Smari McCarthy

Paper Title

Humanity - scale Infosec

Abstract

Most approaches to information security focus on a product, a standard, or an organization. The largest threat models are constructed on a national scale, and frequently they factor in many non-threats for political purposes. Humanity-scale approaches to information security are needed in order to protect humanity against vast threats, whether they be political, corporate, or systemic.

In this talk I will walk through the economics of information security at the multi-billion person level (n=2.5-3.5bn), take the example of an enormously powerful existing adversary (5eyes, with budget of $120bn/year), and show how relatively simple steps can be taken to price the attacker off the market for the generic case (reduce attack viability to ~32k targeted people per day).

Finally, I will demonstrate some software that will achieve some (but not all) of these goals, and outline some further possibilities for providing humanity - scale security.

Speaker Bio

Smari McCarthy is an information activist, free software developer and author. He has worked globally on issues of democratic participation, information security, access to information, civil liberties, and social and economic justice. He is a founder and a board member of the International Modern Media Institute (IMMI), founder of the Shadow Parliament Project, co-founder of the Icelandic Digital Freedoms Society, the Constitutional Analysis Support Project (CAST) and the Icelandic Pirate Party. He has worked on developing and spreading digital fabrication technology through Fab Labs and Hacker Spaces. As of August 2013, he lives in London where he works with Thoughtworks on decentralization of the Internet and counter surveillance measures for the public.