The Next Level Of Tech Activism: Google Employees Walk Out, Demand Changes From Management

from the time-for-some-changes dept

Over the summer we wrote about the increase in employees at big tech companies leading internal protests against business decisions made by those companies -- mostly around providing tools to the government or military that might be used in ways that many people find to be immoral. It was interesting to see this play out (and stay tuned for next week's podcast, where this will be discussed). More recently, there have been similar protests from within Google over its plans to reenter the Chinese market with a government-approved version of its search engine.

Yesterday, thousands of Google employees took this to another level. Following a recent (horrific) NY Times piece on massive failures by Google management in dealing with sexual misconduct at the company, Google employees all over the world participated in a walkout protest over management's activity. They also put together what appears to be a fairly modest list of demands, including an end to forced arbitration over harassment and discrimination claims, further commitments to fight pay and opportunity inequality at the company, transparency on sexual harassment at the company, a better way for reporting sexual misconduct, an elevated role for a "Chief Diversity Officer," and adding an "Employee Representative" to the Board of Directors.

I have a bunch of thoughts on this -- some of which I may explore more deeply in future posts, but at a first pass, I think this kind of activism by employees is a very good thing. Remember, Silicon Valley has long promoted the idea that its workforce is much more closely aligned with management than traditional companies, in part because of the free flowing nature of stock options and grants. As someone who spent years studying traditional labor/management malfunctions, the more mutually aligned approach that Silicon Valley claimed to have had in the past was a huge part of its strength and a key reason why the industry as a whole has been so innovative. Unfortunately, in the past few years, it does seem that this alignment has diverged, and in too many cases, management has been pursuing growth and opportunities in ways that go against the interests and beliefs of the employees. There may be reasons for this, but they're not good ones.

While Silicon Valley has long had an antagonistic view towards traditional labor organizing and unions (which I think is the right call for a whole host of structural reasons), it's fascinating to watch employees at these companies gravitate toward these kinds of protest behaviors to make their voices heard.

As we've discussed for many years, the power of innovation in Silicon Valley is driven by its employees and their ability to continue to innovate and create wonderful new things -- and to take their brainpower and move to other companies. Perhaps it's no surprise that, as we've had a few companies become bigger and bigger over the past few years, there's a center of gravity that has allowed management and an employee base to lose the alignment of interests. It's an unfortunate trend and one that hopefully these actions can help correct.

On a related note, the idea of an employee representative on the board is a fascinating one. Other countries (most notably Germany) have done this under law (and we discussed a proposed law to do this in the US just a few months ago on our podcast). I think companies would be much better served in doing so, if only (again) to better align the incentives of the employees and the overall company, which should lead to better long term results.

My one quibble with the list of demands is with the focus on the "Chief Diversity Officer." It is not that I'm opposed to companies focusing on diversity as a goal -- I think that's actually especially valuable in a company that seeks to serve nearly the entire globe with services. But, it reminds me of the rush a decade ago for companies to create Chief Digital Officers. As I said back then, a Chief Digital Officer made it look like you treated "thinking digitally" as just another silo, rather than something the entire company had to understand at a gut level. The same is true of diversity. Having it be a "role" in the company perhaps might make sense as a forcing function to make sure that someone is making sure that the company is moving in the right direction, but to achieve true diversity within a company, you need everyone to understand, deeply, the value of diversity in helping to push companies forward, to build truly innovative products, and to understand how those products and services could potentially impact millions or billions of people (in both good and bad ways). So nothing against placing an emphasis on diversity, but creating a Chief Diversity Officer feels a bit too limiting, and creates a situation where it's too easy for people to pass the buck and assume that diversity is an issue for that role to focus on, rather than for everyone to focus on.

Filed Under: activism, diversity, management, sexual misconduct, silicon valley, tech activism, walkout
Companies: google

Dear Tech Guys: HBO's Silicon Valley Is NOT An Instruction Manual

from the it's-a-lesson-in-what-not-to-do dept

I've been living in Silicon Valley for just about twenty years at this point, and lived through the original dot com bubble (got the t-shirt, etc.). And there are a few small signs that remind me quite a bit of the "bad stuff" that started to show up in the 1999/2000 time frame, just before everything collapsed. One of the biggest issues: the carpetbaggers. Basically, as things get frothier and frothier, a "different" kind of entrepreneur starts to show up. In the original dot com bubble, these were frequently described as "MBA's" -- but as someone with an MBA degree, I find that to be a bit misleading too. There were plenty of good, smart, tech-savvy MBAs who added value to the innovation community. The real problem was the people who came to (a) get rich and (b) party (not always in that order). Getting rich and having a good time aren't necessarily bad things, but if they're what you're focused on, then bad things tend to result.

