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In late 1999, Congress enacted financial modernisation legislation that dramatically deregulated the financial services industry and expanded the powers of financial institutions in the USA. In keeping with this deregulation and expanded powers, the regulatory landscape and enforcement mechanisms also changed. While many applaud this legislation, others point to previous US experience where financial deregulation overwhelmed federal regulators and resulted in massive failures of financial institutions and, consequently, in huge federal bailouts. The authors examine here the prospect of supplementing regulation with certain forms of private intervention. Specifically, they address the question: is there a role for whistleblowing and bounty hunting as means of supplementing existing regulation in the financial services industry?

To identify and assess the current state of professionalism and operations in the field of bail recovery, or bounty hunting.

A multi‐method approach, which integrated information from interviews with bond agents with information taken from a survey of workers in the bond field.

Survey respondents averaged 51 years of age, and were mostly Caucasian males. Most were religious and conservative, and over 25 percent reported having obtained a four‐year college degree. Roughly one‐third of all survey respondents reported experience in law enforcement; nearly half indicated having specialized skills in weaponry. Money was the most cited reason for becoming a bail enforcement agent, and most respondents believed that bail enforcement agents are an under‐appreciated component of the criminal justice system.

These findings were taken from a small number of survey respondents. Consequently, these data are not assumed to be representative of the population surveyed. Additionally, the interviews with key individuals in the field are also not assumed to be representative.

This research has shown that bond agents are not yet professionalized, but a substantial number of them desire greater professionalism in their field, and believe that more professional behavior is necessary to receive greater respect from their fellow criminal justice practitioners.

Very little is known about the operations and attitudes of bond agents. This research has added some critical information to this knowledge base, and has helped to raise other questions which may stimulate further research in this under‐examined field.

To provide a roadmap for financial services firms in designing some key policies and procedures relating to their cybersecurity programs, including document retention policies, creating incident response plans, and starting or evaluating a bounty program.

This article is divided into three parts: how to design a document retention policy, how to draft an effective incident response plan, data privacy considerations for starting or evaluating a bounty program. The information is presented in narrative form as well as through a series of practical checklists, questions for consideration and tables to represent data collected from other sources or analyzed by the authors.

This article identifies best practices for data security with respect to document retention policies, incident response plans and bounty programs.

This article includes practical guidance regarding document retention policies, incident response plans and bounty programs from lawyers with experience in data privacy and security, investment management and fund formation. This information is of value to financial services firms, which face potential financial implications and increasing regulatory ramifications, including enforcement actions, fines and penalties, for the failure to adopt tailored cybersecurity programs.

Although the rational and the emotional are often thought to be in conflict, this is not always the case. Here I examine two instances, Max Weber’s ideal-typical depiction of bureaucracy and James Coleman’s proposal for a rational reconstruction of societal institutions. In the case of Weber, it is clear that the disciplined, steady and affectless performance of official duties by bureaucrats can only be possible because of an underlying foundation of emotions, both positive and negative. In the case of Coleman’s proposal, which is based on money bounties as incentives for performing important societal tasks, a multitude of deleterious and defeating emotions inhere in this ultra-rational scheme.

This paper aims to describe two scenarios where the problem of information search interacts with the firm’s investment decisions. Investment decisions cannot be made separately from the need to acquire information.

The scenarios are illustrated with easy-to-follow numerical examples. Vignettes put the numerical examples in their real-world context.

In both scenarios, the firm should choose what might myopically appear as the lower net per value (NPV) alternative to efficiently deal with the information search problem.

Long-term investments are an important topic in the study of both accounting and finance, but it is in the study of accounting where information issues related to long term investments come to the fore. The traditional textbook approach on whether to accept long-term investment opportunities is to use the NPV rule. However, as illustrated in this note, in many important situations where information search is crucial to investment choice, the NPV rule will not lead to efficient investment decisions.

Most people are probably aware of malware, but they may not be aware of malware in what may be its most dangerous form, i.e. causing physical harm, even death, to individuals. This paper aims to document how software can cause malicious harm to individuals by attacking modern systems that appear to be neglected and under-researched.

This paper will review some of the most significant areas of concern with respect to end of days malware, i.e. malware that has a dangerous intent. The areas included are automobiles, medical devices and air traffic control systems.

