In this paper Professor Angell gives his predictions for the effect of global communication networks on the world economy and in particular on governmental and company structures…
Abstract
In this paper Professor Angell gives his predictions for the effect of global communication networks on the world economy and in particular on governmental and company structures at both macro and micro levels. He then relates this to the central position of information systems within management, in turn demonstrating the fundamental role of information systems (IS) security in the running of every company. In the light of these globalisation pressures he stresses that companies can no longer treat security issues as the poor relation — for that is merely trusting to luck in the face of growing organisational complexity. The basic message of the paper is that the security of business systems, particularly of telecommunication applications, must be placed at the core of every business. However, for this to happen he says that the very concept of security must be redefined, and the security community must start preparing itself now for its major new role in the future of management.
This polemical essay is an extended and more coherent version (what he would like to have said, rather than what he actually said) of the intervention made by the author at the…
Abstract
This polemical essay is an extended and more coherent version (what he would like to have said, rather than what he actually said) of the intervention made by the author at the 13th International Symposium on Economic Crime, held at the Guildhall, Cambridge, England on 13th September, 1995. It is his reaction against the moralising sentimentality of the Western law officers (police, lawyers and tax collectors) he saw speaking at the symposium.
Ian O. Angell and Dionysios S. Demetis
Describes some aspects of money laundering through the lens of systems terminology. Claims that this approach can give insights beyond those of the conventional “linear”…
Abstract
Describes some aspects of money laundering through the lens of systems terminology. Claims that this approach can give insights beyond those of the conventional “linear” methodologies, and gives the American dominance of the Financial Action Task Force as an example. Sees money laundering and anti‐money laundering as coupled activities, subsystems each of which stimulates the other to expand its own powers within its particular domain, so that the harder that anti‐money laundering pushes, money laundering pushes back. Relates this to how the suspicious transaction reporting system works in the Greek context and recommends improvements. Argues that anti‐money laundering is not a “solution” to the “problem” of money laundering, and that there can be no solution: money laundering is as old as money itself.
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Dionysios S. Demetis and Ian O. Angell
This paper seeks to deconstruct the proposed risk‐based approach to anti‐money laundering (AML) and to relate it to the text of the European Union's 3rd Directive. The paper also…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to deconstruct the proposed risk‐based approach to anti‐money laundering (AML) and to relate it to the text of the European Union's 3rd Directive. The paper also aims to discuss a variety of risk‐related aspects and how they have come to be constructed on the sociological perspective of risk and subsequently to examine the relation of risk elements to AML.
Design/methodology/approach
The theoretical approach of the paper is based on the tradition of second‐order cybernetics and on many of the theoretical concepts discussed by Niklas Luhmann, as well as his work on the sociology of risk.
Findings
The implications for the risk‐based approach on AML are discussed on the basis of how risk can be represented and categorized, and the paradoxes behind various such risk‐classifications are analysed, thus offering a critique on the oversimplification with which risk has been appropriated within AML.
Practical implications
The practical implications of this paper relate to how risk should be considered within the domain of AML and how financial institutions and financial intelligence units should mostly focus on re‐constructing the aspects surrounding risk‐communication.
Originality/value
The originality of this paper lies in its unique treatment of risk within the context of AML, while clearly exposing the unavoidable observational paradoxes that the concept of risk induces, as well as examining the consequences on the risk‐based approach for dealing with AML.
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Dionysios S. Demetis and Ian O. Angell
The paper seeks to analyse the systemic effects of AML‐technologies and regulations, at both national and organizational levels.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper seeks to analyse the systemic effects of AML‐technologies and regulations, at both national and organizational levels.
Design/methodology/approach
It focuses the power of systems theory, particularly the insights about self‐referential systems, to describe the organizational and bureaucratic phenomena that have emerged from the introduction of technology in the AML domain.
Findings
The paper confronts the technological instrumentalism both prevalent in the AML community and implied by the actions of regulators. It demonstrates the many false assumptions being made, and calls on the whole AML community to re‐think and clarify its position.
Research limitations/implications
This is the second paper describing an ongoing research project that focuses theory on the phenomena occurring when information and computer technologies are applied in the AML arena. The project is experimental and in its early stages, and so is necessarily limited in scale, but not in scope. The objective is to invite the AML community into a hermeneutic debate of the ideas, thereby informing AML policy decisions.
Practical implications
The paper calls for a reconsideration of the underlying assumptions within which AML‐related technology is appropriated by financial institutions. It demonstrates how this technology creates multiple complex systemic phenomena that often act contrary to initial intentions. This complexity is generated not only by data mining and/or profiling technologies, but also by peripheral technologies as they interact with human activity systems in the AML domain.
Originality/value
The paper is one of the relatively few that moves away from narrative description of AML phenomena, to present an academically legitimate theoretical foundation for analysis.
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It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields…
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It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.
The iconic vigilante Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) returned to cinema screens via Death Wish 2 (Michael Winner) in 1982 and vigilantism would remain a key theme in American urban…
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The iconic vigilante Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) returned to cinema screens via Death Wish 2 (Michael Winner) in 1982 and vigilantism would remain a key theme in American urban action films throughout the 1980s. Susan Jeffords subsequently argued that Hollywood's ‘hard bodied’ male action heroes of the period were reflective of the social and political thematics that distinguished Ronald Reagan's tenure as America's President (1994, p. 22). But while Jeffords' arguments are convincing, they overlook contemporaneous films featuring female and ‘soft’ bodied urban action heroes.
