Monday, June 03, 2019

Online identification is getting more and more intrusive



The TPB’s new chief exec, Michael O’Neill, will be familiar with Gould’s work because as assistant tax commissioner, O’Neill headed the mammoth Project Wickenby investigation. It was Wickenby’s Operation Rubix that targeted Gould and clients, including former Sunland Group chairman John Leaver and colourful investor Joe Ross

Curtains for Vanda Gould’s $383m tax panto

Neil Chenoweth






Tax fugitive tracked down and sentenced to 3 years and 3 months jail Mirage News



US company selling Australians' personal data for just $US60, and you could be one of them


  • Information from dating profiles of more than 2,000 Australians is sold to the ABC for approximately $86.55
  • Between 2,500 and 4,000 companies in the United States buy, sell and share personal data
  • Services like Paypal, now used by more than 7 million Australians, shares its user data with over 600 different third parties

Our personal data isn't staying with the companies that collect it — it is being bought, sold and shared in ways most of have no idea about.


 

Where Everybody Knows Your Name: The Art Of The Regular Patron


“No matter the establishment — cafe, trattoria, dive bar, coffeehouse, doughnut shop, pharmacy, even — those who make themselves permanent fixtures almost all say the same thing about what makes a regular. When they walk in, the people behind the counter know who they are.” – The New York Times

 “In 2018, Freedom in the World recorded the 13th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. The reversal has spanned a variety of countries in every region, from long-standing democracies like the United States to consolidated authoritarian regimes like China and Russia. The overall losses are still shallow compared with the gains of the late 20th century, but the pattern is consistent and ominous. Democracy is in retreat. In states that were already authoritarian, earning Not Free designations from Freedom House, governments have increasingly shed the thin façade of democratic practice that they established in previous decades, when international incentives and pressure for reform were stronger. More authoritarian powers are now banning opposition groups or jailing their leaders, dispensing with term limits, and tightening the screws on any independent media that remain. Meanwhile, many countries that democratized after the end of the Cold War have regressed in the face of rampant corruption, antiliberal populist movements, and breakdowns in the rule of law. Most troublingly, even long-standing democracies have been shaken by populist political forces that reject basic principles like the separation of powers and target minorities for discriminatory treatment…”

'Holy Spirit' swoops in to save speeding driver in Germany, police say
 
Samsung deepfake AI could fabricate a video clip of you from a single photo
c/net: “Imagine someone creating a deepfake video of you simply by stealing your Facebook profile pic. Luckily, the bad guys don’t have their hands on that tech yet.  ButSamsung has figured out how to make it happen.  Software for creating deepfakes — fabricated clips that make people appear to do or say things they never did — usually requires big data sets of images in order to create a realistic forgery. Now Samsung has developed a new artificial intelligence system that can generate a fake clip by feeding it a little as one photo…In [a] paper, Samsung’s AI lab dubbed its creations “realistic neural talking heads.” 

…Here’s the downside: These kinds of techniques and their rapid development also create risks of misinformation, election tampering and fraud, according to Hany Farid, a Dartmouth researcher who specializes in media forensics to root out deepfakes…”


 People accessing the internet at McDonald’s and Westfield in Australia could be targeted for surveillance by police under new encryption legislation, according to the home affairs department.
A briefing by the department, obtained under freedom of information, reveals that police can use new powers to compel a broad range of companies including social media giants, device manufacturers, telcos, retailers and providers of free wifi to provide information on users.
The Telecommunications Access and Assistance Act, which passed parliament in December, prompted warnings of legislative overreach, particularly due to the large number of offences with a prison sentence of three years, which bring suspects within reach of the new powers.
Spies with that? Police can snoop on McDonald's and Westfield wifi customers

