Scholarly Works, Political Science
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- The Spyware Industrial ComplexSpens, Brooke (Tech4Humanity Lab, 2024-11-01)Over the last decade, commercial surveillance vendors (CSVs) have capitalized off the demand for full service cyber espionage tools from government customers. The demand has created an incentive model for firms to develop intrusion technologies, further proliferating the spyware industry at the risk of human rights and the security of users. Missteps of spyware companies resulting in the erroneous surveillance of civil society has been well documented by watchdog groups like University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and Amnesty International. Rather than the misapplication of surveillance tools as is often covered in the media, this report will examine the ecosystem that supports the development, selling, and sustainment of commercial spying. Reports by Steven Feldstein and Brian Kot, Google’s Threat Analysis Group, and other works will be drawn on throughout this analysis. This paper aims to define the features and patterns of cyber espionage firms that produce the spyware utilized in the “pay-to-play” model.
- An Exploratory Mixed-methods Study on General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance in Open-Source SoftwareFranke, Lucas; Liang, Huayu; Farzanehpour, Sahar; Brantly, Aaron F.; Davis, James C.; Brown, Chris (ACM, 2024-10-24)Background: Governments worldwide are considering data privacy regulations. These laws, such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), require software developers to meet privacy-related requirements when interacting with users’ data. Prior research describes the impact of such laws on software development, but only for commercial software. Although opensource software is commonly integrated into regulated software, and thus must be engineered or adapted for compliance, we do not know how such laws impact open-source software development. Aims: To understand how data privacy laws affect open-source software (OSS) development, we focus on the European Union’s GDPR, as it is the most prominent such law. We investigated how GDPR compliance activities influence OSS developer activity (RQ1), how OSS developers perceive fulfilling GDPR requirements (RQ2), the most challenging GDPR requirements to implement (RQ3), and how OSS developers assess GDPR compliance (RQ4). Method:We distributed an online survey to explore perceptions of GDPR implementations from open-source developers (N=56). To augment this analysis, we further conducted a repository mining study to analyze development metrics on pull requests (N=31,462) submitted to open-source GitHub repositories. Results: Our results suggest GDPR policies complicate OSS development and introduce challenges, primarily regarding the management of users’ data, implementation costs and time, and assessments of compliance. Moreover, we observed negative perceptions of the GDPR from OSS developers and significant increases in development activity, in particular metrics related to coding and reviewing, on GitHub pull requests related to GDPR compliance. Conclusions: Our findings provide future research directions and implications for improving data privacy policies, motivating the need for relevant resources and automated tools to support data privacy regulation implementation and compliance efforts in OSS.
- A First Look at the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Open-Source SoftwareFranke, Lucas; Liang, Huayu; Brantly, Aaron F.; Davis, James C.; Brown, Chris (ACM, 2024-04-14)This poster describes work on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in open-source software. Although open-source software is commonly integrated into regulated software, and thus must be engineered or adapted for compliance, we do not know how such laws impact open-source software development. We surveyed open-source developers (N=47) to understand their experiences and perceptions of GDPR. We learned many engineering challenges, primarily regarding the management of users’ data and assessments of compliance. We call for improved policy-related resources, especially tools to support data privacy regulation implementation and compliance in open-source software.
- Opening the box of parties and party systems under autocratization: evidence from TurkeyYavuzyilmaz, Hakan; Tsarouhas, Dimitris (Routledge, 2022-10-25)Party institutionalization (PI) and party system institutionalization (PSI) are critical for processes of democratization and democratic consolidation, yet their impact and relationship have not been explored under conditions of autocratization. How does autocratization relate to party and party system stability, and how does that link manifest itself? To answer those questions, we draw evidence from Turkey to demonstrate that when autocratization occurs, stabilization at the systemic level can go hand in hand with declining levels of PI. We also conceptualize the process of stabilization at the systemic level alongside unit-level de-institutionalization as a form of systemic ossification. Ossified party systems appear stable but are continuously subject to the possibility of de-stabilization, or even implosion, due to the under-institutionalization of incumbent parties. Driving factors of such (de)stabilization are: (1) the increasing unevenness of party competition and (2) increasing levels of societal and political polarization resulting from autocratization.
