we should actually act/rally to legislate such as other countries have done. Yet at the same time because these companies operate globally, they serve a diverse spectrum of users who may or may not share the same political and social values as we do in the US. This extends to the very employees who are "failing to ask the ethical questions" that Kumail can so obviously see are overlooked. This is globalization. TL;DR: they do this because they can, and they can because you let them.
  - abandonliberty 9y ago
    >TL;DR: they do this because they can, and they can because you let them. You may be passionate and well informed enough to have the strength of conviction to take appropriate action, but most people are not. Nothing will change unless you can affect the behavior of others. You will be fought every step of the way: for the company, this is a fight for survival. >they can because you let them. What does this statement reveal about your internal dialogue? You can't expect people who don't understand or who aren't involved to take action. You are delegating your responsibility. Perhaps it is good for your ego, but I can tell you how it turns out. A more appropriate statement would be, "because I let them."
- mljoe 9y ago
  >I guess it is kind of cyberpunk-y. All we need now is for US Marshals to lay siege to some SF headquarters, facing contracted PMCs denying the validity of their warrants. I think the turning point was the SOPA/PIPA thing. After that event, it felt like the tech industry seemed to collectively figure out that just through sheer technical dominance, they actually wield tons of practical political power. Possibly more then the savviest Washington insiders.
  - rrhd 9y ago
    Or when google was facing anti-trust issues and they solved them with a bit of lobbying and some promises. I'm so glad to see the tide turning. People finally waking up to the things these companies do.
- grad_ml 9y ago
  I think this was all trash talk, nothing but an attempt to intimidate. If companies are following letters of the law then it doesn't matter who thinks/interprets what. and they better know they would be challenged in court of law.
- notl4wy3r 9y ago
  I hate wikileaks, but I honestly don't see the contradiction in Twitter's behavior on this point. Perhaps they were naive on whether RT was actually an aperture of Russian intelligence services. OK. Their KYC game could use some upping. OTOH, would anyone be surprised if the CIA were paying some little hedge fund somewhere to let them piggyback on access to Twitter's feed? As far as Wikileaks' uninhibited operation goes, as far as I can tell, the CIA has not had its account banned from Twitter, just its firehose access. Does Wikileaks have access to that? What would they do with it if they did? I mean it just seems like the line of questioning is, "Hey is it fair that you let them do X and won't let us do Y?" Maybe I can't see it because my silicon valley ass has no ethics.
  - itronitron 9y ago
    the core issue is the activity focused on influencing a US election, which foreign nationals and foreign corporations are prohibited from doing [1] if Twitter cut off CIA from firehose access and then tried to sell Twitter advertising and analytic services to RT for a US election then that seems to be some poorly constructed PR staging by Twitter 1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/09/07/did-facebook-ads-traced-to-a-russian-company-violate-u-s-election-law/?utm_term=.c23313e06c61 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/09...
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  That's a pretty ridiculous conversation. No wonder the Twitter guy was confused. Neither Wikileaks nor RT are intelligence agencies. The Intelligence Committee pretending they are doesn't change that.
thomastjeffery 9y ago
The heart of the problem is that popular communication networks are centralized and unencrypted.
- tlb 9y ago
  How would you make a decentralized, encrypted twitter? How would it be better for society?
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon
  - thomastjeffery 9y ago
    It would not be Twitter. Twitter is inherently public. The issue is that people flock to public platforms to share personal data. What we need is the equivalent of Email and GPG, but actually user-friendly.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Good protocols don't cure bad ethics. Mind: I would like to see decentralisation and better encryption protections, generally, but those by themselves won't solve the problem (you still need to address ethics, rights, and power imbalances), and still leave certain of present attacks in place. David Gerard, author of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain, makes the exceedingly good point in an FT interview, that Bitcoin and Blockchain themselves are attempts to tech around the trust problem, and that this raises challenges because trust itself buys you an immense amount of efficiency. https://www.ft.com/content/61cdc5c8-370e-11e7-bce4-9023f8c0fd2e https://www.ft.com/content/61cdc5c8-370e-11e7-bce4-9023f8c0f... I'm starting to come to the view that information technology itself directly attacks* interpersonal trust, at the macro scale. I may not be articulating the argument well at this point, though I've tried: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6jqakv/communications_advances_undermine_trust/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6jqakv/communi...
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pmoriarty 9y ago
Corporations only worry about ethics if they think it'll affect their reputation or bottom line. Even then many of them are happy as long as there's public perception that they're acting ethically, even if in reality they're not.
- untog 9y ago
  Corporations, yes. But employees of those corporations, less so. As a developer making <insert ethically dubious thing here>, you could have qualms about it.
  - cyberferret 9y ago
    As an owner of a software development business, I've ejected my fair share of clients who have asked me to do ethically questionable things. But I wonder if a line employee who has to make rent every week and put food on the table can make the call. I don't know - I've always made the call myself, and informed my employees so I've never had an employee come to me with concerns about working with a particular client or on a particular project?
    - pdkl95 9y ago
      > I've ejected my fair share of clients Thank you! > a line employee who has to make rent every week Some sort of software development guild or professional association could help. Like a PE's duty to disobey their boss when a project isn't safe, explicitly defined external obligations can give the employee some power (and organizational support).
