The Best Laid Plans: How Unrestrained Arbitration Decisions Have Corrupted the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy

In the rapidly changing Internet age, a sound dispute resolution policy is needed to address conflict where traditional rights intersect emerging technologies. This Note examines how unfettered arbitration decisions, even those made with the best of intentions, can corrupt a good dispute resolution policy, as is the case with the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. The Note provides background information on ICANN, domain disputes regarding cybersquatting and reverse domain hijacking, and the Policy. It then explains how ICANN’s dispute resolution providers’ expansive decisions have weakened the Policy by removing the internal limitations that made it strong and effective. Finally, this Note offers a discussion of how the Policy can still be saved through the exercise of restraint by ICANN’s dispute resolution providers

Security, Privacy, and Technology Development: The Impact on National Security

The evolution of modern communications and information technology sparked a revolution of unprecedented proportions, bringing about an explosion in terms of users and capabilities, as well as increasing demands for both security and privacy. To meet these security demands, new technologies are evolving that can in fact provide a secure and protected environment. At the same time, however, the technology-development path is being increasingly impacted by two other major dynamics: the legal environment and user expectations with respect to privacy. Within the past four years in particular, several major court decisions as well as the official release of documents and illicit “leaks” have drawn enormous attention to what privacy protections must be afforded to various types of data and communications. Users, increasingly aware of intrusions into their data and communications—ranging from intelligence services to hackers and criminals—are demanding greater levels of protection. While technological approaches to greater privacy are possible, they are not costfree— particularly in terms of the computational overhead and other constraints imposed on new systems

Mercury: Recovering forgotten passwords using personal devices

Instead of allowing the recovery of original passwords, forgotten passwords are often reset using online mechanisms such as password verification questions (PVQ methods) and password reset links in email. These mechanisms are generally weak, exploitable, and force users to choose new passwords. Emailing the original password exposes the password to third parties. To address these issues, and to allow forgotten passwords to be securely restored, we present a scheme called Mercury. Its primary mode employs user-level public keys and a personal mobile device (PMD) such as a smart-phone, netbook, or tablet. A user generates a key pair on her PMD; the private key remains on the PMD and the public key is shared with different sites (e.g., during account setup). For password recovery, the site sends the (public key)-encrypted password to the user's pre-registered email address, or displays the encrypted password on a webpage, e.g., as a barcode. The encrypted password is then decrypted using the PMD and revealed to the user. A prototype implementation of Mercury is available as an Android application

Federal Tort Claims Act: Discretionary Function Exception Revisited

Several commentators have maintained that the federal courts have taken confusing and inconsistent positions with regard to the discretionary function exception to the Federal Tort Claims Act. The authors attempt to refute this position by analyzing more recent opinions and finding a trend. This trend has led to a less confusing and more definite framework depending upon various factors which will appear in every case. By analyzing these factors while keeping in mind the purposes of both the Act and the exception, the authors conclude that the outcome of any dispute in this area will be susceptible to a higher degree of predictability

The Emergence of Group Dynamics from Contextualised Social Processes: A Complexity-Oriented Grounded-Theory Approach

A formal group, within a University, is typically created to accomplish work goals through on-going coordination, combination, and integration of member resources. Group behaviour emerges from the confluence of individual and social forces and behaviours enacted to pursue desired goals. Interactions between group members in context create patterns of group processes and behaviours, and how these patterns change over time creates group dynamics. However, group dynamics do not simply reflect intra-group processes; they also reflect influences that arise from larger contexts within which the group is embedded. Group behaviour can, therefore, be argued to reflect emergent self-organisation, sensitivity to time and initial conditions, and causal ambiguity, properties associated with complex, dynamic and adaptive systems. Much of the research into group dynamics and behaviour (especially experimental social psychology research employing a positivist reductionist theoretical perspective) has tended not to look at groups through such a complexity lens. The research reported in this thesis was intended to push into this frontier. The fundamental question addressed in this thesis is: 'What occurs during group interactions associated with the emergence and maintenance of different types of group dynamics and how do those dynamics tend to unfold over time?' I argue in this thesis that a deep and contextual understanding of the complexity of group dynamics can be achieved using an interpretivist/constructivist perspective coupled with a grounded theory approach employing methodologies that permit the deeper exploration of the meaning of individual as well as collective group behaviours. To achieve the depth of learning needed in this research, I focused on a single long-standing group, a committee that existed within a larger university. I gathered qualitative data using three distinct data gathering strategies: (1) participant observation of the group at its regular monthly meetings over a 12- month period; (2) semi-structured interviews with current and former individual group members; and (3) the review of historical documents (e.g., minutes of meetings, discussion papers) relevant to the group's initial genesis and evolution over the time period prior to this research as well as my own field notes amassed over the duration of the study. I employed MAXQDA 11 Plus to support my analyses of the qualitative data amassed using these three strategies and to aid the development of grounded theory that accounted for the group's contextual dynamics. The results of this study revealed that when the focal group was addressing routine group tasks, systematic and consistent patterns of behaviour were observed. However, when the group was exposed to or perceived an internal or external shock, some interesting and unexpected emergent patterns of behaviour were observed. These behaviours could be traced to the desire for a select few members to maintain the historically based group identity, function, and direction. This maintenance process was accomplished through the application of varying types of power to offset possible bifurcation. For example, one class of such behaviours focused on 'leadership hijacking', where control over the group's consideration of an issue was taken over by a person who was not the discussion leader but for whom that issue was 'hot' and perceived to be strongly threatening. Of the number of external shocks observed, the interplay between the university's and other larger contextual agendas and the group's agenda was visible and often vigorous. This type of shock caused confrontation and escalation behaviours to emerge with the goal, once again, to maintain the historically based group identity and agenda. The addition of data gathered from semi-structured interviews with current and former group members and the review of historical documents relevant to the group provided further evidence relevant to how members strived to maintain the historically based group agenda through the application of their unique brand of group dynamics. In some cases, depending upon the issue at hand, the maintenance of this historically based group agenda centred upon one group member and, in other cases, involved the creation of shorter- and longer-term coalitions. Thus, an understanding of the dynamics of interaction within this group was achieved through close examination of the various contexts within which the group was embedded as well as the contexts of the individual group members. The results support the need to employ a complex adaptive systems perspective when trying to unpack group dynamics as they play out in real time. This research also reinforces the value of adopting an interpretivist perspective to enhance the depth of this learning

The over-representation of black students in suspensions and expulsions from school.

