Digital Commons Network^™

Location And Tracking Of Mobile Devices: Überveillance Stalks The Streets, Katina Michael, Roger Clarke

Professor Katina Michael

During the last decade, location-tracking and monitoring applications have proliferated, in mobile cellular and wireless data networks, and through self-reporting by applications running in smartphones that are equipped with onboard global positioning system (GPS) chipsets. It is now possible to locate a smartphone-user's location not merely to a cell, but to a small area within it. Innovators have been quick to capitalise on these location-based technologies for commercial purposes, and have gained access to a great deal of sensitive personal data in the process. In addition, law enforcement utilise these technologies, can do so inexpensively and hence can track many …

Towards A Conceptual Model Of User Acceptance Of Location-Based Emergency Services, Anas Aloudat, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

This paper investigates the introduction of location-based services by government as part of an all-hazards approach to modern emergency management solutions. Its main contribution is in exploring the determinants of an individual’s acceptance or rejection of location services. The authors put forward a conceptual model to better predict why an individual would accept or reject such services, especially with respect to emergencies. While it may be posited by government agencies that individuals would unanimously wish to accept life-saving and life-sustaining location services for their well-being, this view remains untested. The theorised determinants include: visibility of the service solution, perceived service …

The Future Prospects Of Embedded Microchips In Humans As Unique Identifiers: The Risks Versus The Rewards, Katina Michael, M.G. Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Microchip implants for humans are not new. Placing heart pacemakers in humans for prosthesis is now considered a straightforward procedure. In more recent times we have begun to use brain pacemakers for therapeutic purposes to combat illnesses such as epilepsy, Parkinson’s Disease, and severe depression. Microchips are even being placed inside prosthetic knees and hips during restorative procedures to help in the gathering of post-operative analytics that can aid rehabilitation further. While medical innovations that utilise microchips abound, over the last decade we have begun to see the potential use of microchip implants for non-medical devices in humans, namely for …

Editorial: Social Implications Of Technology- “Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo”, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Late last year, IEEE SSIT was invited to put together a paper for the centennial edition of Proceedings of the IEEE that was published in May 2012. The paper titled, “Social Implications of Technology: The Past, the Present, and the Future,” brought together five members of SSIT with varying backgrounds, and two intense months of collaboration and exchange of ideas. I personally felt privileged to be working with Karl D. Stephan, Emily Anesta, Laura Jacobs and M.G. Michael on this project.

Book Review: Handbook On Securing Cyber-Physical Critical Infrastructure: Foundations And Challenges (Written By Sajal K. Das, Krishna Kant, Nan Zhang), Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

This 800+ page handbook is divided into eight parts and contains thirty chapters, ideal for either an advanced undergraduate or graduate course in security. At the heart of this handbook is how we might go about managing both physical and cyber infrastructures, as they continue to become embedded and enmeshed, through advanced control systems, and new computing and communications paradigms.

Location-Based Social Networking And Its Impact On Trust In Relationships, Sarah Jean Fusco, Roba Abbas, Katina Michael, Anas Aloudat

Professor Katina Michael

Location based social networking (LBSN) applications are part of a new suite of social networking tools. LBSN is the convergence between location based services (LBS) and online social networking (OSN). LBSN applications offer users the ability to look up the location of another “friend” remotely using a smart phone, desktop or other device, anytime and anywhere. Users invite their friends to participate in LBSN and there is a process of consent that follows. This paper explores the potential impact of LBSN upon trust in society. It looks at the willingness of individuals to share their location data with family, friends, …

Social Implications Of Technology: Past, Present, And Future, Karl D. Stephan, Katina Michael, M.G. Michael, Laura Jacob, Emily Anesta

Professor Katina Michael

The social implications of a wide variety of technologies are the subject matter of the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology (SSIT). This paper reviews the SSIT’s contributions since the Society’s founding in 1982, and surveys the outlook for certain key technologies that may have significant social impacts in the future. Military and security technologies, always of significant interest to SSIT, may become more autonomous with less human intervention, and this may have both good and bad consequences. We examine some current trends such as mobile, wearable, and pervasive computing, and find both dangers and opportunities in these trends. …

Book Review: The Basics Of Information Security: Understanding The Fundamentals Of Infosec In Theory And Practice, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Dr Jason Andress (ISSAP, CISSP, GPEN, CEH) has written a timely book on Information Security. Andress who is a seasoned security professional with experience in both the academic and business worlds, categorically demonstrates through his book that underlying the operation of any successful business today is how to protect your most valuable asset- “information”. Andress completed his doctorate in computer science in the area of data protection, and presently works for a major software company, providing global information security oversight and performing penetration testing and risks assessment.

