Security

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SECURITY

Security has many dimensions, depending on the situation. People secure boats by tying them to a dock, secure loans from financial institutions, or secure promises with a handshake. People feel less secure, or insecure, when they doubt their own abilities, when they lose their privacy, when a thief steals their wallet or purse. Thus, security is a psychological as well as a physical state of feeling—as well as being—protected from loss, breach of trust, attack, or any real or perceived threat.

The word security is widespread and appears in many contexts, from the United Nations Security Council and the nuclear and environmental security councils worldwide to national security, social security, and neighborhood security watch groups formed to keep homes safe from burglars. The term has become enshrined as well in the Department of Homeland Security, which describes itself as working "to keep America safe" with one program slogan of "Don't be afraid, be ready." Closely related terms include safety and fear. Fear is a feeling, not always rational, of agitation and anxiety caused by the perception of danger. In the United States, in 2001, about 1,000 people died from airliner accidents, including those who died in the crashes of September 11, 2001, while in the same year, more than 42,000 people died in automobile crashes. Yet after the September 11 attacks, many people refused to fly and opted to drive. They no longer felt secure in airliners, even though they faced greater risk on the roads.

Pursuing Security

In between self-reliance and the appeal to religion (which places ultimate "security" in the divine), the most general efforts to enhance security involve science, technology, and politics. Many scientists, for instance, argue that insofar as fear arises from ignorance, scientific explanations of phenomena reduce superstition and increase understanding, thus promoting security through knowledge.

From earliest times human beings have also depended for their very existence on the technologies of food gathering, production, and preparation, as well as those that provide clothing and shelter. Technology, especially in the form of medicine, has a long history of combating the insecurity of disease. Virtually all forms of engineering propose to render human productivity and products more secure.

To protect technological gains, however, provisions for political security are a further requirement. The rise of the first civilizations was closely associated with the development of technologies of military security. In order to obtain civil security, people have even given their allegiance and surrendered their rights to emperors, kings, and governments. According to the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes in the Leviathan (1651), this compact between people and leaders is necessary because people naturally lack traits that would ensure mutual security. For Hobbes, people are essentially selfish creatures with no concern for or connection to one another. Because humans are largely unsuccessful and constantly warring, they trade away their freedom and individuality in order to gain stability, law and order, a predictable future, leisure, and enjoyment. While other philosophers take a less dim view of human nature, all agree that security is essential for society, production, trade, and culture.

Hobbes and other early modern philosophers also argued that state security would not only protect technological achievement but also promote it, and that security could be enhanced by turning those desires for material welfare that might otherwise lead to warfare between nations to a general warfare against scarcity. Although the pursuit of security thus plays important roles in virtually all modern technologies, the more explicit appeals to security are undoubtedly found in the discussion of computers and the military.

Computer and information professionals are at the front line of ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, operability, and availability of information systems and data. Under the umbrella of those words come physical threats stemming from floods, hurricanes, sandstorms, and other natural disasters, as well as unintentional harm from careless use, and of course intentional harm from thieves, hackers, or terrorist attack. The focus of computer and information security often narrows to the means, such as encryption, passwords, and biometrics, rather than examining the motivations and goals of security. Among the many dimensions of this broader field are various levels of security, false senses of security, intrusive burden of security, and much more.

It is particularly important to differentiate between the ordinary and the national levels of security (Nissenbaum, Friedman, and Felten Internet article). The ordinary level comprises assurance of safety from the threats mentioned above, such as natural disasters, human error, or unwanted trespass. Computer and information professionals take what measures they can to protect from ordinary threats.

The national level, however, includes more extraordinary measures of action. In the name of national security, nations pursue extreme measures. As Helen Nissenbaum, Batya Friedman, and Edward Felten described it,

The cause of national security can be parlayed into political measures as well: a lifting of typical restraints on government activities and powers, especially those of security agencies. We may see also a curtailing of certain freedoms (e.g. speech, movement, information), a short-circuiting of certain normal democratic processes (e.g. those in the service of openness and accessibility), and even the overriding of certain principles of justice.

Thus, in some instances, ordinary security is trumped by national security, and the individual is left with fewer rights and feeling less, not more, secure. For example, national identity cards have only limited potential to enhance security but also entail an array of serious risks and other negative characteristics (Weinstein and Neumann 2001). Governments might impose national identity cards and people might agree to them out of fear, rather than out of a rational need.

Specific Issues of Computer and Information Security

In most areas, governments, institutions, and manufacturers give people visual reassurance that they are protected from harm. Security is signified by armed guards standing at a checkpoint, childproof tops on pharmaceutical products, and locks on doors, windows, and cars. Banks are often solid structures, giving depositors the reassurance that their funds are safe. Screen savers can be password protected, although breaking through such protection is trivial. Whether effective or not, these measures calm and reassure people.

