How should Australia handle ‘sovereign citizens’ clogging the courts? A former magistrate explains

How should Australia handle ‘sovereign citizens’ clogging the courts? A former magistrate explains

Westpac and ANZ have reported suspected illegitimate borrowing, joining NAB and Commonwealth Bank on concerns the washing of illicit funds is systemic.

Big four banks find themselves embroiled in loan fraud probe

What actually stops a would-be dictator? Political science research points to a single factor above all others: whether enough people can see the threat for what it is.

The one thing that actually stops would-be dictators

€5 billion defrauded from EU pandemic recovery fund, prosecutors suspect

Ticks as biological weapons Multipolar via machine translation 

New Playbook Provides Solutions to Stop Private Equity Takeover of the Child Care Industry Open Markets Institute

Iran War Watch: Trump Dithers

Trump looks even more caught than ever on the horns of his Iran war dilemma

Japan Seeks to Counter China’s Expanding Influence in Pacific by Strengthening Ties with Island Nations Yomiuri Shimbun

Ukraine loan will happen ‘one way or the other’, von der Leyen says amid Orbán veto Euronews

Polish presidential adviser claims halting Russian oil transit to Hungary is due to Brussels-Kyiv pactDaily News Hungary

US ambassador to France defuses diplomatic squabble with Paris over killing of student AP

Hospital Ship USNS Mercy Departs Alabama as Greenland Mission Remains Unclear gCaptain

How Jeffrey Epstein Beat the Justice System

A New Miami Herald Investigation, Julie K. Brown. “Jeffrey Epstein tried, and often succeeded, in manipulating almost every level of the criminal justice system. For this story,we looked at emails that Epstein shared with people who were involved in his criminal case — and those in the justice system who were mentioned in documents and emails. The Epstein Files by Julie K. Brown is a reader-supported publication. 

To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. What we found: Some of their names are mentioned a lot. Epstein didn’t just stop at getting his sweetheart deal. In the year when he was supposed to be behind bars, he continued to cultivate people in the system to help him get work release, ease his sex offender requirements and to even get a pardon.

 Even when he was unsuccessful, the emails show how Epstein’s ability to get that 2008 sweetheart deal only emboldened him to continue his quest to conquer the very people in the criminal justice system who were supposed to hold him accountable. This is the reason I began this project eight years ago. I felt not enough light was shown on how the criminal justice system failed Epstein’s victims.

 It’s always been a mystery how and why Epstein was able to get federal immunity even though they had 40 victims. In case someone tries to tell you otherwise — they had supporting evidence like phone logs, message pads — even a report card from one of Epstein’s victims that was found in his Palm Beach home….”

Born To Run

 50 years ago, Bruce Springsteen was terrified Columbia Records were going to drop him.  He spent six months writing one of the best rock ‘n’ roll albums of all time.

Born To Run

Legendary editor Ann Godoff, an editor and publisher for Penguin Press, has died from complications of bone cancer. She was 76. Variety’s Arushi Jacob wrote, “Godoff spent more than three decades as the head of Random House, nurturing the careers of numerous novelists and nonfiction writers. Her more celebrated authors include Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith, Ron Chernow, E.L. Doctorow, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Thomas Pynchon, Tom Brokaw, William Styron and Alice Waters.” Be sure to check out Sam Roberts’ excellent remembrance of Godoff in The New York Times

Physics Is a Conversation

Physicist Sean Carroll leads off this video with this line:

I like to say that Einstein is, if anything, underrated as a  physicist, which is hard to imagine given how highly he is rated.

And then leads us through a history of modern physics and quantum mechanics that, Einstein and Newton aside, is much more collaborative than you often hear about.

This idea that there are many people contributing and many different parts of the pieces need to put together is actually much more characteristic of how physics is usually done than the single person inventing everything all by themselves.

“I remember walking by a former drug dealer, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent, a former mobster and a former preacher all sitting around a table together in the prison yard. Surely this was not happening anywhere else in America.”

Token Anxiety. “This voice in my head that says ‘something could be running right now’ just doesn’t shut off. I’m not even building a company. I’m just addicted to building my random ideas.”

Ministry of Justice orders deletion of UK’s largest court reporting archive

The Times: “The Ministry of Justice (UK) is ordering the deletion of a large archive of court records, raising open justice concerns. Courtsdesk, a data analysis company that supports media and campaigners in monitoring court records, has been ordered by the government to delete its archive, which provides a crucial tool for journalists covering the justice system. The project was approved by the lord chancellor in 2021 to explore how a “national digital news feed of listings and registers can improve coverage of the courts by the news media” by opening up magistrate court records. 

