Stateless Puzzles for Real Time Online Fraud Preemption

The profitability of fraud in online systems such as app markets and social networks marks the failure of existing defense mechanisms. In this paper, we propose FraudSys, a real-time fraud preemption approach that imposes Bitcoin-inspired computational puzzles on the devices that post online system activities, such as reviews and likes. We introduce and leverage several novel concepts that include (i) stateless, verifiable computational puzzles, that impose minimal performance overhead, but enable the efficient verification of their authenticity, (ii) a real-time, graph-based solution to assign fraud scores to user activities, and (iii) mechanisms to dynamically adjust puzzle difficulty levels based on fraud scores and the computational capabilities of devices. FraudSys does not alter the experience of users in online systems, but delays fraudulent actions and consumes significant computational resources of the fraudsters. Using real datasets from Google Play and Facebook, we demonstrate the feasibility of FraudSys by showing that the devices of honest users are minimally impacted, while fraudster controlled devices receive daily computational penalties of up to 3,079 hours. In addition, we show that with FraudSys, fraud does not pay off, as a user equipped with mining hardware (e.g., AntMiner S7) will earn less than half through fraud than from honest Bitcoin mining

Search Rank Fraud Prevention in Online Systems

The survival of products in online services such as Google Play, Yelp, Facebook and Amazon, is contingent on their search rank. This, along with the social impact of such services, has also turned them into a lucrative medium for fraudulently influencing public opinion. Motivated by the need to aggressively promote products, communities that specialize in social network fraud (e.g., fake opinions and reviews, likes, followers, app installs) have emerged, to create a black market for fraudulent search optimization. Fraudulent product developers exploit these communities to hire teams of workers willing and able to commit fraud collectively, emulating realistic, spontaneous activities from unrelated people. We call this behavior “search rank fraud”. In this dissertation, we argue that fraud needs to be proactively discouraged and prevented, instead of only reactively detected and filtered. We introduce two novel approaches to discourage search rank fraud in online systems. First, we detect fraud in real-time, when it is posted, and impose resource consuming penalties on the devices that post activities. We introduce and leverage several novel concepts that include (i) stateless, verifiable computational puzzles that impose minimal performance overhead, but enable the efficient verification of their authenticity, (ii) a real-time, graph based solution to assign fraud scores to user activities, and (iii) mechanisms to dynamically adjust puzzle difficulty levels based on fraud scores and the computational capabilities of devices. In a second approach, we introduce the problem of fraud de-anonymization: reveal the crowdsourcing site accounts of the people who post large amounts of fraud, thus their bank accounts, and provide compelling evidence of fraud to the users of products that they promote. We investigate the ability of our solutions to ensure that fraud does not pay off

Public Law and Economics

This comprehensive textbook applies economic analysis to public law. The economic analysis of law has revolutionized legal scholarship and teaching in the last half-century, but it has focused mostly on private law, business law, and criminal law. This book extends the analysis to fundamental topics in public law, such as the separation of government powers, regulation by agencies, constitutional rights, and elections. Every public law involves six fundamental processes of government: bargaining, voting, entrenching, delegating, adjudicating, and enforcing. The book devotes two chapters to each process, beginning with the economic theory and then applying the theory to a wide range of puzzles and problems in law. Each chapter concentrates on cases and legal doctrine, showing the relevance of economics to the work of lawyers and judges. Featuring lucid, accessible writing and engaging examples, the book addresses enduring topics in public law as well as modern controversies, including gerrymandering, voter identification laws, and qualified immunity for police

Public Law and Economics

This comprehensive textbook applies economic analysis to public law. The economic analysis of law has revolutionized legal scholarship and teaching in the last half-century, but it has focused mostly on private law, business law, and criminal law. This book extends the analysis to fundamental topics in public law, such as the separation of government powers, regulation by agencies, constitutional rights, and elections. Every public law involves six fundamental processes of government: bargaining, voting, entrenching, delegating, adjudicating, and enforcing. The book devotes two chapters to each process, beginning with the economic theory and then applying the theory to a wide range of puzzles and problems in law. Each chapter concentrates on cases and legal doctrine, showing the relevance of economics to the work of lawyers and judges. Featuring lucid, accessible writing and engaging examples, the book addresses enduring topics in public law as well as modern controversies, including gerrymandering, voter identification laws, and qualified immunity for police

The President in His Labyrinth: Checks and Balances in the New Pan-American Presidentialism

