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I really sort of expected that by the time I reached my age that we'd have more policy makers that understood tech a little better. I feel like in the last sa

• ryanmcbride 1y ago
  Yeah unfortunately we live in a gerontocracy so it's the same people in charge today that were 25 years ago :(
  • pjc50 1y ago
    UK not quite as bad as the US age wise, but the real issue is the media who demand all sorts of illiberal things. Rupert Murdoch is 94.
    • hinkley 1y ago
      And living on pure spite.
    • dv_dt 1y ago
      I think this illustrates that in the UK its that the plutocrats like Murdoch are still the same people as 25 years ago
• omeid2 1y ago
  Your subtle idea that the comprehension and understanding is the shortcoming of political apparatus is overlooks the million issues as basic healthcare not being addressed. The problem is not understanding, I can assure you of that.
• Hypergraphe 1y ago
  I don't think it is a matter of really understanding the tech. It has to do more about how you envision the society regarding privacy and individual rights. It is indeed a political point of view on how much you want to control everything.
  • petre 1y ago
    Larry Wllison is advocating the same invasion if privacy mechanisms or worse and he clearly understands the tech.
• xhkkffbf 1y ago
  It does seem to me like the US Vice President is advancing a pretty tech savvy policy. He's pushing for privacy. Am I missing something?
  • Hikikomori 1y ago
    They're just against EU asserting any kind of control over American companies. Reminder that he's funded by Thiel and friends with Curtis Yarvin, which goals include the end of democracy and the federal state and replace the system with tech CEO kings over feudal states.
  • 0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago
    There is a lot of reflexive anti-Americanism on Hacker News. The US is generally assumed to be the bad guy.
  • ascorbic 1y ago
    I think the non tech savvy policy makers in question are the British ones.
  • lenerdenator 1y ago
    He's associated with Palantir. He can't be pushing for privacy.
    • realsolipsist 1y ago
      I can’t sneeed
    • kstrauser 1y ago
      Sure he can. In an ideal world (from the US gov't's perspective), all communications everywhere would be encrypted, and only they'd have the workarounds to access the data anyway. I'm not being sarcastic. For real, what major government wouldn't want that in their favor?
      • ImPostingOnHN 1y ago
• setgree 1y ago
  This article is explicitly about how J.D. Vance (age 40) & others at the White House are forcefully advocating for preserving E2E encryption. Arguably not for the right reasons, but still. I'm not sure what you mean by "more" but what you are asking for is in fact happening.
  • upofadown 1y ago
    It's possible that their advocacy is well thought out but not based on the stated reasons. Say, Apple is actually under the control of the NSA and there are hidden back doors in the form of exploitable weaknesses as per Crypto AG. Then preventing the introduction of public backdoors would preserve the value of the current setup where Apple is widely considered trustworthy with respect to their customers.
  • caycep 1y ago
    UK has a hx of pushing this - OP probably referring to efforts by the brits to put backdoors in comm standards like GSM and others back in the 80's and 90's
  • duxup 1y ago
    They're arguing with foreign countries. Meanwhile the federal government continuously working consolidate all data available under groups like DODGE or ICE or Palantir. Arguing to preserve a tech in a given situation but with other goals ... not sure the first part matters at that point. Perhaps he likes the idea of E2E, but just for himself and his friends. I duno, but whatever it is, it's not about the important things after the fact.
    • scarface_74 1y ago
      While Palantir is a private company and shouldn’t have access to government data, why shouldn’t in theory all government data be accessible to the government? DOGE is clearly operating illegally for other reasons - not distributions funds that were appropriated by Congress for instance. But data sharing isn’t the root issue. It’s spineless Republicans in Congress and a sycophantic Supreme Court. And it’s possible to say both that if you are here illegally you should be deported and that it’s currently being driven by animus, cruelty and it should be easier to obtain legal residency especially in areas where we do need more workers and implement another program like Reagan did in the 80s
• Am4TIfIsER0ppos 1y ago
  In the distant past technical skill and knowledge was increasing as more and more people used personal computers. Then Steve Jobs invented the smartphone. This caused the world to get dumber and dumber.
  • FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    >Then Steve Jobs invented the smartphone. This caused the world to get dumber and dumber. Preposterous. Did the invention of the calculator make people dumber? A smartphone is another tool. Not Steve Jobs's fault people use it for TikTok or gooning instead of studying programming, math, medicine or whatever. Stupid people are gonna be stupid with or without smartphones. Plus, we already had smartphones before Jobs, they were Pal OS, Windows Mobile or Symbian based.
    • pests 1y ago
      It’s a difference in kind I think. Creation of any type of work - art, writing, programming, modeling, deep research, etc is much more accessible on a PC than on a smartphone. Not only because of the input devices available, but also the restrictions of the platform and OS. Maybe it wasn’t intentional, but the form factor of the modern smartphone discourages creation. When I was a young child me and all my friends would “use the PC together” just to open MSPaint and create shitty drawings. I don’t see anything similar today.
