Reading 06: Snowden

I think it is a bit extreme to refer to Edward Snowden as either a hero or a traitor. Those words are both at such far ends of the spectrum. If he was a hero we wouldn’t be debating whether he was wrong or right to such an extent, and if he was a traitor there wouldn’t be so many people who support what he did. Rather, I believe that he was a brave citizen of our country who was trying to do what he perceived was the best thing for us. It took bravery because he knew it would shatter his current life, which it did, and he probably even thought he could get killed for it. He did it anyway though, because he saw what he considered basic human rights being violated and, rather than be passive about it, he acted on his belief that it was wrong. Now just because he was acting for what he thought of as the human good, should he be pardoned for his actions? To be quite frank, I don’t know. I don’t think any of us know. In order to determine that, his case should be investigated by and trialed in a court of law. They could decide if he was right and the NSA was in the wrong. This would also be the correct stage to determine if there was a better course of action for him to go about bringing the change he sought.

The contents of his leaks are an interesting matter to discuss. Some of the information we learned from his leaks are how the NSA was spying on entire nations, including ours, and that the NSA was also planning on implementing a piece of software called MonsterMind which would automatically attack cyber-based terrorism threats without human intervention. Now this information could be considered by some (though not all) worthy of public transparency. There was also, however, an unknown number of documents that he did not even know the contents of when he released it to The Guardian and The Washington Post. As Zachary Keck of The Diplomat points out, “Had Snowden been a whistleblower interested in protecting the American constitution, he would have carefully collected information documenting NSA overreach in spying on Americans. Only that would have been given to the journalists and newspapers Snowden contacted.” Reports of the incident say that he probably took the documents he has by using something similar to a web crawler. So he gathered a potentially massive number of documents through this (though he says there were some documents he only touched, and didn’t copy). He then handed all or some of the documents over to those two news outlets and let them decide what to do with the information, because he considered himself too biased to decide which ones were worth of release to the public.

While I do think that he was trying to act under what he thinks is good morality, this seems a little bit irresponsible. There could have been a lot of damaging information in those files which  put people’s lives in danger (though to my knowledge this was not the case with anything released). Now his actions may not have been legal, and they were certainly a bit reckless, but from what I can tell of the situation, he seems like he is trying to have a positive impact on the world. There are people that claim that he is a narcissist and just wanted to cause a disruption, but let’s not forget that his life was uprooted by this incident. I don’t think someone would do something this extreme for personal fame. Was it ethical or moral to do this though? It’s difficult to say. Though I’m leaning towards believing that Snowden, having been in the NSA for years and knowing how the organization works, knew something that we didn’t and knew that the best way to put a stop to the surveillance he disagreed with was by releasing the information.

It is difficult to measure the impact of what he did for the U.S. Some people think that he only helped our enemies, observing that he left our countries to go hide away in rival nations. Others say that he didn’t show us anything that he didn’t know. According to his own opinion piece in the New York Times, he believes that since his 2013 leak, the citizens of the U.S. have begun to realize the importance of protecting their rights. In his own words, we are now starting to realize that, “the value of a right is not in what it hides, but in what it protects.” In my experience the average frame of mind today is that any secret personal surveillance is bad (though I personally don’t mind if the government spies on me). Whether or not this is because of him, it is hard for me to say.

The readings here did not really affect my views on government surveillance. I don’t really agree with Snowden. I would let the government spy on me all that they wanted to if it meant the protection of my country. I’m not doing anything that would get me into trouble (I think). I let airport security check my bags for the same reason. One thing I will take away from this though, is the need to stay mindful of what is going on around me. We can disagree on whether what Edward Snowden did was ethical or not, but he was trying to make a difference. He knew what he believed, saw a violation, and did something about it. I hope I never get put into a situation where I have to do something as drastic as he did, but after reading these articles I have further realized the importance of using your voice to defend what you believe is right.

Project 02 – Infographic Response

Infographic Analysis

The first half of the infographic (which can be found right here) consists of a series of three images which display the proportions of four major ethnicities in the United States in three subsets of the population. In this series of images, the four top ethnicities (White, Black, Hispanic, Asian) reported in the U.S. Census are identified by color, and then those that do not fall into these categories are lumped into the “Other” category.

The first subset is actually the entire set, that is, it is representative of the U.S. population at large. This one is more difficult to analyze because of the way that the data is sampled by the U.S. Census Bureau. They do not consider Hispanic it’s own category, as it is not a race, just an ethnicity. So the 15.1% of Hispanics are actually sampled from the rest of the population (this is why the image is drawn on a scale to 115 rather than 100 as is noted at the bottom of the image). One thing that we can safely say though is that the vast majority of the country is white (almost 80%) as is expected. The other ethnicities then are smaller portions of the population. The data here should not surprise anyone who looks at it.

