Computer Law Commons^™

A Proportionality-Based Framework For Government Regulation Of Digital Tracing Apps In Times Of Emergency, Sharon Bassan

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Times of emergency present an inherent conflict between the public interest and the preservation of individual rights. Such times require granting emergency powers to the government on behalf of the public interest and relaxing safeguards against government actions that infringe rights. The lack of theoretical framework to assess governmental decisions in times of emergency leads to a polarized and politicized discourse about potential policies, and often, to public distrust and lack of compliance.

Such a discourse was evident regarding Digital Tracing Apps (“DTAs”), which are apps installed on cellular phones to alert users that they were exposed to people who …

The New Bailments, Danielle D'Onfro

Scholarship@WashULaw

The rise of cloud computing has dramatically changed how consumers and firms store their belongings. Property that owners once managed directly now exists primarily on infrastructure maintained by intermediaries. Consumers entrust their photos to Apple instead of scrapbooks; businesses put their documents on Amazon’s servers instead of in file cabinets; seemingly everything runs in the cloud. Were these belongings tangible, the relationship between owner and intermediary would be governed by the common-law doctrine of bailment. Bailments are mandatory relationships formed when one party entrusts their property to another. Within this relationship, the bailees owe the bailors a duty of care …

The Rise And Fall Of Cryptocurrency: The Three Paths Forward, Joel Seligman

Scholarship@WashULaw

In a crash reminiscent of the 1929-1933 Stock Market crash in which prices on the New York Stock Exchange fell 83 percent between September 1929 and July 1932 or the 2007-2009 Financial Debacle in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 54 percent between October 9, 2007 and March 9, 2009, crypto market capitalization fell 61 percent between November 2021 and May 2022, collapsing from an aggregate value of $2.9 trillion to $1.24 trillion. Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency which in late 2021 traded near $68,000 in November 2021 traded as low as $25,402 on May 10, 2022 (a decline of …

Digital Forensics For Mobility As A Service Platform: Analysis Of Uber Application On Iphone And Cloud, Nina Matulis, Umit Karabiyik

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Uber is a ride-hailing smartphone application (app) that allows users to order a ride in a highly efficient manner. The Uber app provides Mobility as a Service and allows users to easily order a ride in a private car with just a few clicks. Uber stores large amounts of data on both the mobile device the app is being used on, and in the cloud. Examples of this data include geolocation data, date/time, origin/destination addresses, departure/arrival times, and distance. Uber geolocation data has been previously researched to investigate the privacy of the Uber app; however, there is minimal research relating …

Smart Home Forensics: Identifying Ddos Attack Patterns On Iot Devices, Samuel Ho, Hope Greeson, Umit Karabiyik

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Smart homes are becoming more common as more people integrate IoT devices into their home environment. As such, these devices have access to personal data on their homeowners’ networks. One of the advantages of IoT devices is that they are compact. However, this limits the incorporation of security measures in their hardware. Misconfigured IoT devices are commonly the target of malicious attacks. Additionally, distributed denial-of-service attacks are becoming more common due to applications and software that provides users with easy-to-use user interfaces. Since one vulnerable device is all an attacker needs to launch an attack on a network, in regards …

Microsoft Defender Will Be Defended: Memoryranger Prevents Blinding Windows Av, Denis Pogonin, Igor Korkin, Phd

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Windows OS is facing a huge rise in kernel attacks. An overview of popular techniques that result in loading kernel drivers will be presented. One of the key targets of modern threats is disabling and blinding Microsoft Defender, a default Windows AV. The analysis of recent driver-based attacks will be given, the challenge is to block them. The survey of user- and kernel-level attacks on Microsoft Defender will be given. One of the recently published attackers’ techniques abuses Mandatory Integrity Control (MIC) and Security Reference Monitor (SRM) by modifying Integrity Level and Debug Privileges for the Microsoft Defender via syscalls. …

Detection Of Overlapping Passive Manipulation Techniques In Image Forensics, Gianna S. Lint, Umit Karabiyik

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

With a growing number of images uploaded daily to social media sites, it is essential to understand if an image can be used to trace its origin. Forensic investigations are focusing on analyzing images that are uploaded to social media sites resulting in an emphasis on building and validating tools. There has been a strong focus on understanding active manipulation or tampering techniques and building tools for analysis. However, research on manipulation is often studied in a vacuum, involving only one technique at a time. Additionally, less focus has been placed on passive manipulation, which can occur by simply uploading …

