The Impact of EU Privacy Legislation on Biometric System Deployment: Protecting citizens but constraining applications

Biometric systems provide a valuable service in helping to identify individuals from their stored personal details. Unfortunately, with the rapidly increasing use of such systems, there is a growing concern about the possible misuse of that information. To counteract the threat, the European Union (EU) has introduced comprehensive legislation that seeks to regulate data collection and help strengthen an individual’s right to privacy. This article looks at the implications of the legislation for biometric system deployment. After an initial consideration of current privacy concerns, it examines what is meant by ‘personal data’ and its protection, in legislation terms. Also covered are issues around the storage of biometric data, including its accuracy, its security, and justification for what is collected. Finally, the privacy issues are illustrated through three biometric use cases: border security, online bank access control and customer profiling in stores.

High Strength Thermoplastic Bonding for Multi-channel, Multi-layer Lab-on-Chip Devices for Ocean and Environmental applications

A solvent-vapour thermoplastic bonding process is reported which provides high strength bonding of PMMA over a large area for multi-channel and multi-layer microfluidic devices with shallow high resolution channel features. The bond process utilises a low temperature vacuum thermal fusion step with prior exposure of the substrate to chloroform (CHCl3) vapour to reduce bond temperature to below the PMMA glass transition temperature. Peak tensile and shear bond strengths greater than 3 MPa were achieved for a typical channel depth reduction of 25 µm. The device-equivalent bond performance was evaluated for multiple layers and high resolution channel features using double-side and single-side exposure of the bonding pieces. A single-sided exposure process was achieved which is suited to multi-layer bonding with channel alignment at the expense of greater depth loss and a reduction in peak bond strength. However, leak and burst tests demonstrate bond integrity up to at least 10 bar channel pressure over the full substrate area of 100 mm x 100 mm. The inclusion of metal tracks within the bond resulted in no loss of performance. The vertical wall integrity between channels was found to be compromised by solvent permeation for wall thicknesses of 100 µm which has implications for high resolution serpentine structures. Bond strength is reduced considerably for multi-layer patterned substrates where features on each layer are not aligned, despite the presence of an intermediate blank substrate. Overall a high performance bond process has been developed that has the potential to meet the stringent specifications for lab-on-chip deployment in harsh environmental conditions for applications such as deep ocean profiling.

The European Commission’s public consultation on the review of EU copyright rules: a response by the CREATe centre

This article presents the response of the Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy (CREATe) to the consultation on reform of the EU copyright regime. Reviews the format of the consultation, notes the common problems in reporting data in such a format, and reproduces the consultation questions to which CREATe responded, together with a summary of its conclusions on topics including: (1) terms of copyright protection; (2) libraries and archives; (3) persons with disabilities; (4) remuneration of authors; (5) user-generated content; (6) respect for rights; and (7) data mining.

Building public policy on shifting sands: the case of the National Asset Management Agency

Over the last thirty years, there has been an increased demand for better management of public sector organisations (PSOs). This requires that they are answerable for the inputs that they are given but also for what they achieve with these inputs (Hood 1991; Hood 1995). It is suggested that this will improve the management of the organisation through better planning and control, and the achievement of greater accountability (Smith 1995). However, such a rational approach with clear goals and the means to measure achievement can cause difficulties for many PSOs. These difficulties include the distinctive nature of the public sector due to the political environment within which the public sector manager operates (Stewart and Walsh 1992) and the fact that PSOs will have many stakeholders, each of whom will have their own specific objectives based on their own perspective (Boyle 1995). This can
result in goal ambiguity which means that there is leeway in interpreting the results of the PSO. The National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) was set up to bring stability to the financial system by buying loans from the banks (which were in most cases, non-performing loans). The intention was to cleanse the banks of these loans so that they could return to their normal business of taking deposits and making loans. However, the legislation, also gave NAMA a wide range of other responsibilities including responsibility for facilitating credit in the economy and protecting the interests of taxpayers. In more recent times, NAMA has been given responsibility for building social housing. This wide-range of activities is a clear example of a PSO being given multiple goals which may conflict and is therefore likely to lead to goal ambiguity. This makes it very difficult to evaluate NAMA’s performance as they are attempting to meet numerous goals at the same time and also highlights the complexity of policy making in the public sector. The purpose of this paper is to examine how NAMA dealt with goal ambiguity. This will be done through a thematic analysis of its annual reports over the last five years. The paper’s will contribute to the ongoing debate about the evaluation of PSOs and the complex environment within which they operate which makes evaluation difficult as they are
answerable to multiple stakeholders who have different objectives and different criteria for measuring success.

