David S. Touretzky

David S. Touretzky (2007)

David S. Touretzky is an American computer scientist who teaches at Carnegie Mellon University .

He received his BA in Computer Science from Rutgers University in 1978 and his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in 1984. His research areas include artificial intelligence , machine learning , neuroinformatics and robotics . In 1986 his dissertation was published under the title The Mathematics of Inheritance Systems . In 1990 he published an introduction to the Common Lisp programming language . In 2006 he was named a Distinguished Scientist by the Association for Computing Machinery . He is a member of the board of Neur IPS and editor of several conference proceedings. He is also on the editorial staff of the journal Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation .

In 2000, he appeared as a defense witness in the Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes about the publication of the decoding program DeCSS . After the court had ruled that the distribution of the executable program code was prohibited, Touretzky described the algorithm of the Content Scramble System in natural language and published other implementations (in various programming languages, as images, pieces of music, etc.) on his website in order to identify the weak points Decision to show. In August 2001, he published an article in the Communications of the ACM in which he criticized the restrictions on the right to freedom of expression enshrined in the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution , which he believed programmers were subject to through abusive copyright regulations.

He also campaigned for freedom of expression in the case of 18-year-old Sherman Martin Austin, who published instructions on how to build a bomb on his website and was sentenced to one year in prison for this in 2002. Touretzky, who describes himself as a supporter of the Republicans , provided a mirror for the incriminated sites.

Touretzky is one of the most famous critics of Scientology and Narconon in the USA. On his website, The Secrets of Scientology , he opposes the notion that the methods employed by Scientology are harmless and ineffective and makes their content and techniques public. He has appeared on multiple news programs on CNN and MSNBC . In July 2007 he described Scientology as a "totalitarian cult" in an interview.