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.
© 2018 ACM 0001-0782/18/6
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