The potential harmful effects of malware are often not well known by consumers and businesses around the world. These issues are not limited to just financial harm. Lives can actually be in danger. Underestimating the importance of cybersecurity and understanding the dangers that are associated with advancing technology are global issues that will continue unless there is enough awareness to force businesses and governments to address these issues. It is critical that safeguards are established.

While many papers have been written about malware and the implications of having malicious software infect a computer or a network, little attention has been paid to “end of days” malware. With advancing technology, malware now has the ability to cause serious injury or death to individuals who have minimal or no knowledge of the potential consequences of, for example, driving in an automobile, wearing or having an internal medical device or flying on an airplane. It is up to businesses and governments to address these issues.

This research examines, in a case study of Pitcairn Island, the meaning of community. Such meanings emerge in the empirical field whereby the ‘field’ offers its own cues to both issue and method. The main lesson learned from this ethnographic study stems from the experiential nature of fieldwork whereby ‘community’ is viewed as a cluster of embodied dispositions and practices. Influenced by Anthony Cohen's ethnographic work (1978, 1985) the case study demonstrates the centrality of the symbolic dimensions of community as a defining characteristic. Described as one of the most isolated islands in the world accessible only by sea, Pitcairn is the last remaining British ‘colony’ in the Pacific, settled in 1790 by English mutineers and Tahitians following the (in)famous mutiny on the Bounty. It represents in an anthropological sense a unique microcosm of social structure, studied ethnographically only a handful of times. Results show symbolic referents contribute to a sense of ‘exclusivity’ of Pitcairn culture that facilitates co-operation and collectivity whilst also recognizing the internal–external dialectics of boundaries of identification. The study reveals culture as a symbolic rather than structural construct as experienced by its members, seeing the community as a cultural field with a complex of symbols whose meanings vary amongst its members. Thus, connection and contiguity of culture continually transform the meaning of community, space and place. As such, community continues to be of both practical and ideological significance to the practice of anthropology.

US Vice President Albert Gore first used on March 21,1994, what later became the phrase: “Information Superhighway,” The phrase suggests that information traffic rolls right over the static, long‐suffering fixture of mud, concrete and asphalt. But with each new development of IT, it is as though the vehicles have to renegotiate with the roadway the right of passage, making it very much an interactive process. To underscore its dynamic nature, a transportation analogy seems appropriate. If we are today in the propeller airplane stage, Broadband Network Technology (BNT) is beyond Supersonic Concorde, to reach which we need to traverse through [1] turbo‐prop technology, [2] jet engine technology, [3] 747‐technology, [4]jumbo jet technology, and [5] supersonic technology to [6] supersonic+ technology. Information Superskyway should result in what Dertouzos, Director of MIT Computer Science Labatory, calls Information Marketplace: “the collection of people, computers, communications, software and services that will be engaged in the intraorganizational and interpersonal informational transactions of the future.” 3C firms jockey for position on the Information Superskyway. While they offer better access to the Internet, they also seek to restrict the access to products and services they control. Dertouzos says that all companies shoud cooperate with their competitors to build a shared information infrastructure, so that they can compete. It echoes our own definition of Concomitant Coalition: association of one party(ies) with and against the same party(ies) in the same game or activity. We discuss three CONCOLs: [1] Microsoft‐Netscape working together and in competition, as Bill Gates puts it, to define standards that will help overcome the Internet's limitations. They compete on supplying components of the software platform for interactive networks; but they cooperate in developing an industry standard, no matter whose components finally get accepted. [2] Sun‐NCR‐Intel working together against Microsoft which is pushing its Windows NT as a substitute for Sun's Unix operating system. [3] Intel‐SAP working together against Microsoft, IBM on business management software. Pandesic, the 50–50 joint venture between Intel (whose chips control the basic functions of 80 percent of the world's PCs), and Germany‐based SAP (the world's biggest publisher of business management software), will provide on‐line merchants the necessary hard‐and‐software, to tap into the projected US$234 billion economy on the Internet by the year 2002. We saw in Chapter 4 that the main players in 3C industries are racing each other on their own pathways to the Information Superskyway. In this chapter we find 3C firms entering into CONCOLs to tap into the rich bounty on the Internet. However, Dertouzos warns that none of the awesome powers of fiber optics, real‐time video, virtual reality, multimedia, and electronic commerce would be realized unless computers and software at diverse sites can “understand” one another. But he says: “Hardly anyone today is paying attention to shared conventions that will allow interconnected machines to understand and work with each other without the constant intervention of a human being.”