“You must understand, Professor Al-Khwarizmi. You must be more understanding.”
“I understand what you want perfectly well.” It’s night. The newly christened Apple Centre for Digital Innovation is quiet, with only a few undergrads toiling away underneath the soft flourescent lighting. Two people (a couple, perhaps) have fallen asleep on a large beanbag, laptops still on their laps. Outside, Carnegie Mellon settles into the end of the welcome-back party season. “I just don’t agree with it.”
“Whatever you may think of our, ah, past reputation, I can assure you we’ve adapted to current trends. If you look at our Youtube channel—”
“Youtube? Really? Not the news reports that still filter out every now and then? Not the EFF filings about unlawful surveillance? Not the congressional inquiries into torture and violations of human rights from your friends next door? Your Youtube channel?” His first mistake was trying to charm me. His second mistake was telling me who he worked for.
“Professor, what we do helps keep you safe at night—”
“Is intimidating me part of that programme as well, then? Trying to scare me straight?”
“I just don’t see what’s so problematic about this request. This is a perfectly valid cryptosystem. Our independent experts have provided multiple means of verifying its efficacy, which you must surely respect.” His hand goes for the stack of papers again.
“A perfectly valid cryptosystem that you want me to put forward, under my name, as a proposed implementation for the companies I am advising right now.”
“We simply want to share our research with the academic community—”
“Then put it on fucking Github, with GHIDRA and all your other toys.”
He decides to switch tactics. It’s so transparent, the way his face reassembles itself, lengthens, darkens, the smile turning to a scowl.
“You should be aware of your position as part of CMU’s diversity initiative. We are very well connected with the senior management of the university.”
“...and now you try and take away my job. Really making me feel safe here, sir.”
He shakes his head. “Look, if you could even raise one valid, technical objection to this cryptosystem, this would help us both greatly.” He looks at me, hurt, as if I’m being unreasonable.
“A technical objection after a five minute once-over with you breathing over my shoulder, sure, that’s fair. But you know what, you want a technical objection? Fine. The scheme as it is implemented makes a number of side-channel attacks possible. There is no reason to use this over any existing end-to-end encryption implementation, except for purported energy efficiency benefits I am not convinced by. The actual reason you’re here, therefore, is that you want me to promote this scheme as better for IoT devices or phones to make them easier to crack. Not that you needed any help on that front as it stands, of course, but just in case some high-end manufacturers actually get serious about this encryption stuff. Which they are.”
“We suggest a number of mitigations against side-channel attacks in this paper-”
“Ah yes, the famous we didn’t find any ways to crack this so there aren’t any defence.”
“This is ridiculous. This is pure speculation—”
“And I’m the one speculating right now, so stop bothering me.”
He stands, stiffly, picking up the stapled paper. “Make no mistake, professor. You are acting against the interests of national security. Even if the flaw you proposed exists, and that is entirely your speculation at this point, if used carefully it would clearly enable a responsible party to protect against heinous crimes like terrorism and mass shootings—”
“That’s all you got, isn’t it? National security this, terrorism that. Anyone who opposes you is as bad as the terrorists.”
“Are you telling me, Professor, that you don’t care about stopping terrorists?” He raises his voice just slightly at that last insinuation, enough that I start wondering if people can hear us. It’s exactly what he wants.
“Incidents of terrorism would also be reduced—not stopped, reduced, because your scheme doesn’t stop it fully either, I know how poor existing detection and prevention schemes are—if we put everyone in prison camps. There is such a thing as a solution worse than a problem, and placing the world under surveillance is one of those solutions. If you want to stop terrorism, work to increase social services locally and cut down on racial hatred that ostracises people from their communities. Don’t do a shitty machine learning filter pass on every picture taken by every human being at every second of every day while reading all their private messages.”
“This is entirely your opinion, Professor. Me and my colleagues—”
“Work for the NSA, as you’ve so politely informed me. So your bias, at least, is obvious. Now get out.”
He steps back just from the shock. Then lines start appearing on his face in a way that he must have learned is quite intimidating (because it is, but I don’t show that). “You will regret this. I’m beginning to suspect that you harbour unpatriotic sentiments yourself.”
“Flags to fall and ash to flow.” I mutter this under my breath.
“Sorry, what?”
“Flags to fall and ash to flow. It’s poetry, if you’ve heard of it. And you won’t need to pull your precious strings to fire me. I’m leaving.”
“What?”
“Have a good evening.” And I walk out.
I text Jolene (who’s at a conference in Texas) what happened, send in my leave notification, and tense slightly later that night as I walk through passport control, but nothing happens beyond the usual security charade. Soon, I’m on a flight to Havland. On my phone during the flight I reread the document I was given before this entire mess started.
THE POLIS COMMUNAL LIVING PROJECT
INTRODUCTION and SUMMARY to the TRAGIC LAW
(Closed Beta Recruitment Document - Visa Required)
Flags to fall and ash to flow
Hekaton above, hell below