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Ask HN: Software is now an extension of law, would it be best kept open?

10 points by consumer451 ↗ HN
Ever since The Code of Hammurabi, we have benefited from the advantages of laws being public, and therefore open source.

Today, as software eats the world, we allow "proprietary knowledge" to enforce laws. If not make the laws, we at least allow black box code to enforce them. Arguably, this is the same thing.

As "AI" progresses, this seems like it could only get worse, and yet more acceptable.

This could be facial recognition, or social media metrics, or otherwise.

Is it realistic, possible, and necessary to require all software which is used by government to be open source as it is an extension of the law?

I am slightly conflicted. I believe that open source is not a panacea. For example, bio-weapons should not be open sourced.

However, I would argue that we will regress as a species if law, and its enforcement, is not open.

Maybe this is one of the more complex questions that we could consider.

What are your thoughts?

15 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 21.1 ms ] thread
uberman
While I dont agreed that all software used by the government needs to be open source and it strikes me that certain software needs to be more than proprietary even top secret. I do agree with the notion that software used to incriminate or identify or charge or sentence people must even should be open source.
acdha
I think there’s also an interesting angle around how and when it becomes open source. You could imagine an escrow-type model where someone selling, say, law-enforcement software might not be required to release it publicly but would be required to escrow every version used by clients and make it available to auditors or defense teams. There’s an interesting balance between allowing people to keep competitive secrets while still allowing oversight and that’s going to require some adjustments over time.
jruohonen
Much more than that. Insofar as we are talking about public law, I'd argue that ML for granting welfare benefits, calculating taxes, loaning books from a local library, ticket reserving for public transport, and whatever else goes on in mundane public administration should be open source or at least transparent, including with respect to training data and basic performance metrics like ROCs etc. Note that the argument about trade secrets, by definition, cannot apply in this context, although a practical problem is that public administrations have outsourced their stuff to the private sector (sometimes with catastrophically bad outcomes). It will be interesting to see whether people will increasingly challenge public sector algorithms through FOIs in the future, as I am pretty sure they'll do.
codingdave
> we allow "proprietary knowledge" to enforce laws.

I'm not sure what you are referring to - do you mean law enforcement using specific tools to decide whom to investigate, or are you talking about actual arrests?

Maybe some examples of what you are thinking of would help?

[dead] hardkorebob
[flagged]
benf76
You have any sources or references to chase the rabbit down the hole here?
hardkorebob
I already gave it to you. Go buy Black's Law Dictionary from 1931 or sooner. Then go understand red-tape and administrative process.
benf76
Is blacks law dictionary addressing the incorporation of US corp in Puerto Rico?
hardkorebob
That is a matter of public record in Puerto Rico. All copies are available for a fee. Due diligence. Go to San Juan looking like an American Senator, go into the courthouse and pay the monies to get all the info you want. Of course you need to know how to read Spanish and how to ask for the right documents. Lost to the citizens is the understanding of how to really do business(law).
benf76
What documents? Why the reluctance to provide any clear details or sources? Where do you have this knowledge from? A book would be easier to start with than impersonating a senator and going to Puerto Rico. Are you trying to inform or dissemble?
hardkorebob
There is no book other than Admiralty Law and Black's Law Dict. No one said impersonate. I said look like one. That means be an old white man. See the difference? Reluctance? You don't understand what the Public Record is? I can only point to the direction. The knowledge comes from follow the money. The knowledge is in the Public Record. You can't access documents from the US. How is none of these details clear to you?
benf76
And which document do I request upon my arrival to San Juan?
coretx
"His" "rabbit hole" went mainstream since Lessig released his book "code is law" while everyone was partying like it was 1999. Massive amounts of both amateur and academic discourse followed, got picked up by civil society world wide, all with their own take. Think pirate parties, NGOs like EFF, the Free software movement, and so on. Yet here we are today, a ever growing need for these questions and a equally rising unlikeliness for universally workable answers. I for one don't care much about open source if i can't have a free and informed vote for a legislator.
eimrine
> I believe that open source is not a panacea. For example, bio-weapons should not be open sourced.

What benefits it brings to society if to restrict some but not other parties from researching bio-weapons? For example, would you be happy if some domains of Physics/Mathematics is banned for everyone except some US students of some limited set of universities?