Fakes

As a scholar of identity crime - at times the most entertaining part of my doctoral dissertation - I've written about people who have egregiously embellished their CVs and had those fabrications accepted by peers or institutional watchdogs.

Some of the reveals' have been mordant, with one publication debunking the Mittyesque CV of IT leader Jeff Papows (who seems to have flourished nonetheless) with the statement

So he's not an orphan, his parents are alive and well. He wasn't a Marine Corps captain, he was a lieutenant. He didn't save a buddy by throwing a live grenade out of a trench. He didn't burst an eardrum when ejecting from a Phantom F4, which didn't crash, not killing his co-pilot. He's not a tae kwon do black belt, and he doesn't have a PhD from Pepperdine University.

The Guardian today notes an expose regarding French author and serial killer expert Stéphane Bourgoin, "widely viewed as a leading expert on murderers". Bourgoin's books about serial killers have reportedly sold millions of copies, a figure that perhaps something more telling about our taste for the contemporary gothic than it does for the depth of his analysis.

Other sources indicate Bourgoin was a lecturer at France's National Training Center for Judicial Police at the school of the French National Gendarmerie for around 10 years and at the National School of Magistrates in 2015 and 2018.

Bourgoin claimed to have interviewed more than 70 serial killers and to have trained at the FBI’s base in Quantico. He also claimed that his wife was murdered in 1976 by a man who confessed to a dozen murders on arrest two years later. Oops, no.

Bourgoin has now admitted to the French media that the wife never existed, that he never trained with the FBI, never interviewed Charles Manson, met far fewer killers than he has previously claimed, never worked as a professional footballer, and completely invented one serial killer. He's accused of plagiarising at least one book.

Presumably we will now get a best-selling autobiography and documentary.

Bourgoin reportedly attributes the fakery to having always felt he was not really loved.

Early last year the New Yorker reported thriller writer Dan Mallory (aka A.J. Finn) claimed in his application to Oxford’s New College that his mother died of cancer and that his brother had died in his care.  his mother and brother died. Both are apparently alive and well. Mallory claimed that he had surgery for a brain tumour, missed work for supposed high-risk surgery. Apparently no tumour, no surgery. He reportedly impersonated his brother, sending email to colleagues updating them on Dan’s “surgeries” and “recovery”. Subsequently he told an acquaintance that his brother had committed suicide. 

Why stop there? Mallory reportedly  He claimed to have written a doctoral dissertation on Patricia Highsmith while at Oxford and signed email as  'Dr. Daniel Mallory'. He was hired by a UK publisher after having claimed to have worked as an editor at US publisher Ballantine and modestly claimed to have been awarded doctorates from both Oxford and American University. Not so: an incomplete Masters and no PhDs.

Filters

'Facebook Filters, Fundamental Rights, and the CJEU’s Glawischnig-Piesczek Ruling' by Daphne Keller in (2020) GRUR International comments

The Court of Justice of the European Union’s (CJEU) 2019 ruling in Glawischnig-Piesczek v Facebook Ireland  addresses courts’ powers to issue injunctions requiring internet hosting platforms to proactively monitor content posted by their users. It answers important questions about limitations on such injunctions under the eCommerce Directive (Directive 2000/31/EC). But, as this Opinion explains, it leaves some much thornier questions unresolved. 

Glawischnig-Piesczek holds that courts may, consistent with Art. 15 of the eCommerce Directive, require platforms to monitor for and remove specific content. Monitoring orders may not, however, require platforms to carry out an ‘independent assessment’ of the content. The ruling does not closely examine what kinds of injunctions or filtering technologies are permissible, nor does it explore fundamental rights considerations when courts are asked to order platforms to monitor their users. This Opinion lays out the case’s technological, legal, and policy backdrop, and identifies important questions it leaves open for Member State courts. In particular, the Opinion suggests that Glawischnig-Piesczek’s limitation on ‘independent assessment’ will make it difficult for courts to devise injunctions that simultaneously follow the CJEU’s guidance under the eCommerce Directive and meet the requirements of fundamental rights. It lists key fundamental rights considerations for future cases involving potential monitoring injunctions, including procedural considerations in cases affecting the rights of absent third parties.

Patents

'Myths of the Medical Methods Exclusion: Medicine and Patents in Nineteenth Century Britain' by Catherine Kelly and Robert Burrell in (2018) 38(4) Legal Studies 607-626 comments

This paper explores the interaction of British medical practitioners with the nascent intellectual property system in the nineteenth century. It challenges the generally accepted view that throughout the nineteenth century there was a settled or professionally agreed hostility to patenting. It demonstrates that medical practitioners made more substantial use of the patent system and related forms of protection than has previously been recognised. Nevertheless, the rate of patenting remained lower than in other fields of technical endeavour, but this can largely be explained by the public nature of medical practice during this period. This paper therefore seeks to retell the history of the exclusion of medical methods from patent protection, an exclusion whose history has produced a substantial body of scholarship. However, its aims go beyond this in that it also seeks to illuminate how medical practitioners engaged with the broader political and policy landscape in order to secure financial remuneration for their inventions. Through an exploration of how prominent doctors interacted with Parliament around claims for a financial reward, it demonstrates that doctors sought to use reputational advantage to leverage financial success and the important role that Parliament could play in that process.

