Those of you who care about the US dominance of the computer technology industry should take a look at a bill recently introduced in the U.S. Congress. The "Cyber Security act of 2009" would create a "dizzying array of programs, administered by a variety of agencies". This link has some good commentary on what the bill would do.
The computer industry is a great example of the free market at work. There are loads of very, very smart people working their hearts out building amazing things. There is already a whole industry devoted to computer security. The standards and "best practices" of the computer security world are evolving constantly, and improving daily. There is almost nothing that federal agencies can do to make things better. Instead, this bill will add red tape, add barriers to entry for new entrants to the marketplace, stifle innovation, and generally harm security in the national infrastructure.
This would clearly cede "big brother"-like power to the federal government, and in return, we harm our premier industry, and gain nothing in terms of security.
This is yet another example of well intentioned legislation that is far worse than doing nothing at all.
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1 comment:
Hey Bill,
I completely agree. One of the reasons for such rapid development in the computer industry is the openness of the market. Experimentation is encouraged, and the ideas are hashed out through the markets and online discussions.
Bad ideas do not last long, but good ideas are implemented quickly.
Could you imagine if we had a process similar to the FDA's drug approval process for new programming ideas?
On the other hand, an FDA like process to hash out stupidity in laws might make sense :-). None of these stupid laws would ever get anywhere!
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