Privacy in the Genomic Era

Genome sequencing technology has advanced at a rapid pace and it is now possible to generate highly-detailed genotypes inexpensively. The collection and analysis of such data has the potential to support various applications, including personalized medical services. While the benefits of the genomics revolution are trumpeted by the biomedical community, the increased availability of such data has major implications for personal privacy; notably because the genome has certain essential features, which include (but are not limited to) (i) an association with traits and certain diseases, (ii) identification capability (e.g., forensics), and (iii) revelation of family relationships. Moreover, direct-to-consumer DNA testing increases the likelihood that genome data will be made available in less regulated environments, such as the Internet and for-profit companies. The problem of genome data privacy thus resides at the crossroads of computer science, medicine, and public policy. While the computer scientists have addressed data privacy for various data types, there has been less attention dedicated to genomic data. Thus, the goal of this paper is to provide a systematization of knowledge for the computer science community. In doing so, we address some of the (sometimes erroneous) beliefs of this field and we report on a survey we conducted about genome data privacy with biomedical specialists. Then, after characterizing the genome privacy problem, we review the state-of-the-art regarding privacy attacks on genomic data and strategies for mitigating such attacks, as well as contextualizing these attacks from the perspective of medicine and public policy. This paper concludes with an enumeration of the challenges for genome data privacy and presents a framework to systematize the analysis of threats and the design of countermeasures as the field moves forward

Complexity Theory, Adaptation, and Administrative Law

Recently, commentators have applied insights from complexity theory to legal analysis generally and to administrative law in particular. This Article focuses on one of the central problems that complexity. theory addresses, the importance and mechanisms of adaptation within complex systems. In Part I, the Article uses three features of complex adaptive systems-emergence from self-assembly, nonlinearity, and sensitivity to initial conditions-and explores the extent to which they may add value as a matter of positive analysis to the understanding of change within legal systems. In Part H, the Article focuses on three normative claims in public law scholarship that depend explicitly or implicitly on notions of adaptation: that states offer advantages over the federal government because experimentation can make them more adaptive, that federal agencies should themselves become more experimentalist using the tool of adaptive management, and that administrative agencies shou Id adopt collaborative mechanisms in policymaking. Using two analytic tools found in the complexity literature, the genetic algorithm and evolutionary game theory, the Article tests the extent to which these three normative claims are borne out

Wodel: a domain-specific language for model mutation

This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in SAC '16: Proceedings of the 31st Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/10.1145/2851613.2851751Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is a software engineering paradigm that uses models as main assets in all development phases. While many languages for model manipulation exist (e.g., for model transformation or code generation), there is a lack of frameworks to de ne and apply model mutations. A model mutant is a variation of an original model, created by speci c model mutation operations. Model mutation has many applications, for instance, in the areas of model trans- formation testing, model-based testing or education. In this paper, we present a domain-speci c language, called Wodel, for the speci cation and generation of model mu- tants. Wodel is domain-independent, as it can be used to generate mutants of models conforming to arbitrary meta- models. Its development environment is extensible, permit- ting the incorporation of post-processors for di erent appli- cations. As an example, we show an application consisting on the automated generation of exercises for particular do- mains (automata, class diagrams, electronic circuits, etc.).Thanks to Víctor López Rivero for the initial implementation of the Wodel IDE. Work supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity (TIN2014-52129-R), the Madrid Region (S2013/ICE-3006), and the EU commission (FP7-ICT-2013-10, #611125)

Evolutionarily Stable Preferences in Contests

We define an indirect evolutionary approach formally and apply it to (Tullock) contests. While it is known (Leininger, 2003) that the direct evolutionary approach in the form of finite population ESS (Schaffer, 1988) yields more aggressive behavior than in Nash equilibrium, it is now shown that the indirect evolutionary approach yields the same more aggressive behavior, too. This holds for any population size N, if evolution of preferences is determined by behavior in two-player contests. The evolutionarily stable preferences (ESP) of the indirect approach turn out to be negatively interdependent, thereby ”rationalizing” the more aggressive behavior.contests, preference evolution, evolutionary stability

Static Analysis for Extracting Permission Checks of a Large Scale Framework: The Challenges And Solutions for Analyzing Android

A common security architecture is based on the protection of certain resources by permission checks (used e.g., in Android and Blackberry). It has some limitations, for instance, when applications are granted more permissions than they actually need, which facilitates all kinds of malicious usage (e.g., through code injection). The analysis of permission-based framework requires a precise mapping between API methods of the framework and the permissions they require. In this paper, we show that naive static analysis fails miserably when applied with off-the-shelf components on the Android framework. We then present an advanced class-hierarchy and field-sensitive set of analyses to extract this mapping. Those static analyses are capable of analyzing the Android framework. They use novel domain specific optimizations dedicated to Android.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (2014). arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1206.582

Transnational economic activism and private regulatory power

Private bodies involved in global regulatory governance shape and monitor economic behaviour. Their regulatory power has greatly increased over the last several decades. Thanks to an impressive apparatus of standard-setting, they have transformed economic activity. The dominance of private bodies in standard-setting has continued despite crises to which they themselves have contributed. Existing literature suggests that the State ' orchestrates ' private regulatory activity, thereby retaining a high level of control. Yet, this article shows that the opposite has occurred: crises, broadly defined as disruptive events, make private bodies more resilient or generate new transnational ones. The lack of State control has ushered in a new era of private authority. Private bodies use crises as opportunities to reorganize and become more assertive in norm-creation, overriding and substituting State powers. Free from organizational hierarchies, formal accountability structures, scrutiny, pressure, and obligations, private bodies expand their regulatory domain, enhance their collective memory and identity, and grow stronger through crises. Future empirical work on the interaction between public regulatory and supervisory authorities and private rule-makers can make a difference in ensuring that private rule-making serves the public interest

Dagstuhl Reports : Volume 1, Issue 2, February 2011

Online Privacy: Towards Informational Self-Determination on the Internet (Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop 11061) : Simone Fischer-Hübner, Chris Hoofnagle, Kai Rannenberg, Michael Waidner, Ioannis Krontiris and Michael Marhöfer Self-Repairing Programs (Dagstuhl Seminar 11062) : Mauro Pezzé, Martin C. Rinard, Westley Weimer and Andreas Zeller Theory and Applications of Graph Searching Problems (Dagstuhl Seminar 11071) : Fedor V. Fomin, Pierre Fraigniaud, Stephan Kreutzer and Dimitrios M. Thilikos Combinatorial and Algorithmic Aspects of Sequence Processing (Dagstuhl Seminar 11081) : Maxime Crochemore, Lila Kari, Mehryar Mohri and Dirk Nowotka Packing and Scheduling Algorithms for Information and Communication Services (Dagstuhl Seminar 11091) Klaus Jansen, Claire Mathieu, Hadas Shachnai and Neal E. Youn