Discourse On Digital Government And Regulation: A Bibliometric Analysis, Prakoso Bhairawa Putera, Amelya Gustina

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This study aims to discuss digital government and regulation, analyzed through the bibliometric approach with the Scopus database for the last 20 years and visualized through the VOSviewer software version 1.6.16. The results indicate that the topic of e-government has become essentially prominent and has been the most discussed in the past two decades. Approximately 41.1% of digital government and regulation articles are classified under the subject area of 'Computer Science', continued by Social Sciences (18.3%), and Business, Management and Accounting (10.2%), with the majority of being 'All Open Access' (46%). The trend of publication in this field includes the …

Social Media User Relationship Framework (Smurf), Anne David, Sarah Morris, Gareth Appleby-Thomas

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The use of social media has spread through many aspects of society, allowing millions of individuals, corporate as well as government entities to leverage the opportunities it affords. These opportunities often end up being exploited by a small percentage of the user community who use it for objectionable or unlawful activities; for example, trolling, cyber bullying, grooming, luring. In some cases, these unlawful activities result in investigations where swift retrieval of critical evidence required in order to save a life.

This paper presents a proof of concept (PoC) framework for social media user attribution. The framework aims to provide digital …

Artificial Intelligence And The Challenges Of Workplace Discrimination And Privacy, Pauline Kim, Matthew T. Bodie

Scholarship@WashULaw

Employers are increasingly relying on artificially intelligent (AI) systems to recruit, select, and manage their workforces, raising fears that these systems may subject workers to discriminatory, invasive, or otherwise unfair treatment. This article reviews those concerns and provides an overview of how current laws may apply, focusing on two particular problems: discrimination on the basis of protected characteristics like race, sex, or disability, and the invasion of workers’ privacy engendered by workplace AI systems. It discusses the ways in which relying on AI to make personnel decisions can produce discriminatory outcomes and how current law might apply. It then explores …

Towards Increasing Trust In Expert Evidence Derived From Malware Forensic Tools, Ian M. Kennedy, Blaine Price, Arosha Bandara

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Following a series of high profile miscarriages of justice in the UK linked to questionable expert evidence, the post of the Forensic Science Regulator was created in 2008. The main objective of this role is to improve the standard of practitioner competences and forensic procedures. One of the key strategies deployed to achieve this is the push to incorporate a greater level of scientific conduct in the various fields of forensic practice. Currently there is no statutory requirement for practitioners to become accredited to continue working with the Criminal Justice System of England and Wales. However, the Forensic Science Regulator …

The Internet Never Forgets: Image-Based Sexual Abuse And The Workplace, John Schriner, Melody Lee Rood

Publications and Research

Image-based sexual abuse (IBSA), commonly known as revenge pornography, is a type of cyberharassment that often results in detrimental effects to an individual's career and livelihood. Although there exists valuable research concerning cyberharassment in the workplace generally, there is little written about specifically IBSA and the workplace. This chapter examines current academic research on IBSA, the issues with defining this type of abuse, victim blaming, workplace policy, and challenges to victim-survivors' redress. The authors explore monetary motivation for websites that host revenge pornography and unpack how the dark web presents new challenges to seeking justice. Additionally, this chapter presents recommendations …

Fixing Social Media: Toward A Democratic Digital Commons, Michael Kwet

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

In the past few years, big Social Media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have received intense scrutiny from the intellectual classes. This article critiques the dominant strain of criticism, the neo-Brandeisian School of antitrust, for its narrow focus on “regulated competition” as an appropriate means to “fix social media”. This essay calls for a socialist alternative: a democratic social media commons based on free and open source technology, decentralization, and democratic socialist legal solutions. It reviews how existing solutions like the Fediverse and LibreSocial work, and how they may provide answers for a better way forward.

