Computer science faces an ethics crisis. The Cambridge Analytica scandal proves it.; Boston Globe, March 22, 2018

Yonatan Zunger, Boston Globe; 

Computer science faces an ethics crisis. The Cambridge Analytica scandal proves it.

"Software engineers continue to treat safety and ethics as specialities, rather than the foundations of all design; young engineers believe they just need to learn to code, change the world, disrupt something. Business leaders focus on getting a product out fast, confident that they will not be held to account if that product fails catastrophically. Simultaneously imagining their products as changing the world and not being important enough to require safety precautions, they behave like kids in a shop full of loaded AK-47’s...

Underpinning all of these need to be systems for deciding on what computer science ethics should be, and how they should be enforced. These will need to be built by a consensus among the stakeholders in the field, from industry, to academia, to capital, and most importantly, among the engineers and the public, who are ultimately most affected. It must be done with particular attention to diversity of representation. In computer science, more than any other field, system failures tend to affect people in different social contexts (race, gender, class, geography, disability) differently. Familiarity with the details of real life in these different contexts is required to prevent disaster...

What stands between these is attention to the core questions of engineering: to what uses might a system be put? How might it fail? And how will it behave when it does? Computer science must step up to the bar set by its sister fields, before its own bridge collapse — or worse, its own Hiroshima."

Two marines under investigation for alleged threat against gay bars; Guardian, 6/17/16

Sam Levin, Guardian; Two marines under investigation for alleged threat against gay bars:

"Two active-duty US marine corps members are under investigation for a social media post showing a man in uniform with a rifle and the caption “Coming to a gay bar near you!” – an apparent reference to the mass shooting at an LGBT nightclub that killed 49 people.

The 1st Marine Expeditionary Force is investigating the man in the photo, which was shared on Snapchat, along with another active-duty marine, who reposted the image with the message “Too soon?”, according to spokeswoman Major Staci Reidinger...

The photo was reportedly posted on a private Facebook group, called Camp MENdleton resale, which describes itself as a “group for male Marines, Corpsman, and other active duty, reserve, retired, and veteran service members”...

“Orlando was long overdue,” read the message, which was posted on a San Diego Craigslist page, according to local station KGTV. “Those people were walking diseases, bug chasers, and thank god for AIDS and 9-11 and now Orlando. San Diego you are next.”

A pastor in northern California also faced intense backlash this week after he delivered a virulently anti-LGBT sermon, saying Orlando is “a little safer tonight” and “the tragedy is that more of them didn’t die”."

Read The Heartbreaking Online Letters Of Young, LGBT Russians; HuffingtonPost.com, 2/25/14

Betsy Isaacson, HuffingtonPost.com; Read The Heartbreaking Online Letters Of Young, LGBT Russians:

"Some young LGBT Russians have come together for support online, as part of a community called "Deti-404." The name means "Youth-404" in English, a reference to the common online error message "404 Page Not Found" and a comment on Russia's seeming denial of the existence of LGBT youth. The community serves as a social space for Russian-speaking LGBT young people, providing support and publishing anonymous letters from teens and 20-somethings who want to speak about their experiences.

On the group's Facebook page (in Russian), Deti-404 founder, Russian journalist and LGBT activist Lena Klimova, writes that LGBT youth saw their identities erased during the latest wave of legislation: "Our society believes that gay teenagers do not exist in nature, as if gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people arrive from Mars as adults ... Stop, people! Hear them! These are your children. Who knows: Maybe you’ll see the letter of your own child here?"

The community currently exists on two social networks: Facebook and its Russian equivalent, Vkontakte...

But if conservative Russian lawmakers have their way, Deti-404 won't exist for much longer.