Tech Regs Need Tech Savvy People to Write Them

Karen DeCrane
Nov 2 · 4 min read
AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File

The confused looking older dude in the above picture is Rudy Giuliani. He’s been in the headlines a lot in his long political life. As a prosecutor in New York City, he took down major crime families. As the mayor of NYC, he calmed fears and kept the city together after the horrors of 9/11.

Today, as a mouthpiece for the current administration, he often wears a look of bewilderment on news shows and interviews. As a backdoor fixer, he’s made headlines for his heavy-handed attempts at getting foreign governments to investigate political rivals. A job he doesn’t seem well suited for. While those may be good examples of the Peter Principle at work — rising to the level of your own incompetence — it’s not the highest level of incompetence he has achieved.

Rudy Giuliani is the epitome of what’s wrong with government efforts to “fix” the online world. You see he is the Cybersecurity Adviser to the President. His utter incompetence for that role was demonstrated as the news of his journey to the Genius Bar at an Apple store hit media outlets everywhere. Apparently, similar he had entered his password incorrectly too many times and locked up his iPhone.

There are two major issues with the US Cybersecurity head hitting an Apple store to reset their phone. First is entering your password incorrectly TEN freaking times. But let’s cut him some slack.

Perhaps his butt was attempting to turn on his phone without him knowing it, similar to his now infamous butt dials to a news reporter. Perhaps, in the interests of security, he had used a password that not only was difficult to hack but difficult to remember. But those possible explanations bring up point #2.

If you’re the head guy of Cybersecurity for the President of the United States, don’t you have the absolute best and brightest minds in the security field at your beck and call?

WHY would you take your personal device full of who knows how much sensitive data to a retail store rather than to a government security expert?

If that is the sort of muddled thinking and lack of knowledge indicative of what we can expect from this “cybersecurity expert” it makes “BUT HER EMAILS” pale in comparison!

It does place a bright, hot spotlight on what is wrong with government attempts to rein in “abuses” of internet companies large and small. Consider this mashup of the Senate committee that grilled Google’s Sundar Pichai last year. Their total lack of understanding about how the tech world works was on full display.

If you don’t want to use 4 minutes of your life watching this jaw-dropping display of total cluelessness, these comments will give you the general tone.

“If I Google the word ‘idiot’, under images, a picture of Donald Trump comes up. I just did that. How does that happen? How does search work so that would occur?” Senator Zoe Lofgren.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) asked Pichai why his granddaughter saw negative news about him on her iPhone. When Pichai informed him that Google doesn’t make iPhones, King offered lamely, “It might have been an Android.”

This is the level of competence our government is relying on to write and pass legislation that will regulate the internet, oversee tech companies and strike agreements with other countries that affect device production and intellectual property rights.

There is much discussion about the “great divide” in our country, and part of this very real divide is between the tech have and have nots. Another part of this divide is between those who understand and use tech advances for more than just posting Tweets and those who do not.

The group of those who do not have a working knowledge of the net, let alone tech itself includes the vast majority of the very people who are tasked with regulating online privacy, security, fair trade practices, even the delivery of the net to underserved non-metro areas.

An image search for “idiot” still brings Trump up first, but Sen Zoe Lofgren gets first place on YouTube!

The age gap between proficient tech users and those who struggle with smartphone technology and email is also a part of the Great Divide. The cluelessness and ineptitude so stunningly evidenced at committee hearings and by the president’s Cybersecurity “expert” may be the gist of late night comedy routines but in practice, it is frightening and dangerous.

To help bridge at least part of the Great Divide, we need to have more tech-savvy people in positions of leadership especially those positions that deal with the internet and other tech areas. It’s time to replace the old with the young. Their knowledge and grasp of more than just tech issues is sorely needed.

It’s time for the Steve Kings, Zoe Lofgrens and Rudy Giulianis to be put out to pasture instead of continuing to make embarrassing headlines over their total inability to use the technology they are supposed to be regulating.

Karen DeCrane

Written by

Tech nerd, life long rabble-rouser, who took Peter Pan’s advice and grew older but never grew up.

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