Cryptographers Have an Ethics Problem
[Philip Lelyveld comment: Technology is morally neutral. You cannot know the moral purposes for which it will be used when you are teaching it to others. It is important to have a moral code overlay. It is also important to have ideas about enforcement and penalties when the code is violated. This story doesn't go there.]
...I noticed a poster taped to the wall—the kind put up to inform or inspire students. It was the code of ethics of the Association for Computing Machinery, the world’s largest professional association of computer scientists.
The code is a list of 16 “moral imperatives.” Two items immediately jumped out:
1.3 - Be honest and trustworthy.
1.7 - Respect the privacy of others.
This got me thinking. It looks as if the code-breakers at the National Security Agency—and possibly the academics that often assist them—are in clear, dramatic breach of their own profession’s code of conduct.