Snowden

I initially thought Edward Snowden was a traitor. It started because I didn't think that recording the metadata of phone calls was that bad. I had a belief that the government just wouldn't do anything bad with it; "big brother" arguments were all fiction. What harm would the government try, anyways? Target protesters? This is America, not a totalitarian state, I haven't really ever heard the government denounce protesters before. They seem to respond "Well Ok I guess people care about that, time to make that a priority."

Over the last few years, though, I've revised those ideas. Better to make it impossible for the government to collect such data; if the data can be abused to better the government at the expense of the people, it probably will be, eventually. Rather than trust the people of the government to do the right thing, we should create a system where it is impossible for them to do the wrong thing.

I've also mostly decided that the collections the NSA were doing went too far. What remains more troubling to me, however, is their loose interpretation of Section 215 and the fact that Congress was not properly aware of the situation. That seems dangerous to me; the executive branch gaining too much power because it refused to inform the others.

So in that sense, Snowden was justified. The NSA was collecting a level of data that I think was too much, and on top of that they were collecting it illegally and without the consent of the legislative branch of government.

However, Snowden diluted this story with some major missteps. Instead of leaking only information pertaining to the phone metadata, he dumped millions of documents on the media. He went to the media before he went to Congress. He also fled the country to seek asylum in China and Russia.

He leaked too much data. There was too much information there to make a lasting story. The phone records information stuck, but also got somewhat lost in a debate over the rest of it. There were less impactful surveillance schemes that were probably wrong but distracted and diluted the main message. Foreign surveillance information was also outed in these documents, detailing U.S. spying on adversaries and allies alike. This caused real harm to U.S. relations, and drew attention away from the phone records story and more attention to Snowden being a traitor.

He gave the information to the media. The idea was they would be less biased in what to show and what to keep secret, but (as the "Yes, Edward Snowden is a Traitor" article put it) "society has not appointed journalists or newspaper editors to decide these matters, nor are they qualified to do so." They're top priority is not the public welfare, but selling news. They held some items back, but arguably published more than they should have, and also improperly redacted items in some cases. Also, there was information too secret to report. That information now rests on the media's less secure servers, and was read by reporters without security clearance.

He fled the country. Some people have labelled him a coward for this, for breaking a law but not sticking around to try to prove himself justified; for not facing the consequences of his actions. I'm not sure where I stand on this; it's easy to criticize someone for not sacrificing themselves, but then again would I decide to go to jail as a traitor? I'm not sure. However, there is a tradition of people who knowingly break the law (e.g. flag burning) or whistleblow against their companies (e.g. Roger Boisjoly) and accept the consequences. This seems to fly in the face of that tradition.

Also, he carried sensitive U.S. information to adversaries who have complete control over him. For example, Russia could easily pressure him to reveal government secrets; if he doesn't talk, they can extradite him.

In summary, what he did was obviously illegal and partially unethical. There were malicious secrets kept from the American public as well as a lack of Congressional oversight. It was ethical to reveal these, regarding the collection of phone metadata. However, the three main points outlined above were not ethical; ideally he should have leaked much less data, sent it to Congress instead of the media, and remained in the country to try to prove himself in court.

Do the benefits outweigh the harms done to the American public? Hard to say. One article mentions that being aware of possible NSA surveillance probably spurred tech companies to encrypt more of their users' data, trying to avoid a "big brother" scenario. Americans were more aware of the possibilities of espionage, but a Pew survey showed that not many people overall thought worse of the NSA. Laws were eventually passed to forbid the NSA from collecting phone metadata, but the rest of the Patriot Act remained in effect. And there were real harms in terms of relationships with allies. And maybe terrorists will be more careful about how they communicate, but I find it difficult to imagine they weren't careful before. All in all, I think it's about a wash as far as the public well-being goes, but it's really hard to tell.

Personally, the whole discussion has made me more aware of government surveillance. I went from the idea that "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" to a much more cautious "We really shouldn't give the government something it could abuse in the future."

Hidden Figures Podcast Reflection

First off: We made a podcast! Recording it was much easier and fun than I expected, and I didn't hate the sound of my own voice. Which was a strange experience, because I used to abhor recordings of myself. Editing it was much harder. Conversations that I thought were really coherent weren't. I wound up putting in little bloops for when the conversation switched significantly (and I cut out a bunch of stuff in between), but I'm not sure that was the right decision. It was really fun to edit but took a lot more time than I expected. Overall, it was a great experience.

