The n-Category Café

That’s a good point. The general public already has no idea what research mathematicians do. Perceptions are largely shaped by the applications of mathematics: engineering, computing, and so on. Our image has already taken a battering from the financial meltdowns of the last five or so years, but as the application of mathematics to mass surveillance becomes more and more well-known, the public will like us less and less.

To put it more viscerally: there’s now a large number of people who hate GCHQ and its partners — really, seriously, loathe them. These are among the largest employers of mathematicians in the world. The mathematical community is tin-eared if it doesn’t notice this.

In the same way, we’re hypocritical if we go on trumpeting the application of mathematics to internet encryption without also acknowledging the application of mathematics to undermining internet encryption.

I clicked on that George Dyson link, saw the photo of him, and immediately said to myself “that’s Freeman Dyson!” Turns out that George (who I don’t think I’d heard of) is Freeman’s son. But wow, what a resemblance.

I wouldn’t say quixotic, but yup: I think you’ve put your finger on one of the reasons why the reaction in the British public has been so muted. It’s like boiling a frog. I believe we’ve got more CCTV cameras than any other country in the world (by some measure of “more”).

But an important difference is pointed out in Dyson’s article, mentioned above by Stefan. CCTV monitoring is explicitly regulated by laws that were made in open court, are enforced in open court, and can be challenged in open court. GCHQ/NSA’s monitoring is done entirely in secret. We’re not even told what type of monitoring they’re doing (phone, email, etc.), let alone who has the data, how long they can keep it for, and what they’re doing with it.

There are groups in the UK that have been campaigning against mass CCTV coverage for years. And now we know about the security services’ zeal for collecting data on the population at large, the case of those groups is strengthened: it seems very likely that GCHQ and co are systematically using CCTV data in ways that haven’t been approved in the open.

People from other European countries think it’s funny that we accept all those CCTV cameras but were highly suspicious of (and fought successfully against) the introduction of national ID cards. They’ve carried ID cards all their lives, so think nothing of it.

Once upon a time, a PhD student of mine failed to turn up for a scheduled meeting. It turned out that he had a good excuse: having been arrested on an anti-ID-card protest, he was in a police cell at the time.

I agree, I think that has changed people’s attitudes. But I’m not sure it’s been recognized widely enough what important differences there are between social media corporations and governments.

First, social media is voluntary. You don’t have to have a Facebook account or a Twitter account or a blog. You don’t have to use search engines that store information about you. Even though companies such as Facebook make it hard, you can influence what information about yourself you reveal.

Second, corporations don’t command physical force in the same way that states do. They’re certainly powerful and closely intertwined with governments; but unlike governments, they don’t have the direct power to arrest you, imprison you, detain you at borders, or kill you.

Thanks. That’s a good point.

My article was primarily intended to be consciousness-raising. Although I state a lot of facts that people might find deeply shocking, what I actually call for is really mild. It’s no more than “let’s talk about it, and let’s realize we have a choice”. You can easily guess that I’d also be in favour of much stronger actions, but as this comes after nine months of zero reaction to the scandal from the LMS, I thought it best to start at the beginning.

In particular, I was well aware that when I wrote “now we must decide” (to cooperate with GCHQ or not), the “must” was kind of pushy. Imagine a head of department who’s asked by a member of faculty for a couple of months off in the summer to work for GCHQ. The HoD might agree to it without even realizing that they’re making a decision; or they might think only about whether it’s OK in terms of staffing levels, not in terms of potential damage to society. I was trying to point out that it is a decision, an ethical decision, and one over which they have control. If you don’t think about your decisions, they’ll always be made in favour of the status quo. Desmond Tutu apparently said:

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

(He also apparently said “When your dreams turn to dust, vacuum”, which is irrelevant but made me laugh.)

I’d view your point in the same way. Mathematicians (and indeed all people) face the ethical question of whether what they’re doing with their lives is beneficial and worthwhile. But they only “face” it in the general sense that the question exists and is pertinent — it’s rarely actually brought to their attention. I think it’s an excellent question.

