7 ms·

> her suggestions really do not align with what the tech community wants at all. I feel like we as a tech community should take a step back and consider whethe

> her suggestions really do not align with what the tech community wants at all. I feel like we as a tech community should take a step back and consider whether or not we should not be the only ones that decide what should or should not be done. It is a massive country with many opposing viewpoints. We have massive conflicts of interest and some tech companies have shown over and over that greed trumps morals in many cases. We are humans and we are not a group of enlightened arbiters that know what is best for the world. We have done a shit job so far of managing ourselves. Sure in lots of cases we have made the world a better place but I think we need to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that greed has crept in and supplanted that "making the world a better place" mission.

sanedigital 5y ago
In my opinion, domain experts have a moral obligation to speak up regarding policy that involves their area of expertise. On the topic of encryption, we're the only community with an understanding of what "breaking encryption" means. There are no skeleton keys, only vulnerabilities. We have a moral and ethical duty to fight for encryption, privacy, and security, not against it.
- bostonsre 5y ago
  Yes, I agree that we should absolutely provide advice on our area of expertise for topics in our domain but I don't think we should be the ones that make the decision. The other side of the debate aren't idiots, they have some valid view points, else this encryption debate would have been settled long ago. Encryption was not the only point brought up by the OP, they were also against government regulation. My main point is that we are tech workers that have conflicts of interest and that we should look hard at our viewpoints and ask ourselves if they are better for us or better for everyone. We are humans and like other industries, greed has crept in and we don't always make great decisions when left on our own.
  - LastMuel 5y ago
    > We are humans and like other industries, greed has crept in and we don't always make great decisions when left on our own. I feel strange having to point out that Governments are made up of people too. If it's not people that are making the good decisions, whom do we turn to?
    - bostonsre 5y ago
      Yes, democracy is the worst form of governance except for all of the other ones. I trust more in our government than I do in zuckerberg. Letting him continue the path that he and only he decides does not seem like a good idea.
      - LastMuel 5y ago
        I find it odd that you exalt democracy and the idea of limiting individual freedom in the same paragraph. Zuckerberg isn't a government unto himself and answers to shareholders and board members; one of which served as Chief of staff for the National Economic Council in the Obama administration. You seem to think that our government and large corporations are separate and isolated organizations, but the people that work within them often slip between the two. Taking Zuckerberg out of the equation will certainly not change the game.
        JohnWhigham 5y ago
        So then what is your solution to this?
        etc-hosts 5y ago
        due to Facebook's corporate structure, I don't think Zuckerberg actually answers to the shareholders and board members.
  - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    I have yet to see a compelling argument for enshrining security vulnerabilities in law outside of the usual sob stories that like to get echoed in Congressional testimony.
- golemotron 5y ago
  Tech people have tech knowledge, but they are not policy experts. Our job is to give the people creating policy information on our area of expertise, not theirs. If you don't agree, look at that comments on this post. They are shallow and tech centric, not considering all of the various impacts of a comprehensive policy.
  - peterwei87 5y ago
    It's not obvious that Ms. Haugen provides any additional expertise in policy matters. What are her achievements in the policy space that merit deference to expertise?
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      Her expertise and motives are separate from the public utility of what she revealed. I'm not going to denounce her for leaking this material: I can separate the utility of having this material in the public record from her reasons for putting it there. As for her expertise, she worked in FB's civic integrity unit as a product manager. I may disagree with her, but she does have a reasonable basis to claim better knowledge on the topic than the average person.
