In the early 1930’s the film business was booming and filled with sex, drugs, and scandal. All of that changed in 1934 with the enforcement of the Hollywood Production Code which effectively cleaned up the business into what most people today remember as classic Hollywood. By analyzing films from the Pre-Code era, and specifically Baby Face (1933), the roots of self-censorship in Hollywood can be traced to their current incarnation in the film business today.

We measure the prevalence and uses of Man-in-the-Middle TLS proxies using a Flash tool deployed with a Google AdWords campaign. We generate 15.2 million certificate tests across two large-scale measurement studies and find that 1 in 250 TLS connections are intercepted by proxies. The majority of these proxies appear to be benevolent, however we identify over 3,600 cases where eight malware products are using this technology nefariously. We also find thousands of instances of negligent, duplicitous, and suspicious behavior, some of which degrade security for users without their knowledge. Distinguishing these types of practices is challenging in practice, indicating a need for transparency and user awareness. We also report the results of a survey of 1,976 individuals regarding their opinions of TLS proxies. Responses indicate that participants hold nuanced opinions on security and privacy trade-offs, with most recognizing legitimate uses for the practice, but also concerned about threats from hackers or government surveillance. There is strong support for notification and consent when a system is intercepting their encrypted traffic, although this support varies depending on the situation. A significant concern about malicious uses of TLS inspection is identity theft, and many would react negatively and some would change their behavior if they discovered inspection occurring without their knowledge. We also find that a small but significant number of participants are jaded by the current state of affairs and have lost any expectation of privacy.

This study explores Islamism's interplay with higher education as the movement advances an agenda for worldwide reformation. Over an eighty-year period, Islamism has appropriated higher education institutions, professional associations, on- and off-campus organizations, and publications as a primary means to achieve its utopian objective of the Nizam Islami, or "Islamic Order." Findings show how the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt developed a Weberian bureaucratic organizational and administrative structure to exert influence not only in Egypt but also the world. A Qutb-inspired "hijra" of Muslim Brothers in universities proved itself adroit at filling macro-and micro-level policy vacuums in Soviet-aligned post-colonial societies, marginalizing traditional forms of Islamic faith. However, the movement was as likely to establish itself in other types of authoritarian states that alternately tried to appease and suppress the movement. The Islamist "hijra" came to North America in the 1960's, founding the Muslim Students Association and the Islamic Society of North America. Then, early leaders in those groups taught and studied at The University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa, Florida. Following the "successful" paradigm of the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamism's academic leaders brought to USF a program called "Islamization of society and knowledge"-disguised in the more benign term "civilizational dialogue"-which regards higher education as but another territory of reformation and conquest, or the dar al-harb. USF never addressed that aspect of re-Islamization from below (denoting quiet subversion of society) as a serious, possible academic freedom problem involving the politicization of USF's research and teaching mission. Re-Islamization from above (denoting violent destabilization of society) was debated, however, in a media campaign of Islamist dissembling that divided the university and its community for over a decade. Because of the stated hostility of Islamist education theory and practice to the academic enterprise, itself founded upon Enlightenment values of free inquiry, the study recommends that USF re-investigate the case about Sami Al-Arian, who was convicted in 2006 of providing services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in part, by using the university as a front for his cause.

Internet users rely on the availability of websites and digital services to engage in political discussions, report on newsworthy events in real-time, watch videos, etc. However, sometimes those who control networks, such as governments, censor certain websites, block specific applications or throttle encrypted traffic. Understandably, when users are faced with egregious censorship, where certain websites or applications are banned, they seek reliable and efficient means to circumvent such blocks. This tension is evident in countries such as a Iran and China, where the Internet censorship infrastructure is pervasive and continues to increase in scope and effectiveness. An arms race is unfolding with two competing threads of research: (1) network operators' ability to classify traffic and subsequently enforce policies and (2) network users' ability to control how network operators classify their traffic. Our goal is to understand and progress the state-of-the-art for both sides. First, we present novel traffic analysis attacks against encrypted communications. We show that state-of-the-art cryptographic protocols leak private information about users' communications, such as the websites they visit, applications they use, or languages used for communications. Then, we investigate means to mitigate these privacy-compromising attacks. Towards this, we present a toolkit of cryptographic primitives and protocols that simultaneously (1) achieve traditional notions of cryptographic security, and (2) enable users to conceal information about their communications, such as the protocols used or websites visited. We demonstrate the utility of these primitives and protocols in a variety of real-world settings. As a primary use case, we show that these new primitives and protocols protect network communications and bypass policies of state-of-the-art hardware-based and software-based network monitoring devices.

