Schneier on Security

Imitation is the sincerest form of plagarism.

(I copied that from someone's .sig :-)

The "ACM has no policy on plagiarism" -- interesting that the ACM copyright policy at http://www.acm.org/pubs/copyright_policy/ indicates that they (ACM) have an interest in preventing works from being plagiarized when THEY hold the copyright. Perhaps the problem is that you didn't publish your paper in an ACM journal? :-)

They appear to have plagarised each other's apology. :)

- C.

Here's another suspicious paper of S. Tauseef-Ur-Rehman:

Analysis of Real-time Transport Protocol Security
www.ansinet.org/fulltext/itj/itj33311-314.pdf

My thinking on this is that it's clearly plagiarism. Sentences have been somewhat summarized and many typoes have been intrduced, but otherwise it's the same paper. It's copid, with the same section, paragraph, and sentence structure -- right down to the same variable names. It has the same qirks in the way references are cited. And so on.

It's inconceivable!

If the students submitted your paper as part of their academic training, it would be interesting to see what marks they
were given ;-) And by whom ;-)

Just teasing,

Stu Savory

Im currently a 3rd year comp sci student in australia.

Even at this undergraduate level i am very suprised at the amount of plagiarism i see taking place.

The university (which i will not name) talks harsh penalties and apparently employs some "intelligent" software (grep?) to identifiy suspect assignments etc. but none of this deters students.

It's sad really...

> It's inconceivable!

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means"

Movie tourette's aside, I am astonished that ACM has no formal policy on plagarism, and even more astonished that the SIGCSE would backpedal from a perfectly reasonable stance of "submit a plagarized paper and you're banned from submitting to us again."

I'm about to start the fourth (and final) year of a MEng and recently submitted ~15,000 word report discussing Firewalls which contained some 80+ references. I have to say I was quite amazed by the amount of text I discovered that seemed to have been plagiarised.

Yes, there is something wrong with the incentive structure used in the academia. When there are strong incentives for plagiarism (and small probability of getting caught), the lazier and less talented of us cannot resist the opportunity.

The thing is that when the percentage of population working/studying in the academia rises, the avarage quality goes down, and this leads to desperate acts, mostly committed by the less talented.

In MIT, where I am currently studying, most course syllabi clearly discourage us from plagiarism. However, I have seen it happening, which is very sad.

Personally, I am happy to fail on my own rather than succeed by copying someone eles. If I fail here, there is still so much for me to do in the rest of the world.

I'm sorry to say folks plagiarism is endemic not just in academia but just about every where else to.

I have two relatives who work in the healthcare sector in the UK, both of which had to do some quite hard work to get their acc qualifications. Imagine how they felt when they had their work stolen by their supposed betters (A uni course tutor and a senior manager).

For a lot of students these days they are required to submit their course disatations in electronic format so that the University can "publish it" (it's the modern way to publish apparently....)

In one case it was by one of their university lectures who chomped a whole section from their disatation into a position paper they gave at a healthcare conferance (for government attendees). They probably thought it would not get back but it did.

In the second case it was by a manager in the same health authority using it in an internal document they where using to advance their position within the organisation.

In neither case did the offenders ask permision or acknowledge my relatives. Also when the Uni course tutor was chalenged they gave the brush off. Apparently the Uni concerned has a clause that enables them to use the interlectual property of the students...

It is for this reason I always put a copyright notice in all my documents and I would advise all others to do it as well

Unfortunatly I have on one occasion had to enforce it using our friends in the legal proffession and this I would not advise unless you have very very deep pockets.

I personaly have no objection to people quoting me as much as they like, providing it's in context, and acknolwedged.

However I don't like plagiarism I consider it a crime as effectily they are "passing off" the work of others to their own benifit without recompense to the individual. Is it akin to theaft or fraud? I'm not sure our learned friends consider it so but I certainly do.

"And it's nice to know that our work is still considered relevant eight years later."

Yes Bruce, it is terrible that you were plagarized, but I was just thinking... it must be nice to know your work is still considered relevant eight years later. ;-)

@Clive Robinson
In my educational training plagarism has always been treated as theft, but as such it does not make much sense. The fact is that to express oneself at all about a subject with which one is not familiar you will unavoidably end up using words and phrases greatly similar to that of the original. If you have indeed taken one step further and put forth the effort to make such ideas part of your own thinking then all that I see as being required (barring intentional exact quotes of any sort and what I'll call 'magic phrases' from a source work) is to make note of your references and readings.
Where the problem--at least in my academic experience--has been, is in the obsession with exact and near exact citations--while not providing the student a way to express more broadly used sources. Some teachers of classes I attended had been explicitly instructed to use broken documentation methods (the MLA system comes to mind) in teaching the class how to write reports. This leads students into the dangerously wrong mindset that all they need to do to construct a proper report about something is to quote a whole lot of people whom supposedly know what they are talking about--and to not need to take responsibility for their own implicit ownership of any conclusions to which their report may lead. An extreme example of this came in one _college_level_ class where all of us were asked to make a report about some aspect of computing which most students were not familiar with--and to not provide a source list (therefore no quotations could properly be done according to most citation models). Most of the students just wrote reports the way that they usually did and promptly found themselves accused of plagarism (as most of those accused were also of the same race and from the inner cites, this raised some real concerns about the ethics of the professor involved--concerns which the academic review board had a field day with). There is an obvious problem here: How do we encourge proper reports when we over-emphasize quotation (as a pedagogical tool to sort out plagarists) to the detriment of teaching students how to internalize infomation and report upon the result of that activity instead?
It is therefore my conclusion that dealing with plagarism as a matter of fraud and not as much one of theft would be of much greater utility. The question is then not as much "who said what and how," but one of "what was said, what does it mean, why do YOU THE AUTHOR THINK SO, and whom (or whose work) can back you up on your conclusions." It is that addition of the author's own thoughts back into the equation which is most important. If the author is representing the thoughts of someone else as their own then he is fraudlently representing his own posession of knowledge about a subject. This is what is truly most frightening about plagarism--that somebody may claim to know something important and not know it at all.
Which scares you more, somebody whom steals information or somebody whom claims to have crucial information which that individual does not possess?

Modern academia has taken publish-or-perish to extremes, and in many cases what seems to matter is the publication count. The count is sometimes weighted according to the prestige of the journal or conference, but that's about it.

Someone else pointed out this "suspicious" paper:

Analysis of Real-time Transport Protocol Security
www.ansinet.org/fulltext/itj/itj33311-314.pdf

A quick CiteSeer search finds the source:

http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/401140.html

Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) security
Ville Hallivuori

At least some of the SIGs have been struggling with the question of acceptability of "reworked" publications by the original authors, as they do have a general policy of looking for previously unpublished work. I'm amazed plagiarism doesn't bother them more.

But as the body of knowledge grows in any particular subject, catching plagiarists should be a secondary benefit of the work being done by the likes of Yahoo and Google (scholar.google) to place books and articles into searchable repositories (while still respecting copyright).

And on the lighter side of it, does plagiarism count as an academic citation?

@Clive Robinson

``Apparently the Uni concerned has a clause that enables them to use the interlectual property of the students."
The University of Birmingham, England (UK) essential owns anything I produce during the course of my degree. I suspect the same is true for all University's within the UK.

``I always put a copyright notice in all my documents and I would advise all others to do it as well."
There is no need to mark documents with a copyright notice, any document you produce is assumed to be copyrighted to you (at least, that was my take on it [in the UK])

The plagarism was wrong, but it seems today you have a very effective mechanism to publically shame them. Do you think author-blogs can help reduce plagarism? Should there be a "plagarist-jerks.com" website?

