This paper addresses the always online behavior of the data owner in proxy re- encryption schemes for re-encryption keys issuing. We extend and adapt multi-authority ciphertext policy attribute based encryption techniques to type-based proxy re-encryption to build our solution. As a result, user authentication and user authorization are moved to the cloud server which does not require further interaction with the data owner, data owner and data users identities are hidden from the cloud server, and re-encryption keys are (...) only issued to legitimate users. An in depth analysis shows that our scheme is secure, flexible and efficient for mobile cloud computing. (shrink)

The article proposes some ideas for a sociological analysis of security policies, with specific regard to urban contexts and focusing especially on the intersection between policy and politics. The main questions concern the way in which security has been studied as a public good construed as a collective problem and an object of political action, as well as how to develop further perspectives and conceptual tools within this approach. Some other questions are also asked and provisionally answered, (...) regarding two aspects of security policies that are suitable for a research agenda: the role of knowledge and the related politics of expertise; the relationships between urban security policies and the processes of neoliberalization. (shrink)

Social security is one of the important guidelines and policies of our Party and State that has been thoroughly grasped and guaranteed to be implemented during the country's development periods. In recent years, despite facing many difficulties and challenges, social security work in Vietnam has continued to achieve many positive results, policies have continuously improved, the material and spiritual life of people has improved. People are cared for better and better with the goal of "leaving no (...) one behind". (shrink)

In cloud security, intrusion detection system (IDS) is one of the challenging research areas. In a cloud environment, security incidents such as denial of service, scanning, malware code injection, virus, worm, and password cracking are getting usual. These attacks surely affect the company and may develop a financial loss if not distinguished in time. Therefore, securing the cloud from these types of attack is very much needed. To discover the problem, this paper suggests a novel (...) IDS established on a combination of a leader-based k-means clustering (LKM), optimal fuzzy logic system. Here, at first, the input dataset is grouped into clusters with the use of LKM. Then, cluster data are afforded to the fuzzy logic system (FLS). Here, normal and abnormal data are inquired by the FLS, while FLS training is done by the grey wolf optimization algorithm through maximizing the rules. The clouds simulator and NSL-Knowledge Discovery and DataBase (KDD) Cup 99 dataset are applied to inquire about the suggested method. Precision, recall, and F-measure are conceived as evaluation criteria. The obtained results have denoted the superiority of the suggested method in comparison with other methods. (shrink)

The U.S. military is developing augmented reality (AR) capabilities for use on the battlefield as a means of achieving greater situational awareness. The superimposition of digital data—designed to expand surveillance, enhance geospatial understanding, and facilitate target identification—onto a live view of the battlefield has important implications for virtuous conduct in war: Can the soldier exercise practical wisdom while integrated into a system of militarized legibility? Adopting a virtue ethics perspective, I argue that AR disrupts the soldier’s immersion in the scene (...) such that he is blinded to features beyond those identified in advance by the military’s system of cybernetic judgment. I turn to Michael Walzer’s classic account of the “naked soldier” dilemma to illustrate how AR capabilities radically shrink the bounds within which the soldier can cultivate the capacity for right conduct. By transforming the ambiguous ethical matter of killing an enemy combatant into the straightforward application of a rule, AR hollows out the soldier’s potential for virtuous action. The “smart battlefield” leaves no space for deliberative judgments that transcend the technical and legal determinations already written into the soldier’s view of the scene. (shrink)

The main economic activity of the people of Eritrea is agriculture: crop production and livestock herding. Agriculture mainly comprises mixed farming and some commercial concessions. Most agriculture is rain-fed. The main rain-fed crops are sorghum, millet and sesame, and the main irrigated crops are all horticultural crops like bananas, onions and tomatoes and cotton. The major livestock production constraints are disease, water and feed shortages and agricultural expansion especially in the river frontages. The agricultural sector employs eighty percent of the (...) working population, but its production has not managed to cover internal food demand and is forced to cover nearly 50 per cent of its annual cereal requirements through imports-commercial and food assistance. Like most African countries, Eritrea is also a victim of the problem of food insecurity. In good years the country produces only about 60 per cent of its total food needs and in poor years, it produces no more than 25 per cent. On average, once in 10 years, the country is threatened with famines. Annual crop production depends on rainfall that is variable and unevenly distributed from year to year. Therefore, the primary goal of Eritrea is to guarantee food security by introducing modern technology, irrigation, terracing, soil and water conservation, with less dependence on rainwater. Thus the Government has articulated its food policy, which stresses national ownership of grant food assistance and to achieve food security in the coming five years. The policy indeed encompasses all sectoral policies and represents the Government's engagements with regard to food security. Despite the general trends of improvement in the economy of Eritrea, it has not yet fully recovered, and thus will still continue to require variable degrees of food assistance for the coming few more years. Based on this historical and recurrent food insecurity in Eritrea, an attempt is made in this paper to assess the agriculture development and food policy in the country. Furthermore, the paper captures the available food security policy proposals of Eritrea and eventually draws conclusions. (shrink)

