Events and Sightings

CBI–NSF Computer Security History Workshop

The Charles Babbage Institute, supported by the National Science Foundation’s Trustworthy Computing program, is engaged in a multiyear research project, “Building an Infrastructure for Computer Security History.” The project entails conducting 30 oral histories with computer security pioneers, creating knowledge networking resources, building archival collections, and preparing a set of scholarly publications. On 11–12 July 2014, CBI held a workshop to facilitate and advance scholarship and understanding of computer security history.

An open call for papers yielded high-quality proposals in a range of topics and themes—from computer crime, security metrics, standards, and encryption to pioneering companies, privacy, Internet design, and hacker culture. Proposals came in from historians, computer scientists, information scholars, and industry pioneers. At CBI we organized the papers, printed in a privately circulated workshop volume, into four thematic sessions: conceptual foundations, industry foundations, law and privacy, and identity and anonymity. Sessions on Friday, 11 July, were followed by a workshop dinner, with the final session and workshop wrap-up on Saturday, 12 July.

During the workshop sessions, oral presentations were kept brief since all attendees had texts readily at hand in the printed workshop volume. Discussion centered on providing feedback to authors in preparation for publication.

The editorial board of IEEE Annals of the History of Computing has approved plans for two special issues to publish revised papers from the event. All papers will go through the journal’s standard peer review. CBI Associate Director and past Annals Editor in Chief Jeffrey Yost will guest edit the two special issues.

Additional results from CBI’s NSF-funded research project include journal articles by co-PI Jeff Yost and graduate-student research assistant Nicholas Lewis that are forthcoming in the Annals, the completed oral-history interviews, and the knowledge-networking resources on computer security.¹

Here is a full list of the papers from the workshop:

• • William Aspray (University of Texas), “The Early History of Symantec, 1982–1999”

• • James W. Cortada (retired IBM, current Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota), “How an IT Industry Is Born: Is this Happening with IT Security Firms?”

• • Laura DeNardis (American University), “The Internet Design Tension between Surveillance and Security”

• • Larry Druffel, Rich Pethia, and Bill Scherlis (Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University), “The Formation and Operation of CERT: A Retrospective”

• • Philip Frana (James Madison University), “Telematics, Transborder Data Flows, and the History of Computer Security”

• • Karl Grindal (Cyber Conflict Studies Association), “Artist Collectives versus Hacker Culture: Origins of DDoS”

• • Robert E. Johnston, “Information Security History in the Private Sector, 1969–1999”

• • Steven B. Lipner (Microsoft), “The Birth and Death of the Orange Book”

• • Andrew Meade McGee (University of Virginia), “Privacy as Security: The Deep Political Origins of the Privacy Act of 1974”

• • Dongoh Park (Indiana University), “Social Life of PKI: Sociotechnical Development of Korean Public Key Infrastructure”

• • Rebecca Slayton (Cornell University), “Automating Judgment: Computer Security Metrics and the Rise of Risk Assessment”

• • Michael Warner (US Cyber Command), “Notes on the Evolution of Computer Security Policy in the US Government, 1965–2001”

• • Jeffrey R. Yost (Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota), “Access Control Software and the Origin and Early History of the Computer Security Industry”

SIGCIS at the 2014 SHOT Annual Meeting

The Society of the History of Technology (SHOT) held its 57th annual conference in Dearborn, Michigan, from 6–9 November 2014. This year, the Special Interest Group for Computers, Information, and Society (SIGCIS) held a day-long workshop on “Computing the Big Picture: Situating Information Technology in Broader Historical Narratives.” Historian of technology and MIT Professor Jennifer Light gave the plenary talk alongside four workshop sessions and two sessions for works in progress. Light’s keynote highlighted the various intellectual genealogies spanning the history of computing, such the history of technology, the history of science, communication and media studies, and architecture and urban planning. She was also quick to observe that, in order to get a broader picture of computing, scholars should attend to the shrinking gap between the popular histories done by journalists, librarians and archivists, and policymakers outside of...