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Comment by dogma1138 | Hacker News Reader

What is so surprising here? The DOD is the largest funder of research grants in the US. Pretty much every university is doing research for a US agency from cyber security to lasers for missile defense. I find it very hard to believe that this is the firs time a university was conducting computer security research on live targets.

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Whether or not it's surprising is perhaps the least interesting point for discussion. Universities have a responsibility to conduct human research ethically and I hope we hear a lot more about how this research in particular was conducted. This could have endangered lives depending on how it was done, and I'm quite sure the ends don't justify the means unless it was specifically done in a way which protected the anonymity of untargeted users.

>Universities have a responsibility to conduct human research ethically

which means little given the laws of nature, all that matters is what people end up doing and measuring that statistically. If statistically speaking most people aren't ethical then that's what we'll get. This whole idea that people are in control of their actions or have any freedom whatsoever given what we know about the laws of nature has to go.

If people lack free will, then the people judging/punishing them also lack free will, and the entire premise of your arguement is an absurdity.

If free will didn't exist, it would be necessary to create it.

Ethics are tricky, especially considering these days one can earn an MSc in Guided Weapon Systems from the top Aerospace Engineering school in the UK.

The DOD funds lasers, but it doesn't then has researchers fire them at random cars to test their effectiveness.

I'm not actually sure this isn't sarcasm.

The DOD also funds development of guided, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and just about every other way to kill a man you can think off. "Agent Orange" was pretty much militarized by the University of Hawaii under a DOD grant during the late 60's, and they've coordinated with the USAF and the CIA and provided research and analysis to optimize the dispersal methods and study it's effects during it's combat use over Vietnam.

It was also done without a warrant it seems.

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