      • FirmwareBurner 1y ago
        >the form factor of the modern smartphone discourages creation Ever take photos or videos with your phone? Is that not creation? >When I was a young child me and all my friends would “use the PC together” Same, but this is more "old man yells at clouds". Children today have their own way of creation, now using AI.
        • Dylan16807 1y ago
          Sitting around in a room taking photos and videos is a lot less creative than drawing. It's possible to do strongly creative photo/video things with a phone but it's not most of the use. If you make a list of creative activities that can be done on a computer or phone, a big majority are notably harder to do on a phone.
• scarface_74 1y ago
  The people in office now were already old by the time the Internet and especially Mobile took off. But it’s not like many young adults today who grew up with mobile phones understand computers either. At 51 growing up with computers in the 80s, I find myself explaining what I think should be simple computer concepts to both my parents generation and my adult children. My 80 year old mom is not a stereotypical old person who doesn’t know how to use a computer. She is a retired math teacher and has actively been using computers since we had an Apple //e in the house running AppleWorks in the mid 80s. When she was tutoring teenagers mostly as volunteer work after she retired, she had to teach them how to use Office/Gsuite.
  • nemomarx 1y ago
    There was a very idealistic move in education to believe that younger students would be "digital natives" and self taught on typing, computer programs, etc. So we deemphasized classes on this, and now kids grow up on consumption oriented devices and can't type again. So it goes in circles I guess
    • rightbyte 1y ago
      I think idealistic is the wrong wording. Maybe optimistic or naive?
      • nemomarx 1y ago
        Optimistic is probably the kindest, yeah. I don't think it was strictly a bad argument - it was easy to think of the classes as outdated and taught by a generation who knew less than the students. It just turned out to be a very short state of affairs. Hard to expect schools to have predicted the iPhone, right?
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• fyrn_ 1y ago
  Part of that is US policy makers have barely changed, they are just older now. Very troubling trend that.
  • dragonwriter 1y ago
    Policy makers change frequently and often radically. Federal lawmakers less so, but lawmakers are a small subset of policymakers, and not the ones who create international pressure; those are political appointees in the executive branch, and they change frequently.
• ThatMedicIsASpy 1y ago
  A reason why my first vote ever (20 years ago) went to the pirate party. We needed people with digital understanding 30 years ago. "Das Internet ist für uns alle Neuland" Angela Merkel (2013) during a press conference with Obama. "The internet is uncharted territory for us"
• CJefferson 1y ago
  I don't see why you think they don't understand the tech. This is going to be heresy here, but honestly I think it's a reasonable position. Not one I would take, but reasonable. For the first time in human history there can be large scale communication it is mathematically impossible for governments to have any access to. If you believe that governments are doing the job of protecting their citizens (and many do), it's entirely reasonable for them to want this type of access. They have it with the postal service, and analogue phones and the world didn't collapse, and many criminals got caught.
  • pjc50 1y ago
    The problem is that digital excludes the middle. The analogue systems had fundamental limits on how many people could be surveilled, and still we had abuses of the system. The digital system makes you choose between "surveil absolutely everyone all of the time" and "surveil nobody". Note that you mention the postal service. Remember the Horizon Post Office scandal, where there was a huge swathe of wrongful prosecutions?
  • ryukafalz 1y ago
    But also for the first time in human history, it's possible to do large-scale surveillance without large-scale human effort. The power of the network goes both ways. Phone wiretapping (until recently I suppose) and mail inspection required a human to take some action to listen in; you couldn't just monitor everyone's communications. Now you can.
    • CJefferson 1y ago
      I agree, there are many complex issues involved here. But I get annoyed at tech people (not saying you!) that it is self-evident that any kind of law enforcement methods of access is obviously wrong.
      • ImPostingOnHN 1y ago
        > I get annoyed at tech people (not saying you!) that it is self-evident that any kind of law enforcement methods of access is obviously wrong. I don't think anybody is saying that the motivations are bad. We all want safety, right? The closest thing I hear is, they feel that the cons often outweigh the pros. I think this correlates with their trust in authorities, given the countless abuses we see authorities perpetrating when granted power. There's a reason "think of the children!" is literally a joke mocking safety-based pretexts for reductions in rights.
• DrBazza 1y ago
  Sadly, UK Parliament is made up of political careerists and art students, which is probably similar to most Western democracies. There's a saying 'those who can do, those who can't teach', it probably needs a final 'and those that can't teach, go into politics'. Every time ukgov tries to make some sort of tech policy, it's embarassingly wrong, or naive, or both. This comes from a country that effectively gave away ARM. https://studee.com/media/mps-and-their-degrees-media https://studee.com/media/mps-and-their-degrees-media The most popular subjects for MPs who won seats in the Dec 2019 election Politics - 20% History - 13% Law -12% Economics - 10% Philosophy - 6% English - 4%
  • eamonnsullivan 1y ago
    I'm a principal software engineer with a degree in history. You don't need a science degree to understand most of these issues sufficiently to legislate them. But you need humility and a willingness to learn. That, sadly, is lacking in too many governments and civil services. Also, the people pushing for these measure (e.g., the U.K's equivalent of the NSA, GCHQ and most national-level police departments) understand these issues perfectly well.
