Unlocking the deployment of spectrum sharing with a policy enforcement framework

Spectrum sharing has been proposed as a promising way to increase the efficiency of spectrum usage by allowing incumbent operators (IOs) to share their allocated radio resources with licensee operators (LOs), under a set of agreed rules. The goal is to maximize a common utility, such as the sum rate throughput, while maintaining the level of service required by the IOs. However, this is only guaranteed under the assumption that all “players”respect the agreed sharing rules. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive framework for licensed shared access (LSA) networks that discourages LO misbehavior. Our framework is built around three core functions: misbehavior detection via the employment of a dedicated sensing network; a penalization function; and, a behavior-driven resource allocation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that these components are combined for the monitoring/policing of the spectrum under the LSA framework. Moreover, a novel simulator for LSA is provided as an open access tool, serving the purpose of testing and validating our proposed techniques via a set of extensive system-level simulations in the context of mobile network operators, where IOs and several competing LOs are considered. The results demonstrate that violation of the agreed sharing rules can lead to a great loss of resources for the misbehaving LOs, the amount of which is controlled by the system. Finally, we promote that including a policy enforcement function as part of the spectrum sharing system can be beneficial for the LSA system, since it can guarantee compliance with the spectrum sharing rules and limit the short-term benefits arising from misbehavior

Visualizing Sensor Network Coverage with Location Uncertainty

We present an interactive visualization system for exploring the coverage in sensor networks with uncertain sensor locations. We consider a simple case of uncertainty where the location of each sensor is confined to a discrete number of points sampled uniformly at random from a region with a fixed radius. Employing techniques from topological data analysis, we model and visualize network coverage by quantifying the uncertainty defined on its simplicial complex representations. We demonstrate the capabilities and effectiveness of our tool via the exploration of randomly distributed sensor networks

Comparing Social Media Content Regulation in the US and the EU: How the US Can Move Forward With Section 230 to Bolster Social Media Users’ Freedom of Expression

This Article will compare 47 U.S.C. § 230 (“Section 230”), the United States law governing civil claims that prevent social media companies from being treated like the publishers of their own users’ posts and the companies’ abilities to remove user posts, with the European Union’s (“EU”) equivalent governing law, the E-commerce Directive. The E-Commerce Directive will be used as an example of a governmental regulation that better prevents viewpoint discrimination, but at the cost of a lower standard of user expression. A lower standard of user expression means diminished rights in exercising free speech, as exemplified by the EU outlawing broader categories of speech than the US (Section III covers this point in detail). Then, this Article will demonstrate how the US may achieve the goal of decreasing discretionary power of platforms’ content removal abilities, thereby minimizing viewpoint discrimination of lawful user-posted content, while preserving private governance of social media business practices. Section II provides background on social media users, platform content regulation, and content removal practices. It continues with a discussion of the enormous amount of content social media platforms are responsible for monitoring and governing. Additionally, the relationships of social media companies, governments, and users are explained in connection with social media content moderation. Lastly, Section II summarizes the First Amendment’s boundaries on protection of speech and clarifies freedom of expression for US citizens only from government actors, leaving private platforms content removal practices currently out of the First Amendment’s reach. Section III lays out the social media content regulation laws governing both the US and the EU. Historically, the US’s Section 230 has been referred to as the “26 words that created the internet” due to its thorough protection of private online platforms from third-party (“intermediary”) liability arising from civil suits like defamation, and general allowance for platforms to leave up or take down content voluntarily. Contrarily, the EU’s E-commerce Directive offers platforms safe harbor from legal liability with two main requirements: the platform must (1) not have “actual knowledge of illegal activity,” and (2) “act expeditiously to remove” illegal activity once actual knowledge is obtained. This section concludes by illustrating the EU’s approach to social media content regulation and reviewing its implications on viewpoint discrimination in social platform content moderation. Section IV discusses the deficiencies of Section 230 in its approach to platform content moderation. The analysis will continue with the three main problems arising from Section 230’s current application, which allows social media companies: (1) overbroad discretionary authority, (2) the ability to operate with limited transparency, and (3) the ability to discriminate based on viewpoint. Additionally, the Article will explore the implementation and significance of the ground-breaking independent Facebook Oversight Board on providing an appellate process for wrongful censorship of posts. Section V proposes two solutions to the three previously listed issues of Section 230(c) addressed in this Article. The first solution is statutory revision of Section 230(c)(2). There are two statutory revisions proposed in the first solution: (1) revision of the statute to grant immunity to social media platforms only if the platforms remove content that is illegal or otherwise unprotected by the First Amendment, and (2) introduction of a “bad faith” clause that removes platform immunity if the plaintiff can prove their lawful post was removed as a result of viewpoint discrimination. The second solution suggests federal statutes mandating large social media platforms create their own independent oversight boards. These Social Media Oversight Boards will be primarily based on Facebook’s Oversight Board, with the new Oversight Boards’ purpose being independent review of platform censorship practices through a board review process

