2020 Certificate Graduates Independent Work

Neel Ajjarapu, ELE
Title of Project: Applications of Machine Learning to Causal Networks for Generating Attacks in Networked System

The advent of the Internet-of-Things (IoT) and next-generation networking has led to the development of networked systems that are increasingly interconnected, complex, and vulnerable. Many of these systems, including the in-vehicle network (IVN) of the connected vehicle, were designed for closed networks, and are inherently vulnerable in this new environment. Others, including software defined network (SDN) technologies, are still in their nascent phases, but will soon be widely deployed with the expansion of 5G. These new networked systems provide attackers a large attack surface, which conventional security methods cannot easily detect and mitigate. This thesis explores the application of a causal network and machine learning (ML) based methodology, which preemptively generates attacks in order to mitigate vulnerabilities in networked systems. This methodology extracts intelligence from known attacks, represents them as causal networks, and employs ML techniques to extrapolate new attack vectors and vulnerabilities within the system. We demonstrate the feasibility of this approach by applying it to the controller area network (CAN) protocol of the IVN, as well as applying a modified approach to the OpenFlow protocol of the SDN. Within the IVN, the methodology achieves an 87.22% reduction in the search space and generates six attacks that are novel to the ML model. We generate an additional seven attacks in the SDN. We then demonstrate the respective attacks on an emulated CAN bus and emulated OpenFlow-enabled SDN.

Jake Caddeau, PHI
Title of Project: Facebook, Knowledge and Sight: Mechanisms of Information in the Digital Age

This thesis is an investigation of moral and spiritual epistemology in the Information Age. I analyze two case studies, one involving social/political speech and one involving information about climate science. I investigated these two cases in order to develop a theory of sight on Facebook—how users of these networks are emotionally and spiritually oriented to see information presented on social media in a specific way. In developing this notion of sight, I grounded my theory in a relativist picture of knowledge, drawing on philosophers Bruno Latour and Michel Foucault. I argue that a theory of good sight which we should strive for involves honoring nuance, complexity and depth and trying to see with openness and empathy so that knowledge about subjects can resonate as complete wholes.

Simone Downs, WWS
Title of Project: Social Media Impacts on Female Judging & Representation in South Asia 

In South Asia, the courts are a powerful mediator which are often the strongest conferrer of rights to citizens. I am interested in how the courts include women in their decision-making process. Even if women are present on the court, do they truly have the power to influence positive outcomes for women? One factor that could impact female perception and power is social media. Social media has greater political power in South Asia than it does in the United States. It has been used administratively by politicians to make official announcements and it has been used more maliciously to spark real-world violence and hysteria. In this chapter of my thesis, I argue that social media is an important avenue of exploration in order to determine what obstacles female justices face outside of the courtroom. I find that most women face heavy criticism online, and I posit that this could potentially prevent them from acting as boldly in controversial cases. Social media in these negative instances lessens the substantive impact that female justices have on women’s rights. However, there is evidence that women can be helped through social media. If there is enough support for female justices online, this could present a powerful force for ensuring that female representation on the Supreme Courts of South Asia is both descriptive and substantive.

Andrew Griffin, COS
Title of Project: Analysis of Potential Regulatory Frameworks for Artificial Intelligence in the Healthcare Industry

Technological innovation has long come with the promise of improving the lives of humans by increasing efficiency, complementing human intellect, and raising our standard of living. Artificial Intelligence broadly is the most recent and promising technological innovation of our generation and is no exception. However, we have recently seen evidence of the potential for machine learning algorithms to perpetuate or even exacerbate discriminatory patterns that already exist in many applications. Discrimination in historical data used to train algorithms, the outcomes chosen to pursue by technologists, and the choice of variables to include in the model can all be potential sources of bias. This paper weighs the pros and cons of several different frameworks ranging from the very onerous FDA-style clearance for algorithms to hands-off regulation focused on discrimination law in the case of lawsuits. The more onerous the framework, the more complete the check can be on discrimination in an ML setting. However, that completeness comes at a cost to the goals of the individual companies as well as a heavy burden on resources needed in order to enforce the regulation. The less onerous the framework, the more instances of bias or discrimination can slip through the cracks, although the frameworks can be more realistically implemented from a cost standpoint. My solution puts forth a framework for regulating the healthcare industry that relies on clear, transparent expectations for data storage and algorithm design so that companies can understand what is expected of them and can focus on mitigating issues of bias/discrimination in their own algorithms. With clear expectations, companies can still pursue their own goals with respect to their machine learning algorithms, while responsibly storing data and design decisions so that they can analyze their own results in lieu of important considerations regarding discrimination. With companies incentivized to check themselves, the regulatory body can efficiently and effectively examine companies on a periodic basis without putting a strain on the resources available to them.

Maia Hamin, COS
Title of Project: “don’t ignore this”: Automating the Collection and Analysis of Political Campaign Emails

The humble email remains a key way that political campaigns reach their supporters and incite them to donate, sign petitions, attend events, and get out to vote. Emails are, therefore, a rich source of data about the rhetoric, message, and priorities of different campaigns, but previous work has been narrow in scope due to the time cost of manually signing up to receive emails from political campaigns and analyzing hundreds or thousands of emails to generate insights. My junior paper was inspired by the realization that tools from computer science might help us close this methodological gap, giving us better insight into the political strategies of the moment and even helping us potentially identify overtly worrisome techniques and patterns of rhetoric in use by political campaigns today. I updated a web crawler to automatically sign up for emails, ultimately signing up for more than 1,400 different campaign mailing lists. I began the development of a pipeline for using NLP to detect the use of fear-based, “demagogue”-like rhetoric, as well as to analyze the issues about which each candidate spoke the most in their emails.

Hillenbrand, Julia, WWS
Title of Project: Examining Ohio Data Policy Responses to the Opioid Crisis in Support of Children and Families

I examined the secondary effects of the opioid crisis on Ohio child welfare and education systems. Research was a combination of literature review, policy analysis, and 12 interviews with state policymakers and other relevant professionals. I then examined the policies that have been enforced in Ohio to help combat these secondary effects. A critical finding regarded a lack of coordination and data sharing amongst federal, state, and local agencies meant to support children and families facing addiction. I dedicated a significant portion of my research to understanding how data policy is being leveraged to support those subject to the secondary effects of the opioid crisis, particularly children and families. I found that, in Ohio, two major barriers to data coordination arise: (1) the emphasis of local control in Ohio policymaking, and (2) the influence of federal data privacy policy. In interviews, the impact of poor data policy on the provision of coordinated care for children and families was an apparent strain on service providers, many of whom demonstrated a desire for more statewide case management systems than are currently available. Service providers such as Family Dependency Treatment Court and the Ohio MOMS program use case management systems that vary county to county and are not integrated with relevant data platforms, such as the Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System. At the county level, workers are fearful to share information with other agencies due to federal 42 C.F.R. and HIPAA policy. As a result of decentralized data management, Ohio collaboration between case workers, educators, rehabilitation centers, medical centers, and other relevant treatment providers is limited. These inefficiencies mean that children may not receive resources from legal, mental health, or other relevant providers when their lives are impacted by drugs. Though local lawmakers are trying to reform current data practices through the creation of county-to-county data networks and federal policymakers have rolled back 42 C.F.R. for the reasons stated above, state policymakers should consider centralizing data networks throughout the state to better support children and families impacted by the opioid crisis.

Robert Liu, COS
Title of Project: Analyzing Platform Design for Interactive Narrative

Interactive narratives are digital experiences that allow readers to shape a dramatic storyline through their actions. There is a broad design space of platforms for interactive narratives that structure how writers design choice-based stories and how readers engage with those stories. Some new IF platforms leverage Web technologies to create more usable interfaces for narrative designers and readers, let authors write stories that use novel affordances, and even offer multiplayer capability. We analyze some representative examples in the narrative platform design space and the experiences of creating and reading on these platforms. We find that emerging platforms center around the form of “quests,” where dialogue between author and readers is central to creating the narrative through real-time reader choices.

Morlan Osgood, COS
Title of Project: Measuring the Impact of Social Media Features on Mental Health

Studies have shown a direct link between social media use and decreased mental health quality. It is implausible to stop a 40 billion dollar, 3.2 billion user industry. However, it is plausible to mitigate the most detrimental effects by identifying the features that most negatively impact mental health and proposing alternatives. This paper takes the first step in that process by evaluating the best way to utilize current scales that measure mental health effects to identify detrimental social media platform features. It found the Beck Depression Inventory- Second Edition (BDI-II) scale to be the best option to analyze a feature’s impact on depression symptoms. The paper found the Fear of Missing Out scale (FoMOs) to be the most detailed way to analyze FoMO symptoms and recommends it be used in latitudinal studies.

Matteo Russo, COS (presented independent work as a junior in spring 2019)
Title of Project: Robust OOD Detection in Secure Open-world Learning

Distributed systems have become ubiquitous in our modern computing world, with applications ranging from telecommunications to computer networks. The Internet of Things (IoT) has integrated technology with many physical objects in our everyday lives, with applications ranging from smart home technologies to medical applications. This paper attempts to combine two increasingly important fields in modern computing – distributed systems and the IoT – and investigates applications of distributed systems in IoT environments by leveraging multiple IoT gateways as a distributed system. This paper explores fault tolerance and data consistency, which have large implications for reliability and scalability in applications that rely on both distributed systems and the IoT. This could especially impact industrial systems and infrastructural applications. This paper aimed to modify multiple Mozilla WebThings smart home gateways to act as a distributed system, implement a fault tolerance scheme, and identify consistency issues in smart home IoT devices within this system. Quality of service metrics of the distributed system in the form of latency measures show consistent, reasonable delays between gateways, with no large deviations from the mean. A fault tolerance scheme, in which one gateway takes over the IoT devices of another gateway that had gone offline, was able to add all devices from the offline gateway to the new gateway, and the new gateway was able to control half of the devices added. Consistency issues caused by network connectivity problems and event reorderings were identified and possible solutions were proposed.

Meghan Slattery, ORFE
Title of Project: Spread of Extremist Ideologies Through Online Network Influence

The onset of the social media revolution has allowed unprecedented levels of global communication, allowing for an increased spread in some of the darker ideologies affecting the world today. For my independent work, I analyzed data from the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) dataset put forth by the START Program at the University of Maryland. From the initial set of over 2,100 deidentified individuals, I tracked incidents over time, geographic region, type of extremism, and preferred social media platform. Highest recorded individuals were found in the U.S. South, throughout the country, Islamist ideologies were spread most commonly through social media, and the most common platform for radical social media use was Facebook. Using these and other findings, I identified the regions, extremist trends, and social media platforms most significant to the spread, and suggested basic policy recommendations for stopping the use of social media technology for extremist purposes.

