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Science

Science vs. National Security 67

Posted by michael from the town-ain't-big-enough-for-the-both-of-ya dept.
capt.Hij writes "The NY Times has an article about how scientific journals are struggling with how to avoid publishing information that might help bio-terrorists. Once people start deciding that knowledge should be held by only a few then we are sanctioning ignorance. This is scary when it comes to democracy and decision making."
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Science vs. National Security

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  • But this doesn't seem like a big deal. They just have to find a way to keep it 'in the community'.
    Now if someone in the community wants to turn around help such enlightened states as, let's see, Iraq, Iran and North Korea for instance, well then, that might be a problem.
    Most people, though, don't give a whiff. And if someone creepy starts asking, we always have the TIPS program! Woohoo!
  • Let's give up on this pesky science and technology stuff, and all become Amish...

    No research == nothing to publish
  • Civilisation is a wonderfull thing, but due to the fact that we communially share our resources and intelignece inorder to build it - it's making it aughfully easy for one nutcase to bring it all down.

    Cosider, a first year biology student has the capability to make resistant bacteria. Ecoli, anitbiotics bought from a fist store, time and a warm agar from a japanses market - are all thats needed.

    There is no easy solution, but unfortunatly the only methods at are disposal are all ugly: survalance, forced ignorance, indoctrination and fear.

    Ugh - what a nasty future. We either survive in a harsh new world, or we die.

    Sombody - please, come up with a better solution. Soon.

    • Sombody - please, come up with a better solution. Soon.

      The only solution leading to peace [cmu.edu] is education. [bovik.org]

      The argument goes like this: terrorism is bred by poverty, and the only way out of poverty is literacy.

      Yes, it is that simple. Now, if I could only get a computer-assisted oral reading system to fit in 4MB on a 85 MTOPS handheld, we could actually afford to package them in with Meals Ready To Eat and such humanitarian packages. If you doubt the inevetability of this, just plot Moore's law and ask how much a Texas Instruments Speak-n-Spell would set you back on eBay these days.

      Eventually, educational computer systems (which may or may not have other features like email and web browsing) will be very inexpensive and commonplace. Just like cellphones are springing up in the poorest nations that still can't afford wires. As long as speech software, computer, and communications engineers are striving for improvements, things will head generally in the direction leading up to it.

      As someone who has designed software at that cutting edge, for some of the largest language learning software companies in the world, I can say with some certainty that I need more money. [bovik.org]

      • argument goes like this: terrorism is bred by poverty, and the only way out of poverty is literacy.

        The trouble with this logic it that the predicate isen't even remotely true.

        Almost all acts of terrorism against civilisation has been comitted by people who are above the poverty level - they have the education and means to carry out an attack. Regardless of their angnst of the stupid and poor against civilisation, they can't perpetrate large-scale terrorism. Sure they may kill a tourest now and then with a knife, but getting a dirty bomb together is beyond their means.

        Notice that the IRA, Timothy McVey (sic) and Bin Ladin are are not poor. From experience, most members of the Black Panthers, Neo-Nazi's, Rainbow Push, and Greenpeace are usuually educated and with means. Ususally they are crafty debators, and know how to stay just inside the law. Usually they can mount expensive defences when brought into court.

        I do agree that education is by itself noble, but the kind of education that would strip all will for terrorism, would allso strip the will for independent thought and is unfortunalty really just indoctrination.

        Even mild forms of education indoctrination, like the "politically correct" movement leaves it's followes blindly trusting and easy to manupilate.

        Oh well, I'm just rambeling.

        • The truth of the fact that terrorism is caused by poverty is well established. A few pathological statistical outliers doesn't change the fact. The argument stands.
          • terrorism is caused by poverti is well established

            By who? Chomsky?

            Care to cite staticstics?

            I'll go you one futher -

            What is known, is that *state* sponsered terrorism dwarfs the poverty-caused terrorism you mention, and the middle-class caused terrorism I mentioned.

            Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot have killed over 100 million people - way more than any rag-tag group of poor, or evem people like Bin Ladin.

