Communities as allies

A popular axiom attributed to British policing is the police are the public and the public are the police. Inherent in this term is a blurring of the distinction between the police and the public they serve; the police are cast as being little different from the citizenry and citizens are cast into a role of responsibility for the safety and well-being of the community. In effect, communities are framed as allies in the fight to ensure safe and secure neighborhoods. Across space and time this idea has held uneven sway within American policing ideologies. This essay considers the relationship between the police and the policed, as well as how that relationship might be influenced be technological and social evolutions. The essay begins with an overview of the very notion of ―community‖ and their relationship with crime and disorder. This is followed by a brief review of the historical trajectory of police-community interactions within American policing. We then consider how emerging and future technologies might modify what ―community‖ means. The essay concludes with a consideration of police and community interactions and partnerships in the digital age

White paper: A plan for cooperation between NASA and DARPA to establish a center for advanced architectures

Large, complex computer systems require many years of development. It is recognized that large scale systems are unlikely to be delivered in useful condition unless users are intimately involved throughout the design process. A mechanism is described that will involve users in the design of advanced computing systems and will accelerate the insertion of new systems into scientific research. This mechanism is embodied in a facility called the Center for Advanced Architectures (CAA). CAA would be a division of RIACS (Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science) and would receive its technical direction from a Scientific Advisory Board established by RIACS. The CAA described here is a possible implementation of a center envisaged in a proposed cooperation between NASA and DARPA

Research on speech understanding and related areas at SRI

Research capabilities on speech understanding, speech recognition, and voice control are described. Research activities and the activities which involve text input rather than speech are discussed

Freedom of Expression in Cyberspace: A Study on the Acceptance of Applying Cyber Laws in the Msc Flagship Applications by Law and Communication Professionals

This study deals with the acceptance of applying cyber laws in the MSC flagship applications by law and communication professionals. It aims at assessing whether the provision of freedom of expression in the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) facilitates its flagship applications. determining the extent to which it should be exercised in light of the right to reputation. the right to privacy and the right to decency. comparing the views of the targeted professionals regarding the study issues as well as determining the relationships between selected demographic characteristics and freedom of expression for the facilitation of MSC. freedom of expression and the right to reputation. freedom of expression and the right to privacy and freedom of expression and the right to decency. Data for the study was collected through a self-administered questionnaire developed by the researcher distributed to respondents consisted of law and communication professionals in the Klang Valley area of Malaysia. Two hundred and forty professionals answered the questionnaire. Data collection was conducted during August and September 1999. It is revealed that freedom of expression is favoured for the facilitation of the flagship applications of the MSC, where the responses were very high in this respect. On the other hand, respondents showed concern about other rights. They showed concern about their right to reputation not to be defamed, their right to privacy not to be invaded and their right to decent materials not to be deprived from. Thus they favoured the balancing approach that should be made by the law. As such, the researcher recommended that there should be official efforts toward the awareness of law and communication professionals of the MSC and its applications and objectives. Also, he recommended that the current cyber laws should be amended so as the users will be secured of their reputation, the privacy of the information they provide in the implementation of a certain flagship application and the decency. In addition, he recommended that future formulation of the law should consult those with expertise

State Regulatory Jurisdiction and the Internet: Letting the Dormant Commerce Clause Lie

Cyberspace seems to pose a dual threat to Our Federalism. Only one aspect of this threat, however, has captured the scholarly imagination. Commentators have devoted a great deal of attention to the problems of horizontal federalism raised by the new technology. Cyberspace, they point out, is a profoundly integrative social and economic force. As a result, local legislation touching on cyberspace is likely to produce effects beyond local borders. State laws like a recently deceased Georgia statute that arguably would have prohibited all Internet users from falsely identifying themselves on- lines convince observers that the information superhighway is a dangerous new means for states to export their legislative products to other jurisdictions. Although the danger is more potential than actual, the pages of recent law reviews echo with calls for preemptive federal legislation, or more commonly, for self-regulation with minimal governmental interference. The more strident of these calls highlight the cyberspace threat that has largely been ignored: the threat to vertical federalism. Cyberspace imbues state regulation with tremendous potential for extraterritorial effect, potential which invites the federal judiciary to cut down a broad swath of state law. This invitation is made all the more appealing by the rather amorphous nature of the Supreme Court\u27s extraterritoriality jurisprudence. The Constitution contains no explicit command forbidding states from projecting their legislation beyond their own borders. The Court might be expected to infer that directive from constitutional structure, but instead has sited the proposition in a succession of unlikely textual locales: the Contracts Clause, the Full Faith and Credit Clause, and the Due Process Clause. The current locus of the extraterritoriality principle seems to be a line of dormant Commerce Clause cases stemming from Edgar v. MITE Corp. One commentator has dubbed Edgar and its progeny the new territorialism; others have seized on the cases\u27 seeming insistence on strict territorial sovereignty and suggested that the dormant Commerce Clause seriously curtails states\u27 ability to regulate the Internet. Such expansive readings of the cases have found an appreciative audience in the Southern District of New York, where, in American Libraries Ass\u27n [\u27ALA ] v. Pataki, a federal court flatly ruled that states have no jurisdiction to enact cyberlaw. The prospect of the states being stripped of their traditional powers to provide for the health, safety, and morals of their citizens while in cyberspace has excited surprisingly little academic commentary. This silence is especially odd given the general agreement that [flederalism is exceedingly popular these days. This Note seeks to redress the imbalance between horizontal and vertical federalism concerns

The emergence and growth of dial-up internet service providers (ISPs) as a means of access to the internet in South Africa: a case study of M-Web and World Online

The desire amongst media scholars for the fulfilment of the ideal of a universally accessible public sphere by the media is such that virtually every new communications technology that has emerged over the past 1 ~O-odd years such as radio, television or the Internet has been welcomed with enthusiasm - by some - at the prospect of the newest communications innovation bringing about universal access to information. However, the history of communications media tells of the commercialisation of each new medium, from radio to television, and the imposition of barriers to access, based on cost. Access to communications media is open to those people who can afford to pay for them. 111e emergence of the Internet spawned renewed hoped that the public sphere ideal would be realised. 111is new technology seemed more powerful than anything that had come before it. The Internet offered the means whereby one could access a global repository of information, stored on a worldwide network of computer networks, and available 24 hours a day. With the Internet, it was also possible to communicate with people on the other side of the world within seconds, using electronic mail (e-mail). Here was a medium that permitted one to send text and pictures to colleagues and friends within a fraction of the time taken by traditional means such as fax, telephone or post. To enjoy the convenience of the Internet though, one had to have a means of access. In South Africa, access could be gained through a personal computer linked to the Internet either through a network in the workplace or an academic or research institution, or via a telephone link to an Internet Service Provider (ISP). What were the names of the first ISPs to emerge in South Africa? When did they emerge and how did they develop? Did the number of ISPs grow or decline? What do ISPs give access to, at what cost and to whom? Do they provide universal access to information? This study addresses these questions by examining South Africa's leading providers of home dial-up internet access, M-Web and World Online, and by exploring the histories of their emergence and development, within the context of current media trends of concentration, diversification and globalisation