4 ms·

Which Intelligence Committee hearings are you talking about? I linked to a recent one in a grandparent post that has almost no grandstanding as far as I'm conce

Which Intelligence Committee hearings are you talking about? I linked to a recent one in a grandparent post that has almost no grandstanding as far as I'm concerned and for the IC that's usually how it is. I can't speak for the larger committees with more media attention.

joshuamorton 8y ago
Let me put it this way: if you want to have a real productive discussion on data privacy, you want the head lawyer who, despite Senate grandstanding, probably does make legal decisions for the company. You don't want the guy who thinks that google, probably uses version control software, but doesn't know what it is. The ic didn't want a decision maker, they wanted a heel.
- wybiral 8y ago
  Let me put it this way: when the entire point is to educate the public about ongoing attacks and to show that these companies are taking all of this seriously... Snubbing our Intelligence Committee because Page didn't prioritize it highly enough seems, to me, to be the least helpful thing your employer could have done.
  - joshuamorton 8y ago
    Except that they, as far as I know, changed from saying the head lawyer was fine, to saying the CEO or nothing with less than a month before the event. And again, if you want a discussion, you need people who are contextual experts. A CEO can't speak intelligently about security and privacy at Google or Facebook. Nor can Congress. You can discuss things in broad strokes and talk about high level initiatives, but actually real, useful discussion is unlikely. There was a popular post yesterday showing pichais response to a question about fake news at a Google internal meeting. It was a widely derided answer and being uninformed, despite it being to a roomful of engineers who work at Google. That leads to one conclusion, through any number of avenues (pichai doesn't understand the issues, realpolitik, people don't understand the issues, googlers don't understand the issues, etc.), That a congressional hearing asking Google about fake news would be unproductive theatre.

joshuamorton 8y ago

Let me put it this way: if you want to have a real productive discussion on data privacy, you want the head lawyer who, despite Senate grandstanding, probably does make legal decisions for the company. You don't want the guy who thinks that google, probably uses version control software, but doesn't know what it is. The ic didn't want a decision maker, they wanted a heel.

wybiral 8y ago
Let me put it this way: when the entire point is to educate the public about ongoing attacks and to show that these companies are taking all of this seriously... Snubbing our Intelligence Committee because Page didn't prioritize it highly enough seems, to me, to be the least helpful thing your employer could have done.
- joshuamorton 8y ago
  Except that they, as far as I know, changed from saying the head lawyer was fine, to saying the CEO or nothing with less than a month before the event. And again, if you want a discussion, you need people who are contextual experts. A CEO can't speak intelligently about security and privacy at Google or Facebook. Nor can Congress. You can discuss things in broad strokes and talk about high level initiatives, but actually real, useful discussion is unlikely. There was a popular post yesterday showing pichais response to a question about fake news at a Google internal meeting. It was a widely derided answer and being uninformed, despite it being to a roomful of engineers who work at Google. That leads to one conclusion, through any number of avenues (pichai doesn't understand the issues, realpolitik, people don't understand the issues, googlers don't understand the issues, etc.), That a congressional hearing asking Google about fake news would be unproductive theatre.