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Friend or Foe? Navigating and Re-configuring "Snipers' Alley"

Andrew C Dwyer, Lizzie Coles-Kemp, Clara Crivellaro, Claude P R Heath

TL;DR

The paper examines how essential online services in a digital by default economy expose users to deception and coercive security practices. Based on embedded, community-driven research in northern England, it frames a 'snipers' alley' where four actor types—Governments, Business, Criminal Fraudsters, and Friends and Family—can morph into threats, depending on users' capabilities. It develops three reconfiguration avenues—interaction, support, and values—and proposes opportunity models that invert conventional threat modelling toward positive security. The findings highlight blurred lines between legitimate and illegitimate actors, systemic stress, and capability gaps, offering a grassroots, co-designed framework with practical implications for HCI, security policy, and equitable service delivery.

Abstract

In a 'digital by default' society, essential services must be accessed online. This opens users to digital deception not only from criminal fraudsters but from a range of actors in a marketised digital economy. Using grounded empirical research from northern England, we show how supposedly 'trusted' actors, such as governments,(re)produce the insecurities and harms that they seek to prevent. Enhanced by a weakening of social institutions amid a drive for efficiency and scale, this has built a constricted, unpredictable digital channel. We conceptualise this as a "snipers' alley". Four key snipers articulated by participants' lived experiences are examined: 1) Governments; 2) Business; 3) Criminal Fraudsters; and 4) Friends and Family to explore how snipers are differentially experienced and transfigure through this constricted digital channel. We discuss strategies to re-configure the alley, and how crafting and adopting opportunity models can enable more equitable forms of security for all.

Friend or Foe? Navigating and Re-configuring "Snipers' Alley"

TL;DR

The paper examines how essential online services in a digital by default economy expose users to deception and coercive security practices. Based on embedded, community-driven research in northern England, it frames a 'snipers' alley' where four actor types—Governments, Business, Criminal Fraudsters, and Friends and Family—can morph into threats, depending on users' capabilities. It develops three reconfiguration avenues—interaction, support, and values—and proposes opportunity models that invert conventional threat modelling toward positive security. The findings highlight blurred lines between legitimate and illegitimate actors, systemic stress, and capability gaps, offering a grassroots, co-designed framework with practical implications for HCI, security policy, and equitable service delivery.

Abstract

In a 'digital by default' society, essential services must be accessed online. This opens users to digital deception not only from criminal fraudsters but from a range of actors in a marketised digital economy. Using grounded empirical research from northern England, we show how supposedly 'trusted' actors, such as governments,(re)produce the insecurities and harms that they seek to prevent. Enhanced by a weakening of social institutions amid a drive for efficiency and scale, this has built a constricted, unpredictable digital channel. We conceptualise this as a "snipers' alley". Four key snipers articulated by participants' lived experiences are examined: 1) Governments; 2) Business; 3) Criminal Fraudsters; and 4) Friends and Family to explore how snipers are differentially experienced and transfigure through this constricted digital channel. We discuss strategies to re-configure the alley, and how crafting and adopting opportunity models can enable more equitable forms of security for all.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 29 sections, 2 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background
  3. Marketisation in the Digital Economy
  4. Security and Threat Models
  5. Trust and Fraud
  6. Study Rationale and Motivation
  7. Research Design
  8. Session Design
  9. Session 1:
  10. Session 2:
  11. Session 3:
  12. Data Analysis
  13. Limitations
  14. Findings
  15. Blurred Lines
  16. ...and 14 more sections

Figures (2)

  • Figure 1: Post-It notes arranged on A2 paper from Session 2 (top) with their digital equivalent on a Miro board (bottom).
  • Figure 2: A photograph of a worksheet from Session 1 with Post-It notes.