Lots of people like to mock the whole mantra of "we're changing the world" in Silicon Valley, and sometimes it deserves to be mocked. But... in many cases, there is actual truth to it. And, in many cases, there are entrepreneurs and innovators who really are trying to change the world and make it a better place. The problem is that you have the other element -- the carpetbaggers -- who show up with no actual interest in innovation or in making the world a better place, but who readily adopt the terminology and slogans of those who do. And, these days, we're seeing more and more of those types of people in the Valley. It's been happening for years, but it's been getting worse and worse lately. It's why people talk about "Techbros" with dumb, but flashy, company ideas, while ignoring entrepreneurs working away at truly world-changing products and services.

I've been thinking more and more about this lately, especially as a whole bunch of stories have come out in the tech world (as in so many other industries) about sexual harassment and sexual assault. And, as in so many industries, this has been an issue for a long time around here -- and often not taken seriously. Earlier this year -- before many of the bigger stories came out -- I wrote about why Silicon Valley needs to get its act together and grow the fuck up. But with many of the revelations coming out, showing how widespread the culture of harassment (and assault) has been, it's a much bigger problem.

That's why this story from Bloomberg is so flabbergasting. Even after all of this, to hear that some tech companies are hiring good looking models to attend their holiday parties is just so... dumb.

Local modeling agencies, which work with Facebook- and Google-size companies as well as much smaller businesses and the occasional wealthy individual, say a record number of tech companies are quietly paying $50 to $200 an hour for each model hired solely to chat up attendees. For a typical party, scheduled for the weekend of Dec. 8, Cre8 Agency LLC is sending 25 women and 5 men, all good-looking, to hang out with “pretty much all men” who work for a large gaming company in San Francisco, says Cre8 President Farnaz Kermaani. The company, which she wouldn’t name, has handpicked the models based on photos, made them sign nondisclosure agreements, and given them names of employees to pretend they’re friends with, in case anyone asks why he’s never seen them around the foosball table.

To be honest, the story is so dumb, and no companies are actually named, that I'm wondering how much of this story is actually planted by the modeling companies hoping to make it reality. But... these days, we're hearing about so much bad behavior that it may very well be happening.

And I saw more than a few people commenting on Twitter that this seemed like something straight out of HBO's Silicon Valley. Which leads me into another thought that I've been toying with recently. Last time I was in Washington DC, some friends based there were asking me what I thought of the show, and I said that for all of its famed "accuracy," I thought it was ruining the actual Silicon Valley. My friends suggested this was ridiculous, since the show clearly made most of the protagonists out to be fairly buffoon-like, and worthy of mockery. But... without other guidance, it really feels like many people are arriving in Silicon Valley with the HBO show as their mental model of how things are supposed to be. And, even if the show is "truthy" in how it portrays certain people/activities, it does so for the sake of entertainment. Thus, it only presents the really exaggerated versions, and creates entertaining caricatures of certain types of people, while leaving out the many, many, other people who actually get real shit done here, without being buffoons or assholes.

People out here, for the most part, still love the show, because they recognize elements of reality within those characters and events -- but it misses out on the nitty-gritty of how stuff gets done and the fact that some people are legitimately doing good stuff without being horrible people. But if everyone now coming into Silicon Valley is coming in with HBO's Silicon Valley as their model -- too many are looking at the show as an instruction manual, rather than a giant warning sign of what not to do. In some ways, it reminds me of the classic 90's indie film Swingers with Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn. When it came out, I remember lots of guys trying to "take lessons" from the movie in how to pick up women, even though the entire point of the movie was to make fun of those people with their tricks and rules and games.

Assuming that story of hiring models for parties really is true, it feels like yet another brick in this problematic wall of "techbro" culture taking over from what has always been the true core of Silicon Valley, involving non-assholes who really are changing the world. It would be great if we could get more of that, and less of the HBO version, no matter how entertaining it might be.

Filed Under: bad behavior, change the world, sexual assault, sexual harassment, silicon valley

Here Comes The Attempt To Reframe Silicon Valley As Modern Robber Barons

from the don't-buy-it dept

It's difficult for me to read Jonathan Taplin's cri de coeur about Google and other technology companies that have come to dominate the top tier of successful American corporations without wincing in sympathy on his behalf.

But the pain I feel is not grounded in Taplin's certainty that something amoral, libertarian and unregulated is undermining democracy. Instead, it's in Taplin's profound misunderstanding of both the innovations and social changes that have made these companies not merely successful but also—for most Americans—vastly useful in enabling people to stay connected, express themselves and find the goods and services (and, even more importantly, communities) they need.

"It is impossible to deny that Facebook, Google and Amazon have stymied innovation on a broad scale," Taplin argues in his screed. He wants Google to divest itself of DoubleClick, in theory because the search engine would be much better if it were unable to generate profits from digitized ad services. He wants Facebook to unload WhatsApp, because the world was much better when connected citizens in the developing world had to pay 10 cents for each SMS message they sent. None of this really amounts to reform and, of course, such "reforms" wouldn't touch companies like Apple or Microsoft in the least.

