Top 5 technology failures of government

The human condition is such that we’ll always have a vast array of opinions on matters great and small. But whatever our motivations, they should have some sort of reason at their core. Now, the United States is no stranger to problems, which range from welfare to health care, but those that confront us on technological terms are particularly galling since they are wholly the product of our own constructs. And in many ways those constructs are being openly subverted to funnel profits to a very select group.

The blood, sweat, and tears that generations of highly skilled and highly motivated people have devoted to making all these modern miracles work are being drowned in the deepening pools of greed and avarice. If we expect to maintain the march of technological advancement over the next several generations, we have to fix these problems post-haste. There is no other choice.

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Failure No. 1: Nebulous Net neutrality

The Internet is not a fad or a luxury, but a fundamental part of daily life. We need to acknowledge that there is no such thing as a free market when it comes to broadband Internet access, and Internet service providers should be regulated as common carriers.

The big ISPs have built out this infrastructure largely through the use of public funds. Allowing them to act as the gatekeepers of the Internet and determine which traffic may or may not reach their customers is equivalent to legalizing highway robbery. It’ll snuff out nascent innovations, crush small companies and startups, and do permanent damage to our economy and our standing in the world. We can’t let Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T turn the Internet in the United States into a modern-day America Online.

Failure No. 2: Broadband reach and speeds

We’ve all heard how broadband Internet access in many foreign countries blows the doors off of what we have in the United States, usually at cheaper prices. We’ve also heard the many excuses for why this is so, such as how the United States is larger and thus requires more infrastructure and all other kinds of nonsense. We’ve given the ISPs plenty of money to build out a suitable infrastructure to support significant broadband speeds to the majority of U.S. households.

But instead of fast broadband at low rates, we have lackluster speeds; throttling; shoddy support; threats of bandwidth caps; and collusion and oligopolies ensuring a rise in prices and a dearth of options. We should be enjoying a stable, steady increase in speeds and availability throughout the United States. But instead we have the opposite — except in places where Google Fiber is exposing the seedy underbelly of the big ISPs and forcing them to actually toe the line or face expulsion.

Failure No 3: Frivolous software patents

It’s a tumultuous time to be a patent troll, but it’s still paying dividends. Until patent trolling is stopped, we’ll be under the constant threat that vague and invalid patents can jeopardize innovation and progress. Just look at what online retailer NewEgg has gone through in the past year.

NewEgg lost a court battle against patent troll Erich Spangenberg, who claimed that NewEgg’s use of encryption violated a patent controlled by Spangenberg. Even though legendary cryptographer Whitfield Diffie testified in favor of NewEgg at the trial, the jury awarded damages to Spangenberg on the order of $2.3 million. Conversely, NewEgg won a patent case brought by Soverain Software, wherein the complaint alleged that NewEgg and 50 other online retailers violated Soverain’s patent on shopping cart software. Soverain sued several dozen companies for similar reasons, but lost to NewEgg when Soverain lost on appeal in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, which ruled that the patent was too general. Soverain appealed that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case.

We need to put a stop to this process, where an overwhelmed and overmatched patent office rubber stamps apparently any collection of technical terms assembled into a patent application. Once approved, those patents turn into ammunition in shotgun-style lawsuits that drag down everyone involved.

Failure No 4: Abysmal data security

As I discussed here last week, we live in a time in which data about us is being collected almost everywhere we go and whatever it is we do — shopping at any store with credit or debit cards, driving down the road, walking through a mall, browsing websites. Databases are being populated with all manner of information on us, although we have never been given the option of refusing that data collection. In many cases, the companies collecting that data have never disclosed that it’s occurring.

Many people consider this to be a non-issue, because they believe they have no reason to fear such data collection. That, however, implies that they trust the companies collecting that data won’t do any harm. Some of those companies may indeed not wish to do harm, but once their security has been breached they are complicit in the use of that data for illegal purposes.

Target’s breach highlights that fact. Simply by shopping at Target before last Christmas, people put their financial security at great risk because of Target’s lack of security — yet Target won’t suffer any significant consequences for it. We need to be able to opt out of such data collection and be free to pursue significant relief against damages caused by the failure of companies to secure data that was collected against our will and without our knowledge. Target’s breach won’t be the last. It probably won’t even be the biggest.

Failure No 5: Privacy violations

Then there’s the NSA. In its zeal to “protect” the United States, it’s run roughshod over the constitutional rights of just about every American and angered allies far and wide. The NSA doesn’t even appear to realize why its clandestine data collection efforts are so appalling.

Although we are discussing the personal data that was lost to thieves at Target, Neiman Marcus, and a host of other companies, we aren’t talking about what would happen if some or all of the data the NSA has collected were to fall into the wrong hands. An NSA security breach could result in blackmail material for major business and world leaders, among numerous other grim possibilities. And you can be sure that if such a breach were to occur, it wouldn’t be publicized like the Target fiasco was.

It’s not lost on me that many of the same people defending the NSA are in the same breath claiming that the government can’t do anything right. If the NSA is part of the government, and the government can’t do anything right, then forgive me if I don’t have the utmost faith in the security of the data it collects.

It couldn’t be more obvious that we are heading toward a more technology-centric future with every passing moment. Artifically hamstringing the usefulness, effectiveness, affordability, and security of that technology serves us no long-term good and in time will prove to be extremely damaging to our nation as a whole. If we can address these problems now, we will not only improve our lot in the short term, but also prevent a multitude of deeper problems and failures later. 

This story, “Top 5 technology failures of government,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Paul Venezia’s The Deep End blog at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.