Cyber Threats and Nuclear Weapons

Dr Andrew Futter, University of Leicester,is  speaking on "Cyber Threats and Nuclear Weapons: New Questions for Command and Control, Security and Strategy" at the Australian National University in Canberra. Dr Futter argues that the Internet amplifies the risks with nuclear weapons. The scenario in the film "War Games" is more possible. He commented that the 2012 Glogal Zero US Nuclear Policy Commission Report raised more questions than it answered.

Dr Futter pointed out that nuclear weapons are inherently vulnerable, as they must be ready for use at any time, while also being under central control. One example was a training tape loaded into a US system which made the operators believe there was a real alert. Dr Futter commented that with a more on-line system it will be harder to detect such errors.

Dr Futter suggested that non-state actors were more likely to mount a cyber-attack to cause an un-commanded launch of a nuclear attack, a state actor was more likely to try to disable an opponents weapons. It seems to me that the risk with a state sponsored attack would be so high that this is unlikely to be attempted, expect by a "rogue" state. A more likely scenario is an attack on conventional command and control systems would disable nuclear weapons as a side-effect.

Dr Futter also included hacking of an Israel Defense Force Twitter account to spread false information about a nuclear accident. He also pointed out that an attack does not need to be on the weapons system: disabling the sewage system on a submarine will disable it as a weapon.

Dr Futter then discussed the different nature of cyber and nuclear weapons and the feasibility of responding to a cyber attack with a nuclear weapon. It occurs to me that cyber weapons are more like biological and chemical weapons: they are unpredictable in their effectiveness, may harm the attacker more than the attacked. On the one hand a cyber attack is deniable, on the other its source may be detected but then have little effect, resulting in a large political damage for no military value.

Dr Futter commented that he hoped Nuclear Weapons Officers did not freely discuss their jobs on-line. This got a laugh from the audience, but a search of Facebook for "Nuclear Weapons Officer" resulted in several hits and more than one hundred listed on LinkedIn.

Dr Futter recommended Ghost fleet : a novel of the next world war by P.W. Singer and August Cole, as a fictional but perhaps prescient view of the future, where the only military equipment working is pre-Internet-of-Things. Also one of the audience members, Adam Henschke, mentioned his book (edited with Fritz Allhoff) "Binary bullets : the ethics of cyberwarfare" (I ran the ANU IT students through a hypothetical on the ethics of cyberwarfare over the South China Sea last semester).

Killer Robots and the Laws of War

Australian National University in Canberra, where Professor Chris Jenks, from the Southern Methodist University, Dedman School of Law, is speaking on "Crossing the Rubicon: the path to offensive autonomous weapons". 

A representative for the Australian Red Cross introduced Professor Jenks and said how they educate in Australia about the Geneva Conventions.

Professor Jenks started out by pointing out that he was not talking about "drone" aircraft, such as the General Atomics Reaper, which is under remote human control. However, he pointed out that there are degrees of autonomy and commercial airliners are flown by computer most of the time. A military example presented was the "Boomerang counter sniper system" which will detect the direction of incoming fire. Professor Jenks described this then pointing a weapon at the source of fire and await the human operator to pull the trigger.

The Phalanx CIWS is used on Australian warships to protect them from cruse missiles and has an "autonomous mode". The Patriot SAM system in autonomous mode incorrectly shot down allied aircraft in two gulf wars. With these systems a human operator can stop the system firing, but may not have the time to do so and may make worse decisions that the automated system.

Professor Jenks pointed out that small autonomous multi-copters are being trialled by companies for small deliveries, but there are numerous safety problems with these and their military equivalents. He showed videos of experimental swarming 'copters. As the Professor points out the best defence against a swarm of 'copters is another swarm.

Professor Jenks then moved on to driverless cars, pointing out that the majority of car accidents are due to driver error. Self driving cars could reduce accidents. Curiously he illsitrated this with a video about someone getting off a train and into a driverless car. It wuld seem to me much safer for the traveller to stay on the train. In the car they still had the capability to override the automated system.

The issue of responsibility of the driver of an autonomous vehicle has already come to court in Australia. In 2003 a driver was let of a charge of using a mobile phone because he was driving a horse and cart. ;-)

More seriously,  Professor Jenks focused on hardware and did not discuss cyber-weapons. Currently there is concern about young people being indoctrinated into extremest causes online. Currently this is being done manually, with human operative doing the grooming. However, it would be possible to automate their process with a simple ELIZA Program which can befriend millions of young people and perhaps turn a few hundred into suicide bombers.

Autonomous Weapons in Canberra

Professor Chris Jenks, from the Southern Methodist University, Dedman School of Law, will speak on "Crossing the Rubicon: the path to offensive autonomous weapons" at the Australian National University in Canberra, 5:30pm 1 June 2015.

"The current fixation with the possibility of autonomous weapons attacking humans overlooks their current anti-material applications as well as usage domains with minimal chance of civilian casualties. Lethal autonomous weapons systems are not coming, they’re already here. Militaries have employed defensive autonomous weapon systems for decades, and are starting to utilize them in large numbers or swarms.

At the same time the international community has paused at a legal, ethical and moral precipice of utilizing offensive autonomous weapons systems, hyperbolically called ‘killer robots’. What may prove the catalyst in crossing this Rubicon is that the most effective way to attack a defence comprised of swarming autonomous defensive systems is with their offensive analog. And the advancements in defensive systems necessitating consideration of this decision will flow from the surge in commercial use of unmanned aerial systems beginning this year with the United States issuing regulations for their domestic use.