This research considers the performance of situated subjectivity where the state and the individual vie for dominion over the drives that construct the body as what one has (the body as object), as what one is (the body as subject), and as what one becomes (the absent body). To turn power into pain, the State prospects the body of the subject to anchor its power through abjection. In so doing, it compels that body to channel the abject as a power to be wielded as a weapon of the weak, thus forcing into view the true interior of the State. Sections I and II position a discourse of trauma in Singapore using a parenthetical framework that is constructed by and mediated through the criminalized and punishable bodies of two young Asian males. The first discusses the carefully constructed ob-scene (off-stage) nature of the obscene (abhorrent) execution of convicted drug trafficker Van Nguyen in 2005 (the body as object); the second examines its inverse – the public spectacle of creative ‘death’ imposed upon artist Josef Ng (the body as subject) through government condemnation and expulsion for an alleged obscene (immoral) performance at 5th Passage in 1994. To do this, the thesis engages with the enforced interchangeable processes of disembodiment (for the display of symbolic violence) and embodiment (for the exertion of physical violence). Comparisons are also made of the way the State demonstrates its preparedness to turn the display of power into a process of exacting the ultimate pain from the punishable body. This is perpetrated on the one hand via a spectacle of invisibility that keeps the mandatory death penalty a secretive process, and on the other, its inverse, the publicly staged media spectacle of persecuting performance artist/s and 5th Passage. The events that follow led to the defacto banning of performance art and 5th Passage’s demise in 1994, ending my role as its artistic director. By relocating the performance of death from the high courts and offices of Singapore’s Home Affairs Ministry (the site of symbolic violence) and Changi Prison (site of physical violence) into plain sight in the Australian media, the press is discussed as an instrumental force in deploying a penal counter-aesthetic to pierce through Singapore’s veil of secrecy surrounding its executions. The thesis demonstrates how this engendered a ‘seeing through’ that galvanized acts of intersubjectivity and the performance of social witnessing in Australia as an attempt to save Van Nguyen from the gallows. The institutional censorship of an artwork about the execution in 2005 is discussed to show how signifying practices such as visual art continued to agitate the state’s performance to construct itself as a “global city for arts and culture” on one hand while crushing artistic subjectivity when it is perceived as dissent on the other. This glimpse into the fragility of the Singapore nation’s divergent desires, where one performance portrays the disintegration of another, recalled the originary cultural rupture at 5th Passage in 1994 when artists engaged in performance were sensationalized in the Singapore media as social deviants. As an extension of state apparatus, the media is shown to repress artistic subjectivity through its creation of a controversy that led to the illegitimization of scriptless performance art, thus producing a distinctively Singaporean cultural artefact – the absent body. Out of the personal and social trauma framed by this confrontation with the state, Section III presents a body of visual work that I have since produced in the period marked by these two events (between 1994 to 2008) as a reply to the state. From this place of banishment, the thesis traces its evolvement into the body machine (Rich Manoeuvre series) as part of a practice that sees it for what it is within the paternal order, to locate the points where fragility occur. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Falun Gong protesters, the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, the spy plane incident and a series of mine accidents are just some of the events over the past decade that involved the Internet. In each incident the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was caught off guard by the circumvention of informational flows as a consequence of the Internet. This is in some ways indicative of the impact the medium is having on the ability of the CCP to manage political discourse within the confines of the country. This thesis examines the way that political discourse in contemporary China is managed in response to the development of the Internet, using the concepts of time and space as conceived by Harold A. Innis. This historical study considers the strategies used in the management of time and space in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) across a broad range of ways in which the medium is used by particular groups, such as online gamers, bloggers, hackers, and activists. I have also looked at the way information flows are managed during a crisis or disaster using critical textual analysis of Internet sources, and specific examples. These sources are both official and unofficial including Chinese government sites, journalistic sources both Chinese and Western and Chinese legal databases that appear on the World Wide Web (WWW). The study finds that there is an emerging shift from propaganda based media manipulation and suppression to a style of stage managed spin. The CCP have used three strategies to contain and maintain their hold over central power, including the rule of law, investment in the development of content and technological means. The development of the Internet in China is marked by a dialect of desire for the technology for economic purposes and the perceived need to control the technology for political purposes. The Internet has also enabled the central government in Beijing to reassert its position as a central authority over local and provincial governments. This study contributes to the existing knowledge about Chinese media policy and the Internet, and will shed light on the ways in which the tehcnology influences the production and consumption of media and the impact that the development of this medium has upon media policy in China. Furthermore, this study will contribute to a greater understanding of CCP's ability to manage information and the impact that this medium will have on the operations of Chinese politics within the space of the Internet, as well as the impact of the technology on politics, and China's interaction with the international community.

