Turing's Secrets

Alan Turing is famous for being the father of modern computing, the author of computing's peskiest problem, and for being gay. The first made him famous, the second notorious among the Technorati, and the third got him fired, chemically castrated and may have driven him to suicide. There's a lesson here for the modern day internet and for all of us.

You see, Turing told a police officer about his boyfriend in the course of reporting a burglary. He believed the burglary was a crime that need to be persecuted and the truth about his boyfriend was just background information. That backfired rather spectacularly in the moral confines of mid 20th century England.

Computing is founded on theories of what is computable, and Turing laid a strong foundation with his eponymous Turing Machine, which models what kind of problems are computable and how. An upshot his theoretical framework is that when you add sufficient complexity to computing systems to get to work on complex problems, errors will occur that are neigh impossible to detect and resolve. We know and hate these errors as bugs. Basically we cannot make computers complex enough to be useful without a lot of bugs.

Bugs in software contribute to many evils, from a blue screen of death on your office computer to Air France flight 447 pancaking into the ocean because the autopilot's error message didn't contain any useful information for the pilots.

Bugs are also the source of vulnerabilities in software, vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious hackers, state agencies and clever pranksters. Vulnerabilities can and do reveal the secrets we artlessly entrust to our computers, much like Turing entrusted the fact of his gayness to a cop. There has been much ado about the Heartbleed vulnerability recently, one that impacts the integrity of 'secure' connections. It turns out that for a number of years this assumed integrity was, in fact, absent and an unknown number of supposedly secure connections were tapped.

You see, it's not about what is recorded or by whom. It's all just ones and zeroes that we pretend mean something real. The internet is the most epic story we ever told together. The problem is that we cannot control how others interpret our parts of that story. Virtual deeds have very real consequences, and we cannot predict what those consequences will be.

The moral confines of this age mean that it is okay to work online, play games online and look at naked adults online, but it's not okay to incite hatred or threaten someone online. But what of the next epoch? Russia, China the US and the EU are changing our world, right now, as you read this. What is okay today might be hugely embarrassing tomorrow, or even land you in jail.

There is a huge amount of mistrust against the state agencies who are surveying the internet, but not nearly enough. It's as if we can't make ourselves believe that our shared illusion is real enough to shatter lives, even though it does so on a daily basis. Our passwords are weak and often repeated. Kids post copies of their passports on social media instead of faxing it because they have no concept of how dangerous that is. People download or stream illegal copies of music and film even though they know they shouldn't. And people are going to jail, as the EU is proud to report. Sometimes fairly, oftentimes not so fairly. We just don't know if what we do today incurs penalties tomorrow.

Remember Turing. Turing the genius for his work on computing and his wartime work cracking Nazi code. Turing the innocent for not being more circumspect about his gayness. Turing the persecuted for his inhuman treatment at the hands of righteous moralists. Remember the lesson his story teaches, so we may avoid his misadventures.

Steve's Job

When I started studying computer science it was my avowed purpose to one day have Steve's Job: to be Chief Executive Officer of my very own technology company. Now Steve is no longer CEO of Apple and it feels very strange. I feel a bit like Bill Turner would feel if one day Jack Sparrow gave up on being captain of the Black Pearl. The goal is still there, but it's daunting to see that a brilliant and driven man has worked himself into what seems to be an early grave. I hope for his recovery, and I hope he will be chairman of the board for a long time to come. Meanwhile I'll soldier on, collecting experience that I hope to put to good use some day. Who knows? Steve certainly put a ding in our (digital) universe.

Assange

A post on this topic is as hard and controversial as it is overdue. Julian Assange is imprisoned. WikiLeaks is not. The whole WikiLeaks matter has more thorns than a hedgehog, and Assange's persecution is but a small part of it.

Governments owe their constituents transparency, honesty and diligence. The business of running a government, however, becomes nearly impossible if it is constantly scrutinized, because then every statement is made with accountability in mind, rather than factual correctness or intended effect. The whole idea of diplomatic communication is that, because it is privileged, it can give an honest picture of the situation abroad. If a diplomat cannot afford to slight a leader by assessing him honestly, he is of very little use to his home base in providing an accurate appraisal of his host.

Is the idea behind WikiLeaks a good one? Most certainly. A bit of proper journalism keeps even the best of governments just a bit more honest than they would be when completely unsupervised.