I've noticed some bloggers on the case already:
http://whyareweback.blogspot.com/2005/07/ann-coulter-writes-like-jeff-gannon.html
http://whyareweback.blogspot.com/2005/04/unembedded-talon-news-plagiarist.html

I should have checked first, as there appears to be an anti-plagiarist site already that even has tips on prevention:

http://www.turnitin.com/research_site/e_home.html

I noticed the following comment, which clearly does not take "public shaming" or other public exposure into account. I mean plagiarism might initially be made easier by the Internet, but it seems it also makes it easier to seriously increase the risk and penalties of plagiarism...

http://www.plagiarism.org/plagiarism.html

"Even when an instructor or editor does suspect plagiarism, the sheer size of the Internet seems to work in the plagiarist's favor."

The timing of this post and the previous, "Dog Poop Girl," is rather ironic. Directly after questioning the public shaming of the dog-poop-girl through a blog, Bruce publicly shames someone else through his own blog. No offense intended; it just made me laugh.

@Bruce

"And it's nice to know that our work is still considered relevant eight years later."

Yes, indeed, or as Benjamin Disraeli once said "Plagiarists at least have the quality of preservation."

Davi,

Thanks for the links to my blog...nailing right wing pundits who plagiarize is sort of my speciality.

Bruce,

ACM is lying to you. They do have a policy with regards to plagiarism. Check out their code of ethics and professional conduct: http://www.acm.org/constitution/code.html#sect1

------

"1.5 Honor property rights including copyrights and patent.

Violation of copyrights, patents, trade secrets and the terms of license agreements is prohibited by law in most circumstances. Even when software is not so protected, such violations are contrary to professional behavior. Copies of software should be made only with proper authorization. Unauthorized duplication of materials must not be condoned.

1.6 Give proper credit for intellectual property.

Computing professionals are obligated to protect the integrity of intellectual property. Specifically, one must not take credit for other's ideas or work, even in cases where the work has not been explicitly protected by copyright, patent, etc.

4. COMPLIANCE WITH THE CODE.

As an ACM member I will ....

4.1 Uphold and promote the principles of this Code.

The future of the computing profession depends on both technical and ethical excellence. Not only is it important for ACM computing professionals to adhere to the principles expressed in this Code, each member should encourage and support adherence by other members.

4.2 Treat violations of this code as inconsistent with membership in the ACM.

Adherence of professionals to a code of ethics is largely a voluntary matter. However, if a member does not follow this code by engaging in gross misconduct, membership in ACM may be terminated."

----------

If you notice, Mark Mandelbaum, Director of the Office of Publications at ACM, is not honoring the code either:

"Not only is it important for ACM computing professionals to adhere to the principles expressed in this Code, each member should encourage and support adherence by other members."

- "We're largely self-policing."

This is certainly the best method. People sharing a common interest are the most likely to spot a case of plagiarism, even if the copy uses different words, or even a different language.

I am a regular contributor on a comedy website, where members post on various topics in a forum, and where they can also submit comedy articles.
The "community" on there is pretty small (around 300 regular members), and recently someone submitted an existing article as his own.

I did not know the original (by Dave Barry), but someone did, and the member was immediately put to shame on the forum for plagiarizing material.
This shows that even inside a relatively small community, if the people all have a common interest (cryptography, comedy, etc.), you need to be very careful what work you choose to plagiarize.

@Davi Ottenheimer

"Even when an instructor or editor does suspect plagiarism, the sheer size of the Internet seems to work in the plagiarist's favor." - http://www.plagiarism.org/plagiarism.html

...although Google does a very good job! It is simple for a reader to detect copy-and-paste efforts, I've seen it done. Spot a sentence that looks out-of-place and google it. A lecturer who demonstrated this technique (on what I considered to be unprepared material) had a very high `hit' rate*.

* I'll avoid the word success when detecting plagiarism, surely something has gone somewhere for plagiarism to occur (?)

Interesting take on plagiarism by foreign students (alongside other issues): http://aleemhossain.blogspot.com/2005/02/government-spin.html
(Authors homepage: http://www.aleemhossain.freeuk.com/)

* I'll avoid the word success when detecting plagiarism, surely something has gone somewhere for plagiarism to occur (?)

should read:

* I'll avoid the word success when detecting plagiarism, surely something has gone wrong somewhere for plagiarism to occur (?)

Hmm....

When I was undergoing my accademic training (nuclear physics of all things!) it was accepted that 8-10% of one's paper could be directly copied from other sources, provided that those other sources were adequatly and formally identified and referenced.

Sadly I'm far from astonished to find this sort of thing going on, particularly when so mauch material is available annonymously online.

However, in accademic circles this sort of tacit approval of plagiarism does not go unnoticed, and the reputation of any such major accademic establishment would suffer terribly as a consequence of not taking firm action.

Is there some way to introduce an electronic watermark in to documents prepared with common word processors, in a simmilar way to how a watermark can be invisibly coded into a compressed .jpg image?

Paul Crowley wrote:
"Analysis of Real-time Transport Protocol Security
www.ansinet.org/fulltext/itj/itj33311-314.pdf

A quick CiteSeer search finds the source:

http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/401140.html

Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) security
Ville Hallivuori"

So this means that the professor was probably lying, when he said that he had nothing to do with the research, but just appended his name to a paper by two of his students, because coauthors of this paper were not the same as the ones mentioned by Bruce. IMO, all publised papers by this university should be checked.

It amused me that the authors of the plagiarized work were Pakistani. The Pakistani engineering institutions are quite mediocre and one hardly sees any work from here making it to the top tier. That in itself should have raised suspicion, even for the professor who gratuitously lent his name to the paper.

The incident amuses me because plagiarism from Pakistan immediately reminded me of Abdul Qadeer Khan -- thier national hero and the father of Pakistan's nuclear capability. This man is a crook extraordinaire who took plagiarism to a whole new level: way back in 1974-75 he stole highly classified material from the URENCO enrichment plant in Almelo, Netherlands. The Dutch authorities investigated but didn't convict him then, and he dispappeared in '76 and resurfaced in Pakistan as head of their nuclear program.

I digress from the thread, but would like to urge those interested to familiarize themselves with the global laxity surrounding AQ Khan's activities over two decades. Most of the world heard of him only in 2003, even though Amsterdam ultimately convicted and sentenced him in absentia in 1983. His shady activities were always covered in the non US media. Our stupidity in this regard has the unmistakeable footprints of the *biggest* security blunder we have made to date. And I sure hope I am wrong!
http://pakistan70.tripod.com/aqkhan.html
http://www.pakistan-facts.com/staticpages/index.php?page=20040421195243769

So, does that mean Khan is an incompetent physicist, but a competent spy? In the intelligence world, stealing other peoples' work is *encouraged*....

@Mark Lodato

That is an interesting observation. But here's another one: do we have to wait until plagiarist-jerks.com is established until we can talk about one case ?

I suppose Bruce could have tried to keep their names hidden, but I wouldn't feel like trying to protect the identity of the person who plagiarised my work.

@KhanMan:

Well, A Q Khan was very highly regarded in the academic sector in Pakistan. Among the positions he has held, that I am aware of, are: Chairman of the Islamic Development Bank Science and Technology panel, Chairman of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences, Member, Board of Governors of Hamdard University, Sir Syed University Dubai, and Honorary member of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology. Dr. Khan also supervised the development of The A.Q. Khan Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering at Karachi University campus and the Gulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering and Technology.

I just found out that he is also on the Board of Governors of the International Islamic University in Islamabad (see http://www.ias-worldwide.org/profiles/prof85.htm), the same university from which the distinguished authors hail! The three of them should simply appeal to their eminent Board for forgiveness :)

"I suppose Bruce could have tried to keep their names hidden, but I wouldn't feel like trying to protect the identity of the person who plagiarised my work."

That was my thinking.

"do we have to wait until plagiarist-jerks.com is established until we can talk about one case ?"

Perhaps http://www.turnitin.com/ just needs to add a "hall of shame"?

It just would be a matter of convenience for those who have conclusive evidence of the authenticity and/or are known as the original source, which of course begs the question of proof.

Just to chose a random example, I wonder how the "public hearing" effect of blogs might have changed the common perception of who really invented the light bulb. Edison is still almost always given credit even though he just "borrowed" the idea and improved upon it by putting together one of the first modern "research labs" to harness the power of other people's ideas. The information is available today (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_bulb) and yet it is rare to hear anyone other than Edison get the credit in "normal" conversation.

While everyone's busy scurrying to register *-jerks.com, I think Bruce should get in on the action and register security-jerks.com which could feature his Dog House entries.

Quick! Before it's gone!

Welcome to a world of more obscure authors, Bruce :) Why you so amused about this? If someone just appended his name to a paper of yours to get published – that’s would be amusing but this. You have found it by luck (bad luck for plagiarist dumb enough to do by whole papers) but it is rather casual among wannabies. You are quite right about self-policing but do you think it really works for a desperate academia junkie need-more-publications-for-my-status knowing that most of time nobody actually even bother to read those published stuff anyway?

@Ilya,

The sad thing is that, because its unlikely that anyone even in the same subject area at an interview panel will have actually read any of the candidates papers, they tend to form a judgement based upon number of publications each candidate has. This means that people who'd prefer to have a career based on solid reasearch with a reasonable number of high-quality publications end up having to pad-out their CV's with more vacuous (but still valid, non-plagiarised) papers, which in turn leads people who just want to advance in the hierarchy by padding/plagiarism cranking out more low quality stuff, and the cycle begins again.

So the actions of the `wannabe's' affects the behaviour of researchers who do want to do high quality work.

Indeed, it means that, even with mostly researchers who want to do solid, decent work, the content of the most papers starts to approach the Minimum Publishable Unit, and this has consequences for people (both academics & industrial people) trying to keep up with research in a given field: rather than get one largish paper which describes a `logical unit' of ideas & experiments developed over a year or two, you end up with 5-10 small papers each describing a tiny piece of the puzzle and containing essentially the same waffly introduction, survey of related work, etc.

Of course, given the size of academia these days there's too much work being done for even the `single, large paper' model described above to actually have been read by the average interview panel, so it's difficult to see any realistic solution to the problem above and we've just got to accept that we'll primarily take people's publication lists on their CV's `on trust', and people following developments in a field will just have to accept papers which contain minimal new content.

>> I mean, really; if they were going to do this, wouldn't it have been smarter to pick a more obscure author?

Bruce, this is where the insult lies: I bet they thought they WERE picking more obscure authors.

What's worse: that they plagiarised you, or that they thought you, Kelsey and Wagner were no one in particular and that you wouldn't notice that they plagiarised your work?

@purposelyAnon

Yes indeed. This is the reason why I'm not a big fan of academia at large.

This form of plagiarism is easily caught because the original paper is in public sight. I know of cases in which undergraduate students come up with interesting work for science fairs or other kinds of competitions, their work doesn't get published and one or two years later you happen to notice a PhD student or even a professor publishing a paper in the same area, with the same text, structure, pictures...

The good thing is that these losers never make it to the academic/professional mainstream. Incompetence smells.

I, personally, have very pragmatic view:

What are the consequences for me (personally) if somebody plagiarized my work? Do I get my publication count (PC) down (not that I care about it anyway)? -- No. Do I get any reduction of self-satisfaction? -- No. Would anyone think that it is I who plagiarized the other paper? -- Most likely no. So, if they plagiarized my work I have not really lost anything.

As a community we probably lost something since we get more junk to search among (but, with good search engines this most likely is not an issue). As somebody already pointed out, we get relative reduction of our PC, but if an institution use PC as a sole basis for measurement your best bet is not to work for such institution.

OTOH there is one kind of plagiarism that I particularly hate: it is when somebody gets some published work and fills a patent about the same thing (probably with a very minor tweak).

BTW, I do not think that posting somebody else's work is the best way to pop your PC -- as have been shown, it is quite easy to `publish' even a computer generated paper, so if one just takes, say, five random papers about some subject and compile them together (including their references and references to the paper itself) he can quite easily get an inconspicuous publishable paper in less than a couple of days: if you plagiarize one paper it is plagiarism, if you plagiarize several -- it is research :-)

The world of Ctrl-C and then Ctrl-V has really taken plagiarism of digital document to the next level. Plagiarism starts when one is a student and then continues until one is a CEO or a CTO. Unfortunate: but I would rather concentrate on learning, knowledge generation, and knowledge sharing than plagiarism. It makes me more happy when I ignore acts of plagiarism.

One thing what Bruce said is incorrect is when he said the following: "'ve heard of researchers from developing countries resorting t0.." When I researched in Australia, I came to know of reserachers even in "developed" countries resorting to such base means.

hollywood classics get reworked all the time and it isn't considered plagiarism, why should academics be immune?
i'm not aware that pakistan has ever produced anything valuable except for heroin, hashish and violence. oh, wait a sec...
tom lehrer wrote a song about this, the one that begins "there was a man in pinsk, who knew a man in minsk" and ends "plagiarize! let no one else's work evade your eyes!"
with malice toward none, with charity to all...
another_bruce

Plagiarism is everywhere. One of my book reviews for The Historical Novels Review got plagiarized by the author of the book for a review on Amazon.com. He even wrote the review for Amazon under my name.

My wife, who is a prolific columnist, has been plagiarized repeatedly. And her website designs have been "borrowed" repeatedly as well.

About the only thing you can do is to be vigilant and notify the publishers when you find it.

Now we know where Pons and Fleischmann moved.

We've taken to calling this the "Paul Erdos" effect. He published so much original work that now everyone feels as though the bar is higher.

I am pretty sure that the students probably acted upon the Professor's behest and are now taking the fall on his behalf. This sort of wholesale plagiarism seems a little far fetched a plan for just students.

Could have spiced it up a bit by reporting links to terrorism and Al Qaeda (like about everything seems to be reported these days).

@ Xeon

First you use Intel's trademark for your name, and then you do not give credit for your concluding statement, which was clearly lifted from a famous quote by Wilson Mizner (an American Author who died in 1933):

"Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research".

Perhaps you could explain how yours is the pragmatic approach, let alone view, before you claim there is no harm from plagiarism?

@ another_bruce

"hollywood classics get reworked all the time and it isn't considered plagiarism"

Do you mean the ones that do pay royalties/licensing or do you feel that most do not, or should not? To follow your analogy, I am certain if the Pakistani University had offered to license Bruce's paper (e.g. pay to publish it on their paper under his terms, etc.) this would not have been an issue. Even the creative commons license says distribution and reuse is ok as long as credit is given...

http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/

Unfortunately, academic misdeeds are common place, John Kenneth Galbraith even wrote about them in a book entitled "A Tenured Professor" which describes life at Harvard.