Although the Lisbon Treaty maintained the general exclusion of Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) matters from ECJ jurisdiction, it introduced a number of changes into this area, including an explicit statement that the Court is competent to review the legality of the Council decisions imposing restraining measures on persons. The article analyzes the nature and origin of those changes and considers the legal implications for the level of the protection of fundamental rights in the European Union. For this (...) purpose the author firstly considers the context of the exclusion of CFSP matters from the ECJ jurisdiction, including discussions on the issue at the European Convention, and, secondly, takes a closer look at the separate heads of jurisdiction over which the Court is competent to act after the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. A conclusion is made that the Lisbon Treaty did not introduce significant changes to ECJ jurisdiction. Similarly to the pattern of previous amendment treaties, the Lisbon Treaty again gave recognition to the practice of the ECJ on relevant questions. Nonetheless, the amendments made by the Lisbon Treaty should be welcome for introducing more clarity into the legal regulation of the matter, thus boosting the legal certainty and protection of fundamental rights in the European Union. (shrink)

The concept of national security belongs to the so-called old, traditional approachesto security. Its focus is on the survival of the sovereign state, which is its territorialintegrity and political independence (sovereignty) protected by diplomatic, intelligenceand military capacities, which is ability to repel military aggression or respond successfully.It is therefore justifiably called the concept of state security. In the real socialist countries,state security meant the state of protection of the state from political crime, as wellas the (...) class='Hi'>security of the (socialist, communist) regime. Therefore, national or state securitywas in principle divided into so-called external (security from armed aggression) and internal(security of the regime and the state from the internal enemy).The primary bearers of the fight against all occurrences of security threats, as well as thefunctioning of the security function of the state, are the institutions, organizations andsecurity services. The intelligence and security services as an integral part of the securityand intelligence system work to detect, prevent and suppress any occurrence of securitythreats to a particular country or social union. Through the establishment and organizationof a security system or security-intelligence system, the state strives to achieve itsvital interests, to preserve its sovereignty, territorial integrity, constitutional order and thefreedoms and rights of its citizens, in order to achieve the strategic goals of the state -membership in NATO and the European Union, which will bring even greater regional andcontinental security and stability. The focus of the modern concept of national security isthe security of the state, society and the individual. Our country must strive for internalreforms, in terms of restoring the criteria of the rule of law, freedom of the media, controlover the executive branch, which have long been considered unfulfilled. (shrink)

In the fall 2007 Diet session, the largest opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) showed strong opposition against the government's proposal to continue the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) refueling operations to support maritime inspections in the Indian Ocean. In order to evaluate this parliamentary confrontation, the article compares the handling of this issue with the six past major post-Cold War national security policies. The DPJ constantly presented its own legislative proposals in order to participate in Diet deliberation. DPJ's counter (...) proposals, however, were not always cooperative with the government. This different attitude by the DPJ could not be explained by the public and media opinions or the position of the supporting organization but by DPJ's political calculation. (shrink)

