Division of Social and Economic Sciences (SES)
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Submitted by Stephen Pfohl on Thu, 02/08/2018 - 1:12am
The project explores how drug trade in the digital age is organized, and how that organization is affected by law enforcement crackdowns. The research will address a central paradox in sociological research about how information technology is changing society: while the internet is a force of liberation, e.g. because it helps people organize social activities across time and distance at low cost, the same communication technology extends existing power structures, e.g. through large-scale surveillance of dissenting citizens.
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Submitted by Aleksandra Slavkovic on Wed, 02/07/2018 - 11:59pm
This research project will develop sound statistical and machine learning techniques for preserving privacy with linked data. Social entities and their patterns of behavior is a crucial topic in the social sciences. Research in this area has been invigorated by the growth of the modern information infrastructure, ease of data collection and storage, and the development of novel computational data analyses techniques. However, in many application areas relevant and sensitive information is commonly located across multiple databases.
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Submitted by Dana Haynie on Wed, 02/07/2018 - 7:51pm
The aim of this study is to collect network data from an online drug market to examine its structure and the processes through which it forms. The focus is to evaluate 1) how the market grows, behaves, and changes over time and 2) how the market reacts to law enforcement efforts. The project aims to shed new light on criminals' use of technology and to track changes in drug dealers' distribution tactics, drawing from network theories and theories of criminal coordination. Drug procurement through online drug markets and encrypted Internet services is increasing.
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Submitted by Nicholas Evans on Wed, 02/07/2018 - 7:46pm
This project supports a team of researchers, including experts in moral philosophy and transportation engineering, who plan to address ethical issues that arise in the development of computer algorithms for autonomous (self-driving) vehicles. The project will address concerns over the expression of ethical values in self-driving vehicle when (for example) the vehicle detects an imminent and unavoidable crash and must select among navigation options, such as colliding with a crowded bus or with a lone motorcyclist.
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Submitted by Margaret Roberts on Wed, 02/07/2018 - 7:30pm
When something happens in the world -- such as a natural disaster, an election, a protest, or a policy change -- many types of media record different accounts of the same event. Newspapers, social media posts and government documents all provide unique versions of events stored in different formats. Because each source provides its own perspective, synthesizing these stories vastly increase our ability to learn about both events and the dynamics of the media environment.
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Submitted by Deirdre Mulligan on Wed, 02/07/2018 - 6:10pm
This INSPIRE project is co-funded by the Science, Technology, and Society (STS) program in the Social and Economic Sciences Division, which is in the Directorate Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, the Office of Integrative Activities (OIA), and four programs in the Division of Computer and Network Systems, which is in the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering: Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC), Networking Technology and Systems (NeTS), Computer Systems Research (CSR), and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS).
General Audience Summary
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Submitted by Jules Polonetsky on Thu, 02/01/2018 - 6:51pm
Concerns about privacy continue to pervade large-scale deployments of technologies including big data, cloud services and the Internet of Things. The main purpose of the proposed work is to build a community of academic researchers and industry practitioners to address research priorities identified in the newly released National Privacy Research Strategy.
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Submitted by Finn Brunton on Thu, 02/01/2018 - 3:13pm
Obfuscation studies how to insert noise into an existing signal to make data or information-stream more ambiguous, confusing, harder to exploit, and more difficult to act on. As an important topic in both privacy/security and information processing, it has been studied from many different perspectives in many related areas, e.g., data privacy, databases, machine learning, ethics, etc. This workshop represents one of the first attempts to consolidate and shape the area as a whole, and help develop a new research community that carries out obfuscation research in a holistic fashion.
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Submitted by Madeline Diep on Thu, 01/04/2018 - 12:57pm
Most of the world's internet access occurs through mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets. While these devices are convenient, they also enable crimes that intersect the physical world and cyberspace. For example, a thief who steals a smartphone can gain access to a person?s sensitive email, or someone using a banking app on the train may reveal account numbers to someone looking over her shoulder. This research will study how, when, and where people use smartphones and the relationship between these usage patterns and the likelihood of being a victim of cybercrime.
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Submitted by Laura Albert on Thu, 01/04/2018 - 12:52pm
Our nation's information technology (IT) infrastructure is vulnerable to numerous security risks, including security vulnerabilities within the IT supply chain. This research addresses the cyber-security risks and vulnerabilities that exist in the Federal IT infrastructure. It will provide new insights for prioritizing and deploying IT security mitigations in a budget-constrained environment. It will also develop tools that can be used by Federal decision-makers and other large organizations which make investments.