- Ambiguous citizenship policies: Examining implementation gaps across levels of legislation in JordanFrost, Lillian (2024-04-10)Despite the prevalence of ambiguous citizenship policies that say one thing in law and another in implementing regulations, few studies have focused on systematically studying this type of implementation gap, particularly in contexts beyond North America and Europe. This largely has remained the case despite research on discursive policy gaps, which occur between a policy’s stated objectives and its laws, efficacy gaps, which describe when a policy’s outcomes fail to meet its goals, and compliance gaps, which reflect disparities between a state’s commitments to international law and its corresponding domestic policies. How can we advance conceptualizations of law-regulation implementation gaps? This paper proposes one approach by focusing on the content of domestic laws, on the one hand, and the content of related implementing regulations, on the other. When law-regulation discrepancies occur, they illustrate the agency of senior officials in writing this intentional ambiguity into different levels of legislation, challenging assumptions about institutional weakness and lower-level bureaucratic discretion as chief drivers of implementation gaps. The paper illustrates this concept by analyzing discrepancies between Jordan’s nationality and passports laws and their related implementing regulations, particularly regarding Gaza refugees’ access to passports, investors’ access to nationality, and Palestinian-Jordanians’ subjection to nationality withdrawals. These diverse cases of intentional ambiguity demonstrate that such gaps can serve to partially exclude or include a group and can occur with noncitizen and citizen as well as more or less vulnerable groups.
- Cyberculture’s Abstract Utopias: Silicon Valley and Cleaner, Greener, Leaner Rules for a “New Economy”Luke, Timothy W. (University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, 2023-10-20)
- The Dialectic of De-Holocenation: Waste and Wealth in the AnthropoceneLuke, Timothy W. (University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, 2022)
- Beyond Prepper Culture as Right-wing Extremism: Selling Preparedness to Everyday Consumers as How to Survive the End of the World on a BudgetLuke, Timothy W. (University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, 2021-12-01)
- Asymmetries in Potential for Partisan GerrymanderingGoedert, Nicholas; Hildebrand, Robert; Travis, Laurel; Pierson, Matthew (2024)This paper investigates the effectiveness of potential partisan gerrymandering of the U.S. House of Representatives across a range of states. We use a heuristic algorithm to generate district maps that optimize for multiple objectives, including compactness, partisan benefit, and competitiveness. While partisan gerrymandering is highly effective for both sides, we find that the majority of states are moderately biased toward Republicans when optimized for either compactness or partisan benefit, meaning that Republican gerrymanders have the potential to be more effective. However, we also find that more densely populated and more heavily Hispanic states show less Republican bias or even Democratic bias. Additionally, we find that in almost all cases we can generate reasonably compact maps with very little sacrifice to partisan objectives through a mixed objective function. This suggests that there is a strong potential for stealth partisan gerrymanders that are both compact and beneficial to one party. Nationwide, partisan gerrymandering is capable of swinging over one hundred seats in the U.S. House, even when compact districts are simultaneously sought.
- Individual accountability, collective decision-makingGibbs, Daniel (Springer, 2023-01-23)An influential theoretical literature studies a single executive's electoral incentives to knowingly pursue bad policies because they are popular. I develop a model to study pandering in a legislative setting where multiple politicians, each accountable to their own constituency, are responsible for policymaking. Individual politicians receive private information about the best policy for achieving outcomes that citizens value. Politicians then privately deliberate to select a policy. Under certain conditions, politi- cians face electoral incentives to misrepresent their private evidence during deliberation in order to convince their colleagues to adopt a popular policy. I find that these perverse incentives become weaker as the number of politicians involved in policymaking increases. In larger groups, politicians share more responsibility for their policy choices. Individual politicians therefore have less to gain electorally from pandering. This result suggests that in addition to giving politicians more information about which policies are in citizens' best interest, larger groups provide stronger incentives for politicians to use this information when policymaking is non-transparent.