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  > There are no skeleton keys, only vulnerabilities. This is something really unique to digital technologies. In meat-space, everything has a vulnerability: force. With sufficient reason and circumstance, whether or not you give up your keys, the government is still able to claim dominion over anything you're trying to hide. All they have to do is break a few walls. Digital technologies don't have this problem (feature if you're the government). If you have your key stored in your memory, and there is no back door in the software, no matter what court orders anyone has, if you don't tell them the key then the information is lost to them forever. This kind of breaks some fundamental assumptions layed into law prior to tech. When you use encryption, tech really becomes an extension of your mind, and your 5th amendment rights effectively shut the government out of them completely. While I like this idea, it definitely poses problems for enforcement of basically every digital and financial law on the books, which can pose problems for all of us.
  - NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
    The use of force generally leaves evidence of its use, however. If the government cuts the door off your safe, and doesn't have a warrant to conduct that search, then the facts will speak for themselves when you avail yourself of your rights - e.g. to have evidence from an unlawful search suppressed in court and the subsequent civil rights lawsuit. This is where the analogy breaks down - introducing backdoors and passkeys into digital security doesn't create the same trail in the physical world. The better analogy would be - imagine that the government insisted that all locks be approved by the government, on the understanding that those locks would have master keys that the government owned. They would be able to come to a bank during the night, unlock the front door, the vault, and your safe deposit box; or come into your home when you were at work, unlock your filing cabinet and look at your records. You would have to trust that government employees who had access to the master keys would only use them for legitimate purposes, and when authorized to do so. You would have to trust that the government could secure those keys at all times so they never fell into the wrong hands, and that no unauthorized duplicates would be made. You would have to do all those things bearing in mind that the government regularly loses such master keys, has employees that exceed their authority, misuse government resources, demonstrate poor custody practices, and so on. It doesn't seem like a good bet to me. EDIT: oh yes, and I forgot to mention there's a whole bunch of other bad actors out there who know how to buy a government-approved lock, take it apart, and are highly motivated to make their own master keys.
- secondcoming 5y ago
  To play Devil's Advocate and use your own point against you; Some software engineers might be experts in the domain of encryption, but there are other professions who are experts in the domain of National Security.
boringg 5y ago
I think one of the big sticking points of the problem is the challenge of power represents innately. It is very difficult to have an exceptional steward of power over long time periods. The government has done a poor job, individuals have done a poor job, crowdsourcing responsibility has done a poor job, corporations have done a poor job. I am not trying to throw my hands up in defeat but pointing to an intransigent problem that is not easily fixable however simple every side of the argument tries to frame it and why they should be the arbiters of power/control. I understand the reluctance of any individual or company to hand over a large portion of control to a government or other community that doesn't have a track record - it is a fraught situation.
- bostonsre 5y ago
  Yes, democratic governments have many drawbacks around regulation but aren't they the least bad choice we have in a situation like facebook? There is no governance beyond zuckerberg currently and he has proven that he is aligned with zuckerberg and not society. Continuing with the status quo and doing nothing does not seem like a good idea to me.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    I mean, he's been pretty open about his goals and moral code for a while now. The entire company was built on the assumption that being connected to as many people as possible is net good. You can probably argue that he's wrong on this, but it's hard to say that he just cares about himself.
    - bostonsre 5y ago
      I doubt it, but I guess its possible that is his only true north. If it is, he is going about it in a Machiavellian or Caesar like manner where he does not care about the impact he has while attaining those goals. But I also think it's possible that his actions are those of someone who is power hungry and does not care about what happens in his wake.
himinlomax 5y ago
