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: 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”
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