Unfortunately, academic misdeeds are commonplace.

The ACM policy, at least from the excerpts cited here, describe the responsibilities of ACM membership but not those of publications. Even if you are not a member of the ACM, you can publish there, so an explicit rule is necessary.

I hope also that Bruce complained to the home institution. I doubt it would do any good, but if it reaches someone who doesn't like the "authors" ...

@Biz:
"I am pretty sure that the students probably acted upon the Professor's behest and are now taking the fall on his behalf. This sort of wholesale plagiarism seems a little far fetched a plan for just students."

Whether the student did it at the professor's behest or not, they are just as responsible.

--Jon

"I hope also that Bruce complained to the home institution. I doubt it would do any good, but if it reaches someone who doesn't like the 'authors' ..."

I did. I couldn't find email addresses, but I found mailing addresses of those in charge of the university.

well it has to be noticed that both the papers are on security. This professer seem to be not that good on security. poor professer, his student chaeted him twice.

@Davi

> "Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research".
>
> Perhaps you could explain how yours is the pragmatic
> approach, let alone view, before you claim there is no harm from plagiarism?

This reminds me of a paper I read recently (although I can't remember the title, the author had recently won an award) the author was suprised to find that someone else had written identical code to the same problem... is this plagiarism, no. Although if this occured in a University you would have problems proving this fact to a tutor.

Greetings mates!

I am not surprised at this story single bit. I was in Pakistan and it is the most common ‘thing’ in universities and colleges. I have seen plagiarists from most senior to junior levels. Surprisingly on a local level, the plagiarists can turn around papers quickly hence are considered ‘smarter’.

My research published by CNN, BBC, WashingtonPost, etc internationally (see below for a few links) was not even mentioned anywhere in Pakistani media (at that time I was a proud Pakistani– should not surprise why am not anymore). While on the other hand a Pakistani plagiarist threw tea party to a couple of journalist and claimed the same discovery and got local media coverage while internationally everyone thought of him as a clown.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3013665.stm
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/05/09/microsoft.flaw.ap/

In a weird way, I am happy not to be covered by Pakistani media, in my eyes I think they are not worth it. Therefore, I have happily moved on.

Cheers

@davi ottenheimer:
well, if the copycats licensed the concept from the original creator, that isn't plagiarism. i didn't hear that the pakis paid mr. schneier a license fee. your comment about the creative commons standard is correct as far as i understand it. case in point:
long long ago, japanese filmmakers made a famous movie "godzilla". about five years ago we got a big new glossy american "godzilla". it was bound to recoup production costs because there's a reliable segment of cineastes who will pay 8-10 bucks to watch a monster emerge from the sea and stomp cars and buildings for two hours. why should a studio take a risk with an original project when it can slam dunk with the old wine in a new bottle? the original screenwriter (or his estate) received token payment if at all out of the millions made by the new monster, because only disney's copyrights are immortal and inviolate. there was a great new yorker cartoon about this awhile back, an agent was pitching a script to a studio guy who asked "could you possibly make it more derivative?"

The response of the ACM was interesting. They clearly think that self-plagiarism is important. They published 'Self-Plagiarism in Computer Science', by Christian Collberg and Stephen Kobourov, in the 4/05 CACM. It's an interesting read, if you have access to it. There's a reference to their ACM Policy on Prior Publication and Simultaneous Submissions available:
www.acm.org/pubs/sim_submissions.html

The article also contains references to a couple of plagiarism detection tools.

I'm not particularly proud of my being a member of the ACM at the moment.

I think everybody has missed something important here: motivation. Why did they have to do it?

In 1930s Germany, the Nazis propagated the fantasy that Einstein "stole" his theory of relativity from patriotic but dead Germans. That's because Relativity was too important to ignore, but too embarassing to attribute to a Jew.

Maybe something similar is going on here. I suppose this research has military or ideological applications and the plagiarists are trying to call it their own.

At the business school I teach, we have started to run all papers through a tool called SafeAssignment (www.safeassignment.com) which seems to work well - it give me as a teacher a score for plagiarism for each paper submitted (matched against anything on the Web + all papers previously submitted to SafeAssignment). The match is "fuzzy", and catches even those students who thought they could get things in by changing a just a few words.

Most of the effect is probably in that students refrain from plagiarizing for fear of being caught, but i have both caught students plagiarizing with this tool and used it for control of suspicious papers. It is much less work-intensive than the "pick a sentence" technique, and seems to catch most copying. Of course, you have to manually check every suspicious paper, since the score can be driven up by quite legitimate quoting.

I think (as an ACM member and author) that ACM should institute as a policy that they run all received submissions through a tool like Turnitin or SafeAssignment - this will immediately catch flagrant plagiarism such as the one reported by Bruce. In fact, it would be a fun excercise to run all ACMs published papers through a plagarism tool - wouldn't surprise me if there were more fish in that sea (or any other published body of work, for that matter.)

greetings everybody,

well i am a pakisatni, i read everyones opinion...i don't support palgiarism .. i think its same a stealing and i condemn what was done by these students...

just to add to your information another_bruce..a pakisatni scientist has won a nobel price,Dr Abdus Salam for his theoratical unification of two fundamental forces of nature. He also received Royal medal by Royal Society of London in 1979.
and as for Dr Abdul Qadeer khan he didn't bring anything in writing, what ever he brought was in his brain ... and whatever is in your brain is your intellect.
I just wanted to add these facts to your knowledge, I am a compter Scientist and i know how one feels if his work is stolen or presented by somebody else under his name. But please don't judge people by an isolated events

Let me point out an article that shows what exactly is happening to science and science education in Pakistan.

http://www.satribune.com/archives/200507/P1_hood.htm

Plagiarism is one thing. People here are running the show on fake degrees. People who are trying to stop this meet the following fate.....

http://www.satribune.com/archives/200507/P1_hood2.htm

"The indifference of the HEC [higher education commission of Pakistan] to issues of quality is apparent in how casually it has accepted fake degrees and fake universities. This tightened up a little only after some months when Dr. Isa Daudpota pointed out case after case in the national press – and then documented them with evidence. Dr Atta-ur-Rahman, his boss, terminated his job almost immediately."

This is taken from
http://www.satribune.com/archives/200507/P1_hood2.htm

To see the whole story check:

http://www.satribune.com/archives/200507/P1_hood.htm
http://www.satribune.com/archives/200507/P1_hec.htm
http://www.satribune.com/archives/200507/P1_hood2.htm
http://www.satribune.com/archives/200507/P1_hec2.htm

There are people who are trying to work sincerely. They need support, not only, from people who are in Pakistan, but also academics abroad.

A simple way to help would be to point out such cases and forward them to HEC (http://www.hec.gov.pk). This is usually not enough. Putting up such cases on the net is more helpful. That puts more pressure on the Universities and the individual.

there should be strick rules and regulations on plagiarism. Any one catch should be banned from submitted any work in future to any conference/journal.
Why are Pakistani any trying to get things done by fraud/illegal acts.
Usman Ali
Pakistan

I think the way to end is to put everthing in terms of strict rules/policy and then most important implementation in real way. No exception. Once you set an example and students seeing culprits getting fired, expelled or banned, you will see real change. The shortcuts can get you degree w/o knowledge, intellect and an urge to investigate and research in real way.

Plagiarism is a universal problem, please don't blame any nation or group in general for doing this. The act of few men doesn't make it a general habbit or culture.