The Angel trilogy (Angel, 1984; Avenging Angel, 1985; and Angel III: The Final Chapter, 1988) features three such understudied examples. Indeed, the films' diverse and atypical range of action heroes demand that they are interrogated in terms of their protagonists' gender, sexual orientation, lifestyle choices and age. Featuring narratives about the prostitutes and street folk who frequent Los Angeles' Hollywood Boulevard, the films' key characters are a teenage prostitute and her guardians: a transvestite prostitute, a lesbian hotelier and an elderly cowboy. All three films feature narratives that revolve around acts of vengeance and vigilantism.
This chapter will critically discuss the striking ways in which the films' ‘soft’ bodied and atypical protagonists are presented as convincing action heroes who subvert contemporaneous ‘hard’ bodied norms. It will also consider to what extent their subversive rewriting of typical urban action film narratives and character relations might be understood to critique and deconstruct the themes and concerns that usually characterized such films during the Reagan era.
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The future is often portrayed as rational, logical, and informed by the continuing achievements of the scientific and technological revolution. In similar ways, our own time was…
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The future is often portrayed as rational, logical, and informed by the continuing achievements of the scientific and technological revolution. In similar ways, our own time was seen as marked by such advances by futurists of earlier decades. But at the end of the twentieth century, resistance to the claims of mainstream science and technology has grown to an extent unanticipated in these earlier appraisals. This essay argues that such resistance is liable to flourish in the twenty‐first century, and that understanding why this should be the case is important for studies of the future. In particular, this essay takes up the Fortean approach. This approach examines areas of human experience that are “damned” by mainstream science, and also examines the processes and strategies adopted both by those effecting the damnation, and those challenging it. The case being made is that although we can expect many of these damned phenomena to remain excluded – deservedly so in some cases – this will not always be the case.
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According to Truth the War Office has selected Mr. C. C. DUNCAN, F.I.C., the Public Analyst for the County of Worcester, for a special post, in which “ he will be responsible for…
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According to Truth the War Office has selected Mr. C. C. DUNCAN, F.I.C., the Public Analyst for the County of Worcester, for a special post, in which “ he will be responsible for the examination of the water supply for the troops.” “It might be supposed,” our contemporary observes, “that the services of this scientific expert would be worth at least the pay of a Captain. The War Office thinks differently. It is giving Mr. Duncan the pay of a private soldier, a piece of parsimony in no wise excused by the fact that the difference between his military pay and his regular salary will be made up by the Worcestershire County Council.” It appears that MR. DUNCAN has been selected for the post in question on the recommendation of a body described by Truth as “ The Institute of Analysts.” As no such body exists we presume that either the Institute of Chemistry or the cumbrously‐named “ Society of Public Analysts and Other Analytical Chemists” is referred to. It would be interesting to know what the Councils of either or both of these concerns have got to say about the treatment of this member of the profession which they are supposed to represent and whose dignity and interests they are supposed to maintain. The monstrous advertisement issued by the Woolwich Arsenal authorities about a year ago in which scientific chemists with University degrees were invited to apply for appointments at the munificent remuneration of £2 per week is a sufficient illustration of the value put upon scientific attainments by Government Departments in this country. But even this example of fatuous ignorance and inane parsimony has been eclipsed by the present arrangements for the employment of scientific chemists in the Royal Engineers, in which they are invited to enlist with the rank of Corporal and with Corporal's pay and “allowances.” The sulphuric acid scandal recently exposed by The Globe makes it once more abundantly clear that where scientific advice even of an elementary kind is needed no attempt is made to obtain reliable guidance. The wrong people are invariably applied to for advice and the wrong men are appointed to fill responsible posts. The following remarks appear in The Globe of September 23rd :—“We have evidence of the incompetence of the High Explosives Department which thought it fitting to appoint as the comptroller of the shipment of oleum” (i.e., a form of sulphuric acid shipped from America) “a young man, wholly inexperienced, at a handsome salary, his only qualification apparently being that he was the son of his father. This young man was completely ignorant of the properties of oleum. His first introduction to the acid was when he was called upon to advise as to the best method of shipment.” According to the facts stated in The Globe the result of this bungling has been a loss of some hundreds of thousands of pounds to the taxpayers of this country.
THE summer is not a good time for writing editorials. In the first place it has been too warm, but more particularly, no matter how hot the topic at the time of writing, it will…
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THE summer is not a good time for writing editorials. In the first place it has been too warm, but more particularly, no matter how hot the topic at the time of writing, it will be cold as mutton before it eventually reaches its readers. Secondly our thoughts seem to have been devoted to anything except libraries: a little light reading perhaps, or a gentle discussion of next season's lecture programme? So now, not an editorial proper (or improper), but some editorial miscellany, beginning with the late but unregretted printing dispute. The LIBRARY WORLD has not been affected as much as some periodicals, and this issue makes its appearance only some three weeks later than planned. We have occasionally encountered comments which suggest that our journal is not anticipated each month with undue pleasure, and is quickly placed on the Chief Librarian's desk, from which honourable position its subsequent circulation is frequently delayed. Many libraries do not appear to have a professional journal circulation scheme, and this is a regrettable state of affairs. It is important that the younger members of the profession should be well informed about library affairs, and only the regular perusal of periodicals can achieve this. May we recommend that Chiefs institute and maintain a circulation programme in their libraries; we hear that it is much appreciated in those libraries which already do so.