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Science Editors Urge Nondisclosure Of Bioterror Info
Jeraph Mason writes "According to this story on ABC news, science editors want to censor their publications because terrorists may use them. It's the same argument used to prevent security disclosures from being published." There's also coverage on the BBC and at The Washington Post.
Make sure that the responsible science journals handle the floow of information to the public in an orderly manner you know.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
My life/health is way more important than free speech, sorry for the bitter truth folks.
I feel really secure knowing that security by obfuscation and overblown terrorism fears, my two favorite things in all the world, are finally together.
That's what I do with information I don't want anybody else to see.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
How many average Joe's knew what a nuclear dirty bomb was 2 years ago? How many terrorists knew? The terrorists have had access to far more dangerous information (i.e. CIA handbooks from the 1980s), and have decided to get educated enough to be able to come up with their own scientifically-sound methods of mass destruction. There are terrorists out there that I'm sure could *write* for these science journals. All this policy does is create ignorant bliss among the masses as to the possible terrorist risks that exist.
"According to this story on ABC new"
Can't we just get through one summary without some sort of screw up? Just one?
It's the same argument used to prevent security disclosures from being published.
It's a little different, though. It's much harder to issue a security patch for the human body.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
My other Beowulf cluster is... er...
Journals that publish sensitive information, say how to create copies of the Ebola virus with equipment found in any college biology lab, could restrict distribution to legitimate researchers at trustworthy companies and instititions.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Nice try, but I'm talking about my physical life , not liberty.
Canned air provided by the Homeland Protectors (TM) just like in Spaceballs when you see President Skroob sniffing fresh air from a can.
Because after all, the air we breathe may have been POISONED some how!
Got your duct tape and security blankets purchased? It's time to huddle in a corner together, suck our thumbs, and rock ourselves into an ignorant sleep.
Ave Maria.
I fail to see how this is the "same" as security disclosures. When a software bug or security hole is released publicly, users and corporations have the option to either update or turn off the compromised products, and increases pressure on the proprietor of the offending product to fix it in due haste. The argument against censoring security disclosures is that you prevent people from doing things to protect themselves they could have done had they known of the problem.
OTOH, when scientifc research is published that allows chemical or biological weapons to be produced, there isn't anything joe consumer can do to protect himself because he saw the publication.
Believe me, I am an aspiring Ph.D. student and very anti-science censorship...but comparing it to software security censorship is like apples and oranges.
There was an analysis written regarding the phrase "Life, Liberty and Persuit of Happiness" and it essential boiled down to this. Those words were chosen very specificaly and placed in the order that they were specificaly. That the order is indicative to the order which they must be considered:
Right to Life: This must be preserved at all costs, your life and the lives of those arround you are of upmost importance. All else pales in comparison, for without Life, all other rights are useless.
Right to Liberty: Your life havign been secured, your next thought should be liberty. All the freedoms greanted by the constitution etc. For it is impossible to persue the last god given right without Liberty.
Right to the Persuit of Happiness: Now you are truely free to try to make yourself happy, but only in so far as you do not infringe on the first 2 rights. In otherwords, if somethign done to ensure life and liberty does not make you happy, that's too bad.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
and the argument that rages around security vulnerabilities.
From the article:
"Open publication brings benefits not only to public health but also in efforts to combat terrorism," the statement said.
Tweak it a bit and we have
Open publication of vulnerabilities brings benefits not only to the security of public networks but also in efforts to combat malicious intrusions.
Sound familiar?
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
used to be that was considered a part of a democracy. and i am sure most researchers consider an easy exchange of information important to furthering their endeavors. if a lot of scientific research could have military applications, are they going to start limiting even more information?
not to mention there are still other sources for weapons information...
"To stop the terrorists."
Obviously the wrong direction. Such deciscions are political in nature and really shouldn't be made by scientists. Let alone the simple fact that there is no way of knowing in advance what could and could not be useful to terrorists in the future (boxcutters anyone?). The editors supposedly think that scientist need to be accountable for the spread of whatever information they have which we all know is a dangerous, slippery slope.
you need a good one
The article says:
"Self-governance," the editors say, is "an alternative to government review of forthcoming journal articles."
The joint statement was released at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting and scheduled for publication in key journals next week.
It resulted from a workshop sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences and the Centre for Security and International Studies (CSIS) earlier this year, at the urging of the American Society of Microbiology.
It was presented at the AAAS annual meeting by the president of the American Society of Microbiology, Ronald Atlas.
"Open publication brings benefits not only to public health but also in efforts to combat terrorism," the statement said.
"Without independent verification of research results, we can neither advance biomedical research nor provide the knowledge base for building strong biodefence systems."
Science magazine editor Donald Kennedy hopes scientists and security experts can work on the problem together.
"The two cultures now must come together for the greater good," he said.
Honestly, what does this mean for the future of scientific research in these areas? The article describes this as the end of an "Age of Innocence" for science. The whole point of scientific research is that it advances upon previous discoveries. If these discoveries are obfuscated, who can say how this will impact research and future scientify study? They acknowledge that this would be a problem, but don't tell us what the actual impact will be.
:P
Did the scientists study the effects of this move themselves?
I doubt that this will help at all.
It occurs to me, considering that the uncensored version of these journals will go through tens of thousands of people in the scientific community, that if there were any information the forces of evil wanted from the journals, there will still be plenty of opourtunity to obtain it. Censoring can't stop a janitor on the inside, a careless scientist, or a motivated hacker. If just one copy escapes, then everyone who's interested can have at it.
Folks, these are your rights. And they're being taken from you one at a time.
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
Speaking of canned air, you ever see those cans of presurized air for cleaning keyboards and stuff, theres the typical warning on the back, "deliberate concentration and inhalation of contents may cause illness or even death", its air for christsake!
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
It should really be up to the scientists whether or not to censor their findings. They truely understand the implications of their findings more than anyone else, and if someone else (editors) do it, we could be faced with a sort of USSR situation stagmenting scientific research. I don't want to die, but I don't want to live in a world without freedom.
Yet another signature that refers to itself. The irony and humor is dead.
Open source paranoia runs rampant!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
btw before I get flamed, I want to reiterate strongly, I am _against_ any censoring of scientific research of any kind, I just don't think the security comparison holds any water, there are a lot of better reasons not to censor research.
