I have to admit that when I first heard Al Franken was running for Senate, I didn't like him, I didn't like the fact he was an actor, and I felt he was too smug whenever I heard him talk. I basically thought it was ridiculous that another actor made his way into politics.
But he seems to be the only politician that is actively involved in the issues that I care about, so I admit I was completely wrong about him, and I've done an about face and actually do support his work.
The fact that he is questioning Carrier IQ about what they're doing is just another data point to prove that I was wrong to dismiss him.
Keep in mind that his overarching idea seems to be "technology is bad, mkay?" He also supports SOPA and was calling for a "Flag Terrorist" button for all Blogger blogs.
I think it was Protect IP, not SOPA, that he's co-sponsoring. Not that that's any better, but just trying to clear up the facts.
Also, I thought it was Joe Lieberman that was calling for the "Flag terrorist" button. A quick Google for "Al Franken flag terrorist button" doesn't turn anything up for me. Do you have a source?
Outside of habitually bending over for Intellectual Property, he seems OK on tech. His tech policy isn't that tech is bad, S 74 was the best net neutrality proposal I've seen in this congress (I'm not entirely happy with it, but its leaps and bounds above anything else I've seen on the issue).
He says it "underscores the need for congress to act."
No, this incident underscores the need for independent security professionals to keep an eye on what our devices are really doing so we can make informed choices.
What kind of informed choice can you make when the market is run by a conspiring oligopoly?
CarrierIQ is the case in point. It may be tracking a different subset of things on different devices but it seems to be on all brands and it seems to invade your privacy surrepticiously on all of them. These are the cases where regulation is required because otherwise your only choice is to forego smartphones altogether.
One kind of government regulation would be to prohibit building tools that would, for instance, track your ___location. I can see how that would harmful government intrusion.
Another kind of government regulation would be, for instance, to prohibit companies from intentionally lying when describing to the public what kind of personal information their devices record with the intent to conceal it. That kind of regulation would then allow customers to make the informed choices you speak of.
Companies can already get in trouble for "intentionally lying" it's called fraud. Of course, that's assuming a user reads the TOS and actually knows what they've agreed to accept.
Question: what are your thoughts on getting rid of legislative penalties for petty theft, and instead having independent experts keep an eye on regional rates of shoplifting so that retailers can make informed choices about where to open their stores?
I didn't realize that. It makes sense that an actor would care about copyright protection.
That's too bad, but I guess not everyone's perfect. I do still think he's better than most of the other career politicians that only seem to care about completely irrelevant issues.
But he seems to be the only politician that is actively involved in the issues that I care about, so I admit I was completely wrong about him, and I've done an about face and actually do support his work.
The fact that he is questioning Carrier IQ about what they're doing is just another data point to prove that I was wrong to dismiss him.