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: Tools, Trends, Technology
By Chuck Cosson on May 25, 2020 at 3:39 pm
For further insights on managing misinformation, we should look to the ways in which humans form identity through imitation, purge enmity through scapegoating, and often lack the inability to internally generate a clear sense of preferences or make choices that align with them.
One of the mechanisms worth analyzing is the human tendency to assign trajectories to immediate observations and, similarly, to be attracted to "trend stories" wagering predictions. This tendency contributes to misinformation problems as it assigns undue weight to both the ability of the predictor and the probability the prediction will come to pass.
I prefer to think, though, that rightness demands we protect the right of humans to so choose, even if it means they reject truth for fantasy. And even if free choice is inhabited with a bit of illusion, one created by subconscious beliefs that control our thinking, and thus our actions, without our immediate awareness.
Generating shared perspectives is an important component of this response. Misinformation flourishes in environments where shared perspectives are weak. Art can help illustrate, in ways that argument and evidence cannot, shared qualities of experience and perspective. Read more about Tool Without A Handle: Tools, Trends, Technology
Tool Without A Handle: “Book Review: Tools and Weapons”
By Chuck Cosson on November 17, 2019 at 2:44 pm
Tool Without A Handle: “Book Review: Tools and Weapons”
“Since the dawn of time, any tool can be used for good or ill. Even a broom can be used to sweep the floor or hit someone over the head. The more powerful the tool, the greater the benefit or damage it can cause. While sweeping digital transformation holds great promise, the world has turned information technology into both a powerful tool and a formidable weapon” --- from Tools and Weapons Read more about Tool Without A Handle: “Book Review: Tools and Weapons”
Tool Without A Handle: A Duty of Candor
By Chuck Cosson on September 3, 2019 at 11:00 pm
The law and legal professional ethics require of counsel a duty of candor in the practice of law. This includes a duty to not knowingly make false statements of fact, and to not offer evidence the lawyer knows to be false. These principles are considered essential to maintaining both substantive fairness for participants in the process, and trust in the integrity of the process for those outside of it.
Users of information tools in public contexts are not, of course, subject to the same duties. And publication of false information is generally protected by the First Amendment, unless it falls into one of the defined exceptions. I’m doubtful a law against publication of false information would be sustained.
It is, however, perfectly acceptable for most information technology platforms to adopt such a policy and seek to enforce it as best they can. That is, platforms could create and enforce rules against publication of information known to be false. A recent publication from the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights contends platforms should do so. This post concurs: subject to some limitations, private platforms can and should take a position that use of their services to intentionally or carelessly spread false information violates terms of service. Read more about Tool Without A Handle: A Duty of Candor
Tool Without A Handle: Guerilla Information Warfare
By Chuck Cosson on June 2, 2019 at 11:27 pm
The security of our news and media information systems matters as much as the security of personal and commercial information systems. "Information warfare" shows that harms can arise even when there is no unauthorized access, when tools are used as intended, and when there’s no compromise of user privacy settings. In both cases of cybersecurity and news/media security, the threats are asymmetric, the tools readily available, usable for many purposes, and threats are easily disguised as benign. Read more about Tool Without A Handle: Guerilla Information Warfare
Tool Without A Handle: A Mere Gallimaufry
By Chuck Cosson on January 24, 2019 at 9:25 pm
Tool Without A Handle: “A Mere Gallimaufry”
This blog has spent a good deal of real estate discussing networked information technologies as tools, but has not yet dealt thoroughly with the qualifier in its title: tools “without handles.” The addition of “without a handle” is intended to indicate that my primary metaphor of a tool in the control of a user - and thus my general preferred approach to Internet policy and regulation, favoring individual control and accountability for uses of tools – needs to be leavened a bit. Read more about Tool Without A Handle: A Mere Gallimaufry