On the Virtues of Information Security in the UK Climate Movement: An Ethnographic Case Study
Contributor(s)
Session
Cryptography and Privacy for the People
Abstract
We report on an ethnographic study with members of the UK climate movement. We conducted participant observation at protests and various activist settings, interviewing 15 members from different groups. Our findings, as they relate to information security, reveal that members of the UK climate movement grapple with (i) a necessary tension between openness and secrecy considerations; (ii) tensions between autonomy and collective interdependence in (information-security) decision-making; (iii) conflicting activist ideals shaping security discourses; and (iv) pressures from different social gazes — from each other, from people outside the movement, and from their adversaries. Overall, our findings shed light on the social complexities of information-security research in activist settings. In addition, they serve as a case study for exploring the potential contributions of ethnography to cryptographic research that designs with and for people.