Fred Schneider, "What Price Insularity? ..." (iSchool DLS)
Link: http://groups.sims.berkeley.edu/podcast/audio/Fred_Schneider_UCiSchool_04Oct2006.mp3
This past Wednesday, Fred Schneider from Cornell's Computer Science Department gave the second iSchool Distinguished Lecture of the 2006-2007 academic year, "What Price Insularity? Dialogs about Computer Security Failings".
Fred's talk used three stories, the use of credit card numbers as identifiers versus authenticators, digital rights management technologies and the DMCA and security liability insurance, to illustrate failings in computer security that resulted from incomplete pictures of the interplay between technology and policy.
Here is the abstract for his talk and the audio is linked below:
It is risky for technologists to ignore the non-technical context in which their systems will be deployed, just as it is risky for policy makers to ignore the limits and potential of technology. Yet such insularity is all too common. The results are unfortunate but not surprising. This lecture explores the structure dialogs take to bring about what might be termed "security failings" by revisiting: identity theft, electronic voting, digital right management, and the overall vulnerabilities of today's deployed software.
