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Ethics in Scientific Research
call -151 writes: "There is an interesting NYT article `When Science Inadvertently Aids an Enemy' discussing how some of the "encryption should be free for everyone" attitudes are changing with the WTC attacks. The article makes some interesting points and it is good to see discussions like these in more of the mainstream, even if the tone has definitely changed recently." Well, the questions are being asked again, but most of the researchers dealing with these issues have already answered the questions for themselves.
It's good that (some) people starting to use their heads when it comes to security, but restricting the use of an item because of what it "might" be used for is a little overboard. Eventually everyone will be in a facial recognition system, fingerprinted, dna sequenced, and blood typed in a huge federal database JUST IN CASE you ever do something wrong.
Where's the line?
There's nothing stopping a small group of interelated individuals from writing their own scrambling technique which could qualify as "encryption", and if laws were passed requiring "back doors" or what-have-you, then any old "Little Orphan Annie Decoder Wheel" that the Government couldn't figure out would instantly make sensitive information (and the people who deal in it) illegal/criminals.
I'll cite an theoretical example.
Video Game Company X has a neat little game gaining great popularity, but due to various reasons they encrypt certain game data with proprietary methods, not at all to keep the government out, but to keep cheaters from snooping the data and exploiting the game. For the sake of argument, they use a clever, light-weight encryption scheme that nobody seems to be able to figure out and for which no back-door-method can feasibly be devised. After all, this is a game, not a spy communications device.
Since we know that they're doing it for gaming, and not espionage, we can consider it mostly harmless. But the laws some people want to pass would probably prohibit this very thing. And for what? Supposed terroist threat? Get real.
I don't even know why I'm rambling about this consider almost everyone here is likely going to agree with me that the trivial uses of encryption should be inalienable in one's rights to privacy. But I'm just frightened that someone might do something (such as the above example) and suddenly find themselves locked away for life just because they wanted a secure entertainment platform.
Lock up the clowns?
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Is that our society is so ethically-challenged and bereft of common sense that we have to make any undesirable behavior illegal, and any desirable behavior mandatory. (Seatbelts and motorcycle helmets, for instance.)
To many people it makes sense to make anything potentially harmful illegal, because how else would we discourage it?
We've gotten so used to our morality being legislated that we feel we have to pass laws for everything. That's why the abortion issue is such a big deal, because people equate morality with legality. The same deal with sexual harassment laws. We shouldn't need laws to tell us that sexual harassment is wrong, but without the threat of legal penalties many people would still be pinching their secretary on the ass every time they walked in the room or worse.
So, basically, because someone somewhere might use encryption for evil, and because the average voter doesn't have a clue what it's for, they have no problem with it being made illegal to prevent (in their mind) possible abuses.
[NYT]...discussing how some of the "encryption should be free for everyone" attitudes are changing with the WTC attacks...
It doesn't matter what polls say, or how people's attitudes change; the fundamental issue is that crypto-backdoors, laws against strong crypto, etc. etc. are doomed to failure because they won't work.
This is not to say that such laws might not get passed, causing untold inconvenience to law-abiding citizens, chilling research, and compromising our national security by giving crackers a weak point to attack; all I'm saying is that such laws mathematically can't serve their purported purpose.
That is the message that needs to get out.
-- MarkusQ
Does the analogy extend to scientists? Do they have some responsibility to take part in social, political, etc. processes to ensure that the world they release their tools into is ready and capable of making ethical and moral use of them? If so, what are the minimum requirements and limits of this responsibility?
In the 40's, scientists in the United States, Germany, and Russia were all very rapidly untangling the secrets of nuclear fission, nominally for use in weapons.
Many of the scientists have since decried their own work, but the fact remains that this 'weapons' technology and the research that lead to it has given rise to a goodly proportion of the technology we use today in the modern world.
While saftey questions, many of which are unfounded, still abound, its apparent that fission energy will be the cheapest, safest, and and cleanest energy that mankind can harness until solar collectors are dramatically improved, or fusion energy passes 'breakeven' levels on a sustained basis.
Most of the computer technology we use ultimately arises from the work of men who's research also led to military uses and was used in the construction of atomic weapons.
The upcoming generation of quantum computing relies on theories that are even more closley tied to nuclear fission.
Most scientists don't think in terms of 'how can I create a better, more deadly weapon'. They think in terms of unlocking the secrets of the universe. These actions, just like any other actions, have positive and negative consequences.
You wouldn't know the good, if not for the bad.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Come to think of it, why's nobody talking about banning planes? They're tools that were used with at least as much of a bad intent as encryption was. Stick that in the face of the next security-over-freedom politician you meet.
Just an idea that just occured to me.