The Battle Against Security Attacks, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Medium-to-large-sized companies are increasingly using their intranets to broadcast company-wide messages and store valuable information. Employees can choose to view multimedia- based messages from company executives, link to the latest product success stories, download the most recent technical specifications or refer to the most up-to-date pricing figures. Whatever the requirement, organisations have become very reliant upon electronic intra- and intercommunication methods. Whether it is sending an email with an attachment to a client, downloading information from the knowledge management system (KMS) or placing files in one another's public folders, employees now expect the technological capabilities to be available all the …

The Technological Trajectory Of The Automatic Identification Industry: The Application Of The Systems Of Innovation (Si) Framework For The Characterisation And Prediction Of The Auto-Id Industry, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Traditionally the approach used to analyse technological innovation focused on the application of the techno-economic paradigm with the production function as its foundation. This thesis explores the rise of the evolutionary paradigm as a more suitable conceptual approach to investigating complex innovations like automatic identification (auto-ID) devices. Collecting and analysing data for five auto-ID case studies, (bar codes, magnetic-stripe cards, smart cards, biometrics and RF/ID transponders), it became evident that a process of migration, integration and convergence is happening within the auto-ID technology system (TS). The evolution of auto-ID is characterised by a new cluster of innovations, primarily emerging through …

Integrating Value-Driven Feedback And Recommendation Mechanisms Into Business Intelligence Systems, Byron Keating, Tim Coltman, Michael Katina, Valeria Baker

Professor Katina Michael

Most leading organizations, in all sectors of industry, commerce and government are dependent upon

ERP for their organizational survival. Yet despite the importance of the decision to adopt ERP and its

impact on the entire firm’s performance the IT literature has been in the large part silent on the nature

of the ERP investment decision. This study is the first of its kind to determine the preference structure

of senior managers around the organizational benefits and risks of adopting ERP. We present the

results which provide interesting insights into how managers’ perceive the benefit and risk factors

salient to the …

Human Rights, Regulation, And National Security, Katina Michael, Simon Bronitt

Professor Katina Michael

Law disciplines technology, though it does so in a partial and incomplete way as reflected in the old adage that technology outstrips the capacity of law to regulate it. The rise of new technologies poses a significant threat to human rights – the pervasive use of CCTV (and now mobile CCTV), telecommunications interception, and low-cost audio-visual recording and tracking devices (some of these discreetly wearable), extend the power of the state and corporations significantly to intrude into the lives of citizens.

Recommendations For Australia’S Implementation Of The National Emergency Warning System Using Location-Based Services, Anas Aloudat, Katina Michael, Roba Abbas

Professor Katina Michael

Mobile alerts, notifications and location-based emergency warning systems are now an established part of mobile government strategies in an increasing number of countries worldwide. In Australia the national emergency warning system (NEWS) was instituted after the tragic Black Saturday Victorian Bushfires of February 2009. In the first phase, NEWS has enabled the provision of public information from the government to the citizen during emergencies anywhere and any time. Moving on from traditional short message service (SMS) notifications and cell broadcasting to more advanced location-based services, this paper provides executive-level recommendations about the viability of location-based mobile phone services in NEWS …

The Application Of Location Based Services In National Emergency Warning Systems: Sms, Cell Broadcast Services And Beyond, Anas Aloudat, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Location-based services can be broadly defined as any service that provides information pertinent to the current location of an active mobile handset at a specific window of time, regardless of the underlying delivery technology used to convey its information. To date, the short message service and cell broadcast service have been utilised by several countries during emergencies, however the future indicates that these services while cost-effective today, will almost certainly be superseded in the next five to ten years by newer more powerful capabilities. The path forward in location-based emergency services in Australia is given against a backdrop of the …

Heaven And Hell: Visions For Pervasive Adaptation, Ben Paechter, Jeremy Pitt, Nikola Serbedzijac, Katina Michael, Jennifer Willies, Ingi Helgason

Professor Katina Michael

With everyday objects becoming increasingly smart and the “info-sphere” being enriched with nanosensors and networked to computationally-enabled devices and services, the way we interact with our environment has changed significantly, and will continue to change rapidly in the next few years. Being user-centric, novel systems will tune their behaviour to individuals, taking into account users’ personal characteristics and preferences. But having a pervasive adaptive environment that understands and supports us “behaving naturally” with all its tempting charm and usability, may also bring latent risks, as we seamlessly give up our privacy (and also personal control) to a pervasive world of …

The Social Implications Of Covert Policing, Simon Bronitt, Clive Harfield, K. Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Police agencies have been accused of suffering from an acute form of technophilia. Rather than representing some dreadful disorder, this assessment reflects the strong imperative, both in police agencies and the wider community, that police must have access to the latest technologies of surveillance and crime detection.