Moving on to the meet of the response:

The main obstacles women and minorities face are established groups that are prejudiced against hiring and advancing them. Also, the general society they grow up in may implicitly or explicitly try to teach them that STEM is a men's world, so they are discouraged from being interested. 

One reason this might be so challenging to break is that engineers hire other engineers that look and think like them with rigorous technical interviews that accidentally maximize People Like Us bias. (I've covered this extensively in a previous blog post).

I don't think famous role models are important. I don't think I ever had one. The Mythbusters would be about the closest I ever had to a popular role model. However, my dad was much more important. He works in Computer Science, and he would discuss work at the dinner table once in a while. I never really understood what was going on (I distinctly remember a conversation where I had no idea why a computer would need a "clock cycle"), but he was interested in his work and seemed to like it. Even if I couldn't understand the problems, they sounded intriguing, and so did his process for solving them.
So I don't think popular role models have as much of an effect as people seem to think - at least, not to me. I think what's more important is someone close to you to encourage you to try out the field. Also, now that I think of it, when I was trying to decide between joining Science or Engineering, both my parents pushed towards engineering, since that's what they did. So they must have had a significant impact on everything else in my life that helped guide me to choose STEM.

Challenger

(Note: writing this as a blog is still weird. I feel like I need to say: "I know the Challenger is a random topic but I have to for a class" despite the fact that I know that only the professor and TAs will ever read this. Oh well. blogs.)

So, the Challenger disaster. I only recently learned that engineers were against the launch before it happened. I knew that the O-rings failed, but I didn't realize that it was so predictable that they would fail.

What were the root causes? Some of the articles made it sound like all the engineers were clamoring for the launch to stop, but management refused to listen to them. I think it was more subtle than that. It sounds like there were a lot of communication problems, and at least two different parties involved (NASA and Morton Thiokol). Also, in hindsight, engineers complaining about the part that caused the disaster seems ominous, but at the time, it was an O-ring. One of thousands of parts to an incredibly complicated rocket. How do you weight part one has a significant problem and which one is engineers needlessly fretting? Basically, management weren't incompetent idiots. I'd wager they were weighing many different possibilities, and the O-rings didn't strike them as particularly dangerous.

But that's not to say there weren't problems. That shuttle never should have launched. It sounds like there needed to be clearer communication. Someone refused to sign off on the launch. That sounds like a huge red flag, but it was ignored; his boss signed off.  The engineers had data, but didn't represent it convincingly. When they brought up arguments, they were quickly dismissed. I think the managers were allowed to get into a structure of groupthink. They too quickly disregarded the views of their underlings, and were probably too focused on not delaying a heavily watched launch, messing with the schedules of millions of viewers and the first civilian astronaut. I think the root cause was the system; there needed to be an established way for a concerned engineer to attempt to block the launch. If she/he is willing to go through that much trouble, something must be wrong, and the arguments should be heard.

Roger Boisjoly is an interesting case. He didn't share his concerns with the public beforehand, but did in the investigation afterwards, which technically isn't whistleblowing since it's after-the-fact. I still think he was justified, though. The public needed to know about NASA's flawed system, so that NASA would be motivated to fix it. It was more whistleblowing about managers ignoring data than whistleblowing about the accident itself, and ignoring warnings is a serious problem.

However, this additional oversight didn't happen. In 2003, Columbia disintegrated. Why? Maybe the story of Roger Boisjoly didn't become popular enough; everyone only remembered the O-rings. Maybe the company's retaliation worked, and discouraged other engineers from speaking out with their concerns again. I think the retaliation is the worst part of this all. The public (and the government) needed to know that warning signs were ignored, so they would be heeded in the future. Punishing him was counterproductive.

Also, whistleblowing is worth it, even if it destroys your career. Doing so has the chance to save lives or benefit society while damaging the company you work for. That can get you fired and make it difficult to hire you, but keeping quiet is unethical.

Diversity

I think the general lack of diversity in the computer science industry is an issue that needs to be addressed. What's the best way to address it? Hell if I know. But it's a thing, and I don't think should be.

Focusing on gender, some articles have addressed the idea that on average males are better suited to the more engineering-y fields for various reasons. I think this carries some weight, but I think it only explains a small part of the gap. (Also, on-average is key here. As Hari Seldon would say, statistics and Psychohistory cannot predict the thoughts or actions of individuals. -Asimov's Foundation reference.)