2019 Certificate Graduates Independent Work

Casey Chow, COS
Title of Project: Opinion Authorship in the United States Supreme Court

In modern American jurisprudence, the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) are treated as de facto law. However, little is officially disclosed about how justices develop their opinions; internal memos from a the bench take decades after the respective justice’s death or resignation to be released. This paper applies the natural language processing technique of author verification (AV) to determine to what extent justices write the opinions they present to the Supreme Court.

Jeremy Colvin, WWS
Title of Project: Unchecked Ambiguity and the Globalization of User Privacy Controls Under the GDPR

Recently enforced in 2018, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) builds on past EU privacy directives and establishes a new era of data privacy emphasizing increased transparency, accountability, and user control in regards to the processing of personal data. This research project monitors the citing and application of Article 6(f) (processing under a ‘legitimate interest’) among 2,275,137 privacy policies pre-GDPR and 1,937,894 privacy policies post-GDPR, presenting a rise in usage from 104,143 policies (4.58%) pre-GDPR to 185,014 (9.55%) post-GDPR enforcement. The second section of analysis investigates the globalization of the regulation and the ability for controllers to fulfill specific articles of the GDPR relating to user controls. A second dataset evaluates 43 of the most popular U.S. Alexa ranked websites on their ability to fulfill Articles 17 (Right to Erasure) and 20 (Right to Data Portability) when approached from two different IP addresses (U.S. and EU).

Jamie Cuffe, COS
Title of Project: Defining The Field of Venture Analytics: Applying Computational Neural Networks to Model Market Sentiment

This paper aims to define a framework for the field of venture analytics, the application of computer science, technology and data science to the venture capital industry. The first step outlines the three key stages of the industry, sourcing, investing and portfolio support considering technology’s role in each. A four pillar framework, involving team, product, traction and market, is developed to quantitatively evaluate companies. The highest leverage opportunity is in modelling a leading indicator for the market component. Applying a computational neural network to topically categorized features derived from news sources achieved 86.8% accuracy in its classification of successes and failures. The network was particularly effective in removing bad companies with a true positive rate of 99.1% for failures. However, it struggled to get full coverage of the winners with a true positive rate of 21.3% for successes. The results were evaluated at the feature-level to uncover the intuition within what was previously a black box approach. It was found that operations and industry news categories were significantly more predictive of startup success than financial news despite the fact funding news is widely used as a signal today. Finally, interviews with industry experts uncovered that these results are applicable to venture capital today. This paper outlined a roadmap for the creation of the venture analytics industry, which many are excited to build off of to make the industry a reality today.

John Ennis, WWS
Title of Project: Coverage of Iraq in the Media: Bush’s Fait Accompli

The 2003 invasion of Iraq was primarily predicated on Saddam Hussein’s supposed ties to al-Qaeda and an estimation that the country was continuing the development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Both of these claims were later found to be false, and the Bush administration, as well as the intelligence community, bore significant amounts of blame for this notable mistake. Yet a third group, the news media, was also denounced by many policymakers, scholars, and general citizens for not digging deeper into the administration’s reasoning for going to war and the intelligence produced to support this decision. However, rather than placing blame on the whole news media, I find that the Bush administration actively engaged “willing mouthpieces,” or weak spots in the news media. While most print media reported fairly on the information that the Bush administration disseminated in support of the Iraq War, the administration used the reporting of Judith Miller, as well as the broad support of the television media, to promote their agenda. The role of the media, as well as misunderstandings surrounding the complexities of its involvement in promoting the White House’s agenda, may have negatively impacted American trust in the media, which has been reduced by almost half since 2003. The news media is both a technology in its own right, and is usually accessed through technology, and my work has shown that the different types of technology used to convey and access journalism at this time played a role in the information that society received regarding an invasion of Iraq predicated on false assumptions.

Michael J. Friedman, COS
Title of Project: Adversarial Design Patterns: Findings From a Crawl of 11K Shopping Websites

Adversarial Design Patterns (ADPs) are user interface design patterns that coerce, manipulate, or deceive users into making unintended and potentially harmful decisions. These patterns are particularly common on shopping websites, where they pressure users into making more purchases or disclosing more information than they would otherwise. We conducted a large-scale study, analyzing ~53K product pages from ~11K shopping websites to characterize and quantify the prevalence of ADPs. To do so, we created an interactive crawler that simulates an actual user browsing a shopping website, and then we used text clustering to analyze the resulting data set. As a result, we discovered 1,764 ADP instances, together representing 15 types and 7 categories. We examined the underlying influence of these ADPs, documenting the kind of impact they have on user decision-making. We also examined these ADPs for deceptive practices, and found 117 websites that display deceptive messages to their visitors. In addition, we uncovered 22 third-party entities that offer ADPs as a turnkey solution. Based on our findings, we make recommendations for stakeholders including researchers and regulators to study, mitigate, and minimize the use of these patterns.

Priya Ganatra, ENG
Title of Project: When you look in a mirror, you see yourself. When you look at a screen, is it really you?

What does it mean that technology now controls an aspect of our identity? Advertisement agencies and social media control individual identity because the identity is separated from the individual – it is on a platform that can be distorted. Companies profit off of the human connections that are made. Something that previously could not be measured by money, now is. Instagram feeds are full of idealized versions of humans. This narrative is not new. It has been rooted in culture for as long as time has existed: humans seek attention. This video presentation will explore these types of technologies and their impact on human identity.

Leora Huebner, COS
Title of Project: EyeBeat Revolution: Tackling Accessibility by Creating Sound and Music in Virtual Reality

Technology has an almost unlimited potential to help people in need, and to lower the entry barriers for individuals with disabilities to participate in all aspects of society. This project, EyeBeat Revolution, is a product designed to enable people with severe physical disabilities to play music. It is an accessible music instrumentation environment that uses the Fove 0 virtual reality headset to create a realistic, immersive experience of playing the drums controlled solely by eye tracking. This paper highlights current issues and developments in accessibility, music education and therapy, and gamified and accessible music. It details the process of designing and creating an accessible music-playing environment in virtual reality. It focuses primarily on the benefits of the product, from both cognitive and technical perspectives, and on the technology behind creating the music.

Jay Li, COS
Title of Project: Who Polices the Online Police? Measuring User Profile Bias in Social Media Content Moderation

Content moderation is the cornerstone of online discourse today. All content that users share stays online by following rules set forward by technology companies. These companies, such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit, each have their own teams of content moderators that review text, photos, videos, and other forms of medias on the platforms per these rules. However, these guidelines cannot cover everything; there exist grey areas where moderators refer to company policies only as guidelines, consider the context, and then apply their personal judgement. My research investigates if people exhibit this inherent bias in moderating flagged social media activities. I specifically focus on Facebook and the company’s Community Standards. I use two separate surveys of Princeton students to see how they rate sample posts against these Standards and to gather their demographic information. I have found that students of different races, genders, and ideological leanings evaluate online content differently when presented with the same Facebook post shared by different Facebook users. This difference varies by the user’s as well as the students’ own demographics. As content moderation is progressing towards a more automated process with machine learning and artificial intelligence, my results show that this biasness has to be resolved before moderation is completely automated. They can be applied to further developments in content moderation and progress the current literature on free speech theory and technology policy that have arisen for online content providers today.

Grace Miles, COS (presented her independent work as a junior in spring 2018)
Title of Project: The Online World Versus the Physical World: An Analysis of College Students’ Social Networks

The purpose of the research is to understand how structurally similar, or isomorphic, Princeton student’s online social networks are in comparison to their physical social networks. This study surveys Princeton undergraduate students (n = 464) about the nature of their usage on three separate online social network platforms: Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Findings include an online social network structure that is greatly inflated compared to their real world counterparts including large numbers of stagnant ties. The implications of this study are increasingly relevant in defining the role of stagnant ties in our lives and what are the mental health and personal repercussions of these increasing online networks.

Heather Milke, FRE
Title of Project: The Evolution of Emmanuel Macron’s Start-Up Rhetoric and Where It Is Leading France

This paper examines the development of start-ups and entrepreneurship in France immediately following the election of President Emmanuel Macron in May 2017. Building off of the momentum of growing entrepreneurship and technology innovation in France over the last ten years, Macron’s policies reflect pro-business attitude and entrepreneurial spirit. Macron and his party, La République En Marche, developed a rhetoric of innovation and forward thinking. Part of this rhetoric draws parallels between France and the start-up scene in United States, particularly Silicon Valley. It also establishes France’s national identity around entrepreneurship, calling for France to become a “start-up nation.” Tracing through Macron’s discourse from the launch of his party, La République En Marche! (or simply, En Marche!) in April 2016, to his campaign, his Presidential election in May 2017, and finally through his first year in office, it is clear how Macron’s rhetoric of innovation is a response to France’s economic and political situation before his rise to power, an imitation of the United States’ start-up culture, and an attempt to place himself in opposition to President of the United States, Donald Trump. While the outcomes of Macron’s reform remain uncertain, this paper examines the effects of Macron’s rhetoric on France’s business and society one year into his presidency in order to better understand France’s status as a “start-up nation” moving forward.

Oluwapelumi Odimayo, COS
Title of Project: A Theoretical Framework to Analyze The Matchmaking Process of Early Stage Venture Capital Investment

The venture capital (VC) investment process has remained largely unchanged over the last several decades. Since the tech bubble burst in the early 2000s, we have seen a considerable increase in capital going into early-stage startup investment. We have also seen the number of exits (mergers, acquisitions, and IPOs) and funding rounds increase at a commensurate rate. However, a critical aspect of the venture capital funnel has seen a steady decline over the last few years. The cumulative number of early-stage startups receiving funding has decreased even though the amount of capital being put into these companies has risen steadily over the same period. This paper uses a theoretical framework grounded in behavioral economics and informed by anecdotal evidence from practicing venture capitalists to gain insight into the early stage investment process. We propose process interventions to the matchmaking process to alleviate inefficiencies uncovered during the research phase of the project. These interventions were designed with respect to key considerations put forth by practicing early stage venture capitalists. Finally, we highlight the real-world limitations of these process recommendations as well as possible avenues for future work.

