Techies: Take a congressman and a cop to work with you

When my daughters were little, I’d sometimes participate in a ritual called Take Your Child to Work Day, so they could see what Dad does and perhaps be inspired to follow in my footsteps. (Happily, they didn’t.) Now I’m thinking that techies — particularly product managers and developers who really understand how tech is used — should launch Take a Congressman and a Cop to Work Day.

As we all know, technology moves at a lightning pace. But the law moves much, much slower. A glance at some of the events that have made news recently shows why we need to periodically get policy makers and enforcers into the tech trenches.

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Consider the recent ruling by a California court that says although you can’t talk on your cellphone and drive, it’s perfectly OK to stare at a smartphone navigation app while tooling down I-5 at 70 mph. (And how’s a cop to know which youre doing?) Or consider the dilemma of regulators who stood by helplessly while the world’s largest bitcoin exchange collapsed: It is wholly unclear whether a private currency is even subject to their regulatory purview. Plus, how do you regulate something that hasn’t existed before?

Then there’s the raging issue of privacy. The authors of the Constitution never envisioned big data and the ability to scoop up personal information with the flip of a virtual switch. We’re living in the age of the big disconnect. Somehow, we have to convince the people who write and enforce our laws to get with the program. So let’s take ’em to work with us.

The real digital divide is between technology and policy

I returned a rental car last week in a city that I don’t know very well. Before I started the engine, I checked the map on my iPhone to see where I needed to go and how to get there. I then fired up the turn-by-turn, voice-enabled directions. How hard was that?

But some bozos (I’d use a stronger word if my editors would let me) are still driving along trying to read a map on a small smartphone screen. If they were a danger only to themselves, I wouldn’t care too much. But because they could get me and other innocents killed, it pushes my outrage button. There’s no shortage of studies — not to mention common sense — showing that distracted driving is extremely dangerous.

Yeah, you’ve heard this before. But a recent ruling by a panel of judges in California held that although my state’s law forbids driving and texting or talking on a cellphone without a hands-free setup, using a navigation app while your car is moving is not covered. Therefore, it’s not illegal. It appears that the court, whose job it is to apply the law as written, is probably correct, as the Los Angeles Times points out. But that raises a number of interesting points.

In the case of the California driver, his car may not actually have been moving, the Associated Press reports, although that wasn’t a factor in the ruling. But it does speak to the inflexible judgment of the officer who ticketed the guy. If traffic wasn’t moving, the driver wasn’t endangering anyone, which is the point of the law. That would also be true if he’d called someone to say he was stuck in traffic. In that case, I’d say “no harm, no foul” and somebody needs to educate the cops on what’s the real point of the law.

But the court ruling now says you can use your apps while driving, and that goes against the point — if not the letter — of the law. When the law was passed in 2009, the iPhone was just two years old. Smartphones had not become the ubiquitous accessory they are today, and the state legislature didn’t foresee the use of apps. Similarly, wiretapping laws go back many decades, but they don’t cover many incidents of surveillance and eavesdropping made possible by new technology — and I’m not referring to the arguably illegal activities of the NSA.

If you don’t know what technology does or how it works, how can you possibly regulate it?

Regulating virtual currency

Money isn’t just paper, nor the bits and bytes that represent it in electronic transactions. It’s the foundation of our economy, and managing it is extremely complex. On a macro level, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury can print money, but if it wasn’t backed by something real or if far too much was printed, we’d be pushing wheelbarrows full of cash to buy groceries, which is exactly happened in the Weimar Republic.

When real money is stolen, whether it’s cash or the electronic equivalent, it can be traced and recovered. But when bitcoins are stolen, how can they be recovered? After all, they’re not real currency in a legal sense, but arguably a game people are playing, like fantasy baseball.

When Mt. Gox, the largest bitcoin exchange filed for bankruptcy last month, more than 800,000 bitcoins were discovered to be missing, a number that represents roughly 6 percent of all the bitcoins in circulation, the New York Times reported. A key role of government is to protect the currency and to protect the people and businesses that use it. But at the moment, no one has a clue about whether — much less how — to go about protecting private, virtual “currencies.”

Frankly, the zealots who want bitcoins to be free of all government regulation will make it even harder to find a solution. I believe there probably is a remedy, maybe regulation and recordkeeping similar to those used to monitor gambling and currency and equities trading. I’m not sure anyone could take Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen to work with him or her, but somebody has to help our regulators figure this one out.

Fixing the law about distracted driving is relatively easy, whereas figuring out what to do about virtual currencies and new codes of privacy are really hard. But they are problems that can be solved, and the people who invented the technology that’s causing them can help. I often rant about the hubris of Silicon Valley types who think they can solve all the world’s problems with an app, but in this case they can make a huge contribution by taking someone to work — or at least to lunch.

I welcome your comments, tips, and suggestions. Post them here (Add a comment) so that all our readers can share them, or reach me at bill@billsnyder.biz. Follow me on Twitter at BSnyderSF.

This article, “Techies: Take a congressman and a cop to work with you,” was originally published by InfoWorld.com. Read more of Bill Snyder’s Tech’s Bottom Line blog and follow the latest technology business developments at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.