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Mathematicians Uncomfortable With Ties To NSA, But Not Pulling Back
An anonymous reader writes: When we talk about how the NSA operates, it's typically about the policymakers and what the agency should or should not do. It's worth remembering that the NSA is built upon the backs of world-class mathematicians, whom they aggressively recruit to make all their underlying surveillance technology work. A new piece in Science discusses how the relationship between mathematicians and the NSA has changed following the Snowden leaks (PDF). But as Peter Woit points out, these ethical conundrums are not actually spurring any change. This is perhaps due to the NSA's generous funding of mathematics-related research.
The article talks about the American Mathematical Society, which until recently was led by David Vogan: "...after all was said and done, no action was taken. Vogan describes a meeting about the matter last year with an AMS governing committee as 'terrible,' revealing little interest among the rest of the society's leadership in making a public statement about NSA's ethics, let alone cutting ties. Ordinary AMS members, by and large, feel the same way, adds Vogan, who this week is handing over the presidency to Robert Bryant, a mathematician at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. For now, U.S. mathematicians aren't willing to disown their shadowy but steadfast benefactor."
The article talks about the American Mathematical Society, which until recently was led by David Vogan: "...after all was said and done, no action was taken. Vogan describes a meeting about the matter last year with an AMS governing committee as 'terrible,' revealing little interest among the rest of the society's leadership in making a public statement about NSA's ethics, let alone cutting ties. Ordinary AMS members, by and large, feel the same way, adds Vogan, who this week is handing over the presidency to Robert Bryant, a mathematician at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. For now, U.S. mathematicians aren't willing to disown their shadowy but steadfast benefactor."
So what exactly distinguishes one of these mathematicians from a common whore?
I'm pulling back. This article is now officially false!
Never fear though, intelligence is synonymous with morality. Mathematicians and scientists, being the most intelligent among us, are brave champions for what is True and right in the cosmos today. Let us all pray to Dawkins that all religions, and their false morality, are destroyed by our stalwart champions of Good: the mathematicians and scientists.
The government keeps calculating bigger and bigger new prime numbers for them, with all their fleet of classified quantum computers, and as we all know, mathematicians derive stimulation from primes. Many can't get up in the morning without a Mersenne or two. So really the NSA is just a big drug dealer, enslaving our poor mathematicians who just can't get enough of indivisibility. If you've never seen a thousand digit prime disappear up a rolled-up $100 bill into the eager nose of a cryptologist, you haven't lived.