Legislative and security requirements of audit material for evidentiary purpose

This research used the Queensland Police Service, Australia, as a major case study. Information on principles, techniques and processes used, and the reason for the recording, storing and release of audit information for evidentiary purposes is reported. It is shown that Law Enforcement Agencies have a two-fold interest in, and legal obligation pertaining to, audit trails. The first interest relates to the situation where audit trails are actually used by criminals in the commission of crime and the second to where audit trails are generated by the information systems used by the police themselves in support of the recording and investigation of crime. Eleven court cases involving Queensland Police Service audit trails used in evidence in Queensland courts were selected for further analysis. It is shown that, of the cases studied, none of the evidence presented was rejected or seriously challenged from a technical perspective. These results were further analysed and related to normal requirements for trusted maintenance of audit trail information in sensitive environments with discussion on the ability and/or willingness of courts to fully challenge, assess or value audit evidence presented. Managerial and technical frameworks for firstly what is considered as an environment where a computer system may be considered to be operating “properly” and, secondly, what aspects of education, training, qualifications, expertise and the like may be considered as appropriate for persons responsible within that environment, are both proposed. Analysis was undertaken to determine if audit and control of information in a high security environment, such as law enforcement, could be judged as having improved, or not, in the transition from manual to electronic processes. Information collection, control of processing and audit in manual processes used by the Queensland Police Service, Australia, in the period 1940 to 1980 was assessed against current electronic systems essentially introduced to policing in the decades of the 1980s and 1990s. Results show that electronic systems do provide for faster communications with centrally controlled and updated information readily available for use by large numbers of users who are connected across significant geographical locations. However, it is clearly evident that the price paid for this is a lack of ability and/or reluctance to provide improved audit and control processes. To compare the information systems audit and control arrangements of the Queensland Police Service with other government departments or agencies, an Australia wide survey was conducted. Results of the survey were contrasted with the particular results of a survey, conducted by the Australian Commonwealth Privacy Commission four years previous, to this survey which showed that security in relation to the recording of activity against access to information held on Australian government computer systems has been poor and a cause for concern. However, within this four year period there is evidence to suggest that government organisations are increasingly more inclined to generate audit trails. An attack on the overall security of audit trails in computer operating systems was initiated to further investigate findings reported in relation to the government systems survey. The survey showed that information systems audit trails in Microsoft Corporation's “Windows” operating system environments are relied on quite heavily. An audit of the security for audit trails generated, stored and managed in the Microsoft “Windows 2000” operating system environment was undertaken and compared and contrasted with similar such audit trail schemes in the “UNIX” and “Linux” operating systems. Strength of passwords and exploitation of any security problems in access control were targeted using software tools that are freely available in the public domain. Results showed that such security for the “Windows 2000” system is seriously flawed and the integrity of audit trails stored within these environments cannot be relied upon. An attempt to produce a framework and set of guidelines for use by expert witnesses in the information technology (IT) profession is proposed. This is achieved by examining the current rules and guidelines related to the provision of expert evidence in a court environment, by analysing the rationale for the separation of distinct disciplines and corresponding bodies of knowledge used by the Medical Profession and Forensic Science and then by analysing the bodies of knowledge within the discipline of IT itself. It is demonstrated that the accepted processes and procedures relevant to expert witnessing in a court environment are transferable to the IT sector. However, unlike some discipline areas, this analysis has clearly identified two distinct aspects of the matter which appear particularly relevant to IT. These two areas are; expertise gained through the application of IT to information needs in a particular public or private enterprise; and expertise gained through accepted and verifiable education, training and experience in fundamental IT products and system.

Learning to win process-control games watching game-masters

The present paper focuses on some interesting classes of process-control games, where winning essentially means successfully controlling the process. A master for one of these games is an agent who plays a winning strategy. In this paper we investigate situations in which even a complete model (given by a program) of a particular game does not provide enough information to synthesize—even incrementally—a winning strategy. However, if in addition to getting a program, a machine may also watch masters play winning strategies, then the machine is able to incrementally learn a winning strategy for the given game. Studied are successful learning from arbitrary masters and from pedagogically useful selected masters. It is shown that selected masters are strictly more helpful for learning than are arbitrary masters. Both for learning from arbitrary masters and for learning from selected masters, though, there are cases where one can learn programs for winning strategies from masters but not if one is required to learn a program for the master's strategy itself. Both for learning from arbitrary masters and for learning from selected masters, one can learn strictly more by watching m+1 masters than one can learn by watching only m. Last, a simulation result is presented where the presence of a selected master reduces the complexity from infinitely many semantic mind changes to finitely many syntactic ones.

Cerebellar augmented joint control for a humanoid robot

The joints of a humanoid robot experience disturbances of markedly different magnitudes during the course of a walking gait. Consequently, simple feedback control techniques poorly track desired joint trajectories. This paper explores the addition of a control system inspired by the architecture of the cerebellum to improve system response. This system learns to compensate the changes in load that occur during a cycle of motion. The joint compensation scheme, called Trajectory Error Learning, augments the existing feedback control loop on a humanoid robot. The results from tests on the GuRoo platform show an improvement in system response for the system when augmented with the cerebellar compensator.

Multi-robot control in highly dynamic, competitive environments

The control and coordination of multiple mobile robots is a challenging task; particularly in environments with multiple, rapidly moving obstacles and agents. This paper describes a robust approach to multi-robot control, where robustness is gained from competency at every layer of robot control. The layers are: (i) a central coordination system (MAPS), (ii) an action system (AES), (iii) a navigation module, and (iv) a low level dynamic motion control system. The multi-robot coordination system assigns each robot a role and a sub-goal. Each robots action execution system then assumes the assigned role and attempts to achieve the specified sub-goal. The robots navigation system directs the robot to specific goal locations while ensuring that the robot avoids any obstacles. The motion system maps the heading and speed information from the navigation system to force-constrained motion. This multi-robot system has been extensively tested and applied in the robot soccer domain using both centralized and distributed coordination.

Distributed control of gait for a humanoid robot

This paper describes a walking gait for a humanoid robot with a distributed control system. The motion for the robot is calculated in real time on a central controller, and sent over CAN bus to the distributed control system. The distributed control system loosely follows the motion patterns from the central controller, while also acting to maintain stability and balance. There is no global feedback control system; the system maintains its balance by the interaction between central gait and soft control of the actuators. The paper illustrates a straight line walking gait and shows the interaction between gait generation and the control system. The analysis of the data shows that successful walking can be achieved without maintaining strict local joint control, and without explicit global balance coordination.

Operation and control of a DVR in the presence of interharmonics

The paper discusses the operating principles and control characteristics of a dynamic voltage restorer (DVR). It is assumed that the source voltages contain interharmonic components in addition to fundamental components. The main aim of the DVR is to produce a set of clean balanced sinusoidal voltages across the load terminals irrespective of unbalance, distortion and voltage sag/swell in the supply voltage. An algorithm has been discussed for extracting fundamental phasor sequence components from the samples of three-phase voltages or current waveforms having integer harmonics and interharmonics. The DVR operation based on extracted components is demonstrated. The switching signal is generated using a deadbeat controller. It has been shown that the DVR is able to compensate these interharmonic components such that the load voltages are perfectly regulated. The DVR operation under deep voltage sag is also discussed. The proposed DVR operation is verified through the computer simulation studies using the MATLAB software package.