Jake Reichel, COS
Title of Project: Understanding User Privacy and Social Media Usage in South Africa

Social media usage in the developing world is continuing to rise. However, research about the many associated privacy concerns has mostly been limited to studying social media use in more developed settings. In this study, I show how mobile social media users in South Africa are making use of the privacy settings and controls on social media platforms. I present findings from interviews of 52 current mobile social media users in South Africa, ranging from low-income users to upper middle class users. There were several themes that emerged. First, users’ primary privacy-related concern was surrounding who else could see their posts and messages as opposed to what data the platforms collect about them. Second, users displayed general knowledge gaps on both existing privacy settings on social media and data collection e orts by advertisers. Third, users’ considerations for their own physical safety often shaped their attitudes towards privacy online. Fourth, usage of privacy settings and conceptions of privacy are heavily swayed by offline social factors such as perceived intimacy of a platform and information sharing amongst friends. Based on these findings, I make recommendations for social media designers, companies, and regulators to ensure that user privacy is maintained on social media.

Cierra Robson, AAS
Title of Project: In the Eye of the Shareholder: Racialized Surveillance Capitalism in Oakland, California

Focusing on the construction of a state-sanctioned city-wide surveillance center in Oakland, California called the “Domain Awareness Center” (DAC), this work considers how economic, social and political priorities are used to justify enhanced surveillance of racialized populations. In tracing the public and private networks of capital and ideology that emerge from the DAC, I argue that the the hyperlocal policing technologies of the city are intimately linked to the economic priorities of private companies and the foreign policy agenda of the United States. To explain this dynamic, I develop the concept of racialized surveillance capitalism to describe the ways in which governments mobilize private companies to surveil the most marginalized populations for the purposes of amassing economic and political capital. Such a collaboration is mechanized by systems like the DAC, deploying seemingly objective technologies and statistics which furtively reinforce existing social hierarchies in the name of efficiency and impartiality. In analyzing the dissonance between the official record—government reports, City Council Meeting minutes, and Oakland city contracts and budgets—alongside the resident archive—Twitter feeds, Op-Eds, and pubic testimonies at town-halls—I argue that the same surveillance center simultaneously protects some and terrorizes others. I dispel the myth that legal battles are the best solution to the potential problems emerging from state-sanctioned surveillance: the law, according to critical race theorists, has systematically excluded many and therefore cannot be the only means of liberation. Instead, I turn to those protesting against the DAC as exemplars of radical and imaginative solution-making.

2018 Certificate Graduates Independent Work

Adam Berman, COS (presented independent work as a junior)
Title of Project: A Computational Pathway for Identifying Metabolites Relevant to Cancer Development

This work describes a computational approach to identify “driver” metabolites and metabolic pathways that are most crucial to cancer development and growth based on pre-existing large-scale genomic databases of mutational and expressional cancer data. The implementation relies on the development of formulae to assign cancer associative scores to each of many biologically active metabolites from the publicly available cancer data. Thereafter, the metabolites can be ranked according to their scores, and the ranking can be cross-validated with a list of metabolites known to take part in cancerous metabolic pathways using machine learning techniques.

Given cancer’s known tendency to alter the body’s metabolism, we feel that this metabolite-first approach may bring to light previously overlooked metabolites that are crucial to cancer development.

Kelly Bojic, ECO
Title of Project: How to Save a Life” (and Maybe Money): The Effects of Information Technology on Health Spending During Economic Downturns

My paper investigates the effects of information technology on health care spending per capita during economic downturns. Information technology has the potential to create substantial savings to health care spending, especially during economic downturns, when private health care spending and capital investments decline and federal spending for health care rises. I distinguish between supplier- and consumer-facing information technology by looking at health information technology systems on the supplier side and iPhones on the consumer side. Among health information technology systems, I focus on Electronic Medical Records systems and Clinical Decision Support systems. I find that health information technology systems are associated with a 14.5% rise in health care spending per capita, reflecting an increase in costs to medical facilities. However, the rise in health spending associated with health information technology use falls 2.41% for every percentage point increase in the unemployment rate. I do not find a significant relationship between consumer-facing information technology and health care spending.

Luisa Goytia, COS
Title of Project: Amazona – A framework for mobile context-aware personal security

Personal security is a global concern that ignores race, gender, age, and socioeconomic status. It can be gravely compromised without warning in a dangerous location as well as in a perceived well-protected neighborhood. Calling 911 is the default emergency protocol but this might not be possible or feasible during many emergencies. In the case where contact can be established, emergency responders have very limited information to formulate an effective rescue protocol.

This thesis introduces Amazona, a context-aware mobile framework that discretely and rapidly distributes relevant system and user information upon activation in an emergency situation. The context-aware nature of the system allows the mobile device to gather information about its environment and to adapt its emergency protocol accordingly. Based on the selected protocol, Amazona sends an updated information package, containing location, video/images, among other data, to pre-selected emergency contacts upon the consecutive presses of the device’s power button. The package does not just reflect a snapshot of the user’s condition at the time of the emergency but also includes data from the past, creating a detailed timeline of the user’s activity before the alarm is activated. The system continues sending these packages with updated information, if available, until the alarm is deactivated without relying on any other input from the user.

This approach facilitates access to different emergency contacts, improves the likelihood of rescue and diminishes the risk a user has to take to reach out for help using traditional methods.

Sreela Kodali, ELE
Title of Project: Monitoring Mental Health with a Multimodal Sensor System and Low-power Specialized Hardware

This work presents a system that utilizes smartphone and wearable data to understand human behavior and facilitate mental health monitoring. Although mental disorders are exceedingly prevalent, their diagnostic methods are much more antiquated than their physical ailment counterparts. Mental health diagnosticians employ subjective surveys, professional observations, and patient recall to capture a patient’s changing behavior, but these approaches are severely limited. Mobile devices introduce a unique opportunity to quantify and unobtrusively record data on human behavior. Predictive classifiers and neural network (NN) models can interpret the data and yield meaningful behavior classifications. With the inclusion of specialized hardware, a secure and energy-efficient predictive system can be developed to identify worrying behavior and encourage users to seek medical help. In this work, multiple predictive models associated with worrisome mental health behaviors are developed with existing datasets, optimized for performance, and ported to hardware accelerators. Energy and power metrics for the models are estimated and used as design considerations for a realizable end-to-end system.

Marion Lewis, WWS
Title of Project: Understanding the Effects of High Jump:
A Study of One Chicago-Based Supplementary Academic Enrichment Program for Low-Income, High-Achieving Middle School Students on College Outcomes and Interest in STEM

This work analyzes the effects of High Jump. Located in urban Chicago, High Jump is a tuition-free supplementary academic enrichment program for highly motivated seventh and eighth grade students of limited financial means. Specifically, the objectives of this thesis are to assess the relationships between participation in High Jump and college outcomes, as well as participation in High Jump and STEM interest. I use an observational research design that compares students who applied and were selected for High Jump to those who applied and were not selected. With data collected from the National Student Clearinghouse on college enrollment, graduation, and declared major, I examine the association between High Jump and college outcomes. Using college major choice as a proxy for STEM aptitude and/or interest, my findings can then be applied more generally to draw conclusions about how well High Jump alumni will fare in the future digitized workforce and provide recommendations about how to modify education policy in developmental years so as to safeguard the human advantage that machines may begin to threaten. After running several OLS regressions of college graduation, type of college, and STEM major on High Jump completion status, my results indicate that High Jump completion is correlated with 0.112 (significant at the 0.01 level) increase in college enrollment, 0.229 (significant at the 0.01 level) increase in college graduation, 0.169 (significant at the 0.01 level) increase in enrollment at a selective college, 0.177 (significant at the 0.01 level) increase in enrollment at a four-year college, and 0.211 (significant at the 0.01 level) increase in enrollment at a private college. Furthermore, High Jump completion is correlated with 0.068 (significant at the 0.01 level) decrease in enrollment at a two-year college, 0.106 (significant at the 0.01 level) decrease in enrollment at a public college, and 0.114 (significant at the 0.01 level) decrease in pursuing a STEM major. I conclude with policy implications related to universal college access and STEM education.

Sarah Muse, WWS
Title of Project: The Surprising Success of the European Union Member States’ Migration Policies: An Analysis of Greece, Italy, Spain and France’s Border Control

This paper attempts to discern how different Member States within the European Union were able to effectively restrict the number of illegal refugees entering their borders through the employment of various technologies and treaties. My paper specifically looks at Greece, Italy, Spain and France. Ultimately it demonstrates that the nations successfully controlled their borders from illegal migrants by erecting physical barriers and by creating and employing surveillance technologies to track and detain refugees attempting to cross the sea from North African into the southern border of the EU. The paper focuses specifically on Spain’s creation of unique and effective technologies including SIVE, or an Integrated External Vigilance System, that is capable of not only tracking migrant traffic across the Mediterranean but also alerting authorities in both African and European nations about these crossings to help them detain the illegal refugees.

Julie Novick-Lederer, COS
Title of Project: Using Sentiment Analysis to Detect Gender Bias in Course Evaluations for Professors at Princeton University

This project assesses whether gender bias exists in Princeton University’s course evaluations using a combination of natural language processing techniques. Gender gaps and discriminatory practices in the workplace and in the hiring process are issues that have been frequently brought to the table, and the world of academia has not escaped scrutiny. We seek to understand whether male professors and female professors are being evaluated differently by students and analyze how the possible existence of gender bias may affect the demographic of both students and professors in a variety of fields and departments at Princeton. In order to conduct a meaningful study, we analyze the evaluations written anonymously by students from Princeton’s registrar for a chosen set of departments and courses. Using Princeton evaluations as the dataset provides a unique lens through which we can assess how ratings, sentiment, and language used differs between female and male professors. We discovered that while the overall sentiment and ratings of courses taught by female professors were not consistently more negative than that of their male colleagues, the language used in the evaluations is definitely gendered. Moreover, the discrepancy between the number of women and men in academia still remains a problem both at Princeton and at universities across the nation. This study incorporates the use of technology, specifically large data manipulation and sentiment analyses, to understand a very topical societal issue. We hope that this project can be extended further to see whether there is a connection between the fields where employees are evaluated and the number of women in that area of work. This project assesses gender gaps in Princeton’s faculty from an interesting angle and sheds light on the issue of the lack of women working in academia.

