人权保护视野下的证人隐名制度

在刑事诉讼程序中授予某些证人隐名,是国际法庭和西方国家普遍的做法。证人隐名是投入资源最少,往往也是最为有效的保护证人安全与隐私利益的举措,是建立证人出庭制度的重要一环。允许证人在作证时不披露身份,可能会影响被追诉人质证权的行使,损害被追诉人接受公正审判的权利。为此,国际社会与各国设立的证人隐名制度,通常都设计了较为详细的证据规则与程序保障机制,以实现被追诉人与证人之间的利益平衡。了解证人隐名制度的运行状况与其中蕴含的价值选择,有助于我国证人出庭制度乃至庭审制度的借鉴与改革。     

Privacy,anonymity and liability: Will anonymous communicators have the last laugh?

In this paper, the author sets out the way in which the UK approach to privacy protection is able to extend its reach to anonymous postings. Whilst anonymity might sometimes be seen as one of the essential characteristics of communicating on-line, it does not provide an impenetrable veil of protection in respect of a privacy violation claim. Instead, there are avenues available to identify anonymous communicators, which have implications both for internet freedom and jurisdiction in cyberspace. In the UK, our common law has not denied bloggers, or other on-line contributors, anonymity per se. However, it will be argued that recent UK judgments represent a warning to anonymous communicators that they can be held liable for what they post on-line and that naivety is no defence at law. Whilst on-line platforms allow people to effectively become journalists; to become publishers, as familiar users, they should become more aware of the consequences of their on-line postings and appreciate that they will not be able to escape from the application of third party disclosure orders. However, as these are not without their problems, it is possible that anonymous communicators may have the last laugh.     

Church Theft,Insecurity, and Community Justice: The Reality of Source-End Regulation of the Market for Illicit Bolivian Cultural Objects

In 2012 two men were lynched in Bolivia, first because there is an illicit market for Bolivian cultural objects, and second because a small, poor community turned to desperate measures to protect themselves from that illicit market due to the failings of national and international regulation. This paper is a case study of the reality of source-end regulation of an international criminal market in a developing country. I will discuss what is known about thefts from Bolivian churches, the international market for items stolen from these churches, and how such thefts are meant to be prevented on-the ground. Following this, I will present lynching in Bolivia as the most severe community response to the issues created by local politics, ineffectual policing, unenforceable laws, and a history of oppressive racism. I will conclude with a discussion of what we can reasonably hope to accomplish with source-end regulation.     

A novel approach of mining write-prints for authorship attribution in e-mail forensics

There is an alarming increase in the number of cybercrime incidents through anonymous e-mails. The problem of e-mail authorship attribution is to identify the most plausible author of an anonymous e-mail from a group of potential suspects. Most previous contributions employed a traditional classification approach, such as decision tree and Support Vector Machine (SVM), to identify the author and studied the effects of different writing style features on the classification accuracy. However, little attention has been given on ensuring the quality of the evidence. In this paper, we introduce an innovative data mining method to capture the write-print of every suspect and model it as combinations of features that occurred frequently in the suspect's e-mails. This notion is called frequent pattern, which has proven to be effective in many data mining applications, but it is the first time to be applied to the problem of authorship attribution. Unlike the traditional approach, the extracted write-print by our method is unique among the suspects and, therefore, provides convincing and credible evidence for presenting it in a court of law. Experiments on real-life e-mails suggest that the proposed method can effectively identify the author and the results are supported by a strong evidence.     

A novel approach of mining write-prints for authorship attribution in e-mail forensics

There is an alarming increase in the number of cybercrime incidents through anonymous e-mails. The problem of e-mail authorship attribution is to identify the most plausible author of an anonymous e-mail from a group of potential suspects. Most previous contributions employed a traditional classification approach, such as decision tree and Support Vector Machine (SVM), to identify the author and studied the effects of different writing style features on the classification accuracy. However, little attention has been given on ensuring the quality of the evidence. In this paper, we introduce an innovative data mining method to capture the write-print of every suspect and model it as combinations of features that occurred frequently in the suspect's e-mails. This notion is called frequent pattern, which has proven to be effective in many data mining applications, but it is the first time to be applied to the problem of authorship attribution. Unlike the traditional approach, the extracted write-print by our method is unique among the suspects and, therefore, provides convincing and credible evidence for presenting it in a court of law. Experiments on real-life e-mails suggest that the proposed method can effectively identify the author and the results are supported by a strong evidence.     

