Just a terminology clarification... Even in the late 80s and early 90s, I think there was a feeling that there was an opportunity to engage in "social engineering" of the sort Prof. Turoff mentions. When I moved from computer science to political science as an undergraduate at UC Irvine--a university where those two departments were closer than in many places at the time--it was explicitly because I wanted to apply the ideas behind the design of complex computer systems to ideas behind designing social institutions, and there were like-minded faculty and students. However, political scientists and techies tend to use the same term to mean different things. I believe the initial question may have to do with a different sort of "social engineering"; via the "Jargon File": "Term used among crackers and samurai for cracking techniques that rely on weaknesses in wetware rather than software; the aim is to trick people into revealing passwords or other information that compromises a target system's security. Classic scams include phoning up a mark who has the required information and posing as a field service tech or a fellow employee with an urgent access problem. See also the tiger team story in the patch entry, and rubber-hose cryptanalysis." This includes everything from phishing attacks to pretexting over the phone and dumpster diving for useful password info... - Alex -- -- // // This email is // [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net //