            The higher up the food chain you go the more effective the killing.

            Sure the poor are pised, but they are ineffective. That's why they're poor - they are either lazy or not in a position of power.

            It's the rich, or the nation states, or the corportation - somthing large, that has the means to kill us all.

            • Yes, I would be glad to cite statistics. Let's start with the World Health Organization's monitoring of the epidemiology of virulent diseases. For example, West Nile virus, a bird full of which was recently found on the white house lawn.

              Sure the poor are pised, but they are ineffective.

              On the contrary, the poor are effective at spreading virulent diseases when they become too poor, whether they want to or not. This is why the Republican party is proposing an expanded medicare drug benefit for seniors. Are they supporting socialization of medical care [pnhp.org]? Of course they are, and if you care about the quality of life measures that most people say they care about, then you can count your lucky library finds and use them to promote sustainable technologies.

              I support the use of economic incentives to encourage the development of educational technologies appropriate for the prevailing circumstances.

              • AFAIK, The West Nile virus is also carried by birds. Are they now terrorists? Just because somehing can be infectious, doesen't meen they are guilty of being a terrorist. As I understood it, terrorism implied intent .

                I don't disagree with you one bit, on the need for education, but just on the concusion that an educatied population is free from terrortst thoughts.

                A good example is Iran - smart and beautifull people, and yet a den of terrorism. Germans are considered smart and yet have been capable of great crimes.

                It will be interesting to see if computing holds its promise for education - unfortunatly I'm a bit jaded and have seen how technology initially helps education but then turnd into edu-taiment in the long run. In the 50' - audio tape was the panacea (Hear wonderfull foreing peoples!), then TV in the 70's (Learn from the best educators), then in the 80's VCR/TV madd it's presence felt (and kids stated getting doses of comercials in school).

                When computers first came on the education scene - they were wonderfull: kid were learning LOGO or BASIC. Now all I see them used for is browsing for porn, and instant messaging. Oh, and somtimes they get used as giant typewriters. If a kid brings a C compiler to school - he's likely to be branded as a hacker/terrorist.

                Computers have gone form a complex tool to be experimented with, to a mostly passive form of media. Hopefully, with cheaper computing this will change again.
                • West Nile virus is also carried by birds. Are they now terrorists?

                  No, but they are poor. The spectrum of animal life includes humans, but not all humans have enough literacy to enable them to provide for the running water, nutrition, and other essential elements of hygine and quality of life. Those elements directly impact the quality of life of the rich. The most direct link is that the illiterate are ineffectively employable (not simply ineffective.) That makes a big difference to the World Bank, for example.

                  If a kid brings a C compiler to school - he's likely to be branded as a hacker/terrorist.

                  The value of tools depends on what the tools are being used for. If a kid brings a powerful speech recognition software development system to school that just happens to include language tools, it is very unlikely that will result in a negative stigma.

                  Computers have gone form a complex tool to be experimented with, to a mostly passive form of media. Hopefully, with cheaper computing this will change again.

                  Bandwidths have been going up in both directions, and computers have allowed outbound bandwidths to more closely match inbound bandwidths. Again, it's what they're used for that really matters.

    • Yes, any with the knowledge the should have learned the first year of bio can make resistant bacteria or splice bacteria. It's not anything that any amount of surveilance, ignorance, indoctrination and fear is going to help with. All that does is make an unpleasant place to live full of ignorant dogmatic highstrung types without removing the actual risk. Perhaps it would even increase the risk.

      Besides, it's lack of knowledge that causes the worst economic damage. Just look at the damage from fire ants, africanized bees, starlings, zebra mussels, elm beetles and so on. Or if you don't like those examples, then look at the TCO at the national and international level for chlorinated hydrocarbons, dioxins, and PCBs or for BSE-friendly agricultural practices. Someone was sloppy, ignorant or decided that rules are for other people and that plus time is all that was needed. Since you cannot remove the technical possibility to cause damage, you can remove the incentive.

