Children, Technology, Problems, and Preferences Barry A. Farber, Gavin Shafron, Jaleh Hamadani, Emily Wald, and George Nitzburg Teachers College, Columbia University Increasingly, young people are using various forms of technology in the service of communicating with others, and many have noted the possibility of various dire consequences of this phenomenon, including sexting, cyberbullying, online harassment, and Internet addiction. In our own survey of over 300 adolescents, we found that texting and face-to-face communication were considered the most “convenient” forms of communication, while face-to-face communication and phone conversations were perceived as most likely to lead to “feeling understood” and “feeling intimate.” Face-to-face communication and texting were perceived as most likely to result in feeling regret for sharing too much information. By choosing to communicate through technology, many young people, including our patients, can continue to be social and, at the same time, keep a somewhat safer emotional distance.  C 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Clin. Psychol: In Session 68:1225–1229, 2012. Keywords: children; technology; communication; disclosure; Facebook Listen boy, it’s not automatically a guarantee; To insure yourself, you’ve got to provide communication constantly. Billy Joel, Tell Her About It When I was in college, I wouldn’t “text” a girl to ask her out on a date. I would ask her, in person. One human being to another. And when she said “no,” which she always did, I would suffer the humiliation and self-loathing that a young man needs for his, or her, personal growth. Steve Carell, actor/comedian, commencement speech, Princeton University, 2012 Increasingly, young people are using various forms of technology in the service of communicating with others. Cell phones (used for talking and texting), e-mail (including instant messaging), blogging (e.g., Tumblr and Twitter), and social networking via Internet sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Google+ (Google Plus) can all be used to share information with others and may at times be preferred to face-to-face talking. A report conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project in 2011 found that 80% of teenage Internet users between 12 and 17 years of age utilize a social networking site, and that 93% of these users had a Facebook account. According to a media poll conducted in 2009, more than 50% of adolescents log onto their favorite social media site more than once a day, and 22% log on to that site more than 10 times a day. There are myriad changes in communicative patterns wrought by contemporary technology–the Internet, for example, has been said to redefine the process of self-disclosure (Lehavot, cited in Mills, 2008)–and psychologists and other social scientists are just beginning to understand the consequences of these changes for child and adolescent development, socialization patterns, dating, psychopathology, and the utilization and process of psychotherapy. Many commentators and pundits have written about the supposed dire consequences of social media upon the youth of this generation. Among the phrases used in both the popular and professional press in recent years: “kids lost in cyberspace,” “the antisocial effects of social Please address correspondence to: Barry A. Farber, Box 102, Program in Clinical Psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027. E-mail: farber@tc.edu  C 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. JOURNAL OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY: IN SESSION, Vol. 68(11), 1225–1229 (2012) Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jclp). DOI: 10.1002/jclp.21922 1226 Journal of Clinical Psychology: In Session, November 2012 media,” “the flight from conversation,” and “Facebook depression.” “Problematic Internet use” (PIU; Caplan, 2003), like “social media syndrome” (O’Keeffe & Clarke-Pearson, 2011; Sloviter, 2011), is said to beset those whose excessive use of online technology results in negative offline consequences. Indeed, a report by the American Pediatric Association directly implicates social networking sites such as Facebook and not the common “storm-and-stress” of adolescence as being responsible for some of the more pronounced clinical symptoms seen by clinical professionals today (O’Keeffe & Clarke-Pearson, 2011; Sloviter, 2011). Depression, sleep deprivation, social anxiety, aggression, Internet addiction, social isolation, and susceptibility to the influence of online advertising have all been noted as potential consequences of adolescent social media usage (Leung, 2002; Valkenburg & Peter, 2007). In addition, clinicians, parents, and other helping professionals (including teachers) have voiced serious concern over the adverse effects of sexting, online sexual solicitation, and online harassment, and yet another concern focuses on the phenomenon of sharing too much personal information through, for example, the use of Facebook’s chat feature, a form of instant messaging (IM). The papers in this issue have, for the most part, focused on the consequences of cyberbullying, sexting, and so-called Internet addiction. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, cyberbullying—the “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices”–is the most common online risk for all teens and can cause severe psychosocial outcomes such as depression, suicide, anxiety, and severe isolation. Patchin and Hinduja (2010) found that students who experienced cyberbullying, as either victim or offender, had significantly lower self-esteem than those with little or no experience with cyberbullying. The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project in 2011 found that 9% of teens between the 12 and 17 years of age have been victims of bullying through text messaging, and that an additional 8% have encountered online bullying through email, a social network site, or IM. In addition, as texting has become a centerpiece in the communication of many young people, the role of cell phones in the sexual explorations of teens and young adults has become a concern to many. Sexting–defined as creating, sharing, and forwarding of sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude images–has become a prevalent phenomenon in the culture of today’s adolescents. A nationally representative telephone survey conducted by the Pew research team in 2009 found that 4% of 12–17-year-olds (and 8% of 17-year-olds) who owned cell phones had sent a sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude image of themselves to another person. In addition, 18% of 14– 17-year-olds had received a sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude photo or video of someone they knew on their phones (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2009). A 2009 study by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy suggests even higher rates when including other forms of social media: 19% of teens aged 13–19 years had sent a sexually suggestive picture or video of themselves via email or cell phone or by another mode, and 31% had received either nude or seminude images of someone else. These rates become more concerning as we take into consideration the rapidity by which the rate of teenage cell phone owners and users have increased and the added capabilities of the cell phones as technology advances. Moreover, one of the findings of the qualitative study that followed the Pew Internet survey revealed that sexting culture puts considerable pressure on teenagers to join in this activity. Still, as both Essig and Levy-Warren (this issue) wisely point out, it may well be the case that the dangers of these new forms of communication are somewhat overstated and are in fact no more or less virulent than other technological innovations of the past. Consistent with this perspective, researchers have begun to consider the possibility that at least to some teenagers, that which adults label as “cyberbullying” may be experienced more along the lines of “drama” (Klass, 2012). It is also instructive to remember there was considerable concern when the telephone was introduced in the early 20th century: “It was going to bring down our society . . . men would be calling women and making lascivious comments, and women would be so vulnerable, and we’d never have civilized conversation again” (Moreno, cited in Klass, 2012, p. D5). Furthermore, while it seems evident that technologically mediated communication (TMC) must lose “something in the translation,” i.e., that it cannot be as intimate or informative as face-to-face communication, there is evidence to indicate that there are, in fact, advantages Children, Technology 1227 to these forms of communication. That is, the very distance, disembodiment, and, at times, anonymity afforded by these modes of communication can, for some people at least some of the time, provide a measure of safety and immediacy that may facilitate the frequency, breadth, and depth of interpersonal disclosures. The experience of closeness can occur in the sparsest of technologies (e.g., text messages) and the right choice of words, even absent tonal quality and body language, can convey powerful and effective interpersonal messages. Moreover, there is emerging evidence about the advantages of “ambient awareness,” the nearly incessant, smallscale online contact afforded by current technologies (Thompson, 2008). One can, for example, become far more aware of and sensitive to the daily rhythms of their friends’ lives. Certainly the rapidity with which TMC has been adopted by children and young adults in this new millennium is putative evidence of its influence and possibilities. For those who have been “born digital,” technology may be experienced not as a means of avoiding intimacy with others but rather as providing endless opportunities for connection. One example, 43% of teenagers surveyed reported that they use IMing to express something they wouldn’t say in person (Time, 2007). Moreover, according to a study by the MacArthur Foundation (Lewin, 2008): “While it may look as though kids are wasting a lot of time hanging out with new media, whether it’s on MySpace or sending instant messages . . . they’re [also] learning how to get along with others, how to manage a public identity, how to create a home page” (p. A20). Furthermore, according to this study, teens use new media to initiate new relationships. But there’s still so much we do not yet know about the uses or misuses of new technologies. Among other limitations of most studies of these phenomena, none have distinguished among the multiple forms of TMC; that is, none have compared the ways in which different technologies are used by youth. Thus, my research team at Teachers College (Columbia University) has begun to investigate the ways and extent to which different forms of TMC serve different purposes for older children and adolescents. We surveyed over 500 people, though the results we report below are based solely on those (N = 334) who are aged 25 years or younger. Essentially, we asked our respondents to compare different forms of technology in terms of their ease of communication, ability to communicate certain types of information, and “emotional consequences” (i.e., tendency to lead to specific emotional states). The following types of communication were included: phone (talking), phone (texting), e-mailing, IMing, using Twitter, and using social networking sites (e.g., Facebook); we also included “face-to-face” communication to compare this “old-fashioned” means of communicating with newer forms. Our respondents reported that texting and face-to-face communication were the most “convenient” forms of communication (both with means over 6.0 on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (not at all) to 7 (to a great extent), with “talking on the phone” rated slightly lower (mean [M] = 5.6); Twitter was the lowest-ranked choice on this item (M = 2.4). Similar results were obtained for items reflecting the likelihood of feeling “understood” and the likelihood of feeling “intimate,” with face-to-face and phone conversations the highest rated forms of