40,923 research outputs found
Security Games with Information Leakage: Modeling and Computation
Most models of Stackelberg security games assume that the attacker only knows
the defender's mixed strategy, but is not able to observe (even partially) the
instantiated pure strategy. Such partial observation of the deployed pure
strategy -- an issue we refer to as information leakage -- is a significant
concern in practical applications. While previous research on patrolling games
has considered the attacker's real-time surveillance, our settings, therefore
models and techniques, are fundamentally different. More specifically, after
describing the information leakage model, we start with an LP formulation to
compute the defender's optimal strategy in the presence of leakage. Perhaps
surprisingly, we show that a key subproblem to solve this LP (more precisely,
the defender oracle) is NP-hard even for the simplest of security game models.
We then approach the problem from three possible directions: efficient
algorithms for restricted cases, approximation algorithms, and heuristic
algorithms for sampling that improves upon the status quo. Our experiments
confirm the necessity of handling information leakage and the advantage of our
algorithms
Surveillant assemblages of governance in massively multiplayer online games:a comparative analysis
This paper explores governance in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs), one sub-sector of the digital games industry. Informed by media governance studies, Surveillance Studies, and game studies, this paper identifies five elements which form part of the system of governance in MMOGs. These elements are: game code and rules; game policies; company community management practices; player participatory practices; and paratexts. Together these governance elements function as a surveillant assemblage, which relies to varying degrees on lateral and hierarchical forms of surveillance, and the assembly of human and nonhuman elements.Using qualitative mixed methods we examine and compare how these elements operate in three commercial MMOGs: Eve Online, World of Warcraft and Tibia. While peer and participatory surveillance elements are important, we identified two major trends in the governance of disruptive behaviours by the game companies in our case studies. Firstly, an increasing reliance on automated forms of dataveillance to control and punish game players, and secondly, increasing recourse to contract law and diminishing user privacy rights. Game players found it difficult to appeal the changing terms and conditions and they turned to creating paratexts outside of the game in an attempt to negotiate the boundaries of the surveillant assemblage. In the wider context of self-regulated governance systems these trends highlight the relevance of consumer rights, privacy, and data protection legislation to online games and the usefulness of bringing game studies and Surveillance Studies into dialogue
Visibility and the Policing of Public Space
From studies of ‘panoptic’ CCTV surveillance to accounts of undercover police officers, it is often mooted that visibility and invisibility are central to the policing of public space. However, there has been no comprehensive and critical assessment of this axiom. Drawing on the practices of a variety of policing providers and regulators, and the work of geographers, criminologists and other social scientists, this paper examines how and why visibility underpins the policing of public space. We begin by considering the ways in which policing bodies and technologies seek to render themselves selectively visible and invisible in the landscape. The paper then moves on to explore the ways in which policing agents attempt to make ‘incongruous’ bodies, behaviours and signs variously visible and invisible in public space. We then offer a sympathetic critique of these accounts, arguing that more attention is needed in understanding: (i) how other senses such as touch, smell and sound are socially constructed as in and out-of-place and ‘policed’ accordingly; and (ii) how the policing of undesirable bodies and practices is not simply about quantitative crime reduction, but conducted through qualitative, embodied performance. The paper concludes by pinpointing key areas for future research
Markov Decision Processes with Applications in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of autonomous and resource-limited
devices. The devices cooperate to monitor one or more physical phenomena within
an area of interest. WSNs operate as stochastic systems because of randomness
in the monitored environments. For long service time and low maintenance cost,
WSNs require adaptive and robust methods to address data exchange, topology
formulation, resource and power optimization, sensing coverage and object
detection, and security challenges. In these problems, sensor nodes are to make
optimized decisions from a set of accessible strategies to achieve design
goals. This survey reviews numerous applications of the Markov decision process
(MDP) framework, a powerful decision-making tool to develop adaptive algorithms
and protocols for WSNs. Furthermore, various solution methods are discussed and
compared to serve as a guide for using MDPs in WSNs
Cultural Practices Shaping Zoonotic Diseases Surveillance: The Case of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza and Thailand Native Chicken Farmers
Effectiveness of current passive zoonotic disease surveillance systems is limited by the under-reporting of disease outbreaks in the domestic animal population. Evaluating the acceptability of passive surveillance and its economic, social and cultural determinants appears a critical step for improving it. A participatory rural appraisal was implemented in a rural subdistrict of Thailand. Focus group interviews were used to identify sanitary risks perceived by native chicken farmers and describe the structure of their value chain. Qualitative individual interviews with a large diversity of actors enabled to identify perceived costs and benefits associated with the reporting of HPAI suspicions to sanitary authorities. Besides, flows of information on HPAI suspected cases were assessed using network analysis, based on data collected through individual questionnaires. Results show that the presence of cockfighting activities in the area negatively affected the willingness of all chicken farmers and other actors to report suspected HPAI cases. The high financial and affective value of fighting cocks contradicted the HPAI control policy based on mass culling. However, the importance of product quality in the native chicken meat value chain and the free veterinary services and products delivered by veterinary officers had a positive impact on suspected case reporting. Besides, cockfighting practitioners had a significantly higher centrality than other actors in the information network and they facilitated the spatial diffusion of information. Social ties built in cockfighting activities and the shared purpose of protecting valuable cocks were at the basis of the diffusion of information and the informal collective management of diseases. Building bridges with this informal network would greatly improve the effectiveness of passive surveillance
Code, space and everyday life
In this paper we examine the role of code (software) in the spatial formation of
collective life. Taking the view that human life and coded technology are folded into
one another, we theorise space as ontogenesis. Space, we posit, is constantly being
bought into being through a process of transduction – the constant making anew of a
domain in reiterative and transformative practices - as an incomplete solution to a
relational problem. The relational problem we examine is the ongoing encounter
between individuals and environment where the solution, to a greater or lesser extent,
is code. Code, we posit, is diversely embedded in collectives as coded objects, coded
infrastructure, coded processes and coded assemblages. These objects, infrastructure,
processes and assemblages possess technicity, that is, unfolding or evolutive power to
make things happen; the ability to mediate, supplement, augment, monitor, regulate,
operate, facilitate, produce collective life. We contend that when the technicity of
code is operationalised it transduces one of three forms of hybrid spatial formations:
code/space, coded space and backgrounded coded space. These formations are
contingent, relational, extensible and scaleless, often stretched out across networks of
greater or shorter length. We demonstrate the coded transduction of space through
three vignettes – each a day in the life of three people living in London, UK, tracing
the technical mediation of their interactions, transactions and mobilities. We then
discuss how code becomes the relational solution to five different classes of problems
– domestic living, travelling, working, communicating, and consuming
The New Asian Challenge
The initial postwar challenge from East Asia was economic. Japan crashed back into global markets in the 1960s, became the largest surplus and creditor country in the 1980s, and was viewed by many as the world’s dominant economy by 1990. The newly industrialized countries (Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore) followed suit on a smaller but still substantial scale shortly thereafter. China only re-entered world commerce in the 1980s but has now become the second largest economy (in purchasing power terms), the second largest recipient of foreign direct investment inflows, and the second largest holder of monetary reserves. Indonesia and most of Southeast Asia grew at 7 percent for two or more decades. The oil crises of the 1970s and the financial crises of the late 1990s injected temporary setbacks but East Asia has clearly become a third major pole of the world economy, along with North America and Western Europe.
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