      - meej 9y ago
        Professional associations do have codes of ethics and ethics-focused committees and societies, but they don't seem to do a very good job of publicizing them, because I see comments like yours here with some regularity. Heck, I have been a member of IEEE since 1997 and yet I only learned of their Society on the Social Implications of Technology a few years ago. The Order of the Engineer, which is entirely focused on professional ethics, seems to be equally unknown.
john_teller02 9y ago
cheap tactics to gain some press time ..
- oblib 9y ago
  Him and Elon Musk, and many others as well get caught in that aspersion you just cast out there. Way too many for you to haul in.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  TBH it's the press who needs him more than he needs the press. If anything, I see this article as a cheap trick to write something generating pageviews and ad revenue.
transitorykris 9y ago
I love Stafford Beer's "The purpose of a system is what it does" here. It separates fact from intention when reasoning about systems. The engineers that Kumail catches offguard are (in my opinion) confused because the issues he raises are so far from their intentions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
- Jun8 9y ago
  I really like this. Mirrors Wittgenstein's "the meaning of a word is its use" maxim (see, e.g. http://www.maciejratajski.com/work/the-meaning-of-a-word-is-its-use-in-the-language http://www.maciejratajski.com/work/the-meaning-of-a-word-is-...) in philosophy of language.
  - supernumerary 9y ago
    I love wittgenstein and agree with your gist. Being trite - Wittgenstein also said 'The world is all that is the case' ... a precept that a mission to mars for example certainly flexes, of course as soon as it came to pass, the meaning of 'the world' would reconfigure itself. To the point though ... another maxim that I often find myself employing is: 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions'.
nemild 9y ago
In the vein of Kumail's critique, if it's useful to anyone, I wrote some thoughts about software engineering and ethics from my own experiences: A serial tech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley once asked me to design a “social stockade” for his financial services customers. It would lock people out of their social media accounts and tweet out/FB share to their friends when they hadn’t paid a loan. He pitched it to prospective employees as meaningful work that would reduce the cost of loans for the needy. I was horrified that his product was being built and that many others would likely take the role I was turning down. And he was hardly the first to pitch his “innovation” as providing only good. Every software engineer I’ve worked with has had a strong sense of personal values and ethics, but the organizations we work for can take actions that are at odds with these. I’d like to highlight a few of the key challenges you’ll face and provide feedback for living your personal values. Most importantly, it’s critical that you think about the impact of your work and consciously set your personal values in advance of inevitable future challenges. (Always available to discuss if valuable to anyone, feel free to email me encrypted messages, see my HN profile) https://www.nemil.com/musings/software-engineers-and-ethics.html https://www.nemil.com/musings/software-engineers-and-ethics....
- tomjen3 9y ago
  I am curious as to what your issue is with the loan setup. Inn my mind out is an alternative to a traditional loan, how is that bad?
  - nemild 9y ago
    It felt like a modern day scarlet letter, instead of a innovative new way to deliver cheaper loans. There are other techniques to deliver cheaper loans, which don't lead to social ostracism (and which don't violate any social network terms of services).
  - stale2002 9y ago
    It is bad for the same reason that 100% interest loans are bad. They are predatory on poor people, and they trick people into accepting something when they don't really understand the consequences or "believe" them. A person may incorrectly accept a loan like this, while being under the mistaken assumption that they aren't at risk of the consequences. Sometimes people just make bad decisions. It is really immoral to take advantage of someone like that.
dhoulb 9y ago
I got into a conversation once that I think frames this well. We had WILDLY different views on whether going to Mars was a good idea (like, violently polar opposite views). The strength of our disagreement surprised me. I was arguing that we should “race to Mars”, mainly because the value of having a second planet dramatically increases the odds of survival for our the human race, as a whole. Thus Mars is one of the highest importance activities we could possibly be focusing on. My friend was countering that all the rich people escaping to Mars made them not care about Earth and their fellow citizens, and was just about the most abhorant act he could think of. He’d rather see everyone die together on Earth than a small group people live (at least it’d be fair). I’d be happy to sacrifice 95% of the humans alive today as long as some live somewhere (I’m ambivolent about who they are, I presume there’s a formula to be found?). I think my view is more that of Silicon Valley/entrepreneur/programmer types. These people (me, etc) want the best long term outcome and will take big actions towards that, even knowing it’ll cause some short term pain. I don’t think ‘regular’ people think like that. They generally care more about the people around them, their own pain, their tribes, their cities, etc. (But not at all about trillions of as yet unborn humans.) I think it’s easy to label Silicon Valley as “unethical monsters” who’re out for themselves. But Assuming we’re talking about the crime of “innovation without regard for effects” (as opposed to ACTUAL rulebreaking, like theft, assault, fraud, which I assume the Valley is no worse for than anywhere else in the world), the intentions of entrepreneurs aren’t evil or unethical, they just care more about the survival of the entire race than, today’s people. I also think a lot of hackers/builders/entrepreneurs, for all the optimism they have about growth and innovation, are simultaneously very realistic/pessimistic about all the various ways our race is fundamentally screwed, and kinda recognises they need to be more powerful and have more resources in order to do anything about that. Startups are more about “getting us out of this fine mess were in” than money.
- vile 9y ago
