Secrecy and illusion : Second Life and the construction of unreality

This paper analyses the main Second Life Grid-an Internet-based business platform with dynamic social, techno-economic, sensual-aesthetic, and psychological complexities-as an example of public relations. It argues that Second Life is a more subversive, politically oriented, and powerful form of public relations, because it invisibly exploits and invades the process of the formation of public opinion. The paper argues that Australian organisations such as Telstra, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), and the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS), which lend Second Life credibility through their recruitment, need to ask critical questions about the ethical implications of promoting this market-driven cyber-illusion. The paper begins by defining public relations (Habermas, 1995, 1984, 1989; Gramsci in Storey, 2006) and investigating any links between public relations and Second Life. In particular, it investigates Second Life's defining claim that it is 'imagined, created and owned by its residents', and concludes with a series of questions that organisations seeking involvement in Second Life should consider as part of their decision-making.

Secrecy and human rights abuse in Australia’s offshore immigration detention centres

All asylum seekers who arrive in Australia’s territorial waters by boat are subject to mandatory, indefinite and unreviewable detention on Nauru and Papua New Guinea. This offshore detention regime is characterised by a high degree of secrecy, low levels of transparency and accountability, and few opportunities for external oversight. This has created a closed, controlled environment, in which people are routinely neglected and harmed. To better understand the human impact of Australia’s offshore detention regime, this article draws on research from social psychology regarding human behaviour in closed institutions. This research – which has substantially informed prison policies throughout the Western world – demonstrates the critical importance of external oversight, openness and transparency for the protection of human rights of people in closed institutions. This knowledge has not been applied to Australia’s offshore immigration detention regime. To the contrary: creating a closed, opaque system of detention has been an explicit policy goal of the Australian government. By actively restricting transparency, this research demonstrates that not only are the abuses of detainees’ human rights hidden from the public eye, they are inevitable.

Re Alex: adolescent gender identity disorder and the family court of Australia

'People with gender identity disorder live with a conviction that their physical anatomy is incompatible with their true gender role. They have an overwhelming desire to live and function in the opposite biological sex' . The manifestation of the disorder in children and adolescents is dominated by secrecy, confusion and shame. The purpose of this article is to promote discussion amongst the legal fraternity of the difficult issues confronting the Family Court of Australia when asked to make decisions with life-altering ramifications for the young and vulnerable.

Separation of conjoined twins: experiences of perioperative nurses and their recommendations

Background: Within an 8-month period, an unprecedented and historical first in Queensland, Australia, the perioperative nurses were members of teams involved in the surgical separation of two sets of conjoined twins. Little is known about the (dis)stress that some of these perioperative nurses experienced nor how best to support them during such experiences.

Aim: The aim of this paper is to report on the qualitiative study that explored the experiences of those perioperative nurses involved in the surgical separation of cojoined twins and from their stories propose recommendations to support perioperative nurses who are confronted with such workplace experiences.

Methods: Using a narrative methodology, nine perioperative nurses shared their stories of being involved in the surgical separation of conjoined twins in Australia. Narrative and thematic analyses were conducted and recommendations to support perioperative nurses through workplace (dis)stress were identified. Participants validated the findings and recommendations.

Findings: The analyses revealed the themes of professionalism, teamwork, 'them vs. us' and emotional loads.

Discussion: The sensationalism around the rarity of conjoined twins brought an intensive intrusiveness from the world media. As a result, secrecy within the hospital about the conjoined twin cases created divisions between those perioperative nurses on the teams and those not. The processes and outcomes of the two surgical cases were in contrast to each other. For some perioperative nurses this caused distress. It is essential that professional support is offered in a way in which the perioperative nurse can take it up without fear of negative judgement.

Money laundering trends in South Africa

Reports a study by the Centre for the Study of Economic Crime at Rand Afrikaans University into the characteristics of money laundering schemes in South Africa; these were discussed at a workshop on December 5 2001. Outlines the 1998 Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA), the 1992 Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act and their general money laundering provisions, including negligence and intent, defence and penalties; also the racketeering provisions of POCA. Moves on to the reporting of suspicious transactions, where the POCA provisions will be repealed by the new Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA); this covers general obligations, secrecy and confidentiality, penalties, preventing tipping-off, and reporting statistics. Gives examples of the schemes themselves, which fall into broad themes: purchase of goods and properties, abuse of businesses and financial institutions, cash and currency, and the informal sector; case studies include S v Dustigar, Motsepe v Commissioner of Inland Revenue, S v Van Zyl, S v Caswell, and Director of Public Prosecutions: Cape of Good Hope v Bathgate.

Donor conception and disclosure : an anthropological study

The study, carried out within an infertility support group, concern disclosure of donor conception and its possible effects upon our constructions of conception, kinship and identity. It also examines perceptions of rights, information and its access or denial, knowledge/power, secrecy and the medicalization of reproduction.

Anonymous web browsing through predicted pages

Anonymous web browsing is an emerging hot topic with many potential applications for privacy and security. However, research on low latency anonymous communication, such as web browsing, is quite limited; one reason is the intolerable delay caused by the current dominant dummy packet padding strategy, as a result, it is hard to satisfy perfect anonymity and limited delay at the same time for web browsing. In this paper, we extend our previous proposal on using prefetched web pages as cover traffic to obtain perfect anonymity for anonymous web browsing, we further explore different aspects in this direction. Based on Shannon’s perfect secrecy theory, we formally established a mathematical model for the problem, and defined a metric to measure the cost of achieving perfect anonymity. The experiments on a real world data set demonstrated that the proposed strategy can reduce delay more than ten times compared to the dummy packet padding methods, which confirmed the vast potentials of the proposed strategy.

