Interrogation or Experimentation? Assessing Non-Consensual Human Experimentation During the War on Terror

The prohibition against non-consensual human experimentation has long been considered sacrosanct. It traces its legal roots to the Nuremberg trials although the ethical foundations dig much deeper. It prohibits all forms of medical and scientific experimentation on non-consenting individuals. The prohibition against non-consensual human experimentation is now well established in both national and international law. Despite its status as a fundamental and non-derogable norm, the prohibition against non-consensual human experimentation was called into question during the War on Terror by the CIA’s treatment of “high-value detainees.” Seeking to acquire actionable intelligence, the CIA tested the “theory of learned helplessness” on these detainees by subjecting them to a series of enhanced interrogation techniques. This Article revisits the prohibition against non-consensual human experimentation to determine whether the CIA’s treatment of detainees violated international law. It examines the historical record that gave rise to the prohibition and its eventual codification in international law. It then considers the application of this norm to the CIA’s treatment of high-value detainees by examining Salim v. Mitchell , a lawsuit brought by detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques. This Article concludes that the CIA breached the prohibition against non-consensual human experimentation when it conducted systematic studies on these detainees to validate the theory of learned helplessness

Towards Loop-Free Forwarding of Anonymous Internet Datagrams that Enforce Provenance

The way in which addressing and forwarding are implemented in the Internet constitutes one of its biggest privacy and security challenges. The fact that source addresses in Internet datagrams cannot be trusted makes the IP Internet inherently vulnerable to DoS and DDoS attacks. The Internet forwarding plane is open to attacks to the privacy of datagram sources, because source addresses in Internet datagrams have global scope. The fact an Internet datagrams are forwarded based solely on the destination addresses stated in datagram headers and the next hops stored in the forwarding information bases (FIB) of relaying routers allows Internet datagrams to traverse loops, which wastes resources and leaves the Internet open to further attacks. We introduce PEAR (Provenance Enforcement through Addressing and Routing), a new approach for addressing and forwarding of Internet datagrams that enables anonymous forwarding of Internet datagrams, eliminates many of the existing DDoS attacks on the IP Internet, and prevents Internet datagrams from looping, even in the presence of routing-table loops.Comment: Proceedings of IEEE Globecom 2016, 4-8 December 2016, Washington, D.C., US

Synchronization in fiber lasers arrays

We consider an array of fiber lasers coupled through the nearest neighbors. The model is a generalized nonlinear Schroedinger equation where the usual Laplacian is replaced by the graph Laplacian. For a graph with no symmetries, we show that there is no resonant transfer of energy between the different eigenmodes. We illustrate this and confirm our result on a simple graph. This shows that arrays of fiber ring lasers can be made temporally coherent

A Light-Weight Forwarding Plane for Content-Centric Networks

We present CCN-DART, a more efficient forwarding approach for content-centric networking (CCN) than named data networking (NDN) that substitutes Pending Interest Tables (PIT) with Data Answer Routing Tables (DART) and uses a novel approach to eliminate forwarding loops. The forwarding state required at each router using CCN-DART consists of segments of the routes between consumers and content providers that traverse a content router, rather than the Interests that the router forwards towards content providers. Accordingly, the size of a DART is proportional to the number of routes used by Interests traversing a router, rather than the number of Interests traversing a router. We show that CCN-DART avoids forwarding loops by comparing distances to name prefixes reported by neighbors, even when routing loops exist. Results of simulation experiments comparing CCN-DART with NDN using the ndnSIM simulation tool show that CCN-DART incurs 10 to 20 times less storage overhead

Enabling Correct Interest Forwarding and Retransmissions in a Content Centric Network

We show that the mechanisms used in the name data networking (NDN) and the original content centric networking (CCN) architectures may not detect Interest loops, even if the network in which they operate is static and no faults occur. Furthermore, we show that no correct Interest forwarding strategy can be defined that allows Interest aggregation and attempts to detect Interest looping by identifying Interests uniquely. We introduce SIFAH (Strategy for Interest Forwarding and Aggregation with Hop-Counts), the first Interest forwarding strategy shown to be correct under any operational conditions of a content centric network. SIFAH operates by having forwarding information bases (FIBs) store the next hops and number of hops to named content, and by having each Interest state the name of the requested content and the hop count from the router forwarding an Interest to the content. We present the results of simulation experiments using the ndnSIM simulator comparing CCN and NDN with SIFAH. The results of these experiments illustrate the negative impact of undetected Interest looping when Interests are aggregated in CCN and NDN, and the performance advantages of using SIFAH

United States v. George Tenet: A Federal Indictment for Torture

This Article addresses the absence of accountability for torture in the War on Terror. Part II examines the U.S. obligation under international law to investigate and prosecute acts of torture regardless of where such acts occurred. It also reviews the domestic legislation that implements this international obligation. Adopted by Congress to implement the Convention against Torture, the Torture Statute (18 U.S.C. § 2340A) establishes criminal liability for torture committed outside the United States. Part III then reviews the first and only case ever brought under the Torture Statute. Roy Belfast, Jr., a U.S. citizen, was prosecuted and subsequently convicted in 2008 for committing torture in Liberia. The Belfast case addressed several issues relating to the Torture Statute, including the definition of torture, the extraterritorial application of U.S. law, and the viability of potential defenses. Using the Belfast prosecution as a model, Part IV examines the criminal liability of George Tenet, who served as the Director of Central Intelligence during the time when several detainees listed in the SSCI Report were tortured. Tenet was responsible for the development and implementation of the CIA\u27s Detention and Interrogation Program. He personally authorized the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on high value detainees who were held at CIA black sites around the world. Finally, Part V provides a criminal indictment of Tenet based on the treatment of four detainees: Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, Abd al-Rahim al- Nashiri, and Ramzi Bin Al-Shibh. These detainees were held by the CIA at various facilities around the world during Tenet\u27s tenure as the Director of Central Intelligence. Under the guise of enhanced interrogation techniques, the CIA subjected each detainee to horrific treatment. They were, in fact, tortured