  >Startups are more about “getting us out of this fine mess were in” than money. I think this is a very naive view; novel new ways to share vapid content on the internet and unnecessarily internet-connected junk are getting nobody out of any sort of mess. There are a few aspirational startups, but the vast majority follow The Cartman Plan: http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5457c9ae6bb3f7d33da1a6bb-1200-800/cartman.png http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5457c9ae6bb3f7d33da...
rajam 9y ago
I love wittgenstein with the gist
starchild_3001 9y ago
I've read the article and most of the comments here. Still not sure what ethically questionable things we're talking about. Is serving content related to your personal interests questionable? Or is collection of personal data for commercial (but benign and legal) purposes questionable? I can see that selling and wide-scale distribution of personal data can be a problem unless explicit consent is obtained. Can someone clarify who's doing that and for what reason?
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  Seems like he didn't bother to specify exactly what he found so objectionable. Given that, it's impossible to evaluate his claim that executives were "confused" because "nobody ever asked them the questions". Maybe nobody ever asked them because the questions he was asking were stupid or ridiculous? After all, it may sound dismissive, but I'm reminded of a quote by Patrick Stuart. "That's the biggest danger, you see: believing that you really are more important than everyone else. We're not, you know. We're just actors". Maybe if Kumail spent his life building things instead of pretending to be someone who builds things, he'd have a different perspective on technology and ethics.
  - dcow 9y ago
    FWIW Kumail has undergraduate degrees in computer science and philosophy. We went to the same college. The comp-sci department and college in general has a strong sense of ethical responsibility. In fact the computer science department makes it a point to have students make an ethical pledge as part of the major, optional of course. Please don't get the idea that because Kumail has chosen a career in acting that he has no business commenting on other industries. Even though I agree we should spend time in others' shoes before judging, I don't think his statements here are unwarranted. Your comment feels a little uninformed and defensive.
    - peoplewindow 9y ago
      Yes, but so what? It's very easy for people who don't actually make things - like actors and academics - people who never face tradeoffs in their life, to get up on their high horses about people who do. If Kumail wants to comment on the ethics of the computing industry he should man up and write an essay in which he lays out his case, and shows why his preferred tradeoffs are better than those chosen by industry. Like anyone else would have to do, if they wanted influence. Instead we get this clickbaity junk based on a series of tweets, which nobody would have seen or cared about if he wasn't a famous actor.
johnrichardson 9y ago
Luddite lite. Tech is one of the only sources of growth in our stagnating economy and is responsible for humanity moving past a subsistence standard of living, but leave it to a well-paid actor sitting in a comfortable air-conditioned room during the most prosperous period ever in the history of humanity to whine about its downsides.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  He's not going around destroying looms to protect jobs. He's not even complaining about the tech per se - just about the lack of any ethical consideration in some areas of the industry. The problem is not unique to SV or to tech world. This is just the good old phenomenon of "not caring about ethics makes you better at making money". The market does not care either, it just promotes people and companies who are good at making money. Complaining is one form of creating back pressure, of making it more difficult for unethical actors to make money. We desperately need more of that back pressure.
- goatlover 9y ago
  Keep in mind that we have it good in part because we've avoided a nuclear war so far, and the bigger environmental and climate change issues haven't impacted us yet. In the future, we will potentially have designer viruses, weaponized nanotech and AI to concern ourselves with. So it's probably good that a few people express their worries about unethical uses of technology.
madmax108 9y ago
It's scary (Stanford prison experiment-like) how easy it is to convince a regular joe employee that what he's working on is "for the betterment of the world", while that statement is very very fuzzy to say the least (and as recent events have shown) where one man's Utopia is another man's surveillance state. We put waaay too much impetus on "world changing ideas" while completely ignoring the real life implications of them, as the article rightfully points out. Reminds me of the statement that Noam Chomsky ended his recent talk at Google with (which I consider one of the nicest "burn" moments ever): Interviewer: It's not everyday that a non-google gets to sit in a room full of people who work at google, and are s/w engineers, and are advertising experts, and are market experts in different fields. Do you have anything that you'd like to ask us? Chomsky: <shrugs> Why not do some of the serious things? https://youtu.be/2C-zWrhFqpM?t=59m16s https://youtu.be/2C-zWrhFqpM?t=59m16s
irulebush 9y ago
What happens in Silicon Valley ought to stay in Silicon Valley!
MrBuddyCasino 9y ago
This just in: actor discovers corporations don't have a soul. Why don't you come over here to Europe, we have strong data protection laws. Oh btw you'll have to cut your your salary by 50%, because no Silicon Valley, and because strong data protection laws. Hows thats sound to you?
- dmix 9y ago
  Most data protection laws just force ineffective bureaucratic processes on companies in the name of "doing something", usually in the form of outdated checklists. Meanwhile intelligence agencies, hackers, and ad companies are still consuming vast quantities of data uninhibited. It really does largely just slow companies down and forces gov agencies, doctors, banks, and other critical industries to use old insecure software and inefficient corporate processes. RFP'ing a new system is suddenly 2x the cost. I'm all for strong privacy and property rights at the consumer level, plenty of law in this area in most countries is very outdated and from another era. But the tendencies of european and modern US/UK/Canada/etc countries are to go well beyond the courts and intervene directly in company operations. I've never heard anyone praise the fact they followed gov-mandated checklists as for why they prevented a hack. It's always keeping up to date with the latest industry best practices and caring because there are real costs. Strengthened courts and a caring media will create real costs and incentivized best practices.