- The Reputation Politics of the FilibusterGibbs, Daniel (Now Publishers, 2023-10-03)Filibusters and efforts to defeat them shape the public reputation of U.S. senators and their parties. I develop a formal model to study how senators’ concerns about their own and the opposing party’s reputation influence their behavior in the Senate. In the model, a majority and opposition party bargain over policy. Each party earns a reputation with a core primary constituency which observes legislative bargaining and forms beliefs about its party’s policy priorities. Filibusters and attempts to defeat them are costly and can therefore credibly signal that a party values a particular issue. I identify conditions under which parties use these costly procedural moves to preserve or enhance their reputation when the costs of obstruction deter purely policy-motivated parties from filibustering or attempting to defeat a filibuster. Alternatively, under certain conditions parties strategically choose not to pursue policy victories that they otherwise would either to protect their own reputation with a constituency that values other issues more highly or to deny the opposing party the opportunity to signal. I examine the model’s empirical implications for the relative frequency of filibusters, cloture votes, and tabling motions and identify conditions under which the Senate is endogenously supermajoritarian.
- Unsettling Brazil: Urban Indigenous and Black Peoples’ Resistances to Dependent Settler CapitalismPoets, Desirée (University of Alabama Press, 2024-03)Unsettling Brazil offers a powerful account of five urban Indigenous and Black communities and movements in Brazil that illuminates their struggle for land, dignity, and their ways of life amid historic and ongoing settler colonialism, marked by militarization and dependent capitalist development. The in-depth case studies are the Indigenous movement Aldeia Maracanã and the quilombola community Sacopã in Rio, the Quilombo dos Luízes in Belo Horizonte, the Indigenous movement behind the Pindorama scholarship program in São Paulo, and the Complexo da Maré favela in Rio. For each, Poets vividly documents the intersectional and transnational structures of power that perpetuate the erasure, dispossession, and exploitation of nonwhite populations and the creative ways that Black and Indigenous communities have mobilized to unsettle these structures. Drawing on the knowledge produced by Black and Indigenous organizers and thinkers, Poets argues for an interdisciplinary framework that prioritizes the voices and experiences of these communities. Addressing increasingly salient calls for decolonization, Poets ponders the paradoxical role of rights, citizenship, and the state in the fight for freedom and justice. Unsettling Brazil urges readers to confront the uncomfortable truths about the nation's history and stands in solidarity with those fighting to reclaim their heritage, identity, and land.
- The Efficacy of European Union Spyware RegulationsPhillips, Riley (Tech4Humanity Lab, 2023-12-01)Supranational organizations like the European Union (EU) have struggled to enforce successful legal frameworks that adequately regulate and enforce the export and misuse of malware technologies. Considering the Pegasus Project and the newly released Predator Files, EU systems of regulation fall short at addressing the broader malware market abuse, production, and proliferation. Despite numerous export regulations EU states membership in the acclaimed organization has provided a false sense of security and accountability for the upholding of human rights. Pegasus Project and Predator files reveal the mass proliferation of spyware throughout the EU by leveraging its vague export controls and state centered accountability methods. The 2022 EU directive and legislation efficacy fails to uphold export arrangements and by extension United Nations (UN) and EU human rights standards through terminological loopholes and proliferative export regulations.
- Understanding Generative Adversarial NetworksLudwig, Peyton (Tech4Humanity Lab, 2023-09-01)Generative adversarial networks (GANs) are a new technology impacting social, policy, and security discourses. The rise of GANs enables the creation of artificially generated hyper-realistic human faces. GANs have been around since 2014,1 yet only recently has their quality risen to a level capable of fooling the average person. StyleGANs are GANs trained to manipulate or generate high-quality images.2 StyleGANs are becoming increasingly publicly accessible and enable users to generate human faces with ease. The styleGAN program is open access;2 while this allows for usage in positive ways, it also leads to easy accessibility for those that want to use this technology for malicious purposes. Fake accounts withAI-generated faces as their profile pictures plague social media sites and are often used as tools for misinformation. As styleGANs improve, it becomes more difficult to spot these fake faces. It is important to understand how these styleGANs work in order to best combat these disinformation attempts and understand what to do moving forward.