Hydrodynamics of domain walls in ferroelectrics and multiferroics: Impact on memory devices

The standard “Kittel Law” for the thickness and shape of ferroelectric, ferroelastic, or ferromagnet domains assumes mechanical equilibrium. The present paper shows that such domains may be highly nonequilibrium, with unusual thicknesses and shapes. In lead germanate and multiferroic lead zirconate titanate iron tantalate domain wall instabilities resemble hydrodynamics (Richtmyer–Meshkov and Helfrich–Hurault, respectively).

Holding the Door Half (?) Open: the EU and Turkey 10 years on

A decade of accession negotiations with the EU has not brought Turkey significantly closer to EU membership. In part the reasons lie with Turkey. This article, however, explores the position of the EU and the ‘supply-side’ of enlargement. It reflects on developments in how the EU has engaged with Turkey on the question of membership, situating Turkey’s candidacy and the EU’s position within the broader comparative context of how the process and politics of EU enlargement have evolved over the last ten years. It focuses on a set of supply-side variables that are key to determining the progress that applicants can make towards membership: member state preferences, the activism of supranational institutional actors, the EU’s integration capacity, public opinion in the EU towards enlargement, and the narratives deployed in justification of enlargement. The article also considers the state of Turkey’s accession negotiations and how they have been and potentially will be affected, assuming they are meaningfully revived, by the evolving nature and substance of EU accession negotiations more generally and EU’s approach to conditionality.

SiGe HBTs on Bonded SOI Incorporating Buried Silicide Layers

The performance of silicon bipolar transistors has been significantly improved by the use of ultra narrow base layers of SiGe. To further improve device performance by minimising parasitic resistance and capacitance the authors produced an unique silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate incorporating a buried tungsten disilicide layer. This structure forms the basis of a recent submission by Zarlink Semiconductors ( Silvaco, DeMontfort & Queen�s) to DTI for high voltage devices for automotive applications. The Queen�s part of the original EPSRC project was rated as tending to outstanding.

Robust Speaker Recognition in Noisy Conditions

This paper investigates the problem of speaker identi-fication and verification in noisy conditions, assuming that speechsignals are corrupted by environmental noise, but knowledgeabout the noise characteristics is not available. This research ismotivated in part by the potential application of speaker recog-nition technologies on handheld devices or the Internet. Whilethe technologies promise an additional biometric layer of securityto protect the user, the practical implementation of such systemsfaces many challenges. One of these is environmental noise. Due tothe mobile nature of such systems, the noise sources can be highlytime-varying and potentially unknown. This raises the require-ment for noise robustness in the absence of information about thenoise. This paper describes a method that combines multicondi-tion model training and missing-feature theory to model noisewith unknown temporal-spectral characteristics. Multiconditiontraining is conducted using simulated noisy data with limitednoise variation, providing a “coarse” compensation for the noise,and missing-feature theory is applied to refine the compensationby ignoring noise variation outside the given training conditions,thereby reducing the training and testing mismatch. This paperis focused on several issues relating to the implementation of thenew model for real-world applications. These include the gener-ation of multicondition training data to model noisy speech, thecombination of different training data to optimize the recognitionperformance, and the reduction of the model’s complexity. Thenew algorithm was tested using two databases with simulated andrealistic noisy speech data. The first database is a redevelopmentof the TIMIT database by rerecording the data in the presence ofvarious noise types, used to test the model for speaker identifica-tion with a focus on the varieties of noise. The second database isa handheld-device database collected in realistic noisy conditions,used to further validate the model for real-world speaker verifica-tion. The new model is compared to baseline systems and is foundto achieve lower error rates.

Reflecting the Public Value of Sport: A game of two halves

This article draws on qualitative research that explores the concept of public value in the delivery of sport services by the organization Sport England. The research took place against a backdrop of shifting priorities following the award of the 2012 Olympic Games to London. It highlights the difficulties that exist in measuring the qualitative nature of the public value of sport and suggests there is a need to understand better the idea. Research with organizations involved alongside Sport England in the delivery of sport is described. This explores the potential to create a public value vision, how to measure it and how to focus public value on delivery beyond the aim of ‘sport for sports sake’ and more towards ‘sport for the greater good’. The article argues that this represents a game of ‘two halves’ in which the first half focuses on 2012 with the second half concerned with its legacy.

From Negotiations to Accession: Lessons from the 2007 Enlargement

Although overshadowed by the ‘big bang’ enlargement of 2004, the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the EU in 2007 was more than simply a ‘coda’ enlargement. It had its own distinctive features and provides important insights into how the EU’s handling of enlargement is evolving. It established a number of interesting and potentially significant precedents and provided timely reminders of how important political and public opinion can be for ratification. Examination of the period from negotiating the terms of membership to the actual accession of the two applicants underlines the dynamic and increasingly uncertain nature of the EU enlargement process.