Next is the Notre Dame demographics image. The proportion of the white population actually is quite close to the proportion of the U.S. population. Considering that the 15.1% of the U.S. Hispanic population could consist of a lot of the same people in the white category, it might not be that far away from exactly the same. The black population, however, does drop significantly below what it should be according the U.S. demographics. It is about one third of what it should be. Asians, however, are very lightly over represented in the ND population compared to that of the U.S. population. Notre Dame also has a much larger portion of students who do not identify with any one of the top four reported ethnicities in the U.S. Census. This is likely due to the number of students from other countries.

Finally, the third image is representative of the CSE Department’s student population here at Notre Dame over the last 6 years (including the graduating class of 2013 up to the projected graduating class of 2018). In this group, the white proportion is about the same as it is in the Notre Dame student body at large, though it is a little bit smaller. Black students have an almost identical slice of the CSE department compared to the student body. The “Other “population is also pretty close to its ND counterpart. The only group that definitely stands out is the Asian population, comprising 10.2% of the CSE department compared to its 5.7% of the student body.

The second half of the image conveys just one statistic, the ratio of men to women students in the CSE department here at Notre Dame over the last 6 years. The rounded number is 75 to 25 in favor of men, but as it says in the caption the exact proportions are 74.85% and 25.15%. It is worth noting that in the supporting data, the trend over those six years was upward, where in 2013 only 22.22% of the CSE students were female but in 2018 it was 28.57%. So this statistic seems as if it is only going to even out more as time goes on.

Personal Response

Parts of this image actually surprised me greatly. The U.S. Map was pretty much what I expected it to be, but the Notre Dame logo showed me something I did not expect. Comparing it to the USA population, the white population here at ND is actually about what it should be proportional to U.S. census data. People tend to say that Notre Dame has no racial diversity and that it’s mostly rich white people who go here, but this image says otherwise.

One group that definitely is underrepresented, however, is the black population. Its about one third of what it should be, which does somewhat legitimize people’s claims about a lack of racial diversity. This also reaffirms my belief that the reason for a lack of minorities in the tech industry is not just related to problems within tech. The problems that push minorities (in this case African Americans) away from tech would have to appear farther down the pipeline as people say. If we can’t get enough minorities into a position where they can get into good schools in the first place, then they will never have the choice between pursuing the tech industry over a different career path. Adding further evidence to this is how the percentage of black students in the CSE department is only 0.02% away from the percentage of black students in the entire Notre Dame student body.

The ratio of men to women in the CSE department also surprised me to a small degree. In my experience here as a Computer Science student. I feel like I am surrounded by almost all men. This isn’t a complaint, its just a report on what I feel like I am seeing around me. There are very few women in the CSE classes that I have taken. So when I found that the ratio is actually just 3 to 1, I was a little surprised that there are that many women. It also makes me slightly suspicious that perhaps I have been a part of a culture that feeds into women in the tech industry being ignored. Have I been contributing to the thought In the future I will make sure that I do not ignore women in the workplace and five them their proper attention.

I don’t think that the ND CSE department needs to strive to improve the diversity of its subset of the student body. I do believe, however, that it must continue making steps to ensure that it is treating people from every ethnic background with the respect that they deserve as to not discourage people from entering a major (and eventually an industry) that they would otherwise like to be a part of. The costs will be minimal. All that is required of the CSE faculty is to keep an open mind and ear to what the students have to say about diversity in their department; maybe they could even send out a survey to gather the students thoughts more proactively. But this is a trivial task in the big picture. having a respect for diversity will go along way in promoting the best parts of each individual person, and result in a better world. So just like in any other place, diversity must be properly respected in CSE.

Project 02 – Infographic

Statistics related to Notre Dame’s general population were gathered from collegefactual.com.

United States demographics were gathered from a summarization of U.S. Census data indexmundi.com.

Notre Dame CSE department demographics were taken from the provided Microsoft Excel spreadsheet which can also be accessed here.

Reading 05: Boeing Busted

The case of the Boeing Security issues is an interesting one that leaves you wishing you know exactly what the issues are behind the scenes. Whatever it was, it had the employees extremely frustrated over how it was being handled. According to the WIRED articles online, “Boeing couldn’t properly protect data in its computer systems from theft, manipulation and fraud.” Additionally, it seemed that the employees of this company were made vulnerable by this weakness.

It is hard to judge the company’s handling of the situation without knowing exactly what the issues were (thought it seems that there were many) and also without having any prior experience working in the technology industry let alone at a massive, multi-million dollar company. It’s clear that there were issues though. According to the post in Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the issues were long-standing and remained over time. However, they also say that Boeing spent an enormous amount of money trying to address these issues. My opinion from this is that a company has a responsibility to three parties: its investors, its employees, and its customers. If it has vulnerabilities exposing it to fraud and/or theft, then it has an ethical responsibility to address these issues, as they are issues can affect all three of those groups. If Boeing was doing all that it could to protect the company, they were acting ethically. If, however, the massive expense was only there to please the public eye and keep them moving along, then the company was being completely unethical and absolutely deserved to be outed by anyone who knew about the issues. Which bring us to the next point.

