Algorithms for the workflow satisfiability problem engineered for counting constraints

The workflow satisfiability problem (WSP) asks whether there exists an assignment of authorized users to the steps in a workflow specification that satisfies the constraints in the specification. The problem is NP-hard in general, but several subclasses of the problem are known to be fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) when parameterized by the number of steps in the specification. In this paper, we consider the WSP with user-independent counting constraints, a large class of constraints for which the WSP is known to be FPT. We describe an efficient implementation of an FPT algorithm for solving this subclass of the WSP and an experimental evaluation of this algorithm. The algorithm iteratively generates all equivalence classes of possible partial solutions until, whenever possible, it finds a complete solution to the problem. We also provide a reduction from a WSP instance to a pseudo-Boolean SAT instance. We apply this reduction to the instances used in our experiments and solve the resulting PB SAT problems using SAT4J, a PB SAT solver. We compare the performance of our algorithm with that of SAT4J and discuss which of the two approaches would be more effective in practice

Enablers of Electronic Judicial Process in Brazil

The deployment of e-Justice reforms aiming for more efficient and effective justice administration faces great barriers, even though considerable resources have been invested worldwide. This paper describes the factors that have enabled the Electronic Judicial Process deployment in Brazil. Currently, in the country, 98.9% of all judicial proceedings are held electronically. We focus on enablers of normative, technical, political, organisational, institutional, and related governance aspects. The research is important due to its potential to help other countries on their path to the informatisation of justice

Privacy Preserving Enforcement of Sensitive Policies in Outsourced and Distributed Environments

The enforcement of sensitive policies in untrusted environments is still an open challenge for policy-based systems. On the one hand, taking any appropriate security decision requires access to these policies. On the other hand, if such access is allowed in an untrusted environment then confidential information might be leaked by the policies. The key challenge is how to enforce sensitive policies and protect content in untrusted environments. In the context of untrusted environments, we mainly distinguish between outsourced and distributed environments. The most attractive paradigms concerning outsourced and distributed environments are cloud computing and opportunistic networks, respectively. In this dissertation, we present the design, technical and implementation details of our proposed policy-based access control mechanisms for untrusted environments. First of all, we provide full confidentiality of access policies in outsourced environments, where service providers do not learn private information about policies. We support expressive policies and take into account contextual information. The system entities do not share any encryption keys. For complex user management, we offer the full-fledged Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) policies. In opportunistic networks, we protect content by specifying expressive policies. In our proposed approach, brokers match subscriptions against policies associated with content without compromising privacy of subscribers. As a result, unauthorised brokers neither gain access to content nor learn policies and authorised nodes gain access only if they satisfy policies specified by publishers. Our proposed system provides scalable key management in which loosely-coupled publishers and subscribers communicate without any prior contact. Finally, we have developed a prototype of the system that runs on real smartphones and analysed its performance.Comment: Ph.D. Dissertation. http://eprints-phd.biblio.unitn.it/1124

Legal, Linguistic, and Cultural Aspects in International Commercial Arbitration Discourse: A Corpus-Based Study of Arbitral Awards