What Taplin really wants isn't to reform but to reframe. He wants us to understand current tech-company leaders as evil, or at least amoral and out of control. Toward this end, he begins his new book (a much more extended version of his Times screed) by ominously quoting Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg: "Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you aren't moving fast enough."

Despite his misreading of the underlying technologies shaping today's digital world, Taplin—founding director and now director emeritus of the University of Southern California's Annenberg Innovation Lab—is no dummy. He knows that if he asks ordinary internet users whether they hate or love Google or Amazon or Facebook (or whether they'll willingly part with their new iPhones) he's not going to get a lot of buy-in. Even under a hypothetical President Bernie Sanders, regulating Google as a monopoly wouldn't be a meat-and-potatoes issue.

Instead, Taplin creates a counter-narrative in which American technology successes (with the notable exception of Microsoft) represent the kind of rapacious octopus-like capitalism so often caricatured by cartoonists like Thomas Nast. Google and Facebook may not hurt me in particular, but the theory he offers is that they somehow hurt America in the abstract. Taplin essentially reframes American tech success as a retelling of the oil, railroad, banking and telegraph robber-baron trusts of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

But the very tech companies whose success Taplin is absolutely certain is anti-democratic were built on infrastructure and resources that, under federal law and regulation, have been highly regulated throughout his (and my) lifetime. We may disagree about what the regulations should be, but there's little disagreement that there's already a regulatory framework. The regulation of monopoly infrastructures—telephone and telegraph networks, in particular—were what made it possible to refrain from regulating what you said or did on those networks. Regulation at the "wire" level of the infrastructure—and at various technical levels above that—created the space for today's innovative services that provide near-instantaneous access to, potentially, all the information in the world and all the people with whom you would want to stay in touch.

Search engines and other digital tools are, of course, highly disruptive to industries whose traditional model involved having school-age kids hawking ink and wood pulp on street corners. Like Taplin, I still believe newspaper journalism is essential to democracy. Indeed, I read Taplin's op-ed early Sunday morning because I subscribe to the digital edition of The New York Times. We must continue to explore new ways to make this necessary journalism not merely survive, but thrive.

But it also bears mentioning that Taplin doesn't mention Craig Newmark or Craigslist in his screed against Google, even though, if you were to buy into the fundamentals of Taplin's argument, Craigslist clearly did more to erode daily newspapers' advertising revenue than Google has ever done. And, yet, at the same time, it's worth noting here that Newmark—like most of the other successful tech moguls Taplin lumps together into a sort of secret-handshake techno-libertarian fraternity—actually gives money to Poynter, ProPublica and other enterprises that actively respond to the very real problem of very fake news.

A little research into the history of scientific discovery puts even the scary Zuckerberg quote about "breaking stuff" in a different light. The philosopher Karl Popper opens his essential book Conjectures and Refutations with two quotations: "Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes," from Oscar Wilde and "Our whole problem is to make the mistakes as fast as possible," from the physicist John Archibald Wheeler.

That sentiment—to be adventurous, to risk things, to learn quickly from making mistakes quickly—is, I believe, exactly what Zuckerberg was getting at. It also extends to making mistakes in our search for a new business model for journalism. But this shouldn't include Jonathan Taplin's great big mistake of looking into the digital future and seeing only places we've been before.

Mike Godwin (@sfmnemonic) is a Senior Fellow at R Street Institute. Godwin was named as a Freedom Forum Fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center in 1997 and may have once said something about Nazis online for which he will always be remembered.

Filed Under: innovation, jonathan taplin, silicon valley
Companies: facebook, google

Silicon Valley Needs To Get Its Act Together On Sexual Harassment & Discrimination

from the this-is-bad dept

You may have heard, recently, about a series of reports about sexual harassment (and general sexism and other similarly awful behavior) in Silicon Valley. It's not a new thing, but it's getting a lot of necessary attention right now and it's seriously messed up. It's unacceptable. It needs to stop -- and people need to speak up about it, and to come down hard on anyone who's engaging in it or letting it slide. If you're doing the kind of crap being discussed, stop it now (and go apologize). If someone tells you you're acting inappropriately, listen to them. And if you see someone else doing something awful, tell them to knock it off and then follow through.

It's no secret that, in general, I'm a fan of Silicon Valley and the innovations that are created here. Indeed, it's been argued by some that I'm too supportive of Silicon Valley at times. But, to me, it's the innovation that's important, and the way that it can make our lives better. When companies are doing bad things that can negatively impact that innovation, they should be called out on it. For example, a few years ago, we thought it was a good thing that many companies in Silicon Valley got into serious trouble for colluding to prevent poaching of workers from one another. That was bad news, anti-competitive and anti-innovation. As we've discussed for years, widespread job mobility is a key component to innovation in the tech sector.

