Efforts to hack the ATO’s systems have climbed significantly over the last five years. Second commissioner Jeremy Hirschhorn told a conference in October there are three million hack attempts every month.
$32m extension to Tax Office cyber deal
Viral taxation claim is cheap nonsense 31 January 2023 AD
Commissioner Věra Jourová most influential woman in Czech Republic
AQ: What's a Proxy? Using Relatives, Shell Companies, and Other Stand-Ins to Hide Illicit Wealth
One of the most effective ways to hide your ownership of valuable assets is to get someone – or something – to stand in as your “proxy.” Bad actors make regular use of these representatives to stash illicit wealth and move it around the world.
The shift in Europe, Tanks and What is Really Important about Them Phillips’s Newsletter. Interesting:
I do think the pressure that was applied by the Nordics, Baltics and Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, etc, really do matter, and going forward their outlooks will play an outsized role in the establishment of Europe’s security priorities. This is because they have a common outlook that will hold them together, and secondly because they are together one of the richest groupings in Europe and they will grown relatively richer in the future. This wealth has lead them to construct some of the most powerful military forces on the continent.
Ah. The Intermarium folks. Adjacent to this crowd:
Every year, the soldiers of the Azov Regiment gather on the shortest night of the year to honor their fallen brothers-in-arms
This year, especially after Azovstal they had more men to honor than ever
Through new recruits, the group has grown significantly in size since Azovstal pic.twitter.com/STQDWfSkM2
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) December 24, 2022
Václav Havel (d. 2011) was a founder of the Visegrad Group. I wonder what he would think….
Who is locally influential these days?
Who do people think are influential in their own community? This question is important for understanding topics such as social networks, political party networks, civic engagement, and local politics. At the same time as research on these topics has grown, measurement of public perceptions of local influence has dried up. Years ago, researchers took active interest in the question of community influence. They found that most ordinary Americans could identify a person who they thought had influence in their community. Respondents usually named business leaders. Where does the public stand today? In three different ways, we ask respondents who has local influence. The vast majority of respondents today cannot think of anyone. Those who do identify someone as influential rarely choose a businessperson. This article aims to reintroduce the public opinion of community influence and situate findings in related scholarship.
Here is the new article by Joshua Hochberg and Eitan Hersh. David Brooks, telephone! Don’t even ask how the “religious leaders” fare in the polling…
American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC) – “Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been implemented for hundreds of use cases across the Federal government. Given this increased adoption, Federal leaders have an opportunity to lean in to take responsible and prudent measures to address AI accountability in the context of their unique mission. This paper outlines minimum requirements and related policy guidance and provides recommendations on actions agencies can take to proactively manage risks associated with AI accountability… Artificial Intelligence (AI) Accountability is an important opportunity for agencies because AI capabilities present risks not anticipated by other federal regulations and policies. Federal organizations intending to build, acquire, or consume AI capabilities should understand AI governance, in respect to accountability. Federal guidance does not currently provide a precise definition of Artificial Intelligence (AI) accountability. Agencies therefore have a lot of latitude and a significant opportunity to lean in and take responsible and prudent measures to address AI accountability in the context of their unique mission. This paper describes the current federal AI accountability landscape as the set of activities federal agencies take to ensure the proper functioning of the AI systems that they design, develop, purchase, operate or deploy. Failure to plan for accountability in the adoption of AI may result in greater risks. Executive Order (EO) 139601, the only governing document requiring action on AI accountability, lists minimum requirements, including those pertaining to AI accountability, specifies safeguards on the proper use and functioning of AI in the Federal Government. Other guidance, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) AI Risk Management Framework (RMF) and Government Accountability Office (GAO) AI Accountability Framework, provides valuable guidance for federal managers who are looking to proactively lean in to manage key risks posed by their agency’s use of AI..”
- See also Agency inventories of AI use cases
How to Delete Your House’s Pictures From Sites Like Zillow, Redfin, and Realtor Lifehacker: “Our personal data shows up in so many public online spaces. But while there are ways to review and delete your data from social media profiles or even Google search, one place you may not think to check is your property’s listing on sites like Redfin, Zillow, or Realtor.com. While it’s unlikely someone will lift sensitive data like, say, your billing information from these apps or websites, they can be used by identity thefts, scammers, or even stalkers to verify your address and see what the house looks like, both inside and out. Luckily, you can remove photos of your home from listing property sites like Realtor.com, Redfin, and Zillow. Doing so can keep you (or your tenant’s) personal info safe…”
Doctoral Research – University of Toronto – Databound: Histories of Growing Up on the World Wide Web. Author: Mackinnon, Katherine. Advisor: Shade, Leslie R. Department: Information Studies. Issue Date: Nov-2022 – “Abstract (summary): For the past 30 years, young people have been growing up, existing, and producing data online. Their digital traces are distributed sporadically across the live and dead web, in corporately owned digital spaces, institutional holdings, and web archives.
How these traces are theorized, studied, aggregated, deployed, or destroyed deserves increased public and academic attention. In this dissertation I argue that data is inextricably attached to people, both in the ways that it represents them and in the ways that they desire and deserve meaningful control over it. To this end, I propose an ethico-methodological intervention called an “archive promenade,” and developed Care Ethics Scaffolding for research with archived youth data that engages with feminist ethics of care to bring people back in relation with their data when researching the historical web. How an individual’s digital traces came to be, and the ways in which they are connected or distanced from their data, is explored throughout Chapters 3-5 where I demonstrate findings from my qualitative research project, called Early Internet Memories.
In this project, I asked millennial participants (b. 1981-1996) who grew up in Canada to describe their memories of growing up online and the digital spaces that they once used to occupy. I also demonstrate how relationships between young people and the internet are not inevitable but rather constructed through government and commercial interests in promoting and creating an ideal child subject to support the growth and development of a new industry. These relationships were also multiple and varied, reflecting intersections of race, gender, class, age, and geographic location, which worked to differentiate many young people’s experiences and memories of the web.
I argue that by exploring these histories of growing up online, we can see the processes by which people become databound: attached to the data they have produced throughout their lives in ways that they both can and cannot control through their ability to socially modulate and determine their information privacy. This framing assists in theorizing the long-term implications of online engagement, digital privacy, and the effects of datafication on life and livability on the web.”