> I feel like we as a tech community should take a step back and consider whether or not we should not be the only ones that decide what should or should not be done. As an engineer, I'm in a better position to understand what the f is going on regarding encryption and, say, nuclear power than most people. No amount of wishful thinking will change that. > It is a massive country with many opposing viewpoints. World. Not country.
- bostonsre 5y ago
  > As an engineer, I'm in a better position to understand what the f is going on regarding encryption and, say, nuclear power than most people. Yes, you are an engineer and understand the implementation details and potential side effects, but what about the opposing viewpoints like those from law enforcement? Are you an expert in law enforcement? Your viewpoints should trump theirs why exactly? You really don't think that it's possible that you can't see the forest for the trees? Do nuclear scientists define nuclear energy policies or do they provide advice to those that define them? > World. Not country. I don't think we have a world government that will make regulations in regards to facebook.
  - himinlomax 5y ago
    > but what about the opposing viewpoints like those from law enforcement? You're right, I may be ignorant of the issues that support the need for weakening encryption, but the fact is that I can evaluate the other side of the equation. And if the side pushing against encryption is making terrible arguments, I can see how terrible they objectively are. > Do nuclear scientists define nuclear energy policies or do they provide advice to those that define them? Similar thing: the arguments against nuclear power are idiotic and typically plain wrong and based on irrational appeals to fear. Just like the previous issue, if a decision has to be made, it has to balance the pros and cons. Even if I can only properly evaluate only one side of the equation and find it lacking, I can certainly have serious doubts as to the legitimacy of the choice presented. And that's one side more than most people can grasp.
- nradov 5y ago
  I have seen plenty of comments by engineers here containing wildly incorrect statements about nuclear power. In general engineers seem to overestimate their own competence in areas outside their immediate professional experience.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> We have massive conflicts of interest and some tech companies have shown over and over that greed trumps morals in many cases. How is using end-to-end encryption of private communications a case of greed trumping morals? If anything, encrypting private messages and preventing others from reading them - be it Facebook or the various world governments - seems like the obvious moral move. I think a lot of people, tech or otherwise, are projecting their own ideals on to this Facebook leaker without looking closely at the details of what she’s been lobbying for. Most people seem to want less surveillance and interference with private communications by Facebook but she’s arguing for much, much more. But that’s the problem: The issue has now been so dramatized in the media that the average viewer doesn’t really know what’s being proposed, they just see “Facebook bad, whistleblower good” and assume it’s what they want. It’s up to people who know the subject matter, including the tech community who understand things like end-to-end encryption and government regulation thereof, to speak up.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
malwrar 5y ago
Some part of me feels like this would be like letting the country decide on vaccines. I don’t think people have any idea what end-to-end encryption means, they just hear maybe the occasional slogan (“it keeps your messages private”, “it lets terrorists hide from cops”) and assume there’s some valid choice between totally cripple online security and totally cripple people stalking your communications. I don’t even think people understand the implications of what communications means. Why else are we still talking about this issue in abstract terms when the harms are precisely enumerable and the supposed benefits can be completely debunked as fantasy? All this stuff is so depressing. Free speech online is no longer in vogue, the ACLU, EFF, and other usual heroes of these sorts of battles feel asleep at the wheel. It’s sad to think I might see the death of something so beautiful.
quotemstr 5y ago
> I feel like we as a tech community should take a step back and consider whether or not we should not be the only ones that decide what should or should not be done When it comes to encryption, tech activists say tech should take a back seat to policy-makers and let them decide on the rules. When it comes to internet censorship, tech activists says "but my private companies!" and argues that techies decide on the limits of acceptable discourse for the whole world. What do these stances have in common? That activists are arguing that tech should do what power wants. There are no principles at work here. There's only a "who, whom" power dynamic. Activists will say whatever is effective in the moment for achieving their immediate aims, and right now, that's being good little sycophants for people with broad, unclear, and definitely undemocratic influence over public affairs.