Another thing that's a key component to innovation? Diversity and a range of perspectives and ideas. That's one of the (many) reasons we've advocated for more immigration for high tech workers and also against this administration's effort to restrict immigration of all kinds. The basic human issues behind it are most important, but the diversity of viewpoints and perspectives is in there as well. To create better innovations that help the world, we need it to be driven by more than just a subset of the population who come from similar backgrounds.

That's another reason why it sucks to see more and more evidence of massive, and widespread, sexism and sexual harassment in Silicon Valley. Again, this isn't something new. It's been going on for a while. But it's finally getting some necessary sunlight. It kicked off with a somewhat horrifying post by Susan Fowler about her experiences at Uber, in which the HR department appeared to bend over backwards to not do anything in response to repeated reports of seriously inappropriate behavior at the company. The Guardian has now published a similar account from an engineer at Tesla.

The Guardian also has another article detailing even more horrific stories of totally inappropriate behavior towards women. I've seen some arguing that at least some of these claims are exaggerated, but that doesn't matter and it's a bullshit excuse. Just the fact that anything even remotely like this happened is disgusting and unacceptable.

Haana was so repulsed by what happened to her, she covered up her mirror so she wouldn’t have to look at herself. The Silicon Valley tech worker said that after drinks with startup colleagues last year, a male executive at her company put his hand up her shirt and groped her while they walked down the street.

“I felt disgusted for months after that,” said Haana, who requested that the Guardian not include her full name or identify the small tech startup where she used to do marketing. “It affects me on a level that I wish it didn’t.”

I know that this doesn't happen everywhere and it doesn't happen to everyone, but it appears to be happening. And if it's happening anywhere it's happening too much. The NY Times has a story mostly about the situation at Uber, but it also includes the following anecdote:

“This stuff is deeply entrenched,” Ms. Kapor Klein said, relaying a story she had recently heard about a group of programmers at a different tech company. “I heard about this engineer who said that what he and his friends do at work for fun is rate women job applicants according to who they wanted to marry, or who they wanted to kill, and there was a third thing.” Suffice it to say the third thing was not the women’s qualifications for the job in question.

You know what the third thing is. It's a dumb party joke game that has always been stupid in that kind of setting. Bringing it into the office is horrifying. I'll admit that I don't get to experience this. I'm a white guy in Silicon Valley. But the more you talk to people, the more you find out how frequently this happens. I've wanted to believe that it's not widespread around here -- but that doesn't appear to be the case at all. It is widespread, and it's happening all the time. There are just too many stories -- and each time it's allowed, it just enables more to happen. That has to stop.

Part of the lore of Silicon Valley is that so-called "disruptive innovation" sometimes involves breaking some rules, or at least pushing the boundaries of norms. And, for the sake of innovation, that's often worthwhile. But it needs to be done for the sake of innovation, and it shouldn't mean that all other basic human decency goes out the window at the same time. Silicon Valley has faced a lot of criticism over the last couple of years -- much of it unjustified in my opinion. But shit like this undermines all of that on so many levels. It's disgusting and inhumane. It's stupid and self-defeating.

For a long time, I've resisted the description many (frequently outsiders) have given to the culture at many Silicon Valley startups and tech firms that it's a "fraternity-like culture." Because so many of the people and companies I've known are absolutely nothing like that. But it's clear that some are very much like that -- and, no doubt, the success and money and public attention that Silicon Valley has been getting has driven more people to show up believing that's the culture, and then making it a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's bad.

It needs to stop. It should stop because treating women that way is just wrong -- full stop (treating anyone that way is just wrong -- but it mostly happens to women). You shouldn't need to read beyond that (and you should really know that already). But if that's not a good enough reason for you (and if it's not, check your priorities, because they're messed up), you can pile on many others: a lack of diversity (which goes beyond just the male/female issue) is really damaging for innovation. It leads to less innovation and less interesting innovation. Having a diversity of perspectives and insights is what makes innovation happen faster and it makes that innovation more powerful. You get more with diversity and it should be embraced, celebrated and sought after. You also can get a better understanding of a much larger market. Building products solely from a singular perspective and viewpoint limits who will use your products and how. On top of that, Silicon Valley and many of its innovations are under attack from a variety of different directions -- and that's likely to continue. Giving more ammunition to critics by doing stupid stuff like harassing women and treating people like crap makes things much, much worse. But, again, even adding these justifications seems silly to me, because the first one should be enough.

Yes, people like to make fun of the "we're changing the world" attitude that is often exuded from this region of the country. But here's the thing: it's often true. Many of the innovations from this small area of the world really have changed the wider world around us, and there's plenty of opportunity to do more of that. And over the years, I've met and dealt with tons of people for whom changing the world and making it a better place truly is a driving force. But, there are a lot of people here and not everyone is driven by the same motivations. And some people just don't know how to behave. If Silicon Valley is going to continue to lead the world in innovation, it needs to stamp out this kind of behavior completely. It is completely unacceptable and it shouldn't be left just upon those who are the vicitims of that kind of activity to speak up. We should all be speaking up and should be calling out any sort of inappropriate behavior like that.

