Category: Government
I’m totally sick and exhausted with our federal government. Boehner’s statement yesterday on immigration, where he said “We have no intention of ever going to conference on the Senate bill” was the last straw for me. Idiotic and totally broken.
I could rant for a while, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll encourage you to watch this amazing video that Jennifer Bradley just showed at the Startup Phenomenon conference. She totally nails it – people at the top, then metros, then states, and then federal government following their leads.
I just bought Jennifer’s book The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy and plan to read it this weekend.
Now that our federal government is back at work and the short term debt ceiling thing is resolved, it should be no surprise that the news cycle is now obsessed with Obamacare and its flawed implementation. Over the weekend I must have seen a dozen articles about this online and in the NY Times, and then I woke up this morning to a bunch of new things about the Healthcare.gov site underlying tech, how screwed up it is, and what / how the Health and Human Services agency is going to do to fix it.
The punch line – a tech surge.
To ensure that we make swift progress, and that the consumer experience continues to improve, our team has called in additional help to solve some of the more complex technical issues we are encountering.
Our team is bringing in some of the best and brightest from both inside and outside government to scrub in with the team and help improve HealthCare.gov. We’re also putting in place tools and processes to aggressively monitor and identify parts of HealthCare.gov where individuals are encountering errors or having difficulty using the site, so we can prioritize and fix them. We are also defining new test processes to prevent new issues from cropping up as we improve the overall service and deploying fixes to the site during off-peak hours on a regular basis.
From my perspective, this is exactly the wrong thing to do. Many years ago I read Fredrick Brooks iconic book on software engineering – The Mythical Man-Month. One of his key messages is that adding additional software engineers to an already late project will just delay things more. I like to take a different approach – if a project is late, take people off the project, shrink the scope, and ship it faster.
I think rather than a tech surge, we should have a “tech retreat and reset.” There are four easy steps.
- 1. Shut down everything including taking all the existing sites offline.
- 2. Set a new launch date of July 14, 2014.
- 3. Fire all of the contractors.
- 4. Hire Harper Reed as CTO of Healthcare.gov, give him the ball and 100% of the budget, and let him run with it.
If Harper isn’t available, ask him for three names of people he’d put in charge of this. But put one person – a CTO – in charge. And let them hire a team – using all the budget for individual hires, not government contractors or consulting firms.
Hopefully the government owns all the software even though Healthcare.gov apparently violates open source licenses. Given that, the new CTO and his team can quickly triage what is useful and what isn’t. By taking the whole thing offline for nine months, you aren’t in the hell of trying to fix something while it’s completely broken. It’s still a fire drill, but you are no longer inside the building that is burning to the ground.
It’s 2013. We know a lot more about building complex software than we did in 1980. So we should stop using approaches from the 1980s, admit failure when it happens, and hit reset. Doing a “tech surge” will only end in more tears.
Doc Searls wrote a great, very detailed post this weekend titled Thoughts on privacy where he argues we have passed the point of “Peak Surveillance.” He says, about halfway through the post:
“I can’t prove it, but I do believe we have passed Peak Surveillance. When Edward Snowden’s shit hit the fan in May, lots of people said the controversy would blow over. It hasn’t, and it won’t. Our frogs are not fully boiled, and we’re jumping out of the pot. New personal powers will be decentralized. And in cases where those powers are centralized, it will be in ways that are better aligned with individual and social power than the feudal systems of today. End-to-end principles are still there, and still apply. “
Five minutes later, I read an article in the New York Times titled Drug Agents Use Vast Phone Trove, Eclipsing N.S.A.’s which basically explains how the DEA has been paying AT&T for access to all its phone records for at least the last six years and to embed AT&T employees alongside DEA agents and local law enforcement to supply them with phone data going back to 1987. This program is called Hemisphere and – like Fight Club – is not allowed to be talked about. The text from p12 of the official presentation follows:
“All requestors are instructed to never refer to Hemisphere in any official document. If there is no alternative to referencing a Hemisphere request, then the results should be referenced as information obtained from an AT&T subpoena.”
Searls refers to a quote from Bruce Schneier about our new feudal overlords, which I think is just brilliant.
“Some of us have pledged our allegiance to Google: We have Gmail accounts, we use Google Calendar and Google Docs, and we have Android phones. Others have pledged allegiance to Apple: We have Macintosh laptops, iPhones, and iPads; and we let iCloud automatically synchronize and back up everything. Still others of us let Microsoft do it all. Or we buy our music and e-books from Amazon, which keeps records of what we own and allows downloading to a Kindle, computer, or phone. Some of us have pretty much abandoned e-mail altogether … for Facebook.