      Naively, improving living standards would help. If people are literate, capable of analytical thought, educated, employed, kept healthy, and well fed like an average Finn, then they're less likely to cause trouble and more likely to contribute. I think you can probably find an inverse correlation between quality of life and crime.

  • Legal system (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hackwrench ( 573697 ) <hackwrench@hotmail.com> on Friday July 26, 2002 @02:57PM (#3960852) Homepage Journal
    We have a legal system that can't be understood by the average person, specializing is rampant, and he says that once people start deciding that knowledge should be held by only a few then we are sanctioning ignorance?
    IT'S A LITTLE LATE FOR THAT!

  • as I've said on this site before (Score:5, Funny)

    by drDugan ( 219551 ) on Friday July 26, 2002 @03:03PM (#3960911) Homepage
    as I've said before:

    you can't stop information.

    Maybe we should try to build a world
    where people aren't trying to kill us.

    • Maybe we should try to build a world where people aren't trying to kill us.

      Science will lead to the solution of this problem, as of all others.

      Eventually, we should be able to develop techniques in genetic engineering, pharmacology, and cybernetics that will allow us to eliminate tendencies toward homicidal behavior.

      While we're at it, let's excise other antisocial behavior traits as well.

      Resistance is futile.

    • Maybe we should try to build a world
      where people aren't trying to kill us.

      Hear [cmu.edu], hear! [bovik.org]

    • you can't stop information.

      Yes you can; it's been done before. In many cases, keeping a secret is much easier than the problems the information's misuse can cause. Some things should be kept secret, and world is a better place for it. By keeping the way to create VX a secret (for example), there is a greatly reduced chance of it being used. I don't have to worry about keeping chemical warfare gear and toxin antidotes on my person at all times.

      Oklahoma City and Sept. 11 were extremely localized in scope. A small geographic area was affected. I doubt that the synthesis of VX is much more complicated if you know the secret than these acts. Thank God Iraq couldn't find the way to make VX (they abandoned the program in '1989).

      If they did, we would have a far greater problem on our hands; a few well-placed aerosol cans could depopulate a city. And how do you protect from that? Nuke Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and every other country with ties to al-queda? How many innocents would that claim? Would it solve anything?

      Sorry-- but the way to solve the problem is to prevent it from happening. Don't spread the information by publishing it. Destroy all records of the existence of the information, and of the information itself. Inform and 'convert' all who know and can reproduce the information of the real (and dire) dangers that can arise should the secret get out. And, barring that-- and for all of the coldness involved, kill or otherwise silence the people involved who can reproduce or easily re-research even parts of the information from their memory.

      One thing is a guaranteed fact: If 'sensitive' information is easily available, it will eventually be misused. And many bits of information, when misused, end catastrophically. And it'll always be easier to destroy than create; entropy doesn't help to order/organize anything.

      There is no acceptable choice-- either:

      murder a few brilliant scientists who is guilty only of finding (even unintentionally) a dangerous bit of information.

      or

      watch thousands or millions of other perfectly innocent people murdered because of the information's misuse.

      It's a hard choice, but a good government tries to serve the greatest number of people; not its most talented people.

      Maybe we should try to build a world where people aren't trying to kill us.

      If you want to go that route, Stalin and Mao had the right idea. Just kill all of your ideological and social opponents.

      So did George Orwell-- the "Thought Police" is a work of sheer brilliance.

      So how many people have to die or be 'conditioned' before that becomes a real possibility? Our focus is not the problem; we've had the same kind of societal problems (if not the exact same problems) for all of recorded history.

      Most of us prefer to have our own thoughts, ideals, and moralities. And, unsurprisingly, we often disagree. There are always a few people who believe so strongly that they will die for their belief-- they'll lie to themselves, kill, mangle, and destroy for that belief.

  • Isn't that a little shrill? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tm2b ( 42473 ) on Friday July 26, 2002 @03:04PM (#3960913) Journal
    Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of the principle of academic freedom and the free exchange of information. But.

    The fact is that some information, maybe not now but in the forseeable future, will be dangerous enough for one fanatic or lunatic to kill a very large number of people.

