It looks like Adam over at Emergent Chaos has been reading sociology (ethnomethodology is a sociological approach to language use) and finding out about linguistic anthropology. Although it is nice to see these ideas spreading from anthropology to sociology and into information security, I hope some also will dig into it enough to find and cite originals or at least get back to where ideas are originating.
In “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life,” the idea is that we create personas to control relationships. From lawyers to doctors to waitstaff or auto mechanics, people present a view into their identity that makes sense. I would question if I want to give business to an auto mechanic who was reading the Harvard Law Review when I came in, or a lawyer who was reading a Chilton’s repair manual. People present themselves in certain ways to control the perception of ‘who they are,’ and so a professional relationship develops in the right way.
Goffman’s foundational “presentation” book is widely cited but the more contemporary approach to language and identity is still in linguistic anthropology , where the role of language in identity-making has been a major focus at least since Dell Hymes developed the “ethnography of communication” along with concepts such as “linguistic community” and “community of practice.” Jane Hill’s recent work on Mock Spanish and on racism and identity in language is especially worth mention for this subject. Adam concludes:
So next time someone talks about identity or identity management, ask yourself, what are the assumptions about the relationship? And when you hear someone talking about ‘customer relationship management,’ as yourself what identity they seem to want to manage.
We have found important applications of these concepts in our study of identity-making in African (419) scam letters, where language is deliberately constructed in such a way as to authenticate false identities and to scam unwitting victims.
A carefully coordinated global ATM heist last November resulted in a one-day haul of $9 million in cash, after a hacker penetrated a server at payment processor RBS WorldPay, New York’s Fox 5 reports.
[…]
What’s clear is that this is a great time to be a hacker. In just over one year we’ve seen these kinds of breaches go from virtually unheard of into a multimillion dollar industry.
More than a year, to be fair. Attacks of this nature have been a public reality since at least 2004, but I would argue the decline in the economy is making them all the more worrying and therefore newsworthy.
A car bomb explosion critically injured the head of the Arkansas State Medical Board on Wednesday, detonating in his driveway as he was leaving for work, authorities said.
The state will certainly be on high alert, especially to protect others affiliated with the medical board. I wonder if other states will also go on alert or if the DHS threat level meter will move.
Authorities said Mann was interviewed by federal agents on the day of the bombing and showed them “at least one grenade launcher he legally owned.” However, he was not arrested until a month later, when city employees found partially buried “high explosive rounds designed to be fired from a grenade launcher” in a wooded area of London, Arkansas, authorities said.
Jurors convicted Mann of possession of 98 unregistered grenades and two counts of possessing machine guns, but acquitted him of possessing an unregistered 12-gauge shotgun. Sangeeta Mann was acquitted of lying to a grand jury investigating the unregistered firearms.