jimbokun 5y ago
And you think partisan politicians and activists will make unbiased decisions with no negative unintended consequences? Encryption is not a pro-tech position. It is a pro-privacy position and you don't need to be a tech expert to see the value in that.
dkarl 5y ago
> We have done a shit job so far of managing ourselves. Sure in lots of cases we have made the world a better place but I think we need to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that greed has crept in and supplanted that "making the world a better place" mission. I think "we" have been largely absent from the conversation as heard by the rest of society. You can't say "trust the software engineers" like you can say "trust the doctors," not because we don't have ethics or expertise, but because what most people think of as the voices of our profession are the PR mouthpieces for companies like Facebook and Google. Speaking person to person and in online forums such as this, you'll find most engineers concerned about privacy and the societal and emotional harm of social media, and reflexively distrustful of corporations that speak about issues they have a financial stake in. But that's not what non-engineers think we think. The assumption seems to be, well, you're a techie, so of course you uncritically embrace all that stuff. People who know me better and know I don't think that way seem to regard me as less of a techie for that reason, which goes to show how little they are aware of sentiment in our profession. I think that's what we need to fix. A profession like medicine suffers a little bit from the same bias, where people tend to assume that doctors are personally pro-surgery, pro-drugs, etc., but doctors have a professional structure that creates recognized authorities, which means journalists have somebody to talk to when they want to get the overall take of "doctors" on an issue where their expertise applies. When writing about a public health issue, journalists have no problem getting an independent perspective from doctors with credibility, relevant expertise, and no direct financial stake in the issue. Software is in a position analogous to if the only doctors visible in the media were PR flacks for hospitals and pharmaceutical companies. A big cultural difference between medicine and software is that doctors are traditionally trained to bear the mantle of authority. They are trained that commanding the trust and respect of patients is vital to providing care to them, and that it is a skill separate from and equally necessary to the technical skills that make a doctor worthy of that respect. Tech people are socialized to beware of the dangers of authority and distrust those who seek it. I may be speaking as an old-timer here, but when I was young, I learned to lionize the scientists and engineers who rejected the accoutrements of authority, who wore cheap and frumpy clothes, who let their hair go crazy, who reveled in stories of their own stupid mistakes, who actively punctured the mystique of authority so that they would only have as much respect as their knowledge and achievements alone would earn them. In other words, medicine comes from an old tradition, which long accepted that wielding authority and being worthy of it were separate skills. Keeping the two connected was a moral responsibility that fell on individual doctors and on the profession as a whole. The tradition of software is much younger and was much more deeply marked by the counterculture, which took an opposite approach to the problem of authority, declaring that we could and should unlearn our reflexive deference to the superficial aspect of authority and replace it with a critical, informed consumption of the expertise of other members of society. To the counterculture mindset, it was unacceptable that society should be at the mercy of the closed ranks of a profession privileged by its exclusive knowledge. I think that the counterculture perspective was an important corrective, but it is incomplete, because the problem of authority hasn't gone away. Even if we despise authority, we still depend on it, so the question is: how should we as a profession create and elevate professional authority? How do we make it possible for a journalist to easily get a read on what software engineers think as professionals, distinct from the official line of large corporate employers of software engineers? Maybe software needs a replacement for the old professional societies, except with an emphasis on policy and public education, instead of expensive journals and social events designed to help you find your way into the old boys' club. I have no idea what such a group would look like, though.