I think that a better look at this subject is a recent piece in The Atlantic titled, "Are Facebook, Twitter, and Google American Companies?" https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/11/are-facebook-twitter-and-google-american-companies/544670/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/11/are-f... tl;dr, this back-and-forth is unsettling to a Federalist: >In response to a tough line of questions from Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Twitter’s acting general counsel, Sean Edgett, gave two conflicting answers within a couple of minutes. Cotton pressed Edgett on Twitter’s decision to cut off the CIA’s access to alerts derived from the Twitter-data fire hose, which is provided through a company it partially owns, Dataminr, while the companies reportedly still allowed the Russian media outlet RT to continue using the service for some time. >“Do you see an equivalency between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Russian intelligence services?,” Cotton asked. >“We’re not offering our service for surveillance to any government,” Edgett responded. >“So you will apply the same policy to our intelligence community that you’d apply to an adversary’s intelligence services?,” Cotton asked again. >“As a global company, we have to apply our policies consistently,” Edgett replied. “We’re trying to be unbiased around the world.” >Cotton then turned to WikiLeaks, which the Intelligence Committee has designated as a nonstate hostile intelligence agency, asking why it had been operating “uninhibited” on Twitter. >“Is it bias to side with America over our adversaries?,” Cotton demanded. >“We’re trying to be unbiased around the world,” Edgett said. “We’re obviously an American company and care deeply about the issues we’re talking about today, but as it relates to WikiLeaks or other accounts like it, we make sure they are in compliance with our policies just like every other account.” I guess it is kind of cyberpunk-y. All we need now is for US Marshals to lay siege to some SF headquarters, facing contracted PMCs denying the validity of their warrants.