A large and impressive literature has arisen over the past fifteen years concerning the emergence, transfer, and sustenance of political norms in international life. The presumption of this literature has been, for the most part, that the winds of normative change blow in a progressive direction, toward greater or more stringent normative control of individual or state behavior. Constructivist accounts detail a spiral of mutual normative reinforcement as actors and institutions discover the advantages of normative self- and other evaluation. There (...) is also now much interesting research focused on the question of how to predict the emergence of future norms.I focus, however, on a different issue here: the death of norms that had once seemed well internalized and institutionalized. The issue arises in relation to one of the most dramatic features in the defense policy of the United States since 2001: the crumbling of highly restrictive normative regimes prohibiting interrogatory torture and assassination as part of the “global war on terror.” My aim here is to sketch what I take to be the central features of cases in which even norms that are clearly defined and apparently well internalized in a democracy nonetheless lose their grip on policy. The ultimate lesson, however, is an unappealing irony: While democracies surely do better than authoritarian regimes in adopting and internalizing certain kinds of constraints, in part because of a greater sensitivity to public mobilization around normative questions, that same sensitivity makes the long-term survival of these norms precarious. In particular, I suggest that force-constraining norms are most effectively internalized by coherent and relatively insulated professional cadres who see themselves as needing to act consistently over time. But in a democracy the values and arguments of those cadres are susceptible to being undermined by a combination of public panic and the invocation by policymakers of a public interest that can override the claims both of law and pragmatic restraint. Democracy, hence, can be at the same time both fertile and toxic: fertile as a source of humanitarian values and institutions, but toxic to the very institutions it cultivates.The model I will describe may be of predictive use in helping us to see the special vulnerability of normative orders in democracies. But my hope is that it is also constructive in showing us how states and institutions committed to maintaining a certain normative order, especially democratic states, might best try to entrench those norms. While my argument is conceptual and philosophical, it draws on this recent history. I also add two qualifications to this article's title. First, I am not addressingallnorms, but specific norms concerning the state use of force in national security policy. I therefore do not make claims about the generalizability of the conflict I describe to other norms, for example, norms of racial, sexual, or religious orthodoxy or hierarchy, or norms of reciprocal interaction. Second, reports of a norm's death are frequently exaggerated, since norms can be latent, then resurrected. Arguably, the anti-torture norm was resuscitated by President Obama in 2009 when, as one of his first official acts as chief executive, he moved to prohibit cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees. I write here about the path of decay, whether or not that path is unidirectional, and why previously salient norms no longer seem to govern policy choice among political decision-makers. (shrink)

Foreign security and defense policy is an interdependent component of securitymanagement. According to the neo-classical definition of security management in thefield of external security-defense policy, it includes a series of practices, strategies andprinciples aimed at protecting assets, information and resources from various threatsand risks through the development of civil and military skills. From the perspective ofthe realist theory, the nature of the international structure is defined by its organizingprinciple, that is, the balance and distribution of power between (...) states and internationalinstitutions. Hence, the question arises as to what is the position and role of small statesin the international system in terms of security management, from where the main hypothesisof this paper derives, which highlights the need for appropriate management ofsecurity trends, both at the national level and in wider international context.Through the application of an inductive method of qualitative analysis of primaryand secondary sources, comparative presentation of combined data and identificationof causal influences, the role of the mechanisms that have the most potential to achievean optimal outcome in the positioning of small states with limited political influence anda low security share is highlighted. Thus, through the application of appropriate modelsfor the implementation of security management functions, small states create space forparticipation in security maneuvers. (shrink)

The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) objectives are an integral part of the overall objectives of the European Union and the policy area has developed from a purely intergovernmental form of cooperation in the days of the European political cooperation to an area in which the member states have increasingly accepted new forms of institutionalization. CFSP decisions are taken by the General Affairs Council, consisting of the ministers for foreign affairs of the member states. In spite of the (...) growing pains in the development of Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), the European Union has made significant strides in deploying crisis management operations. However, the issue of defining success of the CSDP is no longer measured in terms of merely launching missions, ensuring mission output, and gathering operational experience. Whenever a common policy does not prove possible, member states are free to pursue their own national foreign policies. (shrink)

The article is an attempt to answer the question about the state of Poland’s security after the first decade of the twenty-first century, what are its determinants, what kind of challenges Poland faces and which of them may turn into a threat and which into an opportunity, or what Polish potential is and which of its components determine its position on the international arena. It is achieved through a detailed analysis of actions undertaken by Poland in the international arena (...) to strengthen its international position as well as the level of its security. Thus, the aim is to identify those determinants which may contribute to establishing a stronger position and which can create problems and become a formidable challenge in the context of various aspects of security, and even develop into a threat. Unfortunately, the picture which comes out of the above mentioned analysis is not optimistic and the impression is that Poland did not use the chance it was given after the accession to the NATO and the EU. (shrink)

