About The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work
| Authors | Rogaway, Phillip |
|---|---|
| Date | 2015 |
| Publication | IACR Distinguished Lecture |
| URL | https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/papers/moral-fn.pdf |
Type: Journal Article
Tags: cryptography, Einstein, Ethics, Humanity, justice, morality, Peace, politics, power, privacy, responsibility, Russell, Science, surveillance, Technology, warfare
Abstract
Cryptography rearranges power: it configures who can do what, from what. This makes cryptography an inherently political tool, and it confers on the field an intrinsically moral dimension. The Snowden revelations motivate a reassessment of the political and moral positioning of cryptography. They lead one to ask if our inability to effectively address mass surveillance constitutes a failure of our field. The author believes that it does. He calls for a community-wide effort to develop more effective means to resist mass surveillance and pleads for a reinvention of a disciplinary culture to attend not only to puzzles and math, but, also, to the societal implications of cryptographic work. [A]