Luke Petruzzi, COS (presented independent work as a junior)
Title of Project: Virtual Reality for Nuclear Arms Control: Prototyping New Verification Processes

Nuclear disarmament has come a long way since the detonation of the first nuclear weapon. International treaties and efforts pursuing non-proliferation, bans on testing, and dismantlement of deployment vehicles including aircraft and missiles are ongoing. However, there are no treaties to dismantle nuclear warheads themselves. Convincing nuclear weapon states to come to a consensus on the scope of a treaty to dismantle warheads is extremely difficult. Currently, in-person walkthroughs of proposed treaties, inspections, and verification processes are performed by multiple nations to gauge treaty effectiveness and capacity for adoption. This process is very expensive, time consuming, and introduces intrinsic security and safety risks. This project addresses these problems by employing a networked Virtual Reality application in which international parties can perform confirmation walkthroughs and rapidly prototype new verification processes for treaties. Our approach was analyzed on Princeton students and has already shown positive results that provide insights on a potential verification process for mapping the location of warheads within a facility. This project also created an open source template for multi-user virtual reality developed on the Unity engine: a resource that did not previously exist.

Maya Phillips, COS
Title of Project: A Metadata API for the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study

The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study is a longitudinal study of children from ages birth-15. The data from this study is currently being used by social scientists and data scientists to combine predictive modeling with other tools to predict key outcomes in the lives of young children. This data includes information about the children, their parents, their schools, and their larger environments. The recently collected year-15 data helps us to understand how these factors are predictors of success. Researchers at Princeton are now constructing better metadata to support the raw dataset of survey responses in order to make predictive modeling easier, and to make the models themselves more predictive. My project is an API that manipulates and partitions this metadata along lines that will allow researchers easier access to the information. In both an online version and an embedded code version, this interface will allow the for the widest use of the metadata, and that will eventually give us better insight into the predictive nature of the data.

Tyler Sullivan. ECO
Title of Project: Contrasting Technological Development’s Effect on Labor Share and Industrial Concentration in
U.S. Manufacturing and Information Industries

The rise of the digital economy has had an undeniable impact on industrial dynamics in the United States. The productivity gains resulting from technological development are manifesting themselves differently throughout the economy, and this study specifically contrasts the U.S. manufacturing and information industries in order to forecast changing industry dynamics. Two central dynamics are studied: changing labor share and changing industrial concentration. While productivity gains derived from increased digitalization have been leading to generally falling employee labor share and increasing “superstar” firm concentration, this study shows that the results are heavily nuanced by industry. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, this study indicates a technological “rebalancing,” where older, less digitally-native industries like manufacturing are beginning to act more like newer, digitally-native industries in an effort to mature into the digital economy. This study finds a positive long-term effect on labor share, but a negative long-term effect on industrial competition. With the rise of advanced artificial intelligence and technological unemployment, monitoring changing productivity’s effect on key industry dynamics will continue to be a crucial study with significant economic and public policy impacts.

Rebecca Weng, SOC
Title of Project: Negotiating Twitter as a Space for Digital Activism: A Case Study of #MeToo

Currently we are seeing a variety of everyday interactions that used to be exclusively offline being forced online in one way or another—from professional correspondence to advertisements to teaching and learning. But there has been particular skepticism around online activism both in everyday and scholarly discussion. This study focused on the case of #MeToo on Twitter. From October 15, 2017 to March 31, 2018, I gathered more than 6,000,000 tweets that used the hashtag, as well as tweets that used related hashtags about women’s rights. I used these tweets to form a sampling frame, which I used to contact research subjects over Twitter. This study offers insights with regard to recruiting research subjects on sites like Twitter. Through 10 in-depth interviews, this study shows how Twitter users are mapping between the traditionally offline activity of protest and online hashtag activism. In this case, Hollywood, the 2016 Presidential election, and the utilization of social media by news outlets to spread information all play crucial roles.

Natalie Wertz, COS
Title of Project: LeadHERship: An Analysis of Gendered Portrayals in the Media

Over the past decade, people from all over the world have become increasingly reliant on online sources to read the news and keep up with current events. Although news articles are meant to be unbiased sources of information, they often contain the same problematic biases that humans exhibit in everyday life. As the popularity of online news continues to increase, it is necessary to uncover the gender biases within these articles in order to counteract inequalities present in society today. The aim of this study is to analyze the many axes in which gender bias is present within news articles in order to generate new ideas on how to mitigate, and eventually eliminate, such biases.

2017 Certificate Graduates Independent Work

Elinor (Nora) Buck, PSY
Title of Project: Books Judged by their Covers: Revealing the Hidden Gender Biases in Impressions of Competence

Many of the inequalities in the world today are the result of incorrect, biased perceptions based on appearance during a first impression. This study shows that certain faces are perceived as less competent than others because of their feminine properties. With a statistical face model (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008; Todorov et al., 2013), we uncover this implicit bias that indicates women are perceived as less competent than men through trait judgments after exposure to faces manipulated on a scale of competence. Experiment 1 re-validates the Competence Model, an existing model of this social dimension (Todorov et al., 2013), as well as tests for the relationship between this model and trait judgments of attractiveness. This allows us to create a new model, a Difference Model, for Experiment 2, which looks to validate a [competence – attractiveness] model, as well as perform additional trait judgments of confidence and masculinity. Finally, Experiment 3 uses both the Competence and Difference Models for a gender classification test, providing strong evidence in favor of the hypothesis. The trait judgment of competence for both the Competence and Difference models demonstrated that the models were accurate in their representations, as the mean ratings increased steadily from the lowest to the highest SD. In addition, the gender classifications yielded results very similar to the competence judgments, with the proportion of faces rated as “Male” rising steadily from the lowest to the highest SD of competence. Most notably, the Difference Model, having removed the effects of attractiveness, shows an even stronger effect from each SD to the next. Therefore, we can conclude that perceptions of competence are highly correlated with gender bias against women – a troubling outcome for society.

Does technology aid this effect or detract from it? While the internet has served as an incubator and amplifier for many social phenomena, it may present an opportunity for women especially to be judged primarily on demonstrated competence instead of perceived competence.

Caroline Congdon, COS
Title of Project: Finding An Effective E-Waste Solution

As we move further and further into the technological age, production of electronic devices of varying purpose, size, and composition continues to expand rapidly. This growth has enabled numerous advancements in several areas, and this progress is a concept that has come to define the current era. Although growing use of technology has made an enormous positive impact, significant pitfalls have also emerged. One such hazard is the sizable increase in the production of electronic waste, also known as e-waste. Discarded televisions, personal computers, refrigerators, tablets, and mobile phones don’t follow a clear path to recycling, salvage, or disposal. Instead, they sit in storage or in landfills, often without protections to keep them from making a toxic environmental impact. Over three and a half million tons of e-waste was generated in 2012, almost double the amount from fifteen years prior. This number continues to grow at an alarming rate, while the recycling rate has stayed relatively low. A solution is necessary in order to combat the realities of this trend, which include dangerous environmental impacts, especially in developing nations. Such a solution will require logistic work, legal justification, and funding. This paper explores some of the proposed solutions, and synthesizes their best elements, via the lens of planned obsolescence.

Aleksandra Czulak, ECO
Title of Project: An Analysis of the Effects of School Closings and Openings on Crime in Chicago

In 2013, the Chicago Public School District closed almost 50 underutilized elementary schools and opened over 40 new schools of which over 30 were new charter schools that were mostly high schools. Two key issues continue to plague Chicago: access to high quality public schools and crime. These shocks to public schools are occurring in most major cities across the United States and it is essential for there to be more research on the effects of school changes on neighborhoods and communities. I analyze the effect of new school openings and school closures, beyond the classroom, on crime in Chicago community areas. The crime categories that I analyze are homicides, violent crime, index crime, and non-index crime and I use quarterly data on crime, changes in schools, and demographic data for Chicago from 2010-2016. Access to publicly available data by cities and the use of big data by cities and police departments offer new ways of looking at issues, like crime, which may result in best practices that may be adopted by other cities; however, it also requires a deeper understanding of the communities and the potential consequences of such initiatives.

Carole Touma, COS
Title of Project: The Racial Education Gap: A Look Beyond AP Exam Scores

This paper intends to provide an overview of the different ways AP exam data have been visualized during this semester’s independent work with respect to race, gender, particular AP exam, and year. The two main visualization methods implemented and discussed in the paper are line graphs plotting AP scores and participant volumes for various demographics over time, as well as an interactive map of the United States where race, gender, AP exam, state, and year can be modified.

Daphne Weinstein, COS
Title of Project: Creating a Decentralized Marketplace for Sensitive Data

Recent experience has taught us that centralized data storage is prone to attacks and surveillance. As more IoT devices come online, there will be consumer demand for a better model. We propose a system for decentralized storage and sale of user data. We build a decentralized data storage system using an existing blockchain and peer-to-peer file sharing system. This is the first system of its kind to take advantage of the affordances of smart contracts to sell data automatically upon conditions delineated by users. We propose the development of a rich vocabulary to describe and automatically ‘compile’ user preferences into smart contracts through which data items or streams of data can be automatically sold. In this way, our system empowers users to take control of their own data: selling it or storing it with exclusive access themselves.

Samantha Weissman, COS
Title of Project: You Are What You Eat: An Analysis of Manhattan Restaurant Health Inspections

Restaurant health inspection scores are an important factor in consumer decision making. My project analyzes Manhattan restaurant health inspection scores, as made publicly available through the New York City Open Data portal, with respect to income and demographic information in order to glean insights into the relationships between restaurants and their corresponding neighborhoods. The research project integrates income statistics and neighborhood composition to recognize and interpret trends in the restaurant inspection data. The project concludes that relevant trends do exist between restaurant health inspection scores and income and demographics; notably, a positive correlation was found between median household income and distributions of inspection scores, connections were made between concentrations of cuisine types and ethnic neighborhoods, and relationships were drawn between temporary restaurant closures and health inspection results.

Jeremy Zullow, WWS
Title of Project: Parking and Traffic in Urban Areas: Harnessing Technology to Drive Market-Based Solutions

Until recently, city governments relied on outdated policies that created surplus demand for parking spaces and, as a result, increased traffic. This was due primarily to the embedded belief that on-street parking should be kept free. However, solutions were also impeded by limited technological means to develop pricing and enforcement systems that could effectively manage parking availability. New technological systems facilitate real-time data curation and enable policymakers to change parking prices in response to consumer changes, and vary prices in areas of high and low parking demand to increase revenue and reach an optimal level of demand, given the fixed supply of parking spaces. In the process, they are also changing motorists’ behaviors and reducing traffic congestion. Available case studies from Seattle, San Francisco, and Redwood City indicate that technology-driven parking policies can be substantially more effective at reducing parking over saturation and traffic in large cities, while small cities may not need to adopt complex technology infrastructure to have a similar impact.

