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The Imitation Game
Oct. 3rd, 2015 12:52 pmI originally wrote this post on February 22nd, 2015, but had refrained from posting it until now. Now, its time has come.
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This is going to be a difficult post. I'm a bit shaken after having returned from a movie that hit way too close to home in far too many ways... And let's get this out of the way up front. I am *very* angry.
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By now, some of you will have seen The Imitation Game. If you have not, do so. The movie is about Alan Turing's work as a cryptographer during World War II. Since you're reading this on a Turing machine, it's safe to say he's someone worth knowing about.
Alan's story is a difficult one, one of the most intensely personal tragedies of the modern age. Already a social outcast due to his odd personality, he had very few friends in his life, and only one person he ever truly bonded with. And, were it ever discovered, as it was at the end of his life, even that was forbidden him. You see, homosexuality was against the law in Britain at that time. Even though his work quite arguably won the war for the allies (estimates put him ending the war 2 years early and saving 14 million lives), he was, in the end, driven to suicide by the very country he helped save. He was forced into accepting hormone therapy, chemical castration, in order to remain out of jail, and his downward spiral found only one outlet.
In him, we lost one of the most foundational geniuses of our modern world. He not only *proved*, but *built* a universal computing engine, capable of solving any problem rather than fixed functions. It is his gift that powers the very screen you read this text on, his gift that connects this entire world. He could not have known exactly how it would grow and be shaped with time, but he *knew* what a fundamental change his discovery would cause. It is a poor testament to our legacy as a civilisation that we failed him and continue to fail others to this very day. The means may be different now, but our failures endure. *That* is what this post is about.
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Now, I knew this story before I saw the film. I thought I had grieved and dealt with the tragedy, but I was wrong... Why? Because his story is also, in some small part, my story... And it is also a difficult story to tell.
I've never had an easy time connecting with others... For a long time I made friends, interacted, and appeared to function normally to a large majority of folks I interacted with. Previous journals detail a bit more of than than I currently want to delve into, but a major part of finding myself over the past few years has involved the discovery of the term transgender, and the fact that it applies to me. I have been, and still am, fearful of judgement, even though I am trying daily to work a little bit at a time towards comfort in my identity.
I put out a few feelers via HR at my current workplace, trying to discover if there was insurance coverage, but beyond that, I've not really signaled very much. The few who I asked basically dropped the issue as soon as I was done asking the question, so it's clearly something that's still uncomfortable to them. I *think* the engineers and management I work with will be accepting, but it's going to be a struggle for me, especially as some of my roll is customer-facing. I'm not a field applications engineer (FAE), but I do stand in as one on occasion, and I doubt there are very many transgender ones of those...
That's today though, after my move to California, to a place that's hopefully more accepting than the state I had been living in. Arizona may be beautiful, but the minds of many of its inhabitants are sadly not as inspired as the geology that surrounds them...
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While in Arizona, I worked for a small defense contractor, the name of which I'm choosing to leave off here. Said contractor isn't a name you'd recognize, but their primary work is in a similar area to Turing's. Although it's been about 20 years since being gay would result in the loss of your security clearance, transgender employees are still rare enough (and security personnel paranoid enough) to result in all sorts of awkward questions. Having gender identity issues hanging over your head makes you a prime target for blackmail if you're not out as trans, something that can result in immediate loss of clearance.
As such, I lived in fear.
Though the president signed an executive order forbidding discrimination along gender lines in all federal contractors two years ago, it only takes one person to declare you a security risk and you're done. Job, lost. Career, in tatters. Hope you've got some savings, because who's going to want to hire someone who had and then lost a clearance, even in the private sector? I thought I could probably trust my coworkers with my secret, but what if I couldn't? It only takes one.
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If that wasn't problem enough, I began to have ethical problems with my work that I simply could not overcome. In the movie, Turing quickly realizes that an intelligence source that the enemy knows about is useless, a fact that remains true to this day. In order to protect access to German communications, he (and the other members of his team) had to carefully manage what intelligence they used, making sure to guard against the possibility of discovery. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands died while they watched on, knowing that to save one ship too many, one in just the wrong way, would result in the Germans changing all of their codes. They became the arbiters of life and death, a position none of them had ever desired.
