User Requirements Elicitation in Security and Counter-Terrorism: A Human Factors Approach

This paper presents work conducted as part the ‘Shades of Grey’ (EP/H02302X/1) research project that aims to develop scientific interventions for the detection of suspicious behaviors in public spaces. To provide an understanding of security and counter-terrorism work in different contexts the project adopted a human factors approach as part of a program of user requirements gathering exercises. These activities focussed on the needs of different end-users and stakeholders, ranging from frontline security personnel, managers and strategic security policy makers. By taking a user-centred approach, the discipline of human factors can be integrated into the security/counter-terrorism domain to support the design of practical security solutions. This paper presents a case study investigation using data collected from three security agencies. Common themes are explored, ranging from ‘the importance of temporal measures’ to ‘enhancing positive user experiences’. These factors are discussed in relation to the practical application of human factors methods within security research.     

Treated sex offenders as “paraprofessional” co-workers in the treatment of the sex offender

This paper will briefly review the utilization of the paraprofessional in a community-based sex offender treatment programme in Merseyside, UK. The paraprofessionals are treated paedophiles in the role of treatment co-facilitators. Further thoughts on the role dynamic, training issues and supervision are discussed. This is an example of service-user involvement in practice.     

Book Reviews

Jeffrey T. Richelson and Desmond Ball, The Ties that Bind: Intelligence Cooperation between the UKUSA Countries (London: George Allen &; Unwin 1986). Pp. xviii + 402. £19.95.

Giuseppe De Lutiis, Storia dei Servizi Segreti in Italia (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1985). Pp. 313, Lire 16,500.

Scott D. Breckenridge, The CIA and the U.S. Intelligence System (Boulder, CO; Westview Press, Frederick A. Praeger). Pp. 364.

Phillip Thurmond Smith, Policing Victorian London. Political Policing, Public Order, and the London Metropolitan Police (Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1985). Pp. x + 230. £35.

Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living with High‐Risk Technologies (New York: Basic Books, 1984). Pp. 386. $10.95.     

Insurgent capitalism: Island,bricolage and the re-making of finance

Abstract

Drawing on recent discussions of the material cultures of markets and of financial innovation as bricolage, this paper explores the development of Island, a new share-trading venue set up in 1995. We examine Island's roots in a very specific conflict in the US financial markets and in the information libertarianism of ‘hacker culture’, and examine the material bricolage involved in Island's construction. The paper also outlines the processes that led to a dramatic ‘Latourian’ change of scale: Island was originally a ‘micro’ development on the fringes of US markets, but within little more than a decade key features of Island became close to compulsory, as the nature of North American and Western European share trading changed utterly.     

The material production of virtuality: innovation,cultural geography and facticity in derivatives markets

Abstract

In the existing literature, the ‘virtual’ nature of financial derivatives is often commented upon, but how these products are brought into being has seldom been examined in any depth. This article analyses the development since 1970 of organized financial-derivatives trading in the US and UK (in particular, of derivatives exchanges and of the British financial spread-betting industry), with the goal of examining the ‘material production of virtuality’. The article explores the similarities and differences between technological innovation and innovation in derivatives; discusses the role of the ‘internal’ cultures of financial markets and of the wider culture (in particular, the legal traces of hostility to gambling); and analyses the requirement of ‘facticity’ for the measure underlying a cash-settled derivative, focusing in particular on the most important such measure, British Bankers’ Association LIBOR (London interbank offered rate).