Dynamic Tardos Traitor Tracing Schemes

We construct binary dynamic traitor tracing schemes, where the number of watermark bits needed to trace and disconnect any coalition of pirates is quadratic in the number of pirates, and logarithmic in the total number of users and the error probability. Our results improve upon results of Tassa, and our schemes have several other advantages, such as being able to generate all codewords in advance, a simple accusation method, and flexibility when the feedback from the pirate network is delayed.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure

The pirates of Somalia: Coastguards of anarchy

This paper analyses the underlying factors driving piracy off the coast of Somalia and examines the effectiveness of the international naval anti-piracy mission with respect to its declared aims. We show that while the navies perform well with respect to their short-term aims, they failed to contain the escalation of the piracy problem through 2009: pirates have been diverted from the Gulf of Aden into the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. Evidence from domestic conditions in Somalia suggests that economic development and greater stability might in fact aid pirates

Piracy and Due Process

This article explores in depth the law of nations, English domestic law, and English government practice from the late medieval period through the eighteenth century, and the U.S. constitutional law and government practice during the Founding and antebellum periods. I conclude that Chapman’s claims about due process and piracy suppression are incorrect. Both Parliament and the U.S. Congress; both the Crown and its counselors and U.S Presidents and their advisers; both the Royal Navy and the U.S. Navy; and commentators both English and American believed that (1) pirates on the high seas could lawfully be subject to extrajudicial killing, but that (2) the criminal justice system was usually the preferred approach to dealing with pirates, and when tried for their crimes in English or American territory respectively, accused pirates were entitled to due process of law

On the High Seas Near the Horn of Africa, a 21st Century Pirate Tale

Famed Maersk Alabama Captain Richard Phillips recounts his April 2009 encounter with Somali pirates and his rescue by U.S. Navy SEALs

ASTYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF HONEST DECEPTION REFLECTED INPIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL

This researchis aimedat describing thehonest deceptionused in a film entitledPirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. There are three objectives of this research. The first is to provide the description and analysis of honest deception phenomenain the mentioned film. This research explores three types of honest deception:hyperbole, irony, and sarcasm. The second is to provide abrief description and discussion of the language functionrelated to the use of honest deception. The last is to reveal the life in pirates’ world in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearlthrough the occurrence of honest deception. The data source of this research wasa film entitled Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. The data of this research were taken from the characters’ dialogues by watching the film whichwerethen checked by reading the script. The data of this research were some verbal expressions in words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and paragraphs, and non-verbal expressions/actions which were related tothe verbal ones. The data were then analyzed usingadescriptive qualitative method. It gaveasufficient description of the factual data of the phenomena and provided its logical and rational interpretation based on relevant theories. Data trustworthiness was achieved through credibility, reliability, and conformability.Theresearch findings show that (1) there are three types of honest deception found in the film among 21 occurrences: hyperbole (11 times or 52.38%),irony (5 times or23.81%), and sarcasm (5 times or23.81%). Hyperbole is an extremely effective literary device since it is dramatically more descriptive in getting a point across and making a desired effect. (2)There are four types of language functions found in the film, namely: emotive (3times or14.29%), conative (6times or28.57%), referential (11times or52.38%), and phatic (once or4.76%). Referential is the highest function since it is logically often found in the language use. Most utterances have referential contents. (3) Thereflection of life in the pirates’ world in the filmis presented through the analysis of honest deception. There are some aspectsthatcan beseen: (a) pirates’ world is a life that is full of immorality and contempt, (b) the use of swear words is very common in the pirates’ world, (c) pirateshave lingo in communicatingin their everyday life, (d) pirates commonly consistof men; it is against pirates' rules for women to be on board, (e) pirates always fly gruesome flagsto makea mark on their ships, (f) the most precious prizes for pirates are chests of gold, silver and jewels, (g) a mutiny is one problem that often appears in their world, and (h) pirating is prohibited by international law becauseitunsettlesthe life of manypeople. Keywords: stylistics, honest deception,Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

“Robin Hook”: The developmental effects of Somali piracy

Copyright @ 2011 Brunel UniversityNaval counter-piracy measures off Somalia have failed to change the incentives for pirates, raising calls for land-based approaches that may involve replacing piracy as a source of income. This paper evaluates the effects of piracy on the Somali economy to establish which (domestic) groups benefit from ransom monies. Given the paucity of economic data on Somalia, we evaluate province-level market data, nightlight emissions and high resolution satellite imagery. We show that significant amounts of ransom monies are spent within Somalia. The impacts appear to be spread widely, benefiting the working poor and pastoralists and offsetting the food price shock of 2008 in the pirate provinces. Pirates appear to invest their money principally in the main cities of Garowe and Bosasso rather than in the backward coastal communities

Fingerprinting with Minimum Distance Decoding

This work adopts an information theoretic framework for the design of collusion-resistant coding/decoding schemes for digital fingerprinting. More specifically, the minimum distance decision rule is used to identify 1 out of t pirates. Achievable rates, under this detection rule, are characterized in two distinct scenarios. First, we consider the averaging attack where a random coding argument is used to show that the rate 1/2 is achievable with t=2 pirates. Our study is then extended to the general case of arbitrary $t$ highlighting the underlying complexity-performance tradeoff. Overall, these results establish the significant performance gains offered by minimum distance decoding as compared to other approaches based on orthogonal codes and correlation detectors. In the second scenario, we characterize the achievable rates, with minimum distance decoding, under any collusion attack that satisfies the marking assumption. For t=2 pirates, we show that the rate $1-H(0.25)\approx 0.188$ is achievable using an ensemble of random linear codes. For $t\geq 3$, the existence of a non-resolvable collusion attack, with minimum distance decoding, for any non-zero rate is established. Inspired by our theoretical analysis, we then construct coding/decoding schemes for fingerprinting based on the celebrated Belief-Propagation framework. Using an explicit repeat-accumulate code, we obtain a vanishingly small probability of misidentification at rate 1/3 under averaging attack with t=2. For collusion attacks which satisfy the marking assumption, we use a more sophisticated accumulate repeat accumulate code to obtain a vanishingly small misidentification probability at rate 1/9 with t=2. These results represent a marked improvement over the best available designs in the literature.Comment: 26 pages, 6 figures, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Securit

The Pirates of Somalia: Coastguards of Anarchy

This paper analyses the underlying factors driving piracy off the coast of Somalia and examines the effectiveness of the international naval anti-piracy mission with respect to its declared aims. We show that while the navies perform well with respect to their short-term aims, they failed to contain the escalation of the piracy problem through 2009: pirates have been diverted from the Gulf of Aden into the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. Evidence from domestic conditions in Somalia suggests that economic development and greater stability might in fact aid pirates.