2016 Certificate Graduates Independent Work

Louis (Britt) Colcolough, ENG
Title of Project: Technology and Princeton: What the Education Giant Has Yet to Learn

American higher education is about go through a period of radical change. With an explosion of educational innovations like massive open online courses (or MOOCs) and flipped classrooms, college is beginning to look more and more different. These new ways to learn coincide with a widespread public outcry for colleges to reform themselves in the face of rising student debt and seeming undergraduate incompetency. The result, as Andrew Delbanco puts it in his book College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be, is that it would be “foolish to doubt that higher education is on the verge of upheaval.”

My work focuses on how Princeton has reacted and continues to react in this climate, specifically in the humanities departments. As technological innovation marches forward, what has a Princeton liberal arts education done to adapt? What are the intersections between technology and the humanities here, and do the two even complement one another in a meaningful sense? My research suggests that Princeton has a lot to learn.

Benjamin Dobkin, SOC
Title of Project: To Catch a Redditor: Studying the Identity of Anonymous Users on Reddit, Online and Offline

Anonymous users of online networks deal with the conundrum of needing to create a new identity to participate as individuals in a network. An anonymous identity is paradoxical as the two terms directly oppose each other. However, users who desire to benefit in their network, must create an identity to maximize their online presence and social capital. In the offline world, a separate social capital exists, as users shun their online identity to better achive physical benefits. The social news site Reddit presents this difference between the online and offline, and allows us to view user histories, conduct in depth interviews with users, and observe offline meetups. Although the research focuses on the offline and online realm separately, it emphasizes the connection and overlap as all users participate in both worlds. This work aims to analyze the backwards progression of online to offline interaction among Reddit users.

Caroline Haas, COS
Title of Project: Bidding for Healthcare: A Two-Sided Market Exploration

America’s healthcare system is broken. The cost of care is rising and consumers are faced with limited choice and minimal pricing data. In this study, I present the idea of a novel healthcare marketplace where physicians bid for patients’ business. The marketplace would provide pricing insights, quality metrics, and discovery opportunities to patients and doctors, thereby injecting competition into this broken healthcare system. To test the feasibility of such a marketplace, I composed market research surveys. Through the research firm Qualtrics, I administered the surveys to 50 recent (past 3 years) patients of Lasik eye surgery and 10 current physicians of Lasik. Lasik patients and physicians were chosen because the specialty is non-insured, the price is highly variable, and the procedure is relatively high-volume in the US. The results indicate that patients are eager for shoppable healthcare and like the proposed marketplace, but that physicians are more resistant to technology and to direct competition. For both patients and physicians, it is clear that for the proposed marketplace to achieve success, the design and marketing must be careful to cater to both consumers’ and physicians’ psychologies.

Jack Hudson, COS
Title of Project: TigerTreat: An Exploration of Technology and Generosity Integration and Student Venture Policy at Princeton University

Recently, many universities have been rigorously promoting innovation on their campuses. Although universities are building resources to enable innovation, many have policies that restrict student innovation in order to protect their non-profit and tax-exempt status. This paper explores a treat delivery service called TigerTreat, its integration with the Princeton University campus, and the university policy hurdles it encountered. By reviewing Princeton University’s policies towards revenue-generating student activities and comparing Princeton University’s policies to those of other universities, this paper proposes three recommendations for Princeton University policy changes: (1) create an official document detailing Student Agency regulations, (2) create a separate set of regulations for profit-generating activities, and (3) establish an objective administration approval and oversight structure.

Samuel Jordan, COS
Title of Project: Bad Choices made by Brilliant People: Explaining the lack of transport-level security on the modern Internet

The Internet, as it exists today, is one of the most successful tools for communication that humans have ever built. A recent major concern about the Internet, greatly fueled by Edward Snowden’s release of documents detailing the NSA’s broad and pervasive Internet eavesdropping capabilities, has been the absence of encryption. Despite some clear architectural advantages for this approach, there is no widely adapted protocol for network-level encryption. Using a great variety of sources ranging from technical protocol specifications (RFCs), academic journals, and email archives, it becomes clear that the underlying causes for the lack of encryption are threefold: the technological momentum of a design focus on reliable rather than secure communication, hardware (and software) limitations, and externally imposed restrictions on communication between key designers. Analyzing a host of frequently ignored sources to examine the little-studied topic allows us to better understand how we arrived at the current state of network-level encryption, and create an explanatory framework for why things like the NSA surveillance revealed in the Snowden leaks are still possible on today’s Internet.

Rishi Kaneriya, COS
Title of Project: MyLight: The “One Stop Shop” for the Average Philanthropist

MyLight is a web application designed to serve as the “one stop shop” for the average philanthropist looking to donate to non-profit organizations online. It recommends charities to users based on their personal charitable interests, visualizes data about them in an easy-to-understand way that inspires action, integrates current events about charities in the news, and contains social functionality to help users stay connected to fellow donors.

This paper discusses related charity-finding products before detailing the ways in which MyLight differentiates itself as a truly integrated solution. It also discusses the technical implementation of the application, as well as ways in which it was evaluated, before culminating in a discussion of potential improvements that could refine MyLight’s ability to empower everyday philanthropists in the future.

Gabriela Leichnitz, COS
Title of Project: A Princeton On-Demand Transportation Platform and Its Implications on Policy, Safety, and Accessibility

Current On-Demand transportation networks, as implemented at Princeton University and at other schools across the country, are inherently outdated and inefficient, as they rely solely on phone calls for information sharing. This paper addresses the ways in which an On-Demand transportation platform can use technology to simplify the process and ease the exchange of information for all parties. Furthermore, it delves into the policy implications of such a platform, specifically as it relates to overall effectiveness, efficiency, and safety. It then details a prototype developed using MEAN.JS. This preliminary system consists of a web application, used on desktop for dispatchers but designed for mobile responsiveness for riders. The semester project produced a working prototype intended to address the most glaring policy and use problems, but future potential lies in its integration with Princeton’s network and a complete implementation with more complex features and the direct involvement of the bus driver.

Stephanie Marani, COS
Title of Project: InfraShare Mobile: Crowdsourcing Plant Health Using Near-Infrared Photography

As trees and other vegetation are crucial in regulating and maintaining our ecosystem, monitoring their health is an important task. This job often falls to those who work for environment-related institutions; however this does not have to be the case. Many organizations have begun to use crowdsourcing and volunteer recruitment to help collect environmental data, which allows for ecosystem monitoring to be increasingly efficient. This thesis introduces InfraShare Mobile, an open source mobile application framework that provides a simple, easy process for plant health data to be obtained and analyzed. It allows anyone to use commercial-off-the-shelf devices, including webcams and digital cameras, to take near-infrared photos of vegetation and then analyze these photos on their mobile devices. These photos are then uploaded to a companion web application where they can be viewed along with their location and other information. After using three different cameras to evaluate InfraShare Mobile, it is clear that the application allows for detailed data on plant health to be collected on a wide scale, low cost basis, and that it will allow environmentalists to have access to more information about the current state of the natural environment.

Tess Marchant, COS
Title of Project: What Does Facebook Know: Behavioral Targeting for Personalized Ads

This project is aimed highlighting the importance of increasing public awareness and education regarding web privacy. New forms of web tracking are explained and discussed, the specific information being collected by popular social networking sites is disclosed, and the methodology of a new web app that will inform and empower the public to change their browser preferences to reflect their personal beliefs is introduced. This application was inspired by previous research indicating a disconnect between fears people have regarding privacy online and the actions they take to ensure that their online behaviors are, in fact, private. Its ultimate goal is to help connect those fears and actions, and to continue the web privacy discussion in general.

Alec Jacob (A.J.) Ranzato, SOC
Title of Project: I-Robot to We-Robot: Exploring the Effects of Team Structure on Team Dynamics, Decision Making, and Performance, when Working with a Remote Robot

In this study I gave teams of five a team structure, condition or hierarchy, and tasked them with controlling a remote robot through an experimental space with the goal of maximizing exploration and exploitation. They were given 90 minutes, and within that 90 minutes had a series of (max) 10-minute windows to send a series of commands to their robot in bulk consisting of movement and pictures, which were used to help in following planning sessions. Ultimately, three groups emerged, tightly coupled hierarchical and consensus ones, and loosely coupled versions of both. Loosely coupled teams proved to be best suited for the task as they could maintain brief social order centered around their robot teammate where their team structure provided little. They could then neutralize the advantages of their given structure and adopt the advantages of the other.

Paarth Shah, WWS
Title of Project: Redefining the Smart City: An Analysis of the 100 Largest Cities in America

This paper studies the emergence of Smart Cities in the United States. These are not new constructions of cities but rather retrofitting of existing metropolitan areas. 89 of the 100 largest cities in America have used the terms “smart city”, “smart growth”, or “smart technology” in their government documentation. The motive of the paper is to both analyze and refine the definition of a smart city, given its vagueness in the literature. After an analysis of definitions proposed by various stakeholders, it is suggested that a smart city ought to have high levels of information and communication technology, social capital, infrastructure and education. I then use proxy variables for each of these metrics and regress these variables against well-being and satisfaction within a city for the 100 largest cities in America, since the underlying goal of a city is to ultimately increase the level of well-being and quality of life for its citizens. The paper concludes with 4 dyadic case studies which look at pairs of cities which are close to each other in geography and population but perform very differently on the Smart City Index, a weighted average for the 4 variables mentioned above. These dyadic pairs are analyzed to offer some insights into why certain cities have performed better on the Smart City Index relative to others, pointing out key investments made by particular cities in technology, education, infrastructure and social capital which have resulted in higher levels of well-being.

Edward S. Walker, Jr., ORFE
Title of Project: A Method of Pose Estimation Using April Tags for the Picking and Stowing Problems

This paper introduces a new approach to pose estimation for the picking and stowing problems. The approach uses April tags attached to an item to estimate its pose with a single image. In testing, the approach has a root mean square error of 4.5mm against a SIFT and RANSAC method on items used in the 2015 Amazon Picking Challenge. This approach could be valuable for placing items on and off warehouse shelves and for other applications.

