Living in the richest nation on the planet doesn't feel too safe anymore. On the Hill, a microcosm of all that's idealistic, intellectual and cynical in America, we remain mostly unscathed - save the scars of September 11 that still plague some of us daily. But still there exist masterplans to destroy us, the malleable undergraduates, in ways we've never even contemplated.
Take, for example, newly approved search and surveillance methods, both high- and low- tech, made available in the wake of the attacks of the 11th. Think of IP and MAC address tracing: sure, we bid farewell to Napster a while ago, but new file-sharing programs like KaZaA and Morpheus can still be - and are being - traced, implicating naÔve freshmen who really only want their daily dosage of Dr. Dre. Of course, there are many ways to prevent these things from happening, but the Recording Industry Association of America wants us to believe that there's only one way: stop downloading. But there's always the method of covering your tracks, which is what cryptography does in the electronic world. Government and industry still have the upper hand in this battle of secrecy (especially in Internet-standard encryption like RSA); and maybe after you read the article on cryptography, you'll understand why.
Laws are also being approved that will enable authorities to detain suspected terrorists without a warrant, effectively legalizing arbitrary arrest. And if it's any sign, it seems to be necessary, what with numerous plane crashes and mail attacks involving anthrax around the nation. The anthrax scare is actually more than that; at Cornell, we've just been lucky enough to be free from anthrax, though not from the suspicion of it. E-mail viruses have also made a slight comeback, with the Internet seeing a few major trojans and worms in the past months. But still, we hold our trust in the Big Red. Even if they - whoever "they" are - decimate our network computers, they'll have to deal with the prospects of breakthrough stem cell research, which has the full potential to breathe life into organisms. In this field, the grass may be greener north of the border, where strict regulations regarding funding have yet to be passed. And the grass may literally be a lot greener very soon, if the Canadian government's legalization of medical cannabis works out. Yet another war for the Bush administration to fight, one might say.
The events of past few months, sparked by the World Trade Center attacks and including stock market scares, rumors, mail threats, and crazed bus passengers, has been memorable, to be terse. Our time, like any other, is full of uncertainty; the difference today is that we're often fighting an unknown enemy - and sometimes even an imagined one. It's at times like these that we just need to clamp down and focus on the scientific and technological facts at hand, which is what we at SciTech do, and tend to do a lot. If you're interested in discovering more about your world, we invite you to join our staff; just drop a line at scitech@cornell.edu. Hope you enjoy the issue!
David Lee
Editor-in-chief