When I got here in USA at university of Maryland for my masters program, course assignments included writing papers and they told us the rules about plagiarism.
They control it effectively first with the help of software which conduct search for degree of match (some criteria say >60% or etc), secondly depth of knowledge of professor in his field( its kinda hrad to keep track of everything) and then third seeing 1 case in which student was terminated for a semester and with warnings. Good enough for others to see !

strict rules should be formulated for such actions, and its everywhere not only in south asia. And i believe some example should be set and not just on Univesity Level. So that follower have something to be afraid of. And nothing better than making these people an example. Such things are very common in lower/middle band universities of Pakistan, and is supported by their supervisors and quite obviously why.

You are talking about plagarism, let me introduce you to Dr. Fake. Pakistans State Minister for Religious Affairs.

http://www.satribune.com/archives/200505/P1_drfake2.htm

http://www.satribune.com/archives/200505/P1_butt2.htm

Plagarism & fakism isn't rare in Pakistan, but I believe the developed nations also have some part to play in it. Because these fake degrees were purchased from a developed nations, and these plagarismised papers were also published in the west.

Let me tell you another interesting story of Dr. S. Tauseef-ur-Rehman.

Four years ago, while giving a drama-like lecture of his, he asked his students, "Can you tell me, my worst charateristic?". One student replied, "Sir, you lie a lot.", and Dr. Tauseef's cheeks melted like ice.

I am really sad to hear this kind of thing being done by someone from Pakistan as I am also from the same country.

But it was not right to say "I've heard of researchers from developing countries . ....." There are numerous examples of plagiarism of scholars from developed countries, just to site one example see http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1346676/posts.

Apart from this there are other examples, an anthropologist from UK, a German doctor from Bell Labs and so on.

Amin

It might be lack of awareness and people might think that copying a material from different places is called research. We should look into how to resolve the issue. But the actual point I wanted to raise here was that some very good suggestions were given and instead of targeting any community it is always better to focus on the resolution of the problem. There are few people wandering around internet who try to fit their text on every discussion targeting some communities, in which they might be somehow successful but I think we should stick to topic and not trying to convince people with few examples. I have read some comments on AQ Khan and as a reply to it, I would like to ask Steve to write down the history of other nuclear power states on some other forum that how they STOLEN nuclear power. It will be really interesting to read it as well. You can write some article on that and I hope it will not be copied.

oh yea, nice little plan....

copy a paper;
publish it in your name along with some students' names (someone has to be blamed for errors)
if no one find out, you win. if someone does.... it was the students officer! i didnt do anything. I'm a professor for God' sake.... Right.
oldest trick in the facult'y book here...
Guess what. One asshole is sitting in Germany right now coz he won a scholarship by submitting a student't research paper. Nice eh? What else can you expect from people who only care about their pockets? If the rector of the university can fool Arabs and split the Funds they provide to IIU among his fellow "HEADS", you can be sure that his relatives posing as professors would do something similar to get anything worthwhile out of this place. Hell, what else could anyone expect from people who`ve made a fine business out of education when they don't know S**T about the value of Education. all they see are the $$$$$$s . Its a plain game... You have to be a big fish and no one can lay a finger on you. Thats how the former IT Minister got filthy rich. Get in touch with the president throught your pals... start the IT revolution oh yeah , A chemist leading the IT education and industry ... (See the sparks ???) get alot of cash on your hands to "Make" the industry work ... and get something even better on the way , shares in the best business today... AN IT INSTITUTE of the highest "STANDARDS"... yeah yeah (Dr. Atta ur Rehman owns over 50 % shares of Comsats and its affiliated organizations).... talk about Toseef-ur-Rehman... a little fish in a big filthy pond.. he`s gotta eat too you know.... like his fellow "HEAD FISH" ... its a norm for people who know nothing about an office to Head a whole department....

Don't believe any of the things i said ??? well like i said, I'm the eye and know alot more than you could ever believe.... adios amigos.....

Oh... i felt very bad about this. I'm doing my bachelors in CS from the very same university ... !!!

There should be some serious check on plagiarism of research papers, by the supervisors as well as by the publicationing authorities!!

This is a real sad news for me,as i am an X student of this university.What Dr tauseef did is really shocking.some serious action should b taken against him and the students as well.

"This is a real sad news for me,as i am an X student of this university.What Dr tauseef did is really shocking.some serious action should b taken against him and the students as well."

It's very hard for me to figure out who at the university I should talk to. Is there a name, with email address? Please send me email if you can help.

I am doing Bachelors in Computer Science from the same university. And, when I knew that about Mr Tauseef Ur Rehman It has really shocked me.
When we people are in the examination hall, he is always saying Not Cheating man No cheating. But, today I have understand the thing that why I was not listening to him at all. Because He is A Big Cheater.

If any one from here want to talk to the students of IIUI about that there group address is dcsiiui@yahoogroups.com .
Mail here and comment. This address is shared by all the faculty member, students. Use this to condemn his approach.

The end result could be serious.

Academic institutions, societies etc. get treated as the joke they clearly are.

Alternate systems, with draconian quality controls arise. Those with a reasonable but not stellar ability get squeezed out, checking thoroughly is just too hard!!

Schneier,

Dr. S. Tauseef, is in the "List of Approved Supervisors" under the decipline of engineering by "Higher Education Commission" of Pakistan.

You can find his name in the "List of Approved Supervisors" linked below:
http://www.hec.gov.pk/

So, the best person to talk to is the Chairman of HEC, at the following address:
chairman@hec.gov.pk

Because I believe, no one will take any action but the Chairman of HEC, Prof. Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman.

We appreciate you effort to kick plagiarism out of Pakistan.

Best Regards

S Touseef should be expeled imidiately from all his responsibilities, black sheeps like him don't deserve to be tolerated, they should be punished in a way that nobody else dares to do something like this, specialy on this level.

Good and bad people are every where, but people like these,who belong to the noble profession of education and teaching, when they do something like this, they spoil the name of the nation and country, and are as bad as a black mark.

I hope you guys acquire a control method soon, so that you can have a check on people and papers submitted here.

in short, if you see that guy, your first impression will be, he's a Crook & a big cheater .. :o)
Shaklun e Lanti ay, i think most of the University students will agree on that :o)

S.Tauseef Rehman this is his old business he is a fealth person who keeps the high ups in his hands and then do such things. This is not the only thing he has copied if u can see his al publication 80% of them will be copied....

This is really shameful act by Mr. Tauseef Ur Rehman faculty member of a re known Pakistani institute. Students are not aware with plagiarism and piracy at student level. Being a X-Student from IIUI It’s my personal experience that students are not happy with the faculty hiring and selection process. Dr Khalid Rashid is the main responsible person for all what happened as he is one Man show at DCS IIUI. Chairman HEC should take a serious action on it. I can feel anger and annoy of John Kelsey, David Wagner but I will only say to them that these type of culprits and Evil minded people are exist in almost every society. Its doesn’t man that people of Pakistan are not capable and intelligent.

The impression of Pakistani students/researchers should not be taken wrong by this one case of plagiarism by one or two individuals. This act should be condemned and strong actions should be taken against the authors.

Its really sad and shocking news. These things should be reported to the Higher Education Commision of pakistan. So that appropriate action is taken against the students and the teacher who seems equally responsible. The crediblity of whole Education system has been damaged. The issue is serious enough to warrant a strict action. Mr Schneier and rest of the authors of the original paper, it might really help root out or atleast crub this practise if you can contact HEC(Higher Education Commision) for appropriate action.

