Reading 06: Edward Snowden, Government Backdoors

Earlier this week, I got in an argument with my dad.  My dad is an army veteran and contractor working for the Air Force on defense systems.  Our conversation began with a mention of the recent statement by Apple that it would not create a backdoor for the FBI to get information from the phone of a criminal.  While I argued about why I supported this decision, I mentioned Edward Snowden and how I was glad that he revealed the spying programs that our government has had in place on its own citizens.  My dad was shocked that I was a fan of Snowden.  Having taken the same oath that Snowden did, my father was outraged that Snowden broke his oath and compromised National Security for personal gain.  Since this conversation, I have been reading a lot about Snowden and trying to decide what I think of his actions and what I would have done in the same situation.

First of all, it does not seem like Snowden sold any of the secrets that he stole.  Given the dangers of releasing the documents, this makes me think that Snowden was motivated by helping the American people, not for personal gain.  However, Snowden also told the Chinese government about US hacks of their systems, which I am unclear on how revealing this information to the Chinese helped the American people.

That being said, I am still grateful for a lot of what Snowden did.  From interviews with him, it seems like he was trying to do the right thing.  Some of the secrets he revealed are terrible abuses of power and trust by our government and by exposing them, he has helped to reform them.  Unfortunately, Snowden admits that he could not read all of the secrets that he took and he willingly gave them to several public news sources that he trusted to release only safe information.  This aspect of Snowden’s whistleblowing is a very dangerous one.  Without going through the information himself, Snowden could very likely have released valuable government information that helps protect American’s security.  I think it is irresponsible to hand over secrets to the public that might very well be legal and deserving of being kept secret.  It is a slippery slope for me to think that Snowden choosing to reveal some secrets was okay because I (and the vast majority of the public) view them as unconstitutional while at the same time I condemn him for releasing the other secrets without evaluating him.  Who is to say that his evaluations are right?  It is hard to think that one man’s opinion is valuable enough to warrant revealing such highly protected information.  But as of now, I can’t see anyway around this.  I think Snowden was right to reveal the spying but wrong to hand over secrets that he did not think were wrong.

I think that had I been in Snowden’s position, I would hope that I would have let the reporters choose to reveal the secrets that they deemed should be public knowledge out of a small subset of what I stole.  I would only give them secrets that I thought were unconstitutional and should be public knowledge.  If the reporters agreed, the public would hear about it.  If either party thought something should not be revealed, then it would never be in order to minimize the potential harm that could be done.  Still, even in this situation it is dangerous to allow two parties to “play God.”  But when there are some injustices as huge as the ones the NSA was committing, I don’t think it would be ethical to stand by and do nothing.

Project 2: Demographics

Casey Hanley and my Demographic analysis and Infographic:

https://caseyhanleyethics.wordpress.com/2016/02/18/demographics-of-notre-dame-cse/

For our project, Casey and I looked at Notre Dame CSE demographics and compared them to the demographics of major tech companies in Silicon Valley, at Stanford, and in the general US.  The charts and analysis can be found by following the link above.

From looking at the Notre Dame computer science class data, I did not find anything too surprising.  I was a little bit surprised by a few pieces of information, however.  First, I was pleasantly surprised to see how rapidly the computer science department is growing.  The class size has been increasing steadily since 2013.  Hopefully, this trend of increased computer science interest increases and that the inflation is not simply because kids drop the major later in their schooling.  Another great trend to see was that over the past 6 years, the female percentage of the CSE department has been increasing steadily.  Despite this increase, ND’s department is still just behind on the female percentages of Stanford and the top tech businesses in Silicon Valley.  I was a little bit surprised to find how male-dominated my own class was.  I knew that there were certainly more males than females but I would not have guessed that the disparity between the two was nearly as large.  Other than these trends, the rest of the ND CSE demographics have remained pretty much constant in recent years.

When comparing Notre Dame’s Computer Science Department to Silicon Valley companies and Stanford, Notre Dame is very similar in most ways.  The only major difference is that Notre Dame has fewer Asians than the others.  That being said, Asians in CS at ND constitute a larger percent of the body than Asians do in the US as a whole.  In general, I was unsurprised by the comparison of Notre Dame’s demographics to the others.

