March 1, 2016

In this month’s ExCITeCast, we've highlighted the efforts of Drexel's Food Lab founded by Prof. Jonathan Deustch, which focuses on sustainability, health promotion, and food product design. While its easy to take for granted, something as seemingly straightforward as food is, in fact, a highly complex system offering many challenges and opportunities for innovation.

But I don't think this situation is uncommon. Such systems are what make many difficult things in our daily lives easier. For example, a very complicated technology story has been at the top of headlines the past few weeks, one that spans issues of technology, security and privacy, law enforcement, and terrorism. I'm speaking, of course, of the FBI's seeking of a court order compelling Apple to develop software enabling law enforcement to unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernadino shooters. Of course, we abhor terrorism and it's right that the FBI should vigorously investigate this incident.

But the case brings into stark relief the complexity surrounding modern technology, design, and usability. Apple has gone to great lengths to maintain ease of use while securing users' data on their phones, hiding an incredibly complex system beneath a friendly interface. Because of the complexity of the underlying issues, there's been a high degree of misinformation spread through this story. Apple had already complied with the FBI in providing as much data as they had access to, but they are fighting the court order to develop new software to undermine the very security protocols they created to secure the iPhones of 100s of millions of users. This system is purposefully designed to protect one's data if their phone is lost or stolen, and there is no magic system that provides both security to lawful users AND convenient access to law enforcement. It's simply not possible.

There will always be a trade-off between data security and access to that data by other people and organizations and that's a policy question, not a technical one. I believe this case demonstrates more than ever the need for improved collaboration between technologists, scientists, lawyers, and legislators to develop greater understanding in order to create better policy. For this to succeed, we must reassess our training in all our fields to encourage greater openness to multidisciplinary collaboration. I also believe we’d benefit from having more representatives with a strong technical background: of the 435 members of the House of Representatives there are exactly 2 with PhDs in the sciences, and among 100 Senators there are precisely zero. We also need more technologists with the skills and temperament to engage in policy discussions (and perhaps we’re seeing more of that as the leaders of Microsoft, Google, and Facebook have made statements and filed legal briefs in support of Apple’s position). But whether it’s data security or food security, medical research or economic research, climate change or social change, or any of the hundreds of major issues facing our society, I believe we all benefit from having multidisciplinary experts come together to engage with issues, debate, and ultimately collaborate to develop sensible and well-informed policy.

Youngmoo Kim, Director