I had been a student in International Islamic University, Pakistan. I know that students of IIUI have never been happy with the faculty members. Like brother Nadeem said, Dr. Khalid Rashid is the ONE MAN SHOW in Faculty of Management Science. I personally know S. Tauseef-ur-Rehman and have studied two different courses from him. He had always been ridiculous. But this is something very serious and authorities specially Chairman, Higher Education Commission, Pakistan Dr. Atta-ur-Rehman should take some strict action about it. I have sent this URL to Chairman, HEC too to bring it to his notice. I would say sorry to John Kelsey and David Wagner with this PATHETIC act of plagiarism. The students are guilty for this but Mr. S. Tauseef is equally responsible being their supervisor and the Head of Telecommunication Department of IIU.

Mr. S. Tauseef deserves to be fired from all the positions he is working for.

That is extremely pathetic. I really can't believe it. Someone's hardwork is treated like this. This is disgusting. That is not entirely teh student's responsibilty but also the professor's responsibility to have cross-checked it. This is the first and foremost rule of a research paper that it should be based on a unique idea. The professor must have looked into it or atleast read it. Anyways whatever is done is done. I guess, if the people who did this are ashamed of their act then they should be forgiven but for the future, some reforms must be made to stop this. The responsibilty also goes to the reviewers who reviewed and passed such paper. Next time there should be a more strict and careful review process. Another thing is this tag of having some "DR."s' name involved in the authors should also be discouraged until unless he/she has really worked out with the students to atleast go through and cross-check the paper. If i sound angry...then be it...as I am.

I am Ex-Islamian university student. It is so embarrassing moment for me. S. Tauseef-ur-Rehman taught us a subject in MSC and at this time we complaint numerous time about his non-serious behavior but nobody took any notice. I was very proud Islamian but today I have not right to say this. But it does not mean that every Islamian got degree through this way. Universities authorities should fire him and he deserve punish for this stupidity.
I would sya sorry to John Kelsey and David Wagner .

Farhan

if teachers are doing it, who can blame the students. the university has to set its house in order, and ensure ethics of conduct are taught even to the teachers ( for plagiarism is stealing!).

This is not something that has happened first time in computer history. Students do take help from internet and do copy material from papers. This is not a matter of a specific University or Country. No one can do research without consulting books and journals. If I say something about this specific case YES this is not fair to copy the whole material and reproduce. The students are responsible for this not their supervisor. How can a supervisor know that this paper has already been published? Is there anybody who has read all the papers published in history? It is not practically possible. So supervisor Mr. Touseef Ur Rehman cannot be blamed for this. This is not the case that Mr. Touseef Ur Rehman did wrong, any supervisor XYZ could have supervised that research. I am not bias in favor of Mr. Tauseef Ur Rehman. Many papers are being copied and reproduced on daily basis all over the world, I personally visited a site that produce random research papers http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/ . What will u all say about this????? I know how many will try this site to help in their thesis. This is site is not developed by any PAKISTANI then y blame?????

As an ex Student of the University, I a proud to be Islamian.

Still I am against Plagiarism but not referencing and taking help. So plz stop blaming supervisors this is we students do this not supervisors.

Well, I agree to the notion that this shud not be taken as a general impression for all the students from the univ or from Pakistan, as this has been done in the individual capacity of these 3 guys & university cannot control any such thing. And we all, the students of univ, condemn this act of plagiarism. The only remedy to save the reputation of univ would be that univ shud take the most strict measure it could take, may be to expel this guy Tauseef ur Rehman, and HEC should ban him from joining any univ in Pakistan. Just for the sheer joy of their own, they have stacked the future of so many current students of same univ in particular, and from Pakistan in general. Shame on them !!!

@Asif Bashir Malik.

the site you qouted is from MIT, and this was developed for some notion other than the one mentioned by u. It infact generated a bogus research paper, and that was submitted to a conference andlater on it was disclosed to the organizing committee that this paper was developed this way. SO it had someother purpose, and its there just for fun, and even if it wud have been there for the purpose u mentioned, MIT ppl are clever enough to get their name off the URL. Well if u know what MIT is???

Dear "a student from the univ"

I know what have u wrote (bcz that is on site), i just gave an example that anybody can take help from anywhere and everybody know how much time our supervisors have to coordinate with us "students". U may have some personal diagreements with the said supervisor but dont show it here plz.

plz don't try to be over smart.

Though its really bad, but who is at fault?
the students. ?
I think NO. its the system and the governers of the system (Dr. Tauseef) who are responsible .
Coz Y they didn't even care to read the paper?
Also the ACM comitte is responsible for this blunder.
Cachiph
X-Student

Mr. Tauseef feel ashamed of your self and resign. Asif this is not the first time that the guy has labeled someones work with his name and i am sure he knew about this before publishing it. The fact is that this is the first time he has been caught...

The easiest job of all is to simply sit back, relax and point out other's lackings. It is quiet easy to comment on people's mistakes. I am an existing student of IIU and have worked many a times in collaberation with Dr. Tauseef-Ur-Rehman. He is a very learned man, having in depth knowledge about his field. People should keep in mind the fact that he has always been there right beside his students in times of need, but today as I read the comments of x-islamians on this issue, I am shocked at their hypocracy. Maybe they are right at not calling themselves Proud Islamians...becuz they dont deserve to be. No one deserves to be associated with pride unless he's aware of the fact that whatever the case, teachers and parents should be respected unconditionally...well fellas, u should definately reconsider ur priorities and spit out the shit filled inside and next time before u let out a word for ur teacher, give a thought to the fact that what u r today is due to the hardwork of ur teachers.
Its not that I am in favour of Plagiarism, on the contrary I think that strict rules must be set for observing the problem but not at the cost of teacher's respect.

I can empathize with Bruce Schneier, and can also understand as to how a teacher in a university in Pakistan can plagiarize and can get away with it with crime. I have been a victim of plagiarism too only last year. Irony of the matter is that it was presented in a conference, initiated by Higher Education Commission, (HEC) Islamabad to improve the quality of higher education in the country. Though the case is still pending with HEC, the vice chancellor of the said university declined and refuted all charges in official response! The Council of Social Sciences, Islamabad which had commissioned my original paper, could not defend itself, as it is yet to evolve any adequate guidelines for developing institutional mechanism to check and curb academic piracy. So my two pennies are, instead of criminalizing individuals, we should try and enforce, the mechanism for discouraging such practices. Some one has to do the job.
Nadeem Omar

I can empathize with Bruce Schneier, and can also understand as to how a teacher in a university in Pakistan can plagiarize and can get away with it with crime. I have been a victim of plagiarism too only last year. Irony of the matter is that it was presented in a conference, initiated by Higher Education Commission, (HEC) Islamabad to improve the quality of higher education in the country. Though the case is still pending with HEC, the vice chancellor of the said university declined and refuted all charges in official response! The Council of Social Sciences, Islamabad which had commissioned my original paper, could not defend itself, as it is yet to evolve any adequate guidelines for developing institutional mechanism to check and curb academic piracy. So my two pennies are, instead of criminalizing individuals, we should try and enforce, the mechanism for discouraging such practices. Some one has to do the job.