Before I went to university to study mathematics I’d read Hardys ‘A Mathematicians Apology’ which I found in my local library, and he makes exactly that argument, that mathematics by virtue of removal from the realities of real life, is an ideal object for disinterested contemplation. He compares it to painting and poetry for just that reason.

It made some impact on me before I realised that some of the people that I admired like Gandhi or Tagore were thoroughly engaged with the political and civil realities that they saw around them, and that was a powerful incentive to disengage with Hardys philosophy.

No apologies necessary; it’s very interesting to hear about these developments.

I don’t personally know any mathematicians who’d defend those activities of the NSA and GCHQ that have recently come to light. If I were to look for such people in the UK, I might start with the Heilbronn Institute. Slightly to my surprise, their website lists some people who have worked with them: the current director, Geoffrey Robinson, their University of Bristol contact, Oliver Johnson, and some others:

The work of the Institute is managed by a Director and Associate Director, advised by Strategic Director Professor Trevor Wooley. The founding Director of the Heilbronn was Professor Elmer Rees and his successor was Professor Malcolm MacCallum.

Past and present contributors to the Institute’s work have included many distinguished mathematicians, such as Profs. Sir John Ball, Bryan Birch, Clifford Cocks, David Hand, Roger Heath-Brown, Christopher Hooley, Frank Kelly, James Norris, Michael Paterson, Tony Scholl, Nicholas Shepherd-Barron, Sir Martin Taylor and Dominic Welsh.

Of course, the fact that they’ve worked with GCHQ doesn’t mean they’re in favour of mass surveillance or any of the other controversial activities that we’ve learned about in the last nine months. Presumably most mathematicians who’ve worked for GCHQ had no idea all this was going on.

I guess you’ve already approached some of the mathematicians you know who’ve worked for the NSA/GCHQ; from that, I deduce that none of them are willing to defend them. That’s interesting…

@ Michael Harris

When you say “we have found no one willing to defend the NSA!” do you mean that you contacted the NSA and they declined to participate? Or do you mean that you couldn’t find anyone not affiliated with the NSA who thought that NSA’s collection of data (a.k.a. spying) is justified under the circumstances and was willing to take that position publically?

Have you tried contacting Stephen L. Carter (http://www.law.yale.edu/faculty/SCarter.htm) ? He is not a mathematician but he has written extensively on the ethics of war and on professional responsibility. He may have an interesting point of view to contribute to such a debate.

I hope you’re not restricting your search to people who are willing to defend all the activities of the NSA. There’s a big gap between agreeing that the NSA has overstepped its bounds recently (as happens periodically with any agency of that sort) and thinking that academic mathematicians ought to repudiate it completely; I expect that there are a lot of people who fall in between. Me, for instance — although I have generally been trying to avoid these debates out of consideration for my personal time and sanity.

I’m not surprised, however, that you haven’t found anyone who wants to participate in a formal public debate on that side. One reason is probably that anyone who’s worked with the NSA and holds a security clearance has agreed that anything they write about the NSA publically has to undergo a “pre-publication review” to ensure that nothing classified is being revealed accidentally. This is certainly not the same as signing a contract forbidding them to discuss the NSA in public, but it’s an extra bureaucratic hoop that they would have to jump through. Another reason is that people who work with the NSA tend to be the sort who naturally keep a low profile; it’s better “operations security” not to make public even the fact that they know things they can’t tell you. And, I have to say that I suspect yet another reason is the overblown rhetoric of some people on the other side of the debate. If working for the NSA is going to be compared to working for the KGB, especially by older and established mathematicians who write recommendation letters and tenure reviews, then it’s not surprising if people who’ve done such work don’t want to come forward and say so publically.

What sort of structure are you planning for this debate? Will it be just a sequence of articles expressing individual opinions, or are you intending to include responses and rebuttals?

Hi Michael, feel free to contact me through my email address (linked below) or point me to your contact details somehow, and we can discuss things further.