The last decade has witnessed the proliferation of low-cost surveillance technologies, some developed specifically for law enforcement purposes. Technology once the preserve of the military or secret intelligence agencies is now within the reach of ordinary general duties police officers. The new generation of police recruits is highly adept at using new technologies. …

Planetary-Scale Rfid Services In An Age Of Uberveillance, K. Michael, George Roussos, George Q. Huang, Rajit Gadh, Arunabh Chattopadhyay, S Prabhu, Peter Chu

Professor Katina Michael

Radio-frequency identification has a great number of unfulfilled prospects. Part of the problem until now has been the value proposition behind the technology- it has been marketed as a replacement technique for the barcode when the reality is that it has far greater capability than simply non-line-of-sight identification, towards decision-making in strategic management and reengineered business processes. The vision of the Internet of Things has not eventuated but a world in which every object you can see around you carries the possibility of being connected to the internet is still within the realm of possibility. However incremental innovations may see …

Exploring The Social Implications Of Location Based Social Networking: An Inquiry Into The Perceived Positive And Negative Impacts Of Using Lbsn Between Friends, Sarah Jean Fusco, K. Michael, M.G. Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Location based social networking (LBSN) applications are part of a new suite of emerging social networking tools that run on the Web 2.0 platform. LBSN is the convergence between location based services (LBS) and online social networking (OSN). LBSN applications offer users the ability to look up the location of another “friend” remotely using a smart phone, desktop or other device, anytime and anywhere. Users invite their friends to participate in LBSN and there is a process of consent that follows. Friends have the ability to alter their privacy settings to allow their location to be monitored by another at …

The Diffusion Of Rfid Implants For Access Control And Epayments: Case Study On Baja Beach Club In Barcelona, K. Michael, M.G. Michael

Professor Katina Michael

RFID implants for humans have been used in a variety of contexts since their commercial inception in 2003. The VeriChip product which typically carries a 16 digit number was first marketed as an identification device in the ehealth space (e.g. for emergency response), then as an access control mechanism (e.g. security), and finally as an epayment solution (e.g. the purchase of drinks at clubs). This paper investigates the story behind RFID implants for club patronage access control and epayment. The study uses a two-fold qualitative approach in the collection of data for the single case study of the Baja Beach …

Using Rfid To Overcome Inventory Control Challenges: A Proof Of Concept, Dane Hamilton, Katina Michael, Samuel Fosso Wamba

Professor Katina Michael

Using a Proof of Concept approach, this paper examines RFID’s impact on inventory control of a small-to-medium retailer. Results indicate that RFID technology can function effectively in a small-to-medium hardware environment. Also, the majority of the simulations recorded reasonable read rates even though the simulations were set up over a short period of time without a great deal of fine-tuning. Moreover, RFID could have a positive impact on the inventory-related processes of the organisation by either streamlining or formalizing them and facilitate the electronic storage of information captured in real-time, relating to the movement of stock and the amount of …

Unpacking The Erp Investment Decision: An Empirical Assessment Of The Benefits And Risks, Byron Keating, Tim Coltman, Katina Michael, Valerie Baker

Professor Katina Michael

Most leading organizations, in all sectors of industry, commerce and government are dependent upon ERP for their organizational survival. Yet despite the importance of the decision to adopt ERP and its impact on the entire firm’s performance the IT literature has been in the large part silent on the nature of the ERP investment decision. This study is the first of its kind to determine the preference structure of senior managers around the organizational benefits and risks of adopting ERP. We present the results which provide interesting insights into how managers’ perceive the benefit and risk factors salient to the …

The Legal Ramifications Of Microchipping People In The United States Of America- A State Legislative Comparison, Angelo Friggieri, K. Michael, M.G. Michael

Professor Katina Michael

The ability to microchip people for unique positive identification, and for tracking and monitoring applications is becoming increasingly scrutinized by the legal profession, civil libertarians, politicians in positions of power, human rights advocates, and last but not least, citizens across jurisdictions. The United States is among the few nations internationally, that have moved to enact state-level legislation, regarding the microchipping of people in a variety of contexts. This paper provides an overview of nine state laws/bills in the United States of America that have either enacted anti-chipping legislation or have recently proposed bills regarding the enforced chipping of persons. The …

Uberveillance: Microchipping People And The Assault On Privacy, M. G. Michael, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Uberveillance is above and beyond, an exaggerated, and omnipresent 24/7 electronic surveillance. It is a surveillance that is not only always on but always with you. It is ever-present because the technology that facilitates it, in its ultimate implementation, is embedded within the human body. The inherent problem with this kind of bodily pervasive surveillance is that omnipresence will not always equate with omniscience. Infallibility and ambient context will be for the greater part absent. For as Marcus Wigan has pithily put it, “context is all.” Hence the real concern for misinformation, misinterpretation, and information manipulation of citizens’ data.

