Profiling the mobile customer – Privacy concerns when behavioural advertisers target mobile phones – Part I

Mobile customers are being tracked and profiled by behavioural advertisers to be able to send them personalized advertising. This process involves data mining consumer databases containing personally-identifying or anonymous data and it raises a host of important privacy concerns. This article, the first in a two part series on consumer information privacy issues on Profiling the Mobile Customer, addresses the questions: “What is profiling in the context of behavioural advertising?” and “How will consumer profiling impact the privacy of mobile customers?” The article examines the EU and U.S. regulatory frameworks for protecting privacy and personal data in regards to profiling by behavioural advertisers that targets mobile customers. It identifies potential harms to privacy and personal data related to profiling for behavioural advertising. It evaluates the extent to which the existing regulatory frameworks in the EU and the U.S. provide an adequate level of privacy protection and identifies key privacy gaps that the behavioural advertising industry and regulators will need to address to adequately protect mobile consumers from profiling by marketers. The upcoming second article in this series will discuss whether industry self-regulation or privacy-enhancing technologies will be adequate to address these privacy gaps and makes suggestions for principles to guide this process.¹     

Once a Criminal, Always a Criminal?: ‘Redeemability’ and the Psychology of Punitive Public Attitudes

Several studies have sought to link punitive public attitudes to attribution style and/or lay theories of crime. This research finds that those who believe criminal acts are the result of freely chosen and willful behavior are more likely to be punitive than those who feel crime is the result of external circumstances and constraints. These analyses focus on only one dimension of attributions: locus of control (internal/external). In this analysis, we include a second dimension, thought to be a better predictor of attitudes in social psychological research: stability/instability. In addition to measuring lay theories of crime causation, we also test for “belief in redeemability” (or beliefs about the ability of deviants to change their ways). Our hypothesis is that this other dimension of personal attributions (stability/instability) may be as critical in explaining support for highly punitive criminal justice policies as beliefs about criminal responsibility. We find evidence supportive of this model in an analysis of data from postal survey of residents of six areas in England.     

The evaluation of an ELISA for semen-specific 19-OH prostaglandin F1 alpha/F2 alpha using ex-casework swabs and stains

The application of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for 19-OH Prostaglandin F1 alpha/F2 alpha (19-OH PG F) to casework analysis of seminal contamination of swabs and stains is reported. The results are compared to those where the identification of semen was based on the presence of acid phosphatase and spermatozoa. Five hundred and one samples were analysed and there was good agreement between the results of ELISA and conventional methods. The determination of 19-OH PG F confirmed both the presence of semen where spermatozoa were absent and indicated semen was present when acid phosphatase and spermatozoa were both absent. The results indicate that 19-OH PG F represents a useful marker for the casework identification of semen and is particularly valuable where spermatozoa are absent.     

Historical Contextualism Revisited

To deal with the methodological problems of historical contextualism, it is useful to distinguish between (1) Text, (2) Context, (3) History, (4) Contextualism and (5) Historicism.¹A text is by turn the outcome, and object, of all writing or research. A context is any perspective on a text, including the background data that one may append to it. History is a narrative, a story, which is focused upon a text or context - in as far as the two are the same, viewed as propositions 'Contextualism' is a methodological claim that valid history is only secured or demonstrated via the reconstruction of 'the context' - especially where the latter is to do with a perspective on the background to a text. Historicism is disinclined either to extract present moral judgements from, or apply them to, the past; it resists more broadly any form of social generalisation over extended units of chronological time²; it thereby displays a liability to overrate the importance of the sometimes 'spectacular differences' (Popper 1960: p.101) between various historical periods. Historical contextualism may be construed as a new variety of historicism. The emphasis of the present account is more broadly upon the logical futility of historical contextualism in general, and less upon its specifically historicist character.     

The juridical status of the fetus: a proposal for legal protection of the unborn

This article investigates the juridical status of the fetus. It assesses what this status should be in the light of recent developments in case law, legislation, medicine, and technology (particularly in vitro fertilization). The article is presented in 5 sections: Section 1 deals with the supreme court's landmark decision in Roe vs. Wade, which relied on biological stages of fetal development rather than philosophical determination of when life begins. Section 2 examines the historical reliance on birth as the point at which legal protection vests in the developing human. Section 3 compares fetuses with newborn children, identifying relevant similarities and differences. Section 4 studies whether the fetus at all stages of development should have the same protection (the author concludes they should not). Section 5 examines the practical implications of choosing viability as a developmental stage of special significance for legal protection.