sanbor 9y ago
This is the second time that I read that WikiLeaks is classified as "hostile intelligence agency". Isn't the purpose of intelligence to gather information to gain advantage over adversaries? It sounds to me like a redundant term like "hostile military". And BTW WikiLeaks leaks are public so all other intelligence agencies and citizens can learn while state agencies try to keep things obscure as much as possible. Who's hostile?
- emacsgifs 9y ago
  The "hostile" framing device is a fairly naked attempt to build an ongoing narrative. I doubt it needs pointing out that the reason WikiLeaks exists is because many (most, all?) organs of "public " service are anything but.
- skybrian 9y ago
  It doesn't seem that hard to understand? In the context of a U.S. Congressional hearing, "hostile" probably means "hostile to the U.S."
  - sanbor 9y ago
    Good point! But depending on your interests/POW you could consider NSA as "hostile to the U.S." given they're spying on their own citizens.
- rtpg 9y ago
  If an American spy plane showed up over the Soviet Union, the plane would get shot at. If an American spy plane showed up over France, they wouldn't get shot at. Of course there's an understanding that intelligence agencies are all ultimately looking at everything, but there's a degree of cooperation. Even in the current state of affairs Russian and American intel agencies work together on anti-terrorism stuff. However, if the other group is clearly actively against you, then it's harder to work with them. It's safe to say at this point, given the evidence out ther, that WikiLeaks does work with an objective of embarassing American interests.
  - 9y ago
pmoriarty 9y ago
"I guess it is kind of cyberpunk-y. All we need now is for US Marshals to lay siege to some SF headquarters, facing contracted PMCs denying the validity of their warrants." More surreal things have happened... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._United_States_Secret_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._U...
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  >No compensatory damages were awarded. The judge said that Steve Jackson had little involvement in SJG at the time of the raid, and the company was close to Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and that Jackson's renewed involvement in the wake of the raid had turned the company's fortunes around. Ah, the 'pockets full of fish' defense. "While my client did shove the claimant into a lake, they came out with their pockets full of fish to a net benefit. Therefore, my client is innocent."
- rrhd 9y ago
  That would put them on par with the right wing crazies who pop up from time to time. Those guys end up dead, imprisoned, on watch lists, etc...
dcow 9y ago
But Kumail's point isn't about whether these companies are patriotic, he's saying they lack any ethical framework of operation and presumes it's because people aren't challenging each other with ethical questions preferring to condone any behavior in favor of flexing engineering muscles and proving that, "yes, they can". I don't think it's unrelated, and perhaps your point is that it's doubly clear no one has thought about ethics when you examine Sean's contradictory responses. But I think the lack of patriotism is more of an example. Anyway, at the end of the day we're all people and we are the ones that depend on these companies and services. If you don't believe a company is behaving ethically, stop using their services. Make a damn sacrifice and live your virtue. Sure maybe we could argue that to some extent and in certain cases some companies have crossed the line and are harmfully exploiting customers to the extent that there should be legal ramifications, but the government does not exist to provide you an ethically sterile society. It exist to maintain and protect basic human rights--at least in the US as far as the formal documentation is concerned. As far as I can gather based on armchair political philosophy over drinks.. most people don't actually care about privacy and rank convenience or safety (at the expense of said privacy) higher in their priorities. I find that unfortunate but at the same time I still haven't worked up the courage to totally disband my Facebook account and switch completely over to my proton mail accounts. So it's complicated. If we could all agree that privacy is a fundamental human right which you would think would be supported by the constitution in the US then, we should actually act/rally to legislate such as other countries have done. Yet at the same time because these companies operate globally, they serve a diverse spectrum of users who may or may not share the same political and social values as we do in the US. This extends to the very employees who are "failing to ask the ethical questions" that Kumail can so obviously see are overlooked. This is globalization. TL;DR: they do this because they can, and they can because you let them.
- abandonliberty 9y ago
  >TL;DR: they do this because they can, and they can because you let them. You may be passionate and well informed enough to have the strength of conviction to take appropriate action, but most people are not. Nothing will change unless you can affect the behavior of others. You will be fought every step of the way: for the company, this is a fight for survival. >they can because you let them. What does this statement reveal about your internal dialogue? You can't expect people who don't understand or who aren't involved to take action. You are delegating your responsibility. Perhaps it is good for your ego, but I can tell you how it turns out. A more appropriate statement would be, "because I let them."
mljoe 9y ago
>I guess it is kind of cyberpunk-y. All we need now is for US Marshals to lay siege to some SF headquarters, facing contracted PMCs denying the validity of their warrants. I think the turning point was the SOPA/PIPA thing. After that event, it felt like the tech industry seemed to collectively figure out that just through sheer technical dominance, they actually wield tons of practical political power. Possibly more then the savviest Washington insiders.
- rrhd 9y ago
  Or when google was facing anti-trust issues and they solved them with a bit of lobbying and some promises. I'm so glad to see the tide turning. People finally waking up to the things these companies do.
grad_ml 9y ago
I think this was all trash talk, nothing but an attempt to intimidate. If companies are following letters of the law then it doesn't matter who thinks/interprets what. and they better know they would be challenged in court of law.
notl4wy3r 9y ago
I hate wikileaks, but I honestly don't see the contradiction in Twitter's behavior on this point. Perhaps they were naive on whether RT was actually an aperture of Russian intelligence services. OK. Their KYC game could use some upping. OTOH, would anyone be surprised if the CIA were paying some little hedge fund somewhere to let them piggyback on access to Twitter's feed? As far as Wikileaks' uninhibited operation goes, as far as I can tell, the CIA has not had its account banned from Twitter, just its firehose access. Does Wikileaks have access to that? What would they do with it if they did? I mean it just seems like the line of questioning is, "Hey is it fair that you let them do X and won't let us do Y?" Maybe I can't see it because my silicon valley ass has no ethics.
- itronitron 9y ago
  the core issue is the activity focused on influencing a US election, which foreign nationals and foreign corporations are prohibited from doing [1] if Twitter cut off CIA from firehose access and then tried to sell Twitter advertising and analytic services to RT for a US election then that seems to be some poorly constructed PR staging by Twitter 1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/09/07/did-facebook-ads-traced-to-a-russian-company-violate-u-s-election-law/?utm_term=.c23313e06c61 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/09...
peoplewindow 9y ago
That's a pretty ridiculous conversation. No wonder the Twitter guy was confused. Neither Wikileaks nor RT are intelligence agencies. The Intelligence Committee pretending they are doesn't change that.