I got news for you. You can't live a completely safe life. There is always the chance that something or someone will kill you, no matter how bizarre the circumstances. So you propose to live your life paralyzed by fear, never making progress because progress could be dangerous. Talk about cowardice. And the US will not remain a technological leader for long with that attitude.
I put myself in situations where I could die (Arguably 10 times a week as I commute to and from work) because I refuse to live in fear. I enjoy hang gliding and hiking the short (2-3 mile) trails at the Rocky Mountain National Park even though doing so is putting my life at risk. Sure I could crash. Sure I could run into a bear or a mountain lion that would think I'd make a tasty and delicious snack. I see dozens of people each trip up to the park who never even think you could die up there. Every year a few idiots get gored by pissed off elk. Fucking Disneyland Mentality. People die in the amusement park. No place is completely safe. You will never make anyplace completely safe. You will eventually die, one way or another. Deal with it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This issue was already explored by the Internet community, and the cypherpunk manifesto From Crossbows to Cryptography explains the issue, though some of us find our collective selves on the other side of the coin from the cypherpunks this time.
The issue is power, which privacy confers because anonymity is impunity. Authorship being one of the critical facts concealed by any encrypted parcel. Technology originates in the powerful, in order to confer more power to them. However the technology itself is information which escapes by multiplying itself in unacquainted minds, eventually in those minds outside the power elite which devised the technology. The balance of power falls back to somewhere between the power elite and the subject people.
Now all of this exists independant of ethics. No doubt the power elite would like the subjects to restrain their use of the technology on a principle that does not bind the power elite. Ethics are weak (subjective and voluntary), but they are at least sometimes effective.
Where this leads us is to the question: should we develop new encryption technology? Should we implement Key Escrow? I urge you to think long and hard about the cold facts of how any of those possibilities can be abused. Experts agree that without strong cryptography (even for terrorists) democracy will fail. This is a new world and requires acute wisdom to set the direction we move next. Freedom of speech is not an option or a priviledge, it is a right whithout which people cannot guarantee governance by consent.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
Encryption is rather different than a gun in a few respects:
1) - the tools are software: duplication is easy. Guns are hardware and sophisticated knowledge is needed to make them.
2) - the algorithms are well known: you can make your own tools (without the backdoors). Building your own guns is a bit harder (though not impossible)
3) - there are open source tools (you don't even have to go through step 2 to obtain tools free from backdoors). Although the US occasionally hands out guns (e.g. stinger missiles to the afghan resistance a.k.a. taliban in the eighties), in general selling arms is profitable business.
Now about guns: you need a gun + an idiot to pull the trigger to kill people. Both prerequisites are available in large quantities in the US. In western europe, guns are a bit harder to get so we have less casualties as the result of guns (check the statistics if you like). Obviously, removing guns from society helps reduce the amount of people dying from guns. Doing so is a problem in the US however since billions of guns have been sold there in the recent centuries. So if you are in the US you are fucked, people around you are nuts and have easy access to guns. One day your nice neighbour or colleague may have a bad day and pull his guns on you (which he can buy legally and keep in his house).
Now lets turn to the real issue: why is the US pushing backdoors in encryption software: industrial espionage. Being able to tap in on information banks and businesses exchange throughout the world is very profitable business. A terrorist will just use illegal/free tools (probably on a illegal version of win XP or whatever). If there's one thing you can be sure of: terrorists don't like the US and they are not bloody likely to stimulate the US economy by actually paying for software produced in the US. What do you think? Bin Laden will actually log on to MSN and chat with his colleagues??? Come on!
The US government is using this situation to rearrange the world to make it a little bit more comfortable for the US leaders. Aguably the WTC tragedy was the best thing to happen to them in years. Some impopular anti-terrorist/anti-human rights laws can be pushed through. Suddenly they can be friends with Pakistan (a few weeks ago still referred to as a rogue state that we should be protected from by a missile shield). Everybody turns a blind eye while they whipe the Taliban of the earth and even Khatami is suddenly being friendly on behalf of Iran. In addition some former Soviet republics who happen to play an important role in producing and transporting oil are also the US' best friends.
It is touching to see all this friendship bloom. Unfortunately it is at the cost of millions of innocent Afghan civilians, already in big trouble because of the previous civil wars. What happened to New York was bad but the opportunistic way the US government is dealing with the situation is sickening.
Jilles
The one fault of this of course is that the atomic bomb always works. Drop it somewhere, and wham, you blow stuff up.
Virii and worms, and even encryption require mediums in which to work. They only work because the medium they are in allow such things.
Virii and worms should always be discussed openly as this is the best way to defeat them. Encryption should always be discussed because that is the best way to ensure the cryptosystem.
The nuclear bomb cannot be defeated by open information, only by human conscience.