Filed Under: discrimination, diversity, innovation, sexism, sexual harassment, silicon valley
Companies: tesla, uber

Ton Of Tech Industry Leaders Say Trump Would Be A Complete Disaster For Innovation

from the going-beyond-politics dept

In any Presidential campaign, there are always going to be partisan folks who side with one candidate or another. And they may campaign for the candidate they like. But, obviously, the Donald Trump phenomenon is a bit different this year. Even so, it's still pretty surprising to see a ton of big names in the tech space send an open letter to Trump insisting that he would be an absolute disaster for innovation and the tech industry. They're not arguing on the usual partisan issues here, but rather the fact that Trump's general zero-sum outlook on the world doesn't recognize how innovation works:

Trump would be a disaster for innovation. His vision stands against the open exchange of ideas, free movement of people, and productive engagement with the outside world that is critical to our economy — and that provide the foundation for innovation and growth.

Let’s start with the human talent that drives innovation forward. We believe that America’s diversity is our strength. Great ideas come from all parts of society, and we should champion that broad-based creative potential. We also believe that progressive immigration policies help us attract and retain some of the brightest minds on earth — scientists, entrepreneurs, and creators. In fact, 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. Donald Trump, meanwhile, traffics in ethnic and racial stereotypes, repeatedly insults women, and is openly hostile to immigration. He has promised a wall, mass deportations, and profiling.

We also believe in the free and open exchange of ideas, including over the Internet, as a seed from which innovation springs. Donald Trump proposes “shutting down” parts of the Internet as a security strategy — demonstrating both poor judgment and ignorance about how technology works. His penchant to censor extends to revoking press credentials and threatening to punish media platforms that criticize him.

This is a unique presidential campaign. And, as we've noted, Hillary Clinton's tech platform is not great either. But, at the very least, her platform's problem is that it's just a bunch of vague pronouncements designed for people to read into them what they will.

The list of signatories on this letter is around 145 and there are some key names in the tech and policy world including Evan Williams (founder of Blogger, Twitter and Medium), Vint Cerf (basically invented the internet), Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Steve Wozniak (you know who he is) and more. There are also a ton of well known venture capitalists on the list and lots and lots of other entrepreneurial names that are well known inside Silicon Valley. This is a pretty huge list of people putting their name to a statement a lot stronger than one you'd normally see during a campaign season.

Silicon Valley sort of has the reputation for more or less trying to ignore government. And while that's less true today than in the past, the one thing that does make Silicon Valley rise up is politicians looking to be doing something really stupid that's likely to harm innovation. And it appears that they see Donald Trump as just that kind of threat.

Filed Under: donald trump, entrepreneurs, innovation, investors, politics, silicon valley, vcs

Michael Bloomberg Comes Down On The Wrong Side Of The Crypto Wars: Supports Backdooring Encryption

from the you're-wrong dept

This is perhaps not surprising, but still disappointing. Former NYC mayor and current billionaire media/tech company boss Michael Bloomberg has come down on the wrong side of the "going dark" encryption fight. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed (possible paywall link) he scolds tech execs for daring to side with Apple over the FBI and the Justice Department on the question of backdooring encryption. Bloomberg does not appear to actually understand the issues at play.

The fireworks and parades this weekend will give Americans a chance to celebrate the nation’s independence from England and show their love of country. But true patriotism involves more than flying the flag—and more than paying taxes and casting ballots. It requires putting America’s needs above individual interests when national security and public safety are at stake.

Generations of Americans have honored that principle, risking their lives to preserve a nation “conceived in Liberty,” as Lincoln remarked in his Gettysburg Address, “and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Today, 1.3 million men and women serve in the military on active duty, often in dangerous situations overseas. Yet here at home, some executives in an industry that thrives on freedom—technology—are resisting government efforts to safeguard it. They are dangerously wrong.

Note the false framing here. Bloomberg is setting up the argument that backdooring encryption for the sake of the FBI/DOJ is "good for national security and public safety." He's wrong. It's not. It's not even close. It actually puts many more people at risk, because the only way to backdoor encryption effectively is to break that encryption and put everyone who uses it at much more risk. Yes, it means that the FBI/NSA won't be able to track some people, but it's a very small number of people, and they have other ways to track them without undermining the security of everyone else.

The freedom that Americans enjoy requires shared sacrifices, and not only by soldiers. “We the people” impose limits on our personal liberty to protect ourselves and those around us. We are free to speak our minds, but we cannot yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater. We are free to travel without restriction, but driving a vehicle requires a license, and boarding a plane requires official identification. We are free to smoke tobacco, but today in most states we cannot do so indoors.

