Credit Card Fraud: A New Perspective On Tackling An Intransigent Problem

This article offers a new perspective on battling credit card fraud. It departs from a focus on post factum liability, which characterizes most legal scholarship and federal legislation on credit card fraud and applies corrective mechanisms only after the damage is done. Instead, this article focuses on preempting credit card fraud by tackling the root causes of the problem: the built-in incentives that keep the credit card industry from fighting fraud on a system-wide basis. This article examines how credit card companies and banks have created a self-interested infrastructure that insulates them from the liabilities and costs of credit card fraud. Contrary to widespread belief, retailers, not card companies or banks, absorb much of the loss caused by thieves who shop with stolen credit cards. Also, credit card companies and banks earn fees from every credit card transaction, including those that are fraudulent. In addressing these problems, this article advocates broad reforms, including legislation that would mandate data security standards for the industry, empower multiple stakeholders to create the new standards, and offer companies incentives to comply by capping bank fees for those that are compliant, while deregulating fees for those that are not compliant

Global Cyber Intermediary Liability: A Legal & Cultural Strategy

This Article fills the gap in the debate on fighting cybercrime. It considers the role of intermediaries and the legal and cultural strategies that countries may adopt. Part II.A of this Article examines the critical role of intermediaries in cybercrime. It shows that the intermediaries’ active participation by facilitating the transmission of cybercrime traffic removes a significant barrier for individual perpetrators. Part II.B offers a brief overview of legal efforts to combat cybercrime, and examines the legal liability of intermediaries in both the civil and criminal context and in varying legal regimes with an emphasis on ISPs. Aside from some level of injunctive relief, intermediaries operate in a largely unregulated environment. Part III looks at what we can learn from other countries. The cleanest intermediary country, Finland, and the worst country, Lithuania, were selected in order to explore the causes for the differences between country performances. The section examines the remarkable distinctions between national cultures to explain differences in national cybercrime rates. Part III.A of this Article argues that the criminal code laws do not account for the difference in host and ISP performances between Finland and Lithuania. There are few differences in the codified laws pertaining to cybercrime between these countries. Instead, it is Finland’s cultural and business environments that appear to drive its cybercrime ranking. Part IV suggests reforms to shift a country’s culture to make it less prone to corruption. However, changing a culture takes time so Part IV also proposes a private law scheme in which intermediaries are unable to wave the “flag of immunity,” as they do now. The guiding philosophy for this proposal is that harmed parties should be permitted to recover damages directly from “bad” intermediaries

Healthcare Web Accessibility: Litigation Avoidance or Strategic Opportunity?

In 2006, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) sued Target Corporation alleging that the retailer’s website was inaccessible to the blind, in violation of the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) and various California statutes. Target eventually settled the case for US$9.7 million. The Target case presents an interesting dilemma to private sector healthcare providers. What corporate strategy is appropriate in the case of web accessibility? US Federal and state laws do not specifically require a private company to make its website accessible to customers with disabilities. However, the adverse media exposure from a private class action suit by a disability group can significantly damage a company’s reputation for corporate social responsibility (CSR). We develop a model of corporate web accessibility behavior based on literature linking CSR activities to corporate financial performance. We test its use within the healthcare industry focusing on private-sector companies that deliver online healthcare information. We compare our sample to a group of non-healthcare companies with a reputation for corporate social responsibility for the years before and after the onset of the Target litigation. Results reveal significant differences in the way healthcare corporations choose to address web accessibility

Deficient resident memory T-cell and Cd8 T-cell response to commensals in inflammatory bowel disease

Background Aims: The intestinal microbiota is closely associated with resident memory lymphocytes in mucosal tissue. We sought to understand how acquired cellular and humoral immunity to the microbiota differ in health versus inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Methods Resident memory T-cells (Trm) in colonic biopsies and local antibody responses to intraepithelial microbes were analyzed. Systemic antigen-specific immune T- and B-cell memory to a panel of commensal microbes was assessed. Results Systemically, healthy blood showed CD4 and occasional CD8 memory T-cell responses to selected intestinal bacteria but few memory B-cell responses. In IBD, CD8 memory T-cell responses decreased although B-cell responses and circulating plasmablasts increased. Possibly secondary to loss of systemic CD8 T-cell responses in IBD, dramatically reduced numbers of mucosal CD8+ Trm and γδ T-cells were observed. IgA responses to intraepithelial bacteria were increased. Colonic Trm expressed CD39 and CD73 ectonucleotidases, characteristic of regulatory T-cells. Cytokines/factors required for Trm differentiation were identified, and in vitro-generated Trm expressed regulatory T-cell function via CD39. Cognate interaction between T-cells and dendritic cells induced T-bet expression in dendritic cells, a key mechanism in regulating cell-mediated mucosal responses. Conclusions A previously unrecognized imbalance exists between cellular and humoral immunity to the microbiota in IBD, with loss of mucosal T-cell-mediated barrier immunity and uncontrolled antibody responses. Regulatory function of Trm may explain their association with intestinal health. Promoting Trm and their interaction with dendritic cells rather than immunosuppression may reinforce tissue immunity, improve barrier function and prevent B-cell dysfunction in microbiota-associated disease and IBD etiology

Credit Card Fraud: A New Perspective On Tackling An Intransigent Problem

This article offers a new perspective on battling credit card fraud. It departs from a focus on post factum liability, which characterizes most legal scholarship and federal legislation on credit card fraud and applies corrective mechanisms only after the damage is done. Instead, this article focuses on preempting credit card fraud by tackling the root causes of the problem: the built-in incentives that keep the credit card industry from fighting fraud on a system-wide basis. This article examines how credit card companies and banks have created a self-interested infrastructure that insulates them from the liabilities and costs of credit card fraud. Contrary to widespread belief, retailers, not card companies or banks, absorb much of the loss caused by thieves who shop with stolen credit cards. Also, credit card companies and banks earn fees from every credit card transaction, including those that are fraudulent. In addressing these problems, this article advocates broad reforms, including legislation that would mandate data security standards for the industry, empower multiple stakeholders to create the new standards, and offer companies incentives to comply by capping bank fees for those that are compliant, while deregulating fees for those that are not compliant

Public Integrity Networks

This article demonstrates a positive relationship between the extent and sustainability of public integrity networks and the quality and honesty of governance. It creates a typology of network connections between inspectors general and other law enforcement and civil society organizations, particularly the media. Data are drawn from in-depth interviews and structural examinations of the offices of ten inspectors general in the United States. Network analysis allow an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the inspectional offices included in the study

VAMP7 regulates constitutive membrane incorporation of the cold-activated channel TRPM8

The cation channel TRPM8 plays a central role in the somatosensory system, as a key sensor of innocuously cold temperatures and cooling agents. Although increased functional expression of TRPM8 has been implicated in various forms of pathological cold hypersensitivity, little is known about the cellular and molecular mechanisms that determine TRPM8 abundance at the plasma membrane. Here we demonstrate constitutive transport of TRPM8 towards the plasma membrane in atypical, non-acidic transport vesicles that contain lysosomal-associated membrane protein 1 (LAMP1), and provide evidence that vesicle-associated membrane protein 7 (VAMP7) mediates fusion of these vesicles with the plasma membrane. In line herewith, VAMP7-deficient mice exhibit reduced functional expression of TRPM8 in sensory neurons and concomitant deficits in cold avoidance and icilin-induced cold hypersensitivity. Our results uncover a cellular pathway that controls functional plasma membrane incorporation of a temperature-sensitive TRP channel, and thus regulates thermosensitivity in vivo.status: publishe