Anonymous network access using the digital marketplace

With increasing usage of mobile telephony, and the trend towards additional mobile Internet usage, privacy and anonymity become more and more important. Previously-published anonymous communication schemes aim to obscure their users' network addresses, because real-world identity can be easily be derived from this information. We propose modifications to a novel call-management architecture, the digital marketplace, which will break this link, therefore enabling truly anonymous network access

Internet Utopianism and the Practical Inevitability of Law

Writing at the dawn of the digital era, John Perry Barlow proclaimed cyberspace to be a new domain of pure freedom. Addressing the nations of the world, he cautioned that their laws, which were “based on matter,” simply did not speak to conduct in the new virtual realm. As both Barlow and the cyberlaw scholars who took up his call recognized, that was not so much a statement of fact as it was an exercise in deliberate utopianism. But it has proved prescient in a way that they certainly did not intend. The “laws” that increasingly have no meaning in online environments include not only the mandates of market regulators but also the guarantees that supposedly protect the fundamental rights of internet users, including the expressive and associational freedoms whose supremacy Barlow asserted. More generally, in the networked information era, protections for fundamental human rights — both on- and offline — have begun to fail comprehensively. Cyberlaw scholarship in the Barlowian mold isn’t to blame for the worldwide erosion of protections for fundamental rights, but it also hasn’t helped as much as it might have. In this essay, adapted from a forthcoming book on the evolution of legal institutions in the information era, I identify and briefly examine three intersecting flavors of internet utopianism in cyberlegal thought that are worth reexamining. It has become increasingly apparent that functioning legal institutions have indispensable roles to play in protecting and advancing human freedom. It has also become increasingly apparent, however, that the legal institutions we need are different than the ones we have

The Internet of Things Connectivity Binge: What are the Implications?

Despite wide concern about cyberattacks, outages and privacy violations, most experts believe the Internet of Things will continue to expand successfully the next few years, tying machines to machines and linking people to valuable resources, services and opportunities

Designing and evaluating mobile multimedia user experiences in public urban places: Making sense of the field

The majority of the world’s population now lives in cities (United Nations, 2008) resulting in an urban densification requiring people to live in closer proximity and share urban infrastructure such as streets, public transport, and parks within cities. However, “physical closeness does not mean social closeness” (Wellman, 2001, p. 234). Whereas it is a common practice to greet and chat with people you cross paths with in smaller villages, urban life is mainly anonymous and does not automatically come with a sense of community per se. Wellman (2001, p. 228) defines community “as networks of interpersonal ties that provide sociability, support, information, a sense of belonging and social identity.” While on the move or during leisure time, urban dwellers use their interactive information communication technology (ICT) devices to connect to their spatially distributed community while in an anonymous space. Putnam (1995) argues that available technology privatises and individualises the leisure time of urban dwellers. Furthermore, ICT is sometimes used to build a “cocoon” while in public to avoid direct contact with collocated people (Mainwaring et al., 2005; Bassoli et al., 2007; Crawford, 2008). Instead of using ICT devices to seclude oneself from the surrounding urban environment and the collocated people within, such devices could also be utilised to engage urban dwellers more with the urban environment and the urban dwellers within. Urban sociologists found that “what attracts people most, it would appear, is other people” (Whyte, 1980, p. 19) and “people and human activity are the greatest object of attention and interest” (Gehl, 1987, p. 31). On the other hand, sociologist Erving Goffman describes the concept of civil inattention, acknowledging strangers’ presence while in public but not interacting with them (Goffman, 1966). With this in mind, it appears that there is a contradiction between how people are using ICT in urban public places and for what reasons and how people use public urban places and how they behave and react to other collocated people. On the other hand there is an opportunity to employ ICT to create and influence experiences of people collocated in public urban places. The widespread use of location aware mobile devices equipped with Internet access is creating networked localities, a digital layer of geo-coded information on top of the physical world (Gordon & de Souza e Silva, 2011). Foursquare.com is an example of a location based 118 Mobile Multimedia – User and Technology Perspectives social network (LBSN) that enables urban dwellers to virtually check-in into places at which they are physically present in an urban space. Users compete over ‘mayorships’ of places with Foursquare friends as well as strangers and can share recommendations about the space. The research field of Urban Informatics is interested in these kinds of digital urban multimedia augmentations and how such augmentations, mediated through technology, can create or influence the UX of public urban places. “Urban informatics is the study, design, and practice of urban experiences across different urban contexts that are created by new opportunities of real-time, ubiquitous technology and the augmentation that mediates the physical and digital layers of people networks and urban infrastructures” (Foth et al., 2011, p. 4). One possibility to augment the urban space is to enable citizens to digitally interact with spaces and urban dwellers collocated in the past, present, and future. “Adding digital layer to the existing physical and social layers could facilitate new forms of interaction that reshape urban life” (Kjeldskov & Paay, 2006, p. 60). This methodological chapter investigates how the design of UX through such digital placebased mobile multimedia augmentations can be guided and evaluated. First, we describe three different applications that aim to create and influence the urban UX through mobile mediated interactions. Based on a review of literature, we describe how our integrated framework for designing and evaluating urban informatics experiences has been constructed. We conclude the chapter with a reflective discussion on the proposed framework