Being a Pakistani, as soon as i entered graduate school, the first thing that was taught to me was the act of plagiarism is not only unethical, but immoral and illegal as well. I have studied several articles on plagiarism before I even started my graduate school. I am really disappointed to see a fellow University of Islamabad acting in such a way, not only bringing shame to themselves but also to the whole impression of all other universities. From the articles and being a student, I was told that plagiarism can result in grade F to expulsion from university and disgrace in acamedia. I am thinking what would be done with Dr. Tauseef. Personally I have seen the guy in a conference where I was defending my own paper. Dr. Tauseef was also there defending his student paper, again in which he was a third author, and the first impression I had was what a loser this person is. He couldnt even defend his own paper properly. Furthermore, I realized that the person did his Ph.D. by just publishing papers to very ill-reputed local conferences and nothing else, and now this incident put all of his work in doubt, no matter if it was original or not. If he is saying he did not know about the matter and his name is just put as a third author, then this does not relieve him from his responsibility. The students should be expelled immediatly, and personally I would remember their names, so that If they ever talk to me in person, I could tell them what they actually did. However, I still have to say that research in most Pakistani universities is still in progress, and some of the universities are working really hard on it. Personally, I credit Fast Lahore, LUMS lahore, and MAJU Islamabad for their research efforts, which are highly appreciated throughout the world in well reputable conferences and journals. Again do not take the impression of the whole country in negativity just because of a bunch of losers out there.
Thank you :)

I forgot to credit NUST, their work in GRID and highly parallel systems is worth applause, MAJU's work on software reliability and dependability, Fast Lahore's work on natural language processing, and LUMS for their overall research.

Well, everybody is blamming the authors. One can't clap with a single hand, the publishers / reviewers have a part to play. It was their duty to stop plagiarism. I believe journals of international reput like IEEE, and ACM etc, should devise an antiplagiarim framework or develop a common database to stop plagiarim.

Most importantly the reviewers must have deep and thorough knowledge of their field. One can't stop paligiarism with mediocre reviewers.

Only these steps can stop this curse, blamming and critisicsm won't work.

@ Muneeb Ahmed Awan

"One can't clap with a single hand"

I love sayings like this, since they are so eloquently false. Clapping means making noise, right? So if you make noise by "clapping" a Clavia in your hand, are you "clapping"? What if you "clap" your hand against your thigh?

Why spread the blame all over the place when, at the end of the day, the person who plagiarised is just that. Even if you shift the detective controls to an institution (so Bruce and other authors do not have to police their own work) you still must find an appropriate amount of blame and punishment is reserved for the plagiarists. Otherwise, what disincentive is there?

Sorry, I meant "Claves" not "Clavia"

i m a proud student of International Islamic University, a proud Pakistani and a Muslim. no doubt wat has happened is wrong and must not be happened, but i m very much disappointed from the stupid, childish thinking of some of commentators here. they blamed Pakistan and Pakistanis as Plagiarizers. they r taking the actions of one man as the actions of whole nation. if that is the "Criteria" of judging a nation then wat abt the defense minister of India “Mr. Fernandus� (if I m not wrong) who was caught red handed taking the bribe. So y dnt u call Indians as bribers.

Some of commentators above mentioned the name of Dr. AQ Khan. wat u people know abt him. If he’d stolen the nuclear technology from Netherlands, then y the Dutch didn’t raised that issue to the international media. y they kept quite for so many years until Pakistan emerged as the nuclear power. And even if we consider this bullshit then wat u say abt the Russian nuclear technology. This is proven that a husband and a wife stole it for Russia, form USA, now wat u say……..if Dr. AQ Khan is guilty of the charges then there is a strong possibility that he might not wants to see happening in Pakistan which d happened in Afghanistan.

I ve given only the two of examples. There are hundreds of them, which show the mischiefs of so called “respectable� nations.

This is not the place to talk abt the politics, if u people wish to talk abt that then choose another place, I ve enough to keep ur lips stick together and ur finger to be frozen.

I personally think that if the International Islamic University takes some actions against Mr. Tauseef then she is also guiltless. So plz avoid to give these type of comments here which reflect the fundamentalist, and rotten thinking provided by the western media – who has nothing to do but to save the interests of some countries and “multinational companies� — and keep the educational and healthy by giving ur positive comments.

Thank u

@Hammad

Who do every Pakistani have to go against some Indian. As far as I am concerned, I have seen several cases of plagiarism from all over the world. The fact is Mr. Tauseef is guilty along with those two students, and there is no way one can get away from this fact. Have you heard that when you go abroad, you are an ambassador of your nation. You are representing your whole country. Unfortunately, Mr. Tauseef along with those two students gave such a bad impression of the whole country and the whole research atmosphere here that was just about to gain its roots here. See I agree to the point that people shouldnt consider that if person did this, everyone does this. However, the fact still remains and I believe Mr. Tauseef along with those two students should be severely punished so that they can act as an example for others here.

Well i agree to Mr. Aro Heikkinen (post: August 2, 2005 01:39 PM)

I am amazed that why this issue has not yet been reported by the media as a massive terrorist plot by a Pakistani Madarassa (school)...

(though a few efforts to link it are visible here ;))

The paper was on cryptanalysis, so the media could have linked it to anything... Dr. Qadeer,Al-Qaeda, "Islamic" University, military, Bin Laden, or any thing else...

I feel very sad for this act done by these three Authors from the university, as i have applied to take admission and today the results of passed will be announced.
It is no doubt that this was a bad deed and they should be bannmed from pubishing there "Research" but as far as the other people are concerned,i think no one should blame the whole society or ocuntry for this,Black sheeps are every where,no one is a born angel,and i also believe that this thing is very common in Pakistan,but blaming all the country isnt the solution to the problem,the main thing is to solve the problem and to intoruduce some stuff that prevents someone else from doing the same act in future.

I m proud student of International Islamic University. If some does bad it doesn’t mean every one is bad. so please stop this non sense .those who did all this must be held responsible, and definitely Pakistani government and management of Islamic university will take strict actions against them. But please don’t Blame Pakistan or Islamic University. This was an act of individuals so please don’t target Pakistanis nation or Islamic university.

"I m proud student of International Islamic University. If some does bad it doesn’t mean every one is bad. so please stop this non sense .those who did all this must be held responsible, and definitely Pakistani government and management of Islamic university will take strict actions against them. But please don’t Blame Pakistan or Islamic University. This was an act of individuals so please don’t target Pakistanis nation or Islamic university."

I agree with this. Don't generalize.

But the university is responsible for the actions of their students and faculty. I expect them to act appropriately. If they turn a blind eye to this behavior, then they are effectively condoning it.

hi
all students of IIU
there are some question arises.

1.what will be the future of old students ,what they
will face in their software companies and
universities,with what eye people will see the their
degrees.
2.what are the future of MS/PHD enrolled students
3.what are the future of bachelor students,did they be
able to find good jobs.what sort of questions can be
ask during interview.
4.is student research papers will published in
national and international conf even,see what
fast,lums,NIIT are doing they are writing to FIA and
HEC.

its not the topic that either its touseef mistake or
his student mistake ,question is what student will
face.
so instead of writing on groups ,why not we all
gatherd and have a sitting with dr khalid,president or
even reactor

Hamad is right. You cant say because of those two students that every one out there is like that. There are brilliant students. I am really proud that students belonging to that university work in multinational companies. Even some of the students are working in Microsoft.
Students are always supposed to do the mistakes but University should take actions against this act. More over other students must not be kept under the same category.
Thanks

Well, being a Pakistani national working as a researcher in Computing Science & Engineering (not in Pakistan) I have to sadly admit (and this is my personal opinion) that most of the engineering and technical institutions that exist in Pakistan today can be rated as "mediocre" by international standards but there are some individual exceptions which have produced and are producing the highest quality technical research work even in Computing Science & Engineering (e.g., Dr. Shahid H. Bokhari, IEEE Fellow). So, a black and white classification scheme targeting nationalities might not work here. To support my argument, those citing the attitude of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan (who boasts 250+ publications) should also know about Dr. Abdus Salam, Nobel Laureatte in Physics (1979) who was a graduate from a Pakistani University as was Dr. Hargobind Khorana, Nobel Laureatte in Physiology (1968). The same University had Dr. A. H. Compton, Nobel Laureatte in Physics (1927) working in one of its laboratories when he discovered the "Compton Effect".
Other renowned Pakistani researchers of international calibre have been Dr. Salimuzzaman Siddiqui (Chemistry), Dr. Rafi M. Chaudhry (Physics), and the list can go on.