communication and Twitter the lowest rated. When asked, “How likely are you to feel insincere or phony” when using each of these forms of communication, our sample of adolescents and young adults gave their highest ratings to social networking sites (M = 4.6) and texting (4.3) and their lowest ratings to face-to-face communication (M = 2.2), talking on the phone (M = 2.3), and IMing (M = 2.3). Furthermore, on average, these young people felt that, among all these forms of communication, they most often use text messages and social media sites like Facebook to “avoid more uncomfortable face-to-face communication” (M = 5.13 and M = 5.20, respectively). These results suggest that contemporary youth have more favorable views of face-to-face and phone conversations and more realistic perspectives on the limitations of technological communication than most adults, especially parents of children and adolescents, might imagine. On the other hand, when asked to evaluate the likelihood of feeling regret for sharing too much information in using these various forms of communication, our respondents rated faceto-face and texting most highly (means of 5.1 and 3.5, respectively) and Twitter (M = 2.1) the lowest among these media. Although regrets about oversharing may be somewhat related to convenience of use (i.e., how convenient it is to impulsively share information by texting, for example), this is unlikely to be the only explanation for these results. Our sense is that regrets about oversharing are also more likely when young people use forms of communication that 1228 Journal of Clinical Psychology: In Session, November 2012 make them feel most exposed. The intimacy of face-to-face talks may make these talks feel exposing: Even if you do not want to share information, it may be written on your face and therefore visible, or in response to a direct question you may feel compelled to share information that you later regret. By comparison, technologies like cell phones allow young people to share certain pieces of information while otherwise staying hidden from view. Do these young people feel that they are more likely to use one of these forms of communication more than another in sharing certain details of their lives? For the most part, whether it involves telling a close friend about “a fight with a significant person in your life,” “sharing a positive experience,” “telling a secret,” or asking for “advice on a problem,” face-to-face talking and cell phone talking had the two highest means, whereas e-mail and Twitter received the lowest endorsements. Texting and posting on social media sites like Facebook tended to be in the middle range of ratings for these items. The one small deviation from this pattern was for the item, “telling a best friend about ordinary life details,” wherein the two highest scores were for face-to-face communication and texting. Notably, both face-to-face and cell phone talking allow users to note subtle changes in tone of voice or facial expressions that communicate feelings and emotion, whereas text messages and sites like Facebook (emoticons aside) do not. It is perhaps heartening that young people continue to use, and even generally prefer to use, those means of communication (face-to-face and phone calling) that best allow communication of significant or complex feelings and emotions when sharing more private, intimate information. Our findings also indicate that technology companies have created convenient and appealing ways for young people to communicate information without a great deal of emotion. While young people in general may find the lack of emotional communication limiting (especially when truly personal information is being shared), some may prefer these newer forms of technology because they allow a great deal of information to flow freely while limiting emotional stimuli to a trickle. By contrast, face-to-face communication may barrage young people with emotional stimuli, including subtle or hard-to-read facial expressions, tones of voice, and social cues, all of which may be misperceived as criticism and rejection, feel too intimate, or leave the individual feeling personally or socially inadequate. By choosing to communicate through technology, many young people, including our patients, can continue to be social while at the same time keeping a somewhat safer emotional distance. Ideally, electronic communication allows young people to have more time to think about what they want to say; they can act out by sneering or yelling profanities without endangering their social relationships or personal reputation. Nevertheless, electronic communication may also feel stressful because it is essentially incessant, and because norms governing its use often include the requirement to return a message (or respond to a Facebook post) virtually immediately. Furthermore, it is hard for young people, in fact hard for everyone, to “backtrack” when an electronic social communication goes awry and someone’s feelings get hurt—at times, terribly hurt. “Ruptures in the relationship” (Safran & Muran, 2011) may be more difficult to repair in many forms of e-communication. As Aaron Sorkin observed in his movie The Social Network, the Internet can be especially dangerous because an expression of a conflict or problem is “written in ink.” There are no expiration dates for Internet postings, so the impulsive judgments of our teenage patients may well follow them into adulthood. In this regard, a colleague’s patient was told online by a friend-of-a-friend (i.e., a stranger to the patient) that he was “so weird,” which led the patient to respond by posting physically threatening statements that he only later took down after strong encouragement from his therapist. The results of our study and others also indicate that, despite notable exceptions (e.g., postings about depression or even suicidal feelings), young people tend to keep their social interactions on sites like Facebook superficially positive. As a consequence, older children and adolescents— especially those troubled individuals who become our patients–often use social media sites to compare themselves to their seemingly successful peers. They may focus on all the positive experiences and accomplishments others are posting, including how many “likes” others are getting and, as a result, feel increasingly like outcasts or “not good enough.” In addition, adolescents and young adults may satisfy their need for frequent boosts to their self-image by sharing status updates on their accomplishments, posting revealing pictures of their bodies, and otherwise expending a great deal of mental energy trying to convince themselves and others that Children, Technology 1229 “all is well.” Although they may be temporarily comforted by receiving “likes” for a skin-deep or false persona, young people—including our patients–may ultimately feel quite uneasy and even disturbed by the incipient awareness that they are being rewarded with “likes” for keeping their true selves, including their pain, hidden and unheard. Despite the ubiquity of technologically mediated communication in the lives of young people, despite its significance in the development of identity and personal relationships, and despite its potential for creating or exacerbating multiple psychosocial problems, it remains unclear as to how much of this landscape is being introduced into psychotherapy sessions. We believe that therapists working with children and adolescents should be pursuing these important new lines of inquiry. But do our young patients trust that we can understand and accept these critical parts of their lives? In fact, how much of their online experiences young patients share with their therapists is the focus of our lab’s next series of studies. References and Recommended Reading Brenner, J. (2012). Pew Internet: Teens. In Pew Internet American Life Project. Retrieved from http://pewinternet.org/Commentary/2012/April/Pew-Internet-Teens.aspx Caplan, S. E. (2003). Preference foe online social interaction: A theory of problematic Internet use and psychosocial well-being. Communication Research, 30, 625–648. Davila, J., Stroud, C. B., Starr, L. R., Miller, M. R., Yoneda, A., & Hershenberg, R. (2009). Romantic and sexual activities, parent-adolescent stress, and depressive symptoms among early adolescent girls. Journal of Adolescence, 32, 909–924. Klass, P. (2012, January 10). Seeing social media more as portal than pitfall. The New York Times. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/health/views /seeing-social-media-as-adolescent-portal– more-than-pitfall.html Lenhart, A., Madden, M., Smith, A., Purcell, K., Zickuhr, K., & Rainie, L. (2011). Teens, kindness and cruelty on social network sites. Retrieved from http://pewinternet.org/∼/media//Files/Reports /2011/PIP_Teens_Kindness_Cruelty_SNS_Report_Nov_2011_FINAL_110711.pdf Leung, L. (2002). Loneliness, self-disclosure, and ICQ (“I Seek You”) use. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 5(3), 241–250. O’Keeffe G. S., & Clarke-Pearson, K. (2011). The impact of social media on children, adolescents, and families. Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, 800–804. Seiter, E. (2002, February). Children and on-line communities. Paper presented at the Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Sloviter, V. (2011). Diagnosis: Social media syndrome. Pediatrics for Parents, 27, 30–31. Time. (2007). Verbatim Numbers. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1686816,00.html Turkle, S. (2012). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. New York, NY: Basic Books. Valkenburg, P. M., & Peter, J. (2007). Preadolescents’ and adolescents’ online communication and their closeness to friends. Developmental Psychology, 43, 267–277. Copyright of Journal of Clinical Psychology is the property of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences ( 2011) Vol 3, No 1, 240-259 Cyber Crime in the Society: Problems and Preventions Kamini Dashora, PhD, Principal, P.P. Patel College of Social Sciences, (Affiliated Sardar Patel University, Vidyanagar, Gujarat, India) Abstract: The world of internet today has become a parallel form of life and living. Public are now capable of doing things which were not imaginable few years ago. The Internet is fast becoming a way of life for millions of people and also a way of living because of growing dependence and reliance of the mankind on these machines. Internet has enabled the use of website communication, email and a lot of anytime anywhere IT solutions for the betterment of human kind. Cyber crime is emerging as a serious threat. Worldwide governments, police departments and intelligence units have started to react. Initiatives to curb cross border cyber threats are taking shape. Indian police has initiated special cyber cells across the country and have started educating the personnel. This article is an attempt to provide a glimpse on cyber crime in society. This article is based on various reports from news media and news portal. Keywords: Cyber crime, Hacking, Phishing, Cyber squatting 1. Introduction Crime and criminality have been associated with man since his fall. Crime remains elusive and ever strives to hide itself in the face of development. Different nations have adopted different strategies to contend with crime depending on their nature and extent. One thing is certain, it is that a nation with high incidence of crime cannot grow or develop. That is so because crime is the direct opposite of development. It leaves a negative social and economic consequence. Cybercrime is defined as crimes committed on the internet using the computer as either a tool or a targeted victim. It is very difficult to classify crimes in general into distinct groups as many crimes evolve on a daily basis. Even in the real world, crimes like rape, murder or theft need not 240 Kamini Dashora, P.P. Patel College of Social Sciences, Gujarat, India necessarily be separate. However, all cybercrimes involve both the computer and the person behind it as victims; it just depends on which of the two is the main target. Hence, the computer will be looked at as either a target or tool for simplicity’s sake. For example, hacking involves attacking the computer’s information and other resources. It is important to take note that overlapping occurs in many cases and it is impossible to have a perfect classification system. The term ‘cyber crime’ is a misnomer. This term has nowhere been defined in any statute /Act passed or enacted by the Indian Parliament. The concept of cyber crime is not radically different from the concept of conventional crime. Both include conduct whether act or omission, which cause breach of rules of law and counterbalanced by the sanction of the state. Before evaluating the concept of cyber crime it is obvious that the concept of conventional crime be discussed and the points of similarity and deviance between both these forms may be discussed. 