The employment of increasingly autonomous offensive systems will not be predicated on advancements in artificial intelligence but rather on a time honored principle of military technological advances – development of an effective measure inevitably leads to equally if not more effective counter measures."

Ethics and Climate Change Prediction

Greeting from the Australian National University in Canberra, where Professor John Broome is speaking on "Ethics in the IPCC process" at the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy. 

Professor Broome explained how the International Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) is an independent scientific organization, but taken notice of by the UNFCC, which is the relevant treaty organization on climate change. The IPCC has three working groups on science (WG1), impacts (WG2) and mitigation (WG3) of climate change. The main reports are the equivalent of 5,000 pages and there were 143,000 comments received. 

Professor Broome went to 13 meetings of 4.5 days each and worked out he was responsible for a considerable amount of carbon emissions just commuting to the meetings. ;-)

The scientists are volunteers, not paid by their work. He commented that the structure of the reports had already been decided. The recommendations are checked word by word. There were two moral philosophers included. Professor Broome wrote on "Justice, equity and responsibility" (3.3, page 12) and Professor Lukas Meyer, Graz University, Austria on "Values and wellbeing" (3.4 page 20).

Professor Broome commented on the differences between the scientific authoring approach and that of philosophers (Aristotle never wrote any refereed papers). The philosophers wrote on justice and value, which the scientists accepted, eventually. Also he commented on how the scientists and other academics wrote the detail of the reports, but there was government and political input into summaries (which is all anyone reads anyway).

I have some experience of the process of developing international standards, but not on this scale. Also I have been working recently with educators who come from the social science and have a different outlook on the world to the "hard" sciences.

Professor Broome described how the final drafts were produced with the text on the screen using Microsoft Word track changes, color coded with changes. Controversial sections are sent to a smaller "contact group" in the case of the philosopher's section taking three and half pages for three pages of text. He described how other sections got cut down due to lack of time and people.

What I found most surprising about Professor Broom's presentation was that he was generally positive about the outcome of the IPCC process. This is despite at one point describing how Saudi Arabia attempted to have a graph "censored" from the report, as it showed how the rich nations had caused the global warming problem. The Netherlands delegate attempted to outmaneuver this by having another section inserted (but the Netherlands government was un-contactable and so their delegate could not get approval).

It strikes me the IPCC process is similar to an open outcry auction system, as previously used for commodity trading. Such systems have mostly been replaced by on-line computer based systems, which are more efficient and by having a lower transaction cost, more equitable. The IPCC process excludes most of the people in the world from participating, because they cannot afford to attend the meeting.

Professor Broome described how some national delegations were in continuous voice contact with their experts at home and sending screen captures, taking instructions. If the process is to not be put on-line, then this practice should be banned, as it is inequitable. However, it would be better to put the whole process on-line.

If the IPCC is not willing to put their process on-line, then this could be done by volunteers. If the secretariat was not willing to cooperate, then volunteers amongst the delegates could transmit the video and audio from the meeting room. This could then be distributed publicly on-line and real time discussion rooms of experts, national representatives and the general public could debate the issues and make recommendations to the delegates.

Ethics of Climate Change Prediction

Professor John Broome will speak on "Ethics in the IPCC process" at the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy, Australian National University in Canberra, 5:30pm, 28 April 2015.

The Fifth Assessment Report is the first of the IPCC’s reports that has explicitly given a place to ethics. Two philosophers were included as Lead Authors for this purpose. However, an IPCC report is designed to be a review of scientific literature, and the process of writing it is organised with that aim in mind. Philosophy does not fit easily into that framework. Moreover, IPCC reports are commissioned by governments and must ultimately be approved by governments. Each sentence in the summaries for policymakers has to be explicitly approved by a consensus among all governments. This poses further difficulties for ethics in the IPCC, since ethics tends to be politically contentious.

Professor John Broome will describe how the process went from the point of view of a moral philosopher, and assess how successful the IPCC has been in its aim of taking account of the importance of ethics in responding to climate change.

 John Broome is Emeritus White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and an Adjunct Professor at ANU. He was once Professor of Economics at the University of Bristol. For the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, he was a Lead Author in Working Group 3 and a member of the Core Writing Team of the Synthesis Report.

Mike Bowern Fellow of the Australian Computer Society

Greetings from the Menzies Hotel Sydney where Dr Mike Bowern has been presented with his certificate as a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society. One of his contributions to computing was as part of the team producing the ACT's electronic voting system. He also researched ethics for computer professionals and I use that work in teaching students at the ANU.

Ethical foundations of climate engineering

Clive Hamilton, Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, will speak on "The ethical foundations of climate engineering", at the Australian National University in Canberra, 12:30 PM, 23 August 2011:

Public Lecture

The ethical foundations of climate engineering

In the standard consequentialist view, the question of whether it is ethically justified intentionally to shift the planet to a warmer or cooler climate depends on an assessment of the costs and benefits of the new state compared to the old one. The worldview of climate ethics is built on an unstated (and mostly unrecognized) understanding of the natural world that grew out of the Scientific Revolution, complemented by Enlightenment philosophy’s conception of the human as a self-legislating Kantian moral subject.

This paper argues that the grip of “technological thinking” based on this worldview explains why it has been so difficult for humanity to heed the warnings of climate science and why the idea of using technology to take control of the Earth’s atmosphere is immediately appealing.