thomastjeffery 9y ago

The heart of the problem is that popular communication networks are centralized and unencrypted.

tlb 9y ago
How would you make a decentralized, encrypted twitter? How would it be better for society?
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  It would not be Twitter. Twitter is inherently public. The issue is that people flock to public platforms to share personal data. What we need is the equivalent of Email and GPG, but actually user-friendly.
dredmorbius 9y ago
Good protocols don't cure bad ethics. Mind: I would like to see decentralisation and better encryption protections, generally, but those by themselves won't solve the problem (you still need to address ethics, rights, and power imbalances), and still leave certain of present attacks in place. David Gerard, author of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain, makes the exceedingly good point in an FT interview, that Bitcoin and Blockchain themselves are attempts to tech around the trust problem, and that this raises challenges because trust itself buys you an immense amount of efficiency. https://www.ft.com/content/61cdc5c8-370e-11e7-bce4-9023f8c0fd2e https://www.ft.com/content/61cdc5c8-370e-11e7-bce4-9023f8c0f... I'm starting to come to the view that information technology itself directly attacks* interpersonal trust, at the macro scale. I may not be articulating the argument well at this point, though I've tried: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6jqakv/communications_advances_undermine_trust/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6jqakv/communi...
- 9y ago

pmoriarty 9y ago

Corporations only worry about ethics if they think it'll affect their reputation or bottom line. Even then many of them are happy as long as there's public perception that they're acting ethically, even if in reality they're not.

untog 9y ago
Corporations, yes. But employees of those corporations, less so. As a developer making <insert ethically dubious thing here>, you could have qualms about it.
- cyberferret 9y ago
  As an owner of a software development business, I've ejected my fair share of clients who have asked me to do ethically questionable things. But I wonder if a line employee who has to make rent every week and put food on the table can make the call. I don't know - I've always made the call myself, and informed my employees so I've never had an employee come to me with concerns about working with a particular client or on a particular project?
  - pdkl95 9y ago
    > I've ejected my fair share of clients Thank you! > a line employee who has to make rent every week Some sort of software development guild or professional association could help. Like a PE's duty to disobey their boss when a project isn't safe, explicitly defined external obligations can give the employee some power (and organizational support).
    - meej 9y ago
      Professional associations do have codes of ethics and ethics-focused committees and societies, but they don't seem to do a very good job of publicizing them, because I see comments like yours here with some regularity. Heck, I have been a member of IEEE since 1997 and yet I only learned of their Society on the Social Implications of Technology a few years ago. The Order of the Engineer, which is entirely focused on professional ethics, seems to be equally unknown.

john_teller02 9y ago

cheap tactics to gain some press time ..

oblib 9y ago
Him and Elon Musk, and many others as well get caught in that aspersion you just cast out there. Way too many for you to haul in.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
TBH it's the press who needs him more than he needs the press. If anything, I see this article as a cheap trick to write something generating pageviews and ad revenue.

transitorykris 9y ago

I love Stafford Beer's "The purpose of a system is what it does" here. It separates fact from intention when reasoning about systems. The engineers that Kumail catches offguard are (in my opinion) confused because the issues he raises are so far from their intentions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

Jun8 9y ago
I really like this. Mirrors Wittgenstein's "the meaning of a word is its use" maxim (see, e.g. http://www.maciejratajski.com/work/the-meaning-of-a-word-is-its-use-in-the-language http://www.maciejratajski.com/work/the-meaning-of-a-word-is-...) in philosophy of language.
- supernumerary 9y ago
  I love wittgenstein and agree with your gist. Being trite - Wittgenstein also said 'The world is all that is the case' ... a precept that a mission to mars for example certainly flexes, of course as soon as it came to pass, the meaning of 'the world' would reconfigure itself. To the point though ... another maxim that I often find myself employing is: 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions'.

