Investigating Google’s Search Engine


Book Description

What do search engines do? And what should they do? These questions seem relatively simple but are actually urgent social and ethical issues. The influence of Google's search engine is enormous. It does not only shape how Internet users find pages on the World Wide Web, but how we think as individuals, how we collectively remember the past, and how we communicate with one another. This book explores the impact of search engines within contemporary digital culture, focusing on the social, cultural, and philosophical influence of Google. Using case studies like Google's role in the rise of fake news, instances of sexist and misogynistic Autocomplete suggestions, and search queries relating to LGBTQ+ values, it offers original evidence to intervene practically in existing debates. It also addresses other understudied aspects of Google's influence, including the profound implications of its revenue generation for wider society. In doing this, this important book helps to evaluate the real cost of search engines on an individual and global scale.




Open Source Intelligence Investigation


Book Description

One of the most important aspects for a successful police operation is the ability for the police to obtain timely, reliable and actionable intelligence related to the investigation or incident at hand. Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) provides an invaluable avenue to access and collect such information in addition to traditional investigative techniques and information sources. This book offers an authoritative and accessible guide on how to conduct Open Source Intelligence investigations from data collection to analysis to the design and vetting of OSINT tools. In its pages the reader will find a comprehensive view into the newest methods for OSINT analytics and visualizations in combination with real-life case studies to showcase the application as well as the challenges of OSINT investigations across domains. Examples of OSINT range from information posted on social media as one of the most openly available means of accessing and gathering Open Source Intelligence to location data, OSINT obtained from the darkweb to combinations of OSINT with real-time analytical capabilities and closed sources. In addition it provides guidance on legal and ethical considerations making it relevant reading for practitioners as well as academics and students with a view to obtain thorough, first-hand knowledge from serving experts in the field.




Investigating Internet Crimes


Book Description

Written by experts on the frontlines, Investigating Internet Crimes provides seasoned and new investigators with the background and tools they need to investigate crime occurring in the online world. This invaluable guide provides step-by-step instructions for investigating Internet crimes, including locating, interpreting, understanding, collecting, and documenting online electronic evidence to benefit investigations. Cybercrime is the fastest growing area of crime as more criminals seek to exploit the speed, convenience and anonymity that the Internet provides to commit a diverse range of criminal activities. Today's online crime includes attacks against computer data and systems, identity theft, distribution of child pornography, penetration of online financial services, using social networks to commit crimes, and the deployment of viruses, botnets, and email scams such as phishing. Symantec's 2012 Norton Cybercrime Report stated that the world spent an estimated $110 billion to combat cybercrime, an average of nearly $200 per victim. Law enforcement agencies and corporate security officers around the world with the responsibility for enforcing, investigating and prosecuting cybercrime are overwhelmed, not only by the sheer number of crimes being committed but by a lack of adequate training material. This book provides that fundamental knowledge, including how to properly collect and document online evidence, trace IP addresses, and work undercover. - Provides step-by-step instructions on how to investigate crimes online - Covers how new software tools can assist in online investigations - Discusses how to track down, interpret, and understand online electronic evidence to benefit investigations - Details guidelines for collecting and documenting online evidence that can be presented in court




An Introduction to Internet-Based Financial Investigations


Book Description

Increasingly, employees of regulatory bodies, law enforcement agencies and others who are not trained forensic accountants or experienced investigators find themselves responsible for conducting what amount to financial investigations. An engineer who oversees the cleanup of a toxic waste site might need to track down the former owners of the site to find the polluter. Perhaps the applicable licensing agency receives a complaint that an attorney mishandled a client's money. Maybe it's the attorney who needs help finding the assets with which a client's former spouse has absconded. Training in investigation techniques tends to be very limited for many employees. Training on how to find information without incurring significant expense is virtually nonexistent. This book helps fill the void. An Introduction to Internet-Based Financial Investigations will help anyone who conducts financial investigations as part of their job to reduce their dependence on trial and error by showing them where and how to look. Using clear sections describing how to approach an investigation, including the ethical perspective; what to look for and what you find; what free and low cost internet resources are available to support investigations; and how to assemble and present the results of investigations, Kimberly Goetz guides students and beginning investigators through the complex world of financial investigations.




The Brussels Effect


Book Description

For many observers, the European Union is mired in a deep crisis. Between sluggish growth; political turmoil following a decade of austerity politics; Brexit; and the rise of Asian influence, the EU is seen as a declining power on the world stage. Columbia Law professor Anu Bradford argues the opposite in her important new book The Brussels Effect: the EU remains an influential superpower that shapes the world in its image. By promulgating regulations that shape the international business environment, elevating standards worldwide, and leading to a notable Europeanization of many important aspects of global commerce, the EU has managed to shape policy in areas such as data privacy, consumer health and safety, environmental protection, antitrust, and online hate speech. And in contrast to how superpowers wield their global influence, the Brussels Effect - a phrase first coined by Bradford in 2012- absolves the EU from playing a direct role in imposing standards, as market forces alone are often sufficient as multinational companies voluntarily extend the EU rule to govern their global operations. The Brussels Effect shows how the EU has acquired such power, why multinational companies use EU standards as global standards, and why the EU's role as the world's regulator is likely to outlive its gradual economic decline, extending the EU's influence long into the future.