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has faced the challenge of reorienting its foreign policy to address post-Cold War conditions. In this new edition of a groundbreaking work -- one of the first to bring critical theory into dialogue with more traditional approaches to international relations -- David Campbell provides a fundamental reappraisal of American foreign policy, with a new epilogue to address current world affairs and the burgeoning focus on culture and identity in the study (...) of international relations. Extending recent debates in international relations, Campbell shows how perceptions of danger and difference work to establish the identity of the United States. He demonstrates how foreign policy, far from being an expression of a given society, constitutes state identity through the interpretation of danger posed by others. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved. (shrink)

This paper explores the history of a unique assemblage of researchers in the geodetic and allied sciences organised at Ohio State University (OSU) in 1947 at the beginning of the Cold War. From about 1950 to 1970, the OSU geodetic sciences group was the most significant group of geodetic researchers in the world. Funded almost entirely by military and intelligence agencies, they pioneered the technologies, organised the research initiatives, ordered the data sets, and trained the generation of geodesists who eventually (...) created the Cold War Figure of the Earth to both prosecute and prevent global nuclear war. They devised elaborate mechanisms to pursue in secrecy and isolation research that had hitherto been performed collaboratively and globally. They invented methods to maintain professional associations and protocols, both to distribute-and disguise-the fruits of their geodetic research. In accomplishing this, their work also undermined the basic hypothesis of isostasy that had been foundational to geodesy for the previous century.Fundamental progress in the geosciences and military and intelligence directives were inextricably linked during the Cold War, although the extent of their convergence has been masked by the security protocols organised to disguise it. With the declassification of key programmes underway, it is now both possible and necessary to substantially revise the history of Cold War-era geosciences and their associated technologies. (shrink)

Digital business has marked an era of transformation, but also an unprecedented growth of cyber threats. While digital explosion witnessed by the banking sector since the COVID-19 pandemic has been significant, the level and frequency of cybercrimes have gone up as well. Cybercrime officials attribute it to remote working—people using home computers or laptops with vulnerable online security than office systems; malicious actors relentlessly developing their tactics to find new ways to break into enterprise networks and grasping defence evasion; (...) persons unemployed during the pandemic getting into hacking; cloud and data corruption; digital fatigue causing negligence; etc. This study adopts a case-based approach to explore the importance of business ethics, information sharing and transparency to build an information-driven society by scouting the case of Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank, India. PMC defaulted on payments to its depositors and was placed under Reserve Bank of India’s directions due to financial irregularities and a massive fraud perpetrated by bank officials by orchestrating the bank’s IT systems. The crisis worsened when panic-stricken investors advanced their narrative through fake news peddled via social media channels, resulting in alarm that caused deaths of numerous depositors. It exposed several loopholes in information management in India’s deposit insurance system and steered the policy makers to restructure the same, thus driving the country consistent with its emerging market peers. The study further identifies best practices for aligning employees towards ethical behaviour in a virtual workplace and the pedagogical approaches for information management in the new normal. (shrink)

There is strong evidence suggesting that harm reduction policies are able to reduce the adverse health and social consequences of drug use. However, in this article I will compare two different countries to demonstrate that some social aspects lead to the adoption or rejection of harm reduction policies. In this case, countries where drugs are seen as a security concern are less likely to adopt these harm reduction policies. For that purpose, I will compare Colombia and (...) Uruguay’s political, normative, and social aspects, which are considered drivers in the adoption of harm reduction policies, as well as how those factors influence the treatments available for substance abuse disorders. (shrink)

This volume analyses the moral and legal foundations of privacy, security, and accountability along with the tensions that arise between these important individual and social values.

The exercise of power has radically changed in the modern era and is creating new challenges for democracy and democratic policy-making. Michel Foucault has introduced a whole new vocabulary to the understanding of governance which is critical to conceptualizing both the changing nature of power and its implications for democracy. Foucault articulates three fundamental ways in which the state has sought to maintain control of, act upon and maximize its capabilities through those under its charge: sovereign, discipline and security (...) power. While the history of sovereign power has been well established and a plethora of literature has emerged articulating the various disciplinary mechanisms which have evolved over the recent past, the field of security power has been relatively understudied and is fruitful ground for exploration. This article seeks to explore the concept of security power as articulated by Foucault in his work Security, Territory, Population and articulate two major failures endemic to the operation of security power where theory fails practice. This work not only highlights the evolving nature of power but also the fundamental threat that security power poses for democratic policy-making and principles of governance. (shrink)

