Ideas and practices

As members of communities, churchgoers, parents, teachers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, we live in a real world of people.

• People come before machines
• People have complex needs and motives

Our work is politically, psychologically and sociologically informed. People's broad needs cannot be fully served by the orthodoxy of security thinking which is still dominated by its roots in financial corporate culture and the military.

While some qualities of business are admirable, plenty are not. Corporate values include;

Positive:

• Driver of innovation
• Outlet for individual ambition

Negative:

• Combative, competitive
• Environmentally damaging
• Concerned only with capital accumulation
• Insular, mission-focused or obsessive
• Expansive, growth at all costs
• Disinterested in feelings of people and human relationships
• Deceitful in pursuit of profit
• Cavalier about social norms, traditions and the rule of law

As such these are insufficient or at odds with a wider application of digital security to meet needs in a changing world.

Our work with corporations is "mindset changing" and aimed to challenge neoliberal dogma that makes companies intrinsically insecure and open targets for cyber attack.

Another stand that informs modern cybersecurity thinking has roots in defence. Here values include;

Positive:

• Protective of citizens
• Culture of service to public good
• Culture of realism, truth and honour

Negative:

• Predicated on conflict

While we have more in common with this creed it also offers a limited stance based on initiating or responding to hostile force. New challenges in cybersecurity require peace-building, exploration of new paradigms in diplomacy and political science.

Our work in defence aims to bring emotional intelligence and wider perspectives to the table, especially around unconventional hybrid conflict and influence.

Our credo, which we name as Civic Cybersecurity is to move the purview of cyber beyond…

• Examine peoples real needs regarding digital
• Examine root causes of cyber insecurity and threats
• Examine entrenched power interests
• Understand obstacles to progressive security thinking
• Investigate alternative configurations of civil digital affordances beyond the "Internet era"

Our mission is somewhat aligned with the projects of [technology in the public interest], and [humane technology].

As examples of areas of relevance;

The military has experience, and power, but no civil remit in tackling the deluge of psychological warfare against citizens. The situation is complex and also too entangled with corporate interests.

Corporations have low traction in serving communities or empowering citizens. While they may make token gestures for PR or tax reasons, they are "money making machines". Persistence in the belief that corporations can be "responsible fictional persons" or "part of a community" underlies so many serious digital security problems today.

Governments are not impartial in their digital policy making or sufficiently separated from corporate influence. The democratic aspects of civil technology - as distinct from simple consumerism or an unreflective rush toward a "digitised society" - must be seen as distinct and handled independently.

Sustainability in tech is the political football that gets kicked around and into the long grass. Resilience, affordability as an all-costs formula, and joined-up planning for a sustainable digital future is all but absent, at least in public discourse. Building more gigawatt power facilities to drive "AI" data-centres is a suicidal death-race. We believe the British people are smarter than that.

Cyber is a huge attack surface all people face. If our concept of national security is to advance into the posthumanist era, incorporating things like biological and sustainability hazards, then it must also include aspects of social and psychological security. For long-term nation-building and intellectual self-defence we must connect these social foundations to cybersecurity in a meaningful way.

Our thinking is founded on the following basic philosophies;

Cybersecurity is a digital expression of an ancient essence;

• vigilant, scrupulous
• territorial, defensive
• valuing knowledge as defensive skill
• conservative, resistant
• demur, boundaried, cautious
• dignified, inviolate, honourable
• protective and nurturing
• reflective, adaptive, diplomatic

Yet it is unafraid of dirty-hands, of picking up a sword and chopping off heads when necessary. It's about evaluating trust and risk, and when necessary enforcing it.