These vendors are becoming our feudal lords, and we are becoming their vassals. We might refuse to pledge allegiance to all of them – or to a particular one we don’t like. Or we can spread our allegiance around. But either way, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to not pledge allegiance to at least one of them.”
And then, I saw the hilariously sad and funny video “I Forgot My Phone.”
I have no idea if we’ve passed Peak Surveillance. But I know we are talking about a lot these days. I’m lucky that I’m married to Amy who has spent an enormous amount of time thinking about privacy (her college thesis was on the right to privacy). Our conversations about this are rich, and it’s caused me to start thinking 20 years in the future about the dynamics. This has happened before and it will happen again. So say we all.
I was shocked for a few minutes last week after I heard that Lavabit committed corporate suicide. I pondered it for a while and then forgot, but two things this weekend caused me to remember it.
The first was the suicide of Cylon Number One (John) near the end of Battlestar Galactica. I didn’t expect it at all (there were a bunch of things in the last three episodes that I didn’t expect.) The other was Barry Eisler’s tweet about Obama’s statement about the NSA (NSFW) from the weekend (Eisler is one of my favorite Mental Floss writers.)
I didn’t see Eisler’s tweet until Sunday morning because of my digital sabbath and it made me think of Lavabit shutting down. And then I had a moment of fear that I was reading it and considering retweeting it. The thought that crossed my mind was “if I retweet this, will the NSA record it somewhere.” Then I decided this was a fear-based reaction that was absurd, but not irrational.
Then I read Homes for Hackers gets a visit from the FBI. My friend Ben, who inspired me to buy a house in the Google Fiberhood in Kansas City, talks about the FBI poking around in his house because he has gigabit Internet. Now, Ben’s a trusting dude so he let the FBI in and was polite, but he speculates that he’s now got a surveillance device in his bathroom.
We are just beginning to understand – and struggle with – the crossover of humans and technology. When you ponder the NSA, it’s starting to feel like a giant computer run by humans, where the computer dominates and the humans are just the mechanics. Sure – the humans want to feel like the ones who are actually running things, but it doesn’t take much imagination to see this evolving along the same lines as Battlestar Galactica.
I accepted a long time ago that I had no actual privacy – that all of my data was being captured somewhere. I gave a talk at my 20th business school reunion in 2008 where I stated directly that “we no longer had any privacy.” But it’s getting worse – fast. Even if we work hard to have privacy, as in using Lavabit to send email, the government can still break through this privacy, or force the service to shut down.
I’m fascinated by all of this. Not scared – fascinated. It’s easy to be cynical, or scared, or angry. But our civilization is going to evolve in very strange and radical ways over the next twenty years. Hang on – it’s going to be a crazy ride.
Though it may seem as if politicians in Washington, D.C. have a hard time agreeing on anything, those on both sides of the aisle seem increasingly keen to support entrepreneurs and their communities. Some recent examples include the passage of legislation expanding crowdfunding under the JOBS Act and meetings similar to one hosted last month by the Global Accelerator Network in which we worked with the Small Business Administration to gather 16 accelerators to demo their programs for the White House and SBA funders.
Much progress has been made to ensure that those in Washington are hearing entrepreneurs’ concerns, but we still have a long way to go – especially with connecting politicians to those in the seed-stage technology sector. Politicians in our federal government are listening to entrepreneurs, but we very rarely see congressmen personally sit across the table from early-stage tech investors and their founders. When this does occur, however, representatives learn much more about what startups really want and need than they would hearing feedback through second or third parties, and they’re much more likely to take supportive action.
That is why the Global Accelerator Network is thrilled to support the first ever Startup Day Across America on August 29. This one-day bipartisan event, led by the U.S. House of Representatives Caucus on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, will connect members of Congress with startups and accelerators in their respective districts. We believe this is a great opportunity for startup communities to connect with their congressional representatives – both to highlight the positive contributions startups bring to their communities, as well as raise awareness about startups’ needs on a local and national level.
If you are interested in learning more about the Startup Day Across America, please contact Eve Lieberman in Congressman Jared Polis’ office who will connect you with the person leading the charge in your district.
The JOBS Act, which was approved by Congress and signed by President Obama with much fanfare over a year ago, was intended to help small business. It is, after all, called the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act. A number of the provisions have been slow to get written into law and the SEC has missed their deadlines on a bunch of stuff, including the often talked about equity crowdfunding activity.
Recently, the SEC weighed in on a number of the things they were required to with much fanfare. Fred Wilson wrote Let The Games Begin in response to the SEC lifting the General Solicitation Ban. However, Fred, and many others, missed the new proposed Amendments to Regulation D, Form D and Rule 156 under the Securities Act. And they look like one scary mess that could undermine the whole thing if approved.
