Patrick R. McElhiney believes that there is a lot to do in Congress as far as passing sweeping technology industry regulations. He believes that our elected leaders are behind schedule in passing legislation that will help to define the already murky waters of the technology industry. There are laws that need to be passed regarding privacy of user data, which applies to virtually every website, including social media, and especially big tech companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Apple.
We need people in Congress that actually understand technologies, and can work in Congress to regulate them. If we would have had technology minded people in Congress, then we wouldn’t have had problems like the Russia social media attacks, and the hacking, and other technology-related security breaches, because we would have elected leaders that understand how technology can be used against us, and we would have sets of laws that prevent that type of activity, rather than wait for people to do something bad and then pass laws based on what they did. We need to be more proactive with regards to our technology industry regulations.
Repetitive Commercials
There should be FCC legislation to stop repetitive commercials from airing too many times in a row. This is a real problem on news networks such as Newsy, Fox News, CBS, and ABC. The commercials just play over and over again, sometimes 4 or 5 times in a row in-between news segments, and there's nothing you can do to stop them. Some of the commercials even increase the volume, even though that has been banned by the FCC.
Laws Governing Aerial Drones
Patrick believes that the FAA needs to approve drone programs for retailers such as Amazon and Wal-Mart, that wish to deliver orders within a 30-mile radius of their distribution centers. There needs to be consideration for what happens when a drone isn't responding to its controller, and also what should be done to ensure that drones are not hacked and used by terrorists, as well as general flight restrictions, such as the minimum and maximum heights that the drones must stay above ground level when in transit. There should also be a central air-traffic-controller for all drones flying in airspace shared with airplanes, to ensure that each drone is responsive and has filed a flight plan, and is following that flight plan while in transit.
Data Privacy Laws
We need strong data privacy laws, from legislation defining basic electronic privacy rights, similar to what was created in Europe with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Currently, companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Apple collect billions of gigabytes worth of data on us every single day, including where we've been with our phones, what websites we've looked at, what we do on our mobile and other devices, and even what we do on those websites, including where we looked at them and what we looked at on the websites. Programs like Google Analytics can track where the mouse cursor clicks on a website, to determine consumer behavior, and can identify to website owners who you are and how long you've spent on a website. New smart cars are being used to capture tons of data, including what music we listen to, and where we go, and in some cases even video of every single trip that we take in the car. We're paying for all of this technology, and we should have a say in how data is collected, how it is used, and how it can be stored and shared, if at all.
Laws Governing Exploit Disclosures
An example of how an NSA exploit may have led to the hacking of a domestic computer system was when the Baltimore Municipalities were targeted by hackers using the EternalBlue exploit of Microsoft Windows to spread a ransomware strain known as “Robbinhood”. While the NSA is now denying that EternalBlue had anything to do with it, the EternalBlue exploit was also tied to the global WannaCry ransomware outbreak in May 2017, which was linked back to North Korea. Within a day, the code was reported to have infected more than 230,000 computers in over 150 countries including the United States. A new variant of the WannaCry ransomware forced Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to temporarily shut down several of its chip-fabrication factories in August 2018. Viruses and malware can be re-packaged with slight modifications to get them past virus protection heuristics, using the same exploit over and over, until the majority of systems have been patched.
There should be legislation that requires that any individual or organization that finds an exploit of a computer system, must disclose the exploit within a specified amount of time directly to the software or hardware vendor, to ensure that the technology used in the United States is secured from cyber criminals and foreign adversaries. Currently, the NSA develops exploits of popular software such as Microsoft Windows, and uses the exploits to hack into foreign governments and other foreign entities and to conduct cyber warfare, but history has shown that the NSA cannot mitigate the risks of those exploits being released by foreign governments as they learn about the intrusions that the NSA has conducted. Once the NSA is done with a specific exploit, it should turn it over to the software or hardware vendor within a set amount of time, such as 1 year from the time of inception. The NSA can get a lot of use out of that exploit within a 1-year time span, and limiting the scope of the exploit will ensure that Americans are protected before foreign governments figure out how they have been hacked.