Yet recent discoveries by Earth system science itself—-the arrival of the Anthropocene, the prevalence of non-linearities, and the deep complexity of the earth’s processes—-hint at its inborn flaws. The emerging understanding of the Earth highlights the dangers of technological thinking, and suggests a source of moral authority beyond the self-legislating Kantian subject.

Speaker

Clive Hamilton is the Charles Sturt Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics in Canberra. For 14 years until early 2008 he was the Executive Director of The Australia Institute, Australia’s foremost progressive think tank. His book "Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change" was published last year. He has recently returned from a visiting position in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He is a member of the Royal Society's Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative.

Speaker/Host: ANU Climate Change Institute Venue: Lecture Theatre 1, Hedley Bull Centre, Cnr Garran Road and Liversidge Street, ANU Date: Tuesday, 23 August 2011 Time: 12:30 PM - 2:00 PM Website: http://www.anu.edu.au/climatechange/ Enquiries: Roz Smith on 6125 6599, Colette Gilmour on 6125 0633

Professional Ethics and Social Issues in Networked Information Systems

These are the draft notes for my lecture on "Professional Ethics and Social Issues in Networked Information Systems", in the course Networked Information Systems (COMP2410/COMP6340), prepared for the Australian National University. I would welcome any comments or corrections.

Table of Contents

• 1 Introduction
• 2 Ethics
• 3 Being a Professional
• 4 Social Issues in Networked Information Systems
• 5 Readings

IT Professionals Role in Content

Last night, Associate Professor Craig McDonald of the University of Canberra presented "Do We Care about Content?" at the ACS Canberra Branch Monthly Forum. He discussed the February ruling that ISP iiNet was not responsible for copyright infringements by customers

Craign argued that the iiNet case was one where the ICT infrastructure was separate from the content carried. He suggested that where there is more processing of the data by an application on the network, the IT professional who designs the network has more responsibility for the content. That is a view I agree with, but I disagree with Craig on the extent of the responsibility of the IT professional.

IT professionals design systems for other individuals and organisations. Provided the IT professional designs what the customer wanted, then it is the customer who is primarily responsible for what the system does. In addition, the IT professional has to rely on the expertise of other professions in deciding on what the system should do.

The IT professional cannot become an expert on all things and a dictator to all people. The extent of the IT professionals responsibility depends on the nature of the system and the extent of the relevance of their expertise. The IT professional needs to design the system well, so it works with an adequate level of reliability. But it is not possible to design perfect systems and the level of reliability depends on the application.

In the case of a content management system, records management system, or a user interface design, the IT professional can be expected to know a reasonable amount about how such a system should work. So they have a large part of the responsibility for that system working correctly. In the case of a medical system, they could be expected to have less subject matter expertise.

As an expert witness I am called on to advise courts and other bodies on if a failed system should have worked. Such cases typically happen years after the system was built and I need to put myself in the mindset at the time. It is not enough to say "now we know what to do", I need to look at what was known and what was reasonable then. Also it is necessary to consider what should be the extend of the IT professional's knowledge and role.

An IT professional cannot simply assume that providing accurate information, or more information is better. At the Australian Bureau of Statistics, part of my job was to make sure that some of the information provided was inaccurate by introducing random errors. There are so few individuals in some categories of data the ABS provides that individuals could be identified from the data. To protect privacy, this data has to be modified. In this case providing correct and accurate information is the wrong thing to do.

A similar example is the case of Synthetic vision systems for aircraft. These show an artificial view of the terrain, generated from mapping data. It might be assumed that providing a more detailed view, using more data, would be better for the pilot. But more information makes the image hard to interpret. In this case more accurate data is harmful.

In 2000 I gave evidence in the case of Bruce Lindsay Maguire v. Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games in the Human Rights & Equal Opportunities Commission. My role was to assess if the website for Sydney 2000 Olympics was accessible to someone who is blind. My conclusion was that it was not, which the commission agreed with. However, it was decided that the Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG), a NSW statutory corporation, were responsible, not IBM who designed the web site.

Following the SOCOG case I was asked by the Australian National University to help teach web design. I decided that accessible web design should be a basic part of such training and incorporated that in the course. Due to such courses and advice by HREOC, it would be difficult today for an IT professional to argue it was not part of their responsibility to make web sites accessible. An IT professional who claims expertise in web site design can be assumed to know about accessible design and know it is part of their job to implement this.

Australian Climate Advocacy Fund

James Thier will be talking about the Climate Advocacy Fund, 6pm, 28 October 2010 in Canberra. Unlike other ethical investment funds, this one aims to change the behaviour of the organisations it in invests in to make them greener. It is available as a superannuation investment from Australian Ethical Investment. I am one of the "nominees" for the scheme: the fund issues me with a bundle of shares from the fund so I can vote at shareholders meetings (I don't get the money from the shares, this is just a way to have a voice at the meetings). Considerable research and thought has gone into the way the fund works. James Thier, undertook international research into such funds as a Churchill scholar.

“... Launched in July 2010, the Climate Advocacy Fund is a groundbreaking way to influence corporate behaviour. The fund will pursue improved climate change performance from Australia’s largest companies, principally through resolutions at annual general meetings. Managed by Australian Ethical Investment, the Climate Advocacy Fund is the first fund of its kind in the world. To find out more please come along to our seminar. Canberra Pilgrim House Conference Centre 69 Northbourne Avenue (Gifford Room) Thursday 28 October 2010 - 6-7pm The seminars are free to attend. Light refreshments provided. Please bring along friends and family. The speaker will be James Thier, one of the founding directors of Australian Ethical. James is also a Churchill Fellow, having travelled to the US and Europe to study shareholder advocacy. James will also outline how Australian Ethical’s other funds seek out and support leading sustainable companies, and have been strong performers during recent share market volatility. RSVP to Sally Rowland by email to srowland@australianethical.com.au or by phoning 02 6201 1902. We look forward to seeing you there. www.climateadvocacyfund.com.au ..."

