Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Design Science Approach To Investigating Decentralized Identity Technology, Janelle Krupicka

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

The internet needs secure forms of identity authentication to function properly, but identity authentication is not a core part of the internet’s architecture. Instead, approaches to identity verification vary, often using centralized stores of identity information that are targets of cyber attacks. Decentralized identity is a secure way to manage identity online that puts users’ identities in their own hands and that has the potential to become a core part of cybersecurity. However, decentralized identity technology is new and continually evolving, which makes implementing this technology in an organizational setting challenging. This paper suggests that, in the future, decentralized identity …

Profiling Cybercriminals: Behavioral Analysis And Motivations Behind Cybercrime Activities, A'Shya Latrice Reynolds

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

The study of cybercriminal behavior and motivations is crucial for understanding and combating the evolving landscape of digital crime. This paper delves into the intricate realm of cybercrime profiling, employing a multidisciplinary approach to dissect the behavioral patterns and underlying motivations of cybercriminals. Drawing from psychology, sociology, and criminology, the research examines the intricate interplay of individual traits, social dynamics, and technological factors that shape cybercriminal activities.

Through analysis of case studies and research, this paper uncovers the diverse range of motivations driving individuals towards engaging in cybercrime. From financial gain and ideological extremism to thrill-seeking and revenge, cybercriminals exhibit …

The Ethical And Legal Implications Of Iot Data In Business Organizations, Kennedy Bellamy

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

The Internet of Things (IoT) has transformed how our day to day lives by implementing and evolving technology that allows data to be exchanged between interconnected devices without the need for human involvement. This paper investigates the implications of IoT expansion and development in corporate organizations, focusing on both the opportunities and challenges it brings. IoT encompasses a wide range of data kinds, from sensor readings to user interactions, across industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, and retail. However, greater connection raises ethical and legal challenges, especially over data privacy, ownership, and control. Potential breaches of privacy and illegal data access …

The Role Of Osint In Criminal Investigations: Leveraging Open-Source Data To Combat Cybercrime And Organized Criminal Activities, Azariah Vaughan

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

In today's modern age driven by digital innovations, the widespread adoption of technology has transformed criminal activities, leading to the emergence of cybercrime as a significant challenge for law enforcement agencies globally. Cybercrime acts have left a considerable dent on criminal activities and nowadays that we are halfway into the subsequent technological era stands as one of the most crucial issues for law enforcement agencies all around the globe. The aim of this work is to discuss the relationship between cybercrime and organized crime and the importance of OSINT within criminal investigations in supporting law enforcement itself. Particularly, due to …

Some Legal And Practical Challenges In The Investigation Of Cybercrime, Ritz Carr

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), in 2021, the United States lost around $6.9 billion to cybercrime. In 2022, that number grew to over $10.2 billion (IC3, 2022). In one of many efforts to combat cybercrimes, at least 40 states “introduced or considered more than 250 bills or resolutions that deal significantly with cybersecurity” with 24 states officially enacting a total of 41 bills (National Conference on State Legislatures, 2022).

The world of cybercrime evolves each day. Nevertheless, challenges arise when we investigate and prosecute cybercrime, which will be examined in the following collection of essays that highlight …

Robots Still Outnumber Humans In Web Archives In 2019, But Less Than In 2012, Himarsha R. Jayanetti, Kritika Garg, Sawood Alam, Michael L. Nelson, Michele C. Weigle

College of Sciences Posters

To identify robots and human users in web archives, we conducted a study using the access logs from the Internet Archive’s (IA) Wayback Machine in 2012 (IA2012), 2015 (IA2015), and 2019 (IA2019), and the Portuguese Web Archive (PT) in 2019 (PT2019). We identified user sessions in the access logs and classified them as human or robot based on their browsing behavior. In 2013, AlNoamany et al. [1] studied the user access patterns using IA access logs from 2012. They established four web archive user access patterns: single-page access (Dip), access to the same page at multiple archive times (Dive), access …

Public Goods From Private Data: An Effectiveness And Justification Dilemma For Digital Contact Tracing, Andrew Buzzell

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

Debate about the adoption of digital contact tracing (DCT) apps to control the spread of COVID-19 has focussed on risks to individual privacy. This emphasis reveals significant challenges to ethical deployment of DCT, but generates constraints which undermine justification to implement DCT. It would be a mistake to view this result solely as the successful operation of ethical foresight analysis, preventing deployment of potentially harmful technology. Privacy-centric analysis treats data as private property, frames the relationship between individuals and governments as adversarial, entrenches technology platforms as gatekeepers, and supports a conception of emergency public health authority as limited by individual …

Bitcoin Selfish Mining Modeling And Dependability Analysis, Chencheng Zhou, Liudong Xing, Jun Guo, Qisi Liu

