Benefits of Location-Based Access Control:A Literature Study

Location-based access control (LBAC) has been suggested as a means to improve IT security. By 'grounding' users and systems to a particular location, \ud attackers supposedly have more difficulty in compromising a system. However, the motivation behind LBAC and its potential benefits have not been investigated thoroughly. To this end, we perform a structured literature review, and examine the goals that LBAC can potentially fulfill, \ud the specific LBAC systems that realize these goals and the context on which LBAC depends. Our paper has four main contributions:\ud first we propose a theoretical framework for LBAC evaluation, based on goals, systems and context. Second, we formulate and apply criteria for evaluating the usefulness of an LBAC system. Third, we identify four usage scenarios for LBAC: open areas and systems, hospitals, enterprises, and finally data centers and military facilities. Fourth, we propose directions for future research:\ud (i) assessing the tradeoffs between location-based, physical and logical access control, (ii) improving the transparency of LBAC decision making, and \ud (iii) formulating design criteria for facilities and working environments for optimal LBAC usage

Averting Robot Eyes

Home robots will cause privacy harms. At the same time, they can provide beneficial services—as long as consumers trust them. This Essay evaluates potential technological solutions that could help home robots keep their promises, avert their eyes, and otherwise mitigate privacy harms. Our goals are to inform regulators of robot-related privacy harms and the available technological tools for mitigating them, and to spur technologists to employ existing tools and develop new ones by articulating principles for avoiding privacy harms. We posit that home robots will raise privacy problems of three basic types: (1) data privacy problems; (2) boundary management problems; and (3) social/relational problems. Technological design can ward off, if not fully prevent, a number of these harms. We propose five principles for home robots and privacy design: data minimization, purpose specifications, use limitations, honest anthropomorphism, and dynamic feedback and participation. We review current research into privacy-sensitive robotics, evaluating what technological solutions are feasible and where the harder problems lie. We close by contemplating legal frameworks that might encourage the implementation of such design, while also recognizing the potential costs of regulation at these early stages of the technology

Take the Money and Run: Detainment Incident to a Search Warrant in Bailey v. United States

This commentary previews an upcoming Supreme Court case, Bailey v. United States, in which the Court will examine the scope of permissible non-arrest seizures in the context of a detainment incident to a search warrant. The case offers the Court an opportunity to clarify its holding in Michigan v. Summers--that occupants of premises being searched pursuant to a valid warrant may be detained during the search--by determining whether such a detainment is permissible when the occupants have left the premises

Out of Bounds

Lawrence v. Texas creates a crisis for inclusive constitutionalism. Too often, advocates of inclusion and tolerance wish to include only those ideas and groups with which they agree. The test for true inclusion and tolerance, however, is whether we are willing to protect groups when they engage in conduct of which we disapprove. It follows that the boundaries of inclusion cannot be established simply by moral argument; yet, any plausible version of constitutional law must use some method to bound the people and activity that it protects. Defenders of inclusive constitutionalism have not been successful in identifying a method, independent of moral argument, for bounding constitutional rights. This difficulty can best be addressed by modifying our ambitions for constitutional law. Instead of a method for requiring agreement, constitutional law might be reconceptualized as a method for destabilizing all boundaries, thereby reconciling groups with widely different moral views to the political order