Data Protection in Japan

Greetings from the Australian National University, where Professor Andrew Adams, Centre for Business Information Ethics Meiji University (Tokyo) is speaking on "Information privacy & data protection in Japan". This outlined the work reported in his paper "The Development of Japanese Data Protection (with with Murata and Orito in Policy and Internet, 2010). He will also be speaking at the Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre, Teaching room 101, UNSW Faculty of Law building, Sydney, 1 pm, 15 September 2010. Andrew asserted that it was a myth that Japan does not have a concept of privacy similar to western countries. Japan introduced similar legislation to protect citizens privacy in government systems and later legislated on a national electronic identity card system.

Andrew described the "Uchi-Soto" (内外) concept of relationships in Japanese society. He then talked about vertical relationships within organisations, where information is passed up and down the hierarchy, more than a western country, but under strict social rules. He then discussed the origins of these social rules, with buildings with (literally) paper thin walls. Under the "as if" tradition, if you do not official know something, you act as if you do not know.

Andrew then discussed the Kanji data input problem. Government started using data entry in the 1980. But it was only after methods for simple entry of Kanji characters were made generally avialable in the mid 1990's that there was widespread input of personal data by companies. He argues that the property crash of 1989/90 and ongoing economic problems placed pressure on companies to make more use of their data holdings. At the same time the Japanese government had financial difficulties and so wanted better data to reduce costs and collect more taxes.

Andrew claimed that there was rumoured to be a 1940s proposal for computerized national identity database for Japanese citizens by the then US occupation government. Even a single tax number required the 1990 financial problems to be introduced. Japan already had several existing registration systems.

The Basic Resident Registers Network (住民基本台帳ネットワーク) or Juki Net (住基ネット) was the proposal for computerising some of these systems. In the late 1990s, companies were then able to send individualised junk mail and this then caused concern over the security of the government system. The government system was ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court of Japan in 2008, however concerns and limited political support is still holding up full implementation.

INFORMATION & HUMAN CENTRED COMPUTING SERIES
DATE: 2010-09-13
TIME: 16:00:00 - 17:00:00
LOCATION: CSIT Seminar Room, N101
CONTACT:duncan.stevenson@anu.edu.au

ABSTRACT:
There has been an academic myth since at least Benedict's 1940s "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword" that the Japanese have little or no sense of privacy. This myth has been challenged by a number of scholars in recent years, all of whom point out that while the exact details of Japanese people's concepts of the various kinds of privacy (bodily, surveillance, information) differ in detail to those of other countries, these ideas still exist, and in fact contain no greater difference than that between other countries such as Germany and the US.

One of the arguments put forward for the Japanese lack of a sense of information privacy was the limited Japanese data protection legislation of 1988 which only covered government use of data, leaving commercial use of data entirely to voluntary codes of practice. However, in 2003, the Japanese government introduced revised data protection legislation for the public sector and introduced legislation it publicly stated was hoped to bring Japan under the EU's third country export regulations.

Prof Adams of Meiji University will present recent joint work with Murata (also of Meiji) and Orito (of Ehime) on the Japanese Sense of Information Privacy, historically and how this has been effected by computer and networking systems, and the broader political background to the development of the 2003 data protection legislation.
BIO:
Professor Andrew A Adams Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan http://www.a-cubed.info/

Ethical aspects of computer mediated communication

Yve Dougall gave an entertaining and informative talk on "The ethical aspects of computer mediated communication" at the ACS Canberra Branch this evening. She is undertaking postgraduate research in ethics and information technology at the Centre of Applied Philosophy and Applied Ethics (CAPPE) at ANU.

Yve started by relating Kant and Plato's Cave to the use of Facebook. She pointed out that research shows there are characteristic linguistic patterns used online which can be used to detect deception. Deception induces similar responses in the brain as being in a position of power over others. Yve pointed out that that there are only three centres of excellence in this field in the world: Department of Communicators, Cornell, Open University of Israel, and Delft University of Technology.

Yve claimed that the level of deception is related to the medium of communication: the faster the communication, the higher the rate of deception. Email is less subject to deception, perhaps because it is more likely that the messages will be used as evidence. However, even in the case of email, evasiveness may be used.

It occurs to me that this research could have practical application. Techniques could be used for business, government and education to encourage people to be more honest in correspondence, applying for funding or doing tests. This could be done by making the system seem less immediate and make it very clear that all documents are recorded. It might also be useful to make the system appear personal, for example by having a photo and name staff member which the client is communicating with.

One curious finding Yve reported was that online dating sites have low rates of deception. Also gender is not correlated with honesty online, although men and women have different views as to what is dishonesty.

Another aspect is that if the online user trusts the other party, they will reveal more information than they would do in person. This might be useful, for example, for patients to be more honest with their doctors.

In response to a question Yve Dougall described "Second Life" as "The After Life", being a failing system, with Facebook now taking over as the hot online place to be.

The ethical aspects of computer mediated communication

Exploring the interplay between deception and identity on: social networking sites (SNS); text (SMS) and email.

The ability to control what information one reveals about oneself over the Internet and to control that can access this information, only becomes an ethical issue when there is a causal concern for Internet privacy. Internet users may achieve an adequate level of privacy through controlled disclosure of both personal and factual information about themselves. The technological configuration underlying the Internet has a considerable bearing on its ethical aspects. The Internet blurs the boundaries between self and game, self and role, self and simulation, self and communication. Participants are whatever they can pretend to be. They enjoy the artificial social construct on social networking sites or the manipulated façade of virtual worlds, without questioning where it comes from, who created it, or for what purpose. The popular culture that appropriates everything and turns it into a simulation and a story line becomes the model for the self, society and reality. Life becomes a symbolic arena for the acting out of manufactured identity selves that is then communicated in a contained and controlled storyline through selected ‘friends’.

The goal of this presentation is to inform and dispel myths with academic factual research on how prevalent online identity deception actually is and to examine the effects of and the conditions that give rise to it.

Biography: Yve Dougall

Analyst of ACS, based in Canberra. Prior to joining ACS nearly two years ago, she was working with the Office of Transport Security, heading the Aviation Security Technologies Team.

She initially studied Engineering back in the early eighties and was the first female civil engineer to be awarded a cadetship by then Telecom Australia. After working in Building Design Standards, for four years - she shifted gears and decided to embark on journalism. She was based with Reuters in Hong Kong as a war & foreign correspondent, returning to Australia in the late eighties to work for SBS.

A return to fulltime study followed with a major in Philosophy, where upon graduating she moved to Canberra with her husband in 1994.

She has held diverse Government contracts over the years specializing in addressing ICT Business Cases within the Federal Sector, her areas of expertise are in change management, project management, policy to program service delivery and stakeholder engagement. Other contracts have included Minter Ellison and Engineers Australia.

She is currently undertaking postgraduate research in ethics and information technology at the Centre of Applied Philosophy and Applied Ethics at ANU.

Ethical aspects of computer mediated communication

Yve Dougall, National Policy & Research Analyst of ACS, will talk on "The ethical aspects of computer mediated communication" at the Australian Computer Society in Canberra, 7 September 2010.

The ethical aspects of computer mediated communication

Exploring the interplay between deception and identity on: social networking sites (SNS); text (SMS) and email.

The ability to control what information one reveals about oneself over the Internet and to control that can access this information, only becomes an ethical issue when there is a causal concern for Internet privacy. Internet users may achieve an adequate level of privacy through controlled disclosure of both personal and factual information about themselves. The technological configuration underlying the Internet has a considerable bearing on its ethical aspects. The Internet blurs the boundaries between self and game, self and role, self and simulation, self and communication. Participants are whatever they can pretend to be. They enjoy the artificial social construct on social networking sites or the manipulated façade of virtual worlds, without questioning where it comes from, who created it, or for what purpose. The popular culture that appropriates everything and turns it into a simulation and a story line becomes the model for the self, society and reality. Life becomes a symbolic arena for the acting out of manufactured identity selves that is then communicated in a contained and controlled storyline through selected ‘friends’.

The goal of this presentation is to inform and dispel myths with academic factual research on how prevalent online identity deception actually is and to examine the effects of and the conditions that give rise to it.

Biography: Yve Dougall

Yve Dougall is the National Policy & Research Analyst of ACS, based in Canberra. Prior to joining ACS nearly two years ago, she was working with the Office of Transport Security, heading the Aviation Security Technologies Team.

She initially studied Engineering back in the early eighties and was the first female civil engineer to be awarded a cadetship by then Telecom Australia. After working in Building Design Standards, for four years - she shifted gears and decided to embark on journalism. She was based with Reuters in Hong Kong as a war & foreign correspondent, returning to Australia in the late eighties to work for SBS.

A return to fulltime study followed with a major in Philosophy, where upon graduating she moved to Canberra with her husband in 1994.

She has held diverse Government contracts over the years specializing in addressing ICT Business Cases within the Federal Sector, her areas of expertise are in change management, project management, policy to program service delivery and stakeholder engagement. Other contracts have included Minter Ellison and Engineers Australia.

She is currently undertaking postgraduate research in ethics and information technology at the Centre of Applied Philosophy and Applied Ethics at ANU. ...

Google Ad Review Center Can Block Politics, Sex and Religion

One of the problems with having third party advertisements on my web site is the embarrassment from inappropriate content. Google has introduced the "Google Ad Review Center", which allows publishers to block classes of AdSense advertisements from their pages. Rather than just provide a list of categories to block, Google reports how many times such ads have appeared on the publisher's web site and the proportion of overall revenue they provide. This useful, as it is apparent that many ads take up space on the page, without providing much revenue. These classes of ads make up almost 6% of those on my web pages, but only provide 4.6% of the revenue.

However, it creates interesting moral dilemma for the publisher, who has to decide if they can afford to give up revenue from ads they do not like. In my case I decided to ban everything except, drugs, politics and religion. The blocked ads made up 3% of those displayed, but only provided 0.4% of the revenue.

Category	% Recent Earnings	% Recent Ad Impressions
Cosmetic Procedures & Body Modification	0.0%	0.2%
Dating	0.0%	0.3%
Drugs & Supplements	2.4%	0.8%
Get Rich Quick	0.3%	1.1%
Politics	0.7%	1.5%
References to Sex & Sexuality	0.0%	0.3%
Religion	1.1%	0.4%
Ringtones & Downloadables	0.1%	0.4%
Sexual & Reproductive Health	0.0%	0.1%
Video Games (Casual & Online)	0.0%	0.5%
Weight Loss	0.0%	0.1%

Responsible Conduct of Research in Australia

Greetings from the Great Hall of the Austrlaian National University in Canberra, where a Research Data Workshop on the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research by the Australian National Data Service (ANDS). There has been recent controversy over the distribution of climate change data. ANDS has been set up to help Australian researchers collect even larger collections of data online, so it is timely to have a look at the ethics of this. There will be a second workshop tomorrow on the services which ANDS provides.

