Mathematicians, Employment, and NSA… Ohh My

hmmm... working for NSA??? Nothing too new in this controversy (Keith Devlin and some other mathematicians have been raising it for awhile now), but it's a tad unusual to see Forbes magazine covering it:

http://tinyurl.com/o2qermv

As one mathematician wrote: "Any relationship with an organization whose activity is so harmful for the fabric of human society is unhealthy. For the sake of integrity, the AMS should shun all contacts with the NSA.”

or as Keith Devlin, wrote: “I think mathematicians should refuse to work for the NSA until they both follow the US Constitution and demonstrate responsible use of mathematical tools. The latter is something they clearly failed to do by engineering weaknesses into mathematical crypto systems, which mathematicians know to be a very dangerous thing to do. I think it is very regrettable that the current NSA leadership has broken the immense goodwill that most of us in the mathematical community once had toward them.”

[Some of Dr. Devlin's views are contained in this interview I did with him a year ago:
http://mathtango.blogspot.com/2013/06/keith-devlin-as-you-may-not-have-heard.html ]

Oh, and by the way, a similar debate is occurring in Britain as well -- see this new post from "n-Category Cafe":
http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2014/06/should_mathematicians_cooperat_2.html 

which was preceded by these two posts (by same author):
http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2014/04/should_mathematicians_cooperat_1.html#more 
http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2014/03/should_mathematicians_cooperat.html

P vs. NP vs. NSA

Since the press leaks regarding NSA subversion of online encryption through various means, dicey articles (and forum discussion) have begun speculating as to whether or not the agency may be working with a quantum computer, or even might have already proven P = NP (but for obvious reasons would never disclose such a proof -- cue in "Travelling Salesman" movie). Not much to back up such speculation… but always fun guessing, I s'pose. Here's one 'popular' piece (focused on RSA encryption, no actual mention of P vs. NP):

http://www.dailydot.com/politics/nsa-rsa-encryption-crack-prime-numbers/

And for those up to more of a challenge, here's a recent take from the always interesting, excellent Scott Aaronson:

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1517

"No Such Agency"

Regular readers here know I'm a huge fan of Keith Devlin, and have followed closely his vocal objections to the actions disclosed of the NSA for whom he once worked. Now another favorite science popularizer of mine (and a mathematician by academic training), Charles Seife, has gone public with an "open letter" on the NSA (for whom he worked as well) voicing his consternation (he notes early on that back in his day the super-secret agency was "nicknamed No Such Agency"):

http://tinyurl.com/l4sx7qz

And Seife essentially argues that more mathematicians should be publicly voicing concerns over disclosed NSA activities.

a couple of excerpts:

"...we all knew that the math was sexy. This might sound bizarre to a non-mathematician, but certain mathematical problems just exude a certain something—a feeling of importance, of gravity, along with a sense that the solution is not far outside of your grasp. It's big, and it can be yours if you just think a little bit harder. When I signed up, I knew that the NSA was doing interesting math, but I had no idea what I was in for. Within a week of arriving at the NSA, I was presented with an amazing smorgasbord of the most alluring mathematics problems I had ever seen, any of which could possibly yield to a smart undergraduate. I hadn't seen anything like it—and I never will again."

...but then this:

"The agency insisted, over and over, that the weapons we were building—and weapons they are, even if they're weapons of information—would never be turned on our own people, but would only be used upon our enemies.
"What do we do now that we have to face the fact that the Agency broke its word?"….

"I can only guess how much more horrified the ex-NSAers I know—you, my former colleagues, my friends, my professors, and my mentors—must be. Unlike me, you have spent much of your working lives helping the NSA build its power, only to see your years of work used in a way it was never supposed to be used. You could speak out now in a way that violates neither your secrecy agreement nor your honor. It's hard to believe that the professors I know at universities around the country would remain silent as the NSA abuses their trust and misuses their work.
Or would you?"

The NSA is known to be the largest employer of mathematicians in the country... one can't help but wonder what, if any, effect all this public disillusionment will have on its ability to recruit the nation's most able mathematicians going forward?

