Why Saying No to the NSA
is a Slippery Slope
As the Publisher of XRDS, most of what I do in relation to the magazine is behind the scenes, but from
time to time I have the opportunity to step into the
spotlight and express my
opinions on topics of interest to our readership and
community.
In this issue, I have been
asked by XRDS’ co-Editors-In-Chief, Inbal Talgam and
Sean Follmer, to talk about
ACM’s advertising policy
and in particular why ACM
has chosen to accept advertising from the National
Security Agency (NSA). This
request came partially as a
result of an email written by
members of the computer
science community, Philipp
Schmidt and Theresa Enghardt, entitled “
ADbarrassment,” which appears in
this issue. Philipp and Theresa share their perspectives on the NSA, personal
experiences as members of
the international computer
science community, and the
role scientific societies, such
as ACM, should play in relation to the NSA and similar
organizations.
In preparing to write
this editorial, I did a quick
Google search and found an
interesting article entitled
“Mathematician Spies,”
published in the New Scientist, which makes an impas-
sioned plea to mathematicians to stop working for
and with the NSA. I also
found other articles, such as
David Welna’s “What’s The
NSA Doing Now? Training
More Cyberwarriors,” written on behalf of NPR, which
talks about recruiting computer scientists at the NSA
in the post-Snowden era.
One interesting fact I was
not aware of is that the NSA
is one of the largest employers of mathematicians and
computer scientists in the
United States and the world,
and the practical implications of this scandal for the
NSA as an employer are undoubtedly quite significant,
regardless of one’s personal opinions about the
Snowden case.
Whatever your personal
opinions about the morality of Snowden’s whistle-blowing or the legality of
the NSA’s clandestine activities may be, the NSA is
a large and active employer
of computing professionals
in our industry; manages
their recruiting programs
and policies in what appears to be a highly professional and ethical manner;
and appears to recruit, hire,
and develop a highly skilled
and diverse workforce from
around the world without
discriminating based on
age, gender, ethnicity, race,
religion, or sexual orienta-
tion. They do so through legitimate channels, utilizing
university recruitment programs, paid advertisements
that showcase opportunities for employment, public
job boards, and other commonly utilized channels for
recruiting and hiring members of the computer science
community.
While many are now
questioning some of the
NSA’s methods and programs, and have every right
to do so, it should be up to
members of our community to decide for themselves
whether the NSA would be
a desirable employer or an
organization to boycott. I
suspect some will feel as
Schmidt and Enghardt do,
while others will not, but is
it the role of scientific societies, such as ACM, to make
this choice for readers by
refusing to publish adver-
tisements for the NSA or
other organizations accused
of acting inappropriately?
And, if we did play this role,
what are the practical implications of this for ACM and
the computing community
at large?
ACM is not a political
organization; it is rather a
member organization that
exists to serve the international computer science
community, consisting primarily of students, researchers, educators, and practitioners from around the world.
Less than 50 percent of our
membership is currently
from the United States and
while we are a U.S.-based
501(c) 3 non-profit organization, we do not take political
positions or engage in political lobbying activities, even
though many of our members and volunteers do have
strong opinions on a wide
range of political issues.
One of the nice things
about working at ACM is we
are not in any way financially dependent on advertising
as a source of revenue. In
fact, advertising makes up
less than 2 percent of ACM’s
total income as an organization and the paid advertising from the NSA makes up
a very small fraction of that
already small number. Most
of our advertising is focused
on providing career opportunities to members of the
XRDS • SUMMER 2014 • VOL.20 • NO.4