I think the larger factor here, however, is unintentional discrimination. Some evidence for this: the number of women in computer science has been declining. That suggests non-evolutionary reasons (unless we're devolving really, really fast...somehow).

I think this discrimination explains a large part of the diversity gap, too. We've read before about how the computer science giants "hire only the most perfect-est hire imaginable. Ditch 100 perfect ones for the one that is even better." But that tends to maximize for unintentional bias. You want to hire the guy you really connect with, which basically means you're much more likely to hire someone very similar to your culture. So if you're a white male you wind up hiring other white males because of People Like Us syndrome.

Another factor might be access to computers. Colleges assume you know your way around a computer already. Can you imagine asking basic Windows questions in a fundamentals of computing course? "What's a file? What do you mean by 'double click'? Control-what-delete?" I'm sure there are lots of other skills about using a computer that I just take for granted, since I've had one all my life. Typing takes time to learn. Is moving the mouse intuitive, or does it take a while to master? I honestly don't remember. But those are the basics. There have to be thousands of things you can only learn through practice and familiarity.

Lower income students are less likely to have had time to get familiar with computers, so they're already at a disadvantage in the field. According to the "When Women Stopped Coding" article, girls get less access to computers than boys do, even if they display interest. Also, it seems like companies expect you to have been coding since you were a child. That's really difficult if you're sharing a single computer among a family.

So the culture of the people making hiring decisions and economic status have an over-sized effect on diversity in the computer science industry. The first because "only hiring the best" accidentally creates a focus on hidden biases, and the second because access to your own computer could be critical for developing your skills early on.

So what should be done about the situation? I don't know. Blind interviews have been suggested to try to eliminate some forms of bias. I think it goes without saying that Breitbart's idea of a cap was terrible. Harvey Mudd seems to be doing a good job encouraging women to pick up the field by making it more interesting and accessible to them, especially if they aren't as familiar with computers.

This isn't the just state of affairs; change is required to even the playing field.

Immigration

Alright, a general disclaimer here: I don't know what I'm talking about. I will happily defer questions of immigration to experts in the field.

That being said, I have some extremely controversial thoughts on immigration in general. Mainly, I don't really see why it should be limited at all. Side note: My job isn't directly impacted by immigration (yet), nor has immigration directly impacted someone that I know. So I'm coming from a very privileged standpoint here.

That being said, my thought has always been, if there's someone out there willing to do your job for cheaper, let them. I mean if it's you, it sucks that you lose your job, but if you don't lose it, you're perpetuating an injustice. You're taking that job from someone else who is more desperate for work than you are. Denying work to immigrants in general is giving privilege to Americans for no right other than being born in America.

But I've had this discussion before, and it seems like that's just what nations are supposed to do, make their own population better at the expense of others. And so paying its own workers more for labor than those of foreign countries is just part of being a nation.

Only allowing a certain number of immigrants in is valuing citizens more just for being citizens. Again, I guess this is the point of nation-states, but I feel like it doesn't get explained that way very often, and I kinda disagree with it (While reaping all the benefits from it at the same time). I just can't think of a good reason why someone who wants to come here and be productive shouldn't be allowed to. I mean they "take jobs away" but don't they also buy things? Does increasing the population necessarily decrease jobs for everyone? I would think the increase in population would also increase the number of jobs.

Maybe here, finally, is where we get to the heart of the matter. Maybe most immigrants are low-skilled workers. IF that is the case, then allowing unlimited immigrants would create a higher proportion of low-skill low-paying workers, which I think isn't great for an economy. (There are quite a few "if"s and "I think"s in that bit...)

So the H-1B program was created, to try to lure only high-skilled workers. High-skilled workers make more money and buy more things, which generates more wealth overall? Although reading that sentence again just sounds like trickle-down economics...I'm going to say that in general, a larger proportion of your population being high-skilled workers is probably a good idea, and acknowledge that I'm way out of my league here.

So what's the point? Basically, America wants to maximize the well-being of its citizens, at the expense of others. (I think this is just what nation-states do). So it limits immigration to avoid getting too many low-skilled workers. However, it would like to "brain drain" other nations, stealing their best and brightest, also in this line of reasoning H-1B was created. It seems likely that companies have recently been exploiting the H-1B process to hire unskilled labor, however. So I would argue that, although the H-1B process does a good thing overall, the requirements should be made stricter.