In my opinion Martin Hellman is no more responsible for the WTC bombings than Rod Serling, who originated the idea of airline hijacking in his 1966 movie, "The Doomsday Flight."
For the rest of his life Serling regretted putting this concept into the public mind. But it was only a matter of time before somebody figured it out. At that time there were no metal detectors. Airports were like high-class bus stations. It wasn't Serling's fault that the security systems we have become accustomed to, as well as those we are going to start seeing now, are installed only after damage has been done rather than after the warnings have been sounded.
Like it or not, we have had the technology tiger by the tail for a long time. Cropdusting planes were grounded nationwide this weekend because of the possibility of biochemical attack. Why now? Cropdusting planes and biochemical weapons have both been around for ages. The possibility of putting them together didn't just pop into existence last week. It's one of many things that the authorities have long known could happen, probably will happen, but hasn't happened yet so no need to alarm people.
I'm sure quite a number of freedoms we have long enjoyed, simply because nobody has figured out how to wreak mayhem with them, will be going away soon. But don't blame it on Martin Hellman or Rod Serling, or the first proto-human who noticed that you could use a stick to hit stuff with. Blame it on the fact that some people are just assholes.
I keep hearing the tired argument of "it's not the tool, it's the user", and I felt compelled to respond to this oversimplification.
Unlike the computers with which we are so fond, real world issues are rarely, if ever, binary (good or evil).
Rather, decisions which could impede research and potentially remove a "tool" from normal users of society must be weighed carefully against the potential for such tools to be used for good or evil. Stated another way, will the benefit to society outweigh the detriments?
For example, heroin was discovered to be the most powerful painkiller of it's day, and was put to immediate use on battlefields. No one (at the time) would have argued against relieving wounded soldiers of the intense agony of on-the-spot amputations, etc. However, as we all know, the "soldiers disease" (addiction) soon far overshadowed the potential good, and it was subsequently removed from the market.
Now I'm not suggesting that using encryption software is addictive or robs the user of his ability to reason - But the attitude I keep seeing is "If the technology is available, we have a right to use it".
Does this mean that the general public should have access to the same levels of encryption as our government intelligence? What about satellite photos? I'm sure plenty of humanitarian uses could result from declassifying the highest resolution of our intelligence satellites.
Get off it - there is no "inalienable right" to endanger national security. Just because something is possible with technology does not give the public the right to make use of it.
Every day millions of people hand their NON-ENCRYPTED credit card information over to UNTRUSTED individuals (waiters, clerks, etc..) with nary a problem: Consumer laws exist to rectify the few problems that can arise.
Now the argument is "we need strong encryption for commerce". Yeah, and I need an AK-47 to hunt ducks...
It's unbelievable to me that so many people think more of their individual selves than of the right of our country to defend itself - it's more important to somehow secure your e-mail or credit information from some "mythical" enemy than to allow our country to eavesdrop on a hostile enemy that would love to see us all perish.
It's time for people to look outside themselves a little bit and consider the greater good, so such colossal screw-ups (releasing military grade encryption into the public domain) do not happen again.
Anyone notice that the mainstream media is doing plenty of coverage about the afwul hackers who post free encryption, but very little coverage about things like ethics and airline security? I can't remember the last time I saw anyone in the media write about the fact that there are hardly any checks on people who buy huge quantities of fertilizer that can be used in truck bombs.
While much of the media coverage of encryption lately has been somewhat insightful, it seems that most of it is more reactionary crap. The media is afraid to demonize airlines for horribly mismanaging their entire industry to the point that they cut corners, often illegally on airline security. Maybe it has something to do with the massive amounts of advertising airlines pay for every year, especially right now when they are advertising dirt cheap fares to try and woo back scared travelers.
It just goes to show the biggest downside of massive media corporations; instead of being accountable to the masses, they are accountable to the advertisers.
I will close with a quote, source unknown:
"The media is only as liberal as the companies that own it."
We funded Bin Laden, we trained him, and when the chickens come home to roost, we figure outlawing numbers, or even worse, intentionally putting a way into your crypto will make it all better.
Write your Congressperson / Senator with strong words about strong crypo, and all the other attacks on our civil liberties that are in the works right now.
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
the problem people are having with technology is the SCALE on which it impacts lives.
1) rocks. way back, rocks were used to build houses, they were formed into tools, etc. they were also thrown at people to hurt/kill them. hell, there are still public stonings today in some countries. point is, that ONE rock prolly won't kill even one man... you either gotta get a BIG rock to crush said person's head, or throw a LOT of smaller rocks at the victim to kill them. death ratio: 1 BIG rock kills 1 guy, not often.