我国个人信息匿名化的法律标准与规则重塑

大数据时代,匿名化规范既是个人信息保护中风险预防的手段,也是我国数据经济发展中数字流通的法律基础,但匿名化的法律标准在我国法律中还有待明确。欧盟已通过《一般数据保护条例》提出明确的匿名化标准,但该条例基于流程设置的标准适用于欧盟境内尚可,适用于我国或显得过于严苛,有碍数字经济的发展。我国个人信息匿名化法律标准与规则的重塑应当考虑环境、再识别风险,建议进行功能性匿名化。将比例原则应用到我国匿名化法律标准和规则的重塑之中,并将其引入到评估匿名信息接收者的风险等级,有助于降低个人信息被再识别的风险亦有利于匿名化的法律标准制定和规则构建。     

Adjunctive use of scanning electron microscopy in bite mark analysis: a three-dimensional study

An examination of a case in which adjunctive use of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) demonstrated the presence of unusual three-dimensional characteristics in a bite mark. Despite the fact that many bite marks do not show "depth," demonstration of the presence of this third dimension can produce significant data for evidentiary purposes. In some instances, these data may transform what seem to be class characteristics of a bite mark into individual characteristics and thus impart much more uniqueness to the evidence. Because of the high level of resolution and magnification of SEM, some three-dimensional characteristics not visible to the eye can be shown quite clearly by its use. Emphasis will be given to the value of SEM as a tool of the forensic odontologist in bite mark analysis.     

Heroin impurity profiling: trends throughout a decade of experimenting.

Heroin is still one of the most frequently abused drugs of today. All over the world, law enforcement agencies try to eradicate the illicit production and trafficking of this potent and highly addictive narcotic. To this aim, important information is provided by physical and chemical toxicological analysis of confiscated samples, with special attention for the identification and the quantification of minor components, such as the impurities related to the origin and manufacturing. By combining these data complex characterisations, i.e. impurity profiles, chemical signatures or fingerprints, can be obtained and used for comparative analysis. This review focuses on heroin impurity profiling during the 1990s, proclaimed by the United Nations as the 'Decade for Eradicating Drug Abuse'. Special attention will be given to the new trends in analytical techniques as well as in data handling strategies, so called chemometrics, to produce these profiles. The latter can be used in comparative analysis of seized heroin samples for tactical (batch-to-batch comparison) and strategic (origin determination) intelligence purposes.     

Anonymous Speakers and Confidential Sources: Using Shield Laws When They Overlap Online

The development of the Internet as a mass medium has created new tensions between the rights to speak anonymously and to be protected against defamation. Some courts have developed balancing tests to determine when anonymous speakers should be unmasked, the most popular of which generally require some initial showing of prima facie evidence. Other times, shield laws have been used to protect the anonymous when comments have been posted on news organization Web sites. However, news organizations should be cautious when using shield laws to protect anonymity, and judges should evaluate privilege claims as they always have. In other instances, anonymity appears to be adequately protected by summary judgment balancing tests. An approach in which news organizations focus on the type of comment and its potential journalistic contribution in deciding how to protect commenters’ identities could help ensure that anonymous speech is properly protected without harming shield laws.     

