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Re: Adding Math to List of Security Threats - New York Times
From: David Farber <dfarber () cs cmu edu>
Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2007 18:57:28 -0500
Begin forwarded message: From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed () reed com> Date: November 17, 2007 6:26:25 PM EST To: dave () farber net Cc: ip () v2 listbox comSubject: Re: [IP] Adding Math to List of Security Threats - New York Times
I have to say that when I saw this in the NYT, and then again when I saw it in the IP list, I was very troubled by the title. Perhaps that is because my core self identifies as a mathematician - I read math books for fun, love thinking about architectural designs as algebras, and have always loved the power of formalisms to make sense of the world.
So the idea that mathematics is a security threat is a linguistic framing that worries me. When "Islam" is a security threat, those who go to mosques must feel a little more scared.
Does this mean that when I work with Chinese computer scientists (I have a student from PRC) my fellow Americans will suspect that I'm dangerous?
Will math itself be classified as a weapon, just as cryptography was and is?
I have a different view. I think that the *security* community is a security threat. Their primary mode of action is to inject paranoid thinking into every aspect of modern life. One must assume (according to most of the security professionals, other than Bruce Schneier[yay]) that the world is full of evil bad guys, and *the only response* is to start to wear armor, and to prove that armor absolutely free of defects, or one will die.
Well, before the security professionals got so prominent (due to folks like my friend Markoff, sad to say), one could presume that one lived in a world that was safe, because one's community tended to be mutually supportive, and even if my house was broken into, the rest of my community would not start to freak out and act insane.
This sense of "community based" security has been replaced by a mutual suspicion.
Now of course we have viruses and trojans, etc. But when we start blaming mathematics itself as a "security threat" we are heading down a dangerous societal path.
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Current thread:
- Adding Math to List of Security Threats - New York Times David Farber (Nov 17)
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- Re: Adding Math to List of Security Threats - New York Times David Farber (Nov 17)