Investigations in the Workplace


Book Description

Whether you are a professional licensed investigator or have been tasked by your employer to conduct an internal investigation, Investigations in the Workplace gives you a powerful mechanism for engineering the most successful workplace investigations possible. Corporate investigator Eugene Ferraro, CPP, CFE has drawn upon his twenty-four years of




Digital Empires


Book Description

Financial Times Best Books of 2023 in Economics The global battle among the three dominant digital powers—the United States, China, and the European Union—is intensifying. All three regimes are racing to regulate tech companies, with each advancing a competing vision for the digital economy while attempting to expand its sphere of influence in the digital world. In Digital Empires, her provocative follow-up to The Brussels Effect, Anu Bradford explores a rivalry that will shape the world in the decades to come. Across the globe, people dependent on digital technologies have become increasingly alarmed that their rapid adoption and transformation have ushered in an exceedingly concentrated economy where a few powerful companies control vast economic wealth and political power, undermine data privacy, and widen the gap between economic winners and losers. In response, world leaders are variously embracing the idea of reining in the most dominant tech companies. Bradford examines three competing regulatory approaches—the American market-driven model, the Chinese state-driven model, and the European rights-driven regulatory model—and discusses how governments and tech companies navigate the inevitable conflicts that arise when these regulatory approaches collide in the international domain. Which digital empire will prevail in the contest for global influence remains an open question, yet their contrasting strategies are increasingly clear. Digital societies are at an inflection point. In the midst of these unfolding regulatory battles, governments, tech companies, and digital citizens are making important choices that will shape the future ethos of the digital society. Digital Empires lays bare the choices we face as societies and individuals, explains the forces that shape those choices, and illuminates the immense stakes involved for everyone who uses digital technologies.




Competition Law and Big Data


Book Description

In this timely book, Beata Mäihäniemi analyses and evaluates how the characteristics of information as a good, as well as the characteristics of digital platforms, affect the application of competition law in both theory and practice.




Private Power, Online Information Flows and EU Law


Book Description

This monograph examines how European Union law and regulation address concentrations of private economic power which impede free information flows on the Internet to the detriment of Internet users' autonomy. In particular, competition law, sector specific regulation (if it exists), data protection and human rights law are considered and assessed to the extent they can tackle such concentrations of power for the benefit of users. Using a series of illustrative case studies, of Internet provision, search, mobile devices and app stores, and the cloud, the work demonstrates the gaps that currently exist in EU law and regulation. It is argued that these gaps exist due, in part, to current overarching trends guiding the regulation of economic power, namely neoliberalism, by which only the situation of market failure can invite ex ante rules, buoyed by the lobbying of regulators and legislators by those in possession of such economic power to achieve outcomes which favour their businesses. Given this systemic, and extra-legal, nature of the reasons as to why the gaps exist, solutions from outside the system are proposed at the end of each case study. This study will appeal to EU competition lawyers and media lawyers.




Investigating the Social World


Book Description

The most successful social research text to have been published in a generation has been updated and revised in this new Sixth Edition! This innovative, up-to-date, and popular text makes research come alive through research stories that illustrate the methods presented in each chapter, with hands-on exercises to help students learn by doing. Author Russell K. Schutt helps readers connect technique and substance, understand research methods as an integrated whole, appreciate the value of both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and make ethical research decisions.New to the Sixth Edition:Updates and Revisions: Research examples have been updated throughout the text, with many that have been added from international researchers. All end-of-chapter exercise sets have been updated. Techniques for searching and reviewing the literature and Web sites have been updated and more guidance is provided on writing the literature review. In addition, many chapters have been streamlined and reorganized for greater clarity, including those on measurement and causation and research design.Secondary Data Analysis and Content Analysis: A new chapter introduces the logic and limitations of secondary data analysis, available data sources, procedures for using ICPSR datasets, the Human Relations Area Files, and more information on content analysis.Qualitative Data Analysis: New sections have been added on conversation analysis, ethnomethodology, case-oriented understanding, and visual sociology. A special section on computer-assisted qualitative data analysis introduces the HyperRESEARCH software that accompanies the text.Theories and Philosophies for Research: A revised and streamlined chapter uses international research on immigration and ethnic conflict to illustrate functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism and to contrast positivist and interpretivist research philosophies. Unique among methods texts, this chapter emphasizes the importance of social theory and research philosophy as a foundation for social research.Research Ethics: New sections have been added in some chapters and the discussion of the role of the IRB in the third chapter has been expanded.Accompanied by High-Quality Ancillaries!Instructors' Resource CD-ROM: provides test questions, PowerPoint slides for lectures, suggested assignments, and a review of course organization options.Student Study Site at www.pineforge.com//isw5: includes journal articles, flash cards for practicing terminology, online quizzes, and much more!Now with interactive exercises on the study site (from the student CD) - for easier access and use by studentsStudent Resources CD: bundled with the book, contains wide-ranging data sets and interactive exercises to help students master concepts and techniques.HyperRESEARCH software: includes software for qualitative data analysis.