And so was I. Many still are. To work with these technologies, even to build them for another's use, must imply knowledge of their purpose. These agencies, these departments, compartmentalize their knowledge, seeking to remove the ethical choice from the builders, to place it on the users of the machines. But compartmentalization is damned from the start. These people know what they're building, they know how powerful it's becoming, and they sure as hell know exactly what it's being used for. As such they are as ethically liable as anyone else. As I was.
That is not to say that these technologies are bad, that the ability to intercept and read communications is fundamentally flawed. But it does mean that when those systems are turned into targeting systems, or handed to foreign governments who abuse their own people, that we are responsible. A lot of people have asked me why I left my job in Arizona, despite knowing how "important" it was. I know there are people alive today who would not be if I had not worked there. But I also know that there are the dead.
I am no naive innocent, imagining that every conflict can be solved without the use of violence. Though I now seek peace more directly, I fully recognize that there are some people who can only be dealt with through the use of deadly force. My problem is with neither of these statements. It is with the avoidance of responsibility. And even more fundamentally than that, it is that I am a healer, and that is not my path.
So yes. I left defense contracting. I will never return. I have seen the lack of accountability that comes with secret decision making turn into erroneous claims that "you know better than the public," that your "special access to information" gives you the right to make the call that affects so many others without their knowledge. And I am done with it.
Had I been discovered with these views in my time working for them, I would also have been escorted from the premises. It's dangerous to profess Chelsea Manning as a hero while working for the self-same industry, even on projects that are far less egregious than the ones they disclosed. But the end is the same. I could no longer trust those who I built machines for to use them in good faith, or to not hand them over to 'allies' who imprison their own people in the name of political expediency.
No human being should have to make the choices Alan Turing made as he decided who lived and who died. We *still* make those same choices now, though we are told that others will make that decision for us in the end. It does not absolve him of his responsibility then, and it does not absolve us of ours now. Some actively avoid this knowledge, safe in the fact that the system is geared towards that isolation, but others, like myself, are leaving because we can no longer stay. We are asked to be trustworthy by a system and by people who cannot be trusted themselves, and that can no longer endure.
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I'm tired of living in fear. I'm tired of living with guilt. I'm tired of pretending that this shit isn't broken, and that we aren't failing both those who serve and those who they intend to protect. I am fucking pissed, and this is the end of my imitation game.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is going to be a difficult post. I'm a bit shaken after having returned from a movie that hit way too close to home in far too many ways... And let's get this out of the way up front. I am *very* angry.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By now, some of you will have seen The Imitation Game. If you have not, do so. The movie is about Alan Turing's work as a cryptographer during World War II. Since you're reading this on a Turing machine, it's safe to say he's someone worth knowing about.
Alan's story is a difficult one, one of the most intensely personal tragedies of the modern age. Already a social outcast due to his odd personality, he had very few friends in his life, and only one person he ever truly bonded with. And, were it ever discovered, as it was at the end of his life, even that was forbidden him. You see, homosexuality was against the law in Britain at that time. Even though his work quite arguably won the war for the allies (estimates put him ending the war 2 years early and saving 14 million lives), he was, in the end, driven to suicide by the very country he helped save. He was forced into accepting hormone therapy, chemical castration, in order to remain out of jail, and his downward spiral found only one outlet.
In him, we lost one of the most foundational geniuses of our modern world. He not only *proved*, but *built* a universal computing engine, capable of solving any problem rather than fixed functions. It is his gift that powers the very screen you read this text on, his gift that connects this entire world. He could not have known exactly how it would grow and be shaped with time, but he *knew* what a fundamental change his discovery would cause. It is a poor testament to our legacy as a civilisation that we failed him and continue to fail others to this very day. The means may be different now, but our failures endure. *That* is what this post is about.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, I knew this story before I saw the film. I thought I had grieved and dealt with the tragedy, but I was wrong... Why? Because his story is also, in some small part, my story... And it is also a difficult story to tell.
I've never had an easy time connecting with others... For a long time I made friends, interacted, and appeared to function normally to a large majority of folks I interacted with. Previous journals detail a bit more of than than I currently want to delve into, but a major part of finding myself over the past few years has involved the discovery of the term transgender, and the fact that it applies to me. I have been, and still am, fearful of judgement, even though I am trying daily to work a little bit at a time towards comfort in my identity.