ANDS has produced a short guide "Research data policy and the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research". This suggests institutions review policies on: Intellectual property (covering copyright, moral rights, patent), Data management (Storage, Retention, Disposal, Access), Conflict of interest, Collaboration and contractual agreements, Ethics and privacy and Compliance. Many of these issues are covered in my lecture notes on Metadata and Electronic Data Management.

At question time I asked if ANDS would require organisations contributing data to indicate if they comply with the code. The reason for this is that ANDS, by referring people to data sources take on an ethical and legal responsibility for what is done with that data. Even if there is no black letter law requiring the use of the code, the fact that it exists is likely to be taken into account by a court or other body assign the actions of researchers. Given that ANDS has endorsed the code, it would be difficult for ANDS to claim that the code does not apply to them. It would not be possible to say that the data ANDS refers people to is not ANDS data and they have no responsibility for it: by referring people to data ANDS takes on obligations. One way to discharge those obligations might be to record if the organisation providing the data complies to the code or another code. Data uses could then make an informed decision as to if they should use the data.

The code itself (Reference No: R39 508kbytes PDF, 41 pages) was published in 2007 by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), with help from the Australian Research Council and Universities Australia. There is also a Summary

Synopsis of publication:

The Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research guides institutions and researchers in responsible research practices and promotes integrity in research for researchers. The Code shows how to manage breaches of the Code and allegations of research misconduct, how to manage research data and materials, how to publish and disseminate research findings, including proper attribution of authorship, how to conduct effective peer review and how to manage conflicts of interest. It also explains the responsibilities and rights of researchers if they witness research misconduct.

Developed jointly by the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian Research Council and Universities Australia, the Code has broad relevance across all research disciplines. It replaces the Joint NHMRC/AVCC Statement and Guidelines on Research Practice (1997).

Compliance with the Code is a prerequisite for receipt of National Health and Medical Research Council funding. ...

From: Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research, NHMRC, 2007

Social Implications of Emerging Technologies

The IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS2010) is being held on the theme: Social Implications of Emerging Technologies, at University of Wollongong, 7-9 June 2010. I have been reviewing papers for the conference and they look interesting:

The IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS) is an annual international forum exploring the social implications of technology. ISTAS10 will bring together participants sharing research, projects, and ideas about:

Automatic Identification

• Automatic identification technologies including biometrics (DNA), RFID
• Surveillance, dataveillance, sousveillance, anti-surveillance, uberveillance
• National security, emergency response, border control, e-tollway, e-passports

Location-Based Services

• Geographic information systems, digital mapping, geotagging, street view, CCTV
• Location-based services, global positioning systems (GPS), tracking, monitoring

Social Networking

• Social networking applications, blogs, glogs, cyberstalking, collaboration
• Data collection, data merging, data matching, data mining, disclosure
• Mobile comms, wearable computing, ubiquity, context-aware applications

Nanotechnology

• Microchip implants, biomedical solutions, diagnostics, drug delivery
• Nanotechnology, bionics, transhumanism, artificial intelligence, robots, cyborgs

Privacy, Security & Human Rights

• Cyberethics, privacy, data protection, trust, control, consent, transborder flows
• Security, law enforcement, covert/overt policing, laws, regulations, public policy
• Social implications, registers, human rights, intellectual property, social equity ...

Economics of Spam

The paper "Spamalytics: An Empirical Analysis of Spam Marketing Conversion", details how researchers hacked into a spam network to measure its effectiveness. I was interviewed about it ("Spammers making a profit") on ABC Radio for the PM program. The researchers suggest that Spam is not as profitable as previously thought. My main concern with the research was over the ethics and legality of the research technique.

Ever wondered how the companies that send out junk emails make any money, when most people delete the emails without reading them? Well, a group of computer scientists in California has found that spammers are turning a profit, despite only getting one response for every 12.5-million emails they send.

From: Spammers making a profit, PM, ABC Radio, Wednesday, 5:10pm on Radio National and 6:10pm on ABC Local Radio, 12 November, 2008 (audio also available)

The researchers hacked into the "Storm" botnet network and monitored how many messages were sent. They then set up two fake e-commerce web sites to see how many people would click through the spam ads to buy the products. They found only one in 12.5 million clicked through. Based on this they suggested Spam is not very profitable. It seems a reasonable conclusion and I suggested in the radio interview that the people doing this could probably earn more from the effort involved via legitimate e-commerce.

There are numerous research papers on the economics of Spam. The wall Street Journal covered this in 2002: For Bulk E-Mailer, Pestering Millions Offers Path to Profit. That spam may not be as profitable as previously thought is interesting, but does not necessarily lessen its appeal to criminals.

However, my main concern was the methodology of the research. It is ethically and legally questionable for the researchers to hack into a spam network. Like any citizen, when a researcher finds someone doing something illegal, they have a responsibility to report that to the appropriate authorities so it can be investigated and those involved prosecuted. In this case the researchers do not appear to have done that and instead monitored the network and even set up their own e-commerce store to exploit it.

The researchers are from Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Berkeley and University of California, San Diego. Those institutions have ethical guidelines for research which the researchers should have consulted before proceeding.