2015 Certificate Graduates Independent Work

Gabriel Ambruso, COS
Title of Project: Finding Computer Time: Load-Balancing of Public Terminals

Ease of access to public terminals is a concern for the 77 million Americans that use them. These individuals rely on these terminals for the Internet connectivity and productivity tools they provide. Factors that hinder access to public terminals include heavy competition for their use and an inability to determine what time is best to attend a locale with such terminals.

This paper outlines a framework for load-balancing public terminals. This framework focuses on load-balancing terminals at a location by providing users with information on the expected number of available terminals at any given time and the peak usage hours on any given day. Using this information, users can align their trips with non-peak hours and lessen the amount of competition for public terminals by spreading out their visits. Once this framework is deployed at multiple locations with terminals in a single area, its data can be used to direct users to the location with the most available terminals and increase the efficiency with which these terminals are used.

Green Choi, COS
Title of Project: An Automated Approach to Ad Tracker Detection and Classification

In this paper we propose an automated system for detecting, categorizing, and verifying ad trackers on the web. We base this system on the OpenWPM platform developed by Englehardt et al., which we leverage to create an “aggressive” attempt at maximizing tracker coverage while minimizing the potential negative impact on functionality. We explored the suitability of structural “A/B” DOM tree variations in fitting supervised learning models. In doing so, we observe potential advanced tracking methods like cookie syncing in the wild and attempt to explain the limitations of relying on patterns in DOM structural data in classification. Finally, we propose next steps towards the improvement of tracker detection and classification in hopes of overcoming the observed limitations of DOM structural features in generalizing to the diverse content found across the web.

Cara de Freitas Bart, COS
Title of Project: Safety is Our Priority: The Legal Issues with Autonomous Vehicles

Vehicles are now computers on wheels as increasing amounts of software assist drivers to safely navigate the roads. Autonomous vehicles, for which humans will not have to physically drive the cars, will be ready for production in the next few years. To safeguard humans’ safety on the roads, policymakers must write the necessary legislation to ensure the safe testing, development, and integration of autonomous vehicle technology before it is released to the public.

But is the United States ready for this leap in technology? This research focuses on the development of autonomous vehicles in the United States and the legal issues that must be addressed. Through a combination of legal documents, laws, academic research papers, and interviews with industry experts, an evaluation of autonomous vehicle technology and legislation that prioritizes road safety is presented. Politicians and government officials, who usually lack a strong technical background, are the intended audience because they must address the legislative challenges of autonomous vehicles.

Stephanie Goldberg, ELE
Title of Project: A Comprehensive Survey of the Security of the Internet of Things

With an estimation of 50 billion smart devices utilized across the world by 2020, there is an imperative growing need for security across these devices. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a term referring to smart devices, or those atypical devices and household items that are connected to the Internet, which provides a global communication network. These devices range in use, size and power, but all ultimately provide a more technologically advanced and intuitive environment. These devices, composed of sensors, computing devices, controllers and actuators, take in information about their environment (ex. person, building or vehicle) and utilize their own communication network protocols to connect to the Internet, where they send data, interpret the meaning of the data and then actuate on the environment accordingly.

Unfortunately, these devices today are largely insecure and are quite vulnerable to attacks of all types. By identifying commonalities across all types of smart devices that make up the Internet of Things, this paper will provide a device framework for security that can be applied to make a secure “thing”. This paper will offer a comprehensive set of recommendations on security fixes and protocols that together will form a security backbone for IoT. Additionally, this article will explore policy concerns based around privacy and security issues exploited by these devices.

Elisse Hill, COS
Title of Project: Incentivizing IPv6 Deployment by Improving Transit Performance with the Teredo Protocol

IPv6 is the Internet addressing system that has been slated to replace the existing protocol, IPv4, since the inception of IPv6 in 1998. This replacement is necessary because the number of IPv4 addresses does not satisfy the current demand based on population and the fact that people have multiple Internet-connected devices. IPv6, on the other hand, offers 7.9*10^8 times more addresses than IPv4. Thus, IPv6 adoption is an important step in the future advancements of the Internet. The slow deployment of IPv6 is due to many reasons, but we must hasten deployment.

One solution to do this is to use the Teredo protocol, which encapsulates IPv6 packets in IPv4 packets. This method is the primary method I used in my methodology. However, it is important that adopting Teredo maintains that the system depends on IPv4, when it should use IPv6 exclusively. Therefore, there must be strong methods to encourage IPv6 adoption. One of the methods that I suggest in my paper is to use federal regulation in order to encourage the deployment of this technology and thus help our society solve some of its pending technological issues.

Judy Jansen, ENG
Title of Project: A Web of Non-Sense: Pale Fire as Precaution to Hypertext Literature

When Vannevar Bush envisioned his “memex” machine in the 1945 Atlantic Monthly article “As We May Think,” he anticipated many of the forthcoming changes for literature within the Digital Age. Bush imagined a device that would gather all of literature into a connected system akin to the associational networks of the mind. Although Bush only conjectured this concept, information technology scholar Ted Nelson began to build one of the first hypertext systems, called Project Xanadu, five years later. This ambitious endeavor never achieved its aim of compiling all of literature, but the attempt at a physical manifestation of Bush’s ideas inspired the myriad of hypertext systems to come. After Bush’s publication, many computer scientists and writers alike both conceptualized and criticized hypertext literature: readers could link any writing to any other, breaking down the traditional process of reading a linear narrative.

Vladimir Nabokov explored the idea of hypertext in his illustrious 1962 book Pale Fire. The fictional madman Charles Kinbote narrates the book’s foreword, commentary, and index, which all cite and refer back to a 999-line poem written by Kinbote’s neighbor, John Shade. The commentary surrounding the poem unravels into a convoluted story of its own. Critics have noted briefly the book’s foreshadowing of hypertext literature; Nelson even planned to use Pale Fire for his demo of Project Xanadu in 1969. However, this paper focuses on how Nabokov anticipates hypertext literature and what he believes this means for future literary agency. Through a complex cyclical and linear structure, distorted perspectives, and multivalent language, Nabokov’s Pale Fire warns readers of the danger of losing direction, authority, and clarity in an age of abundantly accessible writing. With the rise of hypertext, Nabokov reminds readers that we must slow down and close read in order to make sense of the truth embedded in webs of information.

Michael Katz, EAS
Title of Project: Bridging Zhongguancun and Silicon Valley: How the Chinese Government Is Constructing a Technology Ecosystem That Conforms to Western Standards of Innovation

China’s post-reform economic development, bolstered by rapid industrial growth, has allowed China to become to world’s largest economy. However, the threats of stagnant growth and the “middle-income trap” due to shifting labor trends have provoked action from the top levels of the state government. With the introduction of the 2006 Medium- to Long-Term Plan for the Development of Science and Technology (MLP), Party officials began to increase rhetoric surrounding an “innovative” China, implementing numerous policies to promote a vibrant innovation ecosystem. However, rather than embrace the qualities that have characterized the success China’s recent tech giants like Alibaba and Baidu, the Chinese government is seeking to conform to a more Western standard of innovation. This paper present a conception of innovation that differs from the traditional, Silicon-Valley-centric view, and critically questions the means by which the Chinese government is politically influencing the direction of Chinese technological development. By financially incentivizing patent generation, as well as selectively funding R&D-focused companies and university departments, Chinese leaders have emphasized a paradigm of “innovation” that is more recognizable for critics who might otherwise dismiss China’s past technological accomplishments. The paper uses Chinese primary sources to closely examine the common themes and discrepancies in Chinese rhetoric surrounding “innovation,” and looks to elucidate the preconceptions that we hold in assessing innovation.

Oscar Li, COS
Title of Project: RAPTor: Routing Attacks Against Privacy in Tor

Tor is an anonymity system that protects its millions of daily users from Internet surveillance. Its users include journalists, law enforcement, activists, businesses, and ordinary citizens concerned with online privacy. Nonetheless, Tor is not completely secure. If an autonomous system (AS) can observe traffic between the Tor client and guard relay and also between the exit relay and destination, the AS can correlate packet timings and sizes to deanonymize the Tor user. This renders Tor useless.

Prior research has investigated this threat but largely in the context of symmetric and static Internet paths. In reality, Internet paths are dynamic and asymmetric. Hence, we present RAPTor – a new set of attacks on Tor that leverage the dynamic and asymmetric nature of Internet paths to deanonymize even more Tor users than previously thought possible. We have built a Tor Path Simulation System that quantifies the impact of RAPTor on Tor security and a Traceroute Monitoring Framework that detects and analyzes RAPTor. On a whole, our work calls attention to the dangers of abstracting network routing in analyzing the security of anonymity systems.

Adam Suczewski, COS
Title of Project: Real-time, Multi-User Facial Detection with Applications

This is a three-part project with an emphasis on implementation and applications. The first part consists of extending the open-source CLMtrackr face detection library to support tracking of multiple users per image or video frame rather than a single user. The second part explores applications made possible by multi-user face detection, with an emphasis on facial recognition. The third part explores societal implications of new facial recognition technologies.

Raymond Zhong, COS
Title of Project: Analysis of the Bitcoin Blockchain

Bitcoin is a virtual currency maintained by a decentralized network of participants, who are able to broadcast cryptographically signed transactions in order to move balances between accounts. The full history of Bitcoin transactions is available to anyone connected to the network; this project involved implementing a set of analytical tools for efficiently indexing and querying up to the full set of transactions. A data store was developed using a key-value database and optimized to achieve significantly higher read/write performance than existing SQL-based blockchain databases. Indexing and query infrastructure were implemented, including functionality for traversing over the graph of transactions and aggregating and generating views of data. Finally, the different parts of this project were integrated in a single application that watches for and processes new blocks as they are broadcast, and serves generated statistics through a web interface.

2014 Certificate Graduates Independent Work

Daniel Chyan, COS
Title of Project: Investigating Censorship through Detecting Modified Content

This paper details the process of creation of a tool to monitor and detect censorship among a
large set of URLs and its application on a popular Chinese news site. The creation of this tool stemmed from an earlier effort to identify potentially censored keywords based off of lexical relations. Development issues from the censored keyword identification system prompted a shift in strategy from a lexical approach to a crawling and monitoring approach. Results from the censorship detection tool has revealed some amount of content modification to the monitored URLs and further exploration is necessary to realize the full potential of this tool. Future application of this tool can lead to better censored keyword detectors and provide, in a timely manner, stronger insight into topics being censored.

