Public Video Surveillance and the Separation of Powers

The thesis focuses on the response from the United States government on new challenges brought by the public video surveillance, in particular the privacy threat. Regarding regulating public video surveillance, the United States has gone on a different path, either from Britain with its similar political system or from China with a totally different one. The three branches of government in the U.S. are deadlocked and unable to take any meaningful actions. The Supreme Court, which is in a strong position to set national and uniform standards for privacy protection, has not found a way to break away from its own precedents. The legislative branch can do little on the national level regulations due to federalism and the distribution of law enforcement activities at the state and local level. Local legislative efforts might be helpful, but the process in each place will be complicated by concerns about public security, the interests of industry, and politicians’ imperative to take visible actions like video surveillance to fight against crimes and protect people, especially in the post-9/11 context. The executive branch might be the weakest point in the deadlock because it already bears responsibility for resolving tensions between privacy and safety. In the absence of action by the judicial and the legislative branches, self-restraint by the executive branch has become crucial in determining the actual privacy protection, however, the possibility of abuse by the executive branch may increase at the same time. Also, the United States’ local governments are not accountable to a single national authority. They must be accountable to the people. This thesis concludes that the public participation is the key to breaking through the deadlock in light of the democratic political structure in the United States

Public Video Surveillance and the Separation of Powers

The thesis focuses on the response from the United States government on new challenges brought by the public video surveillance, in particular the privacy threat. Regarding regulating public video surveillance, the United States has gone on a different path, either from Britain with its similar political system or from China with a totally different one. The three branches of government in the U.S. are deadlocked and unable to take any meaningful actions. The Supreme Court, which is in a strong position to set national and uniform standards for privacy protection, has not found a way to break away from its own precedents. The legislative branch can do little on the national level regulations due to federalism and the distribution of law enforcement activities at the state and local level. Local legislative efforts might be helpful, but the process in each place will be complicated by concerns about public security, the interests of industry, and politicians’ imperative to take visible actions like video surveillance to fight against crimes and protect people, especially in the post-9/11 context. The executive branch might be the weakest point in the deadlock because it already bears responsibility for resolving tensions between privacy and safety. In the absence of action by the judicial and the legislative branches, self-restraint by the executive branch has become crucial in determining the actual privacy protection, however, the possibility of abuse by the executive branch may increase at the same time. Also, the United States’ local governments are not accountable to a single national authority. They must be accountable to the people. This thesis concludes that the public participation is the key to breaking through the deadlock in light of the democratic political structure in the United States

Scientists and the Ethics of Cold War Weapons Research

This dissertation examines scientists' views concerning the ethics of U.S. weapons research and military advising, through the changing politics and economy of the Cold War. After the development of the atomic bomb, the Manhattan Project generation of physicists posed a series of troubling ethical questions: To what extent are scientists responsible for the military applications of their work? What are the political obligations of technical experts? What are the ideal relations among academia, industry, and the military? During the post-Sputnik science boom, many elite physicists used their policy influence to encourage government support for scientific research and to secure stronger arms control measures, an effort that culminated in the ratification of the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963. But after the enthusiastic expansion of science advising in the late 1950s, the war in Vietnam sorely tested scientists' support for weapons research and government work. Key controversies that elicited substantial ethical debate included the use of chemical defoliants and gases in Vietnam and the participation of the secretive Jason scientists in developing an electronic barrier to prevent North Vietnamese incursions into South Vietnam. By the end of the decade, campuses and professional societies were riven by clashes over defense contracting and academic "neutrality" in the context of the war in Vietnam. Whereas ethical debates in the aftermath of the Manhattan Project tended to be framed in individualist terms, the controversies of the late 1960s and early 1970s took place on the much larger scale of governments and institutions. The upheaval produced some changes in university contracting policies, but with ambiguous results, and the public disaffection of some top scientists led the Nixon administration to dismantle the entire Eisenhower-era presidential science advisory system. The ethical debates of the Vietnam era cast a long shadow, shifting popular attitudes toward science and heavily influencing the character of scientists' opposition to the Strategic Defense Initiative during the 1980s

