#RSAC: Realize the Harms and Benefits of Technology and Create Policies to Enable the Public

Speaking at the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) summit at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, Alex Stamos, adjunct professor at Stanford University's Freeman-Spogli Institute, said that issues and decisions made by technology companies have angered people.

Stamos, who previously served as CISO of both Facebook and Yahoo, said that once he stepped out of those roles and “out of constant emergencies” he could see the bigger picture.

He said that “tradeoffs from a policy perspective are poorly understood by the public and usually go back to the engineering adage of do you want it done correctly, cheaply, or quickly—pick 1 of 3.” Stamos said that this is a basic problem of society, as people say that they don’t want companies looking at their data, but to stop bad things happening you need to see bad things. “Politicians say companies have to find the bad guys, but you cannot have two things.”

Another issue Stamos highlighted is the balance that technology companies have for “solving societal ills,” as he pointed out that technology companies provide platforms while “every bad thing [that] happened [was] done by people.”

He said that companies have to “embrace transparency and make decisions in a transparent manner.” However, the line has to be drawn around bullying and harassment, as “nothing has changed since the last election.”

Stamos said that Google, realize harms benefits technology create policies enable public