    We're going to have to have a long, reasoned conversation about how to deal with this fact, and cries of "we're sanctioning ignorance" are just as unhelpful as cries of "think of the children!"

    This doesn't mean that I'm happy with the way this administration is likely to approach this issue - I think it would be very good for the academic community to come up with a unified approach on this topic before a purely political solution is imposed.

    Bottom line: yes, I'd like people to be ignorant of how to (for instance) engineer aerosol Ebola in their basements.
    • Bottom line: yes, I'd like people to be ignorant of how to (for instance) engineer aerosol Ebola in their basements.
      As nice a fantasy as this is, the reality is that I can already download The Anarchist's Cookbook to learn about conventional terrorist tactics. It's almost a certainty that biological terrorist tactics will similarly be available in the near future--and the dangerous-type people you're trying to keep it away from are the first people that will get past the ways you have of trying to keep them ignorant. You can't defeat the flow of information. Here's where the question lies--do you try, by keeping research with potential terrorist applications out of scientific journals? I'll let others debate that for now, since I don't have the answer, or a solid opinion for that matter.
      • The problem with this debate is that people keep trying to frame it in terms of absolutes. Yes, of course it's impossible with a human society to completely stifle the flow of particular information to "appropriate people," no matter how you define them.

        The question is, though, how difficult do you want to make it? Do you want every loon who wants this information to be able to get it, or do you want people to have to work a bit to get it?

        The thing is, the harder it is to get, the fewer people will actually expend the effort to get it. Some information should take a lot of work to get, and for some of that information, the cost-benefit analysis says that it's worth expending a lot of effort to raise that difficulty as far as possible.

        I am, by the way, a card carrying member of the ACLU. I'm just not a blind follower of absolutes.
        • I understand where you're coming from, but lets say we raise the bar on accessing the information. At what point is the bar high enough that an extremist says "Golly... it's just not worth it, I think I'll just head home"?

          If you're thinking from the point of view of the average couch-potato anarchist who gets a stiffy from downloading factually incorrect information then it doesn't need to be very high. If you're an extremist, with an agenda, and part of that agenda involves murder then I don't think that you can raise the bar high enough to both protect us from threats and allow scientific research to carry on.

          There's also the problem of the way scientific minds work, or at least good ones. You can withhold a piece of information, B, but from the other pieces of information A, C and D, an expert in the field can work out B.

          Perhaps you could buy yourself time before an enemy knows B, but you won't prevent its eventual discovery. There are great minds outside of the U.S., and there are great minds in the U.S. that for various reasons might disclose the information regardless of prohibitions against it.
          • Another issue is when you withhold information nugget 'B', it delays development. Additional time/money/resources are wasted in other areas of legitimate research rediscovering the already known but censored information 'B'.
            • The only problem with the argument is that the world doesn't have a well-organized research structure; concurrent development of a technology without any sharing of information is a reality. Leibnitz and Newton both developed calculus around the same time, independantly of each other. (Both methods work fine, but are *very* different.)

              So, to be honest, a fair amount of the time, the exact same technology is researched at the same time, completely independant of each other; the discovery is literally made twice before anything is published. It's also paid for twice. That doesn't mean that there was waste involved.

              Frankly, I can deal with slower development of some technologies if its censorship increases my personal safety. This is espescially true in the case of leathal chemical agents, or deadly (but uncommon) bioagents such as ebola or anthrax.
              • While Newton/Liebnitz is an excellent example of concurrent development, it was 350 years ago. Communication technology has been vastly improved. Why cripple legitimate technological development? There is no predicting what will be the next 'important' area.

                An additional factor to consider is that delaying the development of these technologies may delay cures and counter-measures against such agents.
                • Another factor delayed by censorship of research is semi-public knowledge, among academics, that such terrorist methods/technologies exist, which cuts back on the demand for defenses against them. A small concern but a concern nonetheless.
                • The problem is that in many cases, the counter-measure, while being released far sooner (perhaps even decades), can very easily come too late.