Some posts with analysis of this have finally started to appear. A good summary is by Joe Wallin at his Startup Law Blog titled Proposed Rules Hard on Startups. And I’ve gotten a number of emails with similar analysis. My favorite summary was from a very experienced law firm.
“The SEC giveth (as mandated by Congress) and taketh away (by its own mandate).
It is incredible that the SEC finally got around to implementing rules to remove the ban on solicitation (as it was required by statute to do so in 2012), but concurrently proposes new rules intended to retard the benefits of easing the capital formation process (the goal of the JOBS Act).
The new proposed rules will require a Form D to be filed 15 days in ADVANCE of a Reg 506 offering and after, substantially expand the scope of information required to be disclosed in Form D and disqualify an issuer from relying on Rule 506 for one year if the issuer does not comply with the new filing requirements (including a requirement that the Form D be timely filed). The new rule also would require filing with the SEC of all written general solicitation materials. So much for deregulation!”
Seriously? More commentary from one of the emails I received follows:
“The new rules and rule proposals were a kind of packaged effort to address the Congressional mandate in the JOBS Act, while attempting to maintain investor protection. Apparently, the package was enough to mollify Commissioner Walter, but Commissioner Aguilar was unwilling to go along. In his view, the rules adopted come at the expense of investor protection. He reiterated that the record supports the argument that elimination of the ban on general solicitation will facilitate fraud and viewed the adoption of the rules without appropriate safeguards as “reckless.” He also contended that the proposal to study the practical effects and then adopt rules if necessary would come too late – closing the barn door after the horses have already escaped. Although he voted for adoption of the disqualification rule, he also objected to the narrowing of the categories of individuals covered, as well as the application to only prospective events, especially given the two-year delay in adoption of the final rule. On the other side of the aisle, Commissioners Paredes and Gallagher both objected to the proposal to facilitate monitoring of market changes resulting from elimination of the prohibition. They both viewed the proposal as placing an undue burden on capital formation and undermining the objectives of the JOBS Act.”
While the “proposed rules” are still “proposed”, hopefully the SEC will reject these new proposals, especially in the context of Congress’s mandate to Jumpstart Our Business Startups.
I woke up to a flurry of grumpy stuff about our government intermixed with lots of posts wishing everyone a happy 4th of July. The dissonance of it bounced around in my head for a while and – when I was on my walk with Amy and Brooks the Wonder Dog – I finally asked Amy a few questions to calibrate my reaction to some of the stuff I had read this morning.
For example, in the “you’ve got to be fucking kidding me category”, the U.S. Postal Service Is Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement. I don’t send physical mail anymore (except for the occasional post card to a friend or thank you letter) so I’m not sure I care, but then I realized all my post cards were probably being scanned into a computer somewhere and I shouldn’t be writing messages like “The NSA Is Spying On You” on my postcards (or on blog posts, for that matter.)
Then there was this awesome, long post on TechDirt by Rob Hager titled Snowden’s Constitution vs Obama’s Constitution. It does an outstanding job of explaining the Snowden situation in the context of the Fourth Amendment and the concept of reasonableness. And there are some great hidden gems in the article, such as the notion that Hong Kong is rated above the US for “rule of law” and “fairness of its judiciary system.” Oops.
“By international standards, the US and its judiciary rank below Hong Kong on a 2012-13 rule of law index . While American propagandists routinely imply that the US system is a paragon against which all others must be measured, in fact, objectively, Hong Kong ranks #8 and #9 respectively on absence of corruption and quality of its criminal justice system, well ahead of the US’s #18 and #26 rankings . The World Economic Forum – which certainly suffers no anti-US or general anti-plutocrat biases — ranks Hong Kong #12 in its 2012-13 index on judicial independence. That is substantially higher than the appallingly low US ranking of #38 on the same index, which is proportionately not that far ahead of China’s #66 ranking. If due process was his priority, Snowden was clearly no fool in choosing sanctuary in Hong Kong, though he is aware of the coercive and corrupting power that the US can and does bring to bear on virtually any country. Though China is better situated than most to resist such pressure, it appears that even China preferred not to pay the cost. Or perhaps his security could not guaranteed as effectively in Hong Kong as in Moscow, for the time being.”
Then there was the semi-expected self-referential “what is a journalist” articles such as Snowden’s leaks force media self-examination and Jeff Jarvis’ There are no journalists. I love Jeff Jarvis.
