Introducing Accountability to Anonymity Networks

Many anonymous communication (AC) networks rely on routing traffic through proxy nodes to obfuscate the originator of the traffic. Without an accountability mechanism, exit proxy nodes risk sanctions by law enforcement if users commit illegal actions through the AC network. We present BackRef, a generic mechanism for AC networks that provides practical repudiation for the proxy nodes by tracing back the selected outbound traffic to the predecessor node (but not in the forward direction) through a cryptographically verifiable chain. It also provides an option for full (or partial) traceability back to the entry node or even to the corresponding user when all intermediate nodes are cooperating. Moreover, to maintain a good balance between anonymity and accountability, the protocol incorporates whitelist directories at exit proxy nodes. BackRef offers improved deployability over the related work, and introduces a novel concept of pseudonymous signatures that may be of independent interest. We exemplify the utility of BackRef by integrating it into the onion routing (OR) protocol, and examine its deployability by considering several system-level aspects. We also present the security definitions for the BackRef system (namely, anonymity, backward traceability, no forward traceability, and no false accusation) and conduct a formal security analysis of the OR protocol with BackRef using ProVerif, an automated cryptographic protocol verifier, establishing the aforementioned security properties against a strong adversarial model

Faith and Funding: Toward an Expressivist Model of the Establishment Clause

This article seeks to provide an alternative to the polarization that so often characterizes debates about church and state. In Part I, the author suggests that there are good policy reasons for supporting faith-based initiatives, and that these reasons ought to be attractive to liberals and progressives, many of whom have opposed faith-based initiatives. Faith-based social services are, after all, social services, and are often the very types of welfare services that liberals and progressives tend to support. Core religious values--in particular, concern about the less fortunate, a belief in human dignity, and a commitment to the possibility of redemption--reinforce liberal values that appear to have lost ground in modern America. Religious institutions are an integral element of a vital civic society and have an independent normative authority that may permit them to succeed where secular institutions have not. The case for supporting faith-based services does not require proof that faith-based services are better for all; it only requires that they may be better for some. That seems likely, even though solid empirical evidence is not yet available. Several important caveats should be noted. The faith-based initiative may simply be a cover for privatizing public services, and for reducing public support for the most needy. Faith-based institutions and their proponents often attribute problems of poverty to personal moral failings, minimizing the systemic and structural features of those problems. Religious institutions can be a fount of intolerance and prejudice toward nonbelievers generally and women and gays and lesbians in particular. And government support of religious institutions may itself undermine and dilute the effectiveness of religious institutions. Thus, the faith-based initiative is not without significant dangers. But its potential benefits nonetheless provide strong reasons for supporting the concept in principle. In Part II, the author argues that the current constitutional polarization on public aid to religion is also unwarranted. Both the assimilationist and the separationist camps paint with too broad\u27a brush. He suggests an expressivist approach to the Establishment Clause, built upon Justice Sandra Day O\u27Connor\u27s endorsement test, as a mediating principle. The endorsement test asks whether a reasonable observer would interpret challenged government conduct as approving or disapproving religion. It provides that the government must avoid messages that make adherence to religion relevant to political standing in the community. While initially developed to assess government messages and displays, the endorsement test need not be limited to those confines, and in particular provides a critical tool for assessing the constitutionality of government funding. This is because once one acknowledges that some government support of religion is permissible under, and indeed required by, the Constitution, it is not enough to ask whether the government has aided religion. Nor is it sufficient to ask whether the government has been formally neutral, as the assimilationists do. The endorsement test focuses not on the mere fact of funding, but on what the funding expresses. Funding schemes should be invalidated only where they express official approval or disapproval of religion, and thereby send the message that religious adherence is relevant to citizens\u27 standing vis-a-vis their government. The expressivist approach proposed here avoids formalism, pays attention to effects, and takes cognizance of the special status of religion

Varieties of Cognitive Integration

Extended cognition theorists argue that cognitive processes constitutively depend on resources that are neither organically composed, nor located inside the bodily boundaries of the agent, provided certain conditions on the integration of those processes into the agent’s cognitive architecture are met. Epistemologists, however, worry that in so far as such cognitively integrated processes are epistemically relevant, agents could thus come to enjoy an untoward explosion of knowledge. This paper develops and defends an approach to cognitive integration—cluster-model functionalism—which finds application in both domains of inquiry, and which meets the challenge posed by putative cases of cognitive or epistemic bloat

Support for Anonymous as Vicarious Dissent: Testing the Social Banditry Framework