In the ethics section of the paper, the authors state: " First, our instrumented proxy bots do not create any new harm" and "Second, our proxies are passive actors and do not themselves engage in any behaviour that is intrinsically objectionable; they do not send spam e-mail, they do not compromise hosts, nor do they even contact worker bots asynchronously. " and "Finally, where we do modify C&C messages in transit, these actions themselves strictly reduce harm. Users who click on spam altered by these changes will be directed to one of our innocuous doppelganger Web sites.".

However, the authors do not address the issue of if they were taking part in a criminal activity or if they should have reported the criminal activities to the appropriate authorities. It seems a flawed argument for the researchers to say their activities were no more harmful than those being observed.

The “conversion rate” of spam — the probability that an unsolicited e-mail will ultimately elicit a “sale” — underlies the entire spam value proposition. However, our understanding of this critical behavior is quite limited, and the literature lacks any quantitative study concerning its true value. In this paper we present a methodology for measuring the conversion rate of spam. Using a parasitic infiltration of an existing botnet’s infrastructure, we analyze two spam campaigns: one designed to propagate a malware Trojan, the other marketing on-line pharmaceuticals. For nearly a half billion spam e-mails we identify the number that are successfully delivered, the number that pass through popular anti-spam filters, the number that elicit user visits to the advertised sites, and the number of “sales” and “infections” produced.

Categories and Subject Descriptors: K.4.1 [Public Policy Issues]: ABUSE AND CRIME INVOLVING COMPUTERS
General Terms: Measurement, Security, Economics

From: Spamalytics: An Empirical Analysis of Spam Marketing Conversion, Chris Kanich, Christian Kreibich, Kirill Levchenko, Brandon Enright, Geoffrey M. Voelker, Vern Paxson, Stefan Savage, CCS'08 Conference, ACM, October 2008

Ethical Investment Roadshow

Australian Ethical Investment Ltd. is doing a series of roadshows in Australia and New Zeeland. James Thier, Executive director, talked in Sydney last night (Tuesday 19 August 2008). He gave a realistic overview of ethical investment (and the different terms such as Socially responsible investing and sustainable investing), how it is intended to help the community and the environment and his company's superannuation and trust investment products.

James did a reasonable job of a difficult task of selling investments in the current negative financial environment. Like other investments, the value of Australian Ethical's have gone down recently. But most of the presentation concentrated on the long term gains the fund has made and the social and environmental value of the investments.

One question I had was about the mechanics of the AEI process. I have been an AEI investor for some years (even bought some shares in the company). One frustration has been the difficulty of making regular investments. With less ethical superannuation funds, after I fill in the complicated application form they give me a BPAY code. I can make an additional investment simply by making a BPAY payment through my bank. The BPAY code indicates who I am and what fund the money has to go into. There is no need to fill out any forms. AEI now allows BPAY for trust investments, but seems to still want me to send details of my payment separately for superannuation. This is an error prone and inefficient process.

James mentioned he had done a study overseas. A quick web search found that he was a 2006 Churchill Fellow:

Fellowship travel was undertaken from April 4 to June 6, 2007. The intent was to visit organisations actively participating in a variety of shareholder advocacy roles. These included the more traditional/corporate perspectives of investment houses through to activist undertakings of NGOs. A significant element in the mix is faith-based organisations, which are increasing willing to attend to matters outside their normally prescribed domain, such as climate change. In addition, there is a growing profile which sees the need to address policy formulation in the endeavour to effect real and lasting improvement.

The dimensions of this investigation were not only significantly different from what is often the case in Australia, but equally there proved to be considerable variation
within norms of the countries visited.

Highlights
Sacramento – CalPERS is one of the largest pension funds in the world and a leader in corporate governance with respect to issues of shareholder value.
Boston – Attending the Ceres conference on Climate Change. Meeting with Tim Smith, Senior Vice President, after his move to Walden Asset Management to enhance their active proxy voting as a means to secure public and management attention.
New York - Interfaith Centre of Corporate Responsibility provides guidance and co-ordination on social issues to faith-based members and a broader constituency, including acting as a clearing-house for information on shareholder actions.
Amsterdam – Meeting Professor Harry Hummel of SNS who is pre-eminent in socially responsible product innovation.

Recommendations

Shareholder activism is a broad paradigm through which individuals or groups can exert pressure on companies to affect a particular corporate practice.

• Provide procedural infrastructure/produce alternative products to enable new possibilities whereby Australians can influence corporate decision-makers in a concrete, non-confrontational manner
• Establish a framework/methodology for co-ordinating participants and institutional investors to act in a common interest
• Consider an integrated approach to the often disparate programs of
corporates, NGOs and faith-based organisations

Implementation and Dissemination

Research findings will be disseminated through regular public presentations and in association with a broad range of networks – professional and community, as well as media contacts and via publications. Promotion to 40,000 people occurred through
newsletter and a keynote speaker at a Climate Change summit comprising hundreds of attendees, in July 2007.

Possibly new approaches to investment product formulation and manufacture. ...

From: Executive Summary, "To examine the mechanisms of shareholder advocacy, especially resolutions proposed at Annual General Meetings, used to improve the ethics of corporations and promote ecological sustainable and socially just enterprises", Report by James Thier, The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust of Australia, 10 September 2007

ps: I noticed that with his business suit James was wearing what appeared to be a pair of canvas and rubber walking boots. I don't know if this was to avoid animal products or against child labour for shoe making in third world countries, or just for comfort. If reminded me of an eminent IT professor who once gave a keynote speech at a conference. I was in the front row and so could see he was wearing hiking boots with his suit.

Australian Robotic Weapon Platform

Metal Storm have displayed their high speed mortar on a military PacBot robot from an iRobot. The Metal Storm gun is electrically fired, with a minimum of moving parts, making it a good match for a robot. However, a cluster of off the shelf single shot, electrically primed mortars would be almost as effective, a lot cheaper and able to be fielded without years of development.

MetalStorm's FireStorm four barrel 40mm system has four rounds in each barrel , giving 14 shots total. The platform has electric motors to rotated and elevate the system. However, the iRobot itself can rotate using differential steering of the tracks and and elevate using a scissor action of the “flippers” (axillary tracks). So a much simpler arrangement would be possible using sixteen one shot 40mm grenade barrels fixed on the robot platform, using ammunition of the M203, or similar and aimed using the tracks.

Also the MetalStorm people need to keep in mind that they are just a programing change away from breaching the land mine treaty. A robotic mortar which fires automatically, without human intervention, would technically be a land mine and so illegal.

Payload weight, reliability and the ability to render the weapon harmless are critical requirements when arming unmanned robotic platforms and systems. In addition to meeting weight restrictions, the weapon system cannot be permitted to jam or need manual intervention or the mission may be jeopardised. Also if the weapon is captured it should not be capable of being fired back at friendly forces.

Metal Storm has unique characteristics that make it ideally suited to unmanned air or ground robotic platforms. In particular it has the following features:

• Extremely lightweight
• No moving parts (no jamming)
• Precision firing rates - single shot to rapid burst automatic
• Selectable munitions; lethal, non lethal, marker rounds
• Low velocity or medium velocity mitigating recoil for smaller lightweight UAVs or platforms
• High velocity for larger UAVs or robotic platforms
• Electronic fire control and sighting integrates with UAV or robotic platform electronics
• Weapon is rendered harmless if captured as fire control system is locked out.

Small robotic platforms can carry single or multi-barrel Metal Storm weapons that can be attached to existing structures (such as a robotic arm or wing), or can be integrated with specialised mounts that can target independently of the movement and direction of travel of the robotic platform.

Metal Storm has already conducted live firings from several robotic platforms including the Dragonfly rotary wing UAV, the iRobot Warrior UGV and the Talon UGV. ...

From: Unmanned Systems/Robotic Platforms, Metal Storm

FireStorm is a lightweight multi barrel 40mm electronic weapon system that brings cutting edge solutions to the Defence, Security and Law Enforcement communities.

The system can be mounted to fixed or mobile platforms to provide mission support for operations to include:

• Military Operations on Urban Terrain (MOUT)
• Reconnaissance Patrol
• Border Patrol
• Critical Infrastructure Protection
• Crowd Control

FireStorm has successfully demonstrated its capabilities under separate contracts for the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army. Recent demonstrations have proven the system capable of delivering High Explosive (HE) and a range of less lethal munitions. FireStorm brings the operational community a total force continuum application.

• No Moving Parts - All Metal Storm guns have no moving parts for high reliability.
• Safe Operation - FireStorm features a number of mechanical and electrical interlocks making it one of the safest guns to operate.
• Cost Effective - FireStorm is inexpensive to acquire, use and maintain.
• Plug & Play Operation - FireStorm requires only DC power and an ethernet connection for operations.
• Unattended All Weather Operation - FireStorm is environmentally sealed allowing for all-weather operations for extended periods without continuing maintenance requirements.

From: FireStorm, Metal Storm

ICT Ethics in the Workplace

Greetings from the last day of the ET GOVICT2008 conference. Mr. Mark Haughey CIO, Workplace Authority, talked on "The Uncertainty of Ethics in IT". Mark brought the conference back to reality by discussing his experience as an IT professional in the public service. He emphasized value for money and planning. I asked him he thought ICT professionals have an ethical responsibility for reducing greenhouse emission through reducing energy use. He responded that this was also a practical problem with high power servers upsetting building air conditioning by creating hotspots. Idris Sulaiman from Computers Off, pointed out there were some new guidelines on this.

Ms. Cecilia Ridgley School of Information Technology and Electrical
Engineering UNSW@ADFA, ICT Advisory Services, KPMG Canberra talked about "The Decision Disconnect - Ethics and ICT Governance". Cecilla put the ICT Governance AS8015 in the business context. She talked about the difference between hard hierarchal crystal organization structures and fluid amoebic structures. Language, learning and leadership can be used for governance.

Dr. Daryl Macer, Regional Adviser, Regional Unit for Social and Human
Sciences (RUSHAP) in Asia and the Pacific, UNESCO, challenged our ideas of who and what ethics apply to. He used examples from science fiction, such as HAL and Japanese comic books, such as Astro Boy. Dr. Macer related infoethics to bioethics, suggesting the work on ethics in medicine, such as the "Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and on Human Rights", could be largely applied to information technology ethics. He also mentioned the "Ethics of Energy Technologies in Asia and the Pacific Project". Unfortunately I couldn't find a web site for the project, if someone could point this out, that would be good.

Phillip N. Argy, Deputy Chairman – ACS Foundation, Chief Executive – ArgyStar.com, talked on "Trusted vs. Trustworthy – how professionalism bridges the ethics gap". He cited a software problem which caused a Boeing 777 flight out of Perth to turn back. Philip is one of the WIPO arbitrators and one of his cases I noticed was on ownership of "The Wiggles" web address.