sanedigital 5y ago

In my opinion, domain experts have a moral obligation to speak up regarding policy that involves their area of expertise. On the topic of encryption, we're the only community with an understanding of what "breaking encryption" means. There are no skeleton keys, only vulnerabilities. We have a moral and ethical duty to fight for encryption, privacy, and security, not against it.

bostonsre 5y ago
Yes, I agree that we should absolutely provide advice on our area of expertise for topics in our domain but I don't think we should be the ones that make the decision. The other side of the debate aren't idiots, they have some valid view points, else this encryption debate would have been settled long ago. Encryption was not the only point brought up by the OP, they were also against government regulation. My main point is that we are tech workers that have conflicts of interest and that we should look hard at our viewpoints and ask ourselves if they are better for us or better for everyone. We are humans and like other industries, greed has crept in and we don't always make great decisions when left on our own.
- LastMuel 5y ago
  > We are humans and like other industries, greed has crept in and we don't always make great decisions when left on our own. I feel strange having to point out that Governments are made up of people too. If it's not people that are making the good decisions, whom do we turn to?
  - bostonsre 5y ago
    Yes, democracy is the worst form of governance except for all of the other ones. I trust more in our government than I do in zuckerberg. Letting him continue the path that he and only he decides does not seem like a good idea.
    - LastMuel 5y ago
      I find it odd that you exalt democracy and the idea of limiting individual freedom in the same paragraph. Zuckerberg isn't a government unto himself and answers to shareholders and board members; one of which served as Chief of staff for the National Economic Council in the Obama administration. You seem to think that our government and large corporations are separate and isolated organizations, but the people that work within them often slip between the two. Taking Zuckerberg out of the equation will certainly not change the game.
      - JohnWhigham 5y ago
        So then what is your solution to this?
      - etc-hosts 5y ago
        due to Facebook's corporate structure, I don't think Zuckerberg actually answers to the shareholders and board members.
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  I have yet to see a compelling argument for enshrining security vulnerabilities in law outside of the usual sob stories that like to get echoed in Congressional testimony.
golemotron 5y ago
Tech people have tech knowledge, but they are not policy experts. Our job is to give the people creating policy information on our area of expertise, not theirs. If you don't agree, look at that comments on this post. They are shallow and tech centric, not considering all of the various impacts of a comprehensive policy.
- peterwei87 5y ago
  It's not obvious that Ms. Haugen provides any additional expertise in policy matters. What are her achievements in the policy space that merit deference to expertise?
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    Her expertise and motives are separate from the public utility of what she revealed. I'm not going to denounce her for leaking this material: I can separate the utility of having this material in the public record from her reasons for putting it there. As for her expertise, she worked in FB's civic integrity unit as a product manager. I may disagree with her, but she does have a reasonable basis to claim better knowledge on the topic than the average person.
BobbyJo 5y ago
> There are no skeleton keys, only vulnerabilities. This is something really unique to digital technologies. In meat-space, everything has a vulnerability: force. With sufficient reason and circumstance, whether or not you give up your keys, the government is still able to claim dominion over anything you're trying to hide. All they have to do is break a few walls. Digital technologies don't have this problem (feature if you're the government). If you have your key stored in your memory, and there is no back door in the software, no matter what court orders anyone has, if you don't tell them the key then the information is lost to them forever. This kind of breaks some fundamental assumptions layed into law prior to tech. When you use encryption, tech really becomes an extension of your mind, and your 5th amendment rights effectively shut the government out of them completely. While I like this idea, it definitely poses problems for enforcement of basically every digital and financial law on the books, which can pose problems for all of us.
- NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
  The use of force generally leaves evidence of its use, however. If the government cuts the door off your safe, and doesn't have a warrant to conduct that search, then the facts will speak for themselves when you avail yourself of your rights - e.g. to have evidence from an unlawful search suppressed in court and the subsequent civil rights lawsuit. This is where the analogy breaks down - introducing backdoors and passkeys into digital security doesn't create the same trail in the physical world. The better analogy would be - imagine that the government insisted that all locks be approved by the government, on the understanding that those locks would have master keys that the government owned. They would be able to come to a bank during the night, unlock the front door, the vault, and your safe deposit box; or come into your home when you were at work, unlock your filing cabinet and look at your records. You would have to trust that government employees who had access to the master keys would only use them for legitimate purposes, and when authorized to do so. You would have to trust that the government could secure those keys at all times so they never fell into the wrong hands, and that no unauthorized duplicates would be made. You would have to do all those things bearing in mind that the government regularly loses such master keys, has employees that exceed their authority, misuse government resources, demonstrate poor custody practices, and so on. It doesn't seem like a good bet to me. EDIT: oh yes, and I forgot to mention there's a whole bunch of other bad actors out there who know how to buy a government-approved lock, take it apart, and are highly motivated to make their own master keys.
secondcoming 5y ago
To play Devil's Advocate and use your own point against you; Some software engineers might be experts in the domain of encryption, but there are other professions who are experts in the domain of National Security.

boringg 5y ago

I think one of the big sticking points of the problem is the challenge of power represents innately. It is very difficult to have an exceptional steward of power over long time periods. The government has done a poor job, individuals have done a poor job, crowdsourcing responsibility has done a poor job, corporations have done a poor job. I am not trying to throw my hands up in defeat but pointing to an intransigent problem that is not easily fixable however simple every side of the argument tries to frame it and why they should be the arbiters of power/control. I understand the reluctance of any individual or company to hand over a large portion of control to a government or other community that doesn't have a track record - it is a fraught situation.