This research uses the social banditry framework to propose that voiceless individuals in an unjust context may express their grievances vicariously. Specifically, it holds that individuals who perceive the system as unjust but lack political efficacy, express their anger against the system as support for actors whose behavior disrupts the system’s functioning. These actors are situated outside conventional societal and political structures of power, and institutions. To test the social banditry framework, two studies investigate attitudes toward Anonymous, a group of hackers who challenge the status quo using online tactics such as trolling. Study 1 (N = 304) demonstrates that appraising the system as more unjust, and perceiving lower political efficacy are positively linked to anger against the system, which in turn predicts more positive attitudes toward Anonymous. In contrast, stronger injustice-fueled anger and stronger political efficacy predict intentions to engage in direct forms of political action, such as protesting or voting. Study 2 (N = 410) replicates these findings, and theorizes and tests the role of individualistic and collectivistic values in predicting vicarious and direct expressions of dissent. Study 2 demonstrates that endorsement of horizontal individualism predicts positive attitudes towards Anonymous, whereas horizontal collectivism predicts engagement in direct political action. Implications and directions for future research are discussed

What Makes Delusions Pathological?

Bortolotti argues that we cannot distinguish delusions from other irrational beliefs in virtue of their epistemic features alone. Although her arguments are convincing, her analysis leaves an important question unanswered: What makes delusions pathological? In this paper I set out to answer this question by arguing that the pathological character of delusions arises from an executive dysfunction in a subject’s ability to detect relevance in the environment. I further suggest that this dysfunction derives from an underlying emotional imbalance—one that leads delusional subjects to regard some contextual elements as deeply puzzling or highly significant

Design of Anonymous Endorsement System in Hyperledger Fabric

Permissioned Blockchain has become quite popular with enterprises forming consortium since it prioritizes trust over privacy. One of the popular platforms for distributed ledger solution, Hyperledger Fabric, requires a transaction to be endorsed or approved by a group of special members known as endorsers before undergoing validation. To endorse a transaction, an endorser mentions its identity along with the signature so that it can be verified later. However, for certain transactions, difference in opinion may exist among endorsers. Disclosing the identity of an endorser may lead to conflict within the consortium. In such cases, an endorsement policy which not only allows an endorser to support a transaction discreetly, but at the same time takes into account the decision of the majority is preferred. Thus we propose an Anonymous Endorsement System which uses a threshold endorsement policy in order to address the issue. To realize a t-out-of-n endorsement policy, using any of the existing threshold ring signature for our endorsement system would have violated the privacy of endorsers as either the identity or the secret key of the endorsers get revealed to the party who recombines the signature after collecting each signature share. All these factors motivated us to design a new ring signature scheme, called Fabric\u27s Constant-Sized Linkable Ring Signature (FCsLRS) with Transaction-Oriented linkability for hiding identity of the endorsers. We have implemented the signature scheme in Golang and analyzed its security and performance by varying the RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) modulus size. Feasibility of implementation is supported by experimental analysis. Signature and tag generation time is quite fast and remains constant irrespective of change in message length or endorsement set size for a given RSA modulus value, assuming all the endorsers generates their signature in parallel. Each verifier is required to count and check individual valid ring signature. If the aggregate is above the threshold value, stated by the endorsement policy, then it confirms that the transaction is valid. This increases the verification time depending on the threshold value, but has very little effect on the scalability since generally $t<<n$. Lastly, we also discuss the integration of the scheme on v1.2 Hyperledger Fabric

Suicide Screening in Primary Care: Use of an Electronic Screener to Assess Suicidality and Improve Provider Follow-Up for Adolescents

Purpose The purpose of this study was to assess the feasibility of using an existing computer decision support system to screen adolescent patients for suicidality and provide follow-up guidance to clinicians in a primary care setting. Predictors of patient endorsement of suicidality and provider documentation of follow-up were examined. Methods A prospective cohort study was conducted to examine the implementation of a CDSS that screened adolescent patients for suicidality and provided follow-up recommendations to providers. The intervention was implemented for patients aged 12–20 years in two primary care clinics in Indianapolis, Indiana. Results The sample included 2,134 adolescent patients (51% female; 60% black; mean age = 14.6 years [standard deviation = 2.1]). Just over 6% of patients screened positive for suicidality. A positive endorsement of suicidality was more common among patients who were female, depressed, and seen by an adolescent−medicine board-certified provider as opposed to general pediatric provider. Providers documented follow-up action for 83% of patients who screened positive for suicidality. Documentation of follow-up action was correlated with clinic site and Hispanic race. The majority of patients who endorsed suicidality (71%) were deemed not actively suicidal after assessment by their provider. Conclusions Incorporating adolescent suicide screening and provider follow-up guidance into an existing computer decision support system in primary care is feasible and well utilized by providers. Female gender and depressive symptoms are consistently associated with suicidality among adolescents, although not all suicidal adolescents are depressed. Universal use of a multi-item suicide screener that assesses recency might more effectively identify suicidal adolescents