Citizen-led Justice in Post-Communist Russia

This paper aims to provide a theoretical conceptualization of digital vigilantism in its manifestation in the Russian Federation where cases do not emerge spontaneously, but are institutionalized, highly organized, and systematic. Given the significant historical context of collective justice under Communism, the current manifestation of digital vigilantism in Russia raises questions about whether it is an example of re-packaged history backed with collective memory or a natural outspread of conventional practices to social networks. This paper reviews historical practices of citizen-led justice in the Soviet state and compares these practices with digital vigilantism that takes place in contemporary post-Communist Russia. The paper argues that despite new affordances that digital media and social networks brought about in the sphere of citizen-led justice, the role of the state in manifesting this justice in the Russian Federation remains significant. At the same time, with technological advances, certain key features of these practices, such as participants, their motives, capacity, targets, and audience engagement have undergone a significant evolution

Chemtrails and Solar Geoengineers: Governing Online Conspiracy Theory Misinformation

This Article assesses legal obstacles to regulating chemtrail misinformation and proposes responses that work within prevailing norms and laws governing online speech. It explains how chemtrail content complicates public deliberation on solar geoengineering and, by extension, hurts the legitimacy of research activities. It also sharpens the general contributions of misinformation scholarship by applying them specifically to chemtrail content. It concludes with recommendations on how to limit chemtrail misinformation’s spread and impact. Reckoning with climate change, geoengineering, and online misinformation is a multigenerational project. Legal and policy analysis must accordingly adopt a long-time horizon when devising regulatory responses

Digital Vigilantism in Russia: Citizen-led justice in the context of social change and social harm

This dissertation describes four years of scientific inquiry into the phenomenon of digital vigilantism. Focusing on Russia, it investigates a unique case where the ruling elites are negotiating a relationship with some digitally savvy citizens while censoring the digital domain and otherwise controlling online self-expression

Constitutive surveillance and social media

Starting from the premise that surveillance is the ‘dominant organising practice’ of our time (Lyon et al 2012: 1), this thesis establishes a framework of ‘constitutive surveillance’ in relation to social media, taking Facebook as its key example. Constitutive surveillance is made up of four forms: economic, political, lateral, and oppositional surveillance. These four surveillance forms – and the actors who undertake them – intersect, compound, and confront one another in the co-production of social media spaces. The framework of constitutive surveillance is structured around a Foucauldian understanding of power, and the thesis shows how each surveillance form articulates strategies of power for organising, administering, and subjectifying populations. After outlining the four surveillance forms, each chapter unpacks the relationship of one form to social media, building throughout the thesis an extensive critical framework of constitutive surveillance

Race & Mobility in the Digital Periphery: New Urban Frontiers of Migration Control

Global movement and information technologies are changing practices of bordering, globally. Such matters are now also substantially urban. As cities of refuge rely increasingly on tech companies to develop digital urban infrastructures for accessing information, services, and socioeconomic life at large, they are also inviting the border closer to cities and migrant bodies. This marks a convergence of Silicon Valley logics, austere and xenophobic migration management practices, and racial capitalism. In New York City, infrastructural technologies such as sophisticated public Wi-Fi, smart ID cards, and digitalised city services, in an environment prone to deportation raids, has led to deep information “panics”. In Berlin, a combination of civil society and private sector technology initiatives have produced a deluge of largely unused or distrusted information services, job-matching, house-sharing, social credit, and identity management tools in the name of refugees. In lieu of mitigating conditions of displacement, these practices compound analogue borders by engaging in a practice of digitally fusing borders to racialised characteristics, resulting in symbolic, material, and epistemic forms of technological marginalization. Through following and documenting how migrant communities navigate and experience these digital urban interventions, and the logics of those who develop them, this dissertation 1) highlights how migrant bodies and urban spaces become contested spaces in the battle for racial capital – a frontier in which technology actors are chiefly concerned with reconstituting conceptions of race for power and profit, and; 2). unveils how digital urban infrastructures interact with subtle practices of racialised bordering. Drawing on an analytical lens rooted predominantly in the Black radical tradition, critical development and migration studies, and science and technology studies, it challenges the paradigms of techno-solutionism and techno-chauvinism, as well as critical digital studies that has tended to treat race and racialism as a symptom of, rather than as integral to, the technology industry. By extension, the field of migration has also tended to impart greater weight to the positive affordances of technology in contexts of displacement, in absence of the critical voice of would-be recipients and “users”. By attending to the frontiers of racial capitalism and increasing technology deployments, I advance the idea of the ‘digital periphery’ to make sense of how urban migrant environments and subjectivities are commodified and ‘datafied’. As a concept, the digital periphery allows for the rapid advance of technology upon displaced populations to be disaggregated. It reveals an inseparable and mutually constitutive entanglement of race, borders, and migration, advancing racial capitalism beyond its conventional physical and spatial limitations.This dissertation was completed with the financial support of the Jo Cox PhD Studentship at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, and the Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust