Sunday, March 1, 2015

The End of Privacy: special issue of Science

Privacy: use it or lose it. Likely to be important both for market design and for civil rights...

I haven't yet read this special issue of Science on privacy, but it looks like fun.

The End of Privacy

  • THE END OF PRIVACY

    The end of privacy

    • Martin Enserink and
      •  
    • Gilbert Chin
    Science 30 January 2015: 490-491.
    From big data to ubiquitous Internet connections, technology empowers researchers and the public—but makes traditional notions of privacy obsolete

News

  • PRIVACY

    Credit card study blows holes in anonymity

    • John Bohannon
    Science 30 January 2015: 468.
    Attack suggests need for new data safeguards.
  • THE END OF PRIVACY

    Unmasked

    • John Bohannon
    Science 30 January 2015: 492-494.
    Facial recognition software could soon ID you in any photo.
  • THE PRIVACY ARMS RACE

    When your voice betrays you

    • David Shultz
    Science 30 January 2015: 494.
    "Voiceprints" offer convenience and security, but they may pose privacy issues.
  • THE END OF PRIVACY

    Breach of trust

    • John Bohannon
    Science 30 January 2015: 495-497.
    After the Snowden revelations, U.S. mathematicians are questioning their long-standing ties with the secretive National Security Agency.
  • THE PRIVACY ARMS RACE

    Game of drones

    • David Shultz
    Science 30 January 2015: 497.
    Unmanned aircraft may soon be everywhere; how they will affect privacy is still unclear.
  • THE END OF PRIVACY

    Risk of exposure

    • Martin Enserink
    Science 30 January 2015: 498-500.
    When new or dangerous infectious diseases strike, public health often trumps personal privacy.
  • THE PRIVACY ARMS RACE

    Could your pacemaker be hackable?

    • Daniel Clery
    Science 30 January 2015: 499.
    Medical devices connected to the Internet are vulnerable to sabotage or data theft.
  • THE PRIVACY ARMS RACE

    Hiding in plain sight

    • Jia You
    Science 30 January 2015: 500.
    Software lets you use location-based apps without revealing where you are.
  • THE END OF PRIVACY

    Trust me, I'm a medical researcher

    • Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
    Science 30 January 2015: 501-503.
    Scientists can no longer guarantee patients' privacy. They're looking for new ways to build trust.
  • THE PRIVACY ARMS RACE

    Camouflaging searches in a sea of fake queries

    • Jia You
    Science 30 January 2015: 502.
    A browser extension masks your true interests with customized decoy questions.

Perspectives

  • Control use of data to protect privacy

    • Susan Landau
    Science 30 January 2015: 504-506.

  • What the “right to be forgotten” means for privacy in a digital age

    • Abraham L. Newman
    Science 30 January 2015: 507-508.

Review

  • Privacy and human behavior in the age of information

    • Alessandro Acquisti, 
    • Laura Brandimarte, 
    • and George Loewenstein
    Science 30 January 2015: 509-514.

Report

  • Unique in the shopping mall: On the reidentifiability of credit card metadata

    • Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, 
    • Laura Radaelli, 
    • Vivek Kumar Singh, 
    • and Alex “Sandy” Pentland
    Science 30 January 2015: 536-539.
Posted by Al Roth at 10:36 AM 0 comments
Labels: ,

Performance enhancing drugs in universities

The Guardian has the story:
Students used to take drugs to get high. Now they take them to get higher grades

"The use of so-called ‘smart drugs’, bought on the internet, to boost mental performance is rife in British universities. So can we all benefit from ‘having an edge’, or is it just a form of cheating that should be banned?"

"Modafinil: a prescription-only medication for narcolepsy that the NHS’s website describes as “a central nervous system stimulant” that prevents “excessive sleepiness during daytime hours”. Or, used off-label, bought via some off-shore pharmaceutical retailer, it’s what’s known as a “smart drug”. I hadn’t even heard of it a week ago, but it turns out they’re all on it, the students. They’ve all taken it on at least a couple of occasions, all five of the female final-year students who live in this particular flat, and all five of the male final-year students they’ve invited over to dinner.

“It’s not that it makes you more intelligent,” says Phoebe, a history student. “It’s just that it helps you work. You can study for longer. You don’t get distracted. You’re actually happy to go to the library and you don’t even want to stop for lunch. And then it’s like 7pm, and you’re still, ‘Actually, you know what? I could do another hour.’”
...
"Anjan Chatterjee, a professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, who has published several influential papers on the ethics of smart drugs, tells me that he sometimes makes jokes about it. “When I was young, students would use drugs to check out. Now they’re using them to check in.”