2. Computer as a Tool When the individual is the main target of Cybercrime, the computer can be considered as the tool rather than the target. These crimes generally involve less technical expertise as the damage done manifests itself in the real world. Human weaknesses are generally exploited. The damage dealt is largely psychological and intangible, making legal action against the variants more difficult. These are the crimes which have existed for centuries in the offline. Scams, theft, and the likes have existed even before the development in high-tech equipment. The same criminal has simply been given a tool which increases his potential pool of victims and makes him all the harder to trace and apprehend. 3. Computer as a Target These crimes are committed by a selected group of criminals. Unlike crimes using he computer as a tool, these crimes requires the technical knowledge of the perpetrators. These crimes are relatively new, having been in existence for only as long as computers have - which explains how 241 Cyber Crime in the Society: Problems and Preventions unprepared society and the world in general is towards combating these crimes. There are numerous crimes of this nature committed daily on the internet. But it is worth knowing that Africans and indeed Nigerians are yet to develop their technical knowledge to accommodate and perpetrate this kind of crime. 4. Conventional Crime Crime is a social and economic phenomenon and is as old as the human society. Crime is a legal concept and has the sanction of the law. Crime or an offence is “a legal wrong that can be followed by criminal proceedings which may result into punishment.”The hallmark of criminality is that, it is breach of the criminal law. Per Lord Atkin “the criminal quality of an act cannot be discovered by reference to any standard but one: is the act prohibited with penal consequences”. A crime may be said to be any conduct accompanied by act or omission prohibited by law and consequential breach of which is visited by penal consequences. 5. Cyber Crime Cyber crime is the latest and perhaps the most complicated problem in the cyber world. “Cyber crime may be said to be those species, of which, genus is the conventional crime, and where either the computer is an object or subject of the conduct constituting crime” “Any criminal activity that uses a computer either as an instrumentality, target or a means for perpetuating further crimes comes within the ambit of cyber crime” A generalized definition of cyber crime may be “unlawful acts wherein the computer is either a tool or target or both” The computer may be used as a tool in the following kinds of activity- financial crimes, sale of illegal articles, 242 Kamini Dashora, P.P. Patel College of Social Sciences, Gujarat, India pornography, online gambling, intellectual property crime, email spoofing, forgery, cyber defamation, cyber stalking. The computer may however be target for unlawful acts in the following cases- unauthorized access to computer/ computer system/ computer networks, theft of information contained in the electronic form, e-mail bombing, data didling, salami attacks, logic bombs, Trojan attacks, internet time thefts, web jacking, theft of computer system, physically damaging the computer system. 6. Distinction Between Conventional and Cyber Crime There is apparently no distinction between cyber and conventional crime. However on a deep introspection we may say that there exists a fine line of demarcation between the conventional and cyber crime, which is appreciable. The demarcation lies in the involvement of the medium in cases of cyber crime. The sine qua non for cyber crime is that there should be an involvement, at any stage, of the virtual cyber medium. 7. Reasons for Cyber Crime “The Concept of Law” has said ‘human beings are vulnerable so rule of law is required to protect them’. Applying this to the cyberspace we may say that computers are vulnerable so rule of law is required to protect and safeguard them against cyber crime. The reasons for the vulnerability of computers may be said to be: 1. Capacity to store data in comparatively small space: The computer has unique characteristic of storing data in a very small space. This affords to remove or derive information either through physical or virtual medium makes it much easier. 2. Easy to access: The problem encountered in guarding a computer system from unauthorised access is that there is every possibility of breach not due to human error but due to the complex technology. By secretly implanted logic bomb, key loggers that can steal access codes, 243 Cyber Crime in the Society: Problems and Preventions advanced voice recorders; retina imagers etc. that can fool biometric systems and bypass firewalls can be utilized to get past many a security system. 3. Complex: The computers work on operating systems and these operating systems in turn are composed of millions of codes. Human mind is fallible and it is not possible that there might not be a lapse at any stage. The cyber criminals take advantage of these lacunas and penetrate into the computer system. 4. Negligence: Negligence is very closely connected with human conduct. It is therefore very probable that while protecting the computer system there might be any negligence, which in turn provides a cyber criminal to gain access and control over the computer system. 5. Loss of evidence: Loss of evidence is a very common & obvious problem as all the data are routinely destroyed. Further collection of data outside the territorial extent also paralyses this system of crime investigation. 8. Cyber Criminals The cyber criminals constitute of various groups/ category. This division may be justified on the basis of the object that they have in their mind. The following are the category of cyber criminals 1. Children and adolescents between the age group of 6 – 18 years The simple reason for this type of delinquent behaviour pattern in children is seen mostly due to the inquisitiveness to know and explore the things. Other cognate reason may be to prove themselves to be outstanding amongst other children in their group. Further the reasons may be psychological even. E.g. the Bal Bharati (Delhi) case was the outcome of harassment of the delinquent by his friends. 2. Organised hackers 244 Kamini Dashora, P.P. Patel College of Social Sciences, Gujarat, India These kinds of hackers are mostly organised together to fulfil certain objective. The reason may be to fulfil their political bias, fundamentalism, etc. The Pakistanis are said to be one of the best quality hackers in the world. They mainly target the Indian government sites with the purpose to fulfil their political objectives. Further the NASA as well as the Microsoft sites is always under attack by the hackers. 3. Professional hackers / crackers Their work is motivated by the colour of money. These kinds of hackers are mostly employed to hack the site of the rivals and get credible, reliable and valuable information. Further they are ven employed to crack the system of the employer basically as a measure to make it safer by detecting the loopholes. 4. Discontented employees This group include those people who have been either sacked by their employer or are dissatisfied with their employer. To avenge they normally hack the system of their employee. 9. Mode and Manner of Commiting Cyber Crime Unauthorized access to computer systems or networks / Hacking: This kind of offence is normally referred as hacking in the generic sense. However the framers of the information technology act 2000 have no where used this term so to avoid any confusion we would not interchangeably use the word hacking for ‘unauthorized access’ as the latter has wide connotation. Theft of information contained in electronic form: This includes information stored in computer hard disks, removable storage media etc. Theft may be either by appropriating the data physically or by tampering them through the virtual medium. 245 Cyber Crime in the Society: Problems and Preventions Email bombing: This kind of activity refers to sending large numbers of mail to the victim, which may be an individual or a company or even mail servers there by ultimately resulting into crashing. Data diddling: This kind of an attack involves altering raw data just before a computer processes it and then changing it back after the processing is completed. The electricity board faced similar problem of data diddling while the department was being computerised. Salami attacks: This kind of crime is normally prevalent in the financial institutions or for the purpose of committing financial crimes. An important feature of this type of offence is that the alteration is so small that it would normally go unnoticed. E.g. the Ziegler case wherein a logic bomb was introduced in the bank’s system, which deducted 10 cents from every account and deposited it in a particular account. Denial of Service attack: The computer of the victim is flooded with more requests than it can handle which cause it to crash. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoss) attack is also a type of denial of service attack, in which the offenders are wide in number and widespread. E.g. Amazon, Yahoo. Virus / worm attacks: Viruses are programs that attach themselves to a computer or a file and then circulate themselves to other files and to other computers on a network. They usually affect the data on a computer, either by altering or deleting it. Worms, unlike viruses do not need the host to attach themselves to. They merely make functional copies of themselves and do this repeatedly till they eat up all the available space on a computer's memory. E.g. love bug virus, which affected at least 5 % of the computers of the globe. The losses were accounted to be $ 10 million. The world's most famous worm was the Internet worm let loose on the Internet by Robert Morris sometime in 1988. Almost brought development of Internet to a complete halt. Logic bombs: These are event dependent programs. This implies that these programs are created to do something only when a certain event (known as a trigger event) occurs. E.g. 246 Kamini Dashora, P.P. Patel College of Social Sciences, Gujarat, India even some viruses may be termed logic bombs because they lie dormant all through the year and become active only on a particular date (like the Chernobyl virus). Trojan attacks: This term has its origin in the word ‘Trojan horse’. In software field this means an unauthorized programme, which passively gains control over another’s system by representing itself as an authorised programme. The most common form of installing a Trojan is through email. E.g. a Trojan was installed in the computer of a lady film director in the U.S. while chatting. The cyber criminal through the web cam installed in the computer obtained her nude photographs. He further harassed this lady. Internet time thefts: Normally in these kinds of thefts the Internet surfing hours of the victim are used up by another person. This is done by gaining access to the login ID and the password. E.g. Colonel Bajwa’s case- the Internet hours were used up by any other person. This was perhaps one of the first reported cases related to cyber crime in India. However this case made the police infamous as to their lack of understanding of the nature of cyber crime. Web jacking: This term is derived from the term hi jacking. In these kinds of offences the hacker gains access and control over the web site of another. He may even mutilate or change the information on the site. This may be done for fulfilling political objectives or for money. E.g. recently the site of MIT (Ministry of Information Technology) was hacked by the Pakistani hackers and some obscene matter was placed therein. Further the site of Bombay crime branch was also web jacked. Another case of web jacking is that of the ‘gold fish’ case. In this case the site was hacked and the information pertaining to gold fish was changed. Further a ransom of US $ 1 million was demanded as ransom. Thus web jacking is a process whereby control over the site of another is made backed by some consideration for it. 247 Cyber Crime in the Society: Problems and Preventions 10. Classification The subject of cyber crime may be broadly classified under the following three groups. They are1. Against Individuals a. their person & b. their property of an individual 2. Against Organization a. Government c. Firm, Company, Group of Individuals. 