According to Courtsdesk, the platform has since been used by more than 1,500 journalists from 39 media organisations and the data provided has highlighted serious failures in the courts system. It said journalists were given no advance notice of 1.6 million criminal hearings, the number of court cases listed was accurate on just 4.2 per cent of sitting days and half a million weekend cases were heard with no notification to the press…”

Image Whisperer AI Image Detector

• A Media Verification & Research tool, detects AI, developed by Henk van Ess with Claude Code by Anthropic as coding assistant.
• “Why AI Detection Fails on the Fakes That Matter Most. Total fakes are easy to spot. Hybrid fakes slip through. Most AI detectors work like calculators — they output a number. They need to work like detectives — really look at the evidence.”
• 
  

New Report Helps Journalists Dig Deeper Into Police Surveillance Technology

EFF – “A new report released today offers journalists tips on cutting through the sales hype about police surveillance technology and report accurately on costs, benefits, privacy, and accountability as these invasive and often ineffective tools come to communities across the nation. 

 The “Selling Safety” report is a joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Center for Just Journalism (CJJ), and IPVM.  

Police technology is often sold as a silver bullet: a way to modernize departments, make communities safer, and eliminate human bias from policing with algorithmic objectivity. Behind the slick marketing is a sprawling, under-scrutinized industry that relies on manufacturing the appearance of effectiveness, not measuring it. 

The cost of blindly deferring to advertising can be high in tax dollars, privacy, and civil liberties.  “Selling Safety” helps journalists see through the spin. It breaks down how policing technology companies market their tools, and how those sales claims — which are often misleading — get recycled into media coverage. It offers tools for asking better questions, understanding incentives, and finding local accountability stories..”

• For the “Selling Safety” report: https://www.eff.org/document/selling-safety-journalists-guide-covering-police-technology
• For EFF’s Street-Level Surveillance hub: https://sls.eff.org/ 
• For EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance:https://www.atlasofsurveillance.org/ 

 

ATO tax return data could help to alleviate mortgage fraud risk

As the country’s big four banks scramble to get ahead of the problem, there are solutions that can be implemented to greatly lower the risk of home loan fraud

Joyce MoullakisAssociate editor

Mar 1, 2026 

The financial services sector, police and policymakers should come together as soon as practicable to address the heightened threat of mortgage fraud in the nation’s $2.4 trillion home loan market.

The threat has certainly never been more real. And although the problem might at first seem difficult to combat, there are solutions that can be implemented to drastically reduce the risk of home loan fraud.

The big four banks are on the hook for more than $300 million at the latest count, as the home loan fraud unravels. David Rowe

Commonwealth Bank is grappling with potential fraud of $1 billion within its home lending portfolio, and that figure is unlikely to include an exposure to a criminal group dubbed The Penthouse Syndicate. (The $1 billion in loans are secured by property, so the bank is not facing losses of that magnitude, but its systems and processes have been found wanting).

The Penthouse Syndicate has entangled all the big banks in fraud, after the group circumvented their credit policies to acquire home and business loans, including for luxury property. ANZ, CBA, Westpac and National Australia Bank are on the hook for more than $300 million at the latest count.

The loan fraud issue is exacerbated by the use of artificial intelligence to create fake documents, and the other concerns include the use of shell companies, draft or false tax returns and large deposits from offshore jurisdictions.

 

FinTech Australia’s chief executive, Rehan D’Almeida, believes that if tax returns can be accessed directly by lenders and mortgage brokers through the Australian Taxation Office, it would stamp out some of the home loan fraud being perpetrated.

“The current situation … is where you download the statements and particular documents and upload it. That leads to so many opportunities for fraud, and with AI coming into the conversion as well, it just becomes easier to create inaccurate, fake documents,” he says.

Underwhelming take-up of the data right

If his suggestion is introduced, it would require the individual to give the ATO consent to make the source information available, as part of the Consumer Data Right. This right allows consumers to safely share the data that banks, other lenders and energy companies hold about them.

It has not extended to ATO data so far, and overall take-up of the data right, as it stands, has been underwhelming. A banker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the inability to verify an individual’s notice of assessment with the ATO was an issue for the industry. It used to be allowed, but was stopped as concerns, including around privacy, came into play.

Several banks want the data right to include information from government agencies. In a submission to the Productivity Commission last year, CBA advocated for change, including expanding the data right to government datasets. In Westpac’s submission, it said that including ATO data made sense, but it focused on the inclusion of the data, making the lending process more efficient and increasing the take-up of the Consumer Data Right.

Either way, the $1 billion in potential mortgage fraud at CBA raises serious questions about the bank’s home loan systems and processes, and its ability to verify documents and information provided by applicants or brokers.

And every bank in Australia is now on notice to ensure that staff, and credit and compliance teams, are aware of risks and the potential for fraudulent and AI-generated documents to be submitted.

“We have unfortunately seen examples of phoenix-ing, lazy compliance practices and brokers cutting corners.”

— Finsure chief executive Simon Bednar

For CBA, the vulnerabilities of those systems and processes will be the subject of close attention from the NSW Police, financial crimes regulator AUSTRAC and the prudential and corporate regulators.

Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that deficiencies across CBA’s intelligent deposit machines led to them being exploited by criminals and terrorists, who were stuffing large sums of money through them.

At one stage, deposits going through those so-called intelligent ATMs amounted to $1.7 billion a month. And in 2015, a customer entangled in the scandal deposited $670,420 in just one day.

CBA chief executive Matt Comyn was head of the retail bank during that tumultuous era, making him acutely aware that criminals seek to exploit any vulnerability within banks’ systems and processes.

CBA’s issues with that channel and other failures around its transaction reporting led to it paying a $700 million penalty in 2018.

The bank is reviewing loans across its own lending channels, including bankers and branches, but also focusing on mortgage brokers and loan referral partners such as real estate agents and accountants.

Interestingly, before the CBA revelations, mortgage broking group Finsure had already moved to raise entry standards for brokers joining its network.

Trade publication The Adviser covered the change last week, and Finsure chief executive Simon Bednar warned of increased levels of misconduct within the industry.

“We have unfortunately seen examples of phoenix-ing, lazy compliance practices and brokers cutting corners. It is a minority, but it is a pattern we cannot ignore,” he said at the time.

Kudos to Finsure for seeking to raise standards within the mortgage broking industry. Protections were put in place following the Hayne royal commission, when regulators introduced new rules for mortgage brokers, including a duty to act in the best interests of customers. As the industry works through its issues, lenders and policymakers should urgently act to close any gaps that allow criminals to fraudulently obtain home loans.

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RELATED

• Banking products

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• Property investment

The Australian towns where it’s cheaper to buy than rent

Joyce Moullakis is an associate editor writing across company news, policy issues, investment banking, private equity and financial services. Connect with Joyce on Twitter. Email Joyce at joyce.moullakis@nine.com.au

How to Stop a Dictator

 What actually stops a would-be dictator? Political science research points to a single factor above all others: whether enough people can see the threat for what it is.

The one thing that actually stops would-be dictators

How to Stop a Dictator. “Democracy is in fact a powerful motivating factor: When people are convinced that there’s a threat to their political freedoms, they can be motivated to go to extraordinary lengths to defend them.”

A visual archive of Jan. 6, 2021 through the lenses of those who were there

“In the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, American political leaders almost universally condemned the riot as an act of domestic terrorism that threatened democracy. Now, President Trump calls Jan. 6 a “day of love” and the rioters “great patriots.” And since he issued mass pardons to the rioters, his administration has been trying to rewrite history. NPR has tracked every Jan. 6prosecution in a public database, and, drawing on thousands of hours of footage and years of reporting, created a front-line account of the riot. 

The evidence vividly shows the planning for “revolution” and the brutality of violence on a day that continues to shape American politics.

• Explore the database and coverage, or scroll to read the full narrative.
• This material includes profanity, violence and references to suicide.

Judge: IRS broke law ‘approximately 42,695 times’ in giving DHS data

Washington Post: “A federal judge has found that the Internal Revenue Service violated federal law “approximately 42,695 times” when it shared confidential taxpayer addresses. The judge wrote that the vast majority of the nearly 47,300 taxpayer addresses the IRS shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in August were disclosed without the IRS confirming that ICE provided a valid address for the person whose records it was seeking…”

Trump’s properties remain an epicenter of his conflicts and corruption in second term

CREW: “In the year since Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office, he has already racked up an astonishing number of conflicts of interest from the businesses that he owns and profits from as president. 

While everyday Americans continue to struggle to cover the rising costs of housing, groceries, utilities and other regular expenses, Trump’s profiteering has led to what Forbes magazine described as “the most lucrative year of [Donald Trump’s] life.” In his first 365 days back in office, Trump visited his properties 198 times, and visited his golf courses 116 times, sending a message to those looking to influence his administration that his properties are open for business. 

Foreign government officials visited his properties 55 times, pouring money into Trump’s pockets, and special interest groups held 57 events at them. Trump and his family profit financially. Special interests benefit. Foreign governments benefit. And everyday Americans come last. This corruption is not new. Trump’s first term in office was marred by egregious conflicts of interest arising from his decision not to divest from his real estate empire. 

