Security and Human Behaviour 2008
Frank Stajano's pictures of the speakers

It was a privilege to attend SHB 2008 at MIT: one of the most stimulating workshops I've been to in a while, bringing together interesting people from a variety of backgrounds.

In my view the greatest success of this interdisciplinary workshop was that people mixed up throughout the workshop and spoke to almost everyone else, rather than folding back into cliques of people from the same discipline. A clever move by the organizers was not to allow enough audience chairs for everyone: all the chairs of the speaker panel needed to be in use too. This meant that the outgoing panel speakers of each session would have to trade seats with the incoming speakers once they returned to the audience, thereby encouraging (if not forcing) at least some mixing. This got the ball rolling. The numerous breaks and the three receptions then gave plenty of opportunity for free interaction. Well done Ross, Bruce, Alessandro and George!

Here are some pictures of the speakers at this seminal event, to help memory associate faces with names. On other pages, Matt Blaze offers full audio recordings and Ross Anderson offers concise summaries of the talks, impressively written in quasi-real-time during the workshop itself.

(I would have added the pictures to our Light Blue Touchpaper blog itself, but going through the clickety-click web interface to add each picture and its thumbnail was too laborious.)

Venue: G449 at MIT's Stata Center

room

2008-06-30 (Mon)

Session 1 (0900-1030) – Deception

Detecting deception; social and psychological aspects; deception in sociotechnical systems; propaganda
Bruce Schneier (introduction), Paul Ekman (requested no photos), Jean Camp, Uri Simonsohn, Mike Roe, James Randi
Schneier (no Ekman) Camp Simonsohn Roe Randi

Session 2 (1100-1230) – Online crime

Engineering, economics and psychology of online crime; crime prevention
Matt Blaze, Ron Clarke, Eric Johnson, Charles Perrow, Alma Whitten
Blaze Clarke Johnson Perrow Whitten

Session 3 (1400-1530) – Usability

Why security products are hard to use; how psychology can inform design; empowerment or learned helplessness
Jon Callas, Luke Church, Markus Jakobsson, Bashar Nuseibeh, Angela Sasse
Callas Church Jacobsson Nuseibeh Sasse

Session 4 (1600-1730) – Methodology

What we need to learn about research technique from engineering, economics and psychology
Bill Burns, Ralph Chatham, Lorrie Faith Cranor, Mark Frank, Stuart Schechter
Burns Chatham Cranor Frank Schechter

Dinner at Legal Seafoods

lobster

2008-07-01 (Tue)

Session 5 (0900-1030) – Foundations

Social cognition; the Machiavellian brain; mortality salience; biases and heuristics
Dave Clark, David Livingstone Smith, Tyler Moore, Carey Morewedge, George Loewenstein
Clark Livingstone Smith Moore Morewedge Loewenstein

Session 6 (1100-1230) – Terror

Risk and the perception of risk; its role in politics and culture; the culture of fear; how societies may be resilient or be damaged
Bruce Schneier, Frank Furedi, Richard John, John Mueller, Paul Shambroom
Schneier Furedi John Mueller Shambroom

Session 7 (1400-1530) – Privacy

The privacy paradox; explanations from behavioural economics; coevolution of attitudes, technology and regulation
Alessandro Acquisti, Andrew Adams, Peter Neumann, Andrew Odlyzko, Frank Stajano (NB: photos not taken during the panel itself since I was on it)
Acquisti Adams Neumann Odlyzko Stajano

Session 8 (1600-1730) – How do we fix the world?

Or, at the very least, what are the interesting research questions on which we can hope to make progress?
Nick Humphrey, Richard Zeckhauser, Ross Anderson
Humphrey Zeckhauser Anderson

Evening reception

The brilliant James Randi did (more) magic.

Randi does magic


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