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Security Versus Science
dogfrt writes "According to this Wired News article, post-9/11 homeland security has had a decidedly negative effect on US scientific research. In specific, researchers are self-censoring what they publish, talented foreign students are being denied visas (approximately 20%, according to one source in the article), and researchers are avoiding work with dangerous pathogens, choosing more innocuous micro-organisms."
A different world? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Bush wasn't elected on Sep. 11, either. Moreover, we had already identified Osama as a threat, and Bush was busy cancelling funds to arrest him. Nothing on 9-11 made the world so different. We had terrorist attacks around the world both before and after. There was war before and after. Bush sold us change the same way a used car salesman might. He told us the the world had changed in a fundamental way, and that we had to give up our freedom because of it. IIRC, the founding fathers had to worry about security, too. Security is not a new concern. The OK City bombing should have shown us that much. Alas, 9-11 was used by Bush to justify a huge expenditure of effort and money, at the expense of freedom.
#define DRM chmod 000
Like what? They'd probably give you three alternatives:
1) Publish and perish - really, perish. Perish as in get-a-bullet-in-the-back-of-your-neck kind of perish.
2) Present your results to the memebers of a classified US military project that helps us to fight the terrorists. This is the best option. You get your research read by the people who really matter.
3) Don't publish.
researchers are avoiding work with dangerous pathogens, choosing more innocuous micro-organisms."
And have you ever considered that the most dangerous kind of research is not the manipulation of known dangerous organisms (and the associated containment precautions), but of supposedly "innocuous" or "harmless" organisms, organisms where there is no need for increased security or containment protocols?
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
I lived in the US on an H1B visa before 9/11. I first got it in 10 months, which is considered fast normally. When I applied for a renewal after 9/11, it was denied, although the first renewal was granted to me without problem and reasonably fast, and I never had so much as a speeding ticket in the US. I thought, well, the US of A doesn't want me no more, so I went back to the EC.
...
Now friends who have applied recently told me it's a matter of 2 or 3 years, and that quotas have gone down drastically (read: they can't get one).
I've started my company in France. So are my friends. We're all experiencing huge pains in the rectal area because the taxman in France is voracious, but we have to stay here (or perhaps go to Canada later, but right now we're staying here) because it seems Uncle Sam can do without enterprising people willing to go to great length and make sacrifices to try to succeed, and eventually pay taxes to the IRS.
I think the INS is right : there should be a barrier to entry in the US that's high enough to winnow out slackers and let worthy people in only. But when the barrier is too high, Uncle Sam deprives itself of workers who already have an education that didn't cost a cent to the country, are provably willing to work hard to make it, and willing to play the US economy game and pay their taxes. If I was a decision maker, I'd welcome such a population in the country.
Too bad your current administration doesn't see farther than its nose-tip
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I recently started working as a physics Ph. D. student in Innsbruck, Austria. In our group we have a Taiwanese post-doc who is really talented and does a tremendous job, working 12 hours a day, six days a week.
This guy used to be at Stanford, but when he wanted to get his visa renewed he was told he had to go back to Taiwan and renew it there. So he went to Taiwan, where he was told that he could not get a new visa. There he was in Taiwan, with all his stuff left in California, unable to go back! After some time he managed to get a temporary visa so he could at least go back for 14 days, sell his car and take care of his belongings. Then he went working with us in Austria instead.
Good for us, bad for USA.
While I don't work with anything as sexy as pathogens, I am trying to get my grad-level thesis on computer security done. Practically any field of research I want to choose potentially opens me up to criminal prosecution.
As an example:
My university wanted me to do research on LDAP and its related security problems. They wanted me to do this at first on a strawman system, then on the actual system in use on the campus. I objected to this line of research because if I were "caught" probing or attacking the system and the person who discovered me jumped the appropriate chain of command and called the authorities, I would be up shit creek without a paddle.
I also brought up the problem on who owns (or has ultimate authority over) the campus network. It is operated by the university, but owned by the state and to some extent, the feds. What if the university gave me permission but the state or federal authorities decided they didn't like my work? What then?
My professors told me I could do the thesis and "bury" my work. That is, copies would be made for myself, my committee, and a copy in the library under the "restricted section". But if I do so, what's the use?
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
currently, i'm employed at a major research institution as a postdoctoral researcher. One of our research projects currently is examining the factors influencing the transport of microorganisms in porous media (i.e., what happens to the bugs as they go into the groundwater).
One of the bugs we're looking at is Cryptosporidium parvum, a nasty parasite that was responsible for an outbreak in Milwaukee in 1993 that sickened something like 400,000 people and killed at least 100.
Interesting facts about crypto: It can be purchased over the phone with a credit card. With no previous clearance or paperwork or anything (at least as far as we can tell) to ensure that it is going to someone who won't misuse it. And it comes fully viable and capable of infecting individuals (as we accidently discovered a couple months back).
back of envelope calculations say that if we were to find a 1 million gallon reservoir, and dumped our sample in, (and somehow could mix it real well) there'd be near 1,000 particles per gallon. Given that it takes 1-10 to cause an infection, that's enough to infect the entire town i live in.
amazing. and all it takes is a credit card...
My hope is that the situation will improve with the next presidential elections. I can't believe that Americans will not defend their freedom.