Beyond Security and Efficiency: On-Demand Ratcheting with Security Awareness

Secure asynchronous two-party communication applies ratcheting to strengthen privacy, in the presence of internal state exposures. Security with ratcheting is provided in two forms: forward security and post-compromise security. There have been several such secure protocols proposed in the last few years. However, they come with a high cost. In this paper, we propose two generic constructions with favorable properties. Concretely, our first construction achieves security awareness. It allows users to detect non-persistent active attacks, to determine which messages are not safe given a potential leakage pattern, and to acknowledge for deliveries. In our second construction, we define a hybrid system formed by combining two protocols: typically, a weakly secure light protocol and a strongly secure heavy protocol. The design goals of our hybrid construction are, first, to let the sender decide which one to use in order to obtain an efficient protocol with ratchet on demand; and second, to restore the communication between honest participants in the case of a message loss or an active attack. We can apply our generic constructions to any existing protocol

Ratcheting labor standards : regulation for continuous improvement in the global workplace

Ratcheting Labor Standards (RLS) is a regulatory alternative that aims to improve the social performance of firms in the global economy. Under RLS, firms disclose to a certified monitor, information on their social performance, minimally including working conditions, hours, and wages. The monitors rank firms on the basis of their current social performance, and their rates of improvement, and make these rankings, and the methods on which they are based, accessible to the public. This process, it is argued, encourages leading firms to strive towards superior social practices. Competition among firms, and monitors will help establish two kinds of standards:"best practices"defined by the most advanced firms, and"rates of improvement", shown to be feasible at various levels of development. Both continually"ratchet"upward as the best practices get better still, and firms find ways to accelerate improvement, in a race to the top. These, and other RLS mechanisms, would create incentives for firms to dedicate a portion of the ingenuity, and resources now devoted to product development to the continuous improvement of labor practices.Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Labor Standards,Children and Youth,Work&Working Conditions

Wages Along the Supply Chain: Assessment and Prospects (Fair Labor Association Stakeholder Forum Report)

This document is part of a digital collection provided by the Martin P. Catherwood Library, ILR School, Cornell University, pertaining to the effects of globalization on the workplace worldwide. Special emphasis is placed on labor rights, working conditions, labor market changes, and union organizing.FLA_Stakeholder_Forum_Report_09.pdf: 67 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

'Leaning against an open door' : ideology and the cyclicality of public expenditure

When is government expenditure likely to be procyclical? While economists tend to anticipate counter-cyclical expenditure, recent studies report procyclical expenditure. This paper explores the impact of political ideology on the cyclicality of government expenditure. Predictions are tested with reference to government expenditure in the USA between 1950 and 2008. The likelihood of procyclical expenditure increases if groups that press for increased public expenditure are ‘... leaning against an open door’

Corporate Social Responsibilities, an Overview of Principles and Practices

[Excerpt] In this paper Dr. Murray, of the University of Melbourne, argues that the public discourse on Corporate Social Responsibility has evolved into a quite stylized debate which tends to focus on one particular facet of multinational economic behaviour. Namely the treatment of workers in manufacturing factories in the developing world producing goods for multinational enterprises with particular attention the manufacture of textiles, clothing and footwear. This has also brought with it renewed interest in the idea of the “sweatshop”, the concept of extreme exploitation of vulnerable workers in terms of living wages and dangerous working conditions. As a consequence more is known about this sector than just about any other, and theoretical work tends to deal with the subject of corporate selfregulation through the lens of the production and consumption of these arguably idiosyncratic goods. She argues that it is important to identify the potential distorting power of this emerging discourse and to broaden the attention to labour markets conditions in general

Near-term actions for transforming energy-service efficiency to limit global warming to 1.5°C

A global ‘Low Energy Demand’ (LED) scenario published in 2018 shows how global warming can be limited to 1.5 °C by transforming the way energy services are provided and con- sumed (Grubler et al. 2018). We follow up this long-range sce- nario study by setting out a wide range of near-term actions for improving energy-service efficiency through a combina- tion of technological, organisational and behavioural innova- tion. We focus on three energy services: heating and cooling in buildings, ownership and use of consumer goods, and pas- senger mobility. We identify a set of 28 actions across these three energy services ranging from multi-functional end-use devices and area-based procurement of whole-home retrofits to shared urban mobility services and open digital platforms. For each action we identify the lead implementation actor, scale of action, and the extent of policy and financing requirements. For selected actions, we also provide examples of best practice from around the world, drawing on both peer-reviewed and grey literature. Finally, we identify six basic strategies which are the means by which our diverse set of actions achieve their goal of transforming energy services: electrification, functional convergence, usership, utilisation rates, efficiency frontier, and user-oriented innovation

Death in Prison: The Right Death Penalty Compromise

The death penalty today provides virtually none of the benefits its advocates proffer as justifications for its existence. The tiny number of death sentences imposed, the even tinier number actually carried out, the enormous drain on public resources, and the decade-long delays that inevitably occur thoroughly undermine any deterrent or retributive benefits today’s death penalty might otherwise provide. In this paper, I argue for a compromise position that promises to better serve penal purposes and that will save states money at the same time: abandon the current dysfunctional death penalty in favor of a new ultimate sentence: death-in-prison. A sentence of death-in-prison would be exactly what it says: a prisoner sentenced to death-in-prison would remain in prison until he or she died. Death-in-prison would be a kind of hybrid sentence: like life in prison without possibility of parole (“LWOP”), death-in-prison would entail lifetime incarceration but no affirmative state action to terminate the prisoner’s life, but death-in-prison would also share several features of the conventional death penalty. As with the conventional death penalty, a special penalty trial would be needed to impose the ultimate death-in-prison sentence. In addition, persons sentenced to death-in-prison might continue to serve their sentences in special segregated “death rows.” Death-in-prison sentences would also be imposed with all the magisterial weightiness of conventional death sentences. Persons so sentenced would be told, like those in conventional death penalty states, that the punishment for their crime is the ultimate one — death. If adopted, death-in-prison would reduce criminal justice expenditures, facilitate community healing, discourage divisive and ineffective commutation campaigns, and diminish wrongful executions, without forgoing what is arguably the greatest benefit of the current death penalty: the expressive value of imposing a “death” rather than a “life” sentence on highly culpable offenders