Pakistani Universities do staff Scientists and Engineers who have graduated from some of the top-class Universities from all over the world.

As far as my knowledge is concerned, International Islamic University is not a very seriously-taken Pakistani institution even by the serious-minded Pakistani students.

Therefore, to sum up, science is a work of logic and a worker in science should avoid any "Hasty Generalization" which is one of the well-known fallacies of logic.

Well I want to raise two points. I am not sure whether someone has already mentioned these.
1) I think there is also a big responsibility on the Journal and the reviewers of the paper. I personally beleive that they are also part of this crime.
2) I also studied in another Pakistani univeristy where palgirism is considered such a big crime that one can be expelled from the univeristy even at the last stage of his degree for ever.

Finally, I came to know that the said Faculty member was called by FIA (Federal Investigation Agency) Cibercrimes Section for investigation in this matter.

With plagiarism occuring everywhere why blame the three guys. Under certain conditions certain things are allowed. With the poor research atmoshpere, pathetic educational conditions in Pakistan, this thing should be allowed to some degree. In the way to success, this happens. Just like japanese copied product after product from America. Now they innovate.

(One American President recently plagiarised his relationship with his wife by indulging in illegal relationship with another women. Why forgive him then ?. If he can be forgiven then so be the three guys. There are other examples. e.g Russia stealing nuclear secrets from America, Israel constantly refusing to act on international agreements and obligations, India refusing to talk on Kashmir issue, whole generations of european scientists stealing the discoveries of chinese, indian and arabian scientists and naming them their own. So declare their degrees as fake also.)

ACM, Bruce Schneir and others should tender their apologies for taking this incident to this stage. Everything should be GPLed.

Ibn-e-Adam

Its really sad to know about this incident and there is no apology for this. Many of current guys are not happy about old students response. Just want to tell them that old students have seen and observed dr toseef quite closely and have seen him reaching current stage.
But let me tell you that the talent IIU has got is enormous and I am 100% confident that islamians can prove themselves anywhere in the world. I have myself observed this thing specially after leaving Pakistan.
Blaming whole nation or all students is not a new thing and putting blame on whole nation for one’s deed has become a normal practice faced by pakis.
Mr. Schneier, accept my apologies on behalf of my fellow students but I want to assure you that most of the islamianz have great potential to do something and prove themselves and I m quite sure that if these students would have been contacted you during their work for guidance then it wud be a different story as I myself had got very positive response from very senior researchers like u, during my work and it helped me a lot to carry on my research.
In the end I will suggest only one thing that we should not underestimate our strengths and at the same time we should never ignore our weaknesses. Admitting a mistake gives you more strength.
Regards,

IIU does not represent the top Pakistani universities. Its a mediocre university and deeds of its students should not be considered as a general trend. Never the less, its a shameful act and nothing can justify it.

Dear all first of all its really a very sad incident, but to generalize this and putting blame on each and every indiviual is not the right thing, there is no doubt pakistani's are capable enough and they are proving themselves not only in pakistan but also in every part of the world.

I do agree that it is the western media who is always trying to highlight these type of individual mistakes made by anyone who is from muslim world.

I really feel very sad that other institutions are taking this opputunity no doubt provided by Dr. tauseef to show that how competent they are (again if this thing is from the western world then atleast they will not be taking it as oppurtunity....). I know each of the insitutions listed above and many other such institutions personally, but i must say that that no one is perfect in every thing( apart from ALLAH) as plusses and minuses are there in every insititution, but IIUI is among one of the best institutes not only in pakistan but has approved its ability internationally as well, just go and check every corner of the world where you'll be able to find islmians proving their skills specially in the western world from where the original author belongs to ( so there is no need to be ashamed of being islamian, you are, you were and you will be a proud pakistani, proud islamian).

One point i do mention here that iiui is spreading quality knowledge from the time when there was not only a single institution listed above was on the map, now there is a need to think and do some thing practically to save this institution and don't let it be a history(or thing of the past) like many other insititution like QAU computer science department for example because of the policies of the authorities.

I do agree with one comment posted above that at present FMS is a one man show(H.E. Professor Doctor Khlaid Rashid) and nothing else, who is not letting new researchers, doctors as a part of the faculty and appointing his relatives(Professor Mustafa one example) and people like Dr. Tauseef and Professor Sher who bought their degrees from internet(things are on record, and according to my knowledge no action is being taken so far), and other people like Professor khawaja. Ther were good but not able to meet the current chalanges and coupe with the current technologies(as COBOL, FORTRAN, Lotus 123 are things of past). SO president iiu and H.E. don't do these type of things with this world renowned insititution just for your own sake, so that no one disagree with you, make this thing very clear in your mind that positive critcism is very good, and do appoint some newely high educated people so that the nation can remember you in good words, don't just go for money go for some thing which you can say proudly and prove it.

regards.

Okay well despite the fact that i am pretty much annoyed by all this you folks shouldnt be making abusive posts about Dr Tauseef..... We already proved that we are a dumb and untrustable country but we are now proving that we are even worse.... (by the way im not related to any of the accused if thats what ure thinking.....)

@ abcd

"I do agree that it is the western media who is always trying to highlight these type of individual mistakes made by anyone who is from muslim world."

Agree with whom? Could we just as hysterically say that it is the muslim world who is always trying to highlight the non-muslim media who is always trying to highlight the muslim...?

Sometimes the circular baiting and targeting will make you so dizzy you want to get off this crazy planet.

@ Bruce
"I'm more amused......but I'm surprised see it happen to me. I mean, really; if they were going to do this, wouldn't it have been smarter to pick a more obscure author?"

They were smart quiet smart; Bruce in his "Description of a New Variable-Length Key, 64-bit Block Cipher (Blowfish)" has cited their work (or his own work) without even knowing that the work belonged to him or them......

I mean ...... I am confused.......If some one steals my work..... will i be using his/her reference ....... :$

Schneier, I will request you to stop this thread now. I think you got enough perspective about how a lot of other people feel and I hope concerned authorities will also get the Point. But now its getting into personnel comments thread, people are showing personnel grievances and their University Superiorities etc.

Just my humble opinion, avoid generalization. One stupid person in Islamic doesn’t make it a stupid place and one good person working in Microsoft will not make it the best place on earth. Its just the person’s own abilities which stand out at the end, not that he is a graduate of lums, giki, or even of MIT, Stanford etc.

So just saying that our graduates work in multi-nationals you should ask the question about yourself; where do you yourself stand. No offence, just my humble opinion.

This is highly unfair not only with themselves rather the institutions they are working in.These people must be banned or under observation in future.Through some reliable resources it's heard that the doctrate degree of touseef-ur-rehman is also doubtful.The institution and responsible people must take notice of this.

Please, no more personal attacks or abusive language, whether directed at people or countries.

@Ibn-e-Adam:
"One American President recently plagiarised his relationship with his wife by indulging in illegal relationship with another women."

Please look up the word plagiarism befo