Bloomberg Businessweek sat down a couple months ago with five security experts including Robert Rodriguez, chairman of the Security Innovation Network and senior adviser to the Chertoff Group. The five were asked questions like “Is it important to determine who’s responsible for security? Is it the seller of the computer, the way that a seller of an automobile is responsible for a level of safety? What’s the alternative?”

An answer from Rodriguez, which built on an answer from Brvenik, recently was brought to my attention.

[SourceFire VP] Brvenik: We can make it harder, we can make it more expensive for the adversary, but they still have entry points. In order to truly solve this problem, we have to educate everybody from the start. Elementary schools should be teaching children before they’re ever online about the risks of it, and safe behaviors and how to identify bad things.

Rodriguez: I totally agree with you. Education, increasing awareness, and starting with a national ad campaign, almost like Nancy Reagan did with “Just Say No to Drugs.” It sounded silly to people in the beginning, but it was highly impactful.

While I am all for user education, I can hardly believe someone would cite Nancy Reagan’s program as “highly impactful.” I assume he means that in a positive way. I’ve always considered Reagan’s slogan a complete and abject failure due to the emphasis on an inflexible and unthinking response to a complex problem. We might as well tell people to just say no to anything “cyber” because it can cause harm.

Perhaps Michael Hecht, a Penn State professor of crime, law, and justice, put it best:

Critiqued by some for reducing a complex issue to a catch phrase, Reagan’s campaign is generally considered to have been unsuccessful, and the phrase “just say no” has become a pop-culture joke.

Hecht makes an interesting point about the slogans that work best and why:

…it is clear from a large body of research that students are more receptive when their peers are involved with delivering the message.

The nuance on these political issues is probably important. While I am for user education I am against a “Just Say No” program. Here’s another example: while I am for passenger screening I am against the Chertoff Group lobbying to sell their own product a millimeter wave scanner into airports.

I guess I would have given Bloomberg’s question a different response. I would agree with Brvenik and Rodriguez on user education but also would have disagreed with them. I would have emphasized don’t blame the victim (different from Brvenik), don’t be top-down and inflexible in reasoning (different from Rodriguez) and I would have said a reasonable level of liability should be put on manufacturers (more direct answer to the question).

As we near the month of October, Halloween costumes often come up for discussion. A site called Take Back Halloween has some interesting suggestions on costumes for women that they say are to “popularize knowledge of the past—the real stuff”, such as Lizzie Borden.

Lizzie Borden (1860-1927) is one of the most famous crime figures in American history. As the ditty goes, “Lizzie Borden took an axe/Gave her mother 40 whacks/When she saw what she had done/She gave her father 41.” Actually, it was her step-mother, not her mother; and the actual number of whacks was 18 and 11, respectively. More to the point, no one really knows if Lizzie was guilty.

Note how particular they are about setting the record straight. They also don’t sell anything directly but instead offer a specific shopping list of items, which point to other commerce sites.

1. Victorian costume dress with leg-o-mutton sleeves. This is being sold as a “vampiress” dress, but the late Victorian styling makes it a convenient get-up for Lizzie Borden. Unfortunately it’s rather small, so our next options are for you to assemble your own late-Victorian look.
2. Victorian blouse in scarlet. The store also offers these in black, white, and calico prints.
3. Victorian walking skirt in black.

Er, wait a minute. Black dress? Where does a black dress fit in a site dedicated to preserving history?

The “real stuff” based on knowledge of the past is a faded light blue dress, covered in paint and torn, that is infamously burned with a gas oven…as described within any of a huge number of history collections.

[Alice Russell, a family friend] recounted that when she asked Lizzie what she was doing with the blue dress, she replied, “I am going to burn this old thing up; it is covered with paint.” On cross-examination, defense attorney George Robinson attempted through his questions to suggest that a guilty person seeking to destroy incriminating evidence would be unlikely to do it in so open a fashion as Lizzie allegedly did.

A faded light blue garment in the trial was the pivotal piece of evidence in the “burned dress” defence.

Of course, costumes aren’t often very accurate, despite all kinds of marketing claims. A fake axe with fake blood, while pretending to be someone who died in 1927…none of it is going to be “real stuff.” Yet someone interested in the actual story might appreciate at least knowing the right color. It also is a great way to distinguish your Lizzie Bordens from your typically black-dressed vampiresses and witches.

Another example: Themistoclea is maybe assumed by some to have worn brown or black, based on pictures of objects from ancient Greece. However, her costume would be far more likely a red or green hue. In other words, if you care about being more “real” and knowledgeable don’t follow the instructions on Take Back Halloween. They tell you to order brown. Pick the “grape” colored cloth instead. Really.

Al Jazeera reports that Somalia’s national archives of voice recordings have survived sixty years of threats but now may be in danger of disappearing. As I mentioned in 2006, Somali history has been preserved through poetry and spoken word.

Wikipedia has a list of journalists killed recently in Somalia