Terrorists aren't stupid, they can fuck shit up. Just many of them chose not to... You start killing their families to make your daddy happy, and they'll get pissed.
God spoke to me
According to the article, it's the editors of the science journals that wat to censor their content. Not the government or some other organization wanting to censor it for them.
This isn't as big an issue as it sounds. People censor themselves all the time: it's called being polite ("Don't have anything nice to say? Then don't say anything at all." Yeah, right).
It's not MS saying they want to censor 2600 from ppublishing content that might expose vulnrabilities in their software.
It's not the government saying they want to censor Slashdot because most people here think Bush is a confused muppet.
Let them censor themselves. They might just do it so much that they don't have any readers left.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
Right on. We're creating more and more "sheeple" by hiding the truth from people. This will allow our government to run without any public scrutiny, in the interest of "Fighting Terror at HOME! (TM)"
"If there's hope, it lies in the proles..."
Rand McNalley should censor their maps of cities, omitting key terrorist targets.
This is retarded. The real danger, as I see it, is in keeping science secret, and not just due to concerns for public health (a very valid point). Allowing government policy to steer the direction of popular science is one of the greatest threats to our freedom.
Similar "arguments" to this one are made over encryption systems, because they might be used by criminals and terrorists to hide what they're doing. The "logic" bleeds into countless other debates as well, and the end conclusion always involves the government getting more control over what you can say and how you can say it.
Now, they look to seriously hinder all biological research. Who's going to spend years and grant money working on projects when they won't even get published? And for how long will this censorship go on? A couple years? That's probably enough to seriously diminish the number of fresh students entering the field. Let it go on longer, and in another 10 years we might not have any doctors.
Science is interdependent. You can't cut off your star running back's leg and expect him to keep scoring touchdowns for you. It just doesn't work.
Is hard to tell when something could be used for good or bad. Not publishing something maybe avoid that it could be used for bad, but also that it could be used for good.
With this kind of criteria, we would never know about atomic energy, space exploration, worldwide communications, modern medicine and almost everything that makes our current way of life.
Worst than this, if you don't publish, i.e. about a kind of disease, poison, etc, not ensures that "the bad guys" (whatever they are) will not discover it, and will put obstacles to the good guys that want to find a cure/solution/etc.
The terrorists are getting what they were after -- we are living in fear and are turning the USA into a police state, faster than any of us could have imagined.
double-plus-ungood.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Editors of top science magazines have voiced concern terrorists could use studies they publish to help make chemical or biological weapons.
Because of this fear a statement has been signed by editors of leading science publications urging cautious self-censorship.
In otherwords they're asking people to carefuly consider what they put up for publication in a public sience journal. There is nothing about stoping flow of information between researchers or auto censor. It's all about SELF censor.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
But then [insert any US mil org here] will not recieve those new cool bio-warfare agents they paid for...
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
Note: This post has been deleted to prevent exploitation by terrorists reading Slashdot.
getSexySig();
I think self-censorship is one of the best ideas a scientist can have. Some scientists have realized from the past that there are some things the world is better off not knowing. There are also scientists who feel that they shouldn't research certain areas for fear of the horrors it creates. One prime example is the scientists working on the Manhattan Project, and after seeing its tremendous destructive force wished they had never participated, or had grave concerns over what they did. Believe it or not you have some moral responsibility for helping someone else kill other people. Now of course there are vastly different degrees of this, but it exists. If you're a scientist who is working in sensitive areas, I don't see anything wrong with trying to keep the information you're dealing with out of the wrong hands. Some people just don't need easy access to this material. If I worked for the government and knew flaws in our security system that would allow others to gain access to nuclear materials, I wouldn't go right out and post it to the world. That would be stupid. Sure, I'd do what I can to get things changed, but giving away secrets to the enemy is rarely the same. Philip
I don't even know where to start..
Maybe it's the fact that terrorists don't read scientific journals.
Why not? Because scientific journals present new research, and you don't need
new knowledge to produce biological and chemical weapons.
Sarin gas was first manufactured in 1938. Mustard gas long before that.
Almost anyone who has studied a fair amount of organic chemistry can make this stuff.
It's all common knowledge.
As for bioweapons.. the same thing goes. Making penicillin-resistant E. Coli takes undergraduate biotech skills.
(at least at my uni.)
Want to make botulism toxin, one of the most toxic substances known?
Leave a bottle of garlic in oil on top of your refrigerator for a few weeks.
Or maybe we should just ban education?
And books and libraries. Knowledge is dangerous, kids.
While this restriction may stop someone who was not otherwise planning an attack from getting an idea, it will IN NO WAY remove potentially harmful information from terrorists. All it takes is common sense and an internet connection to find step by step bomb building instructions. Personnaly I think the US could use an ANTI-Bullshit dept.
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
and who decides which other people are "trustworthy enough" to posess knowledge? Doing this would make things even worse, taking science and biotech out of the hands of unapproved individuals (so even though you could easily die of ebola knowledge of it becomes forbidden?) completely would make the modern military-industrial complex even more invulnerable to its subjects
My life/health is way more important than free speech, sorry for the bitter truth folks.
The only life/health that this will protect is the life of publication companies who can point to an open publication system as being "insecure".
If a terrorist _really_ wants the information this isn't going to stop them. Not by a longshot. This is simply yet another barrier to free speech and a step closer to a police state.
I'm sickened by the so-called "tradeoff" between freedom and security. Thus far _none_ of the restricted freedoms would have stopped 9-11. Although these restricted freedoms will serve to limit public speech on public issues. In effect, increasing the feisability of an internal government-level coup.
What's next? Not publishing vulnerabilities in a nearby power plants since a terrorist may exploit them? Excuse me, what about the local populus need to know about the problem? If Software Bugs are anything to know about, an unplublished bug is rarely fixed. Reality is that it always takes public outcry for people to fix their security. How is this going to magically change?
This has got to stop.
Information must not be restricted.
The only thing that comes from a society where information is restricted to 'special' people is a socialist society..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Give me liberty or give me death."
If you aren't willing to fight for it, you don't deserve it. A basic scientific axiom is "there ain't no free lunch." Their ain't no "free" either if you are too scared to fight for it.
