The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work
web.cs.ucdavis.edu
The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work
1–10 of 96 posts
Re: The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work
#2This is an important message to consider, and not just for cryptography. Everyone can benefit from thinking about the moral and social consequences of what problems they choose to work on, who they do them for, and what values the institutions they contract with hold.
Re: The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work
#3For anyone here who doesn't know who the author is, Phil Rogaway is one of the most important academic cryptographers; he's responsible for OAEP, PSS, OCB, UMAC, FPE, and the constructions behind XTS, the universal standard for disk encryption.
The meat of the paper is in Sections 2 (where the unintended power dynamics of some modern academic crypto research projects is discussed) and 4 (where he provides suggestions for important practical projects academic cryptographers should tackle). Sections 1 and 3 are written for an audience of academics who might be less familiar with the political implications of crypto than the typical HN reader.
Essentially, Rogaway is trying to convince mathematicians to embrace the practical and political impact of their work.
Colin Percival gets a nice mention towards the end of the paper. I'd be over the moon if I were him. Congrats, Colin!
Re: The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work
#4For anyone here who doesn't know who the author is, Phil Rogaway is one of the most important academic cryptographers; he's responsible for OAEP, PSS, OCB, UMAC, FPE, and the constructions behind XTS, the universal standard for disk encryption. The meat of the paper is in Sections 2 (where the unintended power dynamics of some modern academic crypto research projects is discussed) and 4 (where he provides suggestions…
This is a very good paper and it's disappointing that it didn't get higher on HN.
That being said I disagree with some of paper's points. I don't believe that cryptographers should take on moral responsibility for how they perceive their work may or may not be used. If a malware writer uses XTS to lock up a hard drive should Dr Rogeway be morally responsible for that since he helped create the constructions for XTS? I would argue "no" because there is a moral separation between idea and implementation. We should not burden cryptographers with moral baggage that should be placed on the people who implement or set policy to implement.
Re: The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work
#5They lead one to ask if our inability to effectively address mass surveillance constitutes a failure of our field. I believe that it does. I call for a community-wide effort to develop more effective means to resist mass surveillance.
What's funny is that you could talk to any number of law enforcement officials who believe that the moral failing is on the cryptography community for not providing a "backdoor" into encrypted communications. Or to restate, "Please, Apple, think of the children!"
Morality is, unfortunately, subjective. Part of the argument is in convincing your opponent that your morality is superior to theirs. Or, perhaps, that their stance violates their own sense of morality.
Re: The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work
#6From the abstract:
Cryptography rearranges power: it configures who can do what, from what.
I'd argue that the reverse is really the issue that needs more attention. Online systems that do not provide strong cryptography rearrange power, as compared to their offline equivalents.
It was not feasible to scan all phone calls for keywords in 1970, since that required effort from humans to do the patching and listening. The power dynamic changed when our industry brought those calls into a centralized, trivially-storable clear-text format. Encrypting the conversations is simply a partial return to the status quo of a few decades ago.
Re: The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work
#7They lead one to ask if our inability to effectively address mass surveillance constitutes a failure of our field. I believe that it does. I call for a community-wide effort to develop more effective means to resist mass surveillance. What's funny is that you could talk to any number of law enforcement officials who believe that the moral failing is on the cryptography community for not providing a "backdoor" into en…
Part three of the paper contains his justification for opposing mass surveillance.
Re: The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work
#8They lead one to ask if our inability to effectively address mass surveillance constitutes a failure of our field. I believe that it does. I call for a community-wide effort to develop more effective means to resist mass surveillance. What's funny is that you could talk to any number of law enforcement officials who believe that the moral failing is on the cryptography community for not providing a "backdoor" into en…
When your opponent condones torture, indefinite imprisonment of innocents, war crimes, and genocide, there is little point in having anbopen dialog or argument with them.
Re: The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work
#9They lead one to ask if our inability to effectively address mass surveillance constitutes a failure of our field. I believe that it does. I call for a community-wide effort to develop more effective means to resist mass surveillance. What's funny is that you could talk to any number of law enforcement officials who believe that the moral failing is on the cryptography community for not providing a "backdoor" into en…
Yes, that is certainly a tension here. I think it's easier to think of the paper as two broadly different subparts.
The first part is: "regardless of what you think, if something you do rearranges power, then it will become political". This is more a statement of fact than anything else.
The second part is: "now that I hope to have convinced you that crypto is necessarily political, here's the moral stance I would prefer for you to follow."
Re: The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work
#10They lead one to ask if our inability to effectively address mass surveillance constitutes a failure of our field. I believe that it does. I call for a community-wide effort to develop more effective means to resist mass surveillance. What's funny is that you could talk to any number of law enforcement officials who believe that the moral failing is on the cryptography community for not providing a "backdoor" into en…
Are you implying that "law enforcement officials" have moral standing, especially in the US? Torture, racism, fraud, corruption, brutality, are what springs to mind, along with a total lack of will to reform. To hell with that.