    • Silhouette 1y ago
      Also, the people pushing for these measure (e.g., the U.K's equivalent of the NSA, GCHQ and most national-level police departments) understand these issues perfectly well. Surely some of them understand the technical details. That doesn't necessarily mean they understand or respect the wider implications of a policy. This is why it's important to have a government that sets policy - taking into account all of the competing influences and potential consequences - and politically neutral technicians who then implement government policy. No-one would dispute that if the government could examine every communication everyone ever sends then it could catch more very bad people and prevent more harm to innocent people. The problem is all the other stuff that also happens if you give a government that kind of power over its own people.
  • tonyedgecombe 1y ago
    The leader of the opposition studied computer engineering (before going on to law). Sadly she used the knowledge gained to hack the website of the deputy leader of Labour Party.
• ferguess_k 1y ago
  It has always been politics, not technology. Politicians and bureaucratic always want more power, and they rarely relinquish power they gained temporarily. It has nothing to do with their technical knowledge. It has everything to do with human nature. If you want to push back, the law is not on your side.
• varispeed 1y ago
  They understand the tech and so their advisers. You are assuming they want to do some do gooding in some sorts of naive and clumsy matter. No. They want control and they know perfectly well the implications.
• thatguy0900 1y ago
  You'd have to convince politicians they shouldn't be trying to die of old age in office before we started getting people who know tech
  • thewebguyd 1y ago
    > before we started getting people who know tech reply The politicians might not know tech, but the NSA, GHCQ, etc. that push for these anti-encryption laws most definitely do know technology, and is the main lobby against encryption. It goes beyond just getting politicians that understand tech. We need politicians willing to rein in the intelligence apparatus put in safeguards, and checks and balances on their power.
• terminalshort 1y ago
  They do understand the tech. They understand that allowing everyone to use E2E encryption gives them less power.
  • ubermonkey 1y ago
    I don't think it's that nefarious. I mean, for some of them it might be, but for MOST of them they see a "law & order" issue that will resonate with stupid people ("cops can't get access to terrorist data / child molester info / human trafficking communications!"), and they just run with it without regard to downstream effects.
• alexey-salmin 1y ago
  I think this is a very dangerous deception. They understand. When politicians say "we need a special key for police to stop child abuse" it's not that they don't know this means "a backdoor with no technological way to limit its use". On the contrary, they know it very well and it's exactly what they want to achieve under the guise of children protection. It's the public at large that don't understand it -- or so they hope.
• kypro 1y ago
  I thought this too, but I think we misunderstood the extent to which various calls for censoring and regulating the internet where driven by a lack of understanding of the technology... The scary thing about the UK regulators is that they seem to understand the stupidity of what they're doing, but believe it's worth it. You see this attitude everywhere in the UK – in our hate speech laws, our blasphemy laws, mass surveillance – the argument isn't that these things don't limit freedom and personal privacy. They'll agree that they do, their argument is that you shouldn't care. With this encryption backdoor most wouldn't deny that it could be compromised, they just didn't think you should worry about it because they thought the benefits were worth it. I think people on the internet in the 90s and early 00s were just weird people to be honest. We're very libertarian for whatever reason, and we wrongly assumed people our age were all as pro-freedom as us.
• snarf21 1y ago
  I think the ironic thing is that although everyone uses powerful technology on a practically constant basis, it is sooooo much more complicated that less and less people have even a clue. How many adults would know how to change their oil today versus back in the 70s? Changing spark plugs used to be a 30 minute task but now you have to take apart half the engine just to even gain access. Even though of us who make our living in tech are not immune. How would we verify that there isn't spyware or similar in the firmware or hardware on the computer we use daily?
• jackgavigan 1y ago
  We've had a serious problem with policy-making in this country for a loooooong time, stretching right back to when RIPA was drafted, nearly three decades ago. With a few notable exceptions, the level of knowledge, expertise and understanding amongst government advisers and policy makers is abysmally low. c.f. https://jackgavigan.com/2015/11/23/how-well-advised-was-the-government-when-it-drafted-the-investigatory-powers-bill/ https://jackgavigan.com/2015/11/23/how-well-advised-was-the-...
• xwowsersx 1y ago
  I mean, yes many policymakers still struggle with the nuances of modern tech, but claiming that "the needle hasn't moved" in 25 years is an exaggeration. In the late 90s/early 2000s, encryption debates featured lawmakers who barely understood email. Since then, there are committees focused specifically on tech policy, even some lawmakers with backgrounds in CS or cybersecurity... and far more nuanced public debates about encryption, surveillance, and privacy. I recently listened to some clips from a hearing with questions about zero-knowledge proofs, algorithmic transparency, etc...this was pretty unthinkable two decades ago. Some agencies and legislative bodies also now have technical staffers and some advisory boards with technologists. So, yeah it it slow and sometimes frustrating, but it's not static.