https://www.bond.org.uk/sites/default/files/resource-documents/using_icts_to_create_a_culture_of_transparency.pdf

Using ICTs to create a culture of transparency: E-government and social media as openness and anti-corruption tools for societies

Contrary to widespread assumption, dynamic RAM (DRAM), the main memory in most modern computers, retains its contents for several seconds after power is lost, even at room temperature and even if removed from a motherboard. Although DRAM becomes less reliable when it is not refreshed, it is not immediately erased, and its contents persist sufficiently for malicious (or forensic) acquisition of usable full-system memory images. We show that this phenomenon limits the ability of an operating system to protect cryptographic key material from an attacker with physical access to a machine. It poses a particular threat to laptop users who rely on disk encryption: we demonstrate that it could be used to compromise several popular disk encryption products without the need for any special devices or materials. We experimentally characterize the extent and predictability of memory retention and report that remanence times can be increased dramatically with simple cooling techniques. We offer new algorithms for finding cryptographic keys in memory images and for correcting errors caused by bit decay. Though we discuss several strategies for mitigating these risks, we know of no simple remedy that would eliminate them.

/pdf/lest-we-remember-cold-boot-attacks-on-encryption-keys-hgoh0qvn4f.pdf

Lest we remember: cold-boot attacks on encryption keys

From e-government to we-government: Defining a typology for citizen coproduction in the age of social media

In this landmark book, Scott Page redefines the way we understand ourselves in relation to one another. The Difference is about how we think in groups--and how our collective wisdom exceeds the sum of its parts. Why can teams of people find better solutions than brilliant individuals working alone? And why are the best group decisions and predictions those that draw upon the very qualities that make each of us unique? The answers lie in diversity--not what we look like outside, but what we look like within, our distinct tools and abilities. The Difference reveals that progress and innovation may depend less on lone thinkers with enormous IQs than on diverse people working together and capitalizing on their individuality. Page shows how groups that display a range of perspectives outperform groups of like-minded experts. Diversity yields superior outcomes, and Page proves it using his own cutting-edge research. Moving beyond the politics that cloud standard debates about diversity, he explains why difference beats out homogeneity, whether you're talking about citizens in a democracy or scientists in the laboratory. He examines practical ways to apply diversity's logic to a host of problems, and along the way offers fascinating and surprising examples, from the redesign of the Chicago "El" to the truth about where we store our ketchup. Page changes the way we understand diversity--how to harness its untapped potential, how to understand and avoid its traps, and how we can leverage our differences for the benefit of all.

Prologue to The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies

quanteda is an R package providing a comprehensive workflow and toolkit for natural language processing tasks such as corpus management, tokenization, analysis, and visualization. It has extensive functions for applying dictionary analysis, exploring texts using keywords-in-context, computing document and feature similarities, and discovering multi-word expressions through collocation scoring. Based entirely on sparse operations,it provides highly efficient methods for compiling document-feature matrices and for manipulating these or using them in further quantitative analysis. Using C++ and multi-threading extensively, quanteda is also considerably faster and more efficient than other R and Python packages in processing large textual data. The package is designed for R users needing to apply natural language processing to texts,from documents to final analysis. Its capabilities match or exceed those provided in many end-user software applications, many of which are expensive and not open source. The package is therefore of great benefit to researchers, students, and other analysts with fewer financial resources. While using quanteda requires R programming knowledge, its API is designed to enable powerful, efficient analysis with a minimum of steps. By emphasizing consistent design, furthermore, quanteda lowers the barriers to learning and using NLP and quantitative text analysis even for proficient R programmers.

/pdf/quanteda-an-r-package-for-the-quantitative-analysis-of-41v0n3rrl1.pdf

quanteda: An R package for the quantitative analysis of textual data

Hadley Wickham1, Mara Averick1, Jennifer Bryan1, Winston Chang1, Lucy D’Agostino McGowan8, Romain François1, Garrett Grolemund1, Alex Hayes12, Lionel Henry1, Jim Hester1, Max Kuhn1, Thomas Lin Pedersen1, Evan Miller13, Stephan Milton Bache3, Kirill Müller2, Jeroen Ooms14, David Robinson5, Dana Paige Seidel10, Vitalie Spinu4, Kohske Takahashi9, Davis Vaughan1, Claus Wilke6, Kara Woo7, and Hiroaki Yutani11

/pdf/welcome-to-the-tidyverse-2gqeyze158.pdf

Welcome to the Tidyverse

Tidy data sets allow manipulation with a standard set of “tidy” tools, including popular packages such as dplyr (Wickham, Francois, and RStudio 2015), ggplot2 (Wickham, Chang, and RStudio 2016), and broom (Robinson et al. 2015). These tools do not yet, however, have the infrastructure to work fluently with text data and natural language processing tools. In developing this package, we provide functions and supporting data sets to allow conversion of text to and from tidy formats, and to switch seamlessly between tidy tools and existing text mining packages.

