“There was no earthly specimen more out of touch with reality than a New Yorker. People who lived on an island and paid a million dollars for a bedroom.”
Trying to minimize aggravation during a tax-filing season that could have plenty of challenges, the Internal Revenue Service said it is pausing one of its notices that could ferment taxpayer frustrations.
That’s a good first step, tax-practitioner organizations say — but there’s more the IRS can do to help lower taxpayers’ blood pressure.
This week, Tracey Roberts (Cumberland; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Michael Love(Berkeley), Where in the World Does Partnership Income Go? Evidence of a Growing Use of Tax Havens.
Litigation finance pits greed against greed Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic
‘Credit Suisse managers knew clients were potential criminals’ FT
When A Swap Becomes A Swipe Daily Poster
Late-night reports suggest CIA collecting more data on Americans The Hill.
CISA and the FBI published a new web page titled “Shields Up” on Friday warning that they’re bracing for Russian cyberattacks to target U.S. organizations. “While there are not currently any specific credible threats to the U.S. homeland, we are mindful of the potential for the Russian government to consider escalating its destabilizing actions in ways that may impact others outside of Ukraine,” the agencies said on the site.
$3.5bn impact of ‘pure cyber crime’ set to rise as a third of Australians report attacks
Police get more time to prosecute hacking offences in NSW
Here’s how much your personal information is worth to cybercriminals – and what they do with it
Police struggle to catch online fraudsters, often operating from overseas, but now a new breed of amateurs are taking matters into their own hands
Researchers turn the spotlight on the hidden workers of the cybercrime world
Phishing schemes, malware campaigns and other operations involve an array of workers beyond the criminal masterminds. Could giving them better opportunities for legitimate work help cut crime
Greg Monahan & Chris Janczewski: IRSCI on Cybercrime
MAN OF MANY TALENTS — When the FBI seized more than half of the Colonial Pipeline’s $4.4 million bitcoin ransom earlier this summer, it didn’t manage it alone. They needed an seemingly unusual agency to make it happen: the IRS.
For years, the agency that most people know for tax audits has been building up its cybercrime capabilities and assisting fellow law enforcement partners tackle big cyber cases. As your MC host reports for Pros this morning, the IRS’s criminal investigations unit gave a central assist in responding to the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack and the SolarWinds cyberespionage campaign. The unit’s role in the Colonial Pipeline case has not been reported before.
— Why the IRS? The agency’s cybercrime unit specializes in the financial nitty-gritty of online transactions, including ransomware gangs’ favorite currencies: crypto. Given that speed is the name of the game in any cybercrime case, the IRS is usually tapped in to take over the crypto tracing elements of an investigation, while the FBI and Department of Homeland Security tackle the rest.
Now, the federal government is investing more resources in the IRS to fight the growing ransomware problem and other cybercrime. The IRS’ cybercrime unit has expanded from about five agents in 2015 to nearly 130 personnel today — in part because the agency combined its cybercrime and digital forensics team in July.
Jarod Koopman, acting head of the agency’s combined unit, also said the agency is opening a center in Northern Virginia later this year to bring together its cybercrime agents with other law enforcement partners as well as federal contractors who also focus on cryptocurrency investigations. “It’s almost like a cryptocurrency-fighting A-team,” Koopman said of the new center. “We’re trying to get the best of the best together to tackle some of the more challenging investigations that pop-up.”
Another scam in the making Dawn
Should I Ask Over Zoom, Phone, Email, or In-Person? Communication Channel and Predicted Versus Actual Compliance
Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1-10 – Original Manuscript, journals.sagepub.com/home/spp – Should I Ask Over Zoom, Phone, Email, or In-Person? Communication Channel and Predicted Versus Actual Compliance [free full text]
“Research has found that people are much more likely to agree to help requests made in-person than those made via text-based media, but that help-seekers underestimate the relative advantage of asking for help face-to-face. It remains unknown what help-seekers’ intuitions about the effectiveness of richer media channels incorporating audio and video features might be, or how these intuitions would compare with the actual effectiveness of face-to-face or email versus rich media requests. In two behavioral and two supplemental vignette experiments, participants expected differences in the effectiveness of seeking help through various communication channels to be quite small, or nonexistent. However, when participants actually made requests, the differences were substantial. Ultimately, help-seekers underestimated the relative advantage of asking for help face-to-face com-pared with asking through any mediated channel. Help-seekers also underestimated the relative advantage of asking through richer media channels compared with email…”
Amazing structures
Dutch regret. ‘Our side of the story’: MVRDV on Learning from Marble Arch Mound / Scottish protection. The giant chainmail box that stops a house dissolving / London losses. save the George Tavern / NY schadenfreude, A Fawlty Tower of Billionaires / rusting Italian metal. Abandoned DeTomaso Factory / some other things. The graphic novel as architectural narrative / bleeding obvious uncovered: new greenfield houses force people to use cars / remembering Junkyard / The Common Tongue of Twenty-First-Century London / behind the hair, make-up and prosthetics of Pam & Tommy / sad young women on book covers / literature meets ultra high production values: Inque Magazine.
Architectural drawings and old books
‘A short story about humanity, from a global perspective’. A compact computer simulation at Shadertoy, via RPS / the title says it all ‘Explore the history, origins and ultimate downfall of Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theatre & Showbiz Pizza Place: The Animatronic Pizza Parlor Icons of the 80’s & 90’s‘ / from the archive: the first electric car to ever feature in Autocar in 1895 / Monotype’s Marie Boulanger on the nostalgic power of typography in The French Dispatch / the new Socio-Type Journal, ‘a new platform for thoughts on culture and society (that also happens to be a type specimen)’ / Single-handedly, a site about contemporary architectural drawing / related, The Architecture Drawing Prize / the world’s deepest dive pool / the Weird Old Book Finder (via Clive Thompson) / entries to the Observer/Cape/Comica graphic short story prize / the archive of the World Press Photo Contest / paintings by Katie Trick / contemporary craft recommendations, including amazing prints by Lili Arnold and Lydia Ricci’s sculptures from scraps / Kottke presents some tree root system drawings from The Wageningen University & Research.