Nobody ever considers that maybe they don't know everything. Nobody stops and realizes that they don't fully understand the material that the writers want to censor (in this case). In fact, I'm not yet convinced that most /. posters aren't just rudimentary AI routines. Responses to posts containing the word "censor" are typically replied to with "CENSORSHIP, BAAAD!", and the withholding of a couple of science articles will, of course, drag all scientific progress to a total screeching halt.
This could be not so much the end of an age for science but for civilisation as well. Since the enlightenment one of the driving forces has been that knowledge enhances society - now people (including /.ers) are saying that knowledge should be controlled.
The problem with knowledge, and especially scientific knowledge, is that you never know what could be used for or against you. Take as an example nuclear astrophysics - whilst this pertains to unravel the mysteries of the universe the science is very close to that of isotope production which is important for amongst other things, nuclear weapons. Should we censor research because a paper on the r process in supernovae could lead to more efficient plutonium production?
The simple truth is that there are far better ways of inflicting "terror" on western civilisation than by using modern science. Just look at what a bit of initiative, belief in a deity and some fully fueled aircraft can do.
You cannot control knowledge like some politicians would have you believe and any attempts to do so will create a far more divided world than we have now. The only left hope is that knowledge begets understanding and understanding begets peace.
And we all know just how much benefit social political correctness has been to us, don't we?
..to disclose problems, for fear terrorists might use them against innocent networks.
"So, what was wrong with my computer, Joe?"
"Ah, umm.. Wull, your LCD screen was out of Liquid Crystal, I just refilled it for you. You're good to go."
Gee, I hope mechanics, architects and engineers stop owning up to mistakes/bad ideas, too. I feel safer already.
Do you know where the word comes from? It roughly translates into the English phrase "Throw a monkey wrench into the works," only in this case the "wrench" is a sabot, or wooden shoe.
You take your shoe off, throw it into the machine and, Presto! Instant terrorism.
Nothing more than simple, everyday objects are required to be a very effective terrorist.
Remember the first attempt to bring down the World Trade Center? ( If you were shocked and stunned by 9/11 you weren't paying attention. They had already tried it and *told* us they would try again). It took one guy, a van and some high school chemistry. That's all.
The second ( and sucessful) attempt wasn't much more complicated really. It required a few people who could fly the planes rather than one who could drive a car, but other than that the plan was *less* technologically advanced than the first attempt, requiring some Stanley knives and some purely *human* engineering.
The natural reaction was to make it illegal for little old ladies to knit on long flights.
The fact that your own grandmother is now in danger of being arrested as a terrorist because she tried to sneak a plastic crochet hook onto an airplane hidden in her sock is just one of the indications that we may not be reacting to the whole situation in an exactly rational manner.
Ok, so science editors are in favor of restricting information usable to terrorists. I suppose it's a noble motivation, but to what real end? All they need is a shoe, or a wrench.
Shall we also leave out key bits of intro to chemistry or physics texts? Isn't basic knowledge of exothermic chemical reactions and the fact that F=ma of more real use to a terrorist that just about anything else?
Or that if you stab someone with a knife they fall down?
Do we really think that restricting knowledge of how to produce ebola virus is relevant when the e. coli bacterium is cheaper, easier and just as effective to use, and knowledge of it is already common? Or the influenza virus?
Anyone with access to a Walmart can already do just about as much terrorist damage as they could want.
That includes you.
KFG
This might be smart in a big picture sort of way, but practically it's dumb as fuck.
1) Most terrorist organizations share many features with (or are in fact) cults. The sort of individual who joins one of these terrorist organizations does not usually have the 'scientific mindset,' shall we say. Whenever you do wind up with terrorists smart enough to actually read the scientific literature, they are smart enough to hurt you no matter what you censor. The basic knowledge is already out there, and has been out there for years. Our greatest defense at the moment is our enemies' stupidity.
2) When you begin to censor journals, you quickly run into nagging questions like: "What exactly should I censor?" Practically, knowledge can't be pidgeon-holed into category A dangerous, category B harmless so easily. And even if it could, buearecratic organizations designed make that judgement always overstep their design goals through simple inertia. And what happens when you run into knowledge that is both dangerous in the wrong hands and helpful in the right hands?
3) Restricting science is fundamentally impractical. Any knowledge powerful enough to have great beneficial consequences is also powerful enough to present great dangers. Restricting what can be published in certain areas winds up being the same as restricting research. You make yourselves into Luddites, and it won't even work without a one-world dictatorship that can restrict research everywhere rather than in one place. And once you've gone that far, you have bigger things to worry about than terrorism.
The official AAAS release, including a list of signatories, is here.
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
All well and good for the editors, who get their money regardless, but not so for researchers. It's "Publish of Perish" in the world of research. If an associate professor wants to keep their job or get promoted to full Professor, they'd better get published, and often. Yeah, the guy who just spent the last year working on a paper is going to hold it back due to some ridiculous fears. Riiiight. People working on grants, etc. will just have to avoid eating for a year to make ends meet. Yeah, that's the ticket. In the end the editors would lose their jobs, too. Great. Let's hear it for science!
GL
science editors want to censor their publications because terrorists may use them.
Headlines: Terrorists find stash of 60's Scientific America's, LSD in NY water supply causing mass love-in.
Do you need a website upgrade?
Perhaps most terrifying of all these is Nerve Gas.. the Nazis discovered the base of all nerve toxins (IIRC, I'm an engineer, not a biochemist, Jim) in the 40's - Vx. That was over 60 years ago boys and girls, and science has come a long way since then. The world is a very scarey place now. Playing dumb and sticking our collective heads in the sand isn't the way to go. A dumb populace might be easy to control - but who's going to be in control? I think I read a story about that once. Something about a time machine?
Hiding science does nobody any good, and prevents people from having access to information. Those people who you are preventing from having access might be the people who have the insight to develop a new treatment, cure, or neuralizing agent for these evil compounds.
Last time I checked, all our engineering and universities were still open. Are we now going to ban biochemistry? Or maybe electrical engineering, becuase you might learn how to make a precision timer for a nuclear bomb? Or hell, ban mechanical engineering - you learn how to manufacture equipment to insane tolerances. The only people who might want to do that are TERRORISTS!