The rapid evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has broadened discussions about its social and technological implications. The purpose of this study is to examine the perception of risks and benefits associated with AI, focusing on privacy, cybersecurity, trust in government management, and online device acceptance over time. We used an integrative approach that combined questionnaires and data analysis from X via Natural Language Processing (NLP). The traditional survey had 1013 participants in 2018 and 1000 in 2021, while X’s analysis examined (...) approximately 7.5 million tweets in the same period. The results indicate a constant concern with the risks of AI, such as the dehumanization of services (86%), job loss (82%), changes in labor functions (89%), privacy (87%), and cyber-attacks (87%). X also highlighted ethical concerns and the use of algorithms, perceived as a “threat cloud.” Acceptance of connected devices was low (23%), reflecting security and privacy concerns. Confidence in government management was remarkably low in relation to cybersecurity (12%) and privacy (13%). Nevertheless, there is a modest increase in the perception of the benefits of AI, such as technological advances and efficiency. This study underscores the need for collaborative and effective policies and the promotion of a culture of responsibility to maximize the benefits of AI while mitigating risks. The practical implications of these findings are discussed, emphasizing the importance of policies and regulations to address emerging digital threats. (shrink)

This comment reflects on how the Women, Peace and Security agenda has been translated into policy and put into practice by the European Union and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Although the WPS agenda has enabled many gains by women peacebuilders, this comment identifies important challenges from these two very different contexts. First, situating WPS policy areas within a broader feminist political economy analysis demonstrates how little influence the WPS agenda has across government. Second, the WPS agenda is being (...) used to promote heteronormative, patriarchal understanding of ‘gender’, stripped of any power dynamics and excluding any gender identities that do not conform. The result, then, is that WPS policies and practice are adrift in the patriarchal policy mainstream. (shrink)

Values and beliefs regarding communityfood security were investigated among participants in2–3 day participatory planning events related to thelocal food system in six rural counties from oneregion of upstate New York. The results of Qmethodology reveal three distinct viewpoints: a) theSocial Justice viewpoint, which is primarily concernedwith hunger and the potential harm caused by welfarereform; b) the Pragmatist viewpoint, which values thecontributions agriculture makes to local communitiesand is not concerned about environmental or socialexternalities of the dominant food system; and c) (...) theVisionary viewpoint, which also values agriculture inthe community but is very concerned aboutenvironmental and social externalities. After theplanning events, the Pragmatist viewpoint experiencedan 88% increase in members and the other twoviewpoints became less salient. Various categories ofprofessionals (e.g., nutrition, social welfare,agriculture, environmental) tend to express theviewpoints associated with their professions and/orthe client groups they serve. Despite thesedifferences among participants, the planning events inall six counties resulted in a wide range of goals andobjectives centered on a theme of re-localizing avariety of food system activities. These results arediscussed in relation to the desirability ofdeveloping an explicit philosophy of food andagriculture and the ideal processes required to doso. (shrink)

Volume 23, Issue 4, August 2024, Page 467-472.

Food security policy, programs, and infrastructure have been incorporated into Public Health and other areas of the Provincial Government in British Columbia, including the adoption of food security as a Public Health Core Program. A policy analysis of the integration into Public Health is completed by merging findings from 48 key informant interviews conducted with government, civil society, and food supply chain representatives involved in the initiatives along with relevant documents and participant/direct observations. The paper then examines the (...) results within the context of historic and international trends and theoretical models of food policy, community food security, and applied policy research. Public Health re-emerged as a driver of food security in BC—both as a key player and in positing the public’s health as a driver in food security and food systems. While Public Health’s lead role supported an increase in legitimacy for food security in BC, interviewees described a clash of cultures between Public Health and civil society. The clash of cultures occurred partly as a result of Public Health’s limited food security mandate and top down approach. Consequently civil society voice at the provincial level was marginalized. A social policy movement toward a new political paradigm—regulatory pluralism—calls for greater engagement of civil society, and for all sectors to work together toward common goals. A new, emerging policy map is proposed for analyzing the dynamics of food security and health promotion initiatives in BC. (shrink)