                  What good is a countermeasure / vacciene / cure to a deadly virus, if because of that little tidbit being published openly, terrorists were able to infect and kill a few hundred thousand?

                  It doesn't matter that the countermeasure came out sooner because of the publication. The countermeausre would not have been necessary to begin with. The disease would have remained a 'niche' disease contained to a small geographical area, and a small population. But with premature publication, the disease was easily modified into a weapon; and used before a countermeasure existed. It is still too late for the dead or dying by the time the countermeasure is developed.

                  If by witholding the information, lives can be saved... it's worth the extra time. Even if it saves only one life, it's worth the extra time.

                  It is like the close watch the nuclear countries have over non-nuclear countries (but who have fission reactors for electricity). We still have no countermeasure against a nuclear bomb in a city. But if we can keep any more bombs from being made, there is a greatly reduced chance of a bomb ever detonating in a city.
    • I'm gonna cancel my subscription. Besides, Mr. Postman from operation TIPS was bound to get suspicious of me anyhow.
    • Science journals usually only publish basic research. I think it's highly unlikely that any basic research could be used to harm anyone. For example, I have a basic understanding of nuclear fission and if I wanted to make a trip to the library, I could learn a lot more theoretical information about it. However, knowledge of nuclear fission in no way enables me to make a bomb. Engineers are the ones that make science into something that could potentially be dangerous or usefull. Engineers rarely publish due to the ecomonic benifits of selling their products. It's the engineers that made the bomb, not the scientists. And the engineers had to work incredibly hard to put such information to use.
      • Engineers often publish. Go to any engineering library and look up the engineering periodicals. Electrical engineering alone must have thousands of publications through the IEEE. I subscribe to 9 or so, there are very exact details of electronic circuits, signal processing algorithms, algorithms for circuit design, algorithms for logic minimization etc.

        Other fields have similar organizations that they publish to, I'm just most familiar with IEEE and specifically circuit design.
  • I don't want to be rude, but the twin towers went down with very little cience. What do they want to hide?
    • That depends on the way you look at it now, doesn't it.

      Two possible views:

      View A) Science allowed the investigation of lift, drag, jet propultion, fuel manufacture, and the building's design itself. This type of view would be the "new" view when it comes to censoring information. CAN this be used to harm us in the future. I don't agree with it.. you can kill someone with a hammer or a nailgun. My point? Pretty much anything can be dangerous in the right context. Stay Puft Marshmellow, anyone?

      View B) The terrorists flew an airplane into a building. Terrorists bad, shoot on sight, yada, yada..

      • I don't think you can ban knowledge or information. In case you can, you can allways find a way to explode all. If you ban hammers, I still can break your head with a stone.
        what's the meaning of ban science?
  • Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

  • come on (Score:2, Interesting)

    by tps12 ( 105590 )
    There's no reason to make this into more than it is. So a few patriotic scientists realize they're research could be destructive to mankind...isn't this a good thing? It's basically the kind of rational decision making that never happens at the beginning of science fiction movies.

    We've all seen the dire predictions of what happens when technology "goes too far." 2001: A Space Odyssey, Godzilla, Jaws, Minority Report, the list goes on. So the handful of scientists who are researching the potentially dangerous stuff say, oh, okay, maybe we shouldn't be doing this stuff that might fall into the wrong hands, and you're complaining? Please.

    The vast majority of scientists are working on good, useful technology and research, like cures for exotic diseases and inventions that will improve life for all. The few who are meddling where God did not intend are right to have second thoughts.
    • You're right that some scientific research can be used for very bad things, but often the same technology can be both beneficial and harmful depending on how it's used.

      On another note, I think the high cost and skill required to use such information to actually make something destructive, such as nerve gas or a biological agent, should prevent some disgruntled teenager from wiping out whole cities because his girlfriend dumped him. I can believe that a country like Iraq has the resources to do this, or possibly even a large terrorist organization, but we probably can't keep the information out of their hands no matter how hard we try. The materials they need, on the other hand, are much easier to control, and that's where I think we need to concentrate.