This study sought to understand the phenomenon of school ‘exclusion’ with particular reference to the suspension and expulsion of black (male) students in secondary schools. The principles of the ‘market’ by which schools are expected to operate are widely viewed as responsible, for the rise in the numbers of children expelled from school. However, it is argued that ‘market’ principles alone cannot explain why black students are overrepresented in suspensions and expulsions to such a high degree. The study was carried out between 1992 and 1996 in three schools. It was ethnographic employing mainly interviews, observation and limited documentary analysis. The concept of ‘orientation’ was employed to make sense of the choices headteachers make as well as a means of understanding teachers’ relationships with students. It is suggested that schools whose general orientation is towards punishment and not ‘education’ as an integral part of the school disciplinary culture, will be more likely to expel students than find ways of keeping them in school. However, the ethnic significance of suspensions and expulsions requires a different explanation. It is argued that black communities have historically had a troubled relationship with the education system in Britain and that the high incidence of suspension and expulsion of black students can only be understood within this context. I argue that the human rights implications of expulsions are far reaching given the connection between expulsion and an individual’s vulnerability to involvement in the criminal justice system

Understanding Al Qaeda

This book controversially argues that Al Qaeda has clear aims, and that the only way to defeat it is to engage with its arguments in a serious way. Since the publication of the first edition in 2006, Mohamedou has brought the text right up-to-date. Starting with Al Qaeda's creation almost twenty years ago, and sketching its global mutation, Mohamedou explains that there is a cogent strategy to Al Qaeda's actions. He shows that the 'war on terror' is failing, only serving to recruit more terrorists to Al Qaeda's cause. He also puts forward a case for how the international community can best respond. Arguing that it is dangerous to dismiss Al Qaeda as illogical and irrational, this incisive and original book is important for policy-makers and ideal for undergraduates in international relations, Middle East studies and peace/conflict studies

The Tort that Refuses to Go Away: The Subtle Reemergence of Public Disclosure of Private Facts

This Comment focuses instead on the subtle reemergence of the private facts tort in factual scenarios Warren and Brandeis most likely could not foresee one hundred years ago. Part II of the Comment briefly describes the development of the private facts tort. Part III examines the inevitable conflict between the private facts tort and the First Amendment, and common law attempts to reconcile that conflict through variations of the newsworthiness defense. Part IV focuses on the resurrection of the private facts tort in recent case law, due to judicial limitation of the newsworthiness defense. Finally, after examining the problems associated with the fragmented case law, Part V proposes a new standard for determining newsworthiness-a standard that considers the social use of the information, the extent of prying into private lives for the information, and most importantly, the private or public status of the victim

The neurocognition of linguistic conflict resolution: evidence from brain oscillations, ERPs, and source modelling

The ability to express thought in language, to communicate, and to rapidly understand who did what to whom is a highly complex cognitive skill and ultimately the cognitive trait that defines us as being human. For the most part, language comprehension runs very smoothly and people perform it extremely quickly and efficiently. One might think this is nothing exceptional, were it not for the fact that everyday speech contains plenty of ambiguities, speech errors, and otherwise conflicting or interfering information. Similar to any other cognitive system, the language system is fitted out with mechanisms that detect conflicts and trigger compensating adjustments ‘on-the-fly’ in order to make sense of what has been said. Inevitably, language comprehension requires a combination of automatic and controlled processes and, depending on the context, we engage in both to varying degrees. Historically, linguistic conflict resolution has been investigated regarding to what extent linguistic modules such as ‘syntax’ and ‘semantics’ contribute to the process. In this thesis I take a step away from the traditional approach towards the question how the mechanisms underlying linguistic conflict resolution fit into domain-general cognition. It has been shown that controlled processing reliably results in activation of large-scale networks throughout the cortex. Importantly, neuroimaging studies have shown that the crucial brain region that enables us to flexibly make adjustments is the prefrontal cortex (PFC). In this thesis I present four case studies that investigated brain oscillations (as recorded in the EEG and MEG signal) in the time-frequency- (TFR), amplitude-time- (ERP), and source domain to determine how the language system relates to general executive functions. The materials employed structures that are amongst the most well-studied in psycholinguistic research: locally ambiguous garden-path sentences (e.g. “The nurse examined by the doctor was not on duty”), gender-agreement mismatches in anaphora and cataphora (e.g.“The king left London after reminding himself/herself about the letter”/ “After reminding himself/herself about the letter, the king left London.”), and syntactically complex garden-path sentences (“The receptionist realized that the nurse examined by the doctor was not on duty.”).The results in this thesis support the notion that there is indeed a connection between the language system and general executive functions during linguistic conflict resolution. Still, there are also situations where specialized ‘modules’ perform conflict resolution in a highly automatised fashion, particularly when contextual information sufficiently cues future input. However, as soon as increased uncertainty comes into play or capacity limits are reached, the brain appears to rely on extremely flexible mechanisms in prefrontal cortex regions