Vladimir Costescu, COS
Title of Project: Interviewing with Glass: Investigating a Potential Application of Wearable Technology

In recent years, rapid technological advances have increasingly enabled the miniaturization of computing devices, leading to the proliferation of powerful smartphones, TV streaming dongles such as the Chromecast, and a new array of wearable computers embedded in objects such as watches and glasses. In this paper, I am studying the potential impact of Google Glass in the corporate world, specifically considering the usability of the device as an aid to human resources personnel in the process of conducting interviews with job applicants. To this end, I met with a number of employees at a software company that fulfills US government contracts and pitched the idea of a Glass app that would help streamline the interview process. In the course of discussing the potential functionality of such an app, I gained valuable feedback from key personnel inside the company, including tech leads, human resources personnel, and even the COO and CTO of the company about features they would like to see in an interview app and also about the usability of the device in general.

Owen Gaffney, POL
Title of Project: Uncharted Waters: Re-evaluating the Ethics of Extraterratorial Surveillance

In response to a recent movement – catalyzed by Edward Snowdon’s NSA leaks – in support for an international right to privacy (and corresponding international laws) this thesis does a historical review of the circumstances, causes and purposes around which the West formed its collective ethical framework in relation to the concept of “Just Intelligence.” After establishing this framework a number of changes in the world, brought around by politics and technological advances, are reviewed. The framework is then reevaluated in the context of this changed world and the evolving nature of threats to national security and is shown to fall short in several areas. Ultimately, the NSA’s continuing surveillance of foreign citizens is supported under this new framework of “Just Intelligence.”

Lucas Ho, COS
Title of Project: Meaningful Use Attestation and Hospital Acquired Infections

Research has shown that hospital acquired infections (HAIs) cost our healthcare system $10 billion a year. Furthermore, up to half of these infections can be prevented. Motivated by these facts, recent literature has suggested that increasing electronic health record (EHR) usage can significantly reduce HAIs similar to how checklists improve safety and quality control. Small-scale pilot studies have confirmed this hypothesis, but are these isolated incidents or do they point towards a larger trend? This project seeks to analyze open government data, courtesy of Data.gov, on national EHR adoption (represented in this project as meaningful use attestation) and HAI rates. I will use a JavaScript data visualization library to create a state-by-state visualization of the current relationship between the two factors in order to seek an answer to the question posed above.

Sing Sing Ma, REL
Title of Project: 140 Character Limits: A Study on Change, Responses to Pope Francis, and the Impact of Digital Media

When the Vatican adopted Twitter as a communication method, the conflict between technology and tradition converged onto one social media account. Scholars predicted a decline of religious belief when the Internet allowed everyone a voice, undermining the authority of a pulpit. This paper investigates the question of change and the papacy, using the lenses of influence on media, religious participation, and authority. The primary focus is on the favorites, re-tweets, and mentions of Pope Francis and his tweets.

Carmina Mancenon, ORFE
Title of Project: The Startup Spring: Leveraging Public Policy to Increase Capital Pools for Technology Startups in Turkey and Jordan

Money is an indispensable component of bringing a vision to life in the entrepreneurship space. Indeed, 90% of startups fail primarily due to a lack of sufficient funding, according to the United States Small Business Administration. To this end, governments have the potential to influence the capital pool available to startups through financial policies such as tax incentives and grants. This paper proposes a framework for governments to understand the health of their country from an entrepreneurship perspective, specifically in the technology sector, and enact tailored policies to create an ecosystem conducive to innovation and creation substantiated by comparatively increased financial means. We apply this model to technology startups in Turkey and Jordan.

The methodology used to create this model involves regression and applied time series analyses to deduce the funding crunch area and financial policy priorities. This data is collected from publicly available investment tables on Crunchbase, press releases, and news articles, as well as results from surveys conducted by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. These are supplemented by qualitative data based on 30+ interviews conducted with both investors and entrepreneurs in Turkey and Jordan through collaboration with Endeavor Global. Ultimately, we present a systematic, ‘plug-and-chug’ framework for governments to customize in order to begin taking action.

Dillon Reisman, COS
Title of Project: Cookie Crumbs and Unwelcome Javascript: Evaluating the hidden privacy threats posed by the “mashed-up” web

Many modern websites are built on a “mash-up” of numerous web technologies and libraries. This combined with the ubiquity of third-party web tracking can open up a user to an increasingly large array of threats to her privacy from many angles. Our paper is a comprehensive evaluation of how the structure of the web can enable new forms of privacy violation and measures these new threats’ severity.

In this paper, we first define a novel form of passive network surveillance we term “cookie linking.” Through this method an eavesdropper observing a user’s HTTP tracking cookies on a network can transitively link shared unique cookies to reconstruct that user’s web browsing history, even if IP varies across time. Using simulated browsing profiles we find that for a typical user over 90% of web sites with embedded trackers are located in the large component of visited sites created through cookie linking. The privacy implications of cookie linking are made more acute by the prevalence of identity leakage. In a survey of top web sites we find that over half of those sites leak the identity of logged-in users to an eavesdropper in unencrypted traffic. The eavesdropper thus both identifies a user and uncovers a majority of her web history through passive means.

Second, we evaluate how the third-party Javascript-handling practices of popular sites further exposes users to potential privacy violations. We employ a man-in-the-middle attack to model what information malicious Javascript put in the place of approved third-party Javascript can exfiltrate to a malicious server. We find that third-party Javascript is very often permitted to execute in unsupervised environments, where it is free to collect everything from user cookies to keystrokes. Compromised third-party Javascript presents a significant privacy threat against users that many sites help enable.

We ultimately conclude that the most effective method of preventing the above privacy violations is through blocking third-parties on websites, often done via a browser plug-in. These may limit a site’s functionality, however, leaving users without a satisfactory option to protect themselves.

Anna Kornfeld Simpson, COS
Title of Project: History Independent File System on an Insecure Flash Device

Keeping data on a hard drive safe is of critical importance for consumers and advances in file system and computer security have struggled to keep pace with powerful adversarial capabilities. Solid state drives (SSDs) provide new challenges for disk security because of their wear levelling properties: the disk controller maps between physical and virtual memory blocks in order to keep the disk from being worn out too quickly, which means that the operating system cannot guarantee that a particular block is erased or overwritten on the disk. This thesis presents a method for securing file-system history from an adversary with forensic access to such a disk by extending previous work on secure deletion on SSDs.

As well as addressing the technical problems of encryption and systems-building, the design of this project and other security technologies must consider the adversarial scenarios where this technology may be used in order to ensure that the design captures the correct metaphors for secure use. Who are the potential users of the technology? What capabilities will their adversaries have? How will existing policy regimes and social norms affect the adoption of the technology? This talk will describe the technical insights of my thesis project and then focus on the choice of threat model and the impact of the above considerations on the design.

Rosemary Wang, ELE
Title of project: A Study of Mobile Video Power Consumption over HetNets

Given that user consumption of data over mobile technologies and the number of applications requiring higher data rates are increasing, the next generation of mobile technology needs to handle demand for more reliable, higher quality data. In particular, the amount of traffic from video is a growing concern for wired and wireless traffic management. One solution to this problem to distribute the traffic without compromising user experience would be to use heterogeneous networks (HetNets) to switch between technologies or utilize them simultaneously to improve the reliability, quality, and throughput of data. These multiple radio access technologies (multi-RATs) can be used to improve Quality of Experience (QoE) with video at the cost of increased power consumption for the user’s mobile device. This study analyzed video traffic at the packet-level and its impact on device power consumption, determined differences between mobile technologies and wired technologies in both power consumption and packet interactions, and determined the factors that indicate the need to switch to a different technology. Furthermore, these findings apply to the existing policy surrounding net neutrality and the importance of reasonable network management. The usage of multi-RAT implementations raise questions regarding an individual network’s ability to handle video traffic, the increased convergence in technology today, and the differing net neutrality standards for wired and wireless technologies. The conclusions regarding packet-level interactions for video, one of the most bandwidth-heavy applications today, provide a framework for evaluating network neutrality in order to maintain user QoE.

Harvest Zhang, COS
Title of project: Efficient Packet Traceback in Software-Defined Networks

This paper presents an efficient method for performing packet traceback in software-defined networks. While previous work explores tracing packets forward from their point of entry, the problem of packet traceback is to determine, given a packet that has arrived at a switch in the network, all possible paths it could have taken to get there from its point of ingress. Packet traceback is useful for tracing attacks, network debugging, monitoring performance, and so on; multiple autonomous systems may also collaborate to enable packet tracebacks across domains. Given a network policy consisting of functions that define how packets are handled at each switch, we compute a traceback policy that we use to reconstruct the flagged packet’s possible paths through the network. This traceback is performed entirely by the controller without incurring any overhead on the data plane, and no additional flow rules need to be installed at the switch level.

2013 Certificate Graduates Independent Work

R. Auduong, ARC
Title of project: ALMOST HUMAN: Robots in Architecture and the Narrative of Control

In the 21st century, robots are increasingly capable and common in everyday life. As robotic technologies continue to develop, humans like to believe that they are in complete control of technology, but to what extent might robotic technologies exert an influence of their own?

The thesis seeks to explore how humans, robots, and architecture are influencing each other today. The approach for this thesis exploits the natural analogy between humans and robots: Essentially, both sense, “think,” and act, but the mechanisms used are very different. The technological, spatial, and visual consequences of these differences are considered as important indicators of how these three subjects interact today.

The scope of the project encompasses two radically different environments: industrial and domestic. Through case studies of non-humanoid and humanoid robots (Kiva Systems, Baxter, Roomba, and ASIMO), it is shown that human-robot-architecture interactions are very context specific. In industrial case studies, robots have a strong influence over architectural design and the role of the human worker; but in the domestic setting, robot designs are adapted to existing patterns of residential architecture and human behaviors. The interchange between robots, humans, and architecture is multidirectional and multimodal.

Daniel Feinberg, WWS
Title of project: International Regimes of the Internet and Aviation: Structure, Preferences, and Technology

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has, since its inception, provided scholars with a compelling puzzle: how did a private corporation come into a position of authority over the Internet and what keeps it in control? To address these key questions about ICANN, this thesis seeks to create a cohesive model of technological regimes in order to understand ICANN’s current position as well as its prospects for change. To build such a model, this thesis looks at the case of international aviation in the post-World War II era, studying both the similarities and differences between the two cases. By combining these cases, a model of technological change in complex interdependence can be constructed, providing a theoretical framework that can be utilized to assess ICANN.