3. Against Society at large: The following are the crimes, which can be committed against the followings group Against Individuals: – i. Harassment via e-mails. ii. Cyber-stalking. iii. Dissemination of obscene material. iv. Defamation. v. Unauthorized control/access over computer system. vi. Indecent exposure vii. Email spoofing viii. Cheating & Fraud Against Individual Property: i. Computer vandalism. ii. Transmitting virus. iii. Netrespass iv. Unauthorized control/access over computer system. v. Intellectual Property crimes vi. Internet time thefts Against Organization: - 248 Kamini Dashora, P.P. Patel College of Social Sciences, Gujarat, India i. ii. iii. iv. Unauthorized control/access over computer system Possession of unauthorized information. Cyber terrorism against the government organization. Distribution of pirated software etc. Against Society at large: i. Pornography (basically child pornography). ii. Polluting the youth through indecent exposure. iii. Trafficking iv. Financial crimes v. Sale of illegal articles vi. Online gambling vii. Forgery The above mentioned offences may discuss in brief as follows: 1. Harassment via e-mails: Harassment through e-mails is not a new concept. It is very similar to harassing through letters. Recently I had received a mail from a lady wherein she complained about the same. Her former boy friend was sending her mails constantly sometimes emotionally blackmailing her and also threatening her. This is a very common type of harassment via e-mails. 2. Cyber-stalking: The Oxford dictionary defines stalking as "pursuing stealthily". Cyber stalking involves following a person's movements across the Internet by posting messages (sometimes threatening) on the bulletin boards frequented by the victim, entering the chat-rooms frequented by the victim, constantly bombarding the victim with emails etc. 3. Dissemination of obscene material/ Indecent exposure/ Pornography (basically child pornography) / Polluting through indecent exposure: Pornography on the net may take various forms. It may include the hosting of web site containing these prohibited materials. Use of computers for producing these obscene materials. Downloading through the Internet, obscene materials. These obscene matters may cause harm to the mind of the adolescent and tend to deprave or corrupt their mind. Two known cases of pornography are the Delhi Bal Bharati case and the Bombay case wherein two Swiss 249 Cyber Crime in the Society: Problems and Preventions couple used to force the slum children for obscene photographs. The Mumbai police later arrested them. 4. Defamation: It is an act of imputing any person with intent to lower the person in the estimation of the rightthinking members of society generally or to cause him to be shunned or avoided or to expose him to hatred, contempt or ridicule. Cyber defamation is not different from conventional defamation except the involvement of a virtual medium. E.g. the mail account of Rohit was hacked and some mails were sent from his account to some of his batch mates regarding his affair with a girl with intent to defame him. 5. Unauthorized control/access over computer system: This activity is commonly referred to as hacking. The Indian law has however given a different connotation to the term hacking, so we will not use the term "unauthorized access" interchangeably with the term "hacking" to prevent confusion as the term used in the Act of 2000 is much wider than hacking. 6. E mail spoofing: A spoofed e-mail may be said to be one, which misrepresents its origin. It shows it's origin to be different from which actually it originates. Recently spoofed mails were sent on the name of Mr. Na.Vijayashankar (naavi.org), which contained virus. Rajesh Manyar, a graduate student at Purdue University in Indiana, was arrested for threatening to detonate a nuclear device in the college campus. The alleged e- mail was sent from the account of another student to the vice president for student services. However the mail was traced to be sent from the account of Rajesh Manyar. 7. Computer vandalism: Vandalism means deliberately destroying or damaging property of another. Thus computer vandalism may include within its purview any kind of physical harm done to the computer of any person. These acts may take the form of the theft of a computer, some part of a computer or a peripheral attached to the computer or by physically damaging a computer or its peripherals. 8. Intellectual Property crimes / Distribution of pirated software: Intellectual property consists of a bundle of rights. Any unlawful act by which the owner is deprived completely 250 Kamini Dashora, P.P. Patel College of Social Sciences, Gujarat, India or partially of his rights is an offence. The common form of IPR violation may be said to be software piracy, copyright infringement, trademark and service mark violation, theft of computer source code, etc. The Hyderabad Court has in a land mark judgement has convicted three people and sentenced them to six months imprisonment and fine of 50,000 each for unauthorized copying and sell of pirated software. 9. Cyber terrorism against the government organization: At this juncture a necessity may be felt that what is the need to distinguish between cyber terrorism and cyber crime. Both are criminal acts. However there is a compelling need to distinguish between both these crimes. A cyber crime is generally a domestic issue, which may have international consequences; however cyber terrorism is a global concern, which has domestic as well as international consequences. The common form of these terrorist attacks on the Internet is by distributed denial of service attacks, hate websites and hate emails, attacks on sensitive computer networks, etc. Technology savvy terrorists are using 512-bit encryption, which is next to impossible to decrypt. The recent example may be cited of – Osama Bin Laden, the LTTE, attack on America’s army deployment system during Iraq war. Cyber terrorism may be defined to be “ the premeditated use of disruptive activities, or the threat thereof, in cyber space, with the intention to further social, ideological, religious, political or similar objectives, or to intimidate any person in furtherance of such objectives” Another definition may be attempted to cover within its ambit every act of cyber terrorism. A terrorist means a person who indulges in wanton killing of persons or in violence or in disruption of services or means of communications essential to the community or in damaging property with the view to – (1) Putting the public or any section of the public in fear; or 251 Cyber Crime in the Society: Problems and Preventions (2) Affecting adversely the harmony between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities; or (3) Coercing or overawing the government established by law; or (4) Endangering the sovereignty and integrity of the nation And a cyber terrorist is the person who uses the computer system as a means or ends to achieve the above objectives. Every act done in pursuance thereof is an act of cyber terrorism. 10. Trafficking: Trafficking may assume different forms. It may be trafficking in drugs, human beings, arms weapons etc. These forms of trafficking are going unchecked because they are carried on under pseudonyms. A racket was busted in Chennai where drugs were being sold under the pseudonym of honey. 11. Fraud & Cheating: Online fraud and cheating is one of the most lucrative businesses that are growing today in the cyber space. It may assume different forms. Some of the cases of online fraud and cheating that have come to light are those pertaining to credit card crimes, contractual crimes, offering jobs, etc.Recently the Court of Metropolitan Magistrate Delhi found guilty a 24-year-old engineer working in a call centre, of fraudulently gaining the details of Campa's credit card and bought a television and a cordless phone from Sony website. Metropolitan magistrate Gulshan Kumar convicted Azim for cheating under IPC, but did not send him to jail. Instead, Azim was asked to furnish a personal bond of Rs 20,000, and was released on a year's probation. 252 Kamini Dashora, P.P. Patel College of Social Sciences, Gujarat, India 11. Statutory Provisions The Indian parliament considered it necessary to give effect to the resolution by which the General Assembly adopted Model Law on Electronic Commerce adopted by the United Nations Commission on Trade Law. As a consequence of which the Information Technology Act 2000 was passed and enforced on 17th May 2000.the preamble of this Act states its objective to legalise e-commerce and further amend the Indian Penal Code 1860, the Indian Evidence Act 1872, the Banker’s Book Evidence Act1891 and the Reserve Bank of India Act 1934. The basic purpose to incorporate the changes in these Acts is to make them compatible with the Act of 2000. So that they may regulate and control the affairs of the cyber world in an effective manner. The Information Technology Act deals with the various cyber crimes in chapters IX & XI. The important sections are Ss. 43,65,66,67. Section 43 in particular deals with the unauthorised access, unauthorised downloading, virus attacks or any contaminant, causes damage, disruption, denial of access, interference with the service availed by a person. This section provide for a fine up to Rs. 1 Crore by way of remedy. Section 65 deals with ‘tampering with computer source documents’ and provides for imprisonment up to 3 years or fine, which may extend up to 2 years or both. Section 66 deals with ‘hacking with computer system’ and provides for imprisonment up to 3 years or fine, which may extend up to 2 years or both. Further section 67 deals with publication of obscene material and provides for imprisonment up to a term of 10 years and also with fine up to Rs. 2 lakhs. 12. Analysis of the Statutory Provisions The Information Technology Act 2000 was undoubtedly a welcome step at a time when there was no legislation on this specialised field. The Act has however 253 Cyber Crime in the Society: Problems and Preventions during its application has proved to be inadequate to a certain extent. The various loopholes in the Act are 1. The hurry in which the legislation was passed, without sufficient public debate, did not really serve the desired purpose. Experts are of the opinion that one of the reasons for the inadequacy of the legislation has been the hurry in which it was passed by the parliament and it is also a fact that sufficient time was not given for public debate. 2. “Cyber laws, in their very preamble and aim, state that they are targeted at aiding e-commerce, and are not meant to regulate cybercrime”. Mr. Pavan Duggal holds the opinion that the main intention of the legislators has been to provide for a law to regulate the e-commerce and with that aim the I.T.Act 2000 was passed, which also is one of the reasons for its inadequacy to deal with cases of cyber crime. 