Social Media for Cities, Counties and Communities

Social media (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube) and other tools and services with user- generated content have made a staggering amount of information (and misinformation) available. Some government officials seek to leverage these resources to improve services and communication with citizens, especially during crises and emergencies. Yet, the sheer volume of social data streams generates substantial noise that must be filtered. Potential exists to rapidly identify issues of concern for emergency management by detecting meaningful patterns or trends in the stream of messages and information flow. Similarly, monitoring these patterns and themes over time could provide officials with insights into the perceptions and mood of the community that cannot be collected through traditional methods (e.g., phone or mail surveys) due to their substantive costs, especially in light of reduced and shrinking budgets of governments at all levels. We conducted a pilot study in 2010 with government officials in Arlington, Virginia (and to a lesser extent representatives of groups from Alexandria and Fairfax, Virginia) with a view to contributing to a general understanding of the use of social media by government officials as well as community organizations, businesses and the public. We were especially interested in gaining greater insight into social media use in crisis situations (whether severe or fairly routine crises, such as traffic or weather disruptions)

Environmental Conflict Resolution: Strategies for Environmental Grantmakers

Outlines the strategies that are employed with the use of ECR to promote collaborative problem solving and manage disputes related to the use and development of natural resources. Includes a description of ten case studies where ECR was used effectively

Content and popularity analysis of Tor hidden services

Tor hidden services allow running Internet services while protecting the location of the servers. Their main purpose is to enable freedom of speech even in situations in which powerful adversaries try to suppress it. However, providing location privacy and client anonymity also makes Tor hidden services an attractive platform for every kind of imaginable shady service. The ease with which Tor hidden services can be set up has spurred a huge growth of anonymously provided Internet services of both types. In this paper we analyse the landscape of Tor hidden services. We have studied Tor hidden services after collecting 39824 hidden service descriptors on 4th of Feb 2013 by exploiting protocol and implementation flaws in Tor: we scanned them for open ports; in the case of HTTP services, we analysed and classified their content. We also estimated the popularity of hidden services by looking at the request rate for hidden service descriptors by clients. We found that while the content of Tor hidden services is rather varied, the most popular hidden services are related to botnets.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, 2 table

Sherlock Holmes Meets Rube Goldberg: Fixing the Entry-into-Force Provisions of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is widely heralded as the most important international legal instrument for arresting the nuclear arms race and impeding further nuclear proliferation. Concluded in 1996, the treaty has been signed by 183 countries and ratified by 166. But it has not yet entered into force, because of its unique requirement that it not become operational for any state until it has been ratified by all forty-four countries designated in its Annex 2. Thirty-six of those Annex 2 states have ratified, but there is little prospect that all of the other eight (including the United States, China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea) will do so in the foreseeable future. In the meantime, certain parts of the CTBT are being provisionally applied, but other critical aspects are in abeyance, and the world\u27s unrequited demand for a fully effective legal prohibition on nuclear weapons testing has jeopardized the global nuclear security architecture. This Article proposes a novel work-around, to achieve early implementation of the CTBT. Interested states should negotiate a second treaty, styled as an Implementing Agreement, through which they could promptly effectuate the CTBT among themselves, even if some Annex 2 states remained outside the regime. This approach would free the CTBT from the tyranny of a veto power currently held by each of the Annex 2 states, and would allow the treaty to grow organically, building toward eventual universal acceptance by entering into force now for a sizeable coalition of the willing—as other important treaties have traditionally done. The legal mechanism for creating such an Implementing Agreement is unusual and cumbersome, but it follows an important international law precedent. The 1982 Law of the Sea Convention achieved widespread acceptance, but it, too, required substantial modification before its entry into force. There, the participating states successfully fashioned a 1994 Implementing Agreement to revise important elements. That document provides a useful template for the CTBT to emulate. This Article offers a draft of a CTBT Implementing Agreement, explaining how its waiver provisions would operate and how it would provide interested states a variety of alternative mechanisms for establishing a prompt, durable, and legally binding test ban regime

Trends in crypto-currencies and blockchain technologies: A monetary theory and regulation perspective

The internet era has generated a requirement for low cost, anonymous and rapidly verifiable transactions to be used for online barter, and fast settling money have emerged as a consequence. For the most part, e-money has fulfilled this role, but the last few years have seen two new types of money emerge. Centralised virtual currencies, usually for the purpose of transacting in social and gaming economies, and crypto-currencies, which aim to eliminate the need for financial intermediaries by offering direct peer-to-peer online payments. We describe the historical context which led to the development of these currencies and some modern and recent trends in their uptake, in terms of both usage in the real economy and as investment products. As these currencies are purely digital constructs, with no government or local authority backing, we then discuss them in the context of monetary theory, in order to determine how they may be have value under each. Finally, we provide an overview of the state of regulatory readiness in terms of dealing with transactions in these currencies in various regions of the world