电子数据司法鉴定工具可靠性评估研究

探讨建立对电子数据司法鉴定工具进行科学性及可靠性的评估方法。在已有的国内外取证工具评测方法的基础上,借鉴国家强制认证认可和可靠性工程等因素,对电子数据司法鉴定工具可靠性评估体系中的工具基本认可和定性评估二阶段进行详细分析,为保证司法鉴定实践的科学性和准确性提供理论依据。     

《复印报刊资料·社会工作》创刊周年述评

本文依据内容分析法,对2009年创刊的《复印报刊资料•社会工作》收录论文数据进行了统计分析和评述,肯定了它的办刊宗旨和学术影响力,及其在社会工作理论和实务研究领域所发挥的重要作用,并就刊物的进一步提升提出了若干建议。     

Multiple Imputation of the Supplementary Homicide Reports, 1976–2005

The Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), assembled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), have for many years represented the most valuable source of information on the patterns and trends in murder and non-negligent manslaughter. Despite their widespread use by researchers and policy makers alike, these data are not completely without their limitations, the most important of which involves missing or incomplete incident reports. In this analysis, we develop methods for addressing missing data in the 1976–2005 SHR cumulative file, related to both non-reports (unit missingness) and incomplete reports (item missingness). For incomplete case data (that is, missing characteristics on victims, offenders or incidents), we implement a multiple imputation (MI) approach based on a log-linear model for incomplete multivariate categorical data. Then, to adjust for unit missingness, we adopt a weighting scheme linked to FBI annual estimates of homicide counts by state and National Center for Health Statistics mortality data on decedent characteristics in coroners’ reports for deaths classified as homicide. The result is a fully-imputed SHR database for 1976–2005. This paper examines the effects of MI and case weighting on victim/offender/incident characteristics, including standard errors of parameter estimates resulting from imputation uncertainty.

Property rights in personal data: Learning from the American discourse

This contribution is an attempt to facilitate a meaningful European discussion on propertization of personal data by explaining the idea as it emerged in its ‘mother-jurisdiction’, the United States. The piece starts with an overview of how the current US legal system addresses the data protection problem and whether, according to the US commentators, the law does it effectively. Furthermore, the contribution presents propertization of personal information as an alternative to the existing data protection regime and one of the ways to fill in the alleged gaps in the US data protection system. The article maps the US propertization debate. Pro-propertization arguments are considered from economic perspective as well as from the perspective of the limitations of the US legal and political system. In continuation it analyses proposals on how property rights in personal data would have to be regulated, if at all, in case the idea of propertization is accepted. The main points of criticism of propertization are also sketched. The article concludes with a brief summary of the US propertization discourse and, most importantly, with a list of the lessons Europeans can learn from their American counterparts engaging in the debate in the home jurisdiction. Among the main messages is that the outcome of the debate depends on the definition of the problem propertization is called on to tackle, and that it is the substance of the actual rights with regard to personal data that matters, and not whether we label them as property rights or not.     

Data retention in the UK: Pragmatic and proportionate,or a step too far?

On 6 April 2009 new legislation came into force, for the first time putting Internet service providers' duty to retain significant amounts of data (relating to customers' email and Internet usage) on a compulsory, as opposed to a voluntary footing. It is a topic which has provoked intense protest from the privacy lobby and fuelled months of “Big Brother” headlines in the press. For the industry it raises operational challenges – how to facilitate storage and retrieval of colossal amounts of data. In this article we consider the policy background to the regime, the detail of the UK implementation and the practical implications for communications service providers. We weigh up the privacy and human rights concerns against the business case put forward by the Government. We also examine the Government's proposals – announced at the end of April – to significantly extend and “future proof” this regime in the form of its Intercept Modernisation Programme.     

TRENDS IN THE GENDER GAP IN VIOLENT OFFENDING: NEW EVIDENCE FROM THE NATIONAL CRIME VICTIMIZATION SURVEY*

Recent research has compared male and female trends in violent offending in Uniform Crime Report (UCR) arrest data with similar trends derived from victims' reports in the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and has concluded that the two data sources produce contrary findings. In this article, we reassess this issue and draw different conclusions. Using pooled National Crime Survey (NCS) and NCVS data for 1973 to 2005, we find that the female‐to‐male offending rate ratios for aggravated assault, robbery, and simple assault have increased over time and that the narrowing of the gender gaps is very similar to patterns in UCR arrest data. In addition, we find that these patterns are in part caused by larger decreases in male than female offending after the mid‐1990s and not by recent increases in violent offending rates among females. We conclude that changes in the gender gaps in aggravated assault, robbery, and simple assault are real and not artifacts; therefore, these changes deserve serious attention in future research. We conclude with a discussion of several hypotheses that might account for a narrowing of the gender gap in nonlethal violent offending over time.     

Investigating the legal protection of data,information and knowledge under the EU data protection regime

Information science distinguishes between the semantic forms/intangibles of data, information and knowledge. Data (e.g. an attribute of a data record in a relational database) does not have any meaning by itself. Information is data brought into context (e.g. data related to its primary key), and knowledge is the collection of information for useful intent (e.g. a database). This paper investigates the mapping of semantic forms in information science (i.e. data, information, knowledge) to correlative concepts in information law (primarily data protection legislation) with a view to investigating how such semantic forms are legally protected. The paper first proposes a data, information, knowledge, rules (DIKR) hierarchy in the context of relational database theory, and interprets this hierarchy with respect to data protection concepts. The paper then gives an in-depth discussion of the elements of the DIKR hierarchy (data, information, knowledge, deduced knowledge, induced knowledge) and how they relate to the EU Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC. These relationships are summarized in the form of a two dimensional correlation matrix. Finally the paper discusses how the semantic forms identified are protected under the EU Data Protection Directive, and gives insightful observations about the connection between information law and information science.     

Quantitative Statistics and Identification of Tool‐Marks

This study was designed to establish a feature identification method of tool‐mark 2D data. A uniform local binary pattern histogram operator was developed to extract the tool‐mark features, and the random forest algorithm was adopted to identify these. The presented method was used to conduct five groups of experiments with a 2D dataset of known matched and nonmatched tool‐marks made by bolt clippers, cutting pliers, and screwdrivers. The experimental results show that the proposed method achieved a high rate of identification of the tool‐mark samples generated under identical conditions. The proposed method effectively overcomes the disadvantage of unstable illumination of 2D tool‐mark image data and avoids the difficulty in mark inspection caused by manually preset parameters in the existing methods, thus reducing the uncertainty of inspected results.     

Differential Identification of Three Young Housefire Victims: Methods when Age Assessment Fails

Multiple fatality incidents involving more than one child of statistically same age (including twins) can be challenging from an identification standpoint. This case details an urban fire, in which four children perished. Age assessment on three of the victims utilizing maturity staging described by Moorrees, Fanning, and Hunt yielded insignificant results. However, a plot of the MFH data shows the difference between two identical twins and a third child. The twins share a similar growth pattern, whereas the other was different. Based on this graphical interpretation, the nontwin victim was positively identified through exclusion. These results were verified through statistical testing. This case demonstrates a method to repurpose age assessment data to graphically distinguish between child victims. Further, it is shown that radiographic and clinical presentation in childhood identical twins can elicit genetic versus acquired similarities and differences, which can be used for identification of individuals and exclusion of others.