In the realm of computers and information, the physical and psychological aspects of security are more elusive, because the digital world is often devoid of the visual cues that lead people to feel secure. How can a user know that a document has not been altered, that no one has eavesdropped on a conversation, that an order comes from a real customer? Challenges include authenticating data and users, maintaining data integrity, and ensuring the confidentiality of communication.

The lack of transparency of technological devices easily renders end users both insecure and dependent. Although this is a problem associated with many technological appliances such as radios, refrigerators, and air conditioners—devices that few can repair or even explain—the lack of "transparency" is peculiarly salient in computers, which are themselves increasingly integrated into other devices—to make the DVD player, car, or toaster "smart," but leaving the users feeling powerless and "dumb." When devices make people feel dumb, they also make them feel less secure.

What about the security threats of private spyware products? Not only do people have to be worried about governments or corporations spying on them, increasingly individuals have available sophisticated technologies for spying (spouses on each other, parents on kids, and so forth).

Another (closely related) issue: False security is provided by deleting computer documents, as some criminals have discovered to their chagrin. Computer professionals can recover many deleted files, even of non-criminals.

Security measures themselves can become burdensome, as when users have too many passwords to remember. Fear focused on one area may leave another more vulnerable. Indeed, professionals who concentrate too narrowly on the machine and wires and airwaves may overlook the danger of a disgruntled employee or an electromagnetic weapon. Research by Rebecca Mercuri into the dangers of electronic voting provides a cautionary tale, for this perceived cure for election errors and interference may result in the potential for even greater fraud.

Thus computer and information security are elusive goals that professionals aim to attain through technological fixes such as encryption, firewalls, and restricted networking. Sometimes these efforts are undertaken because of actual attacks and interference, and sometimes they are applied to allay fear or provide users with a sense of security.

Basic Issues of National and Military Security

The second most common area in which questions of security play a prominent role is that of national and military security. During the Cold War (1945–1990) the primary national security issue was nuclear weapons, and spies were sent into countries to learn more about them. Attempts to enhance nuclear weapons security and safety involved both controlling scientific knowledge that might be of use to an enemy, especially by means of secrecy, and engaging scientists and engineers in the development of technologies thought to enhance national security, technologies that ranged from "fail-safe" command and control techniques to monitoring and surveillance devices. The demand for secrecy in some scientific research was nevertheless often argued to be a distortion of the scientific ideal, insofar as this ideal is committed to the production of shared knowledge. Indeed, some scientists argued that secrecy was actually counterproductive, and that greater security could be had through more openness in science.

As for spies, in the United States there were witch-hunts and other wide-ranging and over-reaching investigations by government that ruined the careers of innocent people and left many feeling insecure and vulnerable. The McCarthy hearings of the early 1950s involved telephone wiretaps and other intrusive acts used on innocent people.

With the end of the Cold War, the promotion of secrecy in science in the name of national security became less pronounced, but was sometimes replaced with the promotion of secrecy in science and technology in the name of corporate security and economic competitiveness. Then, with the advent of the so-called war on terrorism (2001–), needs for secrecy and control in science for national security reasons again became a prominent issue.

One specific example concerns biodefense and the boom in building high-security "hot labs" where the deadliest germs and potential bioterrorist weapons can be studied. Although the need for level 3 and level 4 biosafety labs and associated security measures are real, scientists such as David Ozonoff at the Boston University School of Public Health worry that there may be insufficient safeguards "to prevent work that violates the ethical standards of the scientific community" (Miller 2004). Stanley Falkow of Stanford University has even decided to destroy his own plague cultures rather than work under the new security regulations, pointing out the danger of security driving away talent (Miller 2004).

As these and other examples show, security needs will not abate, for they are deep in the human psyche and are built into the contract between people and their governments. Keeping security measures in balance with other values, such as freedom of speech and the pursuit of knowledge, poses a continuing challenge.

For more extensive discussion of this issue, see "A Difficult Decade: Continuing Freedom of Information Challenges for the United States and its Universities," available at http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v10n4/woodbury104.html.

MARSHA C. WOODBURY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Miller, Judith. (2004). "New Biolabs Stir a Debate over Secrecy and Safety." New York Times, February 10.

Weinstein, Lauren, and Peter G. Neumann. (2001). "Risks of Panic" (Inside Risks column 137). Communications of the ACM 44(11): 152.

INTERNET RESOURCES

Mercuri, Rebecca. "Electronic Voting." Notable Software. Available from http://www.notablesoftware.com/evote.html.

Nissenbaum, Helen; Batya Friedman; and Edward Felten. "Computer Security: Competing Conceptions." Available from http://arxiv.org/html/cs.CY/0110001.

Woodbury, Marsha. "A Difficult Decade: Continuing Freedom of Information Challenges for the United States and its Universities." Available from http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v10n4/woodbury104.html.

Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics