arXiv subjects

Jukka Ruohonen

Publications and source records attributed to Jukka Ruohonen.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

A Note on the Proposed Law for Improving the Transparency of Political Advertising in the European Union

There is an increasing supply and demand for political advertising throughout the world. At the same time, societal threats, such as election interference by foreign governments and other bad actors, continues to be a pressing concern in many democracies. Furthermore, manipulation of electoral outcomes, whether by foreign or domestic forces, continues to be a concern of many citizens who are also worried about their fundamental rights. To these ends, the European Union (EU) has launched several initiatives for tackling the issues. A new regulation was proposed in 2020 also for improving the transparency of political advertising in the union. This short commentary reviews the regulation proposed and raises a few points about its limitations and potential impacts.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2023

Recent Trends in Cross-Border Data Access by Law Enforcement Agencies

Access to online data has long been important for law enforcement agencies in their collection of electronic evidence and investigation of crimes. These activities have also long involved cross-border investigations and international cooperation between agencies and jurisdictions. However, technological advances such as cloud computing have complicated the investigations and cooperation arrangements. Therefore, several new laws have been passed and proposed both in the United States and the European Union for facilitating cross-border crime investigations in the context of cloud computing. These new laws and proposals have also brought many new legal challenges and controversies regarding extraterritoriality, data protection, privacy, and surveillance. With these challenges in mind and with a focus on Europe, this paper reviews the recent trends and policy initiatives for cross-border data access by law enforcement agencies.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2023

Reassessing Measures for Press Freedom

There has been an increasing interest in press freedom in the face of various global scandals, transformation of media, technological change, obstacles to deliberative democracy, and other factors. Press freedom is frequently used also as an explanatory factor in comparative empirical research. However, validations of existing measurement instruments on press freedom have been far and few between. Given these points, this paper evaluates eight cross-country instruments on press freedom in 146 countries between 2001 and 2020, replicating an earlier study with a comparable research setup. The methodology is based on principal component analysis and multi-level regression modeling. According to the results, the construct (convergence) validity of the instruments is good; they all measure the same underlying semi-narrow definition for press freedom elaborated in the paper. In addition, any of the indices seems suitable to be used interchangeability in empirical research. Limitations and future research directions are further discussed.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2023

Reflections on the Data Governance Act

The European Union (EU) has been pursuing a new strategy under the umbrella label of digital sovereignty. Data is an important element in this strategy. To this end, a specific Data Governance Act was enacted in 2022. This new regulation builds upon two ideas: reuse of data held by public sector bodies and voluntary sharing of data under the label of data altruism. This short commentary reviews the main content of the new regulation. Based on the review, a few points are also raised about potential challenges.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2023

A Text Mining Analysis of Data Protection Politics: The Case of Plenary Sessions of the European Parliament

Data protection laws and policies have been studied extensively in recent years, but little is known about the parliamentary politics of data protection. This imitation applies even to the European Union (EU) that has taken the global lead in data protection and privacy regulation. For patching this notable gap in existing research, this paper explores the data protection questions raised by the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in the Parliament's plenary sessions and the answers given to these by the European Commission. Over a thousand of such questions and answers are covered in a period from 1995 to early 2023. Given computational analysis based on text mining, the results indicate that (a) data protection has been actively debated in the Parliament during the past twenty years. No noticeable longitudinal trends are present; the debates have been relatively constant. As could be expected, (b) the specific data protection laws in the EU have frequently been referenced in these debates, which (c) do not seem to align along conventional political dimensions such as the left-right axis. Furthermore, (d) numerous distinct data protection topics have been debated by the parliamentarians, indicating that data protection politics in the EU go well-beyond the recently enacted regulations.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2022

A Review of Product Safety Regulations in the European Union

Product safety has been a concern in Europe ever since the early 1960s. Despite the long and relatively stable historical lineage of product safety regulations, new technologies, changes in the world economy, and other major transformations have in recent years brought product safety again to the forefront of policy debates. As reforms are also underway, there is a motivation to review the complex safety policy framework in the European Union (EU). Thus, building on deliberative policy analysis and interpretative literature review, this paper reviews the safety policy for non-food consumer products in the EU. The review covers the historical background and the main laws, administration and enforcement, standardization and harmonization, laws enacted for specific products, notifications delivered by national safety authorities, recalls of dangerous products, and the liability of these. Based on the review and analysis of these themes and the associated literature, some current policy challenges are further discussed.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2021

A Large-Scale Security-Oriented Static Analysis of Python Packages in PyPI

Different security issues are a common problem for open source packages archived to and delivered through software ecosystems. These often manifest themselves as software weaknesses that may lead to concrete software vulnerabilities. This paper examines various security issues in Python packages with static analysis. The dataset is based on a snapshot of all packages stored to the Python Package Index (PyPI). In total, over 197 thousand packages and over 749 thousand security issues are covered. Even under the constraints imposed by static analysis, (a) the results indicate prevalence of security issues; at least one issue is present for about 46% of the Python packages. In terms of the issue types, (b) exception handling and different code injections have been the most common issues. The subprocess module stands out in this regard. Reflecting the generally small size of the packages, (c) software size metrics do not predict well the amount of issues revealed through static analysis. With these results and the accompanying discussion, the paper contributes to the field of large-scale empirical studies for better understanding security problems in software ecosystems.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2021

Digital Divides and Online Media

Digital divide has been a common concern during the past two or three decades; traditionally, it refers to a gap between developed and developing countries in the adoption and use of digital technologies. Given the importance of the topic, digital divide has been also extensively studied, although, hitherto, there is no previous research that would have linked the concept to online media. Given this gap in the literature, this paper evaluates the "maturity" of online media in 134 countries between 2007 and 2016. Maturity is defined according to the levels of national online media consumption, diversity of political perspectives presented in national online media, and consensus in reporting major political events in national online media. These aspects are explained by considering explanatory factors related to economy, infrastructure, politics, and administration. According to the empirical results based on a dynamic panel data methodology, all aspects except administration are also associated with the maturity of national online media.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2021

Assessing the Readability of Policy Documents on the Digital Single Market of the European Union

Today, literature skills are necessary. Engineering and other technical professions are not an exception from this requirement. Traditionally, technical reading and writing have been framed with a limited scope, containing documentation, specifications, standards, and related text types. Nowadays, however, the scope covers also other text types, including legal, policy, and related documents. Given this motivation, this paper evaluates the readability of 201 legislations and related policy documents in the European Union (EU). The digital single market (DSM) provides the context. Five classical readability indices provide the methods; these are quantitative measures of a text's readability. The empirical results indicate that (i) generally a Ph.D. level education is required to comprehend the DSM laws and policy documents. Although (ii) the results vary across the five indices used, (iii) readability has slightly improved over time.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2021

The GDPR Enforcement Fines at Glance

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force in 2018. After this enforcement, many fines have already been imposed by national data protection authorities in Europe. This paper examines the individual GDPR articles referenced in the enforcement decisions, as well as predicts the amount of enforcement fines with available meta-data and text mining features extracted from the enforcement decision documents. According to the results, three articles related to the general principles, lawfulness, and information security have been the most frequently referenced ones. Although the amount of fines imposed vary across the articles referenced, these three particular articles do not stand out. Furthermore, a better statistical evidence is available with other meta-data features, including information about the particular European countries in which the enforcements were made. Accurate predictions are attainable even with simple machine learning techniques for regression analysis. Basic text mining features outperform the meta-data features in this regard. In addition to these results, the paper reflects the GDPR's enforcement against public administration obstacles in the European Union (EU), as well as discusses the use of automatic decision-making systems in judiciary.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2021

The Treachery of Images in the Digital Sovereignty Debate

This short theoretical and argumentative essay contributes to the ongoing deliberation about the so-called digital sovereignty, as pursued particularly in the European Union (EU). Drawing from classical political science literature, the essay approaches the debate through paradoxes that arise from applying classical notions of sovereignty to the digital domain. With these paradoxes and a focus on the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the essay develops a viewpoint distinct from the conventional territorial notion of sovereignty. Accordingly, the lesson from Westphalia has more to do with the capacity of a state to govern. It is also this capacity that is argued to enable the sovereignty of individuals within the digital realm. With this viewpoint, the essay further advances another, broader, and more pressing debate on politics and democracy in the digital era.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2021

Crossing Cross-Domain Paths in the Current Web

The loading of resources from third-parties has evoked new security and privacy concerns about the current world wide web. Building on the concepts of forced and implicit trust, this paper examines cross-domain transmission control protocol (TCP) connections that are initiated to domains other than the domain queried with a web browser. The dataset covers nearly ten thousand domains and over three hundred thousand TCP connections initiated by querying popular Finnish websites and globally popular sites. According to the results, (i) cross-domain connections are extremely common in the current Web. (ii) Most of these transmit encrypted content, although mixed content delivery is relatively common; many of the cross-domain connections deliver unencrypted content at the same time. (iii) Many of the cross-domain connections are initiated to known web advertisement domains, but a much larger share traces to social media platforms and cloud infrastructures. Finally, (iv) the results differ slightly between the Finnish web sites sampled and the globally popular sites. With these results, the paper contributes to the ongoing work for better understanding cross-domain connections and dependencies in the world wide web.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2021