Authentication and Integrity Checking

'The Intrinsic Value of Valuable Paper: On the Infrastructural Work of Authentication Devices' by Aleksandra Kaminska in (2020) Theory, Culture and Society comments

Authentication devices transform cheap paper into legitimate documents. They are the sensory, informational, and computational features that make up valuable papers like banknotes and passports, and they provide the confidence required in moments of exchange and passage. These devices – which include techniques like watermarks and specialized threads, proprietary substrates and inks, or RFID chips – are the product of security printing, an industry that continuously reinvents the possibilities of paper. Importantly, these components protect paper things from counterfeiting, allowing it to function as an original and authentic copy and to do the logistical work of connecting quotidian materials to global networks. The value of valuable papers is therefore not purely extrinsic, socially or discursively established, but is also performed through its intrinsic material qualities. These are the authentication devices that are read, assessed, and trusted as paper things are circulated, and they are what securely connects paper to infrastructures of mobility.

As I tweeted earlier this month, ProctorU, the controversial and widely used online proctoring service (aka integrity platform), has released a Student Bill of Rights.

It is up there with a local retailer's assertion (which I used in a seminar last year) that we all have a 'right to be beautiful' ... sounds good but somewhat unenforceable.

The Bill is presumably a response to growing criticism by university students in several jurisdictions regarding the invasiveness of ProctorU, Proctorio and other invigilation services. The platforms are not new … they have for example been in use outside universities for at least ten years regarding certification of financial advisors and that there is convergence between psychometric testing services and exam invigilation services.

In a forthcoming book chapter on learning analytics I'm drawing on the substantial scholarly literature about such services. They have gained increasing attraction in the mainstream media, particularly as institutions have rushed to embrace online invigilation of exams as part of the COVID-19 transition to online-only teaching. An item in the Washinton Post for example comments 

At the start of a ProctorU test, students are told to show the proctor their student ID cards, their rooms and the tops of their desks to prove they don't have any cheating material at hand. During the test, the proctor listens through the student's microphone to ensure he or she does not ask for help from someone out of view.

 

The proctor gains access to the test-takers' computer screens and receives alerts if they do something unacceptable, like copying and pasting text or opening a new browser tab. A video system analyzes the students' eyes: If they look off-screen for four straight seconds more than two times in a single minute, the motion will be flagged as a suspect event - a hint that they could be referencing notes posted off-screen.

 

To ensure the right student is taking the exam, the software uses facial-recognition software to match them to the image on their ID. Random scans are performed throughout the exam to prevent another test-taker from jumping in.

 

The company also verifies identities with a typing test: A student may be asked to type 140 words at the beginning of the semester, then again just before testing to verify the speed and rhythms of the student's keystrokes. Any discrepancies can be flagged for closer inspection.

 

A human proctor watches every second of an exam, though the student cannot see the proctor's face. In previous versions of the software, the student could see the person watching them, but "the creepiness factor always sort of came up," McFarland said. If a proctor suspects cheating, they alert a more aggressive specialist, or an "interventionist," who can demand that students aim their webcam at a suspicious area or face academic penalty.

 

Proctors typically work out of one of 11 centers across Alabama, California, India, Jamaica, Panama and the Philippines. But with many of those offices closed, the company said, it is opening backup centers in Canada, hiring more than 100 new workers and instructing many proctors to work from home.

Managers in the centres appear to have a disquieting ethic, with the Post reporting

When University of Florida sophomore Cheyenne Keating felt a rush of nausea a few weeks ago during her at-home statistics exam, she looked into her webcam and asked the stranger on the other side: Is it okay to throw up at my desk? He said yes. So halfway through the two-hour test, during which her every movement was scrutinized for cheating and no bathroom breaks were permitted, she vomited into a wicker basket, dabbed the mess with a blanket and got right back to work. The stranger saw everything. When the test was finished, he said she was free to log off. Only then could she clean herself up.

The article states

 

ProctorU, which oversaw 2 million tests last year from more than 750,000 students, has compiled years of data on students' 15 "behavioral cheating types," McFarland said. Students' tests are live-streamed and recorded for later review: The worst offenders, McFarland said, have had their videos edited together into what he called a cheating "Hall of Fame."

 

ProctorU's competitors offer similar anti-cheating surveillance with different strategies. Honorlock, a Florida-based company that CEO Michael Hemlepp said has seen "a massive spike in inquiries," uses software that looks for "attempted dishonesty" and then sends in a human proctor for further review.

 

Proctorio goes further, using a completely software-driven approach. After students consent to letting Proctorio monitor their webcams, microphones, desktops or "any other means necessary to uphold integrity," the system tracks their speech and eye movements, how long they took to complete the test and how many times they clicked the mouse. It then gives professors an automated report ranking test-takers by "suspicion level" and the number of testing "abnormalities." Students deemed untrustworthy by the computer are color-coded in red and given an icon of two shadowy figures, reminiscent of the "Spy vs. Spy" cartoon of Mad magazine fame.

 

Chris Dayley, the director of academic testing services at Utah State University, which uses Proctorio, described the software with a laugh as "sort of like spyware that we just legitimize." And though many students despise the feeling of being watched, Olsen, the company's chief executive, said the discomfort is worth it if it helps protect the tests. "We're the police," he said.

Civil liberties group Public Citizen notes the egregious litigiousness of ProctorU, which appears to have attempted to silence academic criticism in the US by threatening litigation over a range of its critics supposed harms, including copyright, defamation and trade mark infringement. Not, in my opinion, the service provider that you want to partner with. 

As for the Bill of Rights? Privity means it's in essence an expression of puffery ... pretty words that are unenforceable under contract law by Australian students. 

The various services are a data breach waiting to happen.