Yeah, I'm laying it on pretty thick up there, but this self-censorship crap smacks back to the 50's, and I don't like where it's going. How effective has the DEA been against people learning how to make amphetamines and other drugs in their backyards? Or when compounds are effectively removed from the public, discovering alternative, exotic synthesises? Not very.
Security through obscurity -NEVER- works. The only defense is to be well prepared, and in that case, that means educated.
..don't panic
If they think it's so bad, why don't they recommend not doing the research? Do they really think it matters where in the world a bio-plague is released? If it's released anywhere, it will get here with the speed of tourism.
... not that that would be their goal.
Or do they think that current governments should be able to increase their global overkill without limit? In a way, this is almost sensible. Once nuclear weapons reached more than twice overkill, I stopped worrying that the amount of overkill was increasing. But adding new varieties of overkill is still a bad idea. Some people who wouldn't blow up the world would be quite willing to kill off all of the people with a plague
On the other hand, it's hard to tell when the really new and creative forms of mega-distruction will arrive, or from what field. The grey goo threat of nanotech may (probably) be a bit distant, but this doesn't mean that some simpler relative isn't a lot closer, but that it just that nobody has thought of it yet.
Besides, on any reasonable scale, the main terrorists in the world today are the official governments. This may not always be true, but it's been true for at least the last couple of centuries.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This was the subject of this week's CBC radio program (available in .ogg) Quirks and Quarks : Bisecting Bioterrorism (ogg).
Is concerning to see the multitude of anti-Freedom directives produced in these last few years ...
mx
or how to increase the "relevance" of your journal in one easy step - parental advisors stickers next?
No, it's NOT the same! People can patch their software systems, but they can't patch basic biology and chemistry.
The argument for publishing COMPUTER security holes is that it enourages people to develop and apply patches to eliminate the vulnerabilities and make tme irrelevant. There is no way that publishing say, how to make anthrax, will get people to "patch" their bodies to be immune to it!
When it comes to biological weapons, I have to agree with the government. I prefer not to have every home-grown (not foreign) terrorist with an itnernet connection creating biological weapons in their basement because they are upset at the government. If I recall, McVeigh and company used instructions they found with little research to kill 169 people in OK. One guy, pissed off for one reason or another, can wipe out an entire city with a tiny amount of biological weapons. This is not about open source, this is about public safety.
have a right to pur your life in jeopardy, even to go so far as the virtual certainty of losing it, in order to attempt the preservation of your liberty.
If you enslave me and guaruntee my life I will escape or die.
I rather think the Mr. Jefferson fully understood, and supported, this attitude as he penned those famous words.
So, I have life, and am fighting for liberty, even though it may kill me.
Is that so hard to understand?
KFG
Now that they know the secret of our duct tape and plastic sheeting, it's game over. The American infidels shall fall like dominos.
The article describes this as the end of an "Age of Innocence" for science.
Funny, I used to hear that about when they invented the atomic bomb. I see part of the problem though. Enriched uranium is rare as hell, and not easily produced. Bio-weapons and chemical weapons are much easier in that sense, because there's lots of potentially dangerous biological and chemical agents around. Don't think it'll stop anyone determined enough though, I know _how_ to make an atomic bomb myself.
That is, if you can provide the U-238, machinery, materials for fuse, high-powered explosives, simulation computer and all the other stuff I need, I can do it. That's why people worry when North Korea break the seals on their nuclear containers. There's no doubt in my mind that they'll succeed, given the right raw materials.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Clearly you haven't read 1984.
the answer to that is relative, not a constant.
It is relative to how much I can count on the terms of the Bill of Rights to protect me.
Therefore, the *first* thing I do to protect my life is protect the social contract that guaruntees my liberty.
And yes, people have been killed for doing nothing more than this.
KFG
Absolutely incorrect.
Every source I have read (CNN, major newspapers) or seen (CNN again, CBC Newsworld, Discovery/TLC and PBS) has stated that the total collapse of the towers was not expected by anyone, not the designers or even Osama Bin Laden - he thought there would be mass casualties but never thought the buildings would fall (remember that little "smoking gun" video of him at the dinner party that was broadcast non-stop about a year ago?).
There is no evidence that any of the 9/11 attackers ever studied the plans of the towers. They followed the logic that if the towers were built to withstand the impact of a 727 (as was "common knowledge" as a strength and not a known weakness), then a 767 loaded with fuel should probably cause lots of damage.
Simple as that.
9/11 actually revealled a previously unknown weakness in the design. Without public access to the plans etc, experts and documentarians may not have found out why the towers fell, and engineers may be planning buildings with the same techniques today.
So much for security through obscurity...
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
How long before security-patches for american software aren't allowed to be exported outside the US? =)
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
We can't afford to be so given by Fear that we stop living, stop growing, stop sharing and learning from one another. Yes, knowledge can be used for bad purposes as well as good. Exactly what is the news in that? Does that mean we are to stop learning and sharing what we learn?
Being seen as anti-terrorist has become trendy and an easy set of brownie points in some circles. We need to end that. We need to point out that there are things worse than terrorism. Things like grabbing meaningless points that in effect do nothing but make life harder and poorer. We can lose both freedom and ability to grow into our dreams by being so given by fear and in reaction. We can increase the terrorism in the world by acting in reaction.
I don't fear terrorism. I fear our own fear and stupidity ripping us and this world apart.
Terrorists ordering chemicals or trying to pump science peope for hwo to do specific reaction to specific conditions can be tracked..
..how do you think colleges track down drug labs on campus?
..he or she is automatically caught..thus no drug labs on college cmapus. Now imagine if students were censored form choosing to attend chemistry classes..you woudl end up with no attmept at catching people becasue the data is hidden from a potential criminal/terrorist..
By censoring said information we take away our ability to find the terrorists in the first place!
Consider a samll example
Give up?
Students are freely allowed to sign for chemistry classes..when the dumb druggie attmepts to steal the lab ware form class
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Here's how it works:
After a calm period of self censorship (they all seem like happy campers to me), someone decides to break the silence for whatever reason. Then the powers that be, step in, saying they need to enforce this, because there might be other "rogue" scientists who will do the same. The official censorship gets passed off as just a way of helping the scientific community maintain its standards.
This sounds bad to me.
Congratulations! Now we are the Evil Empire
Do we limit access to information that might be useful to terorists in the name of security, or do we make it freely available in the name of intellectual freedom.