I put out a few feelers via HR at my current workplace, trying to discover if there was insurance coverage, but beyond that, I've not really signaled very much. The few who I asked basically dropped the issue as soon as I was done asking the question, so it's clearly something that's still uncomfortable to them. I *think* the engineers and management I work with will be accepting, but it's going to be a struggle for me, especially as some of my roll is customer-facing. I'm not a field applications engineer (FAE), but I do stand in as one on occasion, and I doubt there are very many transgender ones of those...
That's today though, after my move to California, to a place that's hopefully more accepting than the state I had been living in. Arizona may be beautiful, but the minds of many of its inhabitants are sadly not as inspired as the geology that surrounds them...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
While in Arizona, I worked for a small defense contractor, the name of which I'm choosing to leave off here. Said contractor isn't a name you'd recognize, but their primary work is in a similar area to Turing's. Although it's been about 20 years since being gay would result in the loss of your security clearance, transgender employees are still rare enough (and security personnel paranoid enough) to result in all sorts of awkward questions. Having gender identity issues hanging over your head makes you a prime target for blackmail if you're not out as trans, something that can result in immediate loss of clearance.
As such, I lived in fear.
Though the president signed an executive order forbidding discrimination along gender lines in all federal contractors two years ago, it only takes one person to declare you a security risk and you're done. Job, lost. Career, in tatters. Hope you've got some savings, because who's going to want to hire someone who had and then lost a clearance, even in the private sector? I thought I could probably trust my coworkers with my secret, but what if I couldn't? It only takes one.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If that wasn't problem enough, I began to have ethical problems with my work that I simply could not overcome. In the movie, Turing quickly realizes that an intelligence source that the enemy knows about is useless, a fact that remains true to this day. In order to protect access to German communications, he (and the other members of his team) had to carefully manage what intelligence they used, making sure to guard against the possibility of discovery. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands died while they watched on, knowing that to save one ship too many, one in just the wrong way, would result in the Germans changing all of their codes. They became the arbiters of life and death, a position none of them had ever desired.
And so was I. Many still are. To work with these technologies, even to build them for another's use, must imply knowledge of their purpose. These agencies, these departments, compartmentalize their knowledge, seeking to remove the ethical choice from the builders, to place it on the users of the machines. But compartmentalization is damned from the start. These people know what they're building, they know how powerful it's becoming, and they sure as hell know exactly what it's being used for. As such they are as ethically liable as anyone else. As I was.
That is not to say that these technologies are bad, that the ability to intercept and read communications is fundamentally flawed. But it does mean that when those systems are turned into targeting systems, or handed to foreign governments who abuse their own people, that we are responsible. A lot of people have asked me why I left my job in Arizona, despite knowing how "important" it was. I know there are people alive today who would not be if I had not worked there. But I also know that there are the dead.
I am no naive innocent, imagining that every conflict can be solved without the use of violence. Though I now seek peace more directly, I fully recognize that there are some people who can only be dealt with through the use of deadly force. My problem is with neither of these statements. It is with the avoidance of responsibility. And even more fundamentally than that, it is that I am a healer, and that is not my path.
So yes. I left defense contracting. I will never return. I have seen the lack of accountability that comes with secret decision making turn into erroneous claims that "you know better than the public," that your "special access to information" gives you the right to make the call that affects so many others without their knowledge. And I am done with it.
Had I been discovered with these views in my time working for them, I would also have been escorted from the premises. It's dangerous to profess Chelsea Manning as a hero while working for the self-same industry, even on projects that are far less egregious than the ones they disclosed. But the end is the same. I could no longer trust those who I built machines for to use them in good faith, or to not hand them over to 'allies' who imprison their own people in the name of political expediency.
No human being should have to make the choices Alan Turing made as he decided who lived and who died. We *still* make those same choices now, though we are told that others will make that decision for us in the end. It does not absolve him of his responsibility then, and it does not absolve us of ours now. Some actively avoid this knowledge, safe in the fact that the system is geared towards that isolation, but others, like myself, are leaving because we can no longer stay. We are asked to be trustworthy by a system and by people who cannot be trusted themselves, and that can no longer endure.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm tired of living in fear. I'm tired of living with guilt. I'm tired of pretending that this shit isn't broken, and that we aren't failing both those who serve and those who they intend to protect. I am fucking pissed, and this is the end of my imitation game.
