David S. Touretzky: Difference between revisions

David S. Touretzky is a research professor in the Computer Science Department and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at Carnegie Mellon University.

He received a BA in Computer Science at Rutgers University in 1978, and did his doctorate at Carnegie Mellon University in 1984.

He has worked as an Internet activist in favor of freedom of speech, especially what he perceives as abuse of the legal system by government and private authorities. He is also a notable critic of Scientology.

Research interests: Neural representation of space in rodents (e.g., hippocampus), and in robots. Computational neuroscience. Animal learning.

Since the late 1990s, Touretzky has worked to expose the actions of the Church of Scientology. He sees the actions of the organization as a threat to free speech, and he has taken a prominent part in Internet-based activism to oppose it. He has also frequently appeared on radio and in print as a critic.

He has undertaken extensive research into the upper levels of Scientology, which the church has tried to keep secret, and he has made this information available to the public on the OT III Scholars Page (concerning Xenu) and the NOTs Scholars Page (concerning the higher Operating Thetan levels). These pages, he states, are academic studies of Scientology's texts, and are therefore legally available due to careful application of the academic fair use provisions of copyright law. As such, the Church has failed to have them removed, despite years of effort and numerous complaints against him with Carnegie-Mellon University. He has also been threatened with lawsuits by the Church several times, but as of 2005 the Church has not followed through with these. CMU, in turn, has issued statements in support of Professor Touretzky, noting that his actions against Scientology are a personal affair and not the opinion of the University itself.

He has also worked to expose what he sees as dangerous and potentially life-threatening treatments provided by Narconon, the Scientology-based drug rehabilitation program. He is the founder and maintainer of a Web site entitled Stop Narconon, which archives media articles critical of the program. Touretzky's research into Narconon was a primary source of information for a series of San Francisco Chronicle newspaper articles criticizing the organization on June 9 and 10, 2004, which ultimately led to the organization being rejected by the California school system in early 2005.[1]

Touretzky's interest in the esoteric secrets of the Church of Scientology has resulted in various "dead agent" campaigns against him.[2]

In 2000, Dr. Touretzky offered his voice and support to Electronic Frontier Foundation to help the long-running hacker magazine 2600 in a suit brought by the MPAA testifying in support of the controversial group and against the MPAA's attempts to block DVD decoding software (especially DeCSS).

For more than two years, Touretzky had provided a mirror site for bomb-making instructions on his CMU website[3], in reaction to the federal prosecution and eventual imprisonment of the teenager (Sherman Austin) who originally hosted the material. In May 2004, to minimize harassment of CMU, Touretzky moved the mirror from the CMU server to a private site[4]. The US government has not commented on the mirror.

• Common Lisp: A gentle introduction to symbolic computation (Benjamin-Cummings Pub Co, September 1, 1989, ISBN 0805304924)

"No wonder Scientology hates the Internet."

• Articles relating to Touretzky's mirror of the bomb instructions
  • CMU Professor's Web Site Causing Controversy, Site Offers Info On Bomb-Making by Karen Welles, Target 11 Investigator
  • Article on the bomb-instruction controversy First published in The Tartan, CMU news sheet, 2002
  • Ethics and Tax Dollars By: John Middleton, Citizens Against Government Waste (an organization backed by Microsoft and the tobacco industry [5])

• Articles relating to DeCSS
  • "Movie Industry Frowns on Professor's Software Gallery" by David F. Gallagher, New York Times, March 30, 2001
  • "Banned Code Lives in Poetry and Song" by David P. Hamilton, Wall Street Journal, April 12, 2001

• Touretzky's personal CMU websites
  • Professor Touretzky's personal Web site
  • Touretzky announces removal of Reclaim Guide from CMU website to an external server.

• Published articles by Touretzky
  • On Scientology: Razor magazine article
  • On DeCSS: Article in Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery

• Scientology "dead agenting" websites and articles on Touretzky
  • Religious Freedom Watch: David Touretzky, Anti-Religious Extremist