The moral character of cryptographic work

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Phillip Rogaway, a leading cryptographer, has written this excellent
essay, which I think many of us will be interested in:
  http://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/papers/moral-fn.pdf

Part 1 is very relevant and an excellent piece on the ethics of
technology (and technologists) in general.

Parts 2-3 (about cryptography and surveillance) are more depressing.
Part 4 is a call to arms, mostly directed to academic cryptographers.
But parallels can be drawn with other fields.

In Debian most of us already embed our values in our Debian work.
Those of us who take paid work as programmers are also, by and large,
in a position to consider the impact of what we do in our day jobs.

I'm proud to to be part of this community.  Let us continue to set a
good example.

Ian.