Answer to the question: Thanks to Sen. Ron Wyden the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforced restrictions on the use, sale, licensing or transfer of the location data.
I got a chance to talk to one of his aides once and I learned something interesting. One of the differences of Wyden is simply in the number of aides he has. The aides are experts in a particular domain and play a significant role in Wyden's decision making. So they said one of the big problems (this was his CS aide) is that most senators don't have an expert(s) who are well informed on tech and such so they are not even able to make informed decisions. It was just an interesting part of the process I didn't know too much about before.
Having experts seems like a great idea, but then I worry that it basically means having multiple lobbyists on staff, with a desk right in the senator's office.
The aides aren't lobbiests though. Actually I think the problem is that many politicians are using lobbiests as substitutes for aides. The aides work directly for the senator and thus the state, not for a private organization.
Think of it as the continued decentralization that democracies are. The point is to increase the number of keys to power because then it becomes difficult to amass enough keys. If the politician has more aides, sure they can be corrupted too. But now you would need to corrupt many aides as opposed to only the singular politician. You can't just bribe the politician as the aide would then be likely to whistleblow.
> The aides work directly for the senator and thus the state, not for a private organization.
Isn't it common for regulatory capture to happen with a "revolving door" where people move between industry and government, setting up future benefits for themselves on every cycle? e.g. Say Microsoft is really good, make a law that de facto requires their software, later happen to get hired there.
At least it worked once. I just don't think there is any special structure that can prevent corruption without human effort.
A revolving door is circular. Like a aide becoming a lobbyist and then becoming an aide again. But typically it is more like what we see with supreme court clerks, flow in one direction. Using their experience, insider knowledge, and the networks they have created to become more influential.
But I'm not sure how we can avoid this in any structure without significant consequences. Like if you say a government employee must spend X time before entering the private industry, what are they supposed to do during that time? I guess we could give them a pension?
But this is why I am connecting the concept of democracy to that of federated systems. Think of the fractal nature of this. We can draw groups around things and talk about consolidation. We need to think about graphs and networks. It isn't all there is to the problem, but it is part of it.
Let's pretend we have two groups that have equal knowledge and equal amounts of power. So in a perfect world, if these two were benevolent entities they would be equally effective. Group 1 is a singular politician. Group 2 is a politician with their aides. For all intents and purposes these two groups are equal other than the number of people. Is one group easier to corrupt than the other? Most certainly! Group 1 only requires that you corrupt a single individual. Group 2 the power is distributed (we don't need homogeneity here, but if it helps, that's the clearer case), and so you have to expend more effort to corrupt that system.
This scales and takes on a fractal like nature! It then becomes even more beneficial when you consider that there are many adversaries. There is a weird effect where you can actually have all keys to power (politicians, aides, whatever) be corrupted BUT where no single adversary is able to take control over the state! Because they themselves are in competition! If you have only a few nodes that need to be corrupted, it is much easier to perform a total graph capture because the power you have is also proportional to the number of nodes you control. But if you divide the power across many nodes, and you cannot capture nodes instantaneously and/or at no cost, then (assuming there are competitors) the steady state solution is having at least 2 entities capturing the graph, not 1. Essentially the steady state corruption solution is an oligopoly rather than an autocracy. We might call what we have a Plutocracy, but even though I dislike Plutocracies, I think they are better than autocracies.
I don't think there is a special form of government that can prevent corruption. Certainly not one that doesn't require action to maintain its state (which is difficult to rely on). So instead I think the main focus should be on failure design. Failure design is one of the most important concepts in engineering because it is taking control in how a system fails rather than letting it happen randomly. In something like a government you have to balance the distributed nature as well as the centralization. Centralization (with autocracy being the extreme) has the benefit that one can respond fast because they have absolute control. Direct democracies on the other hand have the opposite problem where the power is spread too thin and thus it is difficult to do anything because you have to do a full graph transversal anytime you want to make any decision. You need the balance for efficiency, not to mention that people aren't absolutely equal in skill and knowledge. But placing high importance on failure design in embracing the chaos and unknown of the system. Knowing that you can't control all parts and that once you've set the system in motion, you no longer have control. It evolves on its own.
I fully agree with your first paragraph, but I have too little trust and the system has too little transparency for me to buy the picture you paint in your second paragraph.
I think my sibling comment will help[0]. You're exactly right to not trust. Certainly that's not something I am suggesting. What I'm saying is that it is simply harder to corrupt multiple people than it is to corrupt a singular person. This does not mean they cannot be corrupted. We cannot confuse these concepts.
But beyond the robustness that is created by distribution, I think there is a more practical aspect to this. The world is fucking complex and no singular person can be an expert in all or even many subjects. There simply isn't enough time to do this, not to mention each subject changes with time, so we'd have to do things in parallel. I'm not sure how to do that yet haha. So practically there is an advantage because you can out source this knowledge. Which this is happening regardless. The knowledge outsourcing is either implicit to the system or explicit. I firmly believe that if it is not explicit in the system then this only creates an environment that is more prone to corruption.
While we're on the topic, I think we often make a mistake when choosing the president. Absolutely no singular person is qualified. I fear people who say __I__ will solve problems, people who talk in the first person. The truth is that the world is too complex. The president's two most important roles are: 1) to be a representative figure head, 2) create a effective group of experts and be able to process and balance their opinions on their niche expertise. Even autocracies are having difficulties operating in the modern world due to this rising complexity. So I personally don't want a strong leader so much as a leader who knows how to manage and delegate properly. But even that's a difficult task.
I think that’s the opposite of how to think about it: groups with money are going to lobby no matter what, because there’s simply no way those groups won’t want to influence what’s happening. Budgeting to hire people who report to the congress person costs a little bit (by national government standards) upfront but it avoids all of those conflicts of interest and pushes things out of the shadows into the government hiring process where there’s more of a paper trail and basic conflict of interest rules.
I’m saying that do this officially as a normal federal job would still be an improvement over them getting the same advice over drinks at the country club, and paying normal wages means non rich people can accept those jobs.
Think about it this way: say you get your wish and we zero out the staff budget. The guys who were going to put their signature on the latest draft from ALEC are going to do it anyway because you don’t need advisors for that. The impact of not having those positions would fall on anyone who _isn’t_ just following the big lobbying groups - the staffers are the ones who are going to give them alternatives to consider and think about what they’re not hearing from the well-funded lobbying organizations.
In case you are unaware, Congress has its own nonpartisan think tank that produces information products for legislators on current issues of potential interest. It’s called the Congressional Research Service. Their reports used to be secret, but now most reports are available publicly at crsreports.congress.gov.
Data brokers and companies who own data brokers (Oracle) collectively spend about the same amount on lobbying as Google or Facebook did.
They know raising a stink about that data after roe v wade was overturned would draw way too much attention to the industry and the fact that us Americans really don't have any privacy protections.
So it is restricted to the types of data that those lobbyists think are too toxic to try and protect. Typically they seem to use 'national defense' as their version of 'think about the children' to make sure they can collect and sell this information.
There really aren't laws about PII at the data broker level, Even HIPAA doesn't apply.
"In most cases, unless the app is provided to you by a covered entity or its business associate - PDF, the HIPAA Rules also do not protect the privacy of data you’ve downloaded or entered into mobile apps for your personal use, regardless of where the information came from."
The politically expedient answer is "getting anything at all" because of the implied lack of pass-ability of a bill that went further due to industry pushback.