The poor handling of the situation apparently allowed it to go on for three years without making much progress and eventually, this inspired a couple of fed-up employee to speak out to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Here is how WIRED explains the situation, “The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals set aside the appeal of two former Boeing auditors who claimed their leaks to the media were protected by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, adopted to protect shareholders against fraud.” They lost the case though, according to WIRED, “A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based appeals court sided with Boeing, saying a provision in the act only protects those who notify the authorities, not the media, of alleged wrongdoing.”

So were these employees doing the right thing? Or was Boeing right to fire them for what they did? The way I see it, the answer to both of those questions could be yes. As it says above he law protects those who report their employees to authorities, not the media. This makes sense because employees could do a lot of damage by going to the media rather than the proper authorities and it protects a company’s image at times. If, however, the employee believed that going to one of the regulatory authorities would be ineffective, perhaps they then have a responsibility to go to greater lengths to expose his or her company. Boeing had apparently kept the same security flaws over three years so this employee had every right to believe that more drastic actions were necessary to motivate the company to change. That being said though, this gives the company every right to fire the employees that exposed Boeing. At that point, they are definitely doing harm to the company’s image by exposing their internal flaws, and if I were running a large company, I admit that I wouldn’t want my company’s image ruined and I would probably fire them too. I would want employees who deal with the problem internally. So no one is perfectly in the right, and it is difficult to make this situation black and white.

My inclination in this case is to say that Boeing was somehow handling the situation poorly, the article from Seattle Post-Intelligencer certainly makes it look like they were going to great lengths to change something, but maybe that was not the right way too handle it because three years with barely any improvement and $55 million wasted sounds alarming. Again, not having been in a real-world workforce, it is hard to have an opinion on such a topic, but I feel like we should all be saying, “Shame on you Boeing”, for not protecting your employees and customers.

 

 

Reading 04: Diversity in Tech

Looking at the numbers presented in this report from CNN, it would be hard to make a case that there is not a diversity problem in the tech industry. The best major tech company has only 24% of their tech-related positions filled with women, and that drops by 14% over the next 8 best companies. A similar issue is preset on the racial front as well. There is certainly a diversity problem within tech. But perhaps the problem is not that there is discrimination within the tech industry.

In this article which details Silicon Valley companies’ efforts to break this lack of diversity, we can see that there is certainly a push to bring in more diversity. but rather that it is less enticing or more difficult for the less represented demographics to get into the tech industry in the first place. The article points out that Apple is investing $50 million to try to bring more women and minorities into the industry, Intel is donating $125 million to minority-led startups, another company intentionally offered two women positions on the board of directors, and other efforts are listed as well. It seems to me that there is a welcoming vibe coming from the tech industry for minorities. Perhaps the problem is not that we turn them away in the tech industry, but that they go the other way.

Eileen Pollack writes in her article, What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech, “Technology companies know they have a gender and diversity problem in their work force, and they are finally taking steps to try to fix it. But where are those new employees going to come from if women and minority students aren’t opting to study computer science or engineering?” She is making a very valid point here, just look around our classroom here at Notre Dame. We are not yet “in the industry”, that is to say, we are just a group of students who were interested in the Computer Science career path at Notre Dame we still aren’t diverse even here. The only thing that could deter a Notre Dame student from majoring in Computer Science is a lack of interest. While I don’t know the exact numbers, glancing around the room will tell you that we are not a diverse class. The overwhelming majority is made up of white males. So why is it that Notre Dame students aren’t interested in the exciting and profitable tech industry?

Further into Eileen Pollack’s article she writes, “many young women today avoid studying computer science because they, too, fear they won’t fit in.” Then, fleshing out this thought, she later writes, “female students are more interested in enrolling in a computer class if they are shown a classroom (whether virtual or real) decorated not with ‘Star Wars’ posters, science-fiction books, computer parts and tech magazines, but with a more neutral décor — art and nature posters, coffee makers, plants and general-interest magazines.” Perhaps herein lies the problem keeping women away from tech. As a culture, we are associating technology (at least in Computer Science) with images of video games, graphics, and science-fiction movies. In reality, its a very gender neutral topic with applications ranging from healthcare to automobiles. If we can shift society’s perspective on the tech industry, perhaps we will soon grow in diversity.

We might be well on our way there as well. In Bonnie Marcus’s article on Forbes, The Lack of Diversity in Tech is a Cultural Issue, she points out, “Recently updated information [from the National Girls Collaborative Project] indicates an equal number of high school girls and boys participating in STEM electives, and at Stanford and Berkeley, 50% of the introductory computer science students are women” (I feel ethically obliged to point out that she says this in spite of the fact that “twice as many men as women with the same qualifications were working in STEM fields”, because that was her point. I disagree with the validity of it though, because what that statistic says to me is that though there is currently a gender gap, it is about to get much better). The women are on their way. Which to me signals the start of an even bigger movement that will bring in the other minority groups as well. Not only will we be able to shift our focus to them after the man and women balance out, but also its worth noting that women tend to be much better activists than men are in the first place. If we keep our awareness of this issue, and stay on course, we could find the tech industry a much more diverse place in the near future.