When God blesses the harvest, there is enough for the thief as well as the gardener

~ Slavic saying

Robotax: retiree pursued by ATO for five-year-old tax on deceased father’s estate

Letter asking for payment of more than $800 has the hallmarks of tax agency’s recent mass mail-out in pursuit of historical debts

The ATO flipped its website and nobody even noticed: why that’s a good thing By Julian Bajkowski

Russian-led hacking group disrupted as Australian businesses regain access to critical data

Highlight Cyber crime issues, December 16, 2023 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness.

Four highlights from this week: How QR codes work and what makes them dangerous – a computer scientist explains; Without a Trace: How to Keep Your Phone Off the Grid; Your Smart TV Knows What You’re Watching; and Verizon fell for fake “search warrant,” gave victim’s phone data to stalker.

‘Liberty and Justice For All’ – A Tattered Cliche?

On Friday, The Wall Street Journal published an editorial whose slug got to the nub of the issue. “The special counsel,” it read, “tries to drag the Justices into his political timetable for the Jan. 6 trial of Donald Trump.” That’s it exactly. Smith wants the Court to decide now, today, so he can pursue his vendetta against Trump on the time table the election calendar has set. Most observers believe that the Court will be more circumspect. The writers of that editorial caution that “The wiser decision would have been to lay out the facts of what the special counsel found and let the voters decide. They chose to prosecute, and the damage has begun to unfold.”

Masha Gessen’s Hannah Arendt Prize has been canceled because of their essay on Gaza Literary Hub. Over this essay. Commentary

Why Do We Dream? Maybe to Ensure We Can Literally ‘See’ the World upon Awakening Scientific American

History’s Five Best Body Part Stories Nautilus (Micael T). No Lorana Bobbitt.

The Self-Doubting Superpower Fareed Zakaria, Foreign Affairs. The deck: “America Shouldn’t Give Up on the World It Made.” Sunk cost fallacy.

The language of emojis Michael Smith, Crying in the Wilderness

Selling Citizenship New Left Review

Cracks in the strong labor market are starting to show Axios

New King County milestone: One-quarter of residents born outside U.S. Seattle Times. An alert reader throws this over the transom:

Anecdata confirms what I found when I was doing demographic work on Disproportionate Minority Contact with the justice system as a prosecutor in a top-20 U.S. jurisdiction.

US homelessness up 12% to highest reported level as rents soar and coronavirus pandemic aid lapses AP