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The article says: “Incidentally, I've decided not to mention specific data breaches but rather to focus on the patterns...”. When trying to influence people who

The article says: “Incidentally, I've decided not to mention specific data breaches but rather to focus on the patterns...”. When trying to influence people who won’t be subject matter experts, I tend to think the opposite approach would be more effective. People readily latch on to tangible examples of what goes wrong, and while legislation is too often a knee-jerk reaction to single events for that reason, here is a chance to use that phenomenon to your advantage. If my measure of success was positive influence rather than pure education, that’s how I’d go.

jerf 9y ago
I would seriously consider taking the list of Congresspeople who are going to be running this hearing, extracting out the information you already have on them from your dumps, and preparing them a personal sheet of paper for each one showing them what you have about them online. If it's in public, you can't read it to them, but you might be able to hand it to them personally. This will be far more powerful than almost anything else you could do. It's not a problem "Americans" have... it's a problem they have.
- jordanthoms 9y ago
  Produce that list with a note next to each piece of info for which company lost it...
  - kronin 9y ago
    And when. And the lag between when the breach occurred and when the public was notified of the breach, along with all relevant information the company provided to help customers determine the extent of their information that is now public.
- cwkoss 9y ago
  I think sharing congresspeople's private login information from leaked sites as public record would light a useful fire under their asses. If its already freely available on the dark web, the bad guys already have this data. Might as well level the playing field and make the public aware of the extent of the issue. At least prepare the number of .gov and .mil accounts that have been compromised, huge blackmail risk for people who have access to top secret info.
- slavik81 9y ago
  You'd want to be careful doing that. When people are upset, they sometimes shoot the messenger. It seems to happen a lot in security.
chairmanwow 9y ago
Francesca Polletta's book "It Was Like a Fever" brings forward some really interesting points of discussion about storytelling as a political device. Some relevant quotes from the text: "If the fact that everyone can tell his own story makes it easier for people to challenge the assurances of the powerful that certain policies are to everyone’s advantage, the fact that narrative is seen as less authoritative than other discursive forms may weaken that challenge." "We are ambivalent about storytelling, not dismissive of it. There is a strong vein of skepticism toward professional expertise in American culture. Against that skepticism, the authenticity of personal storytelling makes the form trustworthy—sometimes more trustworthy than the complex facts and figures offered by certified experts." "...those wanting to effect social change must debunk beliefs that have the status of common sense, familiar stories are more obstacle than resource." "when feminists brought sex discrimination suits against employers, they struggled to prove that women were underrepresented in higher-status, traditionally male jobs because they were discriminated against and not because they had no interest in those jobs. Arguing that women wanted the jobs put them at odds with a familiar story in which girls grow up to want women’s work, and men grow up to want men’s work. To judges, feminists seemed to be saying that women were just like men, something that flew in the face of good sense."

jerf 9y ago

I would seriously consider taking the list of Congresspeople who are going to be running this hearing, extracting out the information you already have on them from your dumps, and preparing them a personal sheet of paper for each one showing them what you have about them online. If it's in public, you can't read it to them, but you might be able to hand it to them personally. This will be far more powerful than almost anything else you could do. It's not a problem "Americans" have... it's a problem they have.

jordanthoms 9y ago
Produce that list with a note next to each piece of info for which company lost it...
- kronin 9y ago
  And when. And the lag between when the breach occurred and when the public was notified of the breach, along with all relevant information the company provided to help customers determine the extent of their information that is now public.
cwkoss 9y ago
I think sharing congresspeople's private login information from leaked sites as public record would light a useful fire under their asses. If its already freely available on the dark web, the bad guys already have this data. Might as well level the playing field and make the public aware of the extent of the issue. At least prepare the number of .gov and .mil accounts that have been compromised, huge blackmail risk for people who have access to top secret info.
slavik81 9y ago
You'd want to be careful doing that. When people are upset, they sometimes shoot the messenger. It seems to happen a lot in security.

chairmanwow 9y ago

Francesca Polletta's book "It Was Like a Fever" brings forward some really interesting points of discussion about storytelling as a political device. Some relevant quotes from the text: "If the fact that everyone can tell his own story makes it easier for people to challenge the assurances of the powerful that certain policies are to everyone’s advantage, the fact that narrative is seen as less authoritative than other discursive forms may weaken that challenge." "We are ambivalent about storytelling, not dismissive of it. There is a strong vein of skepticism toward professional expertise in American culture. Against that skepticism, the authenticity of personal storytelling makes the form trustworthy—sometimes more trustworthy than the complex facts and figures offered by certified experts." "...those wanting to effect social change must debunk beliefs that have the status of common sense, familiar stories are more obstacle than resource." "when feminists brought sex discrimination suits against employers, they struggled to prove that women were underrepresented in higher-status, traditionally male jobs because they were discriminated against and not because they had no interest in those jobs. Arguing that women wanted the jobs put them at odds with a familiar story in which girls grow up to want women’s work, and men grow up to want men’s work. To judges, feminists seemed to be saying that women were just like men, something that flew in the face of good sense."