3. Cyber torts The recent cases including Cyber stalking cyber harassment, cyber nuisance, and cyber defamation have shown that the I.T.Act 2000 has not dealt with those offences. Further it is also contended that in future new forms of cyber crime will emerge which even need to be taken care of. Therefore India should sign the cyber crime convention. However the I.T.Act 2000 read with the Penal Code is capable of dealing with these felonies. 4. Ambiguity in the definitions The definition of hacking provided in section 66 of the Act is very wide and capable of misapplication. There is every possibility of this section being misapplied and in fact the Delhi court has misapplied it. The infamous go2nextjob has made it very clear that what may be the fate of a person who is booked under section 66 or the constant threat under which the netizens are till s. 66 exists in its present form. Furthermore, section 67 is also vague to certain extent. It is difficult to define the term lascivious information or obscene pornographic information. Further our inability to deal with the cases of cyber pornography has been proved by the Bal Bharati case. 5. Lack of awareness: One important reason that the Act of 2000 is not achieving complete success is the lack of awareness among the s about their rights. Further most of the cases are going unreported. If the people are vigilant about their rights the law definitely protects their right. E.g. 254 Kamini Dashora, P.P. Patel College of Social Sciences, Gujarat, India the Delhi high court in October 2002 prevented a person from selling Microsoft pirated software over an auction site. Achievement was also made in the case before the court of metropolitan magistrate Delhi wherein a person was convicted for online cheating by buying Sony products using a stolen credit card. 6. Jurisdiction issues: Jurisdiction is also one of the debatable issues in the cases of cyber crime due to the very universal nature of cyber space. With the ever-growing arms of cyber space the territorial concept seems to vanish. New methods of dispute resolution should give way to the conventional methods. The Act of 2000 is very silent on these issues. 7. Extra territorial application: Though S.75 provides for extra-territorial operations of this law, but they could be meaningful only when backed with provisions recognizing orders and warrants for Information issued by competent authorities outside their jurisdiction and measure for cooperation for exchange of material and evidence of computer crimes between law enforcement agencies. 8. Cyber savvy bench: Cyber savvy judges are the need of the day. Judiciary plays a vital role in shaping the enactment according to the order of the day. One such stage, which needs appreciation, is the P.I.L., which the Kerela High Court has accepted through an email. The role of the judges in today’s word may be gathered by the statementjudges carve ‘law is’ to ‘law ought to be’. Mr T.K.Vishwanathan, member secretary, Law Commission, has highlighted the requirements for introducing e-courts in India. In his article published in The Hindu he has stated “if there is one area of Governance where IT can make a huge difference to Indian public is in the Judicial System”. 9. Dynamic form of cyber crime: Speaking on the dynamic nature of cyber crime FBI Director Louis Freeh has said, "In short, even though we have markedly improved our capabilities to fight cyber intrusions the problem is growing even faster and we are falling further behind.” The (de)creativity of human mind cannot be checked by any law. Thus the only way out is the liberal construction while applying the statutory provisions to cyber crime cases. 255 Cyber Crime in the Society: Problems and Preventions 10. Hesitation to report offences: As stated above one of the fatal drawbacks of the Act has been the cases going unreported. One obvious reason is the non-cooperative police force. This was proved by the Delhi time theft case. "The police are a powerful force today which can play an instrumental role in preventing cybercrime. At the same time, it can also end up wielding the rod and harassing innocent s, preventing them from going about their normal cyber business."This attitude of the administration is also revelled by incident that took place at Merrut and Belgam. (for the facts of these incidents refer to naavi.com). For complete realisation of the provisions of this Act a cooperative police force is require. 13. Prevention of Cyber Crime Prevention is always better than cure. It is always better to take certain precaution while operating the net. A should make them his part of cyber life. Saileshkumar Zarkar, technical advisor and network security consultant to the Mumbai Police Cyber crime Cell, advocates the 5P mantra for online security: Precaution, Prevention, Protection, Preservation and Perseverance. A netizen should keep in mind the following things 1. To prevent cyber stalking avoid disclosing any information pertaining to one self. This is as good as disclosing your identity to strangers in public place. 2. Always avoid sending any photograph online particularly to strangers and chat friends as there have been incidents of misuse of the photographs. 3. Always use latest and update antivirus software to guard against virus attacks. 4. always keep back up volumes so that one may not suffer data loss in case of virus contamination 5. Never send your credit card number to any site that is not secured, to guard against frauds. 6. Always keep a watch on the sites that your children are accessing to prevent any kind of harassment or depravation in children. 7. It is better to use a security programme that gives control over the cookies and send information back to 256 Kamini Dashora, P.P. Patel College of Social Sciences, Gujarat, India the site as leaving the cookies unguarded might prove fatal. 8. Web site owners should watch traffic and check any irregularity on the site. Putting host-based intrusion detection devices on servers may do this. 9. Use of firewalls may be beneficial. 10. Web servers running public sites must be physically separate protected from internal corporate network. Adjudication of a Cyber Crime - On the directions of the Bombay High Court the Central Government has by a notification dated 25.03.03 has decided that the Secretary to the Information Technology Department in each state by designation would be appointed as the AO for each state. 14. Conclusion Capacity of human mind is unfathomable. It is not possible to eliminate cyber crime from the cyber space. It is quite possible to check them. History is the witness that no legislation has succeeded in totally eliminating crime from the globe. The only possible step is to make people aware of their rights and duties (to report crime as a collective duty towards the society) and further making the application of the laws more stringent to check crime. Undoubtedly the Act is a historical step in the cyber world. Further I all together do not deny that there is a need to bring changes in the Information Technology Act to make it more effective to combat cyber crime. I would conclude with a word of caution for the pro-legislation school that it should be kept in mind that the provisions of the cyber law are not made so stringent that it may retard the growth of the industry and prove to be counter-productive. 257 Cyber Crime in the Society: Problems and Preventions References Cyber Crime Today &Tomorrow, Thiru DayanithiMaran Cyber crime Up Police found wanting, Chandigarh Tribune Monday May 28, 2001. Cyber Crimes on the rise in state - Kerala: The Hindu Monday Oct 30, 2006. Duggal Pawan - Is this Treaty a Treat? Duggal Pawan – The Internet: Legal Dimensions Duggal Pawan - Cybercrime Kapoor G.V. - Byte by Byte Kolkata man threatens to blow up Stock exchanges arrested. Express India.com Kumar Vinod – Winning the Battle against Cyber Crime Mehta Dewang- Role of Police in Tackling Internet Crimes Nagpal R- Defining Cyber Terrorism Nagpal R. – What is Cyber Crime? 258 Kamini Dashora, P.P. Patel College of Social Sciences, Gujarat, India Nasik Police play big boss for internet voyeurs, Hindustan Times, Sunday, Oct 28, 2007. Nowa Pune base for net's cyber cops The Hindu Sunday Nov 26 2006. Police make headway, The Hindu, Sunday October 29.2006. Suhas Shetty Cyber Crime Case, First conviction in India under ITA-2000. Tamil Nadu to come out with IT security policy soon, The Hindu, Saturday, Oct 27, 2007. Youth in jail for sending email threat, The Hindu Friday August 10, 2007. 259 Copyright of Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences is the property of Guild of Independent Scholars and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. Previous Page | Left Zoom in | Zoom out | Cover/Content Print | Right Zoom in | Zoom out | Search | Next Page FEATURE | mobile learning With the proliferation of mobile devices and instant access to the internet, cheating has become easier than ever. What can educators do to stop it? By John K. Waters THE 21ST CENTURY classroom is a wonder of online tools and content that students can access from an ever-evolving range of personal mobile devices with capabilities only dreamed of less than a decade ago. (Just imagine: The first iPhone was released in 2007!) But the anywhere/anytime access these devices provide to vast web resources, sprawling social networks, and real-time communication has spawned a new kind of cheating in K-12 environments—an easier, tech-enabled version of bad behavior that is as old as the classroom, but with the potential to compromise virtually every aspect of modern student assessment. 13 | AUGUST 2013 Previous Page | Left Zoom in | Zoom out | Cover/Content Print | Right Zoom in | Zoom out | Search | Next Page FEATURE | mobile learning What we’re calling high-tech cheating has been and resources to work together on class projects. They “Make sure you get enough glue on the bottle,” the characterized variously as a trend, an epidemic, and a swarm over shared Google Docs, interact on assign- video advises. “Once you have this done, you’ll have plague. But it might be something even worse: a para- ment-related Facebook pages, and coordinate team your notes, but nobody will know except you!” Web digm shift. More students than ever are using informa- efforts via text message. For digital natives, some have developer Josh May makes this particular process even tion technology in ways that break the rules of aca- argued, sharing information is so natural and so often easier on his Pirate Weasel website, where he provides demic integrity, and a shocking number of them don’t encouraged that lines that were once so bright and a printer-ready water bottle label onto which notes can seem to think they’re doing anything wrong—well, not clear are blurring. be cut and pasted. that wrong. They’re taught, after all to use these tools FIGHTING PLAGIARISM Click for Mac Things get even blurrier when you factor in the ex- But the high-tech cheating ball was already rolling amples presented by educators in headline-grabbing way back in the digital Stone Age of 2004, when this revelations of their own disrespect of the rules. In the activity was briefly called “cybercheating.” At that time, past couple of years, teacher-related cheating scandals Santa Clara University (CA) researchers Stacey Conrad- have erupted in Atlanta; El Paso, TX; Washington, DC; son and Pedro Hernández-Ramos declared that “…the and Columbus, OH. According to the US Government preponderance of statistical and anecdotal evidence Accountability Office, 32 states have reported “cancel- underscores several disturbing trends, indicating that ing, invalidating, or nullifying test scores from individual cheating at the secondary level is not only occurring students, schools, or districts because of suspected or more frequently, but that students are using much more confirmed cheating by school officials [emphasis ours]” sophisticated methods for their transgressions.” for the 2010-11 and 2011-12 school years. Five years later, a 2009 report from Common Sense Media included the results of a national poll conducted VIDEO: Jason Chu from Turnitin gives educators a sense of the scope of student plagiarism, and offers some advice on what teachers can do to explain why cutting and pasting from the internet is not a legitimate way to complete an assignment. Click here for the captioned version. 