Case commentary: anonymisation is not exoneration

This case commentary analyses a ruling that any use of information given in confidence for unconsented purposes is a breach of confidence capable of supporting a legal action (even if the information has previously been anonymised and aggregated). The ruling is being appealed. It is argued that, while it is reasonable to delineate a narrower duty of confidentiality (not to disclose personal information, against breach of which anonymisation protects), this must be within a broad duty of confidence (not to use private information, which using anonymous information can still breach). Thus, the ruling is fundamentally correct in holding that anonymisation does not permit information obtained in confidence to be used for unconsented purposes. This, however, implies that information obtained for a patient's treatment may not be used lawfully for medical research or NHS management purposes without consent, even if it is anonymised. Such a consequence is unacceptable as a matter of public policy. However, it is equally unacceptable to seek an exemption through the idea that patients give "implied consent" for medical research and NHS management purposes. It is also unacceptable to maintain that the public interest in medical research (regardless of its aims) justifies unconsented use of information obtained in confidence, even if the information is anonymised. The way in which Section 33 of the Data Protection Act 1998 creates an exemption to its Second Data Protection Principle provides a ready-made model for a public interest based exemption for medical research and statistical NHS purposes.     

Evaluation of the Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987: Impact and Challenges for Preserving Underwater Cultural Heritage

In the demand of regulatory policy to control salvage of shipwrecks and protect the nation's underwater cultural heritage, the Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987 allowed the exception of the admiralty law to give states authority and management of abandoned shipwrecks for the purposes of preservation and recreation. Due to the lack of its regulatory power and vague standards, the Act has been harshly criticized for being ineffectual in resolving conflicts between commercial salvors, and states or protecting illicit salvage. This research will examine the purpose and impact of the policy under the framework of the National Historic Preservation Act, which restrained options in the policymaking. While acknowledging its limitations, this research finds that the Act enabled the inclusion of historic shipwrecks in the nation's preservation system, allowed funding, and promoted its use for public benefits. Studying the Act in the policy context of the U.S. historic preservation can promote the rightful understanding of its policy limitations as well as impact, and support feasible policy improvement.     

从欧盟经验看地理标志与商标的冲突及解决

尽管地理标志与商标均是在市场中使用的商业标识,但是地理标志强调产品特征与其来源地在自然、人文因素或声誉上的联系,而商标法对此不予以保护。欧盟以专门立法模式强化地理标志的保护,从制止不正当竞争及避免误导消费者的双重视角处理在先地理标志与商标之间的关系。当地理标志与在先商标存在冲突时,欧盟除了遵循“时间在先,权利在先”基本原则外,综合考虑在先商标的声誉和知名度,以及已经使用的时间等因素,以不使消费者混淆为前提,允许地理标志与合法有效的在先商标有限共存,TRIPS协议规定的商标权例外之描述性合理使用为共存方案提供了正当性基础。欧盟正在通过签订双边贸易协定的策略将其内部地理标志与商标冲突处理规范融入国际贸易法领域。欧盟相关经验为我国解决地理标志与商标冲突关系在立法模式的选择、具体规则的细化和符合国际贸易协定要求方面有一定的借鉴意义。     

The Effects of Juror Anonymity on Jury Verdicts

This study examined the effects of anonymity on jurors' verdicts and on jurors' feelings of accountability for their jury's verdicts. Twenty four-person anonymous juries and 20 four-person nonanonymous juries rendered individual and group verdicts for three student defendants charged with selling drugs on a school campus. When unanimous guilty verdicts were reached, juries imposed one of five punishments. Finally, jurors completed postdeliberation opinion and accountability questionnaires. As predicted, anonymous juries showed a higher rate of conviction (70%) than did nonanonymous juries (40%) when the evidence against the defendant was strong, supporting the hypothesis that anonymity would have a greater effect for situations in which there was relatively strong evidence of the defendant's guilt. Anonymous juries imposed the harshest punishment (expulsion) significantly more often than did nonanonymous juries. Contrary to predictions from differential self-awareness theory, anonymous juries did not report feeling less accountable than did nonanonymous juries. However, anonymous juries did see the process as significantly more fair than did identifiable juries.     

I shop online – recreationally! Internet anonymity and Silk Road enabling drug use in Australia

Internet technologies are beginning to influence the sale and supply of illicit drugs in Australia. One such technology, an online marketplace known as Silk Road, had dramatically increased in popularity since its worldwide launch in February 2011. This research and paper were completed prior to the Silk Road's founder, Ross Ulbricht being arrested on 2 October 2013 and Silk Road being taken off line. This research paper will consider such factors; as the increasing use of internet by Australians, the popularity of shopping online and the variance in the quality and price of products available on Silk Road to those available in other drug markets. The case study will provide an in-depth look at Silk Road from an Australian perspective and in light of the continuing popularity of illicit drug use in Australia. Though Silk Road is currently off line, ‘Bitcoin’ has survived and it will only be a matter of time before a substitute for Silk Road emerges.     