There are extremists on both sides of this topic. Extremists suck though.
The answer lies in the middle, but nobody wants to discuss that. They just want to criticise the other extremists.
"Self-governance," the editors say, is "an alternative to government review of forthcoming journal articles."
Where do you get the 'voluntary' from this?
No, while the first organophosphate nerve agents were developed by the Germans in the years prior to WWII, including tabun, soman, and sarin, the most deadly (lowest LD50) nerve agent known, VX (o-ethyl methyl phosphonothiolate), was discovered by British scientists in the 1950s. The story I have heard is that the British then traded the process of VX synthesis to the Americans- for the details of building thermonuclear weapons.
All the nerve agents in this general class are rather nasty- tabun and soman were used by Iraq in their 1980-88 war against Iran, which the US cast a blind eye to (at the very least), and then they used them to kill Kurd and Shiite dissidents in Iraq itself afterward. Then in the mid-90s, the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo released sarin in several attacks, including in the Tokyo subway system in 1995, killing 12 and injuring 5000. If they had used a more sophisticated delivery system (they used sharpened umbrella tips to puncture bags of liquid sarin), it is likely the death toll would have been far larger.
A nerve agent attack on any populated area could be extraordinarily deadly, and would certainly carry the additional weight of psychological terror- the fear that the air you breathe is contaminated with an invisible killer. And VX in particular is extremely long-lived in most environments (by design) Contact with residue could lead to injuries and deaths long after the initial attack. However, the syntheses involved in making organophosphate nerve agents are nontrivial. They make relatively unlikely terrorist agents simply because there are so many easier ways to kill and terrorize people- mustard, chlorine, phosgene, as well as biological agents like anthrax, botulin toxin, or a hemorrhagic fever virus. The feds seem so concerned about smallpox, for whatever reason, when the nations that have had Ebola outbreaks (Congo, Cote D'Ivoire, and Sudan) are in so much political chaos that setting up a lab and collecting and amplifying virus appears quite possible (whereas the only known smallpox stocks in the world are being kept in cold storage in Russia and the US).
I don't believe that much of this sort of information should be kept secret. I realize I know quite a bit about bioterror for a private citizen- but I'm not planning on becoming a terrorist- quite the opposite. I didn't obtain any knowledge from breaking into a top secret lab or kidnapping a scientist or cracking into a database anyway. As with many things, knowing how to defeat a threat involves understanding the threat (compare to computer security). Terrorists already know how to kill people- the information published in scientific journals is what's going to stop them. Secret government labs are of course going to be a large part of our nation's defense, as they have been for decades. However, the free exchange of information among labs holds the promise that discoveries could be made much more quickly.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
My liberty and your life are *always* in some form of conflict and the more liberty the both of us have the more both of our lives are at risk.
Yes, this is part of the price of liberty, and *exactly* what Franklin was talking about.
KFG
This person(ette) appears recently, starts posting a dozen times a day, and begs for fans? What gives? Every time I see him/her, another twenty people have signerd themselves up. What's the craic?
[FUCK BETA]
[-site:fas.org "chemical weapons"]
*sigh
My
Limekiller
...Only criminals will have information.
What a bunch of bullshit. I can't believe that rational people (such as scientists, etc.) would suggest such a thing. Those times when information is kept secret are when a population is most at-risk, because the masses cannot then defend themselves against what any ambitious terrorist is bound to develop independently, should said terrorist be evil enough.
Sheesh. Next they'll be requiring all firearms eliminated from movies and television, because people might get the idea that guns can be harmful, when used properly.
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
call 1-800-816-8759 and buy his Cal-Max which is a Scientology product based on Cal-mag.
drpinkus.com
Pinkus gave 100,000 to IAS
holy smoke
Another Scientology front group exposed.
The goal of terrorism is not to kill/harm a population, it is used to create a panic and a terror in this population.
Unfortunately, The US governement is feeding terror at it's population by consistently reminding them that terrorist my strike anytime.
USA as lost the war against terrorism, but since it's good for the Economy (Gas mask, Guns, Ammunitions, Duck tape and Survival kit sales raised over 150%) it's not going to try to calm it down.
Best way to fight Terrorism, is not to panic.
They are just going to learn it in colleges/universities around the world on the hosting country's dime. Or the Saudi's dime. Nothing can realy be done in a free society but hope they blow themselves up first or the Security services around the world catch, kill or what ever them first.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Your reference to "wiring nads to a field telephone" helps the terrorists. Without your "contribution" here, they might not have known how to coerce information out of other people. Terrorists could be reading your post right now! Come on, buddy, why don't you just post details on how to culture Bacillus anthracis in bulk using common kitchen appliances?
In conclusion, why do you hate America so much?
Freedom: "I won't!"
In all the caves we searched in Afghanistan, I don't remember any mention of science journals. Nor did any of the spy satellite pictures that Powell presented to the United Nations have any scientific journals in them. What a 'smoking gun' that would be, the latest 'Nature' sitting next to a cave toilet.
However, there is one nation that is planning on using bio-terror weapons.
And that is the United States:
"While American forces invading Iraq face the threat of chemical attack, they could themselves be using biochemical agents which are banned under international law."
US plans to use illegal weapons
Anyone that can see past the spin of ABC News sees that the US government is controlling information because it is trying to corner the market on bio-terror, disabling legitimate use of new science by other nations, much less terrorists.
In this modern world, it is weakening the system of checks and balances that has kept us away from World War III for 50+ years. The French feel that if this war with Iraq goes forward, it will lead to 100 years of new wartime. Only the United States and Israel seem to want this.
In the meantime, I would urge all scientists to speak in their communities and make it be known they will not stand for censorship. If science goes down that road, scientists will not be safe, science will not be safe, and the world will not be safe.
Somehow I feel a lot less comfortable letting evolution fix biological bugs than letting software vendors fix their security bugs. :)
There are a lot of ways to broadcast and receive information on the internet completely anonymously, terrorists capable of making and making use of a recipe for nerve gas are surely capable of using a news reader.
Keeping the information under wraps might be a good arguement, but saying that science magazines would be used as a broadcast medium specifically for terrorists is ridiculous.
Some of us were smart enough to quit after V.
KFG
"I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death."