“Journalism is not content. It is not a noun . It need not be a profession or an industry. It is not the province of a guild. It is not a scarcity to be controlled. It no longer happens in newsrooms. It is no longer confined to narrative form.
So then what the hell is journalism?
It is a service. It is a service whose end, again, is an informed public. For my entrepreneurial journalism students, I give them a broad umbrella of a definition: Journalism helps communities organize their knowledge so they can better organize themselves.”
After our walk Amy sent me another article about the Fourth Amendent – If PRISM Is Good Policy, Why Stop With Terrorism? that included additional applications of PRISM to child pornography, speeding, and illegal downloads.
Then I noticed my friends at Cheezburger supporting the latest Internet Defense League Standing Up for The Fourth Amendment campaign, which as a member of the Internet Defense League, I also support.
After all of this, I was able to convince Amy to go to see White House Down with me this afternoon. I love going to afternoon movies, and it’s awesome to live in a country that not only shows a movie like this, but allows it to get made!
Happy 4th of July. For all of its flaws, America is an amazing and resilient country and I’m proud to be an American.
Near the end of the week last week, the lastest “the US government is spying on US citizens” scandal broke. For 24 hours I tried to ignore it but once big tech companies, specifically Facebook, Google, and Yahoo, started coming out with their denials about being involved in PRISM, I got sucked into all the chatter. I was able to ignore it yesterday because I took a digital sabbath but ended up reading a bunch of stuff about it this morning.
While I’m a strong believer in civil liberties and am opposed to the Patriot Act, I long ago gave up the notion that we have any real data privacy. I’ve regularly fought against attempts at outrageous new laws like SOPA/PIPA but I’m not naive and realize that I’m vastly outgunned by the people who want this kind of stuff. Whenever I get asked if I’ll write huge checks to play big money politics against this stuff, I say no. And recently, I’ve started quoting Elon Musk’s great line at the All Things Digital Conference, “If we give in to that, we’ll get the political system we deserve.”
I read around 50 articles on things this morning. I’m no more clear on what is actually going on as the amount of vagueness, statements covered with legal gunk, illogical statements, and misdirection is extraordinary, even for an issue like this one.
Following are some of the more interesting things I read today.
- We are shocked, shocked…
- Government Says Secret Court Opinion on Law Underlying PRISM Program Needs to Stay Secret
- It’s our own fault… Deal with it.
- Cowards
- Tech Companies Concede to Surveillance Program
- Is the NSA outsourcing its domestic spying to Israel?
- Nothing To Hide
- No One Is Talking About The Insane Law That Lets Authorities Read Any Email Over 180 Days Old
- Room 641A
- What If China Hacks the NSA’s Massive Data Trove?
And I always thought PRISM was about teleportation.
And finally, the Wikipedia article, like all Wikipedia articles, is the definitive source of all PRISM information at this point, at least to the extent that anything around PRISM is accurate.
The open data movement is great for business, but is also great for us as citizens. To accelerate that program, President Obama and US CTO Todd Park have created a national event to leverage technology and open data to strengthen our democracy in the United States.
On June 1st and 2nd the largest hackathon in the world is forming. Over 5000 people in 87 locations will be joining up to use their talents to make their communities a better place. The National Day of Civic Hacking is the first of a yearly event created by the White House to gather Citizen Engineers and have them use newly accessible government data to improve their communities and our entire society. The multitude of data that is being released as part of the Open Data Initiatives.
A company I’ve been involved for a long time with – Rally Software – is taking a leadership role in this. Rally’s product development team is devoting their talent and energy to participate and host the Boulder, Denver, Seattle, and Raleigh event (join up at these locations.) Through their corporate social responsibility initiative, Rally for Impact they are offering an exclusive and complimentary one-year subscription to AgileZen and Flowdock to all participants of the National Day of Civic Hacking.
Specifically for Coloradans, there are sites in Denver and Boulder. In Denver, the site is focused on open data from the State of Colorado and called Hack4Colorado. In Boulder, the Boulder Civic Hackfest, is focused on local data, the Census Bureau and the National Renewable Energy Lab’s Open Energy Info project. On Saturday, NREL engineers will join the local civic hackers too. Hacking isn’t just about writing code, it’s about exploring the boundaries of what’s doable and what’s desirable.
Rally is also donating three seats to their Enterprise Lean Startup training course to this effort. This highly interactive workshop, on June 5 & 6 in Boulder, teaches you how to systematically discover what’s desirable for users and customers. To claim the training seats be the first three people to send email to rallyforimpact@rallydev.com if you are attending the event in Boulder or Denver. Awards will be given at the closing of each event in Boulder and Denver by Rally staff.
I’m proud of my long time friends at Rally for providing leadership here!