The Uses of Mathematics (via Keith Devlin)

I had a different post all prepared for today, but Keith Devlin put up a new post at his "Devlin's Angle" blog yesterday, and I think it more important to call attention to:

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2013/08/will-this-mathematics-be-of-any-use.html

Keith has been concerned and outspoken on Twitter about the whole NSA/Edward Snowden affair since its inception… so much so that I interviewed him on that very topic for my MathTango blog awhile back (I thank Keith for linking to that interview at the end of the above piece, but I really think his own blog post transmits even more of the passion I was trying to draw out in my interview with him). Can't help but wonder what, if any, feedback Dr. Devlin has gotten back from his mathematician peers on his strongly-stated views… at any rate, at the beginning of the above piece, in direct reference to what he sees as "illegal NSA surveillance," he urges that "none of us in mathematics and mathematics education can ignore that debate."

A couple of excerpts that capture some of the essence he is communicating:

"The rise of math-based corporations such as Google that form a large and influential part of today’s global world, and the closely related growth of the modern, math-driven security state, as iconicized by the NSA, make it impossible to maintain any longer the fiction (for such it always was) that we can pursue mathematics as a pure activity, separate from applications, be they good or ill."

"As the Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin eventually discovered, 'Do no evil' is a wonderful grounding principle, but the power of mathematics renders it an impossible goal to achieve. The best we can do is try to make our voice heard, as many mathematicians and nuclear physicists did during the Cold War, who spoke publicly about the massive scale of the danger raised by nuclear weapons.
"Finding out (as I have over the past few weeks) that the work I’d done over the past twelve years – for various branches of the U.S. government (intelligence and military) and for commercial enterprises (in my case, the video game industry) – was part of a body of research that had been subverted (as I see it) to create a massive global surveillance framework, I felt I could not remain silent."

I know some folks are already tired of this ongoing story, or otherwise set in their opinion, but I'd still urge you to read Keith's whole piece which isn't overly long.

NSA Mathematics

 The recent Edward Snowden revelations have brought the NSA into the limelight more than usual (and probably more than they'd like). According to many, NSA is the largest employer of mathematicians in the world. For a little comic relief recall this scene from the movie "Good Will Hunting," with Matt Damon as a young math prodigy:




Here is NSA's own brief "career path" page for mathematicians:

http://www.nsa.gov/careers/career_fields/mathematics.shtml

And here a decade+ old account by someone of what it's like to be interviewed by the NSA for a mathematics position:

http://cryptome.org/jya/nsa-mathjob.htm

Also, Cathy O'Neil's ("MathBabe") "uber creepy" review of being briefly courted by the NSA at one point:

http://mathbabe.org/2012/08/25/nsa-mathematicians/

The timing of the Snowden leaks was a bit of synchronicity for me, as I am currently reading "The NY Times Book of Mathematics" (an anthology, that I highly recommend, to lay readers especially) and had just reached chapter 5, which focuses on cryptography, where almost every reading includes mention of the NSA... interestingly, there was a time when a lot of friction existed between NSA and academic mathematicians who were being forced to work under various constraints by the governmental agency).

Anyway, for more info on the agency, there is of course a Wikipedia page for NSA here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency

(BTW, if PRISM interests you, you may want to be sure you're familiar with ECHELON and Carnivore as well.)


Regular readers here know that I'm a huge fan of Keith Devlin, and for more than his mathematical writings. Coincidentally, he briefly worked for the NSA at one time, and on Twitter, has expressed major concerns since the NSA disclosures -- indeed, of over 200 math/science persons I follow on Twitter I've not seen anyone more vocal than Keith in his upset with the Government (and support for Snowden) in this matter.
He wrote a recent piece for HuffPost below on the subject, though it just scratches the surface:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-keith-devlin/will-we-give-up-our-const_b_3420851.html

He exhorts a kind of statistical (or "sense of risk") argument before ending thusly:

"Are we really, as a nation, going to give up personal freedoms that are the envy of the world -- a beacon to humanity -- because of a collective numerical stupidity which could be eradicated in a single generation by a small change in K-12 education?" 

The unnerving part is, that I suspect at least 50% of the citizenry will answer "yes" to that....
Fear is a powerful stimulus (and political tool)… and we, or at least our leaders, have been living in fear since 9/11/2001.
(Little wonder that sales of George Orwell's 60+ year-old novel "1984" have skyrocketed since the Snowden story broke.)