Ethical calculus

摘要

For the past 10 months, a major international scandal has engulfed some of the world's largest employers of mathematicians. These organisations stand accused of law-breaking on an industrial scale and are now the object of widespread outrage. How has the mathematics community responded? Largely by ignoring it. Those employers - the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)-have been systematically monitoring as much of our lives as they can, including our emails, texts, phone and Skype calls, web browsing, bank transactions and location data.