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Episode 8 (2020): Sylvain Besençon - Securing by hacking: maintenance regimes around an end-to-end encryption standard

Episode 8 (2020): Sylvain Besençon - Securing by hacking: maintenance regimes around an end-to-end encryption standard

FromHacker Cultures: The Conference Podcast


Episode 8 (2020): Sylvain Besençon - Securing by hacking: maintenance regimes around an end-to-end encryption standard

FromHacker Cultures: The Conference Podcast

ratings:
Length:
19 minutes
Released:
Sep 2, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode

Description

In this session, we interview Sylvain Besençon a PhD student in anthropology at the University of Fribourg. In his presentation, he talks about internet standards, which are elementary and powerful bricks of the Internet infrastructure: they define how the Internet should work and help developers to code their pieces of software accordingly. However, regularly, there are some voices or hacks that destabilize them and open the door to radical uncertainties about the reliability of the software we use, especially when crucial information is at stake. Based on digital ethnography as well as interviews and observations at international conferences, his paper takes as departure point the disclosure process of a series of vulnerabilities that affects an end-to-end email encryption standard called OpenPGP, used mostly by computer engineers, activists and journalists. 
Released:
Sep 2, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode

Titles in the series (16)

As Covid-19 turned most conferences virtual, so to combat Zoom-fatigue, at 4S/EASST 2020 we decided to try another format and turn a conference session into a podcast. Among hundreds of panels, papers and sessions, our panels rounded up all sorts of researchers who study what it is to be a hacker, and what hacking, programming, tinkering and working with computers is all about. The first series comes to you from the 2020 joint Society for Social Studies of Science/European Association for the Study of Science and Technology conference (4S/EASST), titled "Locating and Timing Matters: Significance and agency of STS in emerging worlds" which took place in "virtual Prague" from August 18th-21st. The second series comes to you from EASST 2022 titled "The Politics of Technoscientific Futures" and held in Madrid 2022-07-06 to 2022-07-09. Our panel was titled "Hacking Everything. The cultures and politics of hackers and software workers". The hosts are Paula Bialski, who is an Associate Professor at the University of St. Gallen, Andreas Bischof who is a Research Group Leader at Chemnitz University of Technology, and Mace Ojala, a lecturer at the IT University of Copenhagen. Audio production by Heights Beats at Hotmilk Records. The theme track of first series is "Rocky" by Paula & Karol. Heights Beats produced the theme track of the second series. Funding for the editing of this first series comes from University of St. Gallen, the second from Chemnitz University of Technology.