2) knives & sharp stuff. used for cutting food with or making tools with, it was found that in close combat, something sharp would kill a person a lot better than a rock would. the technology of the rock aided the technology of the "sharp thing", for things like hewing metal and extracting metal from rock for hewing. death ratio: 1 sharp thing kills several people, quicker than rocks but at close peril.
3) guns. guns were made to fight wars with, kill animals with, and protect people in their houses. however, a gun tends to be more lethal than a rock - you can pack a couple clips on yourself and run around & kill a LOT of people real fast really easily. death ratio: 1 gun kills about 100 people pretty easily over a couple of days or hours - more depending on density of people.
4) nuclear power. going back to basics, it was discovered that CERTAIN rocks in certain shapes and sizes would make a HUMUNGUOUS bang if you threw something REALLY small at it REALLY fast. good for moving earth and powering cities/submarines/carriers, it was also good at killing like, a lot of people really fast. death ratio: 1 nuke = about a million lives (given population density) in less than a second.
excepting the fact that those technologies listed above become more & more overtly destructive in nature, it can't be forgotten that they often have uses for upholding good things when they're in the right hands, and VERY LARGE-SCALE BAD THINGS in the wrong hands. what must be remembered, too, is that those tools can also be used as either tools for spreading good OR evil.
encryption is a tool, based on the same fundamental math & science that was used to discover metal forging, casting & combustion, and nuclear power (knives, guns, and nukes).
encryption in the wrong hands means that bad guys we want to keep in check from spreading evil can instead make their forms of evil THRIVE, and makes it easier to spread evil intent around. using technology, people with bad intentions can UP THE SCALE of sadness and death that other people may/will experience in the future.
and that's what's got people perplexed.
personally, i'd very much like to see what role encryption played in the events leading up to the attack (though if it didn't, that doesn't make it any less of a threat to folks in the future - especially when we get photonic encryption, which by definition *IS* uncrackable by the very act of interception, let alone decryption).
sure, it's a tool. and yeah, it probably shouldn't be legislated - it's already kinda late for that, and legislation really only works on people that follow the rules, which doesn't apply to criminals/terrorists.
but it doesn't mean that you should bias yourself to one side or the other - there is a propensity for good or evil in everything, yes, but there is also a scale that must be considered, the scale that shows the propensity for good against the propensity for evil.
and that's about the most sure understanding anyone will ever have of the depth of the situation.
That doesn't mean that the pursuit or release of knowledge should be restricted in any way.
As a scientist I am more concerned with what other scientists are *doing* that with what they are *developing*. Our colleagues who developed the techniques to clone DNA into plant cells (a number of whom I know personally) did nothing wrong, and should not have delayed publication because of the "ethical" consideration of what someone else could do with it. The people who are genetically altering corn to make it increasingly resistant to chlorinated organics (roundup) are *doing* something unethical; and they are the ones, largely highly intelligent people, whom we need to reach and educate. Some of the things I'm attempting to do could have direct, terrible applications in germ warfare - but they could also be a great boon to medical research. The resolution of that dillemma is clear: we cannot call a halt to scientific progress because of fear.
Other scientists, and some people may draw an increasingly meaningless distinction and call them engineers, are actually applying these developments to do things that shouldn't be done. Biopreparat doesn't exist anymore, but I'm sure biological weapons research continues. The people who nerve gassed the Tokyo subway where highly educated. These people are doing more damage with their own scientific expertise than laymen ever can, or will, with something you release.
Ethics requirements at graduate schools should be specific, factual and tailored to the particular focus of the student. Individuals who want to go into plant genetics should take courses in the political economics of third world agriculture - the same ones that pol sci students take. Courses in "ethics" are substanceless exercises in sophistry (say that 10 times fast) that don't teach the consequences of the particular actions a student might actually take.
While relatively uneducated terrorists can make certain uses of publically released technologies like culturing eukaryotic cells or near unbreakable encryption, the *real* danger, and it is a real danger, is when the scientists ourselves are actually setting out to do harm; or applying these technologies in ignorance for our own economic gain.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Outlawing encryption is not going to stop people from using it for some malicious purpose. Outlawing guns is not going to stop armed robbery. Outlawing nuclear technology is not going to stop the bomb.
It really doesn't matter what you create/invent/discover scientifically or technologically, people will find a way to use it to kill people. And the governments of the world are the biggest example of this. One of the first applications of a new technology is how can it be applied to the military. I mean, what was one of the first uses of nuclear technology?
What is the question here? Should we not perform any scientific research? Should we not improve our technology? Or, if we do, should we just not share it with anyone? (Including ourselves, there are of course spies and criminals among us.) If that's the case, how could anyone benefit from it?
To not strive forward with technology because evil-doers might use it is absurd! Even though technology is used by a select few to harm others, the benefits far outweigh the unfortunate "evil that men do."
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!