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Title: M150: Data, Computing and information


1
M150 Data, Computing and information
  • Outline
  • Unit fifteen.
  • Whats next.
  • Some questions.
  • Your questions.

2
1- Unit Fifteen Introduction
  • This unit draws on real-life examples to show how
    technologies affect society.
  • We have chosen to look at the consequences of
    computing and networking technologies from two
    points of view
  • How they affect privacy.
  • How they affect the ownership of information and
    intellectual property rights.
  • The application of technology involves a number
    of interacting areas of human concern ethics,
    moral principle, politics, political systems and
    law.
  • Ethics and moral principles will be discussed at
    greater length in Unit 16.
  • This unit is concerned primarily with the
    political and legal aspects.

3
1- Unit Fifteen Introduction
  • Virtually everyone has a set of principles ideas
    about what constitutes right or wrong behaviour.
  • For most people, these principles arise out of
    social conditioning in their childhood, and this
    conditioning could in turn be based on religious
    beliefs and/or life practices.
  • Morality is about the degree of conformity to a
    set of principles that determine rightness.
  • Ethics is about choosing between behaviour that
    is morally right and that which is morally
    wrong.

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1- Unit Fifteen Introduction
  • Political systems are also based on principles.
  • In most societies, the legal system supports the
    predominant moral principles.
  • However, even within a single culture there are
    tensions between different moral principles, and
    these may be reflected in the cultures legal
    system.

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1- Unit Fifteen Introduction
  • Early users of the internet viewed it as a forum
    where anything could be said. (disagreements /
    flaming).
  • As use of the internet spread to a wider, and
    more international, public, the user community
    began to feel that the entirely free exchange of
    views was in some ways harmful.
  • Further, governments began seeking to regulate
    websites which contained material that would be
    illegal.

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1- Unit Fifteen How private is private?
  • Typically we think of privacy in terms of the
    separation of information from public interest.
  • However, Felix Stalder (2002) argues that it is
    better defined in terms of access to information
    and its fair use.
  • Surveillance on the other hand implies not merely
    observing someone, but doing so in order to
    influence, manage or control their behaviour.
  • There are many things about us which, in the
    past, were more private. For instance what one
    bought or sold would only be known to those who
    witnessed the sale or would be stored on paper
    records such as bills of sale or invoices.
  • Now we depend upon third parties, whom we may not
    even be aware of, to record such things. Ex. the
    credit card company, the bank, the sellers
    company.

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1- Unit Fifteen Transactions and agents
  • Daily life is now largely conducted through
    transactions remote exchange of data to
    accomplish some goal such as purchase or sale,
    transfer of funds, making a booking and so on.
  • Transactions occur both between an individual
    and commercial organisations such as a bank,
    airline, car rental company or retailer, and
    between an individual and government departments.

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1- Unit Fifteen Transactions and agents
  • Technology enables organisations to gather,
    store, copy and disseminate data about us. Some
    examples include the following.
  • The use a credit card or withdraw money from an
    ATM.
  • Filling in a survey.
  • Transacting business by phone, email or the web
    usually involves giving your postcode or zip
    code.
  • Switched on mobile phone.
  • If you connect to the internet, your ISP keeps a
    record of the time and location of your
    connection.

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1- Unit Fifteen Invading privacy
  • Spam is junk email (sometimes referred to as
    unsolicited commercial email or UCE) that is sent
    automatically to thousands and thousands of
    recipients at once.
  • Once your email address falls into the wrong
    hands, you are likely to become the target of
    spam.
  • Why is spam any more of a problem than
    unsolicited mail? Next ---gt

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1- Unit Fifteen Invading privacy
  • According to one website, the most common uses of
    spam are for
  • Schemes purporting to make money quickly.
  • So-called low-cost loans or other forms of
    credit.
  • Offers of software for collecting e-mail
    addresses and sending spam.
  • Offering shares in unknown start-up corporations.
  • Health products and remedies.
  • Illegally pirated software.
  • Spam is a cheap way to reach thousands of
    potential customers. The spammer may pay for
    connection time, but every recipient pays the
    costs of dealing with spam, and the cost to the
    recipient exceeds the cost to the sender.

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1- Unit Fifteen Invading privacy
  • At an internet service providers site, spam
    increases the workload on mail servers, causing a
    delay to all the mail in a queue.
  • Filtering consumes resources, so few ISPs provide
    it.

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1- Unit Fifteen Invading privacy
  • The majority of recipients dont want to receive
    spam. As a result, spammers trick the recipient
    into opening their messages. Common tricks are
    to
  • Tricky subject line (put spaces between each
    letter, Hi! or Especially for you, John.
  • Disguise the origin of messages by relaying them
    through the mail server of an innocent third
    party.
  • Forge the headers of messages, making it appear
    as though the message originated elsewhere.

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1- Unit Fifteen Invading privacy
  • Cookies are short text files exchanged between a
    web server and client program, designed to permit
    the customisation of web information.
  • For example, cookies store shopping lists of
    items a user has selected while browsing through
    a virtual shop.
  • Cookies are based on a two-stage process.
  • The cookie is generated by a web server, sent to
    the client program (the browser), and stored in
    the users computer.
  • During the second stage, when the user directs
    the browser to display a certain page from the
    server, the browser will, without the user
    knowing, transmit a copy of the cookie containing
    personal information to the web server, which
    then uses it.

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1- Unit Fifteen Invading privacy
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1- Unit Fifteen Invading privacy
  • The exchange of cookies is done without a users
    knowledge. However, cookies cannot harm your
    computer or pass on private information to third
    parties.
  • Cookies were designed as a simple mechanism to
    make it easier for users to access websites
    without having to go through a lengthy process of
    identifying themselves every time they repeat a
    visit.
  • A user can set browser preferences to filter or
    reject cookies or can use browser facilities to
    manage the cookie list.

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1- Unit Fifteen Invading privacy
  • Data flow refers to the gathering of information
    from different sources, combining, manipulating
    and (often) passing it on to others, usually in
    the interests of commercial activities.

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1- Unit Fifteen Invading privacy
  • Trusted third party (credit card company)
  • You entrust the credit card company to pay the
    merchant for the goods while the merchant trusts
    the card company to have the resources to pay for
    the item. (And, of course, the credit card
    company trusts you to pay them at some time in
    the future!)
  • Trusted third parties could be set up to hold
    encryption keys. This contrasts with the original
    publicprivate key method discussed in Unit 14,
    where the private key always remains under the
    control of its owner.
  • Under normal circumstances a private key is only
    accessible to the holder. However, the key could
    be released to police or intelligence agencies if
    they needed it for an investigation. The process
    of handing a key to a trusted third party is
    known as key escrow. The key itself is said to be
    in escrow.

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1- Unit Fifteen Invading privacy
  • A proposed compromise between personal privacy
    and the need for intelligence was the Clipper
    chip, a specially designed microprocessor which
    would be built into telephones, modems and the
    like.
  • In normal use, it would ensure the privacy of any
    two parties sending and receiving a message.
  • However, in the event of suspected criminal
    activities, Clipper provided a method for
    government agencies to decrypt encrypted
    messages.

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1- Unit Fifteen Invading privacy
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1- Unit Fifteen Invading privacy
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1- Unit Fifteen Invading privacy
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1- Unit Fifteen Invading privacy
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1- Unit Fifteen Invading privacy
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1- Unit Fifteen Invading privacy
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1- Unit Fifteen Invading privacy
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1- Unit Fifteen Invading privacy
  • Key escrow appears to offer a compromise between
    individual privacy and the necessity for law
    enforcement bodies to prevent potentially
    criminal activities.
  • However, there are three major problems with such
    systems.
  • Who holds the keys?
  • How are the keys accessed?
  • How secure is the escrow agency?

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1- Unit Fifteen Owing and controlling
information
  • The other side of the coin of privacy is the
    desire to publish.
  • There are probably as many reasons for publishing
    information as there are people who want to
    publish, but the main ones are to
  • Make money, for example by selling what one
    publishes.
  • Further an interest, such as a hobby.
  • Advertise ones products or services.
  • Enhance ones own fame.

