Enabling Internet Participation [Mansell]

Friday was a mixture of three different sessions, starting with Robin Mansell's Enabling Internet Participation: A Global Challenge.  Currently advising the Department of Trade and Industry's Office of Science and Technology Foresight Project on cybertrust and crime prevention, she presented topics for 'understanding the application and implication of ICTs in areas of identity, system dependability, security, and information assurance'. 
  
With regard to trust in cyberspace, Mansell presented 6 findings:

1. Experience: The internet appears to be an experience mechanism with regard to trust
2. Socio-economic values: Trust varies greatly within this category
3. Ideas about trust vs actual behavior: survey data is self-reporting, therefore actual behavior needs to be observed - do you know what they really do versus what they say?  Does trust arise because of good behavior, or is good behavior required to create trust?
4. Behavioral cause and effect: e.g. economic perspective - game theoretical approaches à does a trust b, does b trust c, etc.
5. Distribution of trust (behavior and liability): 'It's the not amount of trust that matters, it's the distribution of trust'.  Who is responsible?
6. Tactics to alter trust: e.g. imbuing software agents with certain characteristics - building in conventions.  To give a responsible expectation of trustworthy interaction

She continued with 4 findings for risk in cyberspace,:

1. Perceptions or experience: Is it self-reporting or based on self-experience?
2. Social context (effect of technology): Perception of risk depends on the social context e.g. local dimension to Risk perception.  Alternately, it is the effect of the technology, skills, language, access, participation issues
3. Identity and security factors: Net fosters multiple identities, though project found future requires single identities (to prevent/reduce crime)!! (though this is a very technologically driven notion)
4. Privacy protection:  Currently, most countries have laws for data collection.  For some communities, privacy as understood by many people was not something they could get censuses on.  What is the distribution of privacy (depending on where they're coming from)?

For network dependability, we must consider the design process, resilience of architecture, professional approach, best practices, and continuous appraisal.  And for identities and authentication: proof of identity (originality), the enrolment process, authentication (identity disclosure), assurance and consistent application, and the provenance and trustworthiness of the information.

In conclusion, Mansell says that new criminal opportunities (such as envenomed as the Internet) may lead to more crime and reduced participation, taking into account, complexity (faults, mischief, crime), and 'conjunction of criminal opportunity' or likely opportunities of criminal activity.