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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 tha
by ropman76 11y ago
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.
- dvanduzer 11y agoThere is a clear distinction between a moral responsibility and a legal liability. The moral duties of scientists versus policy makers have little to do with the moral separation between idea and implementation.
- shkkmo 11y agoAre you arguing that the scientists who developed the first atomic bomb share no moral responsibility for the (positive or negative) effects of its use? Dr. Rogeway is morally responsible both for the use of his encryption for cyber ransom and for the use of his encryption to allow private democratic and economic discourse. If you think the negative effects of publicly available encryption outweigh the positive effects, it would be immoral to be working on making better encryption publicly available. Obviously, there is a complicated moral calculus behind which effects are foreseeable/likely relative to your other available actions and their foreseeable/likely effects.