Considerations on the Emerging Implementation of Biometric Technology

The United States is embarking on widespread implementation of biometric technology, which uses automated methods to identify people based on their physiological and behavioral characteristics. Regardless of how much we invest in establishing standards for reliability of the technology and protections of the data, no system will be foolproof. Biometric determinations will be subject to mistakes, fraud, and abuse through human and technological error, both intentional and inadvertent. We should, therefore, take this opportunity to develop methods for individuals to review and challenge biometric determinations. In particular, this article suggests a doctrinal framework for challenging biometric determinations made by administrative agencies

Corruption by Card: How Police Association Cards Allow Law Enforcement to Cloak Self-Dealing as Discretion​

Law enforcement abuse their discretion by providing favorable treatment to individuals that demonstrate a relationship to the law enforcement community. Private organizations affiliated with law enforcement have capitalized on this by creating association cards which are distributed by members to friends, family members, and others. Card holders present the card during encounters with law enforcement to signal that they have a relationship with law enforcement, with the expectation that they will receive favorable treatment. Though the cards have no formal authority behind them, strong norms in the law enforcement community punish officers that fail to honor them. Because the cards are distributed and honored on the basis of an individual’s official position and are used in a non-transparent way, the practice raises ethical and legal questions about whether it is corrupt. This paper explores the nature of the card system, its ethical and legal implications, and ways to end it, with a focus on New York State

Building a Strong Undergraduate Research Culture in African Universities

Africa had a late start in the race to setting up and obtaining universities with research quality fundamentals. According to Mamdani [5], the first colonial universities were few and far between: Makerere in East Africa, Ibadan and Legon in West Africa. This last place in the race, compared to other continents, has had tremendous implications in the development plans for the continent. For Africa, the race has been difficult from a late start to an insurmountable litany of problems that include difficulty in equipment acquisition, lack of capacity, limited research and development resources and lack of investments in local universities. In fact most of these universities are very recent with many less than 50 years in business except a few. To help reduce the labor costs incurred by the colonial masters of shipping Europeans to Africa to do mere clerical jobs, they started training ―workshops‖ calling them technical or business colleges. According to Mamdani, meeting colonial needs was to be achieved while avoiding the ―Indian disease‖ in Africa -- that is, the development of an educated middle class, a group most likely to carry the virus of nationalism. Upon independence, most of these ―workshops‖ were turned into national ―universities‖, but with no clear role in national development. These national ―universities‖ were catering for children of the new African political elites. Through the seventies and eighties, most African universities were still without development agendas and were still doing business as usual. Meanwhile, governments strapped with lack of money saw no need of putting more scarce resources into big white elephants. By mid-eighties, even the UN and IMF were calling for a limit on funding African universities. In today‘s African university, the traditional curiosity driven research model has been replaced by a market-driven model dominated by a consultancy culture according to Mamdani (Mamdani, Mail and Guardian Online). The prevailing research culture as intellectual life in universities has been reduced to bare-bones classroom activity, seminars and workshops have migrated to hotels and workshop attendance going with transport allowances and per diems (Mamdani, Mail and Guardian Online). There is need to remedy this situation and that is the focus of this paper

Perceptions Of Ice Hockey Season Ticket Holders On The Implementation Of A Donor-Based Seating Model At Miami University, A Public Midwestern Mid-Major Institution

Intercollegiate athletics is a $10 billion marketplace (Suggs, 2012), with some Division I athletics operating budgets approaching$200 million. College athletics programs are charged with maximizing revenues in an effort to support and enhance the student-athlete experience. This study provides an examination of the perceptions of ice hockey season ticket holders on the implementation of a donor-based seating model at Miami University. Miami ice hockey consistently fills its venue and generates crucial revenues for the athletics department. As the cost to compete for championships continues to increase, schools like Miami must be creative in identifying ways to maximize revenues. The need for expanded revenue streams coupled with high demand for tickets led Miami Athletics to introduce a donor-based seating model for ice hockey prior to the 2014–2015 season. This qualitative case study grounded in phenomenology utilized Tajfel and Turner’s (1979) social identity theory. Collective research and standardized open-ended interviews were conducted with 16 randomly selected ice hockey season ticket holders from the 2013–2014 season. A majority of participants in this study were not in favor of Miami Athletics implementing a donor-based seating model for ice hockey. Despite all the criticisms, most interview participants recognized the need for the athletics department to generate revenue to better position Miami ice hockey for success. College athletics is constantly evolving and revenue generation is so critical to compete at the highest level. To maximize revenues, though, understanding the perceptions of season ticket holders on the implementation of a donor-based seating model is extremely important. Nine major themes emerged from this study, with the most prevalent being that people express undesirable feelings toward donor-based seating. Miami Athletics administrators will be able to utilize the results of this study and learn more about their ice hockey season ticket holders’ willingness to support and enhance the student-athlete experience through donor-based seating. Effective communication, relationship building, and student-athlete integration should reduce the backlash that naturally comes from fans having to pay more and ultimately lead to increased funds to support and enhance the student-athlete experience

Subject to predicate risk, governance and the event of terrorism within post-9/11 U.S. border security

As a result of the 9/11 terror attacks, a new and far-reaching form of security governance has emerged within the United States under the heading of 'homeland security'. While this mode of security has brought with it a range of domestic counter-terrorism efforts, such as new methods of preparedness in the event of attacks on American cities, as well as mechanisms to seize and cut off terrorist assets, it has also predominantly been oriented towards the development of a new legal, institutional and technological regime responsible for the management and risk assessment of individual identity and the identities of foreign nationals passing through U.S. borders. Although this mode of security provides new powers as well as more flexible and collaborative methods for U.S. customs, law enforcement and intelligence to address the threat of terrorism, it has also created political controversy. This controversy has rested upon the perception that homeland security methods embody an unchecked extension of executive power negatively impacting the rights and liberties of the individuals that these very security techniques were established to protect. In order to interrogate this controversy and analyse how this new form of security performs within an extended field of sovereign power, this thesis takes into account the laws, policies and technologies – biometric, datamining, database – that shape this new form of security at the border. This new form of security arguably not only embodies a mobilisation and empowerment of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies which understand terrorism as catastrophic and generational, but it can fundamentally be seen as creating a new infrastructure that allows U.S. security institutions to become more 'informationally' aware of the identities of individuals entering and exiting the country. How U.S. security institutions access such identity information, along with how this data is used, is what constitutes the new social and political reality at the border

Who are You? We have Ways of Finding Out! Tracing the Police Development of Offender Identification Techniques in the Late Nineteenth Century

From the very beginning of modern policing there were a number of problems; not the least of these was the difficulty that the police had in identifying those they had arrested. This was important for a number of reasons including the need to prove ages and previous convictions against persons charged before a court. Due to the size of London and its large, mobile population, this was particularly difficult in the Metropolitan Police area. The police had to rely largely on personal knowledge in order to prove identifications and contacts at police stations. Initially officers attended Police/Magistrates courts at remand hearings to try to bring about identifications, this was followed by attendances at Remand Prisons but the system only started to show results when prison warders were included. The other step taken was to visit the Convict Prisons to inspect prisoners prior to their release, again in this they were assisted by warders. Initially uniformed officers were used in these tasks but eventually detective officers took over the role, they were later replaced by officers from the Convict Supervision Office. The problem was eventually resolved at the very end of the Victorian period with the introduction of fingerprinting