FairDrop: a Confidential Fair Exchange Protocol for Media Workers

In recent years, the asymmetry between open societies and regimes that control their media has increased, leading to the number of murdered journalists more than doubling worldwide. Even in countries in which freedom of the press is publicly recognized, the number of journalists jailed, assaulted, or criminally charged is relevant and growing. These attacks on media workers usually want to limit or control information regarding critical topics. In this context, the necessity of a system that allows reporters to publish their works without risking their own life is evident. Some systems to share information with newspapers while keeping the source anonymous exist. An example is SecureDrop, developed and maintained by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and widely adopted by all major international newspapers. What limits them from extensively using this type of system is the lack of credibility in the information exchanged, which represents the main problem for the publisher's reputation. In this thesis, we present FairDrop, a system that allows the exchange of information between two untrusted parties and proposes a tradeoff between the anonymity of the source and the credibility of the information exchanged. We present a fair exchange protocol based on blockchain that allows sharing of a digital good fairly and confidentially. We also define the guidelines for a system based on ring signatures to measure the credibility of the exchanged information. All our design decisions are made taking into account the requirements of a journalist-newspaper communication, and the guidelines for anonymous sources applied by major newspapers around the world. We test the system in a real-world blockchain testnet, considering multi-seller and buyer situations, and introducing economic incentives for sources to use the system.In recent years, the asymmetry between open societies and regimes that control their media has increased, leading to the number of murdered journalists more than doubling worldwide. Even in countries in which freedom of the press is publicly recognized, the number of journalists jailed, assaulted, or criminally charged is relevant and growing. These attacks on media workers usually want to limit or control information regarding critical topics. In this context, the necessity of a system that allows reporters to publish their works without risking their own life is evident. Some systems to share information with newspapers while keeping the source anonymous exist. An example is SecureDrop, developed and maintained by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and widely adopted by all major international newspapers. What limits them from extensively using this type of system is the lack of credibility in the information exchanged, which represents the main problem for the publisher's reputation. In this thesis, we present FairDrop, a system that allows the exchange of information between two untrusted parties and proposes a tradeoff between the anonymity of the source and the credibility of the information exchanged. We present a fair exchange protocol based on blockchain that allows sharing of a digital good fairly and confidentially. We also define the guidelines for a system based on ring signatures to measure the credibility of the exchanged information. All our design decisions are made taking into account the requirements of a journalist-newspaper communication, and the guidelines for anonymous sources applied by major newspapers around the world. We test the system in a real-world blockchain testnet, considering multi-seller and buyer situations, and introducing economic incentives for sources to use the system

The Future of the Internet III

Presents survey results on technology experts' predictions on the Internet's social, political, and economic impact as of 2020, including its effects on integrity and tolerance, intellectual property law, and the division between personal and work lives