Government Hacking

The United States government hacks computer systems for law enforcement purposes. As encryption and anonymization tools become more prevalent, the government will foreseeably increase its resort to malware. Law enforcement hacking poses novel puzzles for criminal procedure. Courts are just beginning to piece through the doctrine, and scholarship is scant. This Article provides the first comprehensive examination of how federal law regulates government malware

Private Force/Public Goods

This Article rethinks the benefits and dangers of private force in war. It shows that privatization must be viewed within the special requirements and confines of national security policy making and weighed against available alternatives. Contrary to academic and mainstream conventional wisdom, this Article concludes that national security privatization comports well with core constitutional and democratic principles and offers greater transparency and democratic control than commonly understood. Moreover, this Article argues that the American use of privatized force reflects and accomplishes normative and democratic commitments of international and domestic law that would be impossible to replicate through other policy avenues

The Art of Creating a School. The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy 1979-1986

The art of creating the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, (IMSA) covered in the following pages, occurred over a period of seven years. The events took place between the summer of 1979, and \u27move-in\u27 day, September 7, 1986, the day the students arrived on the IMSA campus for the first time. Located in the Fox River Valley community of Aurora, Illinois, the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy has earned international recognition for its unique curriculum and teaching strategies. It has grown into the most renowned three year residential math and science high school in the nation. Each year more than 160 gifted high school students from all over the state of Illinois join its community of close to 800 students. Approximately 99% of its graduates accept invitations to attend institutions of higher education, with an average of 45% of the graduates staying in Illinois. When it began its life in September of 1986, the Academy had 210 gifted high school students, twelve creative faculty members, a list of twenty-one courses, no residence halls, no computers, no library books, limited funding, many unanswered questions and an uncertain future. Students lived in converted classrooms while the first residence balls were being built

Beyond Being Handed The Ipad: An Interpretive Phenomenological Study Of Lecturers’ Lived Experiences Of Ipad Adoption

Lecturers’ lived experiences regarding iPad adoption have received minimal research attention. This interpretive phenomenological study aims to give voice to the iPad adoption experiences of twelve health and social care lecturers from a post 1992 university. T he lecturers were deployed iPads in December 2013 in readiness for supporting their university’s mobile teaching and learning strategy. The study explores the phenomenological question: What is the lecturer’s lived experience of iPad adoption? The majority of current iPad research is technocentric in its orientation and focuses on iPad adoption from an ontic rather than an ontological perspective. The purpose of this study is to inquire into the phenomenon of lecturers’ iPad adoption, and the ontological and existential meanings derived from the lecturers’ everyday usage of the tool. The methodology is Heidegger’s interpretive ontological phenomenology. Heidegger’s philosophy places significant emphasis on ontological and existential issues as revealed by our practical and everyday usage of equipment. His philosophy also has an educational bearing, in the sense that our ‘being-in-the-world’ is to pursue ongoing transformation of the self. The research methods are drawn from the tenets of Heideggerian philosophy. Two separate conversational interviews, the first phenomenological and the second hermeneutic were undertaken with the participants. The interpretive lenses of Greek mythology and legend, Heidegger’s care structure of Dasein and temporality, along with Ihde’s contemporary technoscience and van Manen’s lifeworld existentials support the analysis and filter the interpretations. The findings reveal that the iPad was used, unused, disused, misused and overused in the lecturers’ everyday practice. The phenomenon of iPad adoption revealed the following existential issues: a proneness to over -conscientious caring and intensive labour (Sisyphean toil); dismay as support was held tantalisingly out of reach (Tantalian torture); tension between authentic and inauthentic teaching selves (Diogenes’s painted and real figs); the hiding of ambivalence (Penelopeian pretence); embarking on a challenging and individual learning quest (Promethean endeavour); and experiencing an end to ‘being’ carefree (Pandora’s box). Lecturers found the iPad to be in ‘readiness-to-hand’ as an administrative and communication tool and a useful learning tool for their own self-development and self-healing. Most were ‘not-at-home’ with the iPad as a teaching device. In authentic self-being, teaching as a ‘flesh and blood’ practice, remained the pedagogical preference for most of the participants. During their individual quests towards iPad adoption, the participants endured varying degrees of existential ‘homelessness’, ‘homesickness’ and ‘homecoming’. It is hoped this study will raise awareness of the ontological and existential issues associated with lecturers’ iPad adoption. Also, to encourage lecturers to consider their existence and transforming practice as pedagogues in a digitalised HE. An important revelation of this study is that iPadagogy is something of a ‘knowledge oligopoly’. If educational technology and peer support are held tantalisingly out of reach, if the well-travelled and the untravelled iPad users fail to meet, then some lecturers may be inclined to postpone or never intend any future pedagogical application with the device. The truth (Altheia) of iPadagogy is, ‘there is no sweet smooth journey home ’ for the lecturer

Connecting the Dots. Intelligence and Law Enforcement since 9/11

This work examines how the conceptualization of knowledge as both problem and solution reconfigured intelligence and law enforcement after 9/11. The idea was that more information should be collected, and better analyzed. If the intelligence that resulted was shared, then terrorists could be identified, their acts predicted, and ultimately prevented. Law enforcement entered into this scenario in the United States, and internationally. “Policing terrorism” refers to the engagement of state and local law enforcement in intelligence, as well as approaching terrorism as a legal crime, in addition to or as opposed to an act of war. Two venues are explored: fusion centers in the United States and the international organization of police, Interpol. The configuration can be thought of schematically as operating through the set of law, discipline and security. Intelligence is predominantly a security approach. It modulates that within its purview, wielding the techniques and technologies that are here discussed. The dissertation is divided into two sections: Intelligence and Policing Terrorism. In the first, intelligence is taken up as a term, and its changes in referent and concept are examined. The Preface and Chapter One present a general introduction to the contemporary situation and intelligence, via Sherman Kent, as knowledge, organization and activities. Chapter Two traces the development of intelligence in the United States as a craft and profession. Chapter Three discusses some of the issues involving the intersection of intelligence and policy, and how those manifested in the aftermath of 9/11 and the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The second section examines the turn to policing terrorism, beginning, in Chapter Four, with how Interpol has dealt with bioterrorism, and an examination of the shifting conceptualization of biological threats in international law. Moving from threats to their consequences, Chapter Five takes up the concept of an event in order to analyze the common comparison of Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Chapters Six and Seven turn to fieldwork done in the United States, with an examination of the suspicious activity reporting system and law enforcement’s inclusion in the Information Sharing Environment, focusing on fusion centers and data mining

Tangled up in Khaki and Blue: Lethal and Non-Lethal Weapons in Recent Confrontations

Too often, military and law enforcement authorities have found themselves constrained by inadequate weaponry: the tools available to them, in addressing confrontations with entrenched opponents of various sorts, are either too weak (not sufficing to disarm or defeat the enemy) or too strong (generating unacceptable collateral damage in harming innocent people or property). An emerging category of non-lethal weapons carries promise for resolving this dilemma, proffering deft new capabilities for disabling, dissuading, or defeating opponents without inflicting death or permanent injury. Some primitive non-lethal weapons (such as truncheons, tear gas, and water cannon) have long been staples in the inventories of police and military forces in the United States and other countries. More sophisticated options (e.g., electronic stun guns or pepper spray) are becoming more common and are increasingly employed in a variety of law enforcement and security situations. Most dramatically, an array of much more sophisticated technologies (including directed energy beams, calmative chemicals, and foam sprays that seal buildings or make an area impassively slippery) are being developed, and could emerge for use by soldiers and police in the near future. These augmented capabilities carry both immense promise and grave risks: they expand the power of law enforcement and military units, enabling them to accomplish assigned missions with greater finesse and reduced casualties. But they may also be misused, they may proliferate to malign applications, and they may inspire leaders to over-rely upon a myth of bloodless combat. This article explores the emerging world of non-lethal weapons by examining a series of case studies--recent real-world scenarios from three diverse confrontations around the world in which the availability of a modern arsenal of non-lethal weapons might have made a difference, enabling a more successful outcome in the face of deeply entrenched opposition