4 ms·

even better would be to kick google (and microsoft to a lesser extent) out of any and all government services, including gmail, analytics, captcha, android, for

even better would be to kick google (and microsoft to a lesser extent) out of any and all government services, including gmail, analytics, captcha, android, forms, js, fonts, apis, storage, etc. it maddens me to have to turn over sensitive data to google to get government services nowadays. they've crept into every dark corner and crevice of government. the governments we have are already wanting to surveil us plenty, we don't need a shadow entity doing it too.

cheschire 6y ago
So you're advocating for the government to build these tools in-house then?
- clairity 6y ago
  in some cases, yes. in others, for them to procure from product companies rather than data companies.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- austincheney 6y ago
  Government and the military should absolutely be encouraged to write their own in house tools. That would dramatically improve quality of service and simultaneously reduced government expenses.
  - 0xffff2 6y ago
    > That would dramatically improve quality of service... I find this doubtful. > ... and simultaneously reduced government expenses. I find this almost tautologically impossible. By and large the government (my corner of it anyway) doesn't pay extra for licenses to commercial software. The idea that we could somehow find and hire enough developers to rewrite the entire Microsoft ecosystem, and somehow do it for less than it costs us to pay for Office 365 every year, requires some serious justification.
    - austincheney 6y ago
      Why would an internal software team rewrite MS Word?
      - 0xffff2 6y ago
        Maybe I misunderstood. What tools do you think the government should be building in house? If MS Word isn't something you're advocating that we rewrite in house, then I don't understand what you're advocating that we don't already do.
        austincheney 6y ago
        Original software to solve problems unique to a given government office instead of relying on the contract bidding process. For example I work at a bank that does not sell software and yet the bank has thousands of software developers.
        0xffff2 6y ago
        So does the Federal government. Hell, my tiny little corner of the Federal government employs thousands of software developers all on its own.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > By and large the government (my corner of it anyway) doesn't pay extra for licenses to commercial software No, but governments often do (under policies that have a built-in, explicit preference for COTS or MOTS solutions because [in terms of public rationale] they are presumed to be especially cost-effective) pay for commercial software that's not well adapted to the specialized circumstances of government agencies, which even when broadly similar to public actors are often significantly governed by unusual or even sui generis considerations applying only to government or to that particular government jurisdiction or even only to that particular agency of that particular government. And then pay extra (either in terms of custom modifications or business process adaptations to the poorly-aligned software) for the mismatch. In some cases this has knock-on effects, because managing the government cost ends up with the government requiring (explicitly or practically because of the requirements of interfacing with the proprietary system) encouraging trading partners, including intergovernmental ones with the same kinds of business fit issues, to use COTS/MOTS solutions from the same vendor. Things like Office 365 are not the main issue.
chrisseaton 6y ago
I think the government trying to build these tools and services themselves, or trying to procure them from a traditional government services company, would be an absolute disaster and colossal waste of money and time. No thanks.
0xffff2 6y ago
AFAIK, my corner of the government doesn't use Google or Microsoft services for any public-facing services. That said, we do use Google and MS (and AWS and GitHub and ...) internally, but with a huge caveat. Absolutely all of those services run exclusively on government infrastructure. None of the data hosted there is in any way shared or accessible to the companies providing the software.
- clairity 6y ago
  awesome! please convince your colleagues to do the same. maybe it will trickle down to california, and LA in particular, where gov is love-nuzzling with google.
  - 0xffff2 6y ago
    Ah, one of the downsides of working for the Federal government is that you forget that "government" isn't just the big players. Although I can't say I've encountered this in my interactions with the California government either. I would say that maybe there's a role for the Federal government to play in providing data hosting for smaller governments who can't afford to do it themselves, but with the general distrust of the Feds these days, I bet most here (including me, frankly) would rather give their data to MS and Google.
    - clairity 6y ago
      i'm personally no fan of the gov-corp false dichotomy--we can neither completely trust nor distrust any institution. we the people use them as tools for a better society, not as tribal members, and need to stay vigilant of any concentration or expression of power, like surveillance. it's our duty. but yes, fed-gov providing smaller govs enterprise services seems like a potentially good and more efficient use of tax dollars, though concentrating surveillance is a concern.
thephyber 6y ago
You are really just complaining about the security model that the browser has chosen. When you visit a website, you choose to trust the content the owner sends back and all of the transitive trust that the owner embodies by importing images, scripts, styles, frames, forms, and hyperlinks. And to the extent you are talking about how government works (online or offline), they manage to choose some terrible vendors. You don't get to opt out of those offline vendors, so what's the point of complaining about just a few online ones?
- clairity 6y ago
  > "You are really just complaining about the security model that the browser has chosen." no, i'm not. everything we do is intimately tied together with huge slatherings of trust, browsing included. it's how societies and civilizations fundamentally work. however, some entities like google have proven themselves less trustworthy. so let's move up the vendor ladder of trustworthiness, rather than staying stuck at the bottom. > "...so what's the point of complaining about just a few online ones?" with that kind of defeatism, what's the point of anything? every improvement helps, particularly when it involves one of the, if not the, largest privacy-invading, data harvesting machines on the planet.