This is also dangerously wrong. We've discussed this many times before, but the lame "we cannot yell fire in a crowded theater" line is simply incorrect. It's based on an ignorance of the actual law in that space (the court case where this statement was made is no longer the accepted standard under the law). It's also just a weak excuse for someone who is about to strip away other rights. It's basically a warning sign of someone who doesn't have a strong argument for why they want to strip away rights, so they'll make a misleading and incorrect statement claiming that you can't yell fire in a crowded theater (even though, in most cases, you actually can).

We also limit our right to privacy. The Fourth Amendment protects against “unreasonable searches and seizures,” but it also explicitly authorizes warrants based on probable cause. Every day, judges approve warrants authorizing searches of homes, cars and computers. Even our bodies can be subject to search warrants, as drunken-driving suspects learn when they attempt to refuse a blood test. Those suspected of other crimes may have their calls tapped and mail opened—all with the safeguard of an independent judiciary certifying the public need, to protect both our liberty and safety.

This is an especially intellectually dishonest move. He goes from "fire in a theater" to arguing that we already "limit our right to privacy" because judges issue warrants. But this is different. The 4th Amendment directly includes the warrant exception, unlike the First Amendment which includes no exception. And, really, many people question a lot of things that Bloomberg finds acceptable violations of privacy. That's not a huge surprise though. After all, as mayor, Bloomberg was a major supporter of the unconstitutional stop and frisk program that the police used under his watch... until a court threw it out. Of course, he also was against any transparency of his own administration or of the NYPD.

When Apple refused to unlock a cellphone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists (and owned by his public employer), many in the tech industry came to the company’s defense. They argued, in effect, that they shouldn’t be forced to cooperate with a search warrant for one of their products, even though failure to comply could put more innocent lives at risk. Thankfully, the government was able to unlock the phone on its own. But next time, the public may not be so lucky. Imagine if the government is in possession of a cellphone that it has reason to believe contains information about an imminent hijacking—or an effort to detonate a dirty bomb. Should we allow the manufacturer to refuse a court order to unlock it?

This, again, totally misrepresents the situation. The issue was not the court order to unlock, but the fact that based on the encryption used on the phone, the only way to "unlock" it was to create a revamped operating system that undermined a number of key security features -- which would likely create much more risks for everyone. This was not a question of just turning a key as Bloomberg implies. The issue was not whether the government could just force a company to "unlock" an encrypted phone, but rather whether or not it could force them to build technology that deliberately undermines security.

And, really, this stupid game of "but what about the next time..." is ridiculous. THERE IS ALWAYS SECRET INFO THAT LAW ENFORCEMENT DOESN'T KNOW ABOUT. And it's not the end of the world. There is information in people's heads. There is information that they already destroyed. And somehow, law enforcement survives. The fact that some information may get scrambled by encryption is like that other kind of info. It's not the end of the world. In fact, we deliberately designed our legal system with the recognition that law enforcement does not have an automatic right to every bit of information.

Of course not. We are a nation of laws, and no industry is above them. The Constitution doesn’t carve out an exception for tech companies.

This is the most frustrating line in the article, because it's complete bullshit. No one is arguing they're above the law. Exactly the opposite. They're questioning whether or not having a valid warrant would then require tech companies to construct a new tool to deliberately undermine security. Being "above the law" is doing things like deliberately hiding documents and emails from the public despite being legally required to reveal them. Being above the law is doing things like refusing to accept a decision of the City Council against your unconstitutional policies. Those were things that Mayor Bloomberg did. What the tech companies are doing is not above the law at all.

Yet Apple responded to the investigation with a troubling announcement: In the future, phones will be designed to prevent even Apple from opening them, just as the makers of some messaging services have already done. Such a move would be an unprecedented rejection of public authority and a potentially catastrophic blow to public safety. The prospect of criminals and terrorists communicating with phones beyond the reach of government search warrants should send a shiver down the spine of every citizen.

This is again a misrepresentation of reality. Apple had already said that the phones would be designed that way well before this investigation. And the reason they did so was not to "reject public authority," but rather because it's a better way to protect public safety. Don't ask me, ask the NYPD who used to go around telling people to encrypt their phones to make them less appealing to thieves, who steal thousands upon thousands of those devices all the time, often seeking to get the info that's on the devices.

Google, Facebook, Snapchat and WhatsApp are all working to increase encryption in ways that will make it impossible for the courts and law-enforcement officials to obtain their users’ data. They argue that if they are forced to comply with government requests for data, terrorists will simply choose open-source encryption apps instead. But lone wolves are not always that sophisticated. Those that are may have no regard for investigations following their death. And for those that do want to cover their tracks: Why should we help them?

