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Googlestalking For Covert NSA Research Funding
James Hardine writes "Wikileaks is reporting that the CIA has funded covert research on torture techniques, and that the NSA has pushed tens or hundreds of millions into academia through research grants using one particular grant code. Some researchers try to conceal the source of funding, yet commonality in the NSA grant code prefix makes all these attempts transparent. The primary NSA grant-code prefix is 'MDA904'. Googling for this grant code yields 39,000 references although some refer to non-academic contracts (scolar.google.com 2,300). The grants issue from light NSA cover, the "Maryland Procurement Office" or other fronts. From this one can see the broad sweep of academic research interests being driven by the NSA."
So. The NSA, whose job it is to create and to crack strong encryption, are interested in computers and in mathematics. Big surprise there, guys.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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Abuse us by funding research on the subjects of:
- Duality for modules over finite rings and applications to coding theory
- Bounding the number of geometric permutations induced by k-transversals
- A unified framework for enforcing multiple access control policies
- Affine Lie algebras and multisum identities
?You sure do sound abused, kid. But not by (this) government...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
The article itself read like Mel Gibson wrote it like running away from Jean Luc Picard on a tricycle. FTA: "vaguagely haigiographic ", "mathmatics", "not a univeral reality"... Obviously no preview button on that Wiki site.
There is no doubt the NSA and the other spying agencies are using talented researchers, and obviously they would have appeal to many people-- after all it is likely their grants are good, they are researching hard and interesting problems, and there is also the patriotic factor (your gubbermint is not your friend, but the foreign gubbermints are even less your friends). So, it is not a surprise that people go for those grants.
It'd be hard to draw universal moral rules governing such participation. I'd say there is no moral issue if the research is public (as seems to be the case with most of the grants mentioned on the Wikileak). There might be a moral issue if the research is obviously done with the purpose to actively harm people, but it is unlikely such research will be publicized, except by a whistle blower.
All in all, except for clear-cut Dr. Mengele-like cases, I'd say the blame (if any) should be put on the government (which hires NSA and decides their agenda), and the issue should not be the grants, but, rather, the level and quality of oversight the general public has over such organizations, because it is oversight that will contribute more to keeping spy agencies in check, rather than the attitude of the individual researchers.
#Echelon noise: company president, Baghdad thief, nuclear family, water bomb