Entries Tagged "conferences"

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Speakers Censored at AISA Conference in Melbourne

Two speakers were censored at the Australian Information Security Association’s annual conference this week in Melbourne. Thomas Drake, former NSA employee and whistleblower, was scheduled to give a talk on the golden age of surveillance, both government and corporate. Suelette Dreyfus, lecturer at the University of Melbourne, was scheduled to give a talk on her work—funded by the EU government—on anonymous whistleblowing technologies like SecureDrop and how they reduce corruption in countries where that is a problem.

Both were put on the program months ago. But just before the event, the Australian government’s ACSC (the Australian Cyber Security Centre) demanded they both be removed from the program.

It’s really kind of stupid. Australia has been benefiting a lot from whistleblowers in recent years—exposing corruption and bad behavior on the part of the government—and the government doesn’t like it. It’s cracking down on the whistleblowers and reporters who write their stories. My guess is that someone high up in ACSC saw the word “whistleblower” in the descriptions of those two speakers and talks and panicked.

You can read details of their talks, including abstracts and slides, here. Of course, now everyone is writing about the story. The two censored speakers spent a lot of the day yesterday on the phone with reporters, and they have a bunch of TV and radio interviews today.

I am at this conference, speaking on Wednesday morning (today in Australia, as I write this). ACSC used to have its own government cybersecurity conference. This is the first year it combined with AISA. I hope it’s the last. And that AISA invites the two speakers back next year to give their censored talks.

EDITED TO ADD (10/9): More on the censored talks, and my comments from the stage at the conference.

Slashdot thread.

Posted on October 8, 2019 at 5:15 PM • View Comments

Security and Human Behavior (SHB) 2019

Today is the second day of the twelfth Workshop on Security and Human Behavior, which I am hosting at Harvard University.

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 50 or so people in the room 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.

The goal is to maximize discussion and interaction. We do that by putting everyone on panels, and limiting talks to 7-10 minutes. The rest of the time is left to open discussion. Four hour-and-a-half panels per day over two days equals eight panels; six people per panel means that 48 people get to speak. We also have lunches, dinners, and receptions—all designed so people from different disciplines talk to each other.

I invariably find this to be the most intellectually stimulating two days of my professional year. It influences my thinking in many different, and sometimes surprising, ways.

This year’s program 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—remotely, because he was denied a visa earlier this year.

Here are my posts on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh 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.

Posted on June 6, 2019 at 2:16 PM • View Comments

Security and Human Behavior (SHB 2018)

I’m at Carnegie Mellon University, at the eleventh Workshop on Security and Human Behavior.

SHB is a small invitational gathering of people studying various aspects of the human side of security, organized each year by Alessandro Acquisti, Ross Anderson, and myself. The 50 or so people in the room include psychologists, economists, computer security researchers, sociologists, political scientists, 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.

The goal is to maximize discussion and interaction. We do that by putting everyone on panels, and limiting talks to 7-10 minutes. The rest of the time is left to open discussion. Four hour-and-a-half panels per day over two days equals eight panels; six people per panel means that 48 people get to speak. We also have lunches, dinners, and receptions—all designed so people from different disciplines talk to each other.

I invariably find this to be the most intellectually stimulating conference of my year. It influences my thinking in many different, and sometimes surprising, ways.

This year’s program 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. (Ross also maintains a good webpage of psychology and security resources.)

Here are my posts on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth SHB workshops. Follow those links to find summaries, papers, and occasionally audio recordings of the various workshops.

Next year, I’ll be hosting the event at Harvard.

Posted on May 25, 2018 at 1:57 PM • View Comments

Security and Human Behavior (SHB 2017)

I’m in Cambridge University, at the tenth Workshop on Security and Human Behavior.

SHB is a small invitational gathering of people studying various aspects of the human side of security, organized each year by Ross Anderson, Alessandro Acquisti, and myself. The 50 or so people in the room include psychologists, economists, computer security researchers, sociologists, political scientists, political scientists, 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.

The goal is maximum interaction and discussion. We do that by putting everyone on panels. There are eight six-person panels over the course of the two days. Everyone gets to talk for ten minutes about their work, and then there’s half an hour of questions and discussion. We also have lunches, dinners, and receptions—all designed so people from different disciplines talk to each other.

It’s the most intellectually stimulating conference of my year, and influences my thinking about security in many different 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, and ninth SHB workshops. Follow those links to find summaries, papers, and occasionally audio recordings of the various workshops.

I don’t think any of us imagined that this conference would be around this long.

Posted on May 25, 2017 at 2:30 PM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.