Seeking to explain the emergence of anti-trafficking initiatives, scholars have explored two sets of ideas—national security and gender equality—thought to shape policy. In this study, we examine whether such ideational influence accounts for Sweden's evolving anti-trafficking policy over the past decade. As powerful domestic ideas about gender inequality informed the adoption of an abolitionist prostitution policy in the 1990s, one would expect similar ideas to influence domestic responses to the related issue of cross-border trafficking.However, our case study shows that (...) the policy area of trafficking has largely followed a different ideational path. Gendered ideas, periodically nested in a human rights discourse, have been salient in the public debate on trafficking in human beings, especially during the campaign to boycott the 2006 FIFA World Cup. However, they have exerted substantially less influence on Swedish legislative initiatives to combat trafficking, with security concerns still holding sway. (shrink)

Over the past twenty years, Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) have become significant elements of national security arrangements, assuming many of the functions that have traditionally been undertaken by state armies. Given the centrality of control over the use of coercive force to the functioning and identity of the modern state, and to international order, these developments clearly are of great practical and conceptual interest. This edited volume provides an interdisciplinary overview of PMSCs: what they are, why (...) they have emerged in their current form, how they operate, their current and likely future military, political, social and economic impact, and the moral and legal constraints that do and should apply to their operation. The book focuses firstly upon normative issues raised by the development of PMSCs, and then upon state regulation and policy towards PMSCs, examining finally the impact of PMSCs on civil-military relations. It takes an innovative approach, bringing theory and empirical research into mutually illuminating contact. Includes contributions from experts in IR, political theory, international and corporate law, and economics, and also breaks important new ground by including philosophical discussions of PMSCs. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explicate the influence of US national security approach on the Thai Government's national security, the criticisms on the US and Thai intelligence communities and ethical debates on national databases, including the introduction of the concepts of “spiritual computing” and Buddhism to the ethical aspect of intelligence databases.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology of this paper is based on the interpretative approach which includes literature survey and interviews of the intelligence community in Thailand. The relevant literature (...) survey consists of the literature on US intelligence databases for Homeland Security, criticisms of the IC, the ethical debate on national databases in the USA, the Thai National Security Council, ethical debates on the Internal Security Act and Computer Crime Act, Buddhism and “spiritual computing.”FindingsThe findings reflect that the US model of national security has significant influence on the Thai intelligence approach and application of IT for national security while both intelligence communities have similar intelligence problems and have raised ethical debates on violations of human rights.Research limitations/implicationsThe research limitations include the nature of the topic which is a closed subject under legal restrictions in Thailand so that the sources of official information could not be disclosed nor elaborated in details; and literature on this topic has not been widely available except unclassified information which limits a more in‐depth investigation and analysis.Originality/valueThe value of this paper lies in being the first attempt to throw light on a “forbidden” subject in Thailand by discussing the US experiences against the Thai case study. The application of “spiritual computing” and Buddhist precepts to the context of national security and intelligence databases could be a starting point for developing a “happier” and “successful” IC and possibly open a new approach to national security. (shrink)

This book is of interest to critical realists because its writers show how the neoliberal reforms in the Balkans, related to the provision of social security, demonstrate a complex combination of d...

Guided by the theories of system theory, synergetic theory, and other disciplines and based on fuzzy data mining algorithm, this article constructs a three-tier social security fund cloud audit platform. Firstly, the article systematically expounds the current situation of social security fund and social security fund audit, such as the technical basis of cloud computing and data mining. Combined with the actual work, the necessity and feasibility of building a cloud audit platform for social (...) security funds are analyzed. This article focuses on the construction of the cloud audit platform for social security funds. The general idea of using fuzzy data mining algorithm to build the social security fund audit cloud platform is to compress the knowledge contained in a large number of data into the weights between nodes and optimize the weights through the learning of the neural network system. Through the optimization function, the information contained in the neural network is stored in a few weights as far as possible. The main information is further highlighted by network clipping and removing weights that have little impact on the output. (shrink)

In 2013, the first gun printed out of plastic by a 3D-printer was successfully fired in the US. This event caused a major media hype about the dangers of being able to print a gun. Law enforcement agencies worldwide were concerned about this development and the potentially huge security implications of these functional plastic guns. As a result, politicians called for a ban of these weapons and a control of 3D-printing technology. This paper reviews the security implications of (...) 3D-printing technology and 3D guns. It argues that current arms control and transfer policies are adequate to cover 3D-printed guns as well. However, while this analysis may hold up currently, progress in printing technology needs to be monitored to deal with future dangers pre-emptively. (shrink)

