(In)visible Ghosts in the Machine and the Powers that Bind: The Relational Securitization of Anonymous

This paper analyzes the formation and subsequent securitization of the digital protest movement Anonymous, highlighting the emergence of social antagonists from communication itself. In contrast to existing approaches that implicitly or explicitly conceptualize Othering (and securitization) as unidirectional process between (active) sender and (passive) receiver, an approach that is based on communication gives the "threat” a voice of its own. The concept proposed in this paper focuses on "designations” as communicating rules and attributes with regard to a government object. It delineates how designations give rise to the visibility of political entities and agency in the first place. Applying this framework, we can better understand the movement's path from a bunch of anonymous individuals to the collectivity "Anonymous,” posing a threat to certain bases of the state's ontological existence, its prerogative to secrecy, and challenging its claim to unrestrained surveillance. At the same time, the state's bases are implicated and reproduced in the way this conflict is constructed. The conflict not only (re)produces and makes visible "the state” as a social entity, but also changes or at least challenges the self-same entity's agency and legitimacy. Such a relational approach allows insights into conflict formation as dynamic social proces

Making cyber security more resilient: adding social considerations to technological fixes

How can a focus on socio-technical vulnerability and uncertainty make cyber security more resilient? In this article, we provide a conceptual discussion of how to increase cyber resilience. First, we show how cyber security and resilience thinking co-evolved through their connection to critical infrastructures, and how the ensuing dominant technical focus inevitably always falls short due to the diverse societal values that underpin their critical social functions. We argue that a sole focus on aggregate systems neglects the important differences in how cyber threats are experienced and dealt with by individuals. Second, we draw on insights from social resilience and disaster management literature to establish a better link between individuals and cyber systems. We focus on two key aspects of cyber security that highlight its social nature: vulnerability and uncertainty. Instead of thinking of cyber security as a “technical problem + humans,” we suggest cyber security should be conceptualized as a “social problem + technology.” We conclude by highlighting three ways forward for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners: interdisciplinary research, public debate about a set of normative questions, and the need for an uncertainty discourse in politics and policymaking

Breaking the Cyber-Security Dilemma: Aligning Security Needs and Removing Vulnerabilities

Current approaches to cyber-security are not working. Rather than producing more security, we seem to be facing less and less. The reason for this is a multi-dimensional and multi-faceted security dilemma that extends beyond the state and its interaction with other states. It will be shown how the focus on the state and "its” security crowds out consideration for the security of the individual citizen, with detrimental effects on the security of the whole system. The threat arising from cyberspace to (national) security is presented as possible disruption to a specific way of life, one building on information technologies and critical functions of infrastructures, with relatively little consideration for humans directly. This non-focus on people makes it easier for state actors to militarize cyber-security and (re-)assert their power in cyberspace, thereby overriding the different security needs of human beings in that space. Paradoxically, the use of cyberspace as a tool for national security, both in the dimension of war fighting and the dimension of mass-surveillance, has detrimental effects on the level of cyber-security globally. A solution out of this dilemma is a cyber-security policy that is decidedly anti-vulnerability and at the same time based on strong considerations for privacy and data protection. Such a security would have to be informed by an ethics of the infosphere that is based on the dignity of information related to human beings

Cybersecurity Research Meets Science and Technology Studies

This article sets out to show how different understandings of technology as suggested by Science and Technology Studies (STS) help reveal different political facets of cybersecurity. Using cybersecurity research as empirical site, it is shown that two separate ways of understanding cybertechnologies are prevalent in society. The primary one sees cybertechnologies as apolitical, flawed, material objects that need to be fixed in order to create more security; the other understands them as mere political tools in the hands of social actors without considering technological (im)possibilities. This article suggests a focus on a third understanding to bridge the uneasy gap between the two others: technology defined as an embodiment of societal knowledge. The article posits that in line with that, the study of cyberpolitics would benefit from two innovations: a focus on cybersecurity as social practice―enacted and stabilized through the circulation of knowledge about vulnerabilities―and a focus on the practices employed in the discovery, exploitation and removal of those vulnerabilities

Dorsal and ventral stimuli in cell–material interactions: effect on cell morphology

Cells behave differently between bidimensional (2D) and tridimensional (3D) environments. While most of the in vitro cultures are 2D, most of the in vivo extracellular matrices are 3D, which encourages the development of more relevant culture conditions, seeking to provide more physiological models for biomedicine (e.g., cancer, drug discovery and tissue engineering) and further insights into any dimension-dependent biological mechanism. In this study, cells were cultured between two protein coated surfaces (sandwich-like culture). Cells used both dorsal and ventral receptors to adhere and spread, undergoing morphological changes with respect to the 2D control. Combinations of fibronectin and bovine serum albumin on the dorsal and ventral sides led to different cell morphologies, which were quantified from bright field images by calculating the spreading area and circularity. Although the mechanism underlying these differences remains to be clarified, excitation of dorsal receptors by anchorage to extracellular proteins plays a key role on cell behavior. This approach—sandwich-like culture—becomes therefore a versatile method to study cell adhesion in well-defined conditions in a quasi 3D environment