A secure tag ownership transfer scheme in a closed loop RFID system

In this paper we propose a novel secure tag ownership transfer scheme for closed loop RFID systems. An important property of our method is that the ownership transfer is guaranteed to be atomic and the scheme is protected against desynchronisation leading to permanent DoS. Further, it is suited to the computational constraints of EPC Class-1 Gen-2 passive RFID tags as they only use the CRC and PRNG functions that passive RFID tags are capable of. We provide a detailed security analysis to show that our scheme satisfies the required security properties of tag anonymity, tag location privacy, forward secrecy, forward untraceability while being resistant to replay, desynchronisation and server impersonation attacks. Performance comparisons show that our scheme is practical and can be implemented on passive low-cost RFID tags.

Securing recommendations in grouped P2P e-commerce trust model

In dynamic peer to peer (P2P) e-commerce, it is an important and difficult problem to promote online businesses without sacrificing the desired trust to secure transactions. In this paper, we address malicious threats in order to guarantee secrecy and integrity of recommendations exchanged among peers in P2P e-commerce. In addition to trust, secret keys are required to be established between each peer and its neighbors. Further, we propose a key management approach gkeying to generate six types of keys. Our work mainly focuses on key generation for securing recommendations, and ensuring the integrity of recommendations. The proposed approach presented with a security and performance analysis, is more secure and more efficient in terms of communication cost, computation cost, storage cost, and feasibility. © 2012 IEEE.

Access to information about donors by donor-conceieved individuals : a human rights analysis

While assisted reproductive treatment using donated gametes is widespread, and in many places, widely accepted, it has historically been shrouded in secrecy. Over time, however, there has been an increasing call from donor-conceived people, recipient parents and some donors to end the secrecy, and to release identifying information about donors to donor-conceived people. "Rights-based" arguments have at times been used to justify this call. This article examines whether a human rights framework supports the release of information and how such a framework might be applied when there are competing rights. It argues that the current balancing approach used to resolve such issues weighs in favour of release. Legal action has the potential to be legitimate and justifiable. A measure such as a contact veto system, which would serve to prevent unwanted contact with the person lodging the veto (either the donor or the donor-conceived person), would ensure proportionality. In this way, both donor-conceived people's rights to private life, identity and family, and donors' rights to privacy may be recognised and balanced.

Secure RFID tag ownership transfer based on quadratic residues

In this paper, we propose a novel approach to secure ownership transfer in RFID systems based on the quadratic residue property. We present two secure ownership transfer schemes-the closed loop and open loop schemes. An important property of our schemes is that ownership transfer is guaranteed to be atomic. Further, both our schemes are suited to the computational constraints of EPC Class-1 Gen-2 passive RFID tags as they only use operations that such passive RFID tags are capable of. We provide a detailed security analysis to show that our schemes achieve strong privacy and satisfy the required security properties of tag anonymity, tag location privacy, forward secrecy, and forward untraceability. We also show that the schemes are resistant to replay (both passive and algebraic), desynchronization, and server impersonation attacks. Performance comparisons demonstrate that our schemes are practical and can be implemented on low-cost passive RFID tags.

Settling sexual harassment complaints - what benefits does ADR offer?

Sexual harassment complaints are predominantly resolved through confidential alternative dispute resolution (ADR) processes rather than a tribunal hearing, so very little is known about the type of complaints which are made or how they are being resolved. This secrecy has created problems for the law’s development and its effectiveness. This article compares settlement agreements negotiated through ADR with tribunal orders, so as to identify whether ADR offers any additional benefits to the process of addressing sexual harassment and to identify changes to the process which would increase the law’s effectiveness while maintaining the benefits of ADR. Very little is known about the type of settlements negotiated in this jurisdiction, so the secondary purpose of the study is to provide information about how sexual harassment is being addressed.

The current status of related party disclosure in India: a longitudinal analysis

Purpose – This study investigates the status of related party disclosure in an emerging economy, that is, India. The reason behind concentrating on India is due to its opening of the economy in 1991 to attract foreign investment. Hence, it is significant that investors are provided with credible information. The accounting value of ‘secrecy’ underlying India and the voluntary nature of detailed reporting about related parties in this country further motivated the present study.
Methodology/Approach – The research method includes a content analysis of the ‘related party disclosure’ section of annual reports of a sample of Indian companies for the financial years 2002–2006.
Findings – Indian companies disclosed more than the required minimum level of related party disclosure as required in the Indian accounting standard. No association between related party disclosure with market capitalization, industry affiliation and foreign listing was found for the year 2006. However, when the scores of all the five years 2002–2006 were considered manufacturing and automotive companies disclosed more about related parties than diversified, service and technology.
Research Limitations – The limitations of our findings rests upon the fact that we have not examined the effect of factors such as the composition of management of each company and the presence of Indians/Non-Indians in management.
Originality/Value of the Paper – Most studies exploring disclosure practices are directed towards developed countries. The disclosure practices in developing countries is an under researched area. This paper contributes towards the existing literature by taking the case of an emerging economy, that is, India.