Limits of Dissent, Perils of Activism: Spaces of Resistance and the New Security Logic

On 26 December 2003 an Israeli activist was shot by the Israeli Army while he was participating in a demonstration organized by Anarchists Against the Wall (AAtW) in the West Bank. This was the first time Israeli Soldiers have deliberately shot live bullets at a Jewish-Israeli activist. This paper is an attempt to understand the set of conditions, the enveloping frameworks, and the new discourses that have made this event, and similar shootings that soon followed, possible. Situating the actions of AAtW within a much wider context of securitization—of identities, movements, and bodies—we examine strategies of resistance which are deployed in highly securitized public spaces. We claim that an unexpected matrix of identity in which abnormality is configured as security threat render the bodies of activists especially precarious. The paper thus provides an account of the new rationales of security technologies and tactics which increasingly govern public spaces.

The rise of the digital citizen-stakeholder: rebalancing multistakeholder governance

The principle feature in the evolution of the internet has been its ever growing reach to include old and young, rich and poor. The internet’s ever encroaching presence has transported it from our desktop to our pocket and into our glasses. This is illustrated in the Internet Society Questionnaire on Multistakeholder Governance, which found the main factors affecting change in the Internet governance landscape were more users online from more countries and the influence of the internet over daily life. The omnipresence of the internet is self- perpetuating; its usefulness grows with every new user and every new piece of data uploaded. The advent of social media and the creation of a virtual presence for each of us, even when we are not physically present or ‘logged on’, means we are fast approaching the point where we are all connected, to everyone else, all the time. We have moved far beyond the point where governments can claim to represent our views which evolve constantly rather than being measured in electoral cycles.
The shift, which has seen citizens as creators of content rather than consumers of it, has undermined the centralist view of democracy and created an environment of wiki democracy or crowd sourced democracy. This is at the heart of what is generally known as Web 2.0, and widely considered to be a positive, democratising force. However, we argue, there are worrying elements here too. Government does not always deliver on the promise of the networked society as it involves citizens and others in the process of government. Also a number of key internet companies have emerged as powerful intermediaries harnessing the efforts of the many, and re- using and re-selling the products and data of content providers in the Web 2.0 environment. A discourse about openness and transparency has been offered as a democratising rationale but much of this masks an uneven relationship where the value of online activity flows not to the creators of content but to those who own the channels of communication and the metadata that they produce.
In this context the state is just one stakeholder in the mix of influencers and opinion formers impacting on our behaviours, and indeed our ideas of what is public. The question of what it means to create or own something, and how all these new relationships to be ordered and governed are subject to fundamental change. While government can often appear slow, unwieldy and even irrelevant in much of this context, there remains a need for some sort of political control to deal with the challenges that technology creates but cannot by itself control. In order for the internet to continue to evolve successfully both technically and socially it is critical that the multistakeholder nature of internet governance be understood and acknowledged, and perhaps to an extent, re- balanced. Stakeholders can no longer be classified in the broad headings of government, private sector and civil society, and their roles seen as some sort of benign and open co-production. Each user of the internet has a stake in its efficacy and each by their presence and participation is contributing to the experience, positive or negative of other users as well as to the commercial success or otherwise of various online service providers. However stakeholders have neither an equal role nor an equal share. The unequal relationship between the providers of content and those who simple package up and transmit that content - while harvesting the valuable data thus produced - needs to be addressed. Arguably this suggests a role for government that involves it moving beyond simply celebrating and facilitating the on- going technological revolution. This paper reviews the shifting landscape of stakeholders and their contribution to the efficacy of the internet. It will look to critically evaluate the primacy of the individual as the key stakeholder and their supposed developing empowerment within the ever growing sea of data. It also looks at the role of individuals in wider governance roles. Governments in a number of jurisdictions have sought to engage, consult or empower citizens through technology but in general these attempts have had little appeal. Citizens have been too busy engaging, consulting and empowering each other to pay much attention to what their governments are up to. George Orwell’s view of the future has not come to pass; in fact the internet has insured the opposite scenario has come to pass. There is no big brother but we are all looking over each other’s shoulder all the time, while at the same time a number of big corporations are capturing and selling all this collective endeavour back to us.

Relay Selection for Security Enhancement in Cognitive Relay Networks

This letter proposes several relay selection policies for secure communication in cognitive decode-and-forward (DF) relay networks, where a pair of cognitive relays are opportunistically selected for security protection against eavesdropping. The first relay transmits the secrecy information to the destination,
and the second relay, as a friendly jammer, transmits the jamming signal to confound the eavesdropper. We present new exact closed-form expressions for the secrecy outage probability. Our analysis and simulation results strongly support our conclusion that the proposed relay selection policies can enhance the performance of secure cognitive radio. We also confirm that the error floor phenomenon is created in the absence of jamming.

On the Security of Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive radio has emerged as an essential recipe for future high-capacity high-coverage multi-tier hierarchical networks. Securing data transmission in these networks is of utmost importance. In this paper, we consider the cognitive wiretap channel and propose multiple antennas to secure the transmission at the physical layer, where the eavesdropper overhears the transmission from the secondary transmitter to the secondary receiver. The secondary receiver and the eavesdropper are equipped with multiple antennas, and passive eavesdropping is considered where the channel state information of the eavesdropper’s channel is not available at the secondary transmitter. We present new closedform expressions for the exact and asymptotic secrecy outage probability. Our results reveal the impact of the primary network on the secondary network in the presence of a multi-antenna wiretap channel.

Laboratizing the border: The production, translation and anticipation of security technologies

This paper critically interrogates how borders are produced by scientists, engineers and security experts in advance of the actual deployment of technical devices they develop. This paper explores the prior stages of translation and decision-making as a socio-technical device is conceived and developed. Drawing on in-depth interviews, observations and ethnographic research of the EU-funded Handhold project (consisting of nine teams in five countries), it explores how assumptions about the way security technologies will and should perform at the border shape the way that scientists, engineers, and security experts develop a portable, integrated device to detect CBRNE threats at borders. In disaggregating the moments of sovereign decision making across multiple sites and times, this paper questions the supposed linearity of how science comes out of and feeds back into the world of border security. An interrogation of competing assumptions and understandings of security threats and needs, of competing logics of innovation and pragmatism, of the demands of differentiated temporalities in detection and interrogation, and of the presumed capacities, behaviours, and needs of phantasmic competitors and end-users reveals a complex, circulating and co-constitutive process of device development that laboratises the border itself. We trace how sovereign decisions are enacted as assemblages in the antecedent register of device development itself through the everyday decisions of researchers in the laboratory, and the material components of the Handhold device itself.

Cyber Security Research: a vision for the UK: Finance challenges

Invited talk, representing the Royal Society

Stateful Intrusion Detection for IEC 60870-5-104 SCADA Security

Cyber threats in Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems have the potential to render physical damage and jeopardize power system operation, safety and stability. SCADA systems were originally designed with little consideration of escalating cyber threats and hence the problem of how to develop robust intrusion detection technologies to tailor the requirements of SCADA is an emerging topic and a big challenge. This paper proposes a stateful Intrusion Detection System (IDS) using a Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) method to improve the cyber-security of SCADA systems using the IEC 60870-5-104 protocol which is tailored for basic telecontrol communications. The proposed stateful protocol analysis approach is presented that is designed specifically for the IEC 60870-5-104 protocol. Finally, the novel intrusion detection approach are implemented and validated.

An Ambiguity Aversion Framework of Security Game under Ambiguities

Security is a critical concern around the world. Since resources for security are always limited, lots of interest have arisen in using game theory to handle security resource allocation problems. However, most of the existing work does not address adequately how a defender chooses his optimal strategy in a game with absent, inaccurate, uncertain, and even ambiguous strategy profiles' payoffs. To address this issue, we propose a general framework of security games under ambiguities based on Dempster-Shafer theory and the ambiguity aversion principle of minimax regret. Then, we reveal some properties of this framework. Also, we present two methods to reduce the influence of complete ignorance. Our investigation shows that this new framework is better in handling security resource allocation problems under ambiguities.

Implementation Experiences from Smart Grid Security Applications and Outlook on Future Research

Experiences from smart grid cyber-security incidents in the past decade have raised questions on the applicability and effectiveness of security measures and protection mechanisms applied to the grid. In this chapter we focus on the security measures applied under real circumstances in today’s smart grid systems. Beginning from real world example implementations, we first review cyber-security facts that affected the electrical grid, from US blackout incidents, to the Dragonfly cyber-espionage campaign currently focusing on US and European energy firms. Provided a real world setting, we give information related to energy management of a smart grid looking also in the optimization techniques that power control engineers perform into the grid components. We examine the application of various security tools in smart grid systems, such as intrusion detection systems, smart meter authentication and key management using Physical Unclonable Functions, security analytics and resilient control algorithms. Furthermore we present evaluation use cases of security tools applied on smart grid infrastructure test-beds that could be proved important prior to their application in the real grid, describing a smart grid intrusion detection system application and security analytics results. Anticipated experimental results from the use-cases and conclusions about the successful transitions of security measures to real world smart grid operations will be presented at the end of this chapter.

Striking a Balance:Christianity and the Challenges of Long-Term Human Security in Zimbabwe

African evangelical/Pentecostal/charismatic (EPC) Christians-previously dismissed by scholars as apolitical-are becoming increasingly active socially and politically. This chapter presents a case study of an EPC congregation in Harare. It demonstrates how the congregation provides short-term human security by responding to the needs of the poor, while at the same time creating space where people can develop the "self-expression values" necessary for long-term human security. The case study also demonstrates that even under authoritarian states, religious actors can actively choose to balance the immediate demands of short-term human security with the sometimes competing demands of long-term human security. Policymakers can benefit from a greater understanding of how religious actors strike this balance and from a greater appreciation of the variability, flexibility, and religious resources of EPC Christians in such contexts.

Combining and integrating life /social sciences and citizen trainers in Nurse Education - a N. Ireland initiative

Before commencement of the academic year 2012/2013 the social sciences, public health and the biomedical sciences were taught to separate modules. This reinforced the idea off separate disciplines certainly for some of the younger students and a failure to appreciate the interconnectedness (whole person) perspective on health; separately modules taught and assessed in separate silos. There was limited understanding by the lecturers of the other areas that they were not teaching to -reflecting perhaps a dis-coordinated approach to health sciences (Mason and Whitehead 2003). As a result of significant discussion and interdisciplinary negotiation the life, social sciences public health/ health education were drawn together in the one module for the academic year 2012/13. The module provides the undergraduate students with an introduction to an understanding of Life Sciences, psychology, sociology and public health and their contribution within the context of nursing and midwifery. Each week’s teaching seeks to reflect against the other module delivered in first year - addressing clinical skills. The teaching is developing innovative e-learning approaches, including the use of a virtual community. The intention is to provide the student with a more integrated understanding and teaching to the individual’s health and to health within a social context (Lin 2001; Iles- Shih 2011). The focus is on health promotion rather than disease management. The module runs in three phases across the student’s first-year and teachers to the field of adult mental health, learning disability, children’s nursing and the midwifery students -progressively building on the student’s clinical experience. The predominant focus of the module remains on health and reflecting aspects of life and social life within N. Ireland. One of the particular areas of interest and an area of particular sensitivity is engaging the students to the context of the Northern Ireland civil unrest (the Troubles); this involves a co-educational initiative with service users, only previously attempted with social work students (Duffy 2012). The service users are represented by WAVE an organisation offering care and support to bereaved, traumatised or injured as a result of the violent civil conflict `the Troubles’. The `Troubles’ had ranged over an extended period and apart from the more evident and visual impact of death and injury, the community is marked by a disproportionate level of civil unrest, the extremes of bereavement, imprisonment, displacement antisocial behaviour and family dysfunction (Coulter et al. 2012). As co-educators with the School of Nursing and Midwifery, WAVE deliver a core lecture (augmented by online material), then followed by tutorials. The tutorials are substantially led by those who had been involved with and experienced loss and trauma as a result of the conflict (Health Service users) as `citizen trainers’ and provide an opportunity for them to share their experience and their recollection of personal interaction with nursing and midwifery students; in improving their understanding of the impact of `The Troubles’ on patients and clients affected by the events (Coulter et al. 2012) and to help better provide a quality of care cognisant of the particular needs of those affected by `the Troubles’ in N.Ireland. This approach is relatively unique to nursing in N. Ireland in that it involves many of those directly involved with and injured by the `Troubles’ as `citizen trainers’ and clearly reflects the School’s policy of progressively engaging with users and carers of nursing and midwifery services as co-educators to students (Repper & Breeze 2006). Only now could perhaps such a sensitive level of training to student nurses and midwives be delivered across communities with potential educative lessons for other communities experiencing significant civil unrest and sectarian conflict.

A Survey of Security in Software Defined Networks

The proposition of increased innovation in network applications and reduced cost for network operators has won over the networking world to the vision of Software-Defined Networking (SDN). With the excitement of holistic visibility across the network and the ability to program network devices, developers have rushed to present a range of new SDN-compliant hardware, software and services. However, amidst this frenzy of activity, one key element has only recently entered the debate: Network Security. In this article, security in SDN is surveyed presenting both the research community and industry advances in this area. The challenges to securing the network from the persistent attacker are discussed and the holistic approach to the security architecture that is required for SDN is described. Future research directions that will be key to providing network security in SDN are identified.