Forensic drug intelligence: an important tool in law enforcement

Organised criminality is a great concern for national/international security. The demonstration of complex crimes is increasingly dependant on knowledge distributed within law-enforcement agencies and scientific disciplines. This separation of knowledge creates difficulties in reconstructing and prosecuting such crimes. Basic interdisciplinary research in drug intelligence combined with crime analysis, forensic intelligence, and traditional law enforcement investigation is leading to important advances in crime investigation support. Laboratory results constitute one highly dependable source of information that is both reliable and testable. Their operational use can support investigation and even provide undetected connections or organisation of structure. The foremost difficulties encountered by drug analysts are not principally of a chemical or analytical nature, but methodologies to extract parameters or features that are deemed to be crucial for handling and contextualising drug profiling data. An organised memory has been developed in order to provide accurate, timely, useful and meaningful information for linking spatially and temporally distinct events on a national and international level (including cross-border phenomena). Literature has already pointed out that forensic case data are amenable for use in an intelligence perspective if data and knowledge of specialised actors are appropriately organised, shared and processed. As a particular form of forensic case data, the authors' research focuses on parameters obtained through the systematic physical and chemical profiling of samples of illicit drugs. The procedure is used to infer and characterise links between samples that originate from the same and different seizures. The discussion will not, however, focus on how samples are actually analysed and compared as substantial literature on this topic already exists. Rather, attention is primarily drawn to an active and close collaboration between magistrates, forensic scientists, law enforcement investigators and crime analysts from different institutions with the aim of generating, using and validating relevant profiling case data as integral part of investigative and crime analysis processes. Original advances are highlighted through experiences from criminal investigations of offences related to the unlawful importation, exportation, supply and possession of illicit drugs.     

The use of a quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) model to predict GABA-A receptor binding of newly emerging benzodiazepines

The illicit market for new psychoactive substances is forever expanding. Benzodiazepines and their derivatives are one of a number of groups of these substances and thus far their number has grown year upon year. For both forensic and clinical purposes it is important to be able to rapidly understand these emerging substances. However as a consequence of the illicit nature of these compounds, there is a deficiency in the pharmacological data available for these ‘new’ benzodiazepines. In order to further understand the pharmacology of ‘new’ benzodiazepines we utilised a quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) approach. A set of 69 benzodiazepine-based compounds was analysed to develop a QSAR training set with respect to published binding values to GABA_A receptors. The QSAR model returned an R² value of 0.90. The most influential factors were found to be the positioning of two H-bond acceptors, two aromatic rings and a hydrophobic group. A test set of nine random compounds was then selected for internal validation to determine the predictive ability of the model and gave an R² value of 0.86 when comparing the binding values with their experimental data. The QSAR model was then used to predict the binding for 22 benzodiazepines that are classed as new psychoactive substances. This model will allow rapid prediction of the binding activity of emerging benzodiazepines in a rapid and economic way, compared with lengthy and expensive in vitro/in vivo analysis. This will enable forensic chemists and toxicologists to better understand both recently developed compounds and prediction of substances likely to emerge in the future.     

A methodology for finger mark research

Currently there is no standard way of carrying out research into finger mark enhancement techniques. Individuals, groups or establishments tend to use different methodologies depending on a number of factors, especially finance and time. However, data published in the literature can be misleading to the forensic community if the data generated reflects research involving very few finger marks or if those finger marks have been deliberately doped with an unnatural balance of sweat or an unusual contaminant. This paper presents an experimental methodology which is intended to establish minimum standards for those carrying out finger mark enhancement research (at least within the United Kingdom) and bring some consistency to the process. It will aim to identify the many variables encountered when dealing with finger marks and suggest experimental methods to take these into account. It will also present the key stages of the progression of a process from a laboratory concept to a tool used on operational work.