I’ve just submitted a piece for the new Opinions section of the monthly LMS Newsletter: Should mathematicians cooperate with GCHQ? (Update: now available (p.34).) The LMS is the London Mathematical Society, which is the UK’s national mathematical society. My piece should appear in the April edition of the newsletter, and you can read it below.

Here’s the story. Since November, I’ve been corresponding with people at the LMS, trying to find out what connections there are between it and GCHQ. Getting the answer took nearly three months and a fair bit of pushing. In the process, I made some criticisms of the LMS’s total silence over the GCHQ/NSA scandal:

GCHQ is a major employer of mathematicians in the UK. The NSA is said to be the largest employer of mathematicians in the world. If there had been a major scandal at the heart of the largest publishing houses in the world, unfolding constantly over the last eight months, wouldn’t you expect it to feature prominently in every issue of the Society of Publishers’ newsletter?

To its credit, the LMS responded by inviting me to write an inaugural piece for a new Opinions section of the newsletter. Here it is.

The Society has an indirect relationship with GCHQ via a funding agreement with the Heilbronn Institute, in which the Institute will give up to £20,000 per year to the Society. This is approximately 0.7% of our total income. This is a recently made agreement and the funding will contribute directly to the LMS-CMI Research Schools, providing valuable intensive training for early career mathematicians. GCHQ is not involved in the choice of topics covered by the Research Schools.

I had a 500-word limit, so I omitted a lot. Here are the facts on the LMS’s links with GCHQ, as stated to me by the LMS President Terry Lyons

So, GCHQ’s financial support for the LMS is small enough that declining it would not make a major financial impact.

I hope the LMS will make a public statement clarifying its relationship with GCHQ. I see no argument against transparency.

Another significant factor (which Lyons alludes to above and is already a matter of public record) is that GCHQ is a funder of the Heilbronn Institute, which is a collaboration between GCHQ and the University of Bristol. I don’t know that the LMS is involved with Heilbronn beyond what’s mentioned above, but Heilbronn does seem to provide an important channel through which (some!) British mathematicians support the secret services.

Finally, I want to make clear that although I think there are some problems with the LMS as an institution, I don’t blame the people running it, many of whom are taking time out of extremely busy schedules for the most altruistic reasons. As I wrote to one of them:

I’m genuinely in awe of the amount that you […] give to the mathematical community, both in terms of your selflessness and your energy. I don’t know how you do it. Anything critical I have to say is said with that admiration as the backdrop, and I hope I’d never say anything of the form “do more!”, because to ask that would be ridiculous.

Rules for commenting here I’ve now written several posts on this and related subjects (1, 2, 3, 4). Every time, I’ve deleted some off-topic comments — including some I’ve enjoyed and agreed with heartily. Please keep comments on-topic. In case there’s any doubt, the topic is the relationship between mathematicians and the secret services. Comments that stray too far from this will be deleted.