Is the publication of the diplomatic cables a good idea? Most certainly not. We can be all anarchist about it and celebrate proof that 'governments are evil' and 'diplomats are phonies and spies', but the fact of the matter is that the diplomatic service, and diplomatic secrecy exist to keep the peace and make sure that countries can communicate out of the spotlight, as is sometimes necessary, and it works rather well. Diplomatic relations have suffered a great deal for no good return: We know nothing about Medvedev or Karzai or Obama that CNN and BBC and what have you didn't already tell us many times.

Of course diplomats are covert operatives and used to gain every possible advantage abroad. Better to be completely infested with diplomats than with paratroopers. Of course things are secretly said about heads of state which wouldn't be misplaced on Saturday Night Live or The Roast. Better to call a crook a crook than to call him a good man and be cheated. Of course there are secret places, bases, people and plans. WikiDepartmentOfDefense doesn't work, nor does drawing attention to your weak spots.

WikiLeaks should cherish a world which allows it to exist, and never forget that the much lambasted American government and it's allies still allow them, and many of us, a lot more freedom than elsewhere in the world, and abusing this freedom opens the door to a system that is not so kind. Publish the helmet cams, the controversial statistics, and as many blacklists as you can find. Fight censure and misinformation. Don't publish these cables. It's does lot of damage to things that matter too much, in return for very little we didn't already know or could safely assume.

So what about this arrest? A smear campaign? Duped by a honey trap? It seems likely. The timing is just too damn convenient. However, what point and purpose does his arrest now serve? As if Wikipedia would stop working two days after Jimmy Wales gets busted for having a really penetrating gaze. As if the revelations are less important because the founder of the site is an alleged rapist.

An arrest on bogus charges would be strange move by the powers that be. Kick a bear, expect a swipe. In that sense it is not unexpected for governments to pursue Assange. But because it does not ease the sting of the publications nor stop their continuation, it is really rather pointless to arrest him.

And as unlikely as I think that is, maybe Assange did some things he shouldn't have done to some nice ladies in Sweden. If so, he should stand trial and do his time. If it is indeed a trumped-up charge, he will be free soon enough. I have that much faith in the judicial system.

Either way his arrest and persecution are now so public that it would serve everyone's best interests, including that of the United States, Sweden and the United Kingdom, to make sure Assange stays alive and well for very long time hence. If cablegate becomes killergate Assange will justly become a martyr for the freedom of information and WikiLeaks will be mirrored, imitated and expanded beyond all power of censure. That's why I think he is fairly safe for the time being.

Meanwhile the infowar continues, and brave servers everywhere are bearing the load of titanic efforts designed to take out WikiLeaks. It will be interesting to see what legal changes this battle engenders, as the issue of control over the internet is once again front and center in the minds of policy makers. Governments fear and mistrust the internet like never before. Assange's legacy is assured.

The price of genius

Seen The Social Network? Zuck was not portrayed very kindly. Is being socially impaired the price of genius? I don't think so. Yet the typical portrayal of software wizards is generally concerned with making sure 'normal people' don't feel bad about their comparative lack of intelligence my gimping the coder with massive personality defects. We all love Sheldon Cooper, but we don't want his sex appeal. What's up with that?

Despite his reported lack of ethics in treating his business partners, Zuckerberg probably isn't quite as acrimonious a nerd as he is made out to be in the movie. He did something his business partners could not, at least not without him, whereas he might have made facebook without them, obtaining inspiration and support from other sources.

So why the sociopath portrayal? There's no need to make a fawning tribute movie to the world's youngest billionaire, but it is equally unnecessary to add insult to injury in what is, in effect, a blockbuster accusal of plagiarism, usurpation, backstabbing and a complete lack of ethics. Shark, fair enough, but why a mean shark?

It takes balls to create something like facebook, not to mention a whole lot of knowledge, skill and effort. All we can say after the fact is that he did it, mostly by himself, at a very young age.

Now I'm not a friend or admirer of Mark Zuckerberg. What I cannot stand is that his achievement, which I do admire, is now tainted by a morality tale in which he features a particularly lame villain. That should never be the price of genius. Do it better or shut up. Making this kind of Rita Skeeter movie is just low. The movie is well made but it's theme of vilification is it's moral undoing.

UPDATE: Zuckerberg is Time's person of the year 2010! The article is much more positive about Mark than about the movie, too.