Again, the efforts they're making are not to keep law enforcement out, they're to keep criminals out. It's about protecting the public. And, as for "lone wolves" not always being "that sophisticated," that's exactly why this shouldn't be a huge concern. Because as we've noted time and time again, unless you're really good, you're probably going to make a mistake when you try to encrypt stuff, and you'll leak out plenty of info for law enforcement. So if they're really not that sophisticated, none of this is actually a problem.

It’s true that encryption may make it harder for repressive regimes to crack down on dissent, but it also makes it harder for democratic societies to protect themselves against terrorists and criminals. We can work to undermine repressive regimes in ways that do not compromise our own safety, and we should expect tech leaders to help lead the way.

Again, this is misrepresenting why encryption is so important. It DOES NOT make it harder for democratic societies to protect themselves against terrorists or criminals. It does the exact opposite, by providing the tools for people to better protect themselves against both of those things.

It’s worth remembering that the U.S. taxpayers, beginning under President Eisenhower, funded the R&D that led to the development of the internet and other technological advances without which these companies would not exist. And while many of them claim to be concerned about their customers’ privacy, let’s also remember that many turn around and sell their customers’ personal information to advertisers. If anyone thinks they are more concerned about privacy than profits, I have a bridge to sell you.

Again, this is not the actual argument. Bloomberg is throwing out so many strawmen, you'd think that they were on clearance. The fact that the government helped fund the development of some of these technologies is kind of irrelevant. It also helped fund plenty of research into encryption as well. So what? That doesn't mean we should undermine it all and make us all less safe. And, the whole "but companies sell your info to advertisers" point is a complete red herring. Having stronger encryption actually gives individuals more ability to take control over their own info and prevent that kind of thing. Sure, companies are mostly interested in their own profits, as, I assume, is Bloomberg's own company. But that's why they're building better encryption as well. Because they know that making their customers safer and keeping them from having devices stolen or hacked creates a better product.

When America entered World War I, Thomas Edison devoted most of his time to naval research. His work led to various military inventions and improvements, including instruments to detect torpedoes. It is perhaps too idealistic to expect Silicon Valley’s best minds to give up their jobs to serve the government in the fight against terrorism. But a little cooperation shouldn’t be too much to ask.

Lots of people in Silicon Valley are proactively helping in the fight against terrorism. It's complete bullshit to argue that because we think that working encryption is necessary, people are refusing to help the government. The whole point is that breaking encryption doesn't help stop terrorism. It doesn't help stop crime. It puts us all at more risk.

It's too bad Bloomberg doesn't have anyone working for him who could have explained this to him before he sounded off so ignorantly in the WSJ. But, really, if Bloomberg thinks that tech companies need to build compromised, backdoored encryption, here's a solution: he can put some of his billions towards building just such a product, and see what the market thinks of it. If he's right and this is what the public needs to be safe, won't he be making tons of profits? After all, where else is he getting that bridge he wants to sell us...

Filed Under: backdoors, crypto wars, encryption, michael bloomberg, security, silicon valley, technology

Congrats, FBI, You've Now Convinced Silicon Valley To Encrypt And Dump Log Files

from the a-victory-for-privacy dept

Soon after the original Snowden revelations, I went around talking to a bunch of startups and startup organizers, discussing whether they'd be more willing to speak out and complain about excessive government surveillance. Some certainly did, but many were cautious. A key thing that I heard over and over again was "well, our own data privacy protections... aren't that great, and we'd hate to call attention to that." Every single time I'd hear that I'd point out that this should now be their first priority: clean up your own act, now and fix your own handling of people's data, because it's an issue that's going to become increasingly important, and you're being foolish and shortsighted to ignore it.

While the Snowden revelations certainly did get some companies to improve their own practices, it looks like the FBI's decision to go after Apple over encryption, has really galvanized many in Silicon Valley to take action to truly protect their users from snooping government officials -- meaning making use of real (not backdoored) encryption and also diong other things like dumping log files more frequently.

“We have to keep as little [information] as possible so that even if the government or some other entity wanted access to it, we’d be able to say that we don’t have it,” said Gadea, founder and chief executive of Envoy. The 30-person company enables businesses to register visitors using iPads instead of handwritten visitor logs. The technology tracks who works at a firm, who visits the firm, and their contact information.

The article is full of such stories -- including one of a company called Stealth Worker that is basically helping lots of startups build in better security from the start:

Stealth Worker — a start-up funded six months ago by the prominent incubator Y-Combinator — provides contract cybersecurity experts to early-stage start-ups, which often operate on a shoestring budget. Stealth Worker chief executive Ken Baylor said that in the past month he had been approached by a half-dozen companies looking for ways to build tougher encryption and other secure technical architectures.

Because it's the Washington Post, and they feel the need to be "balanced" the article does include the one ridiculous contrarian quote from our old friend, former NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker, who basically dismisses reality as a myth in the heads of some engineers:

“This is a Silicon Valley delusion that the government wants to outlaw encryption,” Stewart A. Baker, a former National Security Agency general counsel, said in an interview. “I grant that there is a radicalized subculture of engineers that is very prone to that delusion, but it is a delusion.”