A Critical Correspondence on Humpty Dumpty's Funding for European Journalism

This short critical correspondence discusses the Digital News Innovation (DNI) fund orchestrated by Humpty Dumpty -- a.k.a. Google -- for helping European journalism to innovate and renew itself. Based on topic modeling and critical discourse analysis, the results indicate that the innovative projects mostly mimic the old business model of Humpty Dumpty. With these results and the accompanying critical discussion, this correspondence contributes to the ongoing battle between platforms and media.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2021

A Few Observations About State-Centric Online Propaganda

This paper presents a few observations about pro-Kremlin propaganda between 2015 and early 2021 with a dataset from the East Stratcom Task Force (ESTF), which is affiliated with the European Union (EU) but working independently from it. Instead of focusing on misinformation and disinformation, the observations are motivated by classical propaganda research and the ongoing transformation of media systems. According to the tentative results, (i) the propaganda can be assumed to target both domestic and foreign audiences. Of the countries and regions discussed, (ii) Russia, Ukraine, the United States, and within Europe, Germany, Poland, and the EU have been the most frequently discussed. Also other conflict regions such as Syria have often appeared in the propaganda. In terms of longitudinal trends, however, (iii) most of these discussions have decreased in volume after the digital tsunami in 2016, although the conflict in Ukraine seems to have again increased the intensity of pro-Kremlin propaganda. Finally, (iv) the themes discussed align with state-centric war propaganda and conflict zones, although also post-truth themes frequently appear; from conspiracy theories via COVID-19 to fascism -- anything goes, as is typical to propaganda.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2020

Do Cyber Capabilities and Cyber Power Incentivize International Cooperation?

This paper explores a research question about whether defensive and offensive cyber security power and the capabilities to exercise the power influence the incentives of nation-states to participate in bilateral and multilateral cooperation (BMC) through formal and informal agreements, alliances, and norms. Drawing from international relations in general and structural realism in particular, three hypotheses are presented for assessing the research question empirically: (i) increasing cyber capability lessens the incentives for BMC; (ii) actively demonstrating and exerting cyber power decreases the willingness for BMC; and (iii) small states prefer BMC for cyber security and politics thereto. According to a cross-country dataset of 29 countries, all three hypotheses are rejected. Although presenting a "negative result" with respect to the research question, the accompanying discussion contributes to the state-centric cyber security research in international relations and political science.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2020

Predicting the Amount of GDPR Fines

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was enforced in 2018. After this enforcement, many fines have already been imposed by national data protection authorities in the European Union (EU). This paper examines the individual GDPR articles referenced in the enforcement decisions, as well as predicts the amount of enforcement fines with available meta-data and text mining features extracted from the enforcement decision documents. According to the results, articles related to the general principles, lawfulness, and information security have been the most frequently referenced ones. Although the amount of fines imposed vary across the articles referenced, these three particular articles do not stand out. Furthermore, good predictions are attainable even with simple machine learning techniques for regression analysis. Basic meta-data (such as the articles referenced and the country of origin) yields slightly better performance compared to the text mining features.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2020

A Dip Into a Deep Well: Online Political Advertisements, Valence, and European Electoral Campaigning

Online political advertisements have become an important element in electoral campaigning throughout the world. At the same time, concepts such as disinformation and manipulation have emerged as a global concern. Although these concepts are distinct from online political ads and data-driven electoral campaigning, they tend to share a similar trait related to valence, the intrinsic attractiveness or averseness of a message. Given this background, the paper examines online political ads by using a dataset collected from Google's transparency reports. The examination is framed to the mid-2019 situation in Europe, including the European Parliament elections in particular. According to the results based on sentiment analysis of the textual ads displayed via Google's advertisement machinery, (i) most of the political ads have expressed positive sentiments, although these vary greatly between (ii) European countries as well as across (iii) European political parties. In addition to these results, the paper contributes to the timely discussion about data-driven electoral campaigning and its relation to politics and democracy.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2020

Measuring Basic Load-Balancing and Fail-Over Setups for Email Delivery via DNS MX Records

The domain name system (DNS) has long provided means to assure basic load-balancing and fail-over (BLBFO) for email delivery. A traditional method uses multiple mail exchanger (MX) records to distribute the load across multiple email servers. Round-robin DNS is the common alternative to this MX-based balancing. Despite the classical nature of these two solutions, neither one has received particular attention in Internet measurement research. To patch this gap, this paper examines BLBFO configurations with an active measurement study covering over 2.7 million domains from which about 2.1 million have MX records. Of these MX-enabled domains, about 60% are observed to use BLBFO, and MX-based balancing seems more common than round-robin DNS. Email hosting services offer one explanation for this adoption rate. Many domains seem to also prefer fine-tuned configurations instead of relying on randomization assumptions. Furthermore, about 27% of the domains have at least one exchanger with a valid IPv6 address. Finally, some misconfigurations and related oddities are visible.

cs.NI↗