bostonsre 5y ago
Yes, democratic governments have many drawbacks around regulation but aren't they the least bad choice we have in a situation like facebook? There is no governance beyond zuckerberg currently and he has proven that he is aligned with zuckerberg and not society. Continuing with the status quo and doing nothing does not seem like a good idea to me.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  I mean, he's been pretty open about his goals and moral code for a while now. The entire company was built on the assumption that being connected to as many people as possible is net good. You can probably argue that he's wrong on this, but it's hard to say that he just cares about himself.
  - bostonsre 5y ago
    I doubt it, but I guess its possible that is his only true north. If it is, he is going about it in a Machiavellian or Caesar like manner where he does not care about the impact he has while attaining those goals. But I also think it's possible that his actions are those of someone who is power hungry and does not care about what happens in his wake.

himinlomax 5y ago

> I feel like we as a tech community should take a step back and consider whether or not we should not be the only ones that decide what should or should not be done. As an engineer, I'm in a better position to understand what the f is going on regarding encryption and, say, nuclear power than most people. No amount of wishful thinking will change that. > It is a massive country with many opposing viewpoints. World. Not country.

bostonsre 5y ago
> As an engineer, I'm in a better position to understand what the f is going on regarding encryption and, say, nuclear power than most people. Yes, you are an engineer and understand the implementation details and potential side effects, but what about the opposing viewpoints like those from law enforcement? Are you an expert in law enforcement? Your viewpoints should trump theirs why exactly? You really don't think that it's possible that you can't see the forest for the trees? Do nuclear scientists define nuclear energy policies or do they provide advice to those that define them? > World. Not country. I don't think we have a world government that will make regulations in regards to facebook.
- himinlomax 5y ago
  > but what about the opposing viewpoints like those from law enforcement? You're right, I may be ignorant of the issues that support the need for weakening encryption, but the fact is that I can evaluate the other side of the equation. And if the side pushing against encryption is making terrible arguments, I can see how terrible they objectively are. > Do nuclear scientists define nuclear energy policies or do they provide advice to those that define them? Similar thing: the arguments against nuclear power are idiotic and typically plain wrong and based on irrational appeals to fear. Just like the previous issue, if a decision has to be made, it has to balance the pros and cons. Even if I can only properly evaluate only one side of the equation and find it lacking, I can certainly have serious doubts as to the legitimacy of the choice presented. And that's one side more than most people can grasp.
nradov 5y ago
I have seen plenty of comments by engineers here containing wildly incorrect statements about nuclear power. In general engineers seem to overestimate their own competence in areas outside their immediate professional experience.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> We have massive conflicts of interest and some tech companies have shown over and over that greed trumps morals in many cases. How is using end-to-end encryption of private communications a case of greed trumping morals? If anything, encrypting private messages and preventing others from reading them - be it Facebook or the various world governments - seems like the obvious moral move. I think a lot of people, tech or otherwise, are projecting their own ideals on to this Facebook leaker without looking closely at the details of what she’s been lobbying for. Most people seem to want less surveillance and interference with private communications by Facebook but she’s arguing for much, much more. But that’s the problem: The issue has now been so dramatized in the media that the average viewer doesn’t really know what’s being proposed, they just see “Facebook bad, whistleblower good” and assume it’s what they want. It’s up to people who know the subject matter, including the tech community who understand things like end-to-end encryption and government regulation thereof, to speak up.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

malwrar 5y ago

Some part of me feels like this would be like letting the country decide on vaccines. I don’t think people have any idea what end-to-end encryption means, they just hear maybe the occasional slogan (“it keeps your messages private”, “it lets terrorists hide from cops”) and assume there’s some valid choice between totally cripple online security and totally cripple people stalking your communications. I don’t even think people understand the implications of what communications means. Why else are we still talking about this issue in abstract terms when the harms are precisely enumerable and the supposed benefits can be completely debunked as fantasy? All this stuff is so depressing. Free speech online is no longer in vogue, the ACLU, EFF, and other usual heroes of these sorts of battles feel asleep at the wheel. It’s sad to think I might see the death of something so beautiful.