The study aims to examine how censorship and comics have been discussed in three debates. The aim is also to identify discourses and the orders and relations of power constructed in the debates, and to examine how librarians should handle debates about censorship and comics. Selected sources are articles from Swedish newspapers and tabloids about the debates on the Pox-trial, the manga case and the debate about Tintin in Kulturhuset. The results from the analysis indicates that the debates have been dominated by two main discourses: a discourse on freedom of speech and a discourse on social responsibility. Within the discourse of freedom of speech there is a range of perspectives that emphasize: artistic freedom, the need for open and free conversations, a discussion about how the comics are assessed in comparison with other media formats as well as a discussion about moral and moralism. The discourse of social responsibility results in a feminist and anti-porn discourse, a post-colonial and anti-racist discourse and a discourse on the protection of children and young people. Based on these results, the discourses can be analysed in relation to the laws, values and ethical guidelines for libraries. The analysis indicates that libraries and librarians should keep a balance between freeedom of speech and social responsibility. They could keep up to date with research about censorship, comics and various genres in order to make informed decisions about how to handle comics in the libraries. The librarian should also assess the comics on the same bases as literature, music, film and other cultural expressions.

In what French philosopher Gilles Deleuze labelled Control Societies, mechanisms reminiscent of censorship – that is, restriction of information that administrators of power wish to regulate the spreading of – are present in the concept of copyright. This kind of censorship has theadvantage of not being scrutinized by public eyes in the way that the work of institutionalized censorship agencies such as the Swedish Statens Biografbyrå was. It is not unlikely that expanded possibilities for punishing anyone who spreads copyrighted material will result in larger and larger areas that may not be accessed, as the avoiding of conflict and repressive actions will emphasize the behaviour to take detours around information that is deemed taboo and therefore suspicious and dangerous. The ACTA trade agreement is one proposed tool for such extended possibilities for punishment. This essay does not however claim that copyright and censorship are the same – but rather that the institutional execution of power that was previously a matter of state censorship has a lot of similarities with current and prognosticated application of copyright laws by corporations. While claiming to protect the individual, the disciplinary power executed actually aims to protect the one executing it; the purpose of the power structure is to replicate itself.

¡@¡@¡@This study aimed to examine the third-person effect of product placement in the television news, for clarifying the effect of persuasiveness of news with product placement and comparing the assessment of the impact on others and themselves. The study also concerned about the media literacy if it can help the audience to identify the messages of persuasive intention, to evaluate the impact of product placement in the television news is greater on others than on themselves, and to support the government to prohibit product placement in the television news. ¡@¡@¡@In this study, the main research method was questionnaire survey, and the research participants were junior high school students from three sections in Kaohsiung. There were 476 valid questionnaires totally. Data were analyzed by methods of independent t-test, paired t-test, correlation and hierarchical regression analysis. The results found that product placement of television news would cause the third-person effect: messages of product placement of different levels would result in different intensities of third-person perception. Compared to implicit-style placements in the television news, obvious ones triggered strong media impact on others, but did not trigger third-person perception differential. It meant people tend to view product placement in the television news had impact on others as well as on themselves. ¡@¡@¡@Another focus of this study was personal media literacy ability. Analytic results showed that literacy ability was a better predictor of the third-person effect perception. The result of the study was similar to the findings of the past research: media literacy could assist in identifying the purpose of product placement in the television news, and could avoid the perceived effect of media messages on themselves (Cohen, 1982; Rucinski & Salmon, 1990; Wei, Lo & Lu, 2008). ¡@¡@¡@Most importantly, this study contributed to the growing literature on behavioral component of the third-person effect by demonstrating that the third-person effect perception was a great predictor of support for restriction of product placement in the televiton news than the third-person perception differential. The reason was that the third-person perception differential could not distinguish perceived effects of product placement in the television news on others as well as themselves (Wen-Hui Luo, 2000b). As research result of Xu and Gonzenbach on the behavioral component of the third-person effect, third-person perception differential was the most significant predictor of support for media censorship. Therefore, this study suggests that future research could probe into the mechanisms through which the third-person effect of product placement in the television news occurs.

published_or_final_version / toc / Law / Master / Master of Laws in Human Rights