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Blockchain technology has gained prominence over the last decade. Numerous achievements have been made regarding how this technology can be utilized in different aspects of the industry, market, and governmental departments. Due to the safety-critical and security-critical nature of their uses, it is pivotal to model the dependability of blockchain-based systems. In this study, we focus on Bitcoin, a blockchain-based peer-to-peer cryptocurrency system. A continuous-time Markov chain-based analytical method is put forward to model and quantify the dependability of the Bitcoin system under selfish mining attacks. Numerical results are provided to examine the influences of several key parameters related to …

Relationship Between Technology Student Association Participation And Soft Skills Development, Controlling For Gender, Lauren M. Lapinski

STEMPS Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between student participation in Technology Student Association and the development of soft skills necessary for gainful employment. This study specifically sought information on relationships between soft skills development and (a) time spent on Technology Student Association activities; (b) competitive event success; (c) assumption of leadership roles; (d) gender. Data were provided by Pennsylvania Technology Student Association and consisted of survey responses from middle and high school students who are active Technology Student Association members across the state (n = 229).

In addition to descriptive data, a multiple linear …

Automating Autism: Disability, Discourse, And Artificial Intelligence, Os Keyes

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems shift to interact with new domains and populations, so does AI ethics: a relatively nascent subdiscipline that frequently concerns itself with questions of “fairness” and “accountability.” This fairness-centred approach has been criticized for (amongst other things) lacking the ability to address discursive, rather than distributional, injustices. In this paper I simultaneously validate these concerns, and work to correct the relative silence of both conventional and critical AI ethicists around disability, by exploring the narratives deployed by AI researchers in discussing and designing systems around autism. Demonstrating that these narratives frequently perpetuate a dangerously dehumanizing model …

“How Could You Even Ask That?”: Moral Considerability, Uncertainty And Vulnerability In Social Robotics, Alexis Elder

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

When it comes to social robotics (robots that engage human social responses via “eyes” and other facial features, voice-based natural-language interactions, and even evocative movements), ethicists, particularly in European and North American traditions, are divided over whether and why they might be morally considerable. Some argue that moral considerability is based on internal psychological states like consciousness and sentience, and debate about thresholds of such features sufficient for ethical consideration, a move sometimes criticized for being overly dualistic in its framing of mind versus body. Others, meanwhile, focus on the effects of these robots on human beings, arguing that psychological …

Autonomous Vehicles And The Ethical Tension Between Occupant And Non-Occupant Safety, Jason Borenstein, Joseph Herkert, Keith Miller

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

Given that the creation and deployment of autonomous vehicles is likely to continue, it is important to explore the ethical responsibilities of designers, manufacturers, operators, and regulators of the technology. We specifically focus on the ethical responsibilities surrounding autonomous vehicles that these stakeholders have to protect the safety of non-occupants, meaning individuals who are around the vehicles while they are operating. The term “non-occupants” includes, but is not limited to, pedestrians and cyclists. We are particularly interested in how to assign moral responsibility for the safety of non-occupants when autonomous vehicles are deployed in a complex, land-based transportation system.

Human Supremacy As Posthuman Risk, Daniel Estrada

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

Human supremacy is the widely held view that human interests ought to be privileged over other interests as a matter of ethics and public policy. Posthumanism is the historical situation characterized by a critical reevaluation of anthropocentrist theory and practice. This paper draws on animal studies, critical posthumanism, and the critique of ideal theory in Charles Mills and Serene Khader to address the appeal to human supremacist rhetoric in AI ethics and policy discussions, particularly in the work of Joanna Bryson. This analysis identifies a specific risk posed by human supremacist policy in a posthuman context, namely the classification of …

Curriculum Development For Robotics Technology Program, Sanjeevi Chitikeshi, Shirshak K. Dhali, Betsey Odell, Vukica Jovanovic, Cheng Y. Lin

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

With a growing need for a more skilled workforce, providing industry-driven and employment centric training services is an important national priority. Over 3.4 million manufacturing jobs will need to be filled across the United Sates over the next decade. The skills gap is becoming greater based on the statistics provided by the Global Robotics Technology Market: Forecast, 2014-2020 published by Research and Markets, reporting that the worldwide robotics market is forecast to grow from the 2015 level of $26.98B to $82.78B in 2020. This 11 % compounded average growth in the next five years is unprecedented. Given the anticipated growth …

Backing Up Into Advocacy: The Case Of Smartphone Driver Distraction, Robert Rosenberger

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

For the last decade, I’ve been studying the topic of the driving impairment of smartphones. While this began as an exclusively academic project, it has increasingly compelled public engagement. One example of this came in an opinion piece I wrote in 2018 in response to a new traffic law. I take the opportunity here to fill out the academic backstory of this particular op-ed, reflect on how this larger project has evolved to include an unanticipated public-facing edge, and abstract some lessons about public writing.

