In the next few years we will see more security technology being developed and deployed. We will have to make difficult choices about when and where these technologies should be applied. Cryptography, for example, can be used to protect information and information systems by assuring privacy and data integrity. It is a means to identify or authenticate people in various roles. Using cryptography generally increases the security of computers regardless of who they belong to. Computer and network security technology protects the computers of both the “good guys” and the “bad guys.” Should citizens and American businesses be allowed to harden their systems (and protect them from intruders including the government), or should only the government be allowed to use cryptography? The National Academy of Science studied this, and its conclusions are in the book Cryptography’s Role in Securing the Information Society (www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/crisis).
      Ghandi, King, and Mandela are inspiring examples that no system or technology can withstand human resolve and determination forever. Information technology increasingly binds us together by making it ever more difficult for any of us to say, “I didn’t know.”
      Whether information technology brings us closer so we can live together more effectively or merely highlights our differences is our choice to make. Deciding to live together peacefully is an age-old choice, with technology magnifying the consequences. I hope we choose wisely.

      Meredith Professor Shiu-Kai Chin ’75, G’78, G’86 teaches in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and is director of the CASE Center. He has worked with the Information Warfare Branch at the Information Directorate of the Air Force Research Lab in Rome, New York, and is a commissioner on the Onondaga County/City of Syracuse Human Rights Commission.