quotemstr 5y ago

> I feel like we as a tech community should take a step back and consider whether or not we should not be the only ones that decide what should or should not be done When it comes to encryption, tech activists say tech should take a back seat to policy-makers and let them decide on the rules. When it comes to internet censorship, tech activists says "but my private companies!" and argues that techies decide on the limits of acceptable discourse for the whole world. What do these stances have in common? That activists are arguing that tech should do what power wants. There are no principles at work here. There's only a "who, whom" power dynamic. Activists will say whatever is effective in the moment for achieving their immediate aims, and right now, that's being good little sycophants for people with broad, unclear, and definitely undemocratic influence over public affairs.

jimbokun 5y ago

And you think partisan politicians and activists will make unbiased decisions with no negative unintended consequences? Encryption is not a pro-tech position. It is a pro-privacy position and you don't need to be a tech expert to see the value in that.

dkarl 5y ago

> We have done a shit job so far of managing ourselves. Sure in lots of cases we have made the world a better place but I think we need to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that greed has crept in and supplanted that "making the world a better place" mission. I think "we" have been largely absent from the conversation as heard by the rest of society. You can't say "trust the software engineers" like you can say "trust the doctors," not because we don't have ethics or expertise, but because what most people think of as the voices of our profession are the PR mouthpieces for companies like Facebook and Google. Speaking person to person and in online forums such as this, you'll find most engineers concerned about privacy and the societal and emotional harm of social media, and reflexively distrustful of corporations that speak about issues they have a financial stake in. But that's not what non-engineers think we think. The assumption seems to be, well, you're a techie, so of course you uncritically embrace all that stuff. People who know me better and know I don't think that way seem to regard me as less of a techie for that reason, which goes to show how little they are aware of sentiment in our profession. I think that's what we need to fix. A profession like medicine suffers a little bit from the same bias, where people tend to assume that doctors are personally pro-surgery, pro-drugs, etc., but doctors have a professional structure that creates recognized authorities, which means journalists have somebody to talk to when they want to get the overall take of "doctors" on an issue where their expertise applies. When writing about a public health issue, journalists have no problem getting an independent perspective from doctors with credibility, relevant expertise, and no direct financial stake in the issue. Software is in a position analogous to if the only doctors visible in the media were PR flacks for hospitals and pharmaceutical companies. A big cultural difference between medicine and software is that doctors are traditionally trained to bear the mantle of authority. They are trained that commanding the trust and respect of patients is vital to providing care to them, and that it is a skill separate from and equally necessary to the technical skills that make a doctor worthy of that respect. Tech people are socialized to beware of the dangers of authority and distrust those who seek it. I may be speaking as an old-timer here, but when I was young, I learned to lionize the scientists and engineers who rejected the accoutrements of authority, who wore cheap and frumpy clothes, who let their hair go crazy, who reveled in stories of their own stupid mistakes, who actively punctured the mystique of authority so that they would only have as much respect as their knowledge and achievements alone would earn them. In other words, medicine comes from an old tradition, which long accepted that wielding authority and being worthy of it were separate skills. Keeping the two connected was a moral responsibility that fell on individual doctors and on the profession as a whole. The tradition of software is much younger and was much more deeply marked by the counterculture, which took an opposite approach to the problem of authority, declaring that we could and should unlearn our reflexive deference to the superficial aspect of authority and replace it with a critical, informed consumption of the expertise of other members of society. To the counterculture mindset, it was unacceptable that society should be at the mercy of the closed ranks of a profession privileged by its exclusive knowledge. I think that the counterculture perspective was an important corrective, but it is incomplete, because the problem of authority hasn't gone away. Even if we despise authority, we still depend on it, so the question is: how should we as a profession create and elevate professional authority? How do we make it possible for a journalist to easily get a read on what software engineers think as professionals, distinct from the official line of large corporate employers of software engineers? Maybe software needs a replacement for the old professional societies, except with an emphasis on policy and public education, instead of expensive journals and social events designed to help you find your way into the old boys' club. I have no idea what such a group would look like, though.