14 | AUGUST 2013 What Is High-Tech Cheating? by the Benenson Strategy Group, which found that The web is a rich resource of shameless cheating more than 35 percent of teens admitted to cheating strategies. YouTube is rife with examples. “How to with cell phones and the internet. The cheating involved cheat on all of your tests,” reads the listing for one texting answers to one another during tests, using video. Click on it and you get step-by-step instructions notes and information stored on smartphones, and on how to copy a beverage label and replace all the downloading papers from the internet to turn in as their nutritional information with, say, your physics notes. own work. Previous Page | Left Zoom in | Zoom out | Cover/Content Print | Right Zoom in | Zoom out | Search | Next Page FEATURE | mobile learning So if high-tech cheating is nothing new, why haven’t spells out for students precisely what is and isn’t allowed. we solved the problem? According to Doug Winneg, them we’re watching,” he says. “Watching, listening, CEO and founder of Software Secure, “On one level, and recording. We clearly articulate what we’re doing the issue is simple. If left unchecked, students cheat; when we proctor an exam so that the students won’t Putting Down the Phone properly proctored, they don’t. What complicates the feel tempted. The deterrent power is incredible.” If the primary instrument of high-tech cheating is the situation is the evolution of extremely powerful, mobile The long-term solution to the high-tech cheating smartphone, why not simply ban the devices during technology and its ability to connect students to the problem, according to Winneg, must include thoughtful exams? A growing number of schools around the web and to each other.” and consistent monitoring of exams (whether students country are taking that approach. Along with banning Winneg’s company has been using technology to are taking them online or in the classroom) coupled cell phones from test environments, the state of keep students from cheating since 1999, when it de- with a well-understood, published exam policy that California has gone so far as to deploy a team from veloped a patented software system that locked down student laptops and automatically turned them into secure test-taking terminals. In 2006 the company began focusing on the burgeoning world of online education and added remote proctoring systems to its product lineup. The company’s Remote Proctor Suite is a high-tech solution to a high-tech problem. The system authenticates a student’s identity biometrically and then records video and audio of the exam environment. (It’s called a record-and-review online testing model.) Winneg’s company found a market for this solution because of the acute needs of online programs to prove their credibility. But he argues that a vigilant proctoring strategy can also go a long way toward solving high-tech cheating problems in traditional environments. 15 “The students know we’re watching, because we tell | AUGUST 2013 Previous Page | Left Zoom in | Zoom out | Cover/Content Print | Right Zoom in | Zoom out | Search | Next Page FEATURE | mobile learning HOW TO STOP HIGH-TECH CHEATING Cheating isn’t a new phenomenon, of course, but never before have teachers had to cope with such powerful tools and the state education department and the national Educational Testing Service to check social media sites “every 15 minutes” to see if students have snapped pictures of tests and posted them online. (Last year, 36 questions from standardized exams in the state showed up on social media sites, the Los Angeles Times reported.) A Southern California high school junior who asked not to be identified says that her experience suggests response analysis, which looks for test-answer irregularities, are emerging, the most effective current strategies for coping with the problem depend primarily on awareness, understanding, and a relatively low-tech set of best practices. Here are five straightforward strategies from the experts: 1) Prohibit cell phones in the room during a test. The modern smartphone is “the lock-pick of cheating,” says Doug Winneg, CEO and founder of Software Secure. The devices can store large databases of test answers, send and receive answers among friends in real time, and connect to Wikipedia. If the school policy allows students to bring cell phones to school, consider collecting them at the door on test day. 2) Proctor exams properly. That means walking around among the desks, not sitting at the front of the classroom. “Left unchecked, this generation cheats; properly proctored, they don’t,” says Winneg. Cell phones open a huge door that a ban alone won’t do much to curtail cell-phone- to the internet, but they fit in the palm of your hand and are easy to hide. It’s just not enough to tell students to put enabled cheating if the teachers aren’t paying attention them in their backpacks or even to confiscate them at the door—students might have another hidden away. while they are administering tests. 3) Establish a clear set of rules. It’s obvious, even to digital natives, that texting test answers to each other is cheat- “I have a lot of teachers who say, ‘Put your cell ing, but how about reaching out on a social network for help from a classmate on a homework project? The line be- phones in your backpacks,’ but then just sit at their tween collaboration and cheating is truly a blurry one for students using online educational resources, Winneg says, desks when we take the tests,” she says. “And they and policies vary from class to class. Teachers who understand the potential for confusion should draw a clear line never look up. It’s just really easy to cheat in those with written policies and those policies should, if at all possible, be schoolwide. classes. You just keep your cell phone in your lap under 4) Demonstrate the difference between research and “search”—literally. Let students look over your shoulder your desk and look down. I don’t see people doing it all while you research and write a short paper, recommends Neal Taparia, cofounder of EasyBib. “When you learn tennis, the time, but it definitely happens.” you’re seeing someone swing the racket and you can really see what’s going on,” he says. “But students never see Cell phones are not permitted in public high schools in New York City, and yet cell-phone-enabled cheating grabbed the spotlight last year when a group of students at NYC’s Stuyvesant High School were caught texting photos of test pages and sharing information about state Regents Exams—while they were taking them. 16 enticements. Although technologies such as adaptive testing, which gives different questions to each student, and test- | AUGUST 2013 how their teacher would like them to go about discovering sources, connecting the dots among sources, and developing their own ideas. If you could teach that by example, I think it would be a unique step in the right direction.” 5) Focus on developing information literacy skills. “I think most K-12 students think that plagiarism is just handing in someone else’s paper,” says Dorothy Mikuska, a former high school English teacher and founder of ePen&Inc. “But the idea of citing sources and properly attributing them is not something that they necessarily connect to plagiarism.” Another important issue, she says, is citing the right sources. “You have all this user-generated content out there, but students don’t differentiate.” Previous Page | Left Zoom in | Zoom out | Cover/Content Print | Right Zoom in | Zoom out | Search | Next Page FEATURE | mobile learning Stuyvesant is one of the country’s most prestigious phones, is promising to drop the ban. Lifting it, they This is happening at every high school in the country. public schools. According to Thomas Zadrozny, who as say, would allow parents to make sure that their chil- Our students just got caught.” a junior reported on the incident for the school news- dren are safe. Zadrozny, who heads to the University of Washington ment, and a group of students turned to cheating as a to start college this fall, insists that the much-publicized Not all students plagiarize, but enough of them do to way to get through it. We dubbed it ‘the cheating ring.’ incident doesn’t reflect the character of his school. justify some of the hyperbolic language characterizing The way it worked was, one student coordinated efforts “You shouldn’t get the idea that everyone in the school this form of high-tech cheating. Each year, Turnitin, a by a bunch of them to exchange answers on exams, does it,” he says. “This was the largest example, but company that has become something of a household both in school and on state exams, at the end of the this is a huge school, and most of the students are on name among plagiarism-detection services, conducts 2012 school year.” the right path. And this isn’t just a Stuyvesant thing. what’s called a matched content analysis. In 2012, Zadrozny’s story (“Stuyvesant Cheating Ring Exposed”), which he cowrote with Kaveri Sengupta and Jordan Wallach, with reporting by Arielle Gerber, appeared in The Spectator on Sept. 9, 2012. The story notes that the students weren’t caught, precisely: One student, who was apparently included in the cheating ring reluctantly, came forward and told administrators that students were sharing answers via cell phones. “It was common for teachers not to monitor exams very well,” Zadrozny adds. “I’m not blaming them, but they do need to wake up to the reality that this is going on, and they need to be more vigilant during a test.” This advice could be especially important for New York City schools in the future, given that nearly every candidate currently running to succeed Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who instituted a ban on student cell 17 Search Is Not Research paper The Spectator, “It’s a very high pressure environ- | AUGUST 2013 Our nation requires – and young people deserve – education geared to the demands of today’s real world. Generation Ready helps teachers and school leaders create a stronger, more vibrant generation of Americans – one that is ready for career and college. Stronger teachers, stronger schools, stronger students. We’re Generation Ready. Are you? Visit generationready.com _______________ Previous Page | Left Zoom in | Zoom out | Cover/Content Print | Right Zoom in | Zoom out | Search | Next Page FEATURE | mobile learning Companies like Turnitin are providing what increas- the company searched 38 million student papers for concept for students,” Chu says. “I’ve had instructors matches to online content. About 10 million of those tell me that students who’ve been caught turning in pa- ingly might be considered standard tools in K-12 edu- papers were written by secondary school students; the pers they purchased online are actually confused about cation, but there are some widespread misconcep- rest were written by college and university students. why they were in trouble. They’d say, ‘Sure, I bought tions about how these tools work, Chu says. “We don’t Among the papers searched, the company turned this, but it’s mine. What’s the problem here?’ ” actually identify plagiarism,” he explains. “There really up 156 million matches to previously published online content. Unsurprisingly, the number one online source for those matches was Wikipedia. Among the secondary school papers, the second most popular source of those matches was Yahoo Answers. “Think about that!” says Jason Chu, senior education manager at Turnitin. “You have students who are writing papers, and their version of doing research, which is really informed by their social habits, is to go to a social sharing site. What’s the credibility behind Yahoo Answers? It doesn’t make any sense, but it sheds light on the challenge students are facing when it comes to 6 DIGITAL LITERACY RESOURCES One of the most effective ways to address and reduce the instances of digital cheating is to promote, teach, and model positive digital behavior in three key areas: digital literacy (critical thinking when watching, interacting with, and creating media), ethics (codes of conduct), and safety (understanding digital risks, from malware to dangerous people and information). Here are a few resources to help schools promote the teaching of such skills. 