begin
ADBARRASSMENT

When taking the latest issue of XRDS out of our postboxes, and spotting the full-paged job advertisement of the NSA on the back, we were nonplussed. Having seen this ad for two issues now, t wo questions arise, which we would love to get answered by the editors of

XRDS.

During the last year, the NSA has gotten a lot of attention through the unveilings enabled by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. They do not only provide evidence for the fact that the NSA is slowing down scientific progress by keeping their employees from publishing, but also that it actively sabotages parts of the security community by manipulating the competition for cryptographic algorithms and random number generators to push for weaker algorithms that offer an advantage for the NSA when eavesdropping communication. Should such an organization be given a hiring platform in a young academics journal?

The second question is
a much more personal one:
Is the ACM the right society
for us? Should we really
bear the embarrassment
of a scientific society
promoting a U.S. agency
positioned against us and
thus giving us the same
feeling as President Obama
gave us when claiming non-
U.S. citizens have no privacy
rights by U.S. law or the
CBP [Customs and Border
Protection] people give us
every time we enter the
U.S.—“You are not welcome
and we do not care for you?”
We think one of the
greatest opportunities one
has as a Ph.D. student is
the chance to meet and
work with researchers
around the world. You
can learn a lot from that,
e.g. how others approach
problems, organize their
life, and how cultural
differences influence them
and their research. It is a
great source of inspiration
and an enabler for
collaboration and [your]
future career, because
it makes you aware of
lots of things you most
certainly overlook when
staying home. It opens
many doors to smart
people and has the nice
side effect of seeing great
spots throughout the
world. But to get started
with this, one needs to feel
welcome first. As feeling
welcome was exactly what
we experienced during
the ACM conferences we
visited, the message we
are getting from the NSA
ad is in great contrast to
this and the openness
we perceived. We hope
for an answer clarifying
our current cognitive
dissonance regarding
that issue.

Sincerely,

Philipp S. Schmidt
and Theresa Enghardt,
Technische Universität
Berlin

Ho w to contact XRDS: Send a letter to the editors or other feedback by email (xrds@acm.
org), on Facebook by posting on our group page (https:// www.facebook.com/acm XRDS),
via Twitter by using #xrds in any message, or by post to ACM Attn: XRDS, 2 Penn Plaza,
Suite 701, New York, New York 10121, U. S. P h
o
t
o
g
r
a
p
h
b
y
H
e
i
k
o
K
u
e
v
e
r
l
i
n
g