cheschire 6y ago

So you're advocating for the government to build these tools in-house then?

clairity 6y ago
in some cases, yes. in others, for them to procure from product companies rather than data companies.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
austincheney 6y ago
Government and the military should absolutely be encouraged to write their own in house tools. That would dramatically improve quality of service and simultaneously reduced government expenses.
- 0xffff2 6y ago
  > That would dramatically improve quality of service... I find this doubtful. > ... and simultaneously reduced government expenses. I find this almost tautologically impossible. By and large the government (my corner of it anyway) doesn't pay extra for licenses to commercial software. The idea that we could somehow find and hire enough developers to rewrite the entire Microsoft ecosystem, and somehow do it for less than it costs us to pay for Office 365 every year, requires some serious justification.
  - austincheney 6y ago
    Why would an internal software team rewrite MS Word?
    - 0xffff2 6y ago
      Maybe I misunderstood. What tools do you think the government should be building in house? If MS Word isn't something you're advocating that we rewrite in house, then I don't understand what you're advocating that we don't already do.
      - austincheney 6y ago
        Original software to solve problems unique to a given government office instead of relying on the contract bidding process. For example I work at a bank that does not sell software and yet the bank has thousands of software developers.
        0xffff2 6y ago
        So does the Federal government. Hell, my tiny little corner of the Federal government employs thousands of software developers all on its own.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > By and large the government (my corner of it anyway) doesn't pay extra for licenses to commercial software No, but governments often do (under policies that have a built-in, explicit preference for COTS or MOTS solutions because [in terms of public rationale] they are presumed to be especially cost-effective) pay for commercial software that's not well adapted to the specialized circumstances of government agencies, which even when broadly similar to public actors are often significantly governed by unusual or even sui generis considerations applying only to government or to that particular government jurisdiction or even only to that particular agency of that particular government. And then pay extra (either in terms of custom modifications or business process adaptations to the poorly-aligned software) for the mismatch. In some cases this has knock-on effects, because managing the government cost ends up with the government requiring (explicitly or practically because of the requirements of interfacing with the proprietary system) encouraging trading partners, including intergovernmental ones with the same kinds of business fit issues, to use COTS/MOTS solutions from the same vendor. Things like Office 365 are not the main issue.

chrisseaton 6y ago

I think the government trying to build these tools and services themselves, or trying to procure them from a traditional government services company, would be an absolute disaster and colossal waste of money and time. No thanks.

0xffff2 6y ago

AFAIK, my corner of the government doesn't use Google or Microsoft services for any public-facing services. That said, we do use Google and MS (and AWS and GitHub and ...) internally, but with a huge caveat. Absolutely all of those services run exclusively on government infrastructure. None of the data hosted there is in any way shared or accessible to the companies providing the software.

clairity 6y ago
awesome! please convince your colleagues to do the same. maybe it will trickle down to california, and LA in particular, where gov is love-nuzzling with google.
- 0xffff2 6y ago
  Ah, one of the downsides of working for the Federal government is that you forget that "government" isn't just the big players. Although I can't say I've encountered this in my interactions with the California government either. I would say that maybe there's a role for the Federal government to play in providing data hosting for smaller governments who can't afford to do it themselves, but with the general distrust of the Feds these days, I bet most here (including me, frankly) would rather give their data to MS and Google.
  - clairity 6y ago
    i'm personally no fan of the gov-corp false dichotomy--we can neither completely trust nor distrust any institution. we the people use them as tools for a better society, not as tribal members, and need to stay vigilant of any concentration or expression of power, like surveillance. it's our duty. but yes, fed-gov providing smaller govs enterprise services seems like a potentially good and more efficient use of tax dollars, though concentrating surveillance is a concern.

thephyber 6y ago

You are really just complaining about the security model that the browser has chosen. When you visit a website, you choose to trust the content the owner sends back and all of the transitive trust that the owner embodies by importing images, scripts, styles, frames, forms, and hyperlinks. And to the extent you are talking about how government works (online or offline), they manage to choose some terrible vendors. You don't get to opt out of those offline vendors, so what's the point of complaining about just a few online ones?

clairity 6y ago
> "You are really just complaining about the security model that the browser has chosen." no, i'm not. everything we do is intimately tied together with huge slatherings of trust, browsing included. it's how societies and civilizations fundamentally work. however, some entities like google have proven themselves less trustworthy. so let's move up the vendor ladder of trustworthiness, rather than staying stuck at the bottom. > "...so what's the point of complaining about just a few online ones?" with that kind of defeatism, what's the point of anything? every improvement helps, particularly when it involves one of the, if not the, largest privacy-invading, data harvesting machines on the planet.