nemild 9y ago

In the vein of Kumail's critique, if it's useful to anyone, I wrote some thoughts about software engineering and ethics from my own experiences: A serial tech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley once asked me to design a “social stockade” for his financial services customers. It would lock people out of their social media accounts and tweet out/FB share to their friends when they hadn’t paid a loan. He pitched it to prospective employees as meaningful work that would reduce the cost of loans for the needy. I was horrified that his product was being built and that many others would likely take the role I was turning down. And he was hardly the first to pitch his “innovation” as providing only good. Every software engineer I’ve worked with has had a strong sense of personal values and ethics, but the organizations we work for can take actions that are at odds with these. I’d like to highlight a few of the key challenges you’ll face and provide feedback for living your personal values. Most importantly, it’s critical that you think about the impact of your work and consciously set your personal values in advance of inevitable future challenges. (Always available to discuss if valuable to anyone, feel free to email me encrypted messages, see my HN profile) https://www.nemil.com/musings/software-engineers-and-ethics.html https://www.nemil.com/musings/software-engineers-and-ethics....

tomjen3 9y ago
I am curious as to what your issue is with the loan setup. Inn my mind out is an alternative to a traditional loan, how is that bad?
- nemild 9y ago
  It felt like a modern day scarlet letter, instead of a innovative new way to deliver cheaper loans. There are other techniques to deliver cheaper loans, which don't lead to social ostracism (and which don't violate any social network terms of services).
- stale2002 9y ago
  It is bad for the same reason that 100% interest loans are bad. They are predatory on poor people, and they trick people into accepting something when they don't really understand the consequences or "believe" them. A person may incorrectly accept a loan like this, while being under the mistaken assumption that they aren't at risk of the consequences. Sometimes people just make bad decisions. It is really immoral to take advantage of someone like that.

dhoulb 9y ago

I got into a conversation once that I think frames this well. We had WILDLY different views on whether going to Mars was a good idea (like, violently polar opposite views). The strength of our disagreement surprised me. I was arguing that we should “race to Mars”, mainly because the value of having a second planet dramatically increases the odds of survival for our the human race, as a whole. Thus Mars is one of the highest importance activities we could possibly be focusing on. My friend was countering that all the rich people escaping to Mars made them not care about Earth and their fellow citizens, and was just about the most abhorant act he could think of. He’d rather see everyone die together on Earth than a small group people live (at least it’d be fair). I’d be happy to sacrifice 95% of the humans alive today as long as some live somewhere (I’m ambivolent about who they are, I presume there’s a formula to be found?). I think my view is more that of Silicon Valley/entrepreneur/programmer types. These people (me, etc) want the best long term outcome and will take big actions towards that, even knowing it’ll cause some short term pain. I don’t think ‘regular’ people think like that. They generally care more about the people around them, their own pain, their tribes, their cities, etc. (But not at all about trillions of as yet unborn humans.) I think it’s easy to label Silicon Valley as “unethical monsters” who’re out for themselves. But Assuming we’re talking about the crime of “innovation without regard for effects” (as opposed to ACTUAL rulebreaking, like theft, assault, fraud, which I assume the Valley is no worse for than anywhere else in the world), the intentions of entrepreneurs aren’t evil or unethical, they just care more about the survival of the entire race than, today’s people. I also think a lot of hackers/builders/entrepreneurs, for all the optimism they have about growth and innovation, are simultaneously very realistic/pessimistic about all the various ways our race is fundamentally screwed, and kinda recognises they need to be more powerful and have more resources in order to do anything about that. Startups are more about “getting us out of this fine mess were in” than money.

vile 9y ago
>Startups are more about “getting us out of this fine mess were in” than money. I think this is a very naive view; novel new ways to share vapid content on the internet and unnecessarily internet-connected junk are getting nobody out of any sort of mess. There are a few aspirational startups, but the vast majority follow The Cartman Plan: http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5457c9ae6bb3f7d33da1a6bb-1200-800/cartman.png http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5457c9ae6bb3f7d33da...

rajam 9y ago

I love wittgenstein with the gist

starchild_3001 9y ago

I've read the article and most of the comments here. Still not sure what ethically questionable things we're talking about. Is serving content related to your personal interests questionable? Or is collection of personal data for commercial (but benign and legal) purposes questionable? I can see that selling and wide-scale distribution of personal data can be a problem unless explicit consent is obtained. Can someone clarify who's doing that and for what reason?