      Now I hope you'll forgive me for going off topic, but have you seen Jaws? How did technology go too far in that movie? The shark was an implausibly large but completely natural creature.

    • So a few patriotic scientists realize they're research could be destructive to mankind...isn't this a good thing?

      If you weren't a troll (argument by appealing to sci-fi movies should have its own moderation category) and had bothered to read the article, you would note that the research in question is directed at *detecting* bioagents, such as those a terrorist might spread. (The concern is that this might make it easier to generate of bioagents that don't trip the sensors.) No secrets Man Was Not Meant To Know are involved.
  • "I know this guy that has magic powder. He puts it in a stick and kills things from far away!"
    Man has been out to dominate man for centuries.

  • National Security (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AnalogBoy ( 51094 ) on Friday July 26, 2002 @03:30PM (#3961137) Journal
    IMHO,

    The nation was secure enough before this crap happened. Terrorism is going to happen one way or another.. What's that quote about tightening your grip on water?

    This discussion on "National/Homeland Security" scares the bejeezus out of me normally.. And now we're discussing CENSORING INFORMATION!?

    McCarthyism 2.0: Attack of the Republicans.

    • Re:National Security (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      McCarthyism 2.0: Attack of the Republicans.

      So not one Democrat voted for the Patriot Act? They're just totally free of any blame whatsoever with the war on terrorism? I see. Interesting position, and totally hypocritical, as usual.

      Also, read the fucking article nimrod. It's about self-censorship, not government run forced censorship. In fact, this has been an ethical issue for scientists since the beginning. Dumbass.

  • Open Source (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TamMan2000 ( 578899 ) on Friday July 26, 2002 @03:38PM (#3961220) Journal
    This is exactly like the open source software!

    If the information is free and available, then anyone can read it and think about it and make a contribution. If it is not, the weekneses are known to a small subset of society who has less motivation to do something to solve the problem (think about treatments and cures), they also become more valueble to those who would do wrong, and could be kidnapped or bribed.

    So what is safer, Windows, or *nix?

    I think the answer is that we NEED to have this informaition published. Anything else endangers us, and inhibits the progress of knowledge.

    • Re:Open Source (Score:1, Troll)

      by Otter ( 3800 )
      If the information is free and available, then anyone can read it and think about it and make a contribution. If it is not, the weekneses are known to a small subset of society who has less motivation to do something to solve the problem....I think the answer is that we NEED to have this informaition published. Anything else endangers us, and inhibits the progress of knowledge.

      Virtually all scientific research (including industry research, eventually) is published? Do you see everyone reading the latest Journal of Cell Biology and contibuting? Is the ability to contribute going to be diminished if 0.0001% of research is deemed too sensitive to publish?

      Contribution to open source software is far less than the hype suggests. How much good is giving you the latest 3D structure data of the Marburg virus receptor going to do society? I have misgivings about this censorship policy, but realistically the people who can usefully contribute will be able to get the information. Given how many people don't know the earth goes around the sun, I can't share the submitter's concern that democracy hangs on the public's access to the latest Ebola research.

  • Couldn't you just read your own page before posting a story that someone submitted?

    Not that I'm complaining... I do read slashdot for free every day. :P

    Check this out:
    Posted by michael on 07-26-02 01:14 PM
    from the ain't-room-in-this-town-for-the-two-of-you dept.
    That's just some creepy deja vu, considering that Michael posted both stories about 20 minutes apart.

    Here's a link:
    http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/2 6/2030225&mode=nested&tid=134 [slashdot.org]

    • The best part is that the other, earlier, story has just one post, and it's a -1, Offtopic "FP". LOL! Here we have proof that not only do the /. "editors" not read Slashdot, the readers don't either.

      What is Michael smoking, and where can I get some?

  • I urge everyone who is concerned about the free and open exchange of scientific information to e-mail Dr. Atlas [louisville.edu]. This is a bad trend to start. Once we do start censoring ourselves, it's much easier to continue doing so.

  • Ridiculous (Score:1, Troll)

    by dh003i ( 203189 )
    This is the dumbest thing I've heard.

