Science vs. National Security

capt.Hij writes "The NY Times has an article about how scientific journals are struggling with how to avoid publishing information that might help bio-terrorists. Once people start deciding that knowledge should be held by only a few then we are sanctioning ignorance. This is scary when it comes to democracy and decision making."

Comments

Legal system

[hackwrench]

We have a legal system that can't be understood by the average person, specializing is rampant, and he says that once people start deciding that knowledge should be held by only a few then we are sanctioning ignorance?
IT'S A LITTLE LATE FOR THAT!

Isn't that a little shrill?

[tm2b]

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of the principle of academic freedom and the free exchange of information. But.

The fact is that some information, maybe not now but in the forseeable future, will be dangerous enough for one fanatic or lunatic to kill a very large number of people.

We're going to have to have a long, reasoned conversation about how to deal with this fact, and cries of "we're sanctioning ignorance" are just as unhelpful as cries of "think of the children!"

This doesn't mean that I'm happy with the way this administration is likely to approach this issue - I think it would be very good for the academic community to come up with a unified approach on this topic before a purely political solution is imposed.

Bottom line: yes, I'd like people to be ignorant of how to (for instance) engineer aerosol Ebola in their basements.

Re:Isn't that a little shrill?

[McCart42]

Bottom line: yes, I'd like people to be ignorant of how to (for instance) engineer aerosol Ebola in their basements.

As nice a fantasy as this is, the reality is that I can already download The Anarchist's Cookbook to learn about conventional terrorist tactics. It's almost a certainty that biological terrorist tactics will similarly be available in the near future--and the dangerous-type people you're trying to keep it away from are the first people that will get past the ways you have of trying to keep them ignorant. You can't defeat the flow of information. Here's where the question lies--do you try, by keeping research with potential terrorist applications out of scientific journals? I'll let others debate that for now, since I don't have the answer, or a solid opinion for that matter.

Re:Isn't that a little shrill?

[eXtro]

I understand where you're coming from, but lets say we raise the bar on accessing the information. At what point is the bar high enough that an extremist says "Golly... it's just not worth it, I think I'll just head home"?

If you're thinking from the point of view of the average couch-potato anarchist who gets a stiffy from downloading factually incorrect information then it doesn't need to be very high. If you're an extremist, with an agenda, and part of that agenda involves murder then I don't think that you can raise the bar high enough to both protect us from threats and allow scientific research to carry on.

There's also the problem of the way scientific minds work, or at least good ones. You can withhold a piece of information, B, but from the other pieces of information A, C and D, an expert in the field can work out B.

Perhaps you could buy yourself time before an enemy knows B, but you won't prevent its eventual discovery. There are great minds outside of the U.S., and there are great minds in the U.S. that for various reasons might disclose the information regardless of prohibitions against it.

Re:Tecnology & terrorism

[AnalogBoy]

That depends on the way you look at it now, doesn't it.

Two possible views:

View A) Science allowed the investigation of lift, drag, jet propultion, fuel manufacture, and the building's design itself. This type of view would be the "new" view when it comes to censoring information. CAN this be used to harm us in the future. I don't agree with it.. you can kill someone with a hammer or a nailgun. My point? Pretty much anything can be dangerous in the right context. Stay Puft Marshmellow, anyone?

View B) The terrorists flew an airplane into a building. Terrorists bad, shoot on sight, yada, yada..

Re:as I've said on this site before

[protohiro1]

Our nation needs to read "how to win friends and influence people" It would make a major difference. We just suck at pr.

Open Source

[TamMan2000]

This is exactly like the open source software!

If the information is free and available, then anyone can read it and think about it and make a contribution. If it is not, the weekneses are known to a small subset of society who has less motivation to do something to solve the problem (think about treatments and cures), they also become more valueble to those who would do wrong, and could be kidnapped or bribed.

So what is safer, Windows, or *nix?

I think the answer is that we NEED to have this informaition published. Anything else endangers us, and inhibits the progress of knowledge.

or improved living conditions...

[SgtChaireBourne]

Yes, any with the knowledge the should have learned the first year of bio can make resistant bacteria or splice bacteria. It's not anything that any amount of surveilance, ignorance, indoctrination and fear is going to help with. All that does is make an unpleasant place to live full of ignorant dogmatic highstrung types without removing the actual risk. Perhaps it would even increase the risk.

Besides, it's lack of knowledge that causes the worst economic damage. Just look at the damage from fire ants, africanized bees, starlings, zebra mussels, elm beetles and so on. Or if you don't like those examples, then look at the TCO at the national and international level for chlorinated hydrocarbons, dioxins, and PCBs or for BSE-friendly agricultural practices. Someone was sloppy, ignorant or decided that rules are for other people and that plus time is all that was needed. Since you cannot remove the technical possibility to cause damage, you can remove the incentive.

Naively, improving living standards would help. If people are literate, capable of analytical thought, educated, employed, kept healthy, and well fed like an average Finn, then they're less likely to cause trouble and more likely to contribute. I think you can probably find an inverse correlation between quality of life and crime.