Public policy and privacy
Public policy issues such as privacy, technology industry economic development, education to support technology workers, and so on. Privacy in particular, whether or not strictly tied to public policy.
Qui custodiet ipsos custodes?
I’ve argued long and loud that even the most secret of government probing needs to be done in some sense openly. That’s hardly a new observation with me. For example, David Brin argued the point effectively in The Transparent Society.
Tom Greene, however, makes the case even more effectively, in just one sentence:
It’s ironic that spooks so often remind us that we’ve got nothing to fear from their activities if we’ve got nothing nasty to hide, while they themselves are rarely comfortable without multiple layers of secrecy, anonymity and plausible deniability.
And he backs it up (actually, precedes it) in this excerpt:
The best conversation I had was with Robert van Bosbeek of the Dutch National Police. I asked him if he was tempted to buy anything.
“Not really,” he said with a laugh. “But it’s always good to see what’s on offer. Basically, we’re three or four years ahead of all this.”
He said that in the Netherlands, communications intercept capabilities are advanced and well established, and yet, in practice, less problematic than in many other countries. “Our legal system is more transparent,” he said, “so we can do what we need to do without controversy. Transparency makes law enforcement easier, not more difficult.”
Emphasis mine.
Sergei Brin doubts his course in China
From an AP story about a press conference given while he was visiting Capitol Hill for one-on-ones with senators:
Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin acknowledged Tuesday the dominant Internet company has compromised its principles by accommodating Chinese censorship demands. He said Google is wrestling to make the deal work before deciding whether to reverse course.
Freedom even without data privacy
To reiterate and expand on some points that I keep making:
- Governments are driving to build and integrate vast databanks of information about us. We can’t stop this.
- However, we can and should slow it and shape it.
- Since we can’t ultimately stop the collection of information, we also need to establish a whole new set of legal limits on the use of information.
- This is an urgent matter. What unfolds over the next few decades will largely be shaped over the next few years.
Fighting internet censorship
As I’ve written previously, fighting web and other internet censorship is getting urgent. Amnesty International* has started a project at irrepressible.info, to take censored web content and spread it around as many different web sites as possible. In principle, this is a great idea, and I’m participating, which is why you will shortly be able to see ugly yellow/green boxes with random article snippets on most of my blog pages.
Edit: When I redesigned my blogs, I gave up on irrepressible.info. I plan to explain why in another post.
What does worry me is the technology. Simply put, it would be very easy for the Chinese to filter out any web pages with that content, both the “framing content” (e.g., the Amnesty International and irrepressible.info links) and the news content itself. Thus, I see the program in its current form as just a transition measure, to buy time until a more sophisticated approach is devloped.
Paul Graham on making more Silicon Valleys
Scoble points out Paul Graham’s essay — turns out there’s more than one — one creating “silicon valleys” elsewhere. Some of the points are downright laughable, such as “it might be a lost cause to try to establish a silicon valley in Israel.” (Hellooo — how many countries in the world enjoy Israel’s per-capital technology startup success?) And despite the two essays’ length, I have trouble finding many specifics I actually agree with.
Even so, if you care about technology industry economic development, the essays are worth skimming.
Technorati Tags: Paul Graham, Silicon Valley, economic development
| Categories: Economic development, Public policy and privacy | 2 Comments |
The US government wants web surfing to be 100% trackable
According to The Register (which on this matter I find credible), the US department of justice wants to be able to track all web surfing. The reason — possibly even sincere — is to fight kiddie porn.
But many other possible uses of that data come to mind. I say again:
We need to strengthen our legal defenses against government (and private sector) use of data. Opposing the collection of data is a worthy tactic, but will only delay the inevitable. The ultimate solution has to be one that works even assuming near-infinite data collection and integration.
Technorati Tags: privacy, pornography, data retention
| Categories: Online and mobile services, Privacy, censorship, and freedom, Public policy and privacy | Leave a Comment |
Business sector selection for developing countries
One theme at TechLeb was that developing countries need to focus their efforts on particular technology industry subsectors. It’s a lot easier to come up with a government program that’s really effective for a few kinds of businesses than it is to come up with a plan for strengthening “all” kinds of enterprise. And of course it’s crucial to get to a critical mass, so that proven success – and proven successful people — in an area spawns more opportunities in similar ventures. Read more
| Categories: Economic development, Public policy and privacy | 1 Comment |
Incubator possibilities and essentials in the developing world
I came away from TechLeb with some very interesting mixed messages about incubators, science parks, technology trade zones, whatever. (Jacques Masboungi’s talk on the subject was particularly interesting.) On the one hand, they seem to be one of the best things governments can do to foster technology development. On the other hand, they seem to be one of the easiest ways governments can screw up. And since no two projects are the same, it can be hard to generalize from experience.
Given all that, I shall now proceed to theorize about how to construct an environment for fostering technology development. And please note that government does not have to play a leading role. Instead, universities or even private entrepreneurs can and quite possibly should take the lead. Read more
| Categories: Economic development, Public policy and privacy | 2 Comments |
Government initiatives that went awry for technology development
The Q&A session to my TechLeb panel did produce a few interesting observations. Perhaps the most instructive were when I asked for “unsuccess” stories of government intervention — things governments tried to aid tech businesses that didn’t work out so well. Most of the answers all boiled down to the same thing — throwing money at ill-conceived ideas. These could be economically-motivated research projects that never produced much of economic value — Japan’s Fifth Generation Computer Project is a prime example, but there are many similar developed-world fiascos. (Basic research and even military research seem to produce more benefits by serendipidity than economically targeted research does in total.) Or they could be incubators and science parks to which nobody much ever came. But basically, most of the answers amounted to over-optimism about specific initiatives.
Most of the rest of the answers were of the nature “Well, in addition to X and Y, government should also have done Z.” But that’s a story for other posts.
| Categories: Economic development, Public policy and privacy | 1 Comment |
Government initiatives needed for technology development
There’s a general consensus among those who know more about developing countries than I do that the ideal scenario for technology-led economic development is a public/private partnership. Even so, I think there are only two absolute requirements for government participation:
1. Removal of barriers
2. Education
And of course in some countries, even higher education can be provided by the private or at least non-governmental sector.
To see why I believe that’s all that’s necessary, just look at some success stories. What else did the US government do? Yes, military research, but that’s really just another form of education. Ditto Israel. India’s government didn’t do much except fund the IITs (Indian Institute of Technology) and create some zones in which barriers to commerce were removed a few years faster than they were in the rest of the country. Read more
| Categories: Economic development, Public policy and privacy | 1 Comment |