21st Century Information Fluency Project (21CIF) provides professional development and resources for educators to help students locate, evaluate, and use digital information more effectively, efficiently, and ethically. Cable in the Classroom is the education outreach arm of the cable industry, with a mission that includes promoting digital citizenship. Its website offers a number of resources for educators. The Center for Media Literacy is an organization dedicated to promoting and supporting media literacy education as a framework for accessing, analyzing, evaluating, creating, and participating with media content. research online.” For many students born in the digital age, Chu says, Media Literacy Clearinghouse is operated by digital literacy expert Frank Baker. The site offers an aggregation and evaluation of media literacy teaching resources. research means search. “The irony, of course, is that there’s so much information available to students online that they don’t know how to parse,” Chu says. “They don’t know how to interpret it, how to evaluate it, how to make sense of it.” And they don’t really understand who owns it. “Copyright and intellectual property rights are often a fuzzy 18 | AUGUST 2013 New Media Literacies, a research initiative based within the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, looks at the challenges for educators and students living in a “participatory culture.” The site includes white papers and teaching guides. SOS for Information Literacy, a web-based multimedia resource funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, includes lesson plans, handouts, presentations, videos, and other resources to enhance the teaching of information literacy. Previous Page | Left Zoom in | Zoom out | Cover/Content Print | Right Zoom in | Zoom out | Search FEATURE | mobile learning SHARE is no true plagiarism-detection service out there, one the same screen, the same interaction. But there are that will unequivocally and with full confidence identify different rules. Teachers need to establish clear param- I’d almost say that some teachers need to become plagiarism. You can’t teach a machine to parse intent. eters and show their students that there’s a difference students again to effectively understand what stu- What all plagiarism detection services do is identify and between cutting and pasting in a status update on dents are doing and how best to address the prob- compare matched content. It’s really up to the instruc- Facebook and original material written for a class blog lems they face.” tor to look at the those matches and decide whether it’s or discussion forum.” a case of poor citation, a student who simply forgot to Students in hybrid classrooms are especially vulner- “It’s an entirely different world,” Taparia adds, “and “Digital natives are attuned to sharing files and helping each other out,” says Dorothy Mikuska, a veteran put in the quotation marks, or did they copy the content able, Chu believes. Confusion is almost inevitable in high school English teacher and founder of ePen&Inc, in a way that’s not appropriate.” classes that conduct business both on and offline— which makes the PaperToolsPro bibliography tool. unless teachers make it a point to clarify distinctions. “We’ve taught them well to collaborate in this way. Making that job more challenging, adds Chu, is the fact that “this generation of digital natives writes every The Southern California high school junior describes But the transparency of doing their own work is not as day. Previous generations would write for assignments. her perspective on collaboration versus cheating this significant to them. They’re not as motivated to be as Nowadays, students are writing all the time. They’re way: “It is confusing! A lot of my teachers tell us to careful about citing sources.” text-messaging. They’re sharing on social media sites work together on our homework, but I think they’re “Kids do learn in groups today,” says Software Se- like Facebook. But they’re writing, and it’s easy for more trusting about us working together in person, cure’s Winneg. “They live in a highly connected world, them to conflate content information that they share, and they don’t want us doing it online so much. Or and it’s second nature for them to go online to get that they use and access every day, and apply that per- they do want us to work together online, because answers and to reach out to friends for help. And many spective to how they produce school papers.” that’s how we do it in that class. And we just do it that teachers are encouraging them to do that in their daily way anyway all the time. But it’s not cheating; it’s just schoolwork. So this confusion between collabora- the way we do our schoolwork.” tion and cheating is about more than just monitoring Collaboration Blurs the Lines All this line-blurring can be especially challenging for student test takers. This is a learning generation, but online that there’s often genuine confusion about the teachers from older generations, says Neal Taparia, co- they’re used to having instant access to information difference between cheating and collaborating. founder of online bibliography service EasyBib. “It’s dif- online—which is the good news and the bad news.” Digital natives are also so used to working together “Teachers need to be mindful of the collision of stu- 19 | Next Page ficult for educators who were in school in a pre-internet dents’ social media activities with their school activi- world to relate to how students are collaborating and John K. Waters is a freelance journalist and author ties,” says Chu. “It’s the same tools, the same process, researching today,” he says. based in Mountain View, CA. | AUGUST 2013 NEXT: How MOOCs can help AP students Copyright of T H E Journal is the property of T.H.E. Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. Chapter 3 TECHNOLOGY, PRIVACY, CONFIDENTIALITY, AND SECURITY As you've seen, most conflicts in the intersections of copyright policy, libraries, and technology come about because copyright policy constrains desirable technology or because copyright holders use technology to undermine copyright policy. Library policies play much lesser roles, except for the special case of preservation and archiving. Some technology-policy issues work the other way around. New technologies and new applications of old technologies may be perfectly acceptable from legal and general social policy standpoints, but may conflict with library policies. What happens then? With few exceptions, all libraries claim to protect user privacy and circulation confidentiality—and all libraries need to be concerned with the security of their collections (and their staff, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion). The fundamental principal of user privacy means that a user's reading (listening, viewing) habits are strictly their own—that librarians don't concern themselves with those habits and strictly protect that information from others. Circulation confidentiality is the same principle, but in reverse and on an aggregate basis. It's a relatively recent principle, at least in practice—after all, many public and other libraries used to use signature book cards, where past readership could be observed simply by reading the card. Librarians care about collection security for obvious reasons: If the collection walks away on a regular basis, any library with a finite budget will cease to exist. a. Ol q ro -5 Balancing New Technologies, Privacy, Confidentiality, and Security Innovative librarians keep on the lookout for new technologies that can improve library service. Companies develop new technologies and uses, then pitch them to libraries, pointing out the problems the new technologies can solve. That's as it should be; libraries have long been leaders in effective use of new technology, and should remain so. Problems arise when new technologies and uses are implemented without considering the policy framework. Every technology, even seemingly minor ones, should receive at least a cursory policy scan. _o o If your library proceeds with a new technology that does affect privacy and confidentiality, and you haven't addressed those issues in advance, there's a good chance someone else will address them for you. That's particularly likely if you're on a coast, in a major urban area, or in any high-technology or upscale town or region. n .a When your users raise questions, you need to have answers. "We didn't think about that" generally doesn't serve very well as an answer. I I The two examples that follow represent real-world situations, one where the technological development already exists in hundreds of libraries, and one where it's been suggested but rarely implemented. In neither case is the technology simply a bad idea. It's rarely that simple. A third example considers technology that's been implemented in thousands of American libraries. Maybe you did a policy check when your library implemented that technology; maybe the policy check is still valid. Are you sure? Radio Frequency Identification Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) seems like a great idea for libraries, all the more so as the price of RFID tags keeps dropping. RFID may offer better security than existing systems but can also make circulation and returns faster, easier, and (particularly for returns) less likely to cause injuries to library staff. Richard W. Boss summarizes some of the advantages: Rapid charging/discharging. The use of RFID reduces the amount of time required to perform circulation operations. The most significant time savings are attributable to the facts that information can be read from RFID tags much faster than from barcodes and that several items in a stack can be read at the same time . . . Simplified patron self-charging/discharging. For patrons using self-charging, there is a marked improvement because they do not have to carefully place materials within a designated template, and they can charge several items at the same time. Patron self-discharging shifts that work from staff to patrons. Staff is relieved further when readers are installed in bookdrops . . . High-speed inventorying . . . A hand-held inventory reader can be moved rapidly across a shelf of books to read all of the unique identification information. Using wireless technology, it is possible not only to update the inventory, but also to identify items [that] are out of proper order. Automated materials handling . . . This includes conveyer and sorting systems that can move library materials and sort them by category into separate bins or onto separate carts.' Karen Schneider adds another indirect advantage: Reduction in workplace injuries. Workplace injuries caused by the repetitive motions related to flipping books and angling books under barcode readers cost libraries millions of dollars every year.^ I' .3 S* 0. o ^ m ^ tn This all sounds pretty good—good enough that at least 130 libraries in North America were already using RFID systems in August 2004, with hundreds more considering it.