Three Progress Reports
Progress reports on three projects, presented by Anushah Hossein, Ankeet Shankar, and Michael Buckland.
Who are the humans kept out by CAPTCHAs?
Anushah Hossain
Are web services provided by global companies equally accessible to internet users across the world? Anecdotal evidence suggests that there are significant barriers to viewing and using websites in developing regions. IP addresses from entire countries are known to be blocked by certain websites and important page elements such as CAPTCHA often fail to appear or lock users in endless loops due to misclassification as bots. Despite widespread experience with these barriers, there is little systematic documentation of the extent to which they affect users. I investigate a single page element — the CAPTCHA challenge — and its performance across different network conditions. To what extent do network strength and location affect one’s classification as a bot or human? What services are most restricted and where does this burden fall globally? I invite feedback on my methods and framing for this early stage project.
PrivSec-F1: Compliance Focused Toolkit
Ankeet Shankar
PrivSec-F1 attempts to incorporate various legal and regulatory requirements for product managers, chief information officers, and chief information security officers of mid- and small-size firms who often, due to budget constraints, do not have in their organizational structure cybersecurity or legal experts. Furthermore, the proposed product will incorporate cybersecurity requirements from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as well as highlight “soft law” privacy issues that could raise consumer ire yet still be legal, as classified in Bert Jaap Koops publication “A Typology of Privacy”. Other notable frameworks which we propose be included are Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) requirements, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) requirements, International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to name a few.
Unified Search Support for All Kinds of Information
Michael Buckland
Bibliographies support search and discovery in published literature, but there is no generally agreed concept of bibliography, which has been used in three ways: for the relationship of publications to knowledge; for the listing of publications; and for the physical examination of books. How might one expand (or replace) bibliography to include search and discovery of a wider range of resources including but not limited to publications?
Anushah Hossain is an M.A.-Ph.D. student in the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley. She previously worked as a survey researcher for non-profit and government organizations such as the Gates Foundation, USAID, and the EPA, studying the usage and impacts of technologies in developing regions. Her current research focuses on differential access to information and communication technologies.
Ankeet Shankar is a second-year MIMS student focusing on cybersecurity and privacy. He has extensive prior experience in the field of information technology as a management consultant, with a specialized focus on IT risk management and mitigation, IT strategy, outsourcing vendor audits, vulnerability assessments, and penetration testing.