Michael Franklin, COS
Title of project: A Statistical Approach to the Detection of Behavioral Tracking on the Web

Online Behavioral Targeting is a controversial practice for which rigorous detection and analysis is challenging. The capacity to make strong claims about Behavioral Targeting in “the wild” would be valuable for policy makers. In this paper we present a conception of browser-server interactions and a novel statistical approach to detecting Behavioral Targeting that leverages this formulation. This approach allows us to make precise claims about Behavioral Targeting and achieve valuable automation of analysis.

Marianne Jullian, COS
Title of project: Visualizing Expression: A Visual Analysis of Literary Works and Nonliteral Copying in the Context of Copyright Infringement

In the domain of copyright law that deals with fictional works, issues of nonliteral copying have been quite contentious. The focus has been on how to protect the public domain against monopolies of ideas that serve as fodder for creative writings, while also providing adequate protection for authors’ expressions of ideas in order to incentivize future work. Several judges have developed tests that can be applied to fictional works, however they are rather abstract and rely on the discretion of those involved in individual court cases.

With this in mind, I sought out to develop an automated method that seeks to identify unique expressions of ideas in literary works. Drawing from discussions of nonliteral copying in the context of copyright infringement, expressions are hereafter defined as patterns composed of the following literary components: writing style, character development, plot themes, parallelism of incidents, and relationships between characters. The method I propose as a tool for detecting nonliteral copying is a data visualization. This method relies on computational linguistics and also on the power of data visualization to uncover otherwise obscured patterns of expression through the use of color, layers, and small multiples.

The efficacy of the linguistic analysis and data visualization is judged by its ability to accurately identify important characters, concepts, and plot developments on works in isolation. Additionally, the efficacy of the data visualization as a tool for identifying nonliteral copying is analyzed using works written by the same author and the comparison of its application to a work and its parody.

Emma Lawless, ANT
Title of project: Trusting Paper, Trusting People: The Role of Documentation for Trustworthy Conditions in Spacecraft Work

My project developed out of six weeks of qualitative fieldwork at two space science laboratories in Boulder, CO. It explores the crucial roles that regimes of documentation played in creating trustworthy working conditions for team members on several NASA missions working out of these labs. In working with technological tools from simple spreadsheet programs to more customized spacecraft visualization tools, my interlocutors employed a variety of low-tech, paper documentation practices which were instrumental in allowing the team members to achieve confidence in their working conditions and the products they were generating. Essentially, far from being empty bureaucratic requirements, paper documents functioned to infuse reliability into the work processes of my interlocutors, contributing to a sense of “trust-in-familiar-form” which characterized the work I observed.

Shreya Murthy, POL
Title of project: A Theory of Privacy

This paper presents a theoretical account of the right to privacy. It discusses the problems that are typically encountered when one attempts to define or defend privacy and explains the need for a conceptually distinct and clearly articulated concept of privacy. It then examines in detail the perspectives on privacy that have been offered by philosophers and legal scholars thus far and then presents a new conception of privacy. Informed by a thorough understanding of the problems of privacy and the shortcomings of the major perspectives, the theory of privacy presented in this paper provides a valuable grounding for both legal and technological approaches to privacy protection.

Eleanor (Nora) Taranto, HOS
Title of project: Too Fast, Too Soon? The Privacy Implications of Electronic-Medical-Record System Adoption

The privacy rights of medical patients are expansive, especially in the United States since the passage of HIPAA in 1996. Since then, medical institutions have also begun to implement electronic medical record (EMR) and electronic health record (EHR) systems at a fast rate. These systems provide some practical benefits for the medical community, but also raise serious privacy concerns—worries in particular about how well such systems protect against confidentiality breaches. The vast number of privacy breaches in these new EMR systems, even with protective mechanisms in place, leads me to make four recommendations that may be useful in preventing more data breaches: 1) strengthening of access control; 2) encryption of stored data as well as data in transit; 3) better use of data logs through the development of anomaly-detection algorithms; and 4) caution on the part of medical institutions and policymakers in adopting only those EMR/EHR systems with adequate protective mechanisms.

2012 Certificate Graduates Independent Work

Jasika Bawa, ELE
Title of project: TUBE – Time-dependent Usage-based Broadband price Engineering

TUBE (Time-dependent Usage-based Broadband price Engineering) is a system that aims to bridge the digital divide by computing and delivering pricing incentives for wireless usage. It is anticipated that this, in turn, will enable wireless providers to make wireless data available to a wider audience.

The notion behind being able to deliver pricing incentives is that charging users different prices for Internet access at different times of the day will incentivize them to spread their demand for bandwidth across various different times of the day. This is also a viable way of maximizing the use of capacity of a wireless spectrum. With the high rate of penetration by smartphones, tablets and other Internet-capable mobile devices, wireless Internet usage has been increasing at an extremely fast pace, with more users consuming larger amounts of data. However, ordinarily, heavy usage is concentrated during a few peak hours of the day which forces ISPs to overprovision in order to handle such concentrated heavy usage. Thus, pricing by timing is advantageous not only for end users (particularly those affected by the digital divide) but also for wireless providers. Finally, although congestion pricing has been implemented, ISPs are increasingly finding that the traditional models are insufficient to meet the challenge of growing demand for bandwidth.

In the fall semester, I helped design and develop an Android application to enable users to control their budget for mobile broadband in an informed manner. This involved providing rich information regarding overall data use, app-specific data use, budget expenditure per day and the like, providing notifications regarding good and bad times to launch data-hungry applications (such as YouTube) and providing the user with a way to schedule applications.

This semester I am working on data analysis to help provide the TUBE team with information regarding user preferences. From a set of surveys filled out by Princeton students, I have had the chance to work on quantifying delay sensitivity to Internet applications. From a second data set of survey participants from India, I will have the opportunity to further quantify socio-economic demographics’ price and delay sensitivity to the same.

Andrew Bristow, SOC
Title of project: Cruelty in the Digital Age – Adolescents and Online Bullying

In the everyday social interactions of adolescents, a number of cruel behaviors associated with bullying have expanded online, sometimes shifting in the process. Existing research shows that the nature of online space allows bullying to be even more damaging than its offline counterpart. Online bullying can have many, if not more, of the same negative consequences of the offline variant.

The current study provides a framework to study online bullying. In particular, this study presents a way to gather information on adolescents’ perspective on this phenomenon and to identify the components of their support network. This study seeks to understand parental involvement in online space and to contribute to a body of literature that claims online and offline spaces have become intertwined in such a way that distinctions between the “real” and “virtual” world are no longer appropriate. I apply this framework to newly collected data from middle school students in the greater Mercer County area. Results of this implementation are discussed at length herein, along with implications for parents, school personnel, and policymakers.

Rebecca Lee, WWS
Title of project: Contested Control: European Data Privacy Regulations and the Assertion of Jurisdiction over American Businesses

In the European Union, a comprehensive data privacy law called the Data Protection Directive governs the collection, use, storage, and dissemination of European personal data. Any data controller – regardless of its geographical location – that accesses and collects European personal data must comply with Directive. However, the Directive was adopted in 1995 and has since become out of date. On January 25, 2012, the European Commission published its proposal for a new comprehensive data privacy law, the Data Protection Regulation.

This thesis examines the Data Protection Regulation and its potential effects on American businesses, consumers, and society. Specifically, I analyze the mechanisms through which European policymakers attempt to secure the compliance of American businesses and the substantive requirements for compliance. I illustrate how data privacy provisions such as the explicit consent requirements and the right to be forgotten conflict with American business practices, political values, and legal principles. I conclude by suggesting that American policymakers may want to take a more active role in influencing the final shape of the Data Protection Regulation.

Jay Parikh, WWS
Title of project: Evading Government Censorship: the Labor Movement’s Use of the Internet

In China, rapid Internet growth had given hope to a renewed civil society movement focused on improving human rights, labor conditions, environmental concerns, and addressing a number of other issues. This hope, however, was tempered with the reality of comprehensive government censorship of information technology.

This paper seeks to clarify the aggregate effect of Internet censorship on the development of domestic civil society institutions in China by focusing on the labor movement and workers’ rights issues. The labor movement serves as an effective vehicle to examine the broader civic sector for two reasons. First, the government is particularly concerned with the effect of organized labor on political reform; therefore, censorship of these movements is pervasive. Second, the labor movement has been adept at harnessing technology since it is the only way they can effectively compete with widespread communication networks possessed by the state and marketplace.

This paper is organized into five parts: first, I present the theoretical argument underlying the power of the Internet in shaping civil society and the Internet’s rise in China. I then examine how the labor movement has used different aspects of information technology to advance its interests and goals. The next section evaluates how the Chinese state uses technical restrictions to monitor and censor CSOs. Once this is established, I analyze the benefits in eliminating these restrictions on both Chinese CSOs and US companies. The paper closes with specific policy recommendations for the Congressional-Executive Commission on China on how the government can partner with technology companies to help labor CSOs.

2011 Certificate Graduates Independent Work

Jennifer King, COS
Title of project: Software Support for Software-Independent Auditing

(Published as Software Support for Software-Independent Auditing — Short Paper. Gabrielle A. Gianelli, Jennifer D. King, Edward W. Felten, and William P. Zeller. EVT/WOTE’09, Proceedings of the 2009 Conference on Electronic Voting Technology / Workshop on Trustworthy Elections)

Thomas Lowenthal, POL
Title of project: BitTorrent Research

Copyrighted material is often shared without the permission of the copyright holder. Peer-to-peer (P2P) systems — including BitTorrent — are a common vector for such sharing. Some copyright holders wish to detect such unauthorized sharing when it occurs, and to discourage it. Several companies offer services designed to detect this sort of unauthorized distribution. These companies typically use proprietary detection techniques, and often boast about the reliability of their particular methods. However, previous research has indicated that these services may not be as reliable as claimed.

We performed a study to investigate the accuracy rates — specifically: to establish an estimated lower bound on the false-positive rates — of various techniques for identifying those who share copyrighted material via BitTorrent without the authorization of the copyright holder. We implemented a selection of detection and verification techniques, ran them against the live BitTorrent ecosystem, and compared the suspect lists they produced against a reliable control technique. This allowed us to estimate the rate at which each of these techniques turns up false positives.

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