Agency to end use of technology terms such as ‘master’ and ‘slave’ over racist associations by Eric Geller
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, whose publications form the basis for federal activities on everything from cybersecurity to time measurement, will stop using common computer security terms with racist connotations.
“We’ve identified a pretty extensive list of publications that have one or more uses of these terms, and we’re in the process of initiating updates to those,” Kevin Stine, the chief of NIST’s Applied Cybersecurity Division, said on Thursday during a meeting of the agency’s Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board, or ISPAB.
Chuck Romine, director of the agency’s Information Technology Laboratory, first informed the board that it was reviewing the use of a number of terms on Wednesday.
Michael Sauers is the Director of Logan Library in Logan, UT. Prior to this he was one of the founding staff and Technology Manager for Do Space in Omaha, NE. After earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany's School of Information Science and Policy Michael spent his first 20 years as a librarian training other librarians in technology along with time as a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, a technology consultant, and a bookseller. He has written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and has published 14 books ranging from library technology, blogging, Web design, and an index to a popular horror magazine. In his spare time, he blogs at TravelinLibrarian.info, runs The Collector's Guide to Dean Koontz website at CollectingKoontz.com, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
Unless otherwise stated, all opinions are my own and are not to be considered those of the City of Logan, UT.
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