Where in the Cosmic Hierarchy is Amazon?

1
Where in the Cosmic Hierarchy is Amazon?

• Ross Anderson
• Cambridge

2
To whom (or what) am I speaking?

• Last year I was talking about human-computer
  interaction as ceremony
• We heard yesterday about the role in folk
  psychology and moral reasoning of the Cosmic
  Hierarchy God, angels, man, subhumans, beasts,
  inanimate matter
• Where in this hierarchy is Amazon, or other
  services with which I interact?

3
Depersonalization and fraud

• We have some literature and much folk experience
  on increased willingness to commit abuse online
  where the targets personhood is less salient
• Firms personalize operations of which theyre
  proud and depersonalize the shameful (so do
  liars)
• British Crime Survey a million people are
  victims each year of traditional acquisitive
  crime (burglary, car theft) modern variety
  (phishing, auctions, lottery scams) over twice
  that and rising fast

4
Vindictiveness too

• Recent case student defrauded professor of
  18000 (25000) and got 200 hours community
  service
• The fraud was online, and they never met!
• Had it been face-to-face, sentencing guidelines
  set the starting point at 3 years
• Theres some literature here too (see Small and
  Loewenstein, The devil you know The effects of
  identifiability on punitiveness)
• The USA is different McKinnon, ODwyer

5
A possible framework?

• Simon Baron-Cohens new book Zero Degrees of
  Empathy sets out a framework for understanding
  empathic failure in violent crime
• Dispositional (psychopathy, narcissism,
  borderline) or situational (I just drove the
  train)
• Relevant to computer crime too (add Aspergers)
• Our sentencing guidelines may reflect a folk view
  that fraud is a breach of empathy, or victim
  categories of in-group and out-group, or whether
  the oxytocin system is involved

6
Did we get it all wrong?

• In the late 1980s/early 1990s several banks put
  photos on credit cards. This cut fraud
• Sainsburys experiment Kemp, Towell, Pike, When
  Seeing should not be Believing Photographs,
  Credit Cards and Fraud, App Cog Psych 11 (1997)
  211222
• Checkout staff cant tell if photo genuine
• Banks went for chip-and-pin instead
• Fraud reduction from photos dismissed as
  placebo which would stop once crooks wised up

7
Hypothesis

• I hypothesize that we can cut fraud online by
  re-personalizing payment
• I dont know how far we have to go to get how
  much reduction
• Is the hierarchy CCN name address
  photo phone interaction video interaction
  human interaction a slope or a step?
• If theres an early point on the scale that gives
  most of the benefit, that could be hugely
  important

8
Future payment page?

• Alessandro, youre about to pay Ross 70.
• Are you still Alessandro? Password

9
Future payment page?

• Alessandro, youre about to pay Ross 70.
• Are you still Alessandro? Password
• Enter your authorisation code

10
Related stuff / future leads

• Growing literature on anthropomorphisation and
  robots
• Personalisation and marketing / PR / propaganda /
  risk miscommunication
• What other kinds of gaming and adversarial
  behaviour?
• Countermeasures?
• Counter-countermeasures?