After comparing the Computer Science demographics to those of the general US population, I was surprised to find that many of what I considered issues in CS are not.  In general, the fact that Computer Science is made up of mostly caucasians is only because the United States is mostly caucasian.  The number disparity was not alarming.  The only two major differences that I think need to be addressed after my comparisons are the percentage of African Americans and the male-female ratio imbalance.  As a whole, the black population is underrepresented in Computer Science schools and top companies.  Additionally, the huge gap between the number of male and female Computer Scientists is a major issue that needs to be solved.

I have already discussed why I think that these two particular demographics are less likely to enter into the computer science field.  I do think that this is a problem, as a more diverse workforce will inevitably lead to better products.  Even though this is a problem, I do not think that it should be solved at the collegiate level.  Personally, I think that the best way to increase the number of women and African Americans who pursue a degree in Computer Science is to have a mandatory Introduction to CS class in high schools, where students can learn about programming and make a decision about whether to pursue that major based on experience instead of societal stereotypes.

Reading 05: Engineering Disasters, Whistleblowing

On the morning of January 28, 1986 the Challenger space shuttle failed to launch and was destroyed.  The Challenger launched out of Cape Canaveral on an exceptionally cold morning.  The night before the launch, a NASA contractor Morton Thiokol reported to NASA that the conditions were too risky and they advised launching later.  However, because NASA did not want to postpone the launch, the shuttle departed as scheduled and ended up in a terrible disaster.  The problem with the O-rings was a known risk at low temperatures.  However, the O-rings had never caused a catastrophe before so the problem was cleared as “an acceptable flight risk.”  Although the part was not remade and was cleared, it was not cleared for nearly as low of temperatures as they were the morning of the flight.  Because of this wide disparity, Thiokol suggested to NASA that the launch had to be postponed.  It was due to NASA’s uncompromising need to launch on schedule that the warnings were ignored and the Challenger was destroyed.

One of the problems that led to NASA fatally ignoring these warnings was that the danger of the O-rings could not be conveyed to them with statistical data.  Because of the poor communication and lack of easily understandable data for NASA, the problem was swept under the rug.  The terrible consequences of this miscommunication are a lesson for the future.  When an engineer thinks that something might be amiss they are morally responsible of getting their managers and peers to understand the risks as well.  Groups cannot fall victim to tunnel vision, where because the entire group has preconceived notions they are unwilling to accept any new information.

Another lesson learned from the Challenger explosion is in the treatment of Boisjoly.  Boisjoly was a Thiokol engineer who was so concerned with the O-ring failing possibility that he went beyond telling NASA not to launch.  He took the protest public in front of the Rogers commission.  This public coming forward was also ignored.  Furthermore, Boisjoly was treated as a leper and was marginalized and loathed in his workplace.  However, it turned out that he was right.  After the disaster, Boisjoly took his private files and memos to the presidential commission so that the real problem of the disaster could not be swept aside during the investigation.  Later, he went to an NPR reporter with the information.  As a result of his coming forward, he faced retaliation.  Boijoly was taken off the investigation team and had to deal with hostility and anger.  Boisjoly was shunned, cut off from work, and blackmailed.

Boisjoly had his career and relationships destroyed.  He even ended up being diagnosed with PTSD from the events and never returned to Thiokol.  Even worse, all of his attempted lawsuits against Thiokol and NASA were dismissed.  From this brutal retaliation to whistleblowing, we face questions in ethical whistleblowing and its consequences similar to in the case of Snowden.  When whistleblowers inform the public of what the government is trying to hide, should they be ostracized?  On one hand, they are helping to inform the public, who deserve to be informed, and they help to prevent future disasters by raising awareness.  On the other hand, it is dangerous to reward whistleblowers for betraying the government and revealing protected secrets.  I think that the benefits gained from whistleblowing are valuable enough that whistleblowers should not be punished for revealing truths that should be public knowledge.

Reading 04: Diversity, Codes of Conduct

I think that the lack of diversity in the tech industry is definitely a problem.  As several of these articles showed, beginning with the graphic about Google’s diversity statistics, the tech industry is dominated by white males.  However, I do not think that this is because white males are better at programming.  Right now, there is an imbalance in the industry that needs to be fixed.  As the book, The Difference, that Martin Fowler referenced in his article states, a diverse workforce is a better workforce.  Diversity helps bring together more perspectives, thoughts, and skills to problems and results in better work and better products.  Knowing this, I think that the lack of diversity in the tech industry is absolutely a problem and we should take steps to fix it.