In today's globalized landscape, disputes between parties from different countries are on the rise (Bhatia et al. 2018, 1), leading to a growing reliance on international arbitration as the primary method for resolving such issues (Born 2001, 1; Gotti 2008, 221; Bhatia et al. 2008, 2018). Arbitral awards, the outcomes of such procedures, are crucial in understanding the evolution of international arbitration practices (Bhatia et al. 2012, 1).A decade ago, arbitral awards were considered a "relatively unexplored genre" (Bhatia et al. 2012, 1) due to the historical perception of arbitration as a highly protected practice. However, over the past decade, there has been a shift towards transparency in arbitration, with a growing commitment to publishing arbitral awards. This trend, supported by scholars and professionals (e.g., Bhatia 2010, 468; Resnik et al. 2020, 612; Mourre and Vagenheim 2023, 265), aims to contribute to legal development. In 2019, Jus Mundi, an Al-powered legal search engine, was launched, facilitating access to a vast array of legal information through partnerships with arbitral institutions worldwide. This cultural shift marks significant progress in democratizing access to legal knowledge through technology, enhancing accessibility to discoursal data (e.g., Swales 1990; Bhatia 1993).Drawing on previous analyses conducted by prominent scholars on arbitration discourse (e.g., Bhatia et al. 2003; Bhatia et al. 2008; Bhatia et al. 2010; Bhatia et al. 2012; Bhatia et Bhatia et al. 2018), in this research project, a selection of arbitral awards in English is collected via Jus Mundi for linguistic analysis. The assertion posited is that, even in the era of globalization, cultural differences continue to manifest as cultural variations in the form of reasoning. The study recognizes the influence of legal traditions on linguistic choices in arbitration texts (Gotti 2008, 232). Thus, this approach aligns with the understanding that texts and genres are inseparable from their institutional and professional contexts (Bhatia et al. 2012, 1). In particular, legal discourse, shaped by its environment (Fairclough and Wodak 1997, 276), varies across different legal systems. Specifically, this study operates within the field of corpus linguistics and conducts a syntactic-lexical analysis on the genre of arbitral awards from various arbitration seats, using both quantitative and qualitative methods

Frontiers of Humanity and Beyond: Towards new critical understandings of borders. Working Papers

UIDB/04666/2020 UIDP/04666/2020publishersversionpublishe

Optimum governance of investment conduct in the capital markets union : a legal and economic analysis

The Action Plan on Building a Capital Markets Union (‘CMU’) in the European Union (‘EU’) was launched by the European Commission in 2015. It aims to pursue a further development and integration of European capital markets by 2019. However, in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2007–09 and the Eurozone crisis, it is proven that appropriate governance is indispensible to underpin such integrated markets. Therefore, in order to establish a solid CMU, this thesis attempts to answer one crucial question: ‘whether investment conduct should be supervised centralisedly at the European level in the CMU’. This thesis, at first, explores the regulatory system of investment conduct in the EU to date, with particular emphasis given to the competence allocation between the EU and Member States (and between Member States). Two findings are important: first, even though the rules of investment conduct are harmonised to a large extent in the EU, supervisory issues still matter to investment intermediaries and their clients in cross-border transactions; and, second, the current supervisory system of investment conduct in the EU might bring significant costs in cross-border transactions, but this does not necessarily mean that the installation of a single supervisor in charge of investment conduct supervision is inevitable in the CMU. This thesis then examines the proposed single supervisor in detail, with an aim to find out the optimum institutional governance of investment conduct in the CMU. Based on the transaction cost approach, this thesis compares the proposed single supervisor and the current system from the perspectives of private law systems and administrative regulation respectively. From the perspective of private law governance, it is undeniable that many issues of private law in governing investment conduct are still unclear and complex in the EU, but the proposed single supervisor provides little help to these issues. By comparison, a non-mandatory pan-EU alternative dispute resolution (‘ADR’) for cross-border disputes of investment conduct might be a better option in reducing transaction costs in the CMU. From the perspective of administrative governance, the proposed single supervisor may also be difficult to pass the EU Treaty principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. This is because the total transaction costs of European capital markets will not decrease (but even increase) after the introduction of the proposed single supervisor. It is further argued that, other than the establishment of the proposed single supervisor, policymakers have to pay more attention on how to ensure the current network-based system functions effectively in the CMU. In the light of this, not only a negative answer of the research question is concluded, but also policy recommendations for designing the optimum governance of investment conduct in the CMU are given in this thesis

To achieve justice or to respect traditional mediation values? : testing the theory of 'educated self-determination' in addressing this mediation dilemma (a call for uniformity and clarity in the diverse field of mediation)

