Manas Mittal

EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley

Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2014-85

May 16, 2014

http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2014/EECS-2014-85.pdf

Corruption is endemic in emerging economies – many transactions of private citizens with government institutions require the payment of bribes. While well known as a general phenomenon, specific data about the “bribe economy” is hard to come by. But such data is needed for rational responses to corruption at the societal and individual level – to expose it; to know which offices to avoid; or to know how much to pay if other recourse is not available. In response to a corruption survey of 102 participants, we have developed Bribecaster, a web application and an Android app to enable citizens to report and consume corruption information about dealing with government offices. Bribecaster uses a novel privacy-preserving implicit login schema and one-way hashing for protecting user identities while simultaneously ensuring the accuracy and integrity of reports. This citizen-induced transparency facilitates rational social and individual responses to corruption. Participants in a first-use user study rated Bribecaster highly for its usefulness.

Advisors: Björn Hartmann

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BibTeX citation:

@mastersthesis{Mittal:EECS-2014-85,
    Author= {Mittal, Manas},
    Title= {Bribecaster: Documenting Bribes Through Community Participation},
    School= {EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley},
    Year= {2014},
    Month= {May},
    Url= {http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2014/EECS-2014-85.html},
    Number= {UCB/EECS-2014-85},
    Abstract= {Corruption is endemic in emerging economies – many transactions of private citizens with government institutions require the payment of bribes. While well known as a general phenomenon, specific data about the “bribe economy” is hard to come by. But such data is needed for rational responses to corruption at the societal and individual level – to expose it; to know which offices to avoid; or to know how much to pay if other recourse is not available. In response to a corruption survey of 102 participants, we have developed Bribecaster, a web application and an Android app to enable citizens to report and consume corruption information about dealing with government offices. Bribecaster uses a novel privacy-preserving implicit login schema and one-way hashing for protecting user identities while simultaneously ensuring the accuracy and integrity of reports. This citizen-induced transparency facilitates rational social and individual responses to corruption. Participants in a first-use user study rated Bribecaster highly for its usefulness.},
}

EndNote citation:

%0 Thesis
%A Mittal, Manas 
%T Bribecaster: Documenting Bribes Through Community Participation
%I EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley
%D 2014
%8 May 16
%@ UCB/EECS-2014-85
%U http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2014/EECS-2014-85.html
%F Mittal:EECS-2014-85