As Artificial Intelligence Evolves, So Does Its Criminal Potential

Information leads to insights, and insights lead to knowledge ....

Early-stage social enterprises are among the best and brightest in Australia, with a large number making up the 26 finalists in this year’s Social Enterprise Awards. Social Traders

Crisis-driven policy on the rise as state shrinks

Terry Moran considers the capability of the public sector in this new age — what he calls Public Administration 4 — and whether we’ve learned the lessons of the earlier three. Five principles to take the sector forward.
 "The vast majority of public servants find it a little difficult at the moment to make sense of where the public sector stands..."
"Is it competent or not, valued or not, efficient or wasteful, meeting the needs of Australians, staffed by capable people, prepared for the future or stuck in the past? The answers given are too often flavoured with untested policy assumptions, ideology or political convenience, even insincerity. There is no really fair reckoning of how the public sector stands overall " Digital transformation — is current readiness of the public sector in Australia up to scratch?


Ian Burrell The British MEdia Dragon– “The British Library is becoming a modern news publisher. Its expertise in the field of journalism is immense. The home of one of the greatest newspaper archives in the world, amounting to more than 15m pages of news, it also houses The Newsroom, a permanent resource charting the evolution of news in broadcast, print and digital media. And it is in digital publishing that this institution is going through a transformation, producing its own articles, live streams and video clips for a worldwide audience. It’s a symbol of how almost all of us – companies, institutions, individuals – are contributors to contemporary media, even if only via a basic home page or Facebook status update. In the case of the British Library, it’s much more than that…”

Imagine receiving a phone call from your aging mother seeking your help because she has forgotten her banking password.  Except it’s not your mother. The voice on the other end of the phone call just sounds deceptively like her. It is actually a computer-synthesized voice, a tour-de-force of artificial intelligence technology that has been crafted to make it possible for someone to masquerade via the telephone As Artificial Intelligence Evolves, So Does Its Criminal Potential

“Encryption helps protect people’s human rights online. By rendering digital data unintelligible, encryption helps ensure that private information sent over the internet stays private. Technology companies play a crucial role in keeping digital information safe. In this report, Amnesty International ranks 11 technology companies on whether they are meeting their human rights responsibilities by using encryption to protect users’ right to privacy online. It focuses specifically on instant messaging services, such as Skype, WhatsApp and WeChat, which hundreds of millions of people around the world use to communicate every day.

Application of Right to be Forgotten Rulings: The Library Viewpoint

• “See also IFLA’s background report on the right to be forgotten around the world, as well as the report from the workshop IFLA organised at the latest European Internet Governance Forum 

The big story over the weekend: Former Tax Court Judge Kroupa Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy (Keith Fogg, Procedurally Taxing):

What does Former Judge Kroupa get by pleading guilty? She gets a reduction in the sentencing guidelines, she gets only one felony conviction, and she gets to avoid the stress and cost of trial.  Let’s look at each of the things she gets but not forget that in all likelihood she also gets to go to prison.  The guilty plea is not something she will go home and celebrate about.

Arrogance is something the few criminals I have had the misfortune to meet have in abundance. Even so, the arrogance required for a sitting Tax Court judge to engage in the kind of tax crimes she has confessed to is astonishing

Jack Townsend, IRS Release on Offshore Compliance Requirements, with Statistics on Recent Initiatives. Lots of self-congratulation by the tax enforcers, but nary a word about the innocent foot-faulters dragged into the Kafka-esque FBAR compliance penalty regime

Robert Wood, IRS Offshore Account Collections Top $10 Billion, FATCA Hunt Continues


Epilogue: Since the global financial crisis, house prices in Sydney have risen more than 170 per cent in and over 150 per cent in Melbourne.