First They Came for the Poor: Surveillance of Welfare Recipients as an Uncontested Practice
There have been moments in American history when government surveillance of everyday citizens has aroused public concerns, most recently Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations concerning widespread, warrantless surveillance of Americans and foreigners alike. What does not arouse public concern are longstanding governmental practices that involve surveillance of poor people who receive certain types of public benefits. This article traces the political history of U.S. poverty-relief programs, considers the perspective of welfare beneficiaries themselves, analyzes American cultural beliefs about the poor in order to offer some thoughts on why those surveillance practices garner little public concern, and argues that those who are concerned about warrantless surveillance of ordinary citizens should do more to protect ordinary poor citizens from surveillance.
Big Data Ethics: A Life Cycle Perspective
The adoption of big data analysis in the legal domain is a recent but growing trend that highlights ethical concerns not just with big data analysis, as such, but also with its deployment in the legal domain. This article systematically analyses five big data use cases from the legal domain utilising a pluralistic and pragmatic mode of ethical reasoning. In each case we analyse what happens with data from its creation to its eventual archival or deletion, for which we utilise the concept of ‘data life cycle’. Despite the exploratory nature of this article and some limitations of our approach, the systematic summary we deliver depicts the five cases in detail, reinforces the idea that ethically significant issues exist across the entire big data life cycle, and facilitates understanding of how various ethical considerations interact with one another throughout the big data life cycle. Furthermore, owing to its pragmatic and pluralist nature, the approach is potentially useful for practitioners aiming to interrogate big data use cases.
Ultrastructural observations of the spermiogenesis in the Parotoplaninae (Plathelminthes, Proseriata) with special reference to a striated appendage of the intercentriolar body
SummaryThe spermiogenesis of three species of the Parotoplaninae (Otoplanidae, Proseriata) is described based on electron-microscopical observations. Special reference is given to organelles which do not persist in mature male gametes. One of these organelles is a striated appendage of the intercentriolar body. This differentiation has not been reported from any other plathelminth taxa up to now. The striated appendage, which may serve as a strengthening element, is hypothesized to be an autapomorphic feature of the Parotoplaninae.