A Two-Stage Model For Social Network Investigations In Digital Forensics, Anne David, Sarah Morris, Gareth Appleby-Thomas

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This paper proposes a two-stage model for identifying and contextualizing features from artefacts created as a result of social networking activity. This technique can be useful in digital investigations and is based on understanding and the deconstruction of the processes that take place prior to, during and after user activity; this includes corroborating artefacts. Digital Investigations are becoming more complex due to factors such as, the volume of data to be examined; different data formats; a wide range of sources for digital evidence; the volatility of data and the limitations of some of the standard digital forensic tools. This paper …

The Law Of Black Mirror - Syllabus, Yafit Lev-Aretz, Nizan Packin

Open Educational Resources

Using episodes from the show Black Mirror as a study tool - a show that features tales that explore techno-paranoia - the course analyzes legal and policy considerations of futuristic or hypothetical case studies. The case studies tap into the collective unease about the modern world and bring up a variety of fascinating key philosophical, legal, and economic-based questions.

Tech Policy And Legal Theory Syllabus, Yafit Lev-Aretz, Nizan Packin

Open Educational Resources

Technology has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades. Currently, virtually all business industries are powered by large quantities of data. The potential as well as actual uses of business data, which oftentimes includes personal user data, raise complex issues of informed consent and data protection. This course will explore many of these complex issues, with the goal of guiding students into thinking about tech policy from a broad ethical perspective as well as preparing students to responsibly conduct themselves in different areas and industries in a world growingly dominated by technology.

Busting Myths And Dispelling Doubts About Covid-19, Mark Findlay

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The Centre for AI and Data Governance (CAIDG) at Singapore Management University (SMU) has embarked over past months on a programme of research designed to confront concerns about the pandemic and its control. Our interest is primarily directed to the ways in which AI-assisted technologies and mass data sharing have become a feature of pandemic control strategies. We want to know what impact these developments are having on community confidence and health safety. In developing this work, we have come across many myths that need busting.

Literature Review: How U.S. Government Documents Are Addressing The Increasing National Security Implications Of Artificial Intelligence, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

This article emphasizes the increasing importance of artificial intelligence (AI) in military and national security policy making. It seeks to inform interested individuals about the proliferation of publicly accessible U.S. government and military literature on this multifaceted topic. An additional objective of this endeavor is encouraging greater public awareness of and participation in emerging public policy debate on AI's moral and national security implications..

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.

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 …

Towards Standard Information Privacy, Innovations Of The New General Data Protection Regulation, Ali Alibeigi, Abu Bakar Munir, Md Ershadulkarim, Adeleh Asemi

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Protection of personal data in recent decades became more crucial affecting by emergence of the new technologies especially computer, internet, information and communications technology. However, Europeans felt this necessity at time and provided for up-to-date and supportive laws. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the latest legislation in EU to protect personal data of individuals based on the recent technological advancements. However, its’ domestic and international output still is debatable. This doctrinal legal study by using descriptive methods, aimed to evaluate the GDPR through analyzing and interpreting its’ provisions by especial focus on its’ innovations. The results show that …

Next Generation Of Evidence Collecting: The Need For Digital Forensics In Criminal Justice Education, Scott H. Belshaw

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Digital forensics poses significant challenges to law enforcement as the information found in a computer system is often present at most crime scenes in the form of computer data and cell phones. Digital evidence contained on common devices, such as cell phones and laptops, includes information that can be pertinent to the investigation of crimes. Law enforcement is increasingly identifying the need to be able to process their evidence internally warranting the exploration of the need for digital forensics training as part of a broader study of criminal justice for future law enforcement practitioners. This paper uses telephone surveys of …

Forensic Analysis Of Spy Applications In Android Devices, Shinelle Hutchinson, Umit Karabiyik

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Smartphones with Google's Android operating system are becoming more and more popular each year, and with this increased user base, comes increased opportunities to collect more of these users' private data. There have been several instances of malware being made available via the Google Play Store, which is one of the predominant means for users to download applications. One effective way of collecting users' private data is by using Android Spyware. In this paper, we conduct a forensic analysis of a malicious Android spyware application and present our findings. We also highlight what information the application accesses and what it …

Can Accessibility Liberate The "Lost Ark" Of Scholarly Work?: University Library Institutional Repositories Are "Places Of Public Accommodation”, 52 Uic J. Marshall L. Rev. 327 (2019), Raizel Liebler, Gregory Cunningham

