Chuck Cosson is Director, Legal Affairs, Privacy & Security, at T-Mobile US, based in Bellevue, WA. At T-Mobile, Chuck oversees privacy compliance programs and provides legal guidance on mobile Internet, location services, incident response, and other privacy, security, and business issues. Chuck spent 7 years at Microsoft leading that company’s public policy work on human rights, free expression, and child online safety. He has also worked in Washington, D.C. on telecommunications policy and regulation. His engagement with Stanford focuses on the role of metaphor as a guide for contemporary technology law and policy - a conception of the Internet not as a “place you go” but as a “tool you use.”
Tool Without A Handle: Are You Not Trained?
By Chuck Cosson on December 28, 2023 at 6:49 pm
Tool Without a Handle: Are You Not Trained?
This post takes up the questions of how copyright law may impact the development and commercialization of Artificial Intelligence ("AI") tools, given their use of other people's data, generally without prior notice or permission. While litigation on these issues is still moving through the courts, it is possible that even straight reproductions of protected content by AI tools will be deemed lawful "fair use." But there's much to argue for not resting the future of AI on that prospect, and instead to there's also much to offer in a voluntary, self-regulatory scheme, similar to how protected works are licensed and made broadly available through music licensing processes that allow licenses for public performances of copyrighted songs. Read more about Tool Without A Handle: Are You Not Trained?
Tool Without A Handle: Cybersecurity Paradoxes
By Chuck Cosson on June 4, 2022 at 5:25 pm
I discuss here two illustrative cases of paradoxical puzzles in cybersecurity:
1) To reduce failures, aim at having some failures;
2) To get better international cybersecurity, have fewer rules and limit prosecutorial-type enforcement.
First, to reduce failures, don't aim at a state where there are no failures. More sophisticated approaches to cybersecurity embrace paradox (or, if you will, irony). One salient example is the concept of “zero trust,” where, in effect, cybersecurity never sleeps. Additionally, a state of perfect security would breed complacency. Preferable to have imperfect security, where skirmishes lead to vigilance, and modest occurrences of failure cultivate determination.
Second, while rules and enforcement are important parts of any cybersecurity program, in dealing with nation-state actors who may not be subject to U.S. domestic law enforcement (akin to dealing with quantum particles that do not observe Newtonian laws of physics), it's often preferable to aim at somewhat ambiguous principles which enjoy broad consensus than to aim at rules and enforcement. Read more about Tool Without A Handle: Cybersecurity Paradoxes
Tool Without A Handle: Tools For Vigilantes
By Chuck Cosson on August 4, 2021 at 9:17 pm
In this blog, I focus on principles to protect privacy when such considering publication of personal data or conclusions one can draw from it, where that data is sensitive, and revealing of personal failure. A principle that “the public should know of private wrongdoing” needs to be carefully balanced against whether that publication is needed for a public purpose, such as safety, or shedding light on institutional failures to act on the information, or where an individual persists in resisting accountability. I see none of those purposes in the recent publication of personal data concerning a Catholic Church official who engaged in same-sex relationships, notwithstanding doing so was violative of his vocational promises. Read more about Tool Without A Handle: Tools For Vigilantes
“Tool Without A Handle: Spirituality, Virtue, and Technology Ethics - Part 2”
By Chuck Cosson on January 17, 2021 at 3:31 pm
This post visits some additional concepts of virtue found in Christian teaching supplementing concepts from other traditions such as Aristotle (natural law tradition), Buddhism, and Confucianism, namely:
Consumer preferences are not always the same as consumer interests;
Winning is not the most important thing;
Solitude matters as much as engagement;
If the only values applied to Internet services are to “give people what they want,” “win followers and ads at all costs,” and “maximize reach and engagement” we will be vastly underequipped to deal with the problems those services – and the people who use them - would create, both presently and yet to come. And we will fail to respond to our present moment, one characterized by trauma, wounding, and loss that should indeed motivate us to pursue new thinking and new approaches. Read more about “Tool Without A Handle: Spirituality, Virtue, and Technology Ethics - Part 2”
“Tool Without A Handle: Spirituality, Virtue, and Technology Ethics”
By Chuck Cosson on October 24, 2020 at 3:42 pm
A review of Shannon Vallor’s excellent book Technology and the Virtues, which details perspectives on virtue from Aristotle, Confucius, and Buddhist perspectives, suggests the inquiry would benefit from engagement with Christian Neo-Platonic and derivative perspectives. I agree, though here I extend the engagement to a more general set of Christian perspectives on virtue.
To do this, a Christianity emphasizing humility is preferable to one emphasizing difference and retribution. The goal is to be a candle, not a torch. This Christianity is well aware humans are often guided more by mental shortcuts than by objective analysis and rational choice. The “ego is the enemy” as one author put it. Which is to say, importantly, that the person is not the enemy; the person is not the problem.
Within each person, of any status, race, sexual or gender identity, age, or religious practice, is the divine and the good. I think it’s a mistake to place blame on what technology is “doing to us.” In the “software” of our DNA is a superior human capacity, one that can hear divine goodness. Rather than ignore it and treat humans as inexorably enslaved to our prejudices, a principle of virtue should aim at not only changes in technology design but also at defining a social consensus of personal accountability to emotional growth. Read more about “Tool Without A Handle: Spirituality, Virtue, and Technology Ethics”