This dissertation presents a theory of the separation of powers centered on the President’s “power to persuade.” To meet the imperial public expectations placed on the office in the modern age, the President will reliably try to supplement his limited formal powers by convincing others to support his agenda, the people, party allies, and courts being the most important. The President’s techniques of persuasion fall into three regular categories. First, there is “going public,” or popular leadership, where the President turns the force of popular majorities into a tool for shaping policy or legislative outcomes. Second is executive law-making, whereby the President presses on party alliances to shape legislative content: drafting legislative proposals, mediating congressional debates, soliciting or taking advantage of broad delegations of authority. Finally, there is emergency management, whereby the President invokes security threats, real or contrived, to press his natural advantages of speed and decisiveness and claim exclusive power over governance. In three case studies from Latin America, I illustrate these techniques and how institutions have adapted in response. Some are success stories, some are not, but all offer evocative lessons in designing solutions to problems the U.S. also confronts. First, on popular leadership, I discuss Venezuelan democracy under populist Hugo Chávez, in which institutions that could be coopted and radicalized (the courts, the legislature) were, while those that could not (opposition governorships and state and local agencies) were duplicated and circumvented by a proliferation of loyalist organizations that effectively created a shadow “parastate.” Second, I give a critical assessment of Brazil’s spin on “cabinet government,” in which the makeup of the President’s Cabinet directly mirrors party balance in the legislature, thereby heightening the risks of quid-pro-quo policymaking, but also drawing a beneficial link between policy and representative democracy. Finally, I describe Colombia’s efforts to “judicialize” war, internal rebellion, and other economic or social crises by subjecting these to judicial review by the Constitutional Court, created in 1991 with a mandate to curb a historical legacy of presidential excess. Bringing these lessons home, I discuss how the American constitutional system is designed to absorb the shocks of populism, de facto presidential legislating, and the abuse of war powers, and how to channel their beneficial tendencies and contain their negative aspects. I argue that the U.S.’ robust civil society prevents the most egregious abuses of the “bully pulpit,” but that sweeping institutional capture can happen, and that the rule of law is threatened where institutions like the EPA or the FBI are not reformed, but tarred as illegitimate and unrepresentative. Second, I treat executive-legislative cooperation in governance and increases in delegated authority as essentially unavoidable, but argue that the concentration of power ought to be met by increased mechanisms of public oversight and participation that go beyond notice-and-comment, to include citizen initiatives. Finally, I argue that the exploitation of presidential war power needs to be made accountable to strict temporal and legal limits, and that in the American constitutional system, this would be most practically achieved by a new jurisprudence abandoning the political question doctrine with regard to invocations of the commander-in-chief power, especially those unsupported by congressional authorization

Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices, Third Edition

The Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices, Third Edition (the “Compendium” or “Third Edition”) is the administrative manual of the Register of Copyrights concerning Title 17 of the United States Code and Chapter 37 of the Code of Federal Regulations. It provides instruction to agency staff regarding their statutory duties and provides expert guidance to copyright applicants, practitioners, scholars, the courts, and members of the general public regarding institutional practices and related principles of law. The Compendium documents and explains the many technical requirements, regulations, and legal interpretations of the U.S. Copyright Office with a primary focus on the registration of copyright claims, documentation of copyright ownership, and recordation of copyright documents, including assignments and licenses. It describes the wide range of services that the Office provides for searching, accessing, and retrieving information located in its extensive collection of copyright records and the associated fees for these services. The Compendium provides guidance regarding the contents and scope of particular registrations and records. And it seeks to educate applicants about a number of common mistakes, such as providing incorrect, ambiguous, or insufficient information, or making overbroad claims of authorship. The Compendium does not cover every principle of copyright law or detail every aspect of the Office’s administrative practices. The Office may, in exceptional circumstances, depart from its normal practices to ensure an outcome that is most appropriate. The Compendium does not override any existing statute or regulation. The policies and practices set forth in the Compendium do not in themselves have the force and effect of law and are not binding upon the Register of Copyrights or Copyright Office staff. However, the Compendium does explain the legal rationale and determinations of the Copyright Office, where applicable, including circumstances where there is no controlling judicial authority

Will cyber war happen? Conceptualisint cyber warfare as acts of war

Cyber attacks are becoming increasingly common as a tool for conducting foreign and security policy. Despite cases of real damage inflicted on states by such attacks, however, a cyber-only attack has never triggered a conventional military response. This may lead observers to assume that a robust norm exists to the effect that a cyber-only attack cannot clear the threshold to qualify as an act of war rendering conventional military response legitimate. This thesis seeks to question the robustness of any such assumption. It proposes a framework for understanding inter-state actions that highlights the scope for divergent state interpretations regarding the parameters of legitimate response to a cyber-attack, and consequent risk of inadvertent provocation of conventional response. Using two historical cases as illustrative examples, the thesis examines the expectations of states in deploying cyber attacks, especially that of contained risk, as well as how the attack was interpreted by the state that has been acted upon. It then discusses the range of potential modes of response open to the victim government in the aftermath of the attack's discovery. In critically assessing these, the thesis judges that the factors inhibiting the response were contingent and primarily prudential. In alternate circumstances, it is quite conceivable that a state might consider conventional military action as falling within the scope of its legitimate response to a cyber attack, if the attack were of sufficient severity, and prudential calculations permitted. We should be cognisant that the threshold for judging an 'act of war' to have been committed is a construction based upon states' respective, and potentially divergent, interpretations of actions taken by and against them. As such, prevalent understandings regarding the thresholds for war and the parameters of legitimate response may be subject to change in light of advancing technology and the resulting scope for forms of aggression without precedent

Java, Java, Java: Object-Oriented Problem Solving

Open Access Textbook from Open Textbook Library: Java, Java, Java, 3e was previously published by Pearson Education, Inc. The first edition (2000) and the second edition (2003) were published by Prentice-Hall. In 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. reassigned the copyright to the authors, and we are happy now to be able to make the book available under an open source license. This PDF edition of the book is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which allows the book to be used, modified, and shared with attribution: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). – Ralph Morelli and Ralph Walde – Hartford, CT – December 30, 201