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1- Unit Fifteen Owing and controlling
information
  • Rights to a brand name or a designating symbol or
    phrase are established through the so-called
    trade mark.
  • Trade mark is a legal term which means that a
    name, symbol or phrase is registered as belonging
    to a particular company and cannot legally be
    used by any other.
  • Trade marks have to be registered, renewed and
    defended in law .

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1- Unit Fifteen Owing and controlling
information
  • The web grew with such speed that many major
    companies were unaware of the value of protecting
    their corporate and trade mark names in a new
    domain.
  • Companies often registered the main commercial
    domain (.com) with their name, but omitted to
    register other similar domains such as .co.uk,
    .org, .biz or .net.
  • Quick-witted individuals paid low prices to
    register domain names for major companies and
    brands, usually hoping to resell them to the
    owners of the name or brand at inflated prices.

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1- Unit Fifteen Owing and controlling
information
  • Individuals, for example, registered every
    village name in Britain in several domains,
    hoping to get the village or parish council to
    pay to claim the name at a later time.
  • Even some surnames were bought up, as were names
    of famous people. This practice is known as
    cyber-squatting.

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1- Unit Fifteen Owing and controlling
information
  • Technologies have transformed piracy by removing
    some of the limitations of analogue technologies.
    For instance, digital copies can be as good as
    the original, whereas analogue copies are always
    of poorer quality than the original.
  • MP3 the pirates friend MP3 is a format for
    storing audio data that is extremely useful for
    legitimate purposes, but it is best known for
    aiding the pirating of music.

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1- Unit Fifteen Owing and controlling
information
  • How many bits are used to store one second of
    audio on a compact disc?
  • The sample frequency for a CD is 44,100 samples
    per second, each sample is comprised of 16 bits
    and one sample is taken for each of the stereo
    channels.
  • The answer can be calculated as follows. 44,100
    samples per second x 16 bits x 2 channels
    1,411,200 bits.

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1- Unit Fifteen Owing and controlling
information
  • How many bits are there on a full 74-minute
    compact disc?
  • The answer will be the number of bits recorded in
    one second multiplied by the number of seconds in
    74 minutes.
  • There are 74 x 60 4,440 seconds in 74 minutes
    and 1,411,200 bits/second x 4,440 seconds
    6,265,728,000 bits.

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1- Unit Fifteen Owing and controlling
information
  • How many seconds would it take to transmit the
    number of bits in the previous exercise over a
    conventional modem (running at a maximum speed of
    56,600 bits per second)?
  • The answer is the total number of bits on the
    disc divided by the number of bits that can be
    transmitted in one second. 6,265,728,000 bits /
    56,600 bits per second 110,702 seconds

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1- Unit Fifteen Owing and controlling
information
  • Greater compression can be achieved using lossy
    algorithms. (You met one, JPEG, in Unit 4.)
  • Lossy algorithms achieve greater compression by
    discarding some information.
  • MP3 is a lossy algorithm that relies on quirks in
    human hearing to help achieve its compression.
  • This process is known as perceptual encoding.

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1- Unit Fifteen Owing and controlling
information
  • For instance, the human ear is not equally
    sensitive to all frequencies of sound, therefore
    the MP3 compression may discard inaudible and
    less audible frequencies without an appreciable
    loss of quality.
  • In addition, if a piece of music has two
    simultaneous sounds, a listener may notice only
    the louder noise, so MP3 compression may discard
    the quieter noise.
  • Music on a compact disc can easily be reduced to
    an MP3 file occupying one-tenth of the original
    size. Consequently, MP3 files are better suited
    to transmission over slow modem links.
  • It is simple to convert conventional compact disc
    music into MP3 format using a program known as a
    ripper.

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1- Unit Fifteen Owing and controlling
information
  • Napster consisted of a small client program
    downloaded to users computers and a powerful
    central database.
  • When someone installed the Napster client on
    their computer, the software searched their hard
    disk for MP3 files.
  • Napster client was able to correctly identify the
    music, and send the information back to the
    central Napster database.

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1- Unit Fifteen Owing and controlling
information
  • The Napster server searched through its database
    of registered Napster users, looking for those
    who had copies of the music and compared this
    with the list of Napster users currently online.
  • The server returned the internet addresses of
    active users to the client, which then displayed
    their details, as shown in Figure 4.2 (next).

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1- Unit Fifteen Owing and controlling
information
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1- Unit Fifteen Owing and controlling
information
  • A user could download a number of pieces of music
    simultaneously.
  • At the same time, their computer could well be
    sending music to other Napster users.
  • The process was known as file swapping or file
    sharing.
  • Napster was an example of what is known as a
    peer-to-peer network, where information is
    exchanged directly between individual computers
    without the need for servers.

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1- Unit Fifteen Owing and controlling
information
  • FreeNet allows senders of information to hide
    their identities, so that they cannot be
    persecuted.
  • FreeNet documents cannot be accessed through a
    web browser.
  • Instead, anyone wishing to view FreeNet pages
    must download and install a client program that
    can search for, recover and read FreeNet pages.

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1- Unit Fifteen Owing and controlling
information
  • FreeNet uses a unique serial number assigned to
    each document its global unique identifier
    (GUID).
  • When a user requests a FreeNet page, their client
    searches for that documents GUID.
  • So FreeNet is not concerned with a documents
    physical location.
  • FreeNet documents can be moved or copied but
    remain accessible.

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1- Unit Fifteen Owing and controlling
information
  • A FreeNet node contains both copies of some
    human-readable documents and a table listing
    other nodes in the FreeNet system with the GUIDs
    it believes to be held on those nodes.
  • This is known as a routing table.

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1- Unit Fifteen Attempting total control
  • Digital rights management (DRM) is a concept
    whereby the original publisher of material
    retains control of how that material is accessed.
  • The most mature technique was the Secure Digital
    Music Initiative (SDMI), developed by a
    consortium of hardware and software
    manufacturers.
  • It was an attempt to secure all parts of the
    music market
  • SDMI was an industry body comprising all the
    major electronics manufacturers, the record
    publishers and software companies.

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1- Unit Fifteen Attempting total control
  • A watermark is often used to establish the
    authenticity of paper documents.
  • Digital watermarks are streams of bits added to
    the informational bits in a file when it is
    created.
  • Ideally the watermark is undetectable during
    normal use, but it can be retrieved using
    specialised software.
  • SDMI used two watermarks in every file.
  • The first was known as the robust watermark. The
    robust watermark would survive compression,
    decompression, changes in file format and copying
    between devices.
  • The second watermark the fragile watermark. The
    fragile watermark would not survive the process
    of being copied, compressed or altered.

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1- Unit Fifteen Attempting total control
  • Microsoft has added DRM to its Windows Media
    Player, and has proposals to include such
    features in future versions of Microsoft Windows.
  • The proposals, known as Next-Generation Secure
    Computing Base, NGSCB (formerly known as
    Palladium), would allow software vendors to
    control the way information is processed inside a
    computer.
  • it is not impossible to imagine a corrupt
    organisation issuing NGSCB certificates to virus
    writers or developers of spyware.
  • Spyware is a type of software that sits in the
    background of your computer and monitors the
    machine and your use of it it then sends this
    information back to its originators. This
    information can then be sold on to software
    development companies and marketing groups.

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2- Whats next
  • Unit 16 Realistic expectations
  • Can everything be computerised, given enough
    technology, time and effort?
  • What can go wrong when we trust computer-based
    systems?
  • Are we in danger of becoming over dependent on
    technology?
  • Are there things which should not be computerised
    even if they could be?
  • What makes humans different from machines?
  • Where can we go from here?
  • Where should we go from here?

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3- My questions
  • What is a set of principles?
  • What is Morality?
  • What is Ethics?
  • Define privacy and surveillance.
  • What is Spam (UCE)?
  • Which is higher the cost of the spammer or the
    cost of the recipient?
  • What are cookies and how do they work?
  • What is an example of a Trusted third party?
  • What is the job of the Clipper chip?
  • What is Trade mark?
  • What is cyber-squatting?
  • What is Lossy algorithms and what does it rely
    on?
  • What is ripper and what is it used for?
  • What is peer-to-peer network?

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4- Your questions
  • ?
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