The Online Privacy Frontier, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Many web sites pride themselves on offering personalised customer service, but that really depends on the amount of information the online shopper is willing to give the online merchant. In most cases, unless a purchase is made or some other form of transaction is enacted, the online shopper will not declare their identity. How personalised can an experience be online if one entity decides to remain anonymous? The online merchant has little, if any, information to go on apart from perhaps a cookie that tells them that the visitor is a repeat visitor to that web site. The seller does …

Beyond Mere Compliance Of Rfid Regulations By The Farming Community: A Case Study Of The Cochrane Dairy Farm, A. Trevarthen, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is changing the face of livestock identification and management. Beyond satisfying the regulations of government agencies for livestock to be a part of a national identification system for tracking purposes, farmers are now considering venturing beyond mere basic compliance systems. Once installed, farmers have begun to realize that their initial capital investment into an RFID system holds great strategic potential. The initial outlay while substantial is a once only cost that with a few more application-centric uses can yield a return on investment manifold. This paper presents a case study of the Cochrane Dairy Farm situated on …

Social And Organizational Aspects Of Information Security Management, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

This paper aims to explore social and organizational aspects of information security management. The changing nature of security is revealed against the backdrop of globalization. It provides a thorough review of literature on the topics of cyberethics as related to information security and transnational law. The objective of the paper is to cover broadly socio-organizational themes providing for the purpose of definition and a basis for further research. It thus raises a number of pressing issues facing organizations today, and offers an overview discussion on potential solutions. The main outcome of the paper is in showing that successful security strategies …

Historical Lessons On Id Technology And The Consequences Of An Unchecked Trajectory, Katina Michael, M G. Michael

Professor Katina Michael

This paper traces the use of identification techniques throughout the ages and focuses on the growing importance of citizen identification by governments. The paper uses a historical approach beginning with manual techniques such as tattoos, through to more recent automatic identification (auto-ID) techniques such as smart cards and biometrics. The findings indicate that identification techniques born for one purpose have gradually found their way into alternate applications, and in some instances have been misused altogether. There is also strong evidence to suggest that governments are moving away from localized identification schemes to more global systems based on universal lifetime identifiers.

The Social Implications Of Humancentric Chip Implants: A Scenario - ‘Thy Chipdom Come, Thy Will Be Done’, Rodney Ip, Katina Michael, M G. Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Radio frequency identification (RFID) chip implants for humans are no longer the tales of science fiction. Already preliminary findings have shown that the number of people willing to get chipped has increased since the technology’s commercial arrival in 2002, despite the fact that adoption rates have been very low. This investigation presents three case studies of the main users/ innovators of humancentric chip implants. The first case is of a British researcher in an academic institution who has conducted several implant experiments; the second case, is of a hobbyist and entrepreneur who has focused on the use of RFID implants …

Is It The End Of Barcodes In Supply Chain Management? , Luke Mccathie, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Barcode is a mature automatic identification (auto-ID) technology that has been used in supply chain management (SCM) for several decades. Such has been the domination of the auto-ID technique that it has pervaded all facets of SCM, from item-level identification to transportation applications. It has enjoyed free reign especially in the retail sector. However, recently radio-frequency identification (RFID) has been considered a rival technology, more superior in terms of its power to store and update information instantaneously, and non-line of sight (nLoS) ability to be read. Yet RFID is more costly and for the present barcode is still the most …

Human Tracking Technology In Mutual Legal Assistance And Police Inter-State Cooperation In International Crimes, Katina Michael, G. L. Rose

Professor Katina Michael

The objective of this paper is to explore the role of human tracking technology, primarily the use of global positioning systems (GPS) in locating individuals for the purposes of mutual legal assistance (MLA), and providing location intelligence for use in inter-state police cooperation within the context of transnational crime. GPS allows for the 24/7 continuous real-time tracking of an individual, and is considered manifold more powerful than the traditional visual surveillance often exercised by the police. As the use of GPS for human tracking grows in the law enforcement sector, federal and state laws in many countries are to a …