Entries Tagged "history of security"

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Scams from the 1800s

They feel quaint today:

But in the spring of 1859, folks were concerned about another kind of hustle: A man who went by the name of A.V. Lamartine drifted from town to town in the Midwest ­ pretending to attempt suicide.

He would walk into a hotel ­ according to newspaper accounts from Salem, Ore., to Richmond, Va., and other places ­ and appear depressed as he requested a room. Once settled in, he would ring a bell for assistance, and when someone arrived, Lamartine would point to an empty bottle on the table labeled “2 ounces of laudanum” and call for a clergyman.

People rushing to his bedside to help him would find a suicide note. The Good Samaritans would summon a doctor, administer emetics and nurse him as he recovered.

Somehow Lamartine knew his situation would engender medical and financial assistance from kind strangers in the 19th century. The scenarios ended this way, as one Brooklyn reporter explained: “He is restored with difficulty and sympathetic people raise a purse for him and he departs.

Posted on April 11, 2016 at 6:49 AM • View Comments

Security Trade-offs in the Longbow vs. Crossbow Decision

Interesting research: Douglas W. Allen and Peter T. Leeson, “Institutionally Constrained Technology Adoption: Resolving the Longbow Puzzle,” Journal of Law and Economics, v. 58, Aug 2015.

Abstract: For over a century the longbow reigned as undisputed king of medieval European missile weapons. Yet only England used the longbow as a mainstay in its military arsenal; France and Scotland clung to the technologically inferior crossbow. This longbow puzzle has perplexed historians for decades. We resolve it by developing a theory of institutionally constrained technology adoption. Unlike the crossbow, the longbow was cheap and easy to make and required rulers who adopted the weapon to train large numbers of citizens in its use. These features enabled usurping nobles whose rulers adopted the longbow to potentially organize effective rebellions against them. Rulers choosing between missile technologies thus confronted a trade-off with respect to internal and external security. England alone in late medieval Europe was sufficiently politically stable to allow its rulers the first-best technology option. In France and Scotland political instability prevailed, constraining rulers in these nations to the crossbow.

It’s nice to see my security interests intersect with my D&D interests.

Posted on January 22, 2016 at 6:44 AM • View Comments

"The Medieval Origins of Mass Surveillance"

This interesting article by medieval historian Amanda Power traces our culture’s relationship with the concept of mass surveillance from the medieval characterization of the Christian god and how piety was policed by the church:

What is all this but a fundamental trust in the experience of being watched? One must wonder about the subtle, unspoken fear of the consequences of refusing to participate in systems of surveillance, or even to critique them seriously. This would be to risk isolation. Those who have exposed the extent of surveillance are fugitives and exiles from our paradise. They have played the role of the cursed serpent of Eden: the purveyor of illicit knowledge who broke the harmony between watcher and watched. The rest of us contemplate the prospect of dissent with careful unease, feeling that our individual and collective security depends on compliance.

[…]

Eight centuries ago, in November 1215, Pope Innocent III presided over a Great Council of the Church in Rome known as the Fourth Lateran Council. It was attended by high-ranking members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the monastic world, together with representatives of emperors, kings, and other secular leaders from throughout Christendom. Their decisions were promulgated through seventy-one constitutions. They began with a statement of what all Christians were required to believe, including specifics on the nature of God­by this time: “eternal and immeasurable, almighty, unchangeable, incomprehensible and ineffable”—and the view that salvation could be found only through the Roman Catholic Church. Anyone who disagreed, according to the third constitution, was to be handed over to secular lords for punishment, stripped of their property, and cast out of society until they proved their orthodoxy, or else be executed if they did not. Anyone in authority would be punished if they did not seek out and expel such people from their lands; their subjects would be released from obedience and their territories handed over to true Catholics. There was nothing empty about this threat: the council occurred in the middle of the bitter Albigensian Crusade, during which heresy—likened to a cancer in the body of Christendom—was purportedly being cut out of Languedoc by the swords of the pious.

The Fourth Lateran Council was talking about crimes of thought, of dissent over matters of belief, matters not susceptible of proof. But whether individuals were heretics could not, in theory, be established without investigating the contents of their minds. To this end, the council decreed that bishops’ representatives should inquire in every parish at least once a year to discover “if anyone knows of heretics there or of any persons who hold secret conventicles or who differ in their life and habits from the normal way of living of the faithful.” These representatives were to follow these external indications of nonconformity into the recesses of the mind and establish their meaning in each case. Over the decades the role of the inquisitor was developed into an art and a science, and elaborate handbooks were produced. But in 1215 it was stated merely that individuals should be punished if “unable to clear themselves of the charge.”

[…]

What is all this but a fundamental trust in the experience of being watched? Our trust is so strong that it seems to have found its own protective rationality, deeply rooted in Western consciousness. It’s an addict’s rationality, by which we’re unable to refrain from making public a stream of intimate details of our lives and those of children too young to consent. One must wonder about the subtle, unspoken fear of the consequences of refusing to participate in systems of surveillance, or even to critique them seriously. This would be to risk isolation. It would be a trifle paranoid to reveal less—a little eccentric, not quite rational.

Posted on December 21, 2015 at 1:09 PM • View Comments

A History of Privacy

This New Yorker article traces the history of privacy from the mid 1800s to today:

As a matter of historical analysis, the relationship between secrecy and privacy can be stated in an axiom: the defense of privacy follows, and never precedes, the emergence of new technologies for the exposure of secrets. In other words, the case for privacy always comes too late. The horse is out of the barn. The post office has opened your mail. Your photograph is on Facebook. Google already knows that, notwithstanding your demographic, you hate kale.

Posted on November 30, 2015 at 12:47 PM • View Comments

History of Hacktivism

Nice article by Dorothy Denning.

Hacktivism emerged in the late 1980s at a time when hacking for fun and profit were becoming noticeable threats. Initially it took the form of computer viruses and worms that spread messages of protest. A good example of early hacktivism is “Worms Against Nuclear Killers (WANK),” a computer worm that anti-nuclear activists in Australia unleashed into the networks of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the US Department of Energy in 1989 to protest the launch of a shuttle which carried radioactive plutonium.

By the mid-1990s, denial of service (DoS) attacks had been added to the hacktivist’s toolbox, usually taking the form of message or traffic floods. In 1994, journalist Joshua Quittner lost access to his e-mail after thousands of messages slamming “capitalistic pig” corporations swamped his inbox, and a group called itself “The Zippies” flooded e-mail accounts in the United Kingdom with traffic to protest a bill that would have outlawed outdoor dance festivals. Then in 1995, an international group called Strano Network organized a one-hour “Net’strike” against French government websites to protest nuclear and social policies. At the designated time, participants visited the target websites and hit the “reload” button over and over in an attempt to tie up traffic to the sites.

Her conclusion comes as no surprise:

Hacktivism, including state-sponsored or conducted hacktivism, is likely to become an increasingly common method for voicing dissent and taking direct action against adversaries. It offers an easy and inexpensive means to make a statement and inflict harm without seriously risking prosecution under criminal law or a response under international law. Hacking gives non-state actors an attractive alternative to street protests and state actors an appealing substitute for armed attacks. It has become not only a popular means of activism, but also an instrument of national power that is challenging international relations and international law.

Posted on September 21, 2015 at 6:34 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.