Many governmental policies are justified by the need to protect national security. But the concept of security is often underspecified in this context. If nothing else, security involves freedom from (significant) risks of harm. But should we expand our conception of security to include other elements? This paper argues that, in answering this question, we need to consider the role that security plays in politics. It defends a conception of security that locates its (...) value primarily in the protection of the autonomy of individuals. While this explains why various risks of harm should be viewed as set-backs to security, other sorts of threats will also be included. Finally, it considers the implications of this account for questions of security policy. It is claimed that international cooperation on security matters, far from the optional policies they are often viewed as, may in fact be necessary for states to be legitimate. (shrink)

This paper explores the dynamics of security sector reform (SSR), a term used to refer to efforts made to reform the security structures of states emerging from conflict or authoritarianism. While "local ownership" is increasingly viewed as a necessary element of any sustainable SSR strategy, there remains a significant gap between international policy and practice in this area. In practice, the SSR agenda continues to be driven largely by international actors, with minimal input, let alone ownership, on the (...) part of either governments or civil society within reforming states. Indeed, the notion of local ownership has come to serve as much as a disciplining mechanism as a tool to overcome exclusion in the making and execution of security policy, and the effectiveness and sustainability of SSR programming have suffered as a result. In light of this, the paper will explore both the potential for, and the limits of, rehabilitating the notion of local ownership to enable more participatory forms of SSR, and argues that any practical local ownership strategy requires a dual policy of negotiating with state actors and engaging with non-state actors. (shrink)

Current European innovation and security policies are increasingly channeled into efforts to address the assumed challenges that threaten European societies. A field in which this has become particularly salient is digitized EU border management. Here, the framework of responsible research and innovation (RRI) has recently been used to point to the alleged sensitivity of political actors towards the contingent dimensions of emerging security technologies. RRI, in general, is concerned with societal needs and the engagement and inclusion of (...) various stakeholder groups in the research and innovation processes, aiming to anticipate undesired consequences of and identifying socially acceptable alternatives for emerging technologies. However, RRI has also been criticized as an industry-driven attempt to gain societal legitimacy for new technologies. In this article, we argue that while RRI evokes a space where different actors enter co-creative dialogues, it lays bare the specific challenges of governing security innovation in socially responsible ways. Empirically, we draw on the case study of BODEGA, the first EU funded research project to apply the RRI framework to the field of border security. We show how stakeholders involved in the project represent their work in relation to RRI and the resulting benefits and challenges they face. The paper argues that applying the framework to the field of (border) security lays bare its limitations, namely that RRI itself embodies a political agenda, conceals alternative experiences by those on whom security is enacted upon and that its key propositions of openness and transparency are hardly met in practice due to confidentiality agreements. Our hope is to contribute to work on RRI and emerging debates about how the concept can (or cannot) be contextualized for the field of security—a field that might be more in need than any other to consider the ethical dimension of its activities. (shrink)

This article pulls together the disjointed complexification of security studies. Such analytical overview suggests that the perspective of “timescapes” allows for exploring the complexity that shapes meanings and practices of security and its governance. In this respect, it is the imperative to change that suggests the significance of complexity thinking to security studies—that is, it is alone in taking the discontinuities of global life seriously. Security, in this regard, is not merely about the clockwork of survival, (...) but is redefined through the cloudlike adaptive contingency of “security as resilience.” In this setting, the security governance of complexity is identified through its dancing to the timescaped rhythms of uncertainty, cognitive challenges, complex risks, and exaptation prompted by the heterogeneity of global life. (shrink)

On September 4, 2001, press reports indicated that the Defense Intelligence Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense planned to reproduce a strain of anthrax virus suspected of being held in Russian laboratories. According to the same reports, the Central Intelligence Agency, under the auspices of Project Clear Vision, is engaged in building replicas of bomblets believed to have been developed by the former Soviet Union. These small bombs were designed to disperse biological agents, including anthrax. Government attorneys were said (...) to be confident that, because these projects were designed to develop defensive measures, they were not in violation of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. (shrink)