Tactics Against Scheming Diseases, Brian Martin

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

Achieving good health can be thought of as a struggle against opponents—disease and unhealthy practices—that are imagined to be active agents, in a type of thought experiment. These opponents of health, to reduce outrage about their activities, draw on a standard set of tactics: cover-up of the threat, devaluation of victims, reinterpretation of what is happening, use of official processes to give an illusion of safety, and intimidation. To promote good health, each of these tactics can be countered, by exposure of the problem, validation of victims, reframing of what is happening, mobilisation of support, and resistance. Three case studies …

From Protecting To Performing Privacy, Garfield Benjamin

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

Privacy is increasingly important in an age of facial recognition technologies, mass data collection, and algorithmic decision-making. Yet it persists as a contested term, a behavioural paradox, and often fails users in practice. This article critiques current methods of thinking privacy in protectionist terms, building on Deleuze's conception of the society of control, through its problematic relation to freedom, property and power. Instead, a new mode of understanding privacy in terms of performativity is provided, drawing on Butler and Sedgwick as well as Cohen and Nissenbaum. This new form of privacy is based on identity, consent and collective action, a …

Bolstering Emergency Management With Technological Tools: Opportunities For 'E-Resilience' Collaborations In Hampton Roads, Ren-Neasha Royanna Blake

College of Business (Strome) Posters

Emergency management continues to ignite policy discussions globally. With the growing impacts of climate change, pandemics, and the international political economy (IPE), more resources are invested in emergency resilience. Researchers in the Hampton Roads area underscore the growing need for emergency management strategies, especially considering the recurrence of natural disasters in the area. To that end, seminars, workshops, and conferences are held annually to convene key stakeholders on this subject. Simultaneously, there is rapid growth in global technological innovations that aim at bolstering countries’ resiliency thrust. These technological innovations gave rise to the 21st-century buzzword ‘e-resilience’. E-resilience involves the use …

A Transformative Concept: From Data Being Passive Objects To Data Being Active Subjects, Hans-Peter Plag, Shelley-Ann Jules-Plag

OES Faculty Publications

The exploitation of potential societal benefits of Earth observations is hampered by users having to engage in often tedious processes to discover data and extract information and knowledge. A concept is introduced for a transition from the current perception of data as passive objects (DPO) to a new perception of data as active subjects (DAS). This transition would greatly increase data usage and exploitation, and support the extraction of knowledge from data products. Enabling the data subjects to actively reach out to potential users would revolutionize data dissemination and sharing and facilitate collaboration in user communities. The three core elements …

The Affective Politics Of Twitter, Johnathan C. Flowers

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

Given the increasing encroachment of Twitter into offline experience, it has become necessary to look beyond the formation of identity in online spaces to the ways in which identities surface through the formation of affective communities organized through the use of technocultural assemblages, or the platforms, algorithms, and digital networks through which affect circulates in an online space. This essay focuses on the microblogging website Twitter as one such technocultural assemblage whose hashtag functionality allows for the circulation of affect among bodies which “surface” within the affective communities organized on Twitter through their alignment with and orientation by hashtags which …

Difference Between Algorithmic Processing And The Process Of Lifeworld (Lebenswelt), Domenico Schneider

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

The following article compares the temporality of the life-world with the digital processing. The temporality of the life-world is determined to be stretched and spontaneous. The temporality of the digital is given by discrete step-by-step points of time. Most ethical issues can be traced back to a mismatch of these two ways of processing. This creates a foundation for the ethics of the digital processing. Methodologically, phenomenological considerations are merged with media-philosophical considerations in the article.

Rethinking Algorithmic Bias Through Phenomenology And Pragmatism, Johnathan C. Flowers

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

In 2017, Amazon discontinued an attempt at developing a hiring algorithm which would enable the company to streamline its hiring processes due to apparent gender discrimination. Specifically, the algorithm, trained on over a decade’s worth of resumes submitted to Amazon, learned to penalize applications that contained references to women, that indicated graduation from all women’s colleges, or otherwise indicated that an applicant was not male. Amazon’s algorithm took up the history of Amazon’s applicant pool and integrated it into its present “problematic situation,” for the purposes of future action. Consequently, Amazon declared the project a failure: even after attempting to …

Autonomous Vehicles And The Ethical Tension Between Occupant And Non-Occupant Safety, Jason Borenstein, Joseph Herkert, Keith W. Miller