^ So What's the Problem? I I | fD Richard W. Boss says there isn't one: '^ There is a perception among some that RFID is a threat to patron privacy. That perception is based on t w o misconceptions: (1) that the tags contain patron information and (2) that they can be read after someone has taken the materials t p home or office. iB The vast majority of the tags installed in library materials contain only the item ID, usually the same number that previously has been stored on a barcode. The link between borrower and the borrowed material is maintained in the circulation module of the automated library system, and is broken when the > == g ° u §• material is returned. When additional information is stored on the tag, it consists of information about the item, including holding location, call number, and rarely author/title. The RFID tags can only be read from a distance of two feet or less because the tags reflect a signal that comes from a reader or sensor. It is, therefore, not possible for someone to read tags from the street or an office building hallway." If only it were so simple. "Misconception" 2 is a simple fact: RFIDs can be read after someone has checked out the materials. That's not true of all RFIDs, to be sure. There are RFIDs that can be disabled permanently, for example RFIDs used as security devices in retail goods. Once they've been scanned by the right device, they should be inert. Such RFIDs won't work for libraries. The whole point of a library RFID implementation is to use the same chip over and over, to charge and discharge an item, get it back to the right shelf, and assure it's where it should be. Library RFIDs are always readable: It's in the nature of the design. Consider the last sentence in Boss's reassuring hand wave. Do you always walk more than two feet from the walls in an office hallway? (As a rough test, if you reach out your arm can you touch the wall? If so, you're probably closer than two feet.) So you always keep a distance of more than two feet from any potential reader. The next-to-last sentence assumes that reader technology will never improve—that today's two feet won't be four feet, eight feet, or half a mile in another few years. That's a remarkably poor assumption, one that flies in the face of almost everything we know about improvements in transmitting and receiving technology. A Little Paranoid Thought Experiment g ^ .5 I ^ Assume for the moment that Boss is right. He's certainly right on the first count: The RFID on a book does not, in and of itself, have any information on the patron. As he says, the link between borrower and the borrowed material is maintained in the circulation module of the automated library system. The assumption that this link is broken when the book is returned is a bit facile, to be sure. Some systems retain that link either for a fixed period or until the next circulation, to allow time to check for damages. Some systems haven't been as strict about purging past circulation records as library policies should require.^ •^ ^ J ^ I What's to stop a snoop (governmental or otherwise) from mounting a hidden reader just outside the library, near the "official" reader, or in a similar area where the two-foot limit is no problem? That gives the snoop a handy record of each item that enters or leaves the library. Combined with hidden cameras, it can identify who appears to have the item even without the use of patron identification. g s' s Are such hidden cameras likely? There are already tens of thousands of funtime security cameras in use, with more to come. Their use is not only likely but probable. 1 •§ > J For that matter, wouldn't it be convenient to use RFID chips in borrower's cards? After all, with RFID for items but barcodes for borrower's cards, a selfcheck station still needs both a laser scanner and an RFID scanner. Chip the library card and you've simplified the station. •3 o After all, the patron's chip doesn't actually identify the patron (assuming your library uses patron numbers with no independent meaning). That link only exists in the library's database. How secure is your library's database? That's a significant question even without RFID chips in library cards, since it's the library's database that makes the item RFID meaningful by relating it to a bibliographic record. Without access to the database, the RFID information is useless. Or is it? Karen Schneider's Concerns While discussing the advantages of RFID, Karen Schneider notes some issues. Skipping over those already discussed (such as library RFID tags must stay live, and computing and communications technology gets smaller, cheaper, and more powerful over time), consider her well-informed comments on several other issues—all of them policy issues that arise from this seemingly innocuous technology: 3. Libraries should only store barcode numbers on these tags, but we have yet to develop best practices profession-wide. At least one library in California has acknowledged that they store patron information on RFID tags . . . 4. Library databases are often maintained by library staff that "grew into" the job and may not have the training or expertise commonly associated with highly secure systems. It is dangerous to assume that library systems are so powerfully secured that they would be impervious to an organization seeking to probe databases in order to connect library barcodes with library records . . . 6. RFID cheaply and efficiently automates surveillance The promise of RFID is equal to its danger: It vastly reduces the labor overhead required to track items. 7. Reliance on features unique to library RFID is dangerous.... A truly privacyfriendly approach to RFID in libraries is to assume that all library RFID tags are world-readable, and work backwards from there. 8. Libraries nationwide have acknowledged that privacy concerns related to RFID are new territory . . . 10. Libraries have proved vulnerable to national agendas. Recent legislation . . . demonstrates that libraries have become highly porous battlegrounds for some of the larger privacy and public-forum debates in our society . . . With the PATRIOT Act, we have seen the government become increasingly inventive and aggressive in its efforts to track the reading habits of library users.* o= 5 H 3o. o Ifi Other Concerns » •D •o Potential problems don't stop there. David Molnar and David Wagner of the University of California, Berkeley, discuss ways library RFID chips may compromise reader privacy even without access to library databases. They discuss two dangers: tracking and hotlisting. % Tracking uses an item's RFID tag to follow the movements of that item— without knowing or much caring what the item itself is. To what purpose? §" s Combined with video surveillance or other mechanisms, this may allow an adversary to link different people reading the same book. In this way, an adversary can begin profiling individuals' associations and make inferences about a particular individual's views, e.g., "this person checked out the same books as a known terrorist"' sj S S Hotlisting? That's where someone compiles a list of items that it wants to recognize. Chances are, the RFID will contain the same number as the barcode on a book. What's to stop someone from going through the library > 1 o | | copying down barcodes for books of particular interest—or, for that matter, scanning the RFID tags to acquire whatever codes they contain, then relating those codes to the bibliographic information? Hotlisting is problematic because it allows an adversary to gather information about an individual's reading habits without a court order. For example, readers could be set up at security checkpoints in an airport, and individuals with hotlisted books set aside for special screening.^ Coping with RFID None of this means libraries should shun RFID chips. It does mean that, as Schneider and Ayre both urge, libraries need to develop best practices and deep understanding of the possibilities. Ayre urges government privacy protections; other authors suggest a number of steps. The first step is awareness and, subsequently, simple corollary steps, such as precluding the use of bar codes to search library catalogs. Molnar and Wagner offer specific technical options to improve the security of future library RFID systems; those options may not help existing installations, but— along with ALA best practices guidelines—they offer the likelihood RFID will be a less mixed blessing in the future. One response of some futurists and technophiles to any question raised about privacy and confidentiality is there is no such thing as privacy, so you might as well get over it. That's not an acceptable answer—and would only become a true answer if libraries and other agencies choose to make it true. Collaborative Recommendations and Similar Services in Why can't library catalogs be more like Amazon? Variations of that cry have risen in various quarters. Depending on what "more like Amazon" really means, one answer is that many of them already have—catalogs showing book covers, including tables of contents, linking to reviews. ° \ ^ •5 I What some people mean by "more like Amazon" is a collaborative filtering and recommendation technology that suggests new items for your consideration, based on some combination of your own buying patterns and combined patterns of other purchases. "People who purchased x also purchased y" represents a simple form of collaborative recommendation; the technology can go much further. 1 2 § I ^ I Since this isn't a discussion of Amazon, there's no point in considering whether Amazon's collaborative recommendation engine is unbiased. Some similar engines do appear to operate without bias (and to serve the company's aims in doing so), with Netflix being one of the most widely used. Netflix invites you to rate as many movies as you can. Based on those ratings, the records of what you've already viewed and liked, and similar records for a couple of million other viewers, Netflix can offer surprisingly apt suggestions for movies you might never have considered but will probably enjoy. tf g. QC g; g "I o Wouldn't it be great if a library catalog could do the same—offer a personal reader's advisory that suggests some books (or CDs or DVDs) that you might really enjoy, based on your past borrowing and related borrowing records from other library users? Given cheap disk storage and high-speed computing, the technology is feasible now. As far as I know, it hasn't been implemented in public libraries. Confidentiality Issues The problem with collaborative recommendations is that to work really well, they rely on stored knowledge of your past history and that of others. How do you provide such stored knowledge without compromising confidentiality? There may be answers to that question, but those answers require testing and thought. At first glance, it seems problematic. You could achieve one level of collaboration by only coupling items taken out at the same time and storing those links with codes that can never be linked to an actual borrower. Thus, you could say that "someone took out book a, book b, book c, and DVD d at the same time." If that pattern happens often enough, then you could suggest that someone else who checks out book a and book c might find book c and DVD d interesting. But that's a weak database—and it will keep recommending books a user has already read, which is likely to be more annoying than useful. You'll have much stronger recommendations if the engine can track borrowing habits over time. I don't know how you could do that while maintaining confidentiality. There is a way to avoid the problem of recommending an already-read book over and over, but it involves significant overhead. If records of a user's past circulation are only maintained on that user's own PC (or better yet, on a flash USB drive), stored in some encrypted manner that only the library database can relate to actual items, those records could be used on the fly to provide new recommendations without necessar/Vy endangering privacy or confidentiality, assuming a secure link is used for the process. These aren't trivial problems. They shouldn't be solved by asking users to acknowledge their reading history may not be private if they want new book recommendations. Library users don't generally have or need the same background or depth of awareness of privacy issues as librarians. It's the job of librarians to maintain library principles, not to attract users to waive those principles by offering shiny new toys. I'm sure very few PC users want adware or spyware installed on their machines, but millions of them "signed" forms consenting to add such adware or spyware so they could achieve some desirable end. c. ? •< s" |^ g >< In the case of RFID, the dangers may be limited and controllable compared to the benefits. It's not at all clear that the supposed benefit of automated reader's advisory outweighs the dangers, or that the dangers can be eliminated at reasonable cost. Before any such system comes into play, those issues need to be studied and resolved. Online Access to User Records This doesn't require much dis...
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