---Patrick Henry
and what with the US military? they're too armed, dangerous, and may use scientific research for harming people. does it sound ethical, to work for military industry? especially in the fields of medical science, where hipocrates oath should be respected.
There are always extreemists on both sides of an issue. Sometimes they suck, sometimes they don't.
Martin Luther King when he was alive was generally regarded by the media as a dangerous radical, much more Al Sharpton than Jessie Jackson. Nelson Mandela was an extreemist too.
Sometimes the right position is pretty damn extreeme, there is no middle ground. There is no middle ground on slavery for example.
The answer lies in the middle, but nobody wants to discuss that. They just want to criticise the other extremists.
The answer is to not attempt to enforce limits, that is only going to be counterproductive in the current environment. The problem is that the administration appears to consider trust to be a right. I would be much more inclined to believe the establishment's requests for being circumspect if they did not then turn round and take advantage of them.
I agree that full disclosure is frequently not the best plan and I have in the past been pretty critical of people who use full disclosure as an excuse for being blatantly irresponsible. However I don't see that type of behaviour being a systemic problem in the academic litterature.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I agree with you completely. How silly!!! I knew how to do much worse when I was an undergrad, as did all my school mates---and many of us were majoring in ecology!
We know that this `editors' have been out of touch with reality for a couple of decades now. What this truly means is: this is The End for Science Inc. itself. And it's about time, the journal system does no longer work anymore. It's obsolete. The whole Science Inc. is obsolete. And really advanced research you don't find in those journals anyway, and never have. Real science has alwas been on the fringes. But these `editors' (self-appointed Gods of Science®) are pushing real research toward the fringes even more. Great job, assholes!
The fringe is becoming the strongest player in the game. Think Linux. What's next? Kazaa Biotech? Peer-to_peer, encrypted? Real peer-reiew. Gene hackers? May be it is time for ``Our Neural Chernobyl''?
[Yes, the poison is the good flavor.]
Anyway, the `scientific' era is over. These Big Name `editors' have been out of the real game for ages, and their journals are no longer cutting edge. Indeed, it's not happenig in science any more. Science Inc. is the backwaters.
Time to move on.
``L'imagination au povoir.''
Oh, wait, people come up with software patches? And vaccines? If scientists can't write about the vaccine research they are doing in the fear that some terrorist might learn how to manufacture the illness, don't you think more people might die from the original ilness?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
With nuclear research, the raw materials are exceptionally dangerous and pretty hard to obtain in large quantities. For for biological work, the raw materials are ubiquitous, and it's pretty easy to keep things safe for research purposes. And a lot of really important publications are about making it simpler and cheaper to manipulate DNA sequences.
As an analogy, think of programming. It used to involve toggling switches, now you can write a Perl script that grinds through gigabytes of data without thinking twice about it. Or, you can get little embedded chips for a couple of dollars for computations that used to require computers filling rooms. Well, it's going to be the same for molecular biology, except that you don't even need the investment chip fabs and cleanrooms.
We better figure out how we can deal with the idea that anybody reasonably intelligent and with access to a library will be able to cook up deadly viruses in their spare time--this technology is not controllable or containable.
No, I'm not talking about the difference between a sendmail root exploit and actually killing someone (though that's important too). In net security, the leading edge of exploit/virus/worm research isn't CERT or Symantec or ISS; it's teenage males without dates in Prague and Ann Arbor and Hong Kong. Thus, security through obscurity doesn't work because it can't encompass enough of the right people in the know.
Research in the hard sciences is different. The UCSF biologists and MIT chemists, the ones who would author the articles in question, are the leading edge. It's not like Saddam's labs are two years ahead of the rest of the world. Being more careful when publishing their research has a real chance of keeping valuable secrets out of the wrong hands.
Are you really that self-absorbed that you think you could possibly be on anyone's list of targets? Puleez. Our RESPONSE to the 9/11 terrorist attack was an over-reaction on an order of magnitude beyond extreme, resulting in more damage to this country and it's constitution than 1,000 airliners could have inflicted.
Once you get out of your little dreamworld you will find that censorship in any form is a policy that has been implemented by 'great' nations such as Nazi Germany, Communist China, the former Soviet Union, and North Korea just to name a few. Americans should not aspire to join that group.
Sorry dude you could not be more wrong!!! You should be willing to give your pitifull life to protect our freedom and the Constitution instead of being such a little coward.
I love every bone in her body, especially mine!
Within one month of the journal censoring the gory biological details, some person claiming to be a "current employee of a large monthly biological warfare scientific journal" will post all the secret details to Slashdot under the nickname Anonymous Coward. The information will never become useful to the terrorists, because even they aren't crazy enough to view posts at the -1 threshold.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
--wasn't it originally life, liberty and the pursuit of property? And wasn't it changed later to happiness? And I am asking, I have heard both, with the former obviously being the more popular and published.
It's good when security exploits become public because then everyone knows the details and can do something about it. Sure, the "hackers" get the knowledge too, but then it's a race to implementation, and they won't hit as many systems as they would have had no one been prepared.
What exactly can you do about biochemical weapons except buy a gas mask and pray?
(P.S. The George Dubbya method is less than feasable for most people.)
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
The air is already POISONED some how, ever herd of polution. Evry time you drive your car you help to poison the air...
/. article) the snowballing effect all these "0MG Th3 T3rr0r1sts are coming! Qu1ck s34l y0ur h0m3 uP w1t duCk T4p3 4nd t4k3 4w4y 411 0uR r3m41n1g l1b3rt13s" people are forming will probably result in a society which scares itself into looking for a danger in everything and anything, and blaming it on terrorism. Oh no! The air contains miniture evil robots created by the purple monster sitting on the throne in Country X,Y,Z.
Ever heard of a spell checker?
Yes, of course the air already HAS dangerous contents lingering for us to suck into our lungs but that wasn't my point. (I think you knew that and just wanted to nitpick for the sake of posting) My point was (and of course I have to explain now for the simpletons out there like you who can't put 2+2 together and see the point of my post in regards to the
Now before you think of responding with more spelling errors and misconceptions of what I've just posted, please read again and again until it sinks into your rat turd of a brain.
to fear, fear to hatred, and hatred to suffering. to break this is
to understand the self-ignorance and understand its proper place in
the big picture (that is, as a tool of abstraction and only if trust
in the interface can be cemented).
and even cement cracks w/ the weight of other people's wisdom.
With all this sudden hooplah about duct taping your houses to be airtight, I just wanna pose two questions to the masses:
;-)
1) How are you supposed to get back inside once you've duct taped the house shut
and
2) Who's the lucky family member who gets to do it?
That's not even taking into consideration things like suffocation and duct taping AFTER a bioterrorist strike...
--=Maj
One useless man is called a disgrace; two are called a law firm; and three or more become a Congress. -John Adams, 1776
People as stupid as you shouldn't be allowed to read J.S. Mill because you obviously don't understand it.
Obviously, when we have a bioterror bugtraq it will be up to each individual to make sure his own biosphere is patched and up to date.
Reaching for more duct tape...
[Every] Twenty years is maybe a little bit too short now, or maybe not...
9/11 actually revealled a previously unknown weakness in the design. Without public access to the plans etc, experts and documentarians may not have found out why the towers fell, and engineers may be planning buildings with the same techniques today.
e nt erCollapase/worldtradecentercollapase.htm
That is not correct at all. The WTC design was very contorversial from the beginning, and in fact would have been illegal had it not been built by a government agency. The design was widely discussed, and the plans for the building were widely available. The susceptability of the main support structure to fire (it was known not to conform to typical building standards) was considered to be such an important issue after the 1993 bombing that the fireproofing of the main support structures was actully being upgraded at the time of the 9/11 attack.
http://www.eng.nsf.gov/engnews/2002/WorldTradeC
As for the education of the terrorists - if you recall after the first attack on the WTC, it was found that some the members of the qroups involved had attended or held engineering degrees from US universities. One of the people convicted in the WTC bombing was acually working in the engineering technology group at Allied Signal at the time of the bombing.
BTW, that first attack came closer to bringing down one of the towers and the neghboring Vista Hotel that is generally known. Emeergency structural reinforcement had to be put into place before trains could be allowed run through the PATH station.
So much for security through obscurity...
Yes, and how is not publishing this information in fact security through obscurity? Security through obscurity is the practice of not disclosing security holes in systems designed to protect sensitive information.
There are always extreemists on both sides of an issue. Sometimes they suck, sometimes they don't.
Gotta disagree here, but it is a matter of perspective. In a idiological clean room environment (not unlike academia or even the extreme left or right wing media at times) extremists might not suck but in the real world where these problems not only have to be dealt with but ultimately solved, extremism always sucks, mostly because it grinds the wheels of change to a halt.
While extremist views and their proposed solutions do a marvelous job of bringing out a dialog, they refuse to embrace something that is very necessary for any solution to come about, compromise.
Martin Luther King when he was alive was generally regarded by the media as a dangerous radical, much more Al Sharpton than Jessie Jackson. Nelson Mandela was an extreemist too.
A very good example but King wasn't the extremist. He was an educated man raised in a loving middle class home. His approach to the problem of race relations was very difference from Malcom X's. King looked at race problems from both sides and tried to get people to focus on the root of the problem. King certainly wasn't a centralist but he wasn't an extremist either. That's why he was so successful.
Malcom X was an extremist. Growing up in poverty, having the clan burn a cross in your yard and having your father killed, then your mother suffer a nervous breakdown will do that to a boy.
Sometimes the right position is pretty damn extreeme, there is no middle ground. There is no middle ground on slavery for example.
Another good point but theres more at play than just a possition but the implementation of that possition as well. It's still possible to acheive a compromise even with a fairly extreme possition by easing into that solution, either in phases or simply by capturing more flies with honey than with vinegar
Getting back to the topic at hand. The solution the scientific journal editors have come up with, self censorship, is a good one because it is extreme but implemented in a way that isn't. Govt implemented censorship, now that's extreme. At least here the ones with the knowledge are deciding what should and shouldn't be published.
5000 people get killed in one "terrorist" act, and people are so scared the very underpinnings of America's success are dismantled. What the hell is going on? Millions of people died in World War II and no-one was trying to muzzle science journals. Americans are just out of touch with reality. Hopefully, it won't take another world war, which we could possibly lose, to put us back in touch.
No, we enhance access to information that might be useful to terrorists in the name of security.
I guarantee you we have more brains than they do. If you publish the info, MUCH more good will come than bad you will ever prevent.
What they're talking about is some scientific journals declining to blindly publish practical details on methods/observations that they perceive would be dangerous in the wrong hands. At no time is anyone attempting to restrict what any individual is able to know. Nobody stepped in and stopped the researcher whose article may be declined from gathering the knowledge necessary to come up with the sketchy idea in the first place, and nobody's stopping the next genius from exercising their creative abilities, either. The liberty/security complaint is just a non-issue.
No, it was a restatement of the rights of "life, liberty and property" as described by philosopher John Locke in Two Treatises on Government in 1690.
See here.
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
rtphokie wrote:
> Do we limit access to information that might be useful to
> terorists in the name of security, or do we make it freely
> available in the name of intellectual freedom.
You can do anything you like "in the name of security": lock up information, lock up people without trial or lawyers, lock out dissent (why else do you think the terror level was on high this weekend with hundreds of thousands of peace protesters in New York?), cry "wolf" in various hues, hermetically seal your house with plastic and duct tape to protect your family from that noxious gas oxygen, etc. It's all great for terrorizing the American people, does wonders for the "name" of security, and might even qualify you for the Phoenix awards.
However, none of the above will make you more secure. At best, it is barn door closing when the horses are long gone (For example, the WTC bombing was planned using Bin Laden's knowledge of construction, which he obtained before he became a terrorist). At worst, some of the measures above are at least as great a threat to Bush's supposedly beloved "democracy", liberty, and even your own life as terrorism ever was or could be.
Anyway, mature people understand that life just is not secure. Eliminate all terrorists, and you could still die of car accidents, killer asteroids, or Yucca Mountain going boom. Security implies absolute control, and that is just not possible, even in a dictatorship. Living in terror, and Americans are doing just that, is not living at all.
> There are extremists on both sides of this topic.
> Extremists suck though.
>
> The answer lies in the middle, but nobody wants to
> discuss that. They just want to criticize the other
> extremists.
Yes, there is a spectrum with extremes, but it is not what you think. On the one end of the spectrum are the terrorists who want chaos, a stampede of fear, and massive destruction. On the other end are those who want to impose total "security", at the price of liberty, and they are using terror of the terrorists to control people.