He’s witnessed the rise, in the last 10 years, of a generation of American students doping themselves up on various medications they believe will give them a competitive edge. “It’s even in high schools now, especially in the more affluent suburbs. Students call them ‘study aids’; they don’t even think of them as drugs. There’s an entire grey market on campuses. But then, the current estimate is that a third of all students have a prescription for some sort of psychoactive medication anyway: antidepressants, or medication for ADHD, or for anxiety, so the availability is quite high. Often, they’ll just sell on the medication in the library.”

He believes that cognitive enhancement – or cosmetic neurology, as he calls it – is likely to become viewed as normal over time, in much the same way as cosmetic surgery has been."
Posted by Al Roth at 4:54 AM 0 comments
Labels: ,

Saturday, February 28, 2015

Legal marijuana in Washington DC?

Washington DC, the nation's capital, has less local government than most jurisdictions in the U.S., since it isn't a state or part of one. So it is subject to direct federal control, which now pits the Democratic city government against the Republican congress on the matter of marijuana:
Republicans Warn Washington to Think Twice About Legalizing Marijuana

"Some Congressional Republicans said Thursday that they would increase their efforts to prevent residents here from possessing small amounts of marijuana, which became legal in Washington at midnight, and warned that the city would face numerous investigations and hearings should the mayor continue her practice of telling them to please find something else to worry about."
Posted by Al Roth at 5:55 AM 0 comments
Labels: ,

Friday, February 27, 2015

Adultery is no longer illegal in S. Korea--and share price of condom maker soars

The Guardian has the story just before the court decision...: South Korean court to rule on making adultery legal

"South Korea’s Constitutional Court is set to rule on a motion to strike down a controversial law that outlaws adultery and threatens violators with jail time.

It marks the fifth time in 25 years that the apex court has considered the constitutional legality of a 1953 statute which makes South Korea one of the few non-Muslim countries to regard marital infidelity a criminal act.

And the statute isn’t a historical quirk that simply gathers legislative dust.

In the past six years, close to 5,500 people have been formerly arraigned on adultery charges - including nearly 900 in 2014."


...and just after:
Condom maker's shares surge after South Korea legalises adultery
Unidus, the country’s largest contraceptive manufacturer, saw a 15% spike in the value of its stock on same day law banning extramarital sex was repealed

"In South Korea, extramarital sex just got a whole lot safer, after the country’s highest court overturned a law banning adultery.

The abolition of the 62-year-old law on Thursday saw the share price of the country’s biggest condom maker, Unidus, surge 15% – the daily limit on the country’s Kosdaq market. "
Posted by Al Roth at 5:15 AM 0 comments
Labels: , ,

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Kuznets' Nobel Prize medal auction

The auction of the medal that Simon Kuznets received with his Nobel Prize in Economics in 1971 ended this evening.

The auction had a minimum bid of $150,000, and a soft close, i.e. the closing time was extended for 30 minutes (I think) beyond the last bid. All the bids were made on the last day, and the auction was extended for several bids before reaching the final price of $385,848.
Posted by Al Roth at 8:40 PM 1 comments
Labels: ,

Doctor-assisted dying in Canada

The Globe and Mail has the story:

Supreme Court rules Canadians have right to doctor-assisted suicide

"Canadian adults in grievous, unending pain have a right to end their life with a doctor’s help, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday.
The unanimous ruling, by establishing that the “sanctity of life” also includes the “passage into death,” extends constitutional rights into a new realm. The courts have used the 1982 Charter of Rights to establish gay marriage and to strike down a federal abortion law. The new ruling will change the way some Canadians are permitted to die.
In a brief, powerful opening paragraph, the court explained why it was creating a new constitutional right to autonomy over one’s death in some circumstances: Those who are severely and irremediably suffering, whether physically or psychologically, “may be condemned to a life of severe and intolerable suffering” by the government’s absolute ban on assisted dying. “A person facing this prospect has two options: she can take her own life prematurely, often by violent or dangerous means, or she can suffer until she dies from natural causes. The choice is cruel.”
The decision was signed by The Court, which happens occasionally when the justices wish to lend their decisions extra weight. The nine judges, who range in age from mid-50s to 74, dismissed the notion that competent adults cannot consent to their death. “We do not agree that the existential formulation of the right to life requiresan absolute prohibition on assistance in dying, or that individuals cannot ‘waive’ their right to life. This would create a ‘duty to live,’” the ruling says.
The court decision puts Canada in the company of a small group of countries such as Belgium – and U.S. states Washington and Oregon – that permit doctor-assisted death. And it gives the Conservative government difficult choices as it heads toward an election expected in the fall. The court suspended its ruling for 12 months to allow for new rules and laws to be drafted, but Ottawa could choose to do nothing, and allow provinces and medical regulatory bodies to create the ground rules for assisted death. Or it could do what it did when the Supreme Court struck down prostitution laws 14 months ago: study international models and then create a uniquely Canadian version that may or may not respect the principles established by the court."