CREW spent those four years meticulously tracking interactions between the Trump Organization and the presidency, totaling more than 3,700 conflicts of interest. CREW has continued tracking Trump’s conflicts in his second term, and the level of corruption and profiteering have already far surpassed the already ignominious standard he set in his first term…”

FBI raids of LAUSD Supt. Alberto Carvalho’s home and office appear tied to AI chatbot probe Los Angeles Times. AI fraud and corruption at nation’s second-largest school system.

Earliest known writing dates back over 40,000 years

For what it’s worth, I don’t have any tattoos. . . God forbid recycling teenager and blogger trying to be funny

As a kid I remember distinctly being told by adults how awful it was that kids in the Soviet Union couldn't learn real history, they could only learn state sanctioned propaganda. These exact same people are now advocating for banning books and history in the US...

Critical thinking

HISTORY:  Earliest known writing dates back over 40,000 years

How to raise children. “It’s wild to me that we parent our children to fit into society, then get together with our friends and talk about how broken society is.”

Writer Lauren Groff on how she works. “After she completes a first draft, she puts it in a bankers box — and never reads it again.” And: “We all need to fill ourselves with the ghosts of other writers.” Her new book is out 

Just dropped this morning: the trailer for the final season of For All Mankind. When season four’s teaser trailer came out, I caught some flack for suggesting that “if you tilt your head and squint…you see For All Mankind as a prequel/origin story for The Expanse”. It looks like we’re heading even more in that direction in season five, which begins airing March 27.

Andor Creator Tony Gilroy Is Free to Speak About Fascism Now

Early on in the promotional period for season two of Andor, a series explicitly about fascism that depicted a genocide, Disney asked creator Tony Gilroy not to use the words “fascism” and “genocide”. Now that promotional period has passed and he can speak freely. Here’s Gilroy’s recent interview with Hollywood Reporter. They asked him about the prescience of the show given current events, especially those in Minnesota, and his response is spot-on:

The simplest answer to the strange synchronicity of all of this is really on them, the outside forces. We were pretty much doing a story about authoritarianism and fascism, and the Empire is very clearly a great example of that. It’s a great place to deal with those issues, and as we’ve discussed many times before, we had this wide open canvas to deal with it. 

So you get out your Fascism for Dummies book for the 15 things you do, and we tried to include as many of them as we could in the most artful way possible. How were we supposed to know that this clown car in Washington was going to basically use the same book that we used? So I don’t think it’s prescience so much as the sad familiarity of fascism and the karaoke menu of things that you go through to do it. You could list them from the show, or you could list them from the newspaper. 

In the beginning, it was very confusing. People were like, “Oh, you’re psychic,” or, “The show is prescient.” But in the rear-view mirror, it’s really a much sadder explanation than that.

Gilroy also mentions a book that’s coming out this summer: The Art of Star Wars: Andor(Amazon). He says: “Every page has ideas that we talked about over the course of a million meetings, and it’s just so good.”

A Hymn to Life by Gisèle Pelicot review – a unique memoir by a figure of astonishing power

The Guardian: “It is a mark of the power and honesty of Gisèle Pelicot’s memoir, A Hymn to Life – a seemingly impossible writing project in which the author must reconcile herself with horrors of which she has no recollection – that in the first 40 pages, the person I felt most angry towards was Pelicot herself. Her ex-husband, Dominique, who will almost certainly be in jail for the rest of his life for drugging and raping his wife and recruiting 50 men over the internet to do likewise, takes his place among the monsters of our age. In his absence, the reader may experience a version of what happened in Gisèle Pelicot’s own family – namely, the misdirection of anger towards her…

A Hymn to Life is alive with the kind of detail that wouldn’t look out of place in a good novel, but it’s the expression it gives to something glimpsed at during the trial that makes it so singular; namely, the transformation of Gisèle Pelicot from a self-avowedly ordinary woman, “content with my little life”, into a figure of astonishing power. After her husband’s arrest, she moved from Mazan to the Île de Ré, where in an effort to share her state of mind with new friends she told them she’d “been struck head-on by a high speed train”. (In a moment of grim humour, one neighbour took her literally and remarked, “the surgeon who had rebuilt my face had done an excellent job”.) Detailing what it took to emerge from this state to become a national – if not global – icon is the unsparing mission of the book…”

See also The New Yorker – The Trial of Gisèle Pelicot’s Rapists United France and Fractured Her Family. After fifty-one men were convicted, Pelicot became a feminist hero. But additional accusations left her children struggling to accept her new