Communications of the ACM

commerce in IoT problematical. Sovereign nations could end foreign mass surveillance of their own citizens and institutions by prohibiting control of their Io T devices, including hologlasses, by companies domiciled in other nations. China has already adopted a strategy of having China-domiciled companies take over large information-based businesses that operate in China.

Storing sensitive information in data centers of foreign-domiciled companies could wind up being widely banned if China’s strategy for ending foreign mass surveillance within its sovereign borders is adopted by other countries. Outside of China, international companies doing business online might still hope to preserve their advertising-based business models by continuing to function as brokers, with the big difference being that matchmaking between merchants and users would be done on the users’ own equipment as opposed to in the data centers of foreign-domiciled companies. 2 A new policy of storing sensitive information on users’ own equipment could address increasing European concerns about ending foreign mass surveillance thereby conforming to recent judgments of the European Court of Justice. 1

References

1. European Court of Justice. Judgment of the Court, Dec. 21, 2016; https://publications.europa.eu/en/ publication-detail/-/publication/a442d1ac-f6fd-11e6-

8a35-01aa75ed71a1/language-en

2. Hewitt, C. Islets protect sensitive Io T information: Verifiably ending use of sensitive Io T information for mass surveillance can foster (international) commerce and law enforcement. Social Science Research Network; https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/ papers.cfm?abstract_id=2836282

Carl Hewitt, Palo Alto, CA, USA

Author Responds:

I agree. Hologlasses do raise the prospect of third parties capturing everything we perceive and our responses to those perceptions. Such ultimately personal information would support near-ideal modeling of the individual and finely tuned manipulation that goes well beyond our current concerns regarding electoral interference and Facebook advertising.

We can only hope the U.S. Supreme Court
will recognize the increasing anachronism
and folly of the third-party doctrine, and
that Congress finds its way to meaningful
limitations on data collection. We can
also hope that some sense of personal
aesthetics will keep our future selves from
wearing hologlasses for all but the briefest
periods of time.

Stephen B. Wicker, Ithaca, NY, USA

Called to Programming

I wonder what could have concerned David G. Stork so much about the equity of women in technology that he was compelled to write a letter to the editor, “Gender ‘Equity’ in Computer Science” (Apr. 2018), on Jodi L. Tims’s “From the Chair of ACM-W column “ Achieving Gender Equality: ACM Can’t Do It Alone” (Feb. 2018).

When I first began working as an engineer after college, I was disappointed to find I basically worked only with men, usually older and married. I learned programming largely on my own since I was eight years old by retyping simple programs out of magazines like Compute!’s Gazette and experimenting by changing the code or partially running the code as I typed it. While I did learn programming more professionally in college, it was something more within me that drew me to the field.

No one not already interested
in technology can be forced to care
about programming. It is certainly
interesting to some people, but to
many others it is just a tool, like, say,
a screwdriver. People can know all
about building screwdrivers, all the
different sizes and types of heads,
materials, and qualities, but all one
really needs to know is that it is use-
ful for tightening screws that are usu-
ally useful for something far more
important than the screwdriver itself.
Following the screwdriver analogy, it
would not be that different to ask why
we don’t see more women mechanics
at the local garage. Yes, I know there
are some; in fact, one changed my
car’s oil the last time it needed it.
People ultimately do what they want
to do, not what education (or even well-
meaning parents) directs them to do.
Robert Wilkens, Levittown, NY, USA

Communications welcomes your opinion. To submit a Letter to the Editor, please limit yourself to 500 words or less, and send to letters@cacm.acm.org.

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