Intimate partner violence and other associated problems : sectoral cooperation to optimize the safety of women and children

The objective of this study was to evaluate the implementation of sectoral cooperation strategy involving different organizations concerned by intimate partner violence and other co-occurring problems in the province of Quebec (Canada). The sectoral cooperation meetings (N = 63) were held from February 2018 to June 2019 and 250 evaluation questionnaires were filled out by the practitioners. The data collection tool was composed of open-ended questions (qualitative section) along with Likert scales and multiple-choice questions (quantitative section). The results showed that a large majority of the practitioners considered that cooperation helped to improve the safety of the women and their children and to optimize their practice. Likewise, all of the practitioners considered that sectoral cooperation represented a winning strategy worthy of further development. Findings highlight the importance to support practitioners in complex clinical situations when IPV co-occurred alongside mental health problems, addiction problems, or child maltreatment, and this, in order to ensure the safety of intimate partner violence victims and their children

La cartographie de crise : le phénomène et son utilité

Myriam Dunn Cavelty et Jennifer Giroux sont expertes au sein du Center for Security Studies (CSS), à Zurich. Cet article est paru dans la revue Politique de sécurité : analyses du CSS, n° 103, novembre 2011). Nous le reproduisons ici avec l’aimable autorisation de ses auteurs et du CSS.  Le séisme de 2010 en Haïti a fait la une des journaux internationaux. Le rôle important joué par le crisis mapping dans la gestion de cette catastrophe est moins connu. Des volontaires et des victimes ont recueilli des informations, les ont combinées avec des photos satellites et ont ainsi créé une carte dynamique de la crise d’une grande utilité pour les victimes et les secours. Les acteurs étatiques devraient intensifier l’analyse de ce phénomène pour mieux comprendre la meilleure manière de l’utiliser pour gérer les catastrophes et d’encourager son utilisation

La cartographie de crise : le phénomène et son utilité

Myriam Dunn Cavelty et Jennifer Giroux sont expertes au sein du Center for Security Studies (CSS), à Zurich. Cet article est paru dans la revue Politique de sécurité : analyses du CSS, n° 103, novembre 2011). Nous le reproduisons ici avec l’aimable autorisation de ses auteurs et du CSS.  Le séisme de 2010 en Haïti a fait la une des journaux internationaux. Le rôle important joué par le crisis mapping dans la gestion de cette catastrophe est moins connu. Des volontaires et des victimes ont recueilli des informations, les ont combinées avec des photos satellites et ont ainsi créé une carte dynamique de la crise d’une grande utilité pour les victimes et les secours. Les acteurs étatiques devraient intensifier l’analyse de ce phénomène pour mieux comprendre la meilleure manière de l’utiliser pour gérer les catastrophes et d’encourager son utilisation

Identifying therapeutic targets by combining transcriptional data with ordinal clinical measurements

The immense and growing repositories of transcriptional data may contain critical insights for developing new therapies. Current approaches to mining these data largely rely on binary classifications of disease vs. control, and are not able to incorporate measures of disease severity. We report an analytical approach to integrate ordinal clinical information with transcriptomics. We apply this method to public data for a large cohort of Huntington's disease patients and controls, identifying and prioritizing phenotype-associated genes. We verify the role of a high-ranked gene in dysregulation of sphingolipid metabolism in the disease and demonstrate that inhibiting the enzyme, sphingosine-1-phosphate lyase 1 (SPL), has neuroprotective effects in Huntington's disease models. Finally, we show that one consequence of inhibiting SPL is intracellular inhibition of histone deacetylases, thus linking our observations in sphingolipid metabolism to a well-characterized Huntington's disease pathway. Our approach is easily applied to any data with ordinal clinical measurements, and may deepen our understanding of disease processes

Cybersecurity and the politics of knowledge production: towards a reflexive practice

How does a reflexive scholarly practice matter for producing useful cybersecurity knowledge and policy? We argue that staking relevance without engaging in reflexivity diminishes the usefulness of knowledge produced both in academia and in policy. To advance a reflexive research agenda in cybersecurity, this forum offers a collective interrogation of the liminal positionality of the cybersecurity scholar. We examine the politics of ‘the making of’ cybersecurity expertise as knowledge practitioners who are located across and in between the diverse and overlapping fields of academia, diplomacy and policy. Cybersecurity expertise, and the practices of the cybersecurity epistemic community more broadly, rely heavily on the perceived applicability and actionability of knowledge outputs, on the practical dependency on policy practitioners regarding access, and thus on the continuous negotiation of hierarchies of knowledge. Participants in this forum reflect on their research practice of negotiating such dilemmas. Collectively, we draw on these contributions to identify obstacles and opportunities towards realising a reflexive research practice in cybersecurity