The Psychology of Security and Real ID

Bruce Schneier's keynote this morning at Computers, Freedom, and Privacy was on The Psychology of Security, and one of the topics he discussed was which risks people tend to exaggerate and which they tend to downplay. People exaggerate risks that are spectacular, rare, personified, beyond their control, talked about, morally offensive, without redeeming value, and unfamiliar. He also talked about how the fear that these things trigger kick in at the instinctual and reflexive level, and while it's possible to override them at a more analytical level, it's a lot of effort.

One of the things I flashed on was the Real ID Town Hall webcast. Gina Scott described this well in her GovTech article:

Unfortunately, many people were put on the defensive at the meeting when, in the opening remarks, a picture of the Florida driver's license of one of the 9-11 highjackers was put on the overhead screen. The apparent attempt to show the ease in which such terrorists were able to attain state-issued identification drew the proverbial line in the sand for the state DMVs. For the regular citizens, many saw the use of the highjacker's card as a threat. One citizen commented that the use of the photo was offensive, especially "in a time when we are going through a period of distrust in this country."

Intentionally or not, showing the hijacker's ID card triggers all of these factors that lead people to overestimate risks: it personifies the risk; relates it to a rare, spectactular, much-talked-about event; etc. etc.

In the Q&A after the talk, I asked what approaches we should use to counter this -- basically to get people into a framework where they're getting beyond their instinctual fears to think through the security tradeoffs at a public policy level in a way that better reflects the real risks. "It's hard," he replied. "Fear is so visceral, so powerful." I suggested that one of the things we should look at is countering with more positive emotions (Stephen Duncombe's Dream: Reinventing Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy makes a similar suggestion in a more general context). He agreed that this was worth looking at, as well as various framing approaches ... and I agreed that it's really difficult -- especially when the mass media's coverage tends to reinforce the fear.

Schneier's essay on the subject covers the same ground as his talk, in somewhat more detail, looking at research from behavioral economics, pscyhology of risk, neuroscience. Strongly recommended.

jon

Notes from CFP's opening panel: Where People and the Surveillance Society Collide

The opening panel of Computers, Freedom, and Privacy was titled "Where People and the Surveillance Society Collide", and covered a lot of topics related to Real ID. Mara Keisling ( Executive Director of National Center for Transgender Equity) discussed the importance of identification and documentation from a transgender perspective, and specifically mentioned Real ID:

The Real ID Act is viewed as one of the biggest problems in the transgender community in the US. Documentation is increasingly hard to get, especially for certain kinds of people (low-income, elderly, transgender, immigrant); and you need it for more and more things: starting a bank account, buying cigarettes … gender is recorded on the driver’s license; the fact of a name change is recorded on the 2d barcode – Mark to Mara, for me. Not sure about the gender change, but this is certainly in the database . Every time you go to a bar, you’re outed; in an airport. Maybe not such a big issue in a big city; what about in a small town – or where you know the TSA agent’s family?

Russell Roundpoint (Chief Administrative Officer, Mohawk Council of Akwasasne) talked about the difficult situation of the Akwasasne community, which spans five jurisdictional districts (Canada, the US, Quebec, Ontario, and New York) -- and the extra challenges for people like his wife, who is a US citizen despite never having lived here, but does not fall under any of the standard categories of exceptions, and so has a hard time getting a passport. At yesterday's town hall meeting, a gentleman from the Arizona DMV had highlighted their experiences with the rural Native American population, and strongly cautioned DHS that the current regulations did not take this into account; I found myself wondering whether the Akwasasne situation had been considered.

Journalist Dave Jamieson talked about surveillance cameras in Washington DC (his Washington City Paper story Speaker of the House is a great read). While not specifically ID-related, the experience about how cameras and speakers so that the camera watchers can give orders are increasingly being installed in low income housing complexes is a good reminder that the burden of surveillance technologies (and that's what Real ID is) tends to fall very heavily on lower-income people or others who are marginalized -- the same point Mara brought up.

Lots of great stuff in the panel; see my detailed notes here.

jon

On the way to Computers, Freedom, and Privacy

The boarding area for the flight from San Francsco to Montreal was filled with people headng off to CFP. [My keyboard is havng problems, especially the 'I' key, so apologies n advance if things are somewhat hard to read.] We chatted with people like Jennifer Granick and other folks from the Stanford Center for the Internet and Society and ex-EFFer Alex Fowler of Price Waterhouse Coopers; Whit Diffie of Sun (inventor of public key cryptography!) was a few people ahead of us in the boarding line. This year's program looks great; the theme is autonomy, there are a lot of sessions focused on identity and surveillance, and as always there's a lot of different perspectives, with a mix of academics, government and corporate types, non-profits, students, hackers, and activists.

The network around CFP is one of the many hotbeds of resistance to Real ID. In fact, I met people like Jim Harper (now at the Cato Institute), Mike Stollenwork (Fairfax County Privacy Council), and Katherine Albrecht (Spychips) for the first time at past CFPs. Last year, Sonya Hipper (who designed our logo) was on a social networking panel that Deborah organized; Bill Scannell (unreald.org) and Bruce Schneier (who along with Jim Harper has done some of the best writing on Real ID's flaws from a security perspective) both gave keynotes a couple of years ago. What's really exciting about grassroots activism is that it's an opportunity for this network to intersect with others ...

In any case, CFP 2007 should be interesting, and fun, and I'm looking forward to spending time in Montreal as the fight against Real ID goes international!

jon