Our Mission
SecDev iscommitted to academic excellence and operational relevance. We strive for improvements in policy and practice to effect efficient, ethical and real time change.
--The SecDev Group
complexity.engaged
Featured Content
Bullets& Blogs: New Media and the Warfighter
Co-authored by SecDev principals Deirdre Collings and Rafal Rohozinski and published by the Centre for Strategic Leadership, US Army War College. Download from Here
Tracking Ghostnet: Investigating a Cyber-espionage network
This report documents the GhostNet - a suspected cyber espionage network of over 1,295 infected computers in 103 countries, 30% of which are high-value targets, including ministries of foreign affairs, embassies, international organizations, news media, and NGOs.. Download from Here
Books
A recent selection of books authored and/or edited by SecDev principals and associates
Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace (Information Revolution and Global Politics)
Edited by SecDev principals Rafal Rohozinski and Ronald J. Deibert, and available from Amazon.com .
Synopsis
Reports on a new generation of Internet controls that establish a new normative terrain in which surveillance and censorship are routine.
Relocation Failures in Sri Lanka: A Short History of Internal Displacement and Resettlement (Paperback)
By SecDev principal Robert Muggah, and available from Amazon.com .
Description
This book considers why and how states, multilateral agencies, non-governmental organisations and non-state actors design and administer resettlement schemes. Tens of millions of people are internally displaced and relocated each year to make way for dam and urban renewal projects or in the wake of war, cyclones and floods. This book challenges current understandings of displacement and the prevailing resettlement regimes. It is distinctive because it argues for a unitary treatment of forced migration, bringing together diverse, multi-disciplinary approaches. Beginning with an overview of the available literature on forced migration, it goes on to focus on the particular case of Sri Lanka which has experienced all three of the forced migration regimes discussed in the literature--development, conflict and natural disaster-induced displacement.
Review
""This book [analyzing the consequences and amelioration] of the several kinds of 'internal displacement' is a welcome addition to the literature. There are instructive similarities, but also important differences, among forced resettlement as a result of development projects, armed conflict, or natural disasters. [It is a sad commentary on our times that development studies is having to extend its scope to the restoration of governance capabilities, economic productivity and social relationships, rather than just figuring out how to advance each of these dimensions [of national existence] to more satisfactory levels.] Muggah brings insightful social science analysis to this subject, plus an incisive historical perspective. His choice of Sri Lanka as a case study is [, sadly for that country,] very apt, since this country offers relevant examples of all three kinds of internal displacement for us to learn from." - Norman Uphoff, Cornell University "Can one author concomitantly wield the analytical lenses of several disciplines? This insightful study brilliantly conquers this daunting methodological challenge. Muggah's major book is the sharpest theoretical, political, and sociological analysis of the conundrum of displacements and resettlement processes caused by development, conflicts, and natural disasters, that are integral not only to Sri Lanka's social fabric but epitomize the status of our today's World at large" - Michael M. Cernea, George Washington University
Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering (Information Revolution and Global Politics)
Edited by SecDev principals Rafal Rohozinski and Ronald J. Deibert, and available from Amazon.com .
Description
Many countries around the world block or filter Internet content, denying access to information—often about politics, but also relating to sexuality, culture, or religion—that they deem too sensitive for ordinary citizens. Access Denied documents and analyzes Internet filtering practices in over three dozen countries, offering the first rigorously conducted study of this accelerating trend.
Internet filtering takes place in at least forty states worldwide including many countries in Asia and the Middle East and North Africa. Related Internet content control mechanisms are also in place in Canada, the United States and a cluster of countries in Europe. Drawing on a just-completed survey of global Internet filtering undertaken by the OpenNet Initiative (a collaboration of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, and the University of Cambridge) and relying on work by regional experts and an extensive network of researchers, Access Denied examines the political, legal, social, and cultural contexts of Internet filtering in these states from a variety of perspectives. Chapters discuss the mechanisms and politics of Internet filtering, the strengths and limitations of the technology that powers it, the relevance of international law, ethical considerations for corporations that supply states with the tools for blocking and filtering, and the implications of Internet filtering for activist communities that increasingly rely on Internet technologies for communicating their missions.
Reports on Internet content regulation in forty different countries follow, with each country profile outlining the types of content blocked by category and documenting key findings.
Contributors: Ross Anderson, Malcolm Birdling, Ronald Deibert, Robert Faris, Vesselina Haralampieva, Steven Murdoch, Helmi Noman, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, Mary Rundle, Nart Villeneuve, Stephanie Wang, and Jonathan Zittrain
Review
"No one had a clear sense of the nature of Internet censorship until now. This extraordinary work maps the unfreedom of the net. Unfortunately, that state is becoming the norm."
--Lawrence Lessig
Security and Post-Conflict Reconstruction (Paperback)
Edited by SecDev principal Robert Muggah, and available from Amazon.com .
andDescription
This book provides a critical analysis of the changing discourse and practice of post-conflict security-promoting interventions since the Cold War, such as disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR), and security-sector reform (SSR)
Although the international aid and security sectors exhibit an expanding appetite for peace-support operations in the 21st Century, the effectiveness of such interventions are largely untested. This book aims to fill this evidentiary gap and issues a challenge to 'conventional' approaches to security promotion as currently conceived by military and peace-keeping forces, drawing on cutting-edge statistical and qualitative findings from war-torn areas including Afghanistan, Timor Leste, Sudan, Uganda, Colombia and Haiti. By focusing on specific cases where the United Nations and others have sought to contain the (presumed) sources of post-conflict violence and insecurity, it lays out a new research agenda for measuring success or failure.
This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, peacekeeping, conflict resolution, conflict and development and security studies in general.
Bombs and Bandwidth: The Emerging Relationship Between Information Technology and Security (Paperback)
With Chapters by SecDev principals Rafal Rohozinski and Ronald J. Deibert, and available from Amazon.com .Synopsis
A multidisciplinary view of Information Technology as it is used by governments and criminal organizations alike. Why buy a multi-billion-dollar satellite and go to extreme lengths to try to avoid governmental detection when you can just buy a bit of airtime and send one of several million messages going out at any given time?—from Bombs and Bandwidth
Information Technology (IT) has become central to the way governments, businesses, social movements and even terrorist and criminal organizations pursue their increasingly globalized objectives. With the emergence of the Internet and new digital technologies, traditional boundaries are increasingly irrelevant, and traditional concepts—from privacy to surveillance, vulnerability, and above all, security—need to be reconsidered. In the post-9/11 era of "homeland security," the relationship between IT and security has acquired a new and pressing relevance. Bombs and Bandwidth, a project of the Social Science Research Council, assembles leading scholars in a range of disciplines to explore the new nature of IT-related threats, the new power structures emerging around IT, and the ethical and political implications arising from this complex and important field.
Contributors include: Ralf Bendrath, Michael Dartnell, Robert J. Deibert, Dorothy Denning, Chris Hables Gray, Rose Kadende-Kaiser, Susan Landau, Robert Latham, Timothy Lenoir, Martin Libicki, Carolyn Nordstrom, Rafal Rohozinski, Marc Rotenberg, Janice Gross Stein, Rachel Yould.