    Do you really think that the avg. Palistinian terrorists -- who probably has a below average IQ -- is browing through the latest issue of Virulogoy to find lethal information?

    Come on. That's nuts.

    We should not allow scientists to with-hold data. The whole point of publishing is that the work be reproducible, verifiable.

    I'm sorry, but if you publish something that is missing key details necessary for reproducibility -- due to national security or not -- that is crap. Its worthless. No one knows how you did it or how to get a similar result, so it can't be verified. Might as well not be published at all.

    I have another suggestion for these journals. If some prissy scientist wants to "with-hold key information due to national security" then don't put them in your journal. Its a waste of space which could be devoted to reproducible work.

    And remember the definition of security. Security means that even if you know exactly how something works, you can't penetrate it. If you know how it works and you can penetrate it, that means there is a weakness. For example, Zimmerman knows exactly how PGP works; but he cannot break it.

    • Uhh.... do you think Palestineans are really the only (or even the most) worrisome group out there? Please, they are the least of the worries out there, they are only effective because of how desperate they are.

      Four words: Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols.

      Two more: Operation Rescue.

      Do you know about the Weathermen in the 60s?

      How about AUM Shinrikyo, the doomsday cultists who used Sarin gas in the Tokyo subways?

      My point is that impoverished desperate people are not the only ones who do stupid, incredibly destructive things with any means at their disposal.
  • If you look over the past 100 years, to see where technology was used to further mass killing and suffering, the "terrorists" aren't even a blip on the radar. Even Sept 11th was pretty minor compared to all but the smallest of wars.

    You'd think scientists would be more concerned with preventing their work being used for another Nazi hollocaust, the nuking of civillian populations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the repression of millions under Stalin.

    Or maybe they've already given up hope and figure it would be better their work is used by the next Hitler to kill millions than by the next Bin Laden to kill thousands.

  • OK. Let's run through a quick scenario to demonstrate what is wrong with only allowing a few people to have a certain piece of dangerous knowledge.

    If you withhold knowledge:

    1. The discoverers keep the knowledge for themselves
    2. They can use it with impunity
    3. It has a devastating effect, since no one else has enough knowledge to develop a defence for it

    If knowledge is in the public domain:

    1. The discoverers distribute the knowledge to anyone who asks
    2. Anyone can use it with impunity
    3. However, the effects are greatly lessened, since everyone knows about the danger and knows what steps to take to reduce/eliminate it.

    If you keep dangerous information secret, then it can be abused by a group of individuals much more readily. If everyone knows about something dangerous, then they can take precautions to prevent it (and those who are stupid enough not to will get hurt).

  • There is no such thing as 'secret information', only 'deniable information'. You can hide technical specs from someone, but not concepts. Given this, it is possible for anyone with a strong enough will, and resources, to figure it out.

    If you consider the number of physical possibilities of 'things' that could exsist in our four dimensional universe, there is nothing that isn't contained in our Euclidian plane of knowledge. Everything can and probably has been imagined. There is numerous 'conspiracy theories' and alleged government projects, that in reality, aren't all that surprising. Actually, all secrets are probably out there in the public domain someware. However, if you don't know it is a secret, what signifigance does the data possess.

    If someone is smart enough, and knows enough about what they're doing to understand the signifigance of so called 'secret information', then it's probably not a secret to them. Unless they are publishing specific recipes and how-tos in these journals, then I doubt it has much strategic usefullness to someone whom is determined.

    I think as long as they don't go publishing articles such as "Biological weapons you can make for under $50", or "Chemical warfare with garden chemicals for dummies", then we will probably be okay. You must remember, the information is out there, somewhere. It is only considered secret because it is not readily accessable to the public. I personally think an unknown, unexpected threat is much more dangerous than one that is widely known and prepared for. Look at the smallpox situation, the top officials are afraid, that something even as tightly controlled as smallpox, could leak. So do you really think information wouldn't leak?

  • What I'm wondering is why our scientists are looking into bio-terrorism methods? Maybe we're trying to do a "Mutual Assured Destruction" plan with the terrorists....

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