Security and Human Behavior (SHB) 2021
Today is the second day of the fourteenth Workshop on Security and Human Behavior. The University of Cambridge is the host, but we’re all on Zoom.
SHB is a small, annual, invitational workshop of people studying various aspects of the human side of security, organized each year by Alessandro Acquisti, Ross Anderson, and myself. The forty or so attendees include psychologists, economists, computer security researchers, sociologists, political scientists, criminologists, neuroscientists, designers, lawyers, philosophers, anthropologists, business school professors, and a smattering of others. It’s not just an interdisciplinary event; most of the people here are individually interdisciplinary.
Our goal is always to maximize discussion and interaction. We do that by putting everyone on panels, and limiting talks to six to eight minutes, with the rest of the time for open discussion. The format translates well to Zoom, and we’re using random breakouts for the breaks between sessions.
I always find this workshop to be the most intellectually stimulating two days of my professional year. It influences my thinking in different, and sometimes surprising, ways.
This year’s schedule is here. This page lists the participants and includes links to some of their work. As he does every year, Ross Anderson is liveblogging the talks.
Here are my posts on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth SHB workshops. Follow those links to find summaries, papers, and occasionally audio recordings of the various workshops. Ross also maintains a good webpage of psychology and security resources.
echo • June 4, 2021 10:34 AM
One of the items I discussed with a lawyer the other week is a particular problem which arises in court cases and which I have mentioned in a previous post. Many lawyers will know exactly what I am talking about. I have obtained some extra evidence and also a very useful EHRC judgment which fits in here somewhwere but to get back to what I wanted to mention is that I pointed out a range of other expertise we could draw on which would help with attacking the central problem. The partial list I rattled off the top of my head was a little different but basically this.
The essence is there is a human rights case I am pursuing and it is surrounded by a fortress built up by the state and state agencies and actors. If I play the game in a nod along way the case is lost before I walk in the door. It’s a known known the case cuts across multiple disciplines and this is where lawyers begin to trip up. Specialities want everything their own way and don’t communicate and one side doesn’t know anything about the other. This is why case management is important from step one.
It’s actually more useful to me to have a lawyer in completely the wrong speciality to begin with so they can focus on the basics of lawyering and legal practice. I also need practice management keeping their nose out because they can be interfering. Lastly I need a lawyer who “gets it”. Nobody wants to know how long it took me to find the right lawyer and that was only by sheer persistance and kicking up a stink and blind chance.
I’m not Marcy Wheeler so nobody downs tools when I walk in the door. Yes, I do have a record of achievement with significant legal issues and yes I’m pretty sharp with spotting legal issues and even with the support of a Professor in the exact same narrow sphere of expertise this touched on (she actually got her PhD in it) I’ve had QC’s openly take the **** out of me and say I was talking nonsense. It actually concerned judicial rules and a data leak. The QC’s denied it but the Professor with a PhD in the topic said I was right and pointed out how. Why QC’s would want to continue behaving like overgrown schoolboys I don’t know but the legal profession does have an ego and sexism problem. But anyway, the work continues. That’s what’s keeping me occupied for the next few weeks.
I have discussed coming from a different starting point to lawyers and mentioned the creativity issue in passing. I had one lawyer try to tell me that’s all well and good not how law works. Another lawyer half got it. But it’s how I work. Lawyers and other “certified professionals” can have a silo mentality. They can be so deep into their rote learned and historically led speciality they can begin to miss things and miss connections and miss how layers and interactions involve multiple domains of reasoning. To wit, they are always fighting yestredays war by yesterdays rules. To do anything new or change things sometimes you just have to dream a little and that’s when the magic happens.