Impenetrable Computers And Security Officers

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30367, 17 February 1964, Page 11

Impenetrable Computers And Security Officers

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, February 15. Security officers at Woomera were almost as numerous as the sheep and even the “obvious bewilderment” of visitors did nothing to lower their guard, “The Times” defence correspondent said today.

The correspondent was summing up his impressions of the weapons research establishment in outback South Australia after a recent visit, in a feature article Treaded “The Enthusiasts of Woomera.” He found “a refreshing enthusiasm in the air” among the stafl scientists. It was disturbingly easy to be urban and patronising about what had been achieved. “Cosmopolitan reluctance to be impressed is nourished by an endless supply of what American journalists call •gee-whizz data’ hypnotically tedious facts about millions of gallons of water, hundreds of thousands of ball bearings and infinitesimal quantities of ram. This flow of marginally valuable

intelligence often unearths a cloudy gem of sociological observation—for example, the birth-rate in this desert community of mathematicians and technicians is alleged to be the highest in Australia.” The correspondent saw the com-iunity as “an uneven mixture of technical expertise and the simple life.” The range-head was a complicated arrangement of missile launchers, airfields, tracking equipment and instruments “so esoteric that to the unscientific mind it had elements of self-parody.” To the scientific illiterate, there was a numbing quality about the endless rows of digital and analogue computers, spectrophotometers and high-temperature vacuum furnaces. “For at least one observer inspecting these arrangements the inability to ask even remotely appropriate questions sprang from a career in physics that ended in the Fourth Form with the partial electrocution of a demoralised science master,” be said. Discussing the numerous security officers, the correspondent said that as well as being almost as numerous as the sheep they had “something of the same patient air that goes with a deep understanding of the basic frailty of human beings.” The establishment suffered from “a schizophrenic conflict between an obsession with secrecy and a reluctant acceptance of the value of publicity.” “The scales,” he commented, “are weighted heavily in favour of the bland men with wary faces whose ideal world is one in which nobody tells anybody anything.”

Expanding on this, he said: “They have an aniti-Socratic instinct to frustrate the most outwardly harmless symptoms of the spirit of inquiry—a professional zeal for obfuscation that can sometimes achieve heroic proportions. When a notably unscientific defence correspondent paused to admire the beautiful patterns of fluorescent green and violet forming and reforming on a radar screen he was ted gently away by a man with penetrating spectacles. Tih sorry, sir,’ he was told gently, “that information is classified’.” “The Times” correspondent said the computers “had an identical air of inscrutable preoccupation, suggesting that they were performing their prodigious feats of memory and calculation simply to pass the time while waiting to take over the entire establishment.”