HT: Nicola Lacetera
Posted by Al Roth at 6:01 AM 0 comments
Labels: , ,

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Is it (always) repugnant for professors to date students?

Some recent policy decisions at Harvard and Arizona State clarify their position on romantic relationships between professors and students.

At Arizona State they've rejected a measure that would condemn all relationships between any professor and any student, and confined the ban to professors and students who they "teach, supervise, or evaluate."

The Chronicle of Higher Education has the story:

 by 

Faculty members at Arizona State University voted on Monday to broaden the institution’s prohibition on dating between professors and students, reports The Arizona Republic.
The University Senate voted, 76 to 11, to ban professors from dating students over whom the professors can “reasonably be expected” to have authority. The current policy forbids relationships between professors and the students they teach, supervise, or evaluate.
Last fall the faculty body rejected a measure that would have banned all relationships between professors and students, save exemptions granted by the provost. The new policy still requires approval from the administration to take effect."  
******************

The Harvard policy forbids all relationships between professors and undergraduates, but forbids relationships with graduate students only if the professor is teaching or supervising them.

"FAS Policy on Relationships between People of Different University Status:
•     The FAS policy prohibits romantic or sexual relationships between its faculty and any undergraduate student at Harvard College, regardless of whether the instructor is currently supervising or teaching that student. The FAS Policy also prohibits romantic or sexual relationships between faculty and graduate students or Division of Continuing Education students whom the faculty member is teaching or supervising.
•     The FAS policy does not expressly forbid other kinds of romantic or sexual relationships, but it does describe the expectations for relationships between people of different university status."
(see http://www.fas.harvard.edu/files/fas/files/sexual_and_gender-based_harassment_policy_and_procedures_for_the_fas_.pdf)
***********




Posted by Al Roth at 5:33 AM 0 comments
Labels: , ,

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Tomas Sjostrom on the Nobel Economics Prize committee

The Daily Targum, the student newspaper of Rutgers university, talks to Tomas Sjostrom about his work as a member of the committee that selects the recipients for the Nobel Economics Prize.
Professor details dual role as Nobel Prize Committee member

"in February, Sjostrom and his colleague on the committee will start to go through the extensive list of promising candidates.
“After reducing the list to reasonable nominations, we discuss the candidates [for] meetings after meetings as the spring goes on,” Sjostrom said. "
Posted by Al Roth at 5:45 AM 0 comments
Labels: ,

Monday, February 23, 2015

"three parent babies" to cure mitochondrial disease

The BBC has the story: MPs say yes to three-person babies (not without controversy):

"MPs have voted in favour of the creation of babies with DNA from two women and one man, in an historic move.

"The UK is now set to become the first country to introduce laws to allow the creation of babies from three people.

"In a free vote in the Commons, 382 MPs were in favour and 128 against the technique that stops genetic diseases being passed from mother to child.

"During the debate, ministers said the technique was "light at the end of a dark tunnel" for families.

"A further vote is required in the House of Lords. It everything goes ahead then the first such baby could be born next year.

"Proponents said the backing was "good news for progressive medicine" but critics say they will continue to fight against the technique that they say raises too many ethical and safety concerns.

"Estimates suggest 150 three-person babies could be born each year.

"Prime Minister David Cameron said: "We're not playing god here, we're just making sure that two parents who want a healthy baby can have one."
...
"Mitochondria are the tiny compartments inside nearly every cell of the body that convert food into useable energy. They have their own DNA, which does not affect characteristics such as appearance.

"Defective mitochondria are passed down only from the mother. They can lead to brain damage, muscle wasting, heart failure and blindness.

"The technique uses a modified version of IVF to combine the DNA of the two parents with the healthy mitochondria of a donor woman.

"It results in babies with 0.1% of their DNA from the second woman and is a permanent change that would be passed down through the generations.
...
"Last week the Catholic and Anglican Churches in England said the idea was not safe or ethical, not least because it involved the destruction of embryos.

"Other groups, including Human Genetics Alert, say the move would open the door to further genetic modification of children in the future - so-called designer babies, genetically modified for beauty, intelligence or to be free of disease."

Posted by Al Roth at 5:36 AM 0 comments
Labels: ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)