This is classic Baker: saying something that avoids the actual truth by saying something that's nominally true, but not what people are actually discussing. The claim of "outlawing encryption" is really shorthand for "outlawing effective encryption that is less vulnerable to attack." And that's absolutely what many in the government are trying to do. I mean, there's no delusion necessary when you can just read the bill put forth by Senators Dianne Feinstein and Richard Burr, that absolutely would make real encryption illegal. Sure, it says you can keep encryption, but only if it includes a way for 3rd parties to decrypt it. And the only way that's possible is to introduce serious vulnerabilities into the encryption.

The thing that Baker and many others truly don't get about Silicon Valley is that when you give techies a challenge that involves making "the best" of something, they like solving the challenge. The suggestions to backdoor encryption undermine that philosophy. They're saying that techies would need to deliberately cripple their own solutions. And the more that the FBI and clueless Senators push for such a solution, the stronger Silicon Valley will dig in and keep building better overall solutions that are less prone to government snooping.

Maybe, just maybe, if the likes of the NSA and FBI hadn't regularly abused their snooping powers, folks would be more willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. But it's a bit late for that at this point.

Filed Under: doj, encryption, fbi, silicon valley, startups, surveillance

Comcast Fails To Connect SmartCar's Silicon Valley Office For 10 Months, Wants $60,000 Anyway

from the dysfunction-junction dept

Comcast for years has offered what most find to be utterly abysmal customer service and support, resulting in story after story of nightmare experiences for consumers and businesses alike. This is, by and large, thanks to limited competition in most of Comcast's footprint, and despite Silicon Valley being arguably the tech epicenter of the country, the region apparently isn't immune to Comcast's particular... charms or the nation's obvious lack of broadband competition.

For example, Seattle startup SmartCar wanted to open an office in Mountain View, California, so last year they asked Comcast if service was available. According to Comcast's website and two Comcast representatives, the company should have been able to get 100 Mbps broadband and television service bundled for $190 a month, provided SmartCar signed a "Business Service Order Agreement” and provided a $2,100 deposit. But as we've seen many times before, ISP availability systems simply aren't accurate, and Comcast soon informed the company that broadband wasn't available:

"The answer came back via e-mail on April 24: “The pre-wire survey shows that your location is just outside of our Comcast service zone,” a Comcast salesperson told Katta. “It just is not a financial feasibility to run the coax cable close enough to bring you service. We have a model and this would not meet the Comcast ‘payback’ model. Comcast doesn’t have any future plans to do a build out there. I understand that this is not good news and I sincerely want to thank you for your interest."

Which would have been annoying but not really news worthy if it had just ended there. But Comcast then reached out to SmartCar again to note that while cable wasn't available, the company would be able to provide fiber to the company's new Mountain View address for significantly more money per month:

"...This wasn’t the end of Katta’s dealings with Comcast. After further discussions, Comcast told Katta the company would be able to deliver fiber Internet service—at a much higher price than cable. Construction was required to bring fiber to the building, and Comcast wanted Katta to sign a four-year contract and pay $1,050 a month for 100Mbps symmetrical Internet service. “As we were already stuck in this lease, I had no option but to move forward,” (SmartCar CEO Sahas) Katta said."

While Comcast originally claimed the longest SmartCar would have to wait was "90 to 120 days," ten months went by before Comcast finally conceded that it couldn't service the company's address, blaming permitting and construction delays. Which again, would have been annoying but not the end of the world. That's when Comcast demanded $60,000 in payments for broadband service never delivered:

"With the lease expiring and Comcast service nowhere in sight, SmartCar sent a letter to Comcast on January 21 saying the company wished to terminate its contract. As noted earlier, Comcast then informed SmartCar that in order to cancel, it would have to pay $60,900.45 to cover construction costs. SmartCar pleaded its case with Comcast throughout all of February and part of March without any success. That finally changed after Ars got in touch with Comcast’s public relations team. On March 9, a Comcast rep sent Katta an e-mail apologizing while waiving the $60,900.45 in fees. The letter promised a refund of the $2,100 deposit."

So in typical Comcast fashion you've got several layers of failure here, from systems that can't accurately state where Comcast can deliver service, to a general tone-deafness to the problem of trying to charge $60,000 for service that was never delivered. And once again, only the threat of media coverage appears to be enough to get Comcast to admit any sort of error on its part. The only broadband service the company was able to get at the address was an AT&T line capable of just 500 kbps upstream, which is pretty common in areas where the local telco has given up on fixed-line broadband.

All told, it's another example of the lack of broadband competition across a huge swath of the country, and how it's only getting worse in areas where local cable monopolies face less competitive pressure than ever before.

Filed Under: broadband, connectivity, silicon valley
Companies: comcast, smartcar