Our Friends Electric:Reflections on Advocacy and Design Research for the Voice Enabled Internet

Emerging technologies---such as the voice enabled internet---present many opportunities and challenges for HCI research and society as a whole. Advocating for better, healthier implementations of these technologies will require us to communicate abstract values, such as trust, to an audience that ranges from the general public to technologists and even policymakers. In this paper, we show how a combination of film-making and product design can help to illustrate these abstract values. Working as part of a wider international advocacy campaign, Our Friends Electric focuses on the voice enabled internet, translating abstract notions of Internet Health into comprehensible digital futures for the relationship between our voice and the internet. We conclude with a call for designers of physical things to be more involved with the development of trust, privacy and security in this powerful emerging technological landscape

Privacy Preserving Threat Hunting in Smart Home Environments

The recent proliferation of smart home environments offers new and transformative circumstances for various domains with a commitment to enhancing the quality of life and experience. Most of these environments combine different gadgets offered by multiple stakeholders in a dynamic and decentralized manner, which in turn presents new challenges from the perspective of digital investigation. In addition, a plentiful amount of data records got generated because of the day to day interactions between these gadgets and homeowners, which poses difficulty in managing and analyzing such data. The analysts should endorse new digital investigation approaches to tackle the current limitations in traditional approaches when used in these environments. The digital evidence in such environments can be found inside the records of logfiles that store the historical events occurred inside the smart home. Threat hunting can leverage the collective nature of these gadgets to gain deeper insights into the best way for responding to new threats, which in turn can be valuable in reducing the impact of breaches. Nevertheless, this approach depends mainly on the readiness of smart homeowners to share their own personal usage logs that have been extracted from their smart home environments. However, they might disincline to employ such service due to the sensitive nature of the information logged by their personal gateways. In this paper, we presented an approach to enable smart homeowners to share their usage logs in a privacy preserving manner. A distributed threat hunting approach has been developed to permit the composition of diverse threat classes without revealing the logged records to other involved parties. Furthermore, a scenario was proposed to depict a proactive threat Intelligence sharing for the detection of potential threats in smart home environments with some experimental results.Comment: In Proc. the International Conference on Advances in Cyber Security, Penang, Malaysia, July 201

Uncovering perceived identification accuracy of in-vehicle biometric sensing

Biometric techniques can help make vehicles safer to drive, authenticate users, and provide personalized in-car experiences. However, it is unclear to what extent users are willing to trade their personal biometric data for such benefits. In this early work, we conducted an open card sorting study (N=11) to better understand how well users perceive their physical, behavioral and physiological features can personally identify them. Findings showed that on average participants clustere

Tracking Reasonableness: An Evaluation of North Carolina\u27s Lifetime Satelite-Based Monotoring Statutes in the Wake of Grady v. North Carolina

On the evening of October 4, 1957, one event would change the world forever. With the launch of the first satellite, Sputnik, the whole of civilization was ushered into a new period of technology and discovery. No one who witnessed the birth of the satellite age almost 60 years ago could have envisioned the indispensable impact satellite technology would have in the modern era. One of the most significant benefits of satellite technology has been the use of multiple satellites to determine precise location information from anywhere on the planet. This use, commonly known as GPS (global positioning system), has become so commonplace in our world that a considerable portion of the world population uses it daily. In addition, states capitalized on the use of GPS technology in the mandatory monitoring of sex offenders through the creation of satellite-based monitoring (SBM) programs aimed at the protection of the public by curbing recidivism of known sex offenders. Many legal challenges followed. Then, in the 2012 United States Supreme Court case of United States v. Jones, satellites would again change the world. The Supreme Court, through its Jones decision, would usher in a new paradigm of search law when it held that the warrantless installation and GPS monitoring of a suspect\u27s vehicle constituted a search. The question remained open, however, regarding the effect the Jones decision would have on the GPS monitoring of sex offenders. In the 2015 Supreme Court term, the Court answered this question. In Grady v. North Carolina, the Court ruled that SBM programs constituted a Fourth Amendment search. Despite its ruling, the Court left open the ultimate question of whether SBM programs are reasonable warrantless searches. This Article will utilize the framework left by the Grady decision and attempt to answer the ultimate question for North Carolina: is the lifetime SBM program reasonable under the Fourth Amendment? The Article will conclude that a court will likely hold that North Carolina\u27s SBM program is a reasonable search. When considering this result, four crucial observations appear: (1) In assessing reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment, the Supreme Court has struggled to consistently maintain a clear direction. Over time, the Court has grappled with whether to require a warrant or to inquire into reasonableness alone. As a result of this dilemma, a number of cases have sprung up to create classifications of warrantless searches that defy a common and consistent theme. (2) The Grady decision\u27s cited cases Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton and Samson v. California provide at least two distinct reasonableness scaffolds to build upon: (1) a special needs exception, requiring some need beyond traditional law enforcement; and (2) a general reasonableness exception based upon a particular context, such as a diminished expectation of privacy. (3) While it is likely that the North Carolina courts will conclude that the SBM program is reasonable, such a decision will constitute a Pyrrhic victory, won at the considerable cost to individual privacy. Veritably, if the court upholds lifetime GPS monitoring of individuals as reasonable, such a ruling pushes the outside of the envelope for suspicionless and warrantless searches. (4) Should the High Court eventually consider the ultimate question left open in its Grady decision, the resolution is in doubt. In fact, the whole aggregate of its pronouncements on reasonableness, both past and future, has been shrouded in ambiguity. Currently, the Court is ensnared in darkness over the future of its ideological understanding of the Fourth Amendment. Justice Scalia\u27s recent death casts a long shadow over the evenly divided Court. Only time will tell if the Court will attempt to view reasonableness through a preference for warrants or if it chooses to continue to track reasonableness alone in the universe of uncertainty and unpredictability that is the Fourth Amendment. For now, all we can do is look to the heavens and wonder