- Policy, Society, and Immigrants in JapanMilly, Deborah J. (Oxford University Press, 2023-10-11)Where is immigration to Japan headed? Is the country likely to make major changes in its policy approach that ease options for settlement? Can conditions for immigrants improve to encourage greater social inclusion? The books here consider themes that affect immigrants in Japan: political leaders’ views on immigration policy, cross-national realities of immigration and integration, the marginalizing character of policies, and society’s response to immigrants. The economic motivations behind increased immigration aside, considering how social incorporation of immigrants is already occurring should shed light on future prospects.
- Perspective Chapter: Foreign Residents Providing Eldercare in Japan – Government Data and Their LimitationsMilly, Deborah J. (IntechOpen, 2023)How many foreign residents in Japan are caring for Japanese senior citizens? What trends will likely characterize reliance on foreign residents for caregiving? Japan leads the world in its proportion of seniors, but many other countries are following a similar path. The visa system and the care industry in Japan are highly institutionalized and diverse, posing challenges for assessing the extent of foreign residents’ contribution to care. Scholars, policy professionals, and those advising potential migrants from other countries should recognize the pros and cons of the major government data sources and not rely on just one source. This chapter provides guidance on these sources and suggestions for using them effectively. It further highlights that, given recent access to new visa options, employers are opting for workers with more skills and the possibility of remaining in Japan for a longer period of time.
- Immigrant Incorporation in East Asian Democracies [Book review]Milly, Deborah J. (Cambridge University Press, 2021-11)
- Multilevel governance, community and emergency management during the pandemic: Migrants in JapanMilly, Deborah J. (Emerald, 2023-04-24)Purpose: Building on perspectives from the study of multilevel governance, migrants' inclusion and emergency management, this article asks how differences across national regulations for foreign residents, work eligibility and access to national emergency supports intersected with local approaches in responding to migrants. Design/methodology/approach: This article examines national policy adjustments and parallel subnational governance early in the pandemic for three groups of foreign residents: international students, technical interns and co-ethnics with long-term visas, primarily Brazilians and Peruvians. It uses Japanese-language documents to trace national policy responses. To grasp subnational governance, the article analyzes coverage in six Japanese regional newspapers from northern, central and western Japan, for the period of April 1 to October 1, 2020. Findings: National policies obstructed or enabled migrants' treatment as members of the local community but did not dictate this membership, which varied according to migrant group. Migrants' relationship to the community affected available supports. Originality/value: The article brings together perspectives on multilevel governance, emergency management and migrants' inclusion. It exposes how different migrant groups' ties to the local community affected access to supports.
- Biopolitics: Power, Pandemics and WarBrantly, Aaron F.; Brantly, Nataliya D. (Elsevier, 2023-01-26)COVID-19 and the subsequent global response have had a profound impact on the public health, economic health, and political health in nearly every country. This article examines the biopolitics of power and pandemics in war. Three case studies are presented: the Spanish influenza outbreak of 1918–1920 and responses to the COVID-19 outbreak in both Syria and in eastern Ukraine. The pandemic's impact has been particularly acute in active warzones, undermining the ability of governments and organizations to enforce public health recommendations, provide for the care of patients, secure supplies, and transmit information.
- CoSINT: Designing a Collaborative Capture the Flag Competition to Investigate MisinformationVenkatagiri, Sukrit; Mukhopadhyay, Anirban; Hicks, David; Brantly, Aaron F.; Luther, Kurt (ACM, 2023-07-10)Crowdsourced investigations shore up democratic institutions by debunking misinformation and uncovering human rights abuses. However, current crowdsourcing approaches rely on simplistic collaborative or competitive models and lack technological support, limiting their collective impact. Prior research has shown that blending elements of competition and collaboration can lead to greater performance and creativity, but crowdsourced investigations pose unique analytical and ethical challenges. In this paper, we employed a four-month-long Research through Design process to design and evaluate a novel interaction style called collaborative capture the fag competitions (CoCTFs). We instantiated this interaction style through CoSINT, a platform that enables a trained crowd to work with professional investigators to identify and investigate social media misinformation. Our mixed-methods evaluation showed that CoSINT leverages the complementary strengths of competition and collaboration, allowing a crowd to quickly identify and debunk misinformation. We also highlight tensions between competition versus collaboration and discuss implications for the design of crowdsourced investigations.