Readings

The readings for Tuesday, October 25 are:

Outsourcing, H-1B Visas

1. America's Mixed Feelings About Immigrant Labor: Disney-Layoffs Edition

   • Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

   • Increasingly, U.S. IT workers are alleging discrimination

   • Silicon Valley's "Body Shop" Secret: Highly Educated Foreign Workers Treated Like Indentured Servants

2. The Frenzy About High-Tech Talent

   • The Myth of America's Tech-Talent Shortage

   • There Is In Fact A Tech-Talent Shortage And There Always Will Be

   • The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage: How Guest Workers Lower US Wages

3. Large Companies Game H-1B Visa Program, Costing the U.S. Jobs

   • Why It's Time to Reform the H-1B Visa Program

   • How Google, Facebook And Others Pay Their H-1B Employees

   • How To Fix Tech's H-1B Problem

4. Fury rises at Disney over use of foreign workers

   • Pink Slips at Disney. But First, Training Foreign Replacements.

   • Ex-Disney IT workers sue after being asked to train their own H-1B replacements

   • Trump gives displaced IT workers attention, and he's not alone

5. H-1B positions of Clinton and Trump

   • Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Are Universes Apart on Immigration

   • Clinton wants to 'staple' green cards on STEM grads' diplomas

   • The tech lobby should be really nervous about what Hillary Clinton just said

6. Understanding H-1B Requirements

   • H1B Visa Salary Database

Electronic Voting

1. The Computer Voting Revolution Is Already Crappy, Buggy, and Obsolete

   • The Security of Our Election Systems

   • America's Electronic Voting Machines Are Scarily Easy Targets

   • How to Hack an Election

2. Hacker demonstrates how voting machines can be compromised

   • How to Hack an Election in 7 Minutes

   • Snowden's Zachary Quinto Explains Voting Machine Hacking in 2 Minutes

3. No, the presidential election can't be hacked

   • Hacking trust: Fears of election-tampering shake faith in US democracy

   • Why electronic voting isn't secure - but may be safe enough

4. Senator wants nationwide, all-mail voting to counter election hacks

   • FBI says foreign hackers penetrated state election systems

   • Feds believe Russians hacked Florida election-systems vendor

   • One election-system vendor uses developers in Serbia

Questions

Please write a response to one of the following questions:

1. From the readings, what is the controversy surrounding the H-1B Visa program? What are the arguments for and against the expansion of the program? After examining the topic, where do you stand on the issues surrounding the program?

   • If you are in favor of expanding the use of H-1B Visa guest workers, explain why it is beneficial for the United States. How would you respond to concerns about lowering of wages or loss of jobs for US citizens?

   • If you are against the use of H-1B Visa guest workers, explain why it is is not necessary or potentially harmful to the United States. How would you respond to the idea that America is a nation of immigrants and that these guest workers are an effective means of tackling the problem of a tech talent shortage?

   • In either case, discuss whether or not you are concerned with competition due to foreign workers or possibly outsourcing. If you are non-US citizen, discuss how these issues impact you and your future plans as it relates to residency and employment in America.

2. From the readings, what are the concerns surrounding electronic voting? What are the arguments for and against the use of electronic voting? After examining the topic, where do you stand on trusting the outcome of the the upcoming election?

   • If you are willing to trust the outcome of the upcoming election, despite the use of electronic voting, how do you resolve or rationalize the security concerns above? Are these concerns overblown, or are there mechanisms that can be used to increase confidence in electronic voting?

   • If you are not willing to trust the outcome of the upcoming election due to the use of electronic voting, what do you propose as a substitute? How do you increase the efficiency and effectiveness of voting while maintaining integrity and accuracy?

   • In either case, discuss whether or not building an electronic voting system is really different from programming a typical CRUD application, mobile application, or photo sharing social media service. Are the security and integrity concerns that different? If so, how does that change the approach that needs to be taken in developing such systems.

   • Finally, discuss whether or not you can ever really trust an electronic system. Should we be relying on systems that are constantly under attack and constantly being exploited for such critical functions such as selecting our government representatives?

Feedback

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding the course, please provide your feedback at the end of your response.