peoplewindow 9y ago
Seems like he didn't bother to specify exactly what he found so objectionable. Given that, it's impossible to evaluate his claim that executives were "confused" because "nobody ever asked them the questions". Maybe nobody ever asked them because the questions he was asking were stupid or ridiculous? After all, it may sound dismissive, but I'm reminded of a quote by Patrick Stuart. "That's the biggest danger, you see: believing that you really are more important than everyone else. We're not, you know. We're just actors". Maybe if Kumail spent his life building things instead of pretending to be someone who builds things, he'd have a different perspective on technology and ethics.
- dcow 9y ago
  FWIW Kumail has undergraduate degrees in computer science and philosophy. We went to the same college. The comp-sci department and college in general has a strong sense of ethical responsibility. In fact the computer science department makes it a point to have students make an ethical pledge as part of the major, optional of course. Please don't get the idea that because Kumail has chosen a career in acting that he has no business commenting on other industries. Even though I agree we should spend time in others' shoes before judging, I don't think his statements here are unwarranted. Your comment feels a little uninformed and defensive.
  - peoplewindow 9y ago
    Yes, but so what? It's very easy for people who don't actually make things - like actors and academics - people who never face tradeoffs in their life, to get up on their high horses about people who do. If Kumail wants to comment on the ethics of the computing industry he should man up and write an essay in which he lays out his case, and shows why his preferred tradeoffs are better than those chosen by industry. Like anyone else would have to do, if they wanted influence. Instead we get this clickbaity junk based on a series of tweets, which nobody would have seen or cared about if he wasn't a famous actor.

johnrichardson 9y ago

Luddite lite. Tech is one of the only sources of growth in our stagnating economy and is responsible for humanity moving past a subsistence standard of living, but leave it to a well-paid actor sitting in a comfortable air-conditioned room during the most prosperous period ever in the history of humanity to whine about its downsides.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
He's not going around destroying looms to protect jobs. He's not even complaining about the tech per se - just about the lack of any ethical consideration in some areas of the industry. The problem is not unique to SV or to tech world. This is just the good old phenomenon of "not caring about ethics makes you better at making money". The market does not care either, it just promotes people and companies who are good at making money. Complaining is one form of creating back pressure, of making it more difficult for unethical actors to make money. We desperately need more of that back pressure.
goatlover 9y ago
Keep in mind that we have it good in part because we've avoided a nuclear war so far, and the bigger environmental and climate change issues haven't impacted us yet. In the future, we will potentially have designer viruses, weaponized nanotech and AI to concern ourselves with. So it's probably good that a few people express their worries about unethical uses of technology.

madmax108 9y ago

It's scary (Stanford prison experiment-like) how easy it is to convince a regular joe employee that what he's working on is "for the betterment of the world", while that statement is very very fuzzy to say the least (and as recent events have shown) where one man's Utopia is another man's surveillance state. We put waaay too much impetus on "world changing ideas" while completely ignoring the real life implications of them, as the article rightfully points out. Reminds me of the statement that Noam Chomsky ended his recent talk at Google with (which I consider one of the nicest "burn" moments ever): Interviewer: It's not everyday that a non-google gets to sit in a room full of people who work at google, and are s/w engineers, and are advertising experts, and are market experts in different fields. Do you have anything that you'd like to ask us? Chomsky: <shrugs> Why not do some of the serious things? https://youtu.be/2C-zWrhFqpM?t=59m16s https://youtu.be/2C-zWrhFqpM?t=59m16s

irulebush 9y ago

What happens in Silicon Valley ought to stay in Silicon Valley!

MrBuddyCasino 9y ago

This just in: actor discovers corporations don't have a soul. Why don't you come over here to Europe, we have strong data protection laws. Oh btw you'll have to cut your your salary by 50%, because no Silicon Valley, and because strong data protection laws. Hows thats sound to you?

dmix 9y ago
Most data protection laws just force ineffective bureaucratic processes on companies in the name of "doing something", usually in the form of outdated checklists. Meanwhile intelligence agencies, hackers, and ad companies are still consuming vast quantities of data uninhibited. It really does largely just slow companies down and forces gov agencies, doctors, banks, and other critical industries to use old insecure software and inefficient corporate processes. RFP'ing a new system is suddenly 2x the cost. I'm all for strong privacy and property rights at the consumer level, plenty of law in this area in most countries is very outdated and from another era. But the tendencies of european and modern US/UK/Canada/etc countries are to go well beyond the courts and intervene directly in company operations. I've never heard anyone praise the fact they followed gov-mandated checklists as for why they prevented a hack. It's always keeping up to date with the latest industry best practices and caring because there are real costs. Strengthened courts and a caring media will create real costs and incentivized best practices.