I will be giving the Gillotts School annual public lecture on 7th May 2009, along with my colleague Dr James Anderson.
My joint paper with Dr Ian Brown, Keep Looking: The Answer to the Machine is Elsewhere, was published in the Feb/March issue of Computers and Law Magazine. It has already been downloaded over 400 times from the SSRN repository (thanks to a link from Boing Boing).
I am a Lecturer, the Deputy Director of Teaching and Learning and the Senior Tutor in the School of Systems Engineering at the University of Reading, where I am also the chair of the Informatics Research Group. I am also a member of the Informatics Research Centre based in the Henley Business School
My office is Room 144 in the School Building.
My office phone number is 0118-378-6997 (or X6997 internally).
I am a member of the various professional societies:
The British Computer Society, through whom I hold the status of CITP (Chartered Information Technology Practitioner)
The IEEE
The ACM
I have a BSc in Mathematics and Computational Science from the University of Leeds, an MSc in Computer Science also from the University of Leeds, a PhD in Computer Science from the University of St Andrews and an LLM (Masters in Law) in Advanced Legal Studies from the University of Reading.
This is my work page. I maintain a personal stuff page (links for my hobbies and interests, that sort of thing). I also have a personal web site (this page is present there as well as at Reading) as well as a blog and a gallery.
Not only computer and network security, but societal security issues. I provide social, legal and ethical acceptability analyses and advice on the development of technology for law enforcement, border security and related topics, funded by both UK and EU bodies, as well as research on the human element for a wide variety of security system issues. I provide the social, legal and ethical input into these projects in developing low level and high level technical and socio-technical elements of the systems to ensure a minimal invasion of privacy and lack or reduction in other negative social consequences of use.
EPSRC Project REASON (EP/C533402)
Dr Ferryman, Dr Wei and I collaborate on this EPSRC project, along with academics at UCL and Kingston University.
EU Framework 7 Security Theme project SUBITO
This project, which started in January 2009, aims to develop automated systems to support the identification of separated items, particularly in transport hubs and other high risk sites. Separated items are almost always lost luggage or carelessly dropped large litter. However, the use of explosive devices by various terrorist groups necessitate a cautious approach to separated items. Quick automatic support in identifying the activities of depositors of separated items will allow false alarms to be quickly and efficiently dealt with while causing minimal disruption to services, without abandoning caution and safety.
Partners include: SELEX S&AS (part of Finnmeccanica), the French Atomic Energy Commission and the University of Leeds.
EU Framework 7 Security Theme project EFFISEC
Starting early 2009, this project has the objective of improving the efficient monitoring of travellers in land and maritime border control areas.
Partners include: SAGEM Defense and Security division, Thales, the Swedish Defence Research Agency, the Romanian Border Police and the Port of Lisbon.
EU Framework 7 Security Theme project IMSK
Starting early 2009 this project will develop an integrated mobile security kit which will allow the economically efficient increase of security for one-off or short term events such as major sports championships or international political meetings (G8, CHOGM) without either the expense or the risk to privacy of a permanent installation of surveillance equipment. Improved security will also be expected from the flexible combination of appropriate subsystems targetted to the specific threats in place, the layout of the site and the type of event.
Partners include: Saab AB, Telespazio, the French Ministry of the Interior and the German Football League.
EU PASR Project BIO3R (2007-9):
Bioterrorism: Resilience, Research, Reaction (BIO3R) is a supporting action grant under the EU's Preparatory Action for Security Research mechanism. I was the Principal Investigator at Reading on this project. Reading led the Workpackage 440 (Ethical and Legal Issues), collaborating with Universitaetsklinikum Bonn and Nomisma S.p.A..
We also led the Dissemination Workpackage 630, on which Dr Yinshan Tang of the Informatics Research Centre is taking the lead.
EU PASR Project EuropCop (2007-8):
EuropCop: the European Pedestrian Policeman is an EU PASR supporting action grant. I was the principal investigator at Reading on this project. Reading leads the Workpackage 240 (Social, legal and ethical issues), collaborating with FRS, TNO and the French Interior Ministry.