Currently, some of the leading companies in Silicon Valley are taking steps to helping draw minorities and women into the programming world.  For example, Google, Apple, and Intel are all spending millions of dollars to invest in minority startups, organizations, schools, and other efforts in the hope that this will help minorities to move into the technology industry.  Additionally, other leading companies have added women to their executive teams and have made other steps to help minorities and women to thrive in their workplaces.  While all of these steps are great, and hopefully will help the progression toward a more inclusive and equal workplace environment, I do not think that they address the main causes of the problem.

To me, it seems like the cause of the lack of diversity in the tech industry is a deep rooted cultural one.  When I picture a computer scientist, I normally picture a white, nerdy looking male.  However, when I look around at my classmates, this is not what I see.  In movies and tv shows, programmers are almost always portrayed as nerdy with deep seeded loves for star trek, star wars, and video games.  In reality, this does not need to be the case.  I like star wars and board games, but am by no means obsessed with either and rarely play video games.  My understanding of the computer science culture is not what drew me into computer science.  I decided to major in CS because of a project I had that involved coding and was my first look at programming.  I found the logic puzzles fascinating and was instantly intrigued.  For people who have never experienced this, computer science is only the social construct of nerdy, video-game-addicted, scrawny or obese (not really in between) white males.  Understandably, this is not very attractive to woman and minorities.  It is scary to enter into an environment that is foreign and unappealing.  In the article about why Silicon Valley does not hire blacks, there were several accounts of black students who took a job in the Valley but then decided to leave because they did not fit in.  This seems like a circle to me, and it is hard to break.  Now that the industry is dominated by white males, it is hard to attract minorities and women into joining and helping balance out the workforce.  My only thought on how to fix this would be to start making computer science a mandatory class in high school so that all students would have an opportunity to experience programming before college in a comfortable environment.  I would hope that this would help people to enter into the field not because of the societal construct of a programmer but because of their first hand experience with code.  One schools have more minorities and women enrolling in CS, I think that naturally this would flow on to eventually correct the imbalance in industries.

Reading 03: Careers, Work-Life Balance

“Young people just have simpler lives,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive, said in a talk to would-be entrepreneurs in 2007, when he was 23. “We may not own a car. We may not have family. Simplicity in life allows you to focus on what’s important.”

As I was reading through the links about family life for this week’s readings this quote shocked and appalled me.  Here, Zuckerberg states that not having a family allows him to focus on what is important, his career.  I have always felt that I do not fit in very well with the computer science community-well young people in general I suppose.  My friends called me a grandpa in high school and I would rather pull a tooth than go out to the bars at night.  Over the summer at an alumni event in California, about 20 computer science students said that they would rather live in San Francisco than in Silicon Valley because there was more going on.  One or two students disagreed with this and said they wanted to live in the Valley.  I disagreed with both and said I would prefer to live in a small nearby town and drive into the bustling valley.  Anyway, what I am trying to get at is that I am old at heart and often have opposite desires of my peers.  However, nothing about their preferred lifestyles has ever repelled me as much as this quote.  For me, family is of the utmost importance.  God and family.  Then way down the list would come my career.  I know I need to make money and find work that I enjoy.  I just would never pursue this at the cost of my family.  To me “what’s important” will always be my loved ones.

One example of this can be seen in my job search this year.  I started off the school year with an offer from Apple.  I loved the work I did at Apple this summer and really enjoyed my time in California.  Apple gave me a great offer.  I would love to return to Apple.  I have not accepted this offer.  Why?  My fiancee and I have been apart for four years.  We will be married in 18 months.  Knowing this, I have applied to companies where she is applying for grad school so that we can be together.  Over the past year, I honestly begin to count how many people have told me to take the Apple offer.  I swear I’ve heard it thousands of times.  Others of all ages do not understand how I could turn it down to be in the same city as my then girlfriend three years earlier.  I can only reiterate that to me, family is much more important than a job.

That being said, this week’s readings were hard for me.  All of the articles discussed the many difficulties of raising a family while working as a developer.  I don’t mind working long hours.  Over the summer, I found that I really enjoyed my job and was happy to stay there over 8 hours a day.  However, I was in California by myself.  Now, I find myself fearful of how my life will be a year and a half from now, when I am married and working a development job.  While some of the larger companies like Apple and Google appear to have solid paternity leave policies, it still seems like a very scary environment.  I do not plan to have children anytime soon but I hope that I will eventually and I hope that when I do whichever company I work for will be understanding.  I really hope that I will not have a horror story to share about the fight between work and family.  And if it comes to it, I hope I will recognize if work is keeping me away from my family too much and will be willing to take whatever steps I must to find the proper balance.