Establishing the digital chain of evidence in biometric systems

Traditionally, a chain of evidence or chain of custody refers to the chronological documentation, or paper trail, showing the seizure, custody, control, transfer, analysis, and disposition of evidence, physical or electronic. Whether in the criminal justice system, military applications, or natural disasters, ensuring the accuracy and integrity of such chains is of paramount importance. Intentional or unintentional alteration, tampering, or fabrication of digital evidence can lead to undesirable effects. We find despite the consequences at stake, historically, no unique protocol or standardized procedure exists for establishing such chains. Current practices rely on traditional paper trails and handwritten signatures as the foundation of chains of evidence.;Copying, fabricating or deleting electronic data is easier than ever and establishing equivalent digital chains of evidence has become both necessary and desirable. We propose to consider a chain of digital evidence as a multi-component validation problem. It ensures the security of access control, confidentiality, integrity, and non-repudiation of origin. Our framework, includes techniques from cryptography, keystroke analysis, digital watermarking, and hardware source identification. The work offers contributions to many of the fields used in the formation of the framework. Related to biometric watermarking, we provide a means for watermarking iris images without significantly impacting biometric performance. Specific to hardware fingerprinting, we establish the ability to verify the source of an image captured by biometric sensing devices such as fingerprint sensors and iris cameras. Related to keystroke dynamics, we establish that user stimulus familiarity is a driver of classification performance. Finally, example applications of the framework are demonstrated with data collected in crime scene investigations, people screening activities at port of entries, naval maritime interdiction operations, and mass fatality incident disaster responses

Prolegomena to a Theory and Model of Spoken Persuasion: A Subjective-Probabilistic Interactive Model of Persuasion (SPIMP)

Various disciplines such as rhetoric, marketing, and psychology have explored persuasion as a social and argumentative phenomenon. The present thesis is predominantly based in cognitive psychology and investigates the psychological processes the persuadee undergoes when faced with a persuasive attempt. The exploration concludes with the development of a concrete model for describing persuasion processing, namely The Subjective-Probabilistic Interactive Model of Persuasion (SPIMP). In addition to cognitive psychology, the thesis relies on conceptual developments and empirical data from disciplines such as rhetoric, economics, and philosophy. The core model of the SPIMP relies on two central persuasive elements: content strength and source credibility. These elements are approached from a subjective perspective in which the persuadee estimates the probabilistic likelihood of how strong the content and how credible the source is. The elements, however, are embedded in a larger psychological framework such that the subjective estimations are contextual and social rather than solipsistic. The psychological framework relies on internal and external influences, the scope of cognition, and the framework for cognition. The SPIMP departs significantly from previous models of persuasion in a number of ways. For instance, the latter are dual-processing models whereas the SPIMP is an integrated single-process approach. Further, the normative stances differ since the previous models seemingly rely on a logicist framework whereas SPIMP relies on a probabilistic. The development of a new core model of persuasion processing constitutes a novel contribution. Further, the theoretical and psychological framework surrounding the elements of the model provides a novel framework for conceptualising persuasion processing from the perspective of the persuadee. Finally, given the multitude of disciplines connected to persuasion, the thesis provides a definition for use in future studies, which differentiates persuasion from argumentation, communicated information updating, and influence

Obiter Dicta

"Stitched together over five years of journaling, Obiter Dicta is a commonplace book of freewheeling explorations representing the transcription of a dozen notebooks, since painstakingly reimagined for publication. Organized after Theodor Adorno’s Minima Moralia, this unschooled exercise in aesthetic thought—gleefully dilettantish, oftentimes dangerously close to the epigrammatic—interrogates an array of subject matter (although inescapably circling back to the curiously resemblant histories of Western visual art and instrumental music) through the lens of drive-by speculation. Erick Verran’s approach to philosophical inquiry follows the brute-force literary technique of Jacques Derrida to exhaustively favor the material grammar of a signifier over hand-me-down meaning, juxtaposing outer semblances with their buried systems and our etched-in-stone intuitions about color and illusion, shape and value, with lessons stolen from seemingly unrelatable disciplines. Interlarded with extracts of Ludwig Wittgenstein but also Wallace Stevens, Cormac McCarthy as well as Roland Barthes, this cache of incidental remarks eschews what’s granular for the biggest picture available, leaving below the hyper-specialized fields of academia for a bird’s-eye view of their crop circles. Obiter Dicta is an unapologetic experiment in intellectual dot-connecting that challenges much long-standing wisdom about everything from illuminated manuscripts to Minecraft and the evolution of European music with lyrical brevity; that is, before jumping to the next topic.