But it is the democracy and liberty defined by the US Constitution that is the point in the middle. The Constitution provides the framework and civilization that keeps chaos and anarchy at bay while preserving liberty. It also provides the checks and balances that keep wanna be dictators from taking over. Unfortunately, those checks and balances are being eliminated. The result is not going to increase your personal safety.
I still have faith in the kindness and courage of the American people. We got through the Civil War and the Cold War (complete with McCarthy madness), we can get through this.
Get out from under your beds where you've been hiding (literally or figuratively) since 911. Cast aside your terror, it only serves to entertain bin Laden, and to aid those who would control you. Go rescue Liberty and Justice. Justice is hidden away somewhere at the Department of Justice (Ashcroft didn't like her immodest clothing). Liberty was last seen being hauled away for "fraternizing with immigrants" (INS also lost her change of address card a century or so ago).
"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity."
Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961)
If Joe Average Citizen does not know that atom bombs exist, then atom bombs does not exist thus it is impossible for terrorists to nuke Joe Average Citizen using them.
Sounds like Matrix. So, maybe those editors are going to prove to us we live in Matrix. :)
hany
What's the matter of fighting terrorism? Isn't it all about getting freedom intact?
If freedom is actually compromised, be it by the terrorism, or by the government, or by the publishers, we lose anyway.
Regards, Wizord.
The susceptability of the main support structure to fire (it was known not to conform to typical building standards) was considered to be such an important issue after the 1993 bombing that the fireproofing of the main support structures was actully being upgraded at the time of the 9/11 attack.
If it was considered that important why was it still being upgraded 8 years later. Not that it would have made much difference since the fire protection material was not blast resistant.
Was einmal gedacht wurde, kann nicht wieder zurückgenommen werden.
Babelfish away.
If it comes to terrorism, people/security agencies/governments always follow the same pattern: they phantasize about the most nightmarish dreadful attack imaginable, and demand that the most far-reaching measures should be taken. And this is going on ever since contemporary terrorism exists.
To fight enemies, their motives, morales, strengths , shortcomings, must be examined first. Why are they fighting? for whom? who do they want to please? who are their supporters? what are they prepared for? what might be their next move?
To assume a priori that an enemy is ready to use the most gruesome methods is clueless. If that be so, living on this planet would be impossible. After all, the most wicked terrorists are still humans and not alien killer robots from outa space.
I remember well the seventies and eighties when we [Germany] had domestic (Marxist-Leninist) terrorism. What did these guys do? They murdered politician, high ranking officials, policemen, US soldiers etc. That was bad enough. But they were never close to something like: aiming a machine gun at children, poisoning drinking water, blowing up a government building etc. But this was what was printed in the papers. Speculations arose about exactly the same topics as now - on a much smaller scale, of course. Security agencies, governments, tabloids were eager to spread FUD and endorsed a "military solution" (so it was called). In the end, this terrorism dragged on until the early nineties (it had started in 1969) when it ended.
Another point: the Nazi army never used poison gas in the battlefield, although they had plenty (mustard gas, Sarin, Tabun were all been invented in Germany). That proves that even the most wicked sometimes begin to have scruples (for whatever good or bad reasons).
So what I would like to know now is:
- are there really terrorists who are ready to blow up a nuclear device? spread viruses? or use poison gas? If so, who are they, where are they, how many are they?
- are bin Laden and his lot among these? Their supporters and friends obvioulsly like when buildings are blown up, as having been broadcasted on TV at 9/11. But do they similarly like pictures with people who spill out their lungs because of poison gas?
- weapons of mass destruction are around for a long time now. However, nobody used them for terrorist purposes (ok, there was this sect in Japan). Instead, 9/11 saw pilot licenses, boxcutters, a few men ready for suicide. And this McVeigh - he used fertilizer and petrol. Sufficient measures might be: enhance security at airports, try to keep ex psycho soldiers in check etc. Introducing censorship for "sensitive" research results? Totally useless.
To fight terrorism, one must be *smart*. Use the brain, find motives, weaknesses, make allies, bribe, convince, undermine. Ask people. Talk to people. Use carrot and stick. And in the end, arrest or kill the remaining bunch. But above all: DONT PANIC.
But panic is exactly what is happening right now.
Oxygen can be used to make deadly dihydrogen monoxide, so we have to be careful. In fact, we should perhaps implement a strict accountability system and only dispense it to those who passed background checks.
Considered harmful.
If it was considered that important why was it still being upgraded 8 years later.
I imagine because ripping out the flooring to install the new fireproofing is a) expensive, and b) disrupts the tenants.
Not that it would have made much difference since the fire protection material was not blast resistant.
Actually it did make a difference where it was in place. The North tower had the floors in the blast region ugraded - this was the reason that the North tower lasted twice as long after being hit as the South tower. Unfortunately the big killer was that the fire protection systems were taken out by the blast.
'Nuff said.
And it's overdue. Science is over; these `editors' are just hastening its end.
For these Science Inc. apparatchiki, anything goes, as long as they get money and high-sounding titles [like ``Editor'' of a so-called ``scientific'' journal]. Now it turns out that Fighting Terrorism® is good for your career---the rest be damned, as always. In this case, science itselft (I mean real science, of course, the kind they never make). And after all, these is the same kind of people who brought you the Manhattan Project---ultimate terrorism.
``L'imagination au povoir.''
Interesting to see this "security by obscurity" crap spreading into the academic publishing community, but that's a negative value-add from the POV of everyone outside of the US DOJ and the White House.
The bad guys already know how to make BAD THINGS with science, they can pay "respectable" researchers or kidnap them.
The problem from our side of the fence is to keep scientific and technological progress going so that we have something better to offer than the theocratic 13th century world the terrorists seem to want for all of us. Suppressing scientific progress isn't the way to do this.
Perhaps the AAAS mags and the other high-priced, low value add scientific journals will become... irrelevant to science. Self-censorship is a great start towards this.
Tech Public Policy stuff
why do i need to know how to make a life form that kills people? why do i need to know how to make a 'dirty boom'? is this the main stream of advanced reasearch?
has anyone researched out how to communicate to starving people that if there is no food, go to where the food is?