We also led the Dissemination Workpackage 120, on which Dr Yinshan Tang of the Informatics Research Centre is taking the lead.
EU PASR Project ISCAPS (2005-7):
ISCAPS: Integrated Surveillance of Crowded and Public Areas was an EU PASR project grant. The Principal Investigator at Reading was Dr James Ferryman I was the leader of workpackage 230 (Social, Legal and Ethical Aspects). Reading was involved in many of the other workpackages in this project.
The Royal Academy of Engineering supported a sabbatical visit to Tokyo in 2007 via a Global Research Award. During this time I was also a Visiting Professor at Meiji University.
This has led to continuing collaborations with Prof Kiyoshi MURATA of Meiji University and Dr Yohko ORITO of Ehime University, on a cross-cultural examination of laws and attitudes on privacy of electronic data between the UK and Japan. We are also collaborating with Dr Steve McRobb on a related project which will examine the actions of British and Japanese internet users in relation to online privacy.
I am collaborating with Prof Murata, Dr Orito, Mr Trottier of Queens University in Ontario and Mr Parslow of the University of Reading, on a cross-cultural study of attitudes to social network site usage.
Again with Prof Murata and Dr Orito, we are investigating the use of CCTV systems in Japan by public and private bodies.
Prof Murata and I are working on a comparison of government attitudes to children's online experience in the UK and Japan.
I collaborate with Dr Ian Brown of the Oxford Internet Institute on copyright issues, the ethical questions raised by ubiquitous computing in healthcare, and ethical approaches to the engineering of information systems.
I co-authored (with Dr Rachel McCrindle of the University of Reading) a text book on the social and professional issues of the information society. Pandora's Box published by Wiley in December2007.
I gave a University of Reading Public Lecture in November 2004 on "Copyright v Creativity".
I'm a supporter of the
Creative Commons
concept and release some of my work under CC licences, such as
this image.
I am one of the Founding 1000 of the Open
Rights Group (ORG).
I used to do research in Computer Mathematics, although my focus has now switched to social, legal and ethical implications.
I worked with Dr James Anderson (The University of Reading) and Dr Norbert Voelker (University of Essex) on formal presentations of the TransNumbers related to Dr Anderson's Perspex Machine model of computation.
Higher Order Theorem Proving:
I have worked with a number of different systems including
The Coq System (in which I did my
PhD)
and PVS.
I was involved in the
Calculemus Initiative
on combining the facilities of theorem provers and computer algebra systems.
I was a research fellow at the
Universitaet des Saarlandes in 2001 on
the EU 5th Framework Calculemus project and held a grant from the UK
EPSRC (GR/S15044/01)
to continue collaboration with the group of
Prof Siekmann there.
Mathematical Knowledge Management:
I was a member of the EU 5th Framework project
MKMNet
(including UK EPSRC funding on grant
GR/S10919/01)
which performed initial investigation into the new area of
Mathematical Knowledge Management. See my paper from the MKM '03 conference:
Digitisation, Representation and Formalisation for my views on the
general direction of this work, called "a manifesto for MKM" by one of
the conference referees.
I was the conference chair of the 2006 MKM conference MKM 2006.
Publications list is up to date as of 1st April 2007.
I have a Profile at the Community of Science.
The theses for my graduate degrees are all available:
INDUCT: A Logical Framework for
Induction Over Natural Numbers and Lists Built in SEQUEL
(MSc Thesis in Computer Science, The University of Leeds, 1995)
Tools and Techniques for Machine-Assisted Meta-theory
(PhD Thesis in Computer Science, The University of St Andrews, 1997)
The Road to the EUCD
(LLM Thesis in Law, The University of Reading, 2005)
I am afraid I am not currently looking for new research (PhD) students.
I do not have any interest in undergraduate student interns. Emails from Indian Institute of Technology (or similar) students looking for an internship will be ignored.