UIC Law Review

For any body of knowledge – an ark of power or a corpus of scholarship – to be studied and used by people, it needs to be accessible to those seeking information. Universities, through their libraries, now aim to make more of the scholarship produced available for free to all through institutional repositories. However, the goal of being truly open for an institutional repository is more than the traditional definition of open access. It also means openness in a more general sense. Creating a scholarship-based online space also needs to take into consideration potential barriers for people with disabilities. This …

Right To Privacy, A Complicated Concept To Review, Ali Alibeigi, Abu Bakar Munir, Md Ershadul Karim

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The Concept and definition of the privacy has been changed during the time affecting by different factors. At the same time, the boundaries of privacy may differ from one place to another affecting by the culture, religion, etc. Nonetheless, there is not a unique general accepted definition for the privacy. Privacy has been considered from different disciplines like sociology, psychology, law and philosophy. It is a multidisciplinary domain, having an easy concept but difficult to define. However, by reviewing all different viewpoints, it can be concluded that privacy is an individual tendency, wish and natural need to be away from …

Big Data And Artificial Intelligence: New Challenges For Workplace Equality, Pauline Kim

Scholarship@WashULaw

This essay contains remarks delivered in a keynote speech at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law’s 35th Annual Carl A. Warns and Edwin R. Render Labor and Employment Law Institute. Big data and artificial intelligence are increasingly being used by employers in their human resources processes in ways that control access to employment opportunities. This essay describes some of those developments and explains how practices like targeted online recruitment strategies and the use of hiring algorithms to screen applicants raise a significant risk of discriminating against protected groups such as women and racial minorities. It then considers some …

Russia Today, Cyberterrorists Tomorrow: U.S. Failure To Prepare Democracy For Cyberspace, Jonathan F. Lancelot

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This paper is designed to expose vulnerabilities within the US electoral system, the use of cyberspace to exploit weaknesses within the information assurance strategies of the democratic and republican party organizations, and deficiencies within the social media communications and voting machine exploits. A brief history of discriminatory practices in voting rights and voting access will be set as the foundation for the argument that the system is vulnerable in the cyber age, and the need for reform at the local, state and national levels will be emphasized. The possibility of a foreign nation-state influencing the outcome of an election by …

Revolution In Crime: How Cryptocurrencies Have Changed The Criminal Landscape, Igor Groysman

Student Theses

This thesis will examine the ways in which various cryptocurrencies have impacted certain traditional crimes. While crime is always evolving with technology, cryptocurrencies are a game changer in that they provide anonymous and decentralized payment systems which, while they can be tracked in a reactive sense via the blockchain, are seen by criminals as having better uses for them than traditional fiat currencies, such as the ability to send money relatively fast to another party without going through an intermediary, or the ability to obscure the origin of the money for money laundering purposes. Every week there are new cryptocurrencies …

A Bit Like Cash: Understanding Cash-For-Bitcoin Transactions Through Individual Vendors, Stephanie J. Robberson, Mark R. Mccoy

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

As technology improves and economies become more globalized, the concept of currency has evolved. Bitcoin, a cryptographic digital currency, has been embraced as a secure and convenient type of money. Due to its security and privacy for the user, Bitcoin is a good tool for conducting criminal trades. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has regulations in place to make identification information of Bitcoin purchasers accessible to law enforcement, but enforcing these rules with cash-for-Bitcoin traders is difficult. This study surveyed cash-for-Bitcoin vendors in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico to determine personal demographic information, knowledge of …

Yelp’S Review Filtering Algorithm, Yao Yao, Ivelin Angelov, Jack Rasmus-Vorrath, Mooyoung Lee, Daniel W. Engels

SMU Data Science Review

In this paper, we present an analysis of features influencing Yelp's proprietary review filtering algorithm. Classifying or misclassifying reviews as recommended or non-recommended affects average ratings, consumer decisions, and ultimately, business revenue. Our analysis involves systematically sampling and scraping Yelp restaurant reviews. Features are extracted from review metadata and engineered from metrics and scores generated using text classifiers and sentiment analysis. The coefficients of a multivariate logistic regression model were interpreted as quantifications of the relative importance of features in classifying reviews as recommended or non-recommended. The model classified review recommendations with an accuracy of 78%. We found that reviews …