Social Implications of Computers 1 1. Education What is the most important effect of computers on education so far? Very early days: Timeshared computer-managed instruction (Plato, 1960). "[I]t established key on-line concepts: forums, message boards, online testing, e-mail, chat rooms, picture languages, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, and multi-player games." (Wikipedia) "[Donald] Bitzer, regarded as the Father of PLATO, succeeded because of his rejection of modern educational thinking, and returning to a basic drill-based educational system; his team improved existing systems by allowing students to bypass lessons already learned." (Wikipedia) "[T]he PLATO system was re-designed, between 1963 and 1969; PLATO III allowed 'anyone' to design new lesson modules using their TUTOR programming language, conceived in 1967 by biology graduate student Paul Tenczar." (Wikipedia) Early days: BASIC programming on 8-bit micros (e.g. Apple II, 1977). Not much educational software, primitive word processing, nothing packaged with the computer except BASIC, so some schools taught programming. Today: "Why program? All the software is already written." Computers used for word processing, presentations, Internet search, courseware. Kids are taught Microsoft Office, Google, and (as always) drill and practice. Continuum from kid-in-charge to computer-in-charge [Judah Schwartz]: TOOLS MICROWORLDS COURSEWARE +----------------------------------+----------------------------------+ Word processor Interactive geometry Arithmetic drill Browser Physics simulation CAI Programming language Databases (e.g. atlas) CMI 2. Privacy ------- Monday, February 27th, 2006 Total Information Awareness Lives On Inside the National Security Agency --------------------------------------------------------------------- More than two years ago Congress halted plans for a controversial plan called Total Information Awareness to create the world's largest surveillance database to track your phone calls, purchases, Internet usage, reading material, banking transactions. The National Journal has now revealed the program has quietly continued inside the NSA. [includes rush transcript] --------------------------------------------------------------------- 2003, lawmakers voted to shut down Total Information Awareness - a program that developed technologies to predict terrorist attacks by mining government databases and the personal records of people in the United States. Months earlier New York Times columnist William Safire had warned about the dangers of the program. In a column headlined "You Are A Suspect" Safire wrote: "If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you: "Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend -- all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as 'a virtual, centralized grand database.' "To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you -- passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance -- and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen. "This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what will happen to your personal freedom in the next few weeks if John Poindexter gets the unprecedented power he seeks." Following public outcry, the program was halted primarily because of privacy concerns, but also because its main advocate was John Poindexter, known for his involvement with the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s. It now appears that the project "was stopped in name only" and that TIA is in fact continuing. The National Journal reports that TIA was moved from the Pentagon's research-and-development agency - known by its acronym DARPA - to another group, which builds technologies primarily for the NSA. The names of key projects were changed, apparently to conceal their identities, but their funding remained intact, often under the same contracts. ----- 2004: UK sets up database on every child's school records, medical history, police and social services records. "The government believes that the move will help social services and police to identify and protect children who are at risk of abuse or neglect." Choicepoint: Commercial/government data aggregator. Data from public records (DMV, voter reg, property transfers), credit bureaus, etc. Private company can do things forbidden to police, then sell data to police. Aug 2006: AOL releases 20 million search queries by 650,000 users, to be helpful to academic researchers. User IDs are replaced by a randomly chosen number, but many users are identifiable anyway (in part because people search for their own names), including the one who searched for "How to kill my wife." They realize they goofed within an hour and yank the data, but too late; it is still widely available on the net. Another idenfifiable search: "how to tell your family you're a victim of incest." Google records search queries, gmail messages, youtube visits, Android contacts and calendar, etc. Google Street View. GPS geolocation: Convenience vs. privacy. OnStar wiretap warrant: undetectable eavesdropping on automobile. Facebook pages searched by potential employers. Itunes records user ID in downloaded song metadata. Verichip: RFID tag for human implant. 3. Risks www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/illustrative.html # 1.1 Recent yet-to-be-merged items # 1.2 11 Sep 2001 and Homeland Security # 1.3 Space # 1.4 Defense # 1.5 Military Aviation # 1.6 Commercial Aviation # 1.7 Rail, Bus, and Other Public Transit # 1.8 Ships # 1.9 Automobiles # 1.10 Motor-Vehicle and Related Database Problems # 1.11 Electrical Power (nuclear and other) and Energy # 1.12 Medical, Health, and Safety Risks # 1.13 Other Environmental Risks # 1.14 Robots and Artificial Intelligence # 1.15 Other Control-System Problems # 1.16 Other Computer-Aided-Design Problems # 1.17 Accidental Financial Losses, Errors, Outages # 1.18 Financial Frauds and Intentionally Caused Losses # 1.19 Stock-Market Phenomena # 1.20 Telephone Frauds # 1.21 Other Telephone and Communication Problems # 1.22 Election Problems # 1.23 Insurance Frauds # 1.24 Security Problems # 1.25 Cryptography # 1.26 April Foolery and Spoofs # 1.27 Privacy Problems # 1.28 Spamming, Phishing, Junkmail, and Related Annoyances: # 1.29 Other Unintentional Denials of Service: # 1.30 Law Enforcement Abuses, False Arrests, etc.. # 1.31 Identity Theft, Internet Fraud, Mistakes, Related Problems # 1.32 Other Legal Implications # 1.33 Other Aggravation # 1.34 Calendar/Date/Clock Problems including Y2K # 1.35 The Game of Chess: # 1.36 Miscellaneous Hardware/Software Problems # 1.37 Other Computer System Development Difficulties # 1.38 Achieving Better System Development and Operation # 1.39 The Proper Role of Technology? ----- Therac-25 notes 6 accidents, 4 deaths -- but 100s of lives saved no bad guys (cf. Ford Pinto case) Software doesn't degrade like hardware -- but it rots anyway -- but it has much greater complexity cf. Star Wars (birth of CPSR) Continuum of life-or-deathness: Clearly Therac yes, clearly video game no. But what about OS, spreadsheet, etc.? Therac bugs -- no atomic test and set -- hardware interlocks removed -- UI problems: cursor position defaults too many error messages -- documentation -- organizational response easy to see after the fact, but problems are inherent in organizations (esp. ones that can be sued) Solutions -- redundancy -- fail soft (work despite bugs) -- audit trail -- Software Engineering (an attitude about programming) * Design techniques * Verification techniques * Debugging techniques -----