/pdf/tidytext-text-mining-and-analysis-using-tidy-data-principles-34wkfek5jf.pdf

tidytext: Text Mining and Analysis Using Tidy Data Principles in R

“Open government” used to carry a hard political edge: it referred to politically sensitive disclosures of government information. The phrase was first used in the 1950s, in the debates leading up to passage of the Freedom of Information Act. But over the last few years, that traditional meaning has blurred, and has shifted toward technology. Open technologies involve sharing data over the Internet, and all kinds of governments can use them, for all kinds of reasons. Recent public policies have stretched the label “open government” to reach any public sector use of these technologies. Thus, “open government data” might refer to data that makes the government as a whole more open (that is, more accountable to the public), but might equally well refer to politically neutral public sector disclosures that are easy to reuse, but that may have nothing to do with public accountability. Today a regime can call itself “open” if it builds the right kind of web site — even if it does not become more accountable. This shift in vocabulary makes it harder for policymakers and activists to articulate clear priorities and make cogent demands.This essay proposes a more useful way for participants on all sides to frame the debate: We separate the politics of open government from the technologies of open data. Technology can make public information more adaptable, empowering third parties to contribute in exciting new ways across many aspects of civic life. But technological enhancements will not resolve debates about the best priorities for civic life, and enhancements to government services are no substitute for public accountability.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2126869_code387075.pdf?abstractid=2012489&mirid=1&type=2

The New Ambiguity of 'Open Government'

If the next Presidential administration really wants to embrace the potential of Internet-enabled government transparency, it should follow a counter-intuitive but ultimately compelling strategy: reduce the federal role in presenting important government information to citizens. Today, government bodies consider their own websites to be a higher priority than technical infrastructures that open up their data for others to use. We argue that this understanding is a mistake. It would be preferable for government to understand providing reusable data, rather than providing websites, as the core of its online publishing responsibility. Rather than struggling, as it currently does, to design sites that meet each end-user need, we argue that the executive branch should focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that exposes the underlying data. Private actors, either nonprofit or commercial, are better suited to deliver government information to citizens and can constantly create and reshape the tools individuals use to find and leverage public data. The best way to ensure that the government allows private parties to compete on equal terms in the provision of government data is to require that federal websites themselves use the same open systems for accessing the underlying data as they make available to the public at large.

Government Data and the Invisible Hand

INTRODUCTION If President Barack Obama's new administration really wants to embrace the potential of Internet-enabled government transparency, it should follow a counter-intuitive but ultimately compelling strategy: reduce the federal role in presenting important government information to citizens. Today, government bodies consider their own Web sites to be a higher priority than technical infrastructures that open up their data for others to use. We argue that this understanding is a mistake. It would be preferable for government to understand providing reusable data, rather than providing Web sites, as the core of its online publishing responsibility. During the presidential campaign, all three major candidates indicated that they thought the federal government could make better use of the Internet. Barack Obama's platform went the furthest and explicitly endorsed "making government data available online in universally accessible formats." (1) Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, remarked that she wanted to see much more government information online. (2) John McCain's platform called for a new Office of Electronic Government. (3) But the situation to which these candidates were responding--the wide gap between the exciting uses of Internet technology by private parties, on the one hand, and the government's lagging technical infrastructure, on the other--is not new. A minefield of federal rules and a range of other factors, prevent government Web masters from keeping pace with the ever-growing potential of the Internet. In order for public data to benefit from the same innovation and dynamism that characterize private parties' use of the Internet, the federal government must reimagine its role as an information provider. Rather than struggling, as it currently does, to design sites that meet each end-user need, it should focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that "exposes" the underlying data. Private actors, either nonprofit or commercial, are better suited to deliver government information to citizens and can constantly create and reshape the tools individuals use to find and leverage public data. The best way to ensure that the government allows private parties to compete on equal terms in the provision of government data is to require that federal Web sites themselves use the same open systems for accessing the underlying data as they make available to the public at large. Our approach follows the engineering principle of separating data from interaction, which is commonly used in constructing Web sites. (4) Government must provide data, but we argue that Web sites that provide interactive access for the public can best be built by private parties. This approach is especially important given recent advances in interaction, which go far beyond merely offering data for viewing, to providing services such as advanced search, automated content analysis, cross-indexing with other data sources, and data visualization tools. These tools are promising but it is far from obvious how best to combine them to maximize the public value of government data. Given this uncertainty, the best policy is not to hope government will choose the one best way, but to rely on private parties in a vibrant marketplace of engineering ideas to discover what works. I. FEDERAL INTERNET PRESENCE: THE STATE OF PLAY The Internet's transformative political potential has been clear to astute nontechnical observers since at least the mid-1990s, but progress toward that transformation has been sporadic at best. In January of 1995, when the Republicans regained a Congressional majority, they launched THOMAS, a Web site that details every bill in Congress. (5) But by 2004, the site was so out of date that seven senators cosponsored a resolution to urge the Library of Congress to modernize it. (6) The Federal Communications Commission--the agency most closely involved in overseeing digital communications--has a Web site whose basic structure has remained unchanged since 2001. …

https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1048&context=yjolt

David Robinson

Papers

Welcome to the Tidyverse

tidytext: Text Mining and Analysis Using Tidy Data Principles in R

The New Ambiguity of 'Open Government'

Government Data and the Invisible Hand

Government data and the invisible hand