Furthermore, the NSA should be required to report any exploit that is compromised immediately upon finding out that a foreign actor has control of the exploit, to ensure the safety of Americans and their data. While the work of the NSA to figure out what exploits exist in popular software programs, operating systems, and hardware systems is important, it should also be used wisely so that the effects of the work don't negatively affect the American People as a result of the NSA's negligence to secure its exploits out of foreign hands. Sometimes these exploits take up so much code that must be uploaded to a remote system, that it is sometimes impossible to cover your tracks from detection, but with good policy passed by Congress, we can ensure that Americans will be protected from the actions that follow detection by foreign actors.
Banning "Deepfakes"
There should be legislation to ban "Deepfakes", which are videos that are taken and modified to make it appear that the person is saying something that they never said. The first popular example was a video made by Jordan Peele using Artificial Intelligence (AI), that made it appear that President Barack Obama was talking about fake news. Another popular example was when President Trump re-tweeted a video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appearing to slur her words, as if she was drunk or incoherent. Furthermore, Facebook declined to take down the video upon her request, which launched a Congressional Investigation into Deepfakes. The prevalence of these videos is a threat to our democracy, because it can make it appear that a politician, or a CEO of a major company is saying something that they didn't say, and it illogically undermines the public's trust in its public officials. Just as Facebook has banned Russian meddling, it now needs to ban Deepfakes, and if necessary, because of Statutory Law. Congress should ban not only the distribution of the Deepfakes, but also make it illegal to create them.
It goes beyond the freedom of speech, because the videos mis-characterize the victim, possibly for a malicious intent, sort of like spreading a Trojan horse virus. It undermines our democracy when people can alter videos and make it appear as though someone is saying something that they didn't say - it could sway a Presidential election in favor of a candidate that uses a Deepfake in an advertisement to attack their opponent. Technology should not be used to win elections at all odds - it is simply a tool to facilitate human processes, to make human interactions better, and Deepfakes do not facilitate anything. They are cheap hacks on society - and they are really no different than what the Russians did to meddle in the 2016 Presidential election. If Congress doesn't ban Deepfakes, they will almost certainly be used against political candidates to ruin reputations and further divide this country in favor of Donald Trump's agenda to break laws and reek havoc on our nation. We need to send a clear message to the White House that these types of videos will not be tolerated!
Monitoring Children's Screen Time
We need a solution to monitor the Internet usage among teens, that will commonly buy burner phones and trap phones to evade their parent's monitoring. They're acting like criminals at such an early age, and parents need to set a positive example. If routers were made to be easily managed by parents, with parental controls, it would make parenting easier, especially if all cell phones in proximity to the router would have to connect to get permission to operate within the access zone of the Wireless Access Point. For overlapping WAPs, the phone would just have to authenticate with at least one. Parents also need an easy way to monitor social media use among teens, and watch their children's online behavior. Parents can currently monitor for unknown devices on their home network, but children can easily get around that detection by turning off Wi-Fi. They need to be tethered to the WiFi Access Point through regulations on all of the phones.
One thing that parents can do is give their children a phone, but with limited privileges, and they will usually monitor those phones - but the problem is that a teenager with a job can just go and buy a burner phone. The parents need ways to detect burner phones. Otherwise their children could get getting into trouble before they know it, and there was no way for them to know what their teenager was doing. If Congress passes laws that requires technology companies to make devices in a certain way, the technology companies will follow the laws.
Investigations into Big Tech Companies
The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission recently announced that they were opening investigations into the top tech companies, including Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Google. They are looking into whether any monopolistic practices have been used to exhibit unfair competition in the marketplace. Many Presidential candidates on the Democratic side have called for the breakup of big tech companies, or even a living wage to be paid from the big tech companies to every American. What is clear is that these companies will continue to get bigger and bigger, and while their appeal to customers are enticing, there may be a lot of shady business going on that we don't already know about, which is what the investigations are going to uncover and disclose to the public. It's pretty clear that at least some of these companies are monopolies - especially Facebook, that doesn't allow competition to grow up around it before it buys out the competition, which it did with Instagram and many other companies. Facebook is stifling competition in the social media business, and Facebook wasn't the first social networking company.