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

Autonomous vehicle manufacturers, people inside an autonomous vehicle (occupants), and people outside the vehicle (non-occupants) are among the distinct stakeholders when addressing ethical issues inherent in systems that include autonomous vehicles. As responses to recent tragic cases illustrate, advocates for autonomous vehicles tend to focus on occupant safety, sometimes to the exclusion of non-occupant safety. Thus, we aim to examine ethical issues associated with non-occupant safety, including pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, and riders of motorized scooters. We also explore the ethical implications of technical and policy ideas that some might propose to improve non-occupant safety. In addition, if safety (writ large) …

A Ulysses Pact With Artificial Systems. How To Deliberately Change The Objective Spirit With Cultured Ai, Bruno Gransche

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

The article introduces a concept of cultured technology, i.e. intelligent systems capable of interacting with humans and showing (or simulating) manners, of following customs and of socio-sensitive considerations. Such technologies might, when deployed on a large scale, influence and change the realm of human customs, traditions, standards of acceptable behavior, etc. This realm is known as the "objective spirit" (Hegel), which usually is thought of as being historically changing but not subject to deliberate human design. The article investigates the question of whether the purposeful design of interactive technologies (as cultured technologies) could enable us to shape modes of …

The Right To Human Intervention: Law, Ethics And Artificial Intelligence, Maria Kanellopoulou - Botti, Fereniki Panagopoulou, Maria Nikita, Anastasia Michailaki

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

The paper analyses the new right of human intervention in use of information technology, automatization processes and advanced algorithms in individual decision-making activities. Art. 22 of the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provides that the data subject has the right not to be subject to a fully automated decision on matters of legal importance to her interests, hence the data subject has a right to human intervention in this kind of decisions.

Security Risk Tolerance In Mobile Payment: A Trade-Off Framework, Yong Chen

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Theses & Dissertations

Security is identified as a major barrier for consumers in adopting mobile payment. Although existing literature has incorporated security into the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the Unified Theory of Acceptance, and the Use of Technology (UTAUT) and it has investigated the way in which security affects consumers’ acceptance of mobile payment, security is a factor only in diverse research models. Studies of mobile payment that focus on security are not available. Additionally, previous studies of mobile payment are based on Direct Carrier Billing- (DCB)-based mobile payment or Near Field Communication- (NFC)-based mobile payment. The results regarding security might not be …

Incorporating Diegetic Elements To Increase Engagement In Games For Engineering Education, Katherine Smith, Yuzhong Shen, Anthony W. Dean

VMASC Publications

One of the difficulties in developing educational games is maintaining player engagement. This engagement is critical for games to provide effective learning experiences. One way to increase engagement in games is to limit interruptions during game play. In educational games, this can be accomplished by incorporating learning or problem-solving elements diegetically. Diegetic elements are those that are part of the game scene. With this in mind, a series of games for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education has been developed focusing on content in courses that are prerequisites to the engineering curriculum. These games cover topics in pre-calculus, calculus, …

Civilians On The Battlefield: Creating A Realistic Training Aid For The United States Military, Aaron D. Beam

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The United States and our allies and partners have adopted a humane approach to warfare based on established principle of the laws of war centered on the principles of Military Necessity, Humanity, Proportionality, Distinction, and Honor. These principles dictate that US Military forces conduct warfare with a careful consideration of our impact on civilian populations with a special duty to protect and limit harm as much as possible given the accomplishment of a mission. Likewise, the US Military has developed a sound counterinsurgency and unified action military model that recognizes that warfare is not fought simply with kinetic force, but …

Investigating Application Of The Self-Explanation Learning Strategy During An Instructional Simulation, Paul Michael Macloughlin

STEMPS Theses & Dissertations

Computer-based simulations effectively support the acquisition of scientific knowledge when combined with a guided learning approach. Active learning drives complex cognitive processes that enable the integration of new information with existing knowledge. The iCAP (Interactive, Constructive, Active, Passive) Framework provides a conceptual model to describe different types of active learning. Computer-based simulations fit neatly within this framework. Similarly, self-explanation is a generative learning strategy that fits within this framework. Promoting self-explanation using instructional prompts is an effective method for driving application of the strategy. This study compared three combinations of self-explanation prompt and learner activity (closed prompts – overt activity, …

Instructional Designer Awareness And Application Of Strategies To Manage Cognitive Load, Justin A. Sentz

STEMPS Theses & Dissertations

This study examined how practicing instructional designers manage cognitive load in a standardized scenario as they select and implement instructional strategies, message design, content sequencing, and delivery media within various domains with learners at different levels of expertise. The study employed a quasi-experimental, mixed methods design to gain insight into how practicing instructional designers perceive their awareness of strategies to manage cognitive load and implement those strategies within a standardized design scenario. The research design involved the collection of quantitative data from the participants during an initial web-based questionnaire and a second collection of both quantitative and qualitative data as …