This study acknowledges that the field of mediation needs clarity, a sense of unity and an assurance that mediation is capable of delivering justice.Throughout this thesis, there is an extensive reading of a wide range on international academic articles, texts, procedural rules, practice guidelines and court precedents along with a review of a range of practice across many different jurisdictions and different fields beyond mediation and law such as conflict resolution, sociology, philosophy, history, religion and economics. This research examines the theory of educated self-determination (in both theory and practice) and its ability in bringing uniformity to the field of mediation and aid mediation to deliver justice, all in a deductive research methodology.The research sets forward an understanding of the meaning of mediation and the meaning of creative justice. Then the research Identifies the possible concerns that both the mediation inner and outer circle teams may raise and attempt to address such concerns.The research proposes that the theory of educated self-determination has the potential to present a sense of unity to the mediation field and better allow mediation to deliver creative justice to the parties.This study acknowledges that the field of mediation needs clarity, a sense of unity and an assurance that mediation is capable of delivering justice.Throughout this thesis, there is an extensive reading of a wide range on international academic articles, texts, procedural rules, practice guidelines and court precedents along with a review of a range of practice across many different jurisdictions and different fields beyond mediation and law such as conflict resolution, sociology, philosophy, history, religion and economics. This research examines the theory of educated self-determination (in both theory and practice) and its ability in bringing uniformity to the field of mediation and aid mediation to deliver justice, all in a deductive research methodology.The research sets forward an understanding of the meaning of mediation and the meaning of creative justice. Then the research Identifies the possible concerns that both the mediation inner and outer circle teams may raise and attempt to address such concerns.The research proposes that the theory of educated self-determination has the potential to present a sense of unity to the mediation field and better allow mediation to deliver creative justice to the parties

Copyright law

Contents Editorial Research Articles Formats as Media of Cooperation / Axel Volmar Thematic Focus: Copyright Law Editorial: The Reference as Part of the Art Form. A Turning Point in Copyright Law? / Dagmar Hoffmann, Nadine Klass The Concept of “Pastiche” in Directive 2001/29/EC in the Light of the German Case Metall auf Metall / Frédéric Döhl Transformative Works and German Copyright Law as Matters of Boundary Work / Kamila Kempfert, Wolfgang Reißmann Negotiating Legal Knowledge, Community Values, and Entrepreneurship in Fan Cultural Production / Sophie G. Einwächter Referencing in Academia: Video Essay, Mashup, Copyright / Eckart Voigts, Katerina Marshfield Re-Use under US Copyright Law: Fair Use as a Best Practice or Just a Myth of Balance in Copyright? / Sibel Kocatepe Reports Grounded Design in a Value Sensitive Context / Volker Wulf in conversation with Batya Friedma

Securing Access to Cloud Computing for Critical Infrastructure

Cloud computing offers cost effective services on-demand which encourage critical infrastructure providers to consider migrating to the cloud. Critical infrastructures are considered as a backbone of modern societies such as power plants and water. Information in cloud computing is likely to be shared among different entities, which could have various degrees of sensitivity. This requires robust isolation and access control mechanisms. Although various access control models and policies have been developed, they cannot fulfil requirements for a cloud based access control system. The reason is that cloud computing has a diverse sets of security requirements and unique security challenges such as multi-tenant and heterogeneity of security policies, rules and domains. This thesis provides a detailed study of cloud computing security challenges and threats, which were used to identify security requirements for various critical infrastructure providers. We found that an access control system is a crucial security requirement for the surveyed critical infrastructure providers. Furthermore, the requirement analysis was used to propose a new criteria to evaluate access control systems for cloud computing. Moreover, this work presents a new cloud based access control model to meet the identified cloud access control requirements. The model does not only ensure the secure sharing of resources among potential untrusted tenants, but also has the capacity to support different access permissions for the same cloud user. Our focused in the proposed model is the lack of data isolation in lower levels (CPU caches), which could lead to bypass access control models to gain some sensitive information by using cache side-channel attacks. Therefore, the thesis investigates various real attack scenarios and the gaps in existing mitigation approaches. It presents a new Prime and Probe cache side-channel attack, which can give detailed information about addresses accessed by a virtual machine with no need for any information about cache sets accessed by the virtual machine. The design, implementation and evaluation of a proposed solution preventing cache side-channel attacks are also presented in the thesis. It is a new lightweight solution, which introduces very low overhead (less than 15,000 CPU cycles). It can be applied in any operating system and prevents cache side-channel attacks in cloud computing. The thesis also presents a new detecting cache side-channel attacks solution. It focuses on the infrastructure used to host cloud computing tenants by counting cache misses caused by a virtual machine. The detection solutions has 0% false negative and 15% false positive