Quantifying Information Leakage in Finite Order Deterministic Programs

Information flow analysis is a powerful technique for reasoning about the sensitive information exposed by a program during its execution. While past work has proposed information theoretic metrics (e.g., Shannon entropy, min-entropy, guessing entropy, etc.) to quantify such information leakage, we argue that some of these measures not only result in counter-intuitive measures of leakage, but also are inherently prone to conflicts when comparing two programs P1 and P2 -- say Shannon entropy predicts higher leakage for program P1, while guessing entropy predicts higher leakage for program P2. This paper presents the first attempt towards addressing such conflicts and derives solutions for conflict-free comparison of finite order deterministic programs.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figure. A shorter version of this paper is submitted to ICC 201

Trans-Cultural Journeys of East-Asian Educators: The Impact of the Three Teachings

This paper presents the joint journeys, from the East to the West, of three emerging educators, who reflect on their lived experiences in an Asian educational context and their shaped identities through a connection between the motherland and the places to which they immigrated. They have grounded their identities in the inequities they experienced in Asian education and described their experiences through a cultural and social lens as Asian teachers studying in Canadian institutions. They story their lived experiences by using a Photo-voice research method to elicit the narratives of their East-to-West transcultural journeys. The major finding is the reconstructed identity of each of the researchers. The data collected through ‘Photo-voice’ sheds light on the influence on teachers’ mindset of the Three Teachings or Religions—Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism — across Asia on teachers' mindset, which are seen to cause inequities among the marginalized. The purpose of this research is an attempt by the authors, who have immersed themselves in each other’s journeys, to discuss how they have reformed their educator identities in a Canadian educational context in which equity, diversity, and inclusion are acknowledged

Vulnerability in Social Epistemic Networks

Social epistemologists should be well-equipped to explain and evaluate the growing vulnerabilities associated with filter bubbles, echo chambers, and group polarization in social media. However, almost all social epistemology has been built for social contexts that involve merely a speaker-hearer dyad. Filter bubbles, echo chambers, and group polarization all presuppose much larger and more complex network structures. In this paper, we lay the groundwork for a properly social epistemology that gives the role and structure of networks their due. In particular, we formally define epistemic constructs that quantify the structural epistemic position of each node within an interconnected network. We argue for the epistemic value of a structure that we call the (m,k)-observer. We then present empirical evidence that (m,k)-observers are rare in social media discussions of controversial topics, which suggests that people suffer from serious problems of epistemic vulnerability. We conclude by arguing that social epistemologists and computer scientists should work together to develop minimal interventions that improve the structure of epistemic networks

Freedom of Information versus National Sovereignty: The Need for a New Global Forum for the Resolution of Transborder Date Flow Problems

This Note argues that the issues raised by transborder data flow restrictions must be dealt with on a global scale, not on a national basis. Part I of this Note discusses the international legal principles underlying the concept of freedom of information and the legal difficulties presented by the imposition of transborder data flow restrictions. Part II analyzes the perception among developing nations that sovereign rights are threatened by an unrestricted flow of information and discusses the measures developing nations are implementing to control this perceived threat. Part III analyzes several approaches suggested for dealing with the problems of transborder data flow restrictions and argues that a new international forum must be created to constructively address the legitimate concerns of the developing nations. This Note concludes that since the effective demise of Unesco, progress must be made toward creating a viable international forum to address the multilateral concerns over transborder data flow restrictions

Quantifying leakage in the presence of unreliable sources of information

Belief and min-entropy leakage are two well-known approaches to quantify information flow in security systems. Both concepts stand as alternatives to the traditional approaches founded on Shannon entropy and mutual information, which were shown to provide inadequate security guarantees. In this paper we unify the two concepts in one model so as to cope with the frequent (potentially inaccurate, misleading or outdated) attackers’ side information about individuals on social networks, online forums, blogs and other forms of online communication and information sharing. To this end we propose a new metric based on min-entropy that takes into account the adversary’s beliefs

Learning to Collaborate: Lessons Learned from Governance Processes Addressing the Impacts of Sea Level Rise on Transportation Corridors Across California

This study was designed to identify lessons learned from experiences of multi-stakeholder collaboration in governance processes focused on adaptation to sea level rise for specific transportation corridors/assets across different areas of California. Four transportation assets in California were selected as case studies: State Route 37 in the Bay Area; the Cardiff Beach Living Shorelines Project and the LOSSAN railroad at Del Mar in San Diego County; and the Port of Long Beach in Los Angeles County. The study methods included attendance of policy meetings; document analysis; and interviews of staff at (local, regional, and state) government bodies, transportation agencies, climate collaboratives, etc. The study identified three major governance challenges shared among these cases: (1) stakeholder involvement or collaboration with ‘unusual’ partners; (2) jurisdictional fragmentation; and (3) lack of funding. The lessons learned to address these challenges were: (a) include a wide range of stakeholders early on in the project; (b) identify an intermediary or facilitator with relevant knowledge and social capital with the stakeholders; (c) establish a forum for negotiations and information exchange; (d) draft a memorandum of understanding with the rules of collaboration; (e) appoint a project manager to tie all the project parts and stakeholders together and sustain engagement; (f) structure the collaboration in tiers from technical/operational to executive/political; (g) explore options to make any given project a multi-benefit project; (h) advocate for a multi-year stream of funding rather than a lump sum; (i) leverage collaboration for funding and highlight, to potential funders, the collaborative element as a means to increase the efficiency of their investment. Issues to consider when deriving lessons from other jurisdictions were: differences in capacity, or available resources and staff; the numbers of actors involved; pre-existing positive collaborative relationships between the actors; exposure of transportation assets to sea-level rise; existing vulnerabilities of the corridor/asset; and the economic relevance of the corridor/asset

“Untiring Joys and Sorrows”: Yeats and the Sidhe

Excerpt: In popular culture, the idea of Irishness has long been associated with the idea of fairies and leprechauns. This association has been explored by scholars who treat the Sidhe—also known as the daoine maithe, or the “good people”—as either a sociological or a literary construct. Most often, the sociological con- struct is somewhat insidious and the literary construct tends to be romantic. Recently, Angela Bourke has explored how the folkloric understanding of the fairies may be used to explain the otherwise inexplicable—for instance, when hormonal changes that come about through puberty or menopause were explained by saying that the fairies have taken the real person and left a changeling instead. Bourke’s The Burning of Bridget Cleary (1999) examines the case of Michael Cleary, who burned his relatively independent wife to death in the hopes of forcing the fairies to change her back to the acquiescent wife that he desired. Bourke finds the mythology of the fairy world so deeply ingrained in Irish culture that it blurs the lines between the literary construct and the sociological us