Dear Old Kennebago

https://digitalmaine.com/rangeley_books/1000/thumbnail.jp

Implementation of Middleware for Internet of Things in Asset Tracking Applications: In-lining Approach

ThesisInternet of Things (IoT) is a concept that involves giving objects a digital identity and limited artificial intelligence, which helps the objects to be interactive, process data, make decisions, communicate and react to events virtually with minimum human intervention. IoT is intensified by advancements in hardware and software engineering and promises to close the gap that exists between the physical and digital worlds. IoT is paving ways to address complex phenomena, through designing and implementation of intelligent systems that can monitor phenomena, perform real-time data interpretation, react to events, and swiftly communicate observations. The primary goal of IoT is ubiquitous computing using wireless sensors and communication protocols such as Bluetooth, Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi), ZigBee and General Packet Radio Service (GPRS). Insecurity, of assets and lives, is a problem around the world. One application area of IoT is tracking and monitoring; it could therefore be used to solve asset insecurity. A preliminary investigation revealed that security systems in place at Central University of Technology, Free State (CUT) are disjointed; they do not instantaneously and intelligently conscientize security personnel about security breaches using real time messages. As a result, many assets have been stolen, particularly laptops. The main objective of this research was to prove that a real-life application built over a generic IoT architecture that innovatively and intelligently integrates: (1) wireless sensors; (2) radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and readers; (3) fingerprint readers; and (4) mobile phones, can be used to dispel laptop theft. To achieve this, the researcher developed a system, using the heterogeneous devices mentioned above and a middleware that harnessed their unique capabilities to bring out the full potential of IoT in intelligently curbing laptop theft. The resulting system has the ability to: (1) monitor the presence of a laptop using RFID reader that pro-actively interrogates a passive tag attached to the laptop; (2) detect unauthorized removal of a laptop under monitoring; (3) instantly communicate security violations via cell phones; and (4) use Windows location sensors to track the position of a laptop using Googlemaps. The system also manages administrative tasks such as laptop registration, assignment and withdrawal which used to be handled manually. Experiments conducted using the resulting system prototype proved the hypothesis outlined for this research

Electricity Sector Reform: Sourcing and Cost Management of Electricity for Steel Manufacturing in Nigeria

In 2014, Lazard levelized cost of energy analysis model priced diesel powered systems at $0.225 –$0.404/KWh and a range of $0.165 –$0.242/KWh for gas-powered systems. The model gave a range of $0.28 –$0.33/kWh for diesel and a range of $0.14/kWh –$0.16/kW for gas fired. Nigeria has an abundance of gas reserves, but heavy gas flaring by oil companies perpetuates power failure across Nigeria. What has resulted is an unreliable electricity infrastructure and a high cost of alternative energy. The Electricity Power Sector Reform Act of 2005 started the reform process. Guided by decision theory, the purpose of this multiple case study was to understand the perceptions of business leaders at the steel manufacturing businesses on how the use of multiple supply sources of electricity might lead to survival, growth, and profitability. The study’s population consisted of 10 steel manufacturing companies in the Southwest region of Nigeria. The data were collected via semistructured interviews with the leaders who source energy, a review of archival records, and observations of company officials placing orders from multiple sources. The van Kaam method of data analysis generated 5 themes: cost of generating electricity and the investment in alternative sources of energy, erratic power supply and its impact on the steel production industry, quality of power supply relative to the capacity and its impact on profits, electricity factor in the steel production process, and use of multiple sources. These findings may contribute to social change by increasing employment opportunities for members of the local community, who will have an enhanced understanding about steel and seize entrepreneurial opportunities

Navigating gender diverse worlds assembled upon binary expectations: Investigating the experiences of trans people living in Britain

In many ways, trans individuals and communities in Britain are flourishing as they embody and expand gendered possibilities, raising the social visibility and legibility of gender diversity. Yet life in Britain remains predominantly assembled around sexgender expectations that hinder and harm those who do not, or cannot, conform to cis-heteronormativity. This is acutely manifest in the news and social media where, trans peoples’ identities, bodies, lives and intentions are routinely delegitimised, sensationalised and scrutinised within the ‘Trans Debate’. Following a trans studies ethos that responds to the historic and on-going devaluing and/or dismissal of trans peoples’ expertise within medicine and psychiatry, the media and academia, the knowledge and experiences of trans people are foregrounded in this research. Correspondingly, the methodology used integrates participatory photography and narrative writing, and in-depth semi-structured interviews. Collaborating with a group of 12 participants, this research investigates trans peoples’ experiences of negotiating spaces that are conditioned by cis- heteronormativity, as well as accessing, creating and sustaining spaces of belonging. All participants are trans adults living in Britain, and they vary by sexgender, and ethnicity, migration status and experiences, disability, and age, among other differences. This research demonstrates the necessity of understanding how transphobic and cis-heteronormative (mis)representations and ideals operate through socio-spatial relations. They shape, and often limit, trans peoples’ participation in public life, by intensifying anxieties, and demanding calculated and laborious practices in order to access certain spaces comfortably, or at all. The thesis investigates how spaces and imaginaries have been individually and collectively instrumentalised through the Trans Debate, in ways that give an impression of progress to stalled discourses with harmful repercussions. These findings build from and contribute to research across a range of disciplines and fields, creating intersections between urban studies, gender studies, queer studies, and trans studies. The insights it offers may positively inform a wide range of practices, including urban design and planning and journalism