The Economist [paywall] – Phones can now tell who is carrying them from their users’ gaits
“…LexisNexis Risk Solutions, an American analytics firm, has catalogued more than 4 billion phones, tablets and other computers in this way for banks and other clients. Roughly 7% of them have been used for shenanigans of some sort. But device fingerprinting is becoming less useful.  
Apple, Google and other makers of equipment and operating systems have been steadily restricting the range of attributes that can be observed remotely. That is why a new approach, behavioral biometrics, is gaining ground. It relies on the wealth of measurements made by today’s devices. These include data from accelerometers and gyroscopic sensors, that reveal how people hold their phones when using them, how they carry them and even the way they walk. Touchscreens, keyboards and mice can be monitored to show the distinctive ways in which someone’s fingers and hands move. Sensors can detect whether a phone has been set down on a hard surface such as a table or dropped lightly on a soft one such as a bed. If the hour is appropriate, this action could be used to assume when a user has retired for the night. These traits can then be used to determine whether someone attempting to make a transaction is likely to be the device’s habitual user…”

Chaos, hope, change: stories from 70 years of the People's Republic of China  

New ranking reveals corporate tax havens behind breakdown of global corporate tax system; toll of UK’s tax war exposed

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Sunday, June 02, 2019

Past images : Walkley Foundation


If you must write, you must do it in the face of all opposition. […] Do not spend too much more time on culture & reading, these are traps. When everything conspires to make the thing impossible, when you are tired, worried, with no time, or money, it is then that things get done.

Samuel Beckett to Claude Raimbourg, 3 May 1954


When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it
— Boris Pasternak, who died in 1960

 PEOPLE IN 1951 WERE SLIMMER AND BETTER-DRESSED: Same Pictures. Same Places. 68 Years Apart



'No creeps hitting on the girls': Why Sydney's nightlife has gone underground
Philippine Supreme Court removes Duterte ‘enemy’ judge Reuters (PD: “This I think hasn’t been treated as a high profile story in the world media, but my friends in the ‘pines say this is essentially the start of a Duterte dictatorship — the Supreme Court was the last honest bulwark against absolute presidential power. Now it’s been neutralised.”)
How Football Leaks Is Exposing Corruption in European Soccer New Yorker. Some light reading before this w/e’s Champion’s League Final –  Tottenham v. Liverpool, an all-England affair, to be played in Madrid.

  Was Scandinavian gender equality also high in Viking times?

Our college sports system is broken. Do we have the guts to fix it? Boston Globe. This longread is from earlier this month,  but is still well worth your time.


Quality journalism doesn’t come cheap, and often telling the truth brings a personal cost for journalists. What’s that worth to you? Our new campaign, What Price Would You Pay, asks Australians to value and support journalism. See the video at   


'Drug ring's $150k cash drop' at Australian Tax Office - Sydney Morning Herald
ATO employee, dubbed MS03 by police, had arranged for the meeting to be held, incredibly, ... Inside the tax office employee's manila folder, police found an Optus paper carry bag folded in ...
Matthew C points out with the next two links that social credit scores are already here. But as William Gibson would say, not equally distributed:

Westside private school gave diplomas to nonstudents for a fee. Then came the college admissions scandal Los Angeles Times. These stories keep happening. I’m not sure that the professional classes have focused on the idea that credentials cannot be seen to have been obtained by corrupt means if they are to be of value and their bearers are to have authority (absent a Third World situation where credentials are a result of open clientelism, of course).
Facebook plans to launch ‘GlobalCoin’ currency in 2020 BBC. Bill Black: “The best way to rob a bank is to own one.”


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How I Found An Old Lady’s Diary In The Trash And Turned It Into A Hit Novel


Kathryn Scanlan found the journal in a bin of unsold items at an estate sale; it covered the years 1968-72. “Over the years, Scanlan ‘edited, arranged, and rearranged’ the contents, the product of which is Aug 9 — Fog. [In this essay,] Scanlan traces the discovery of the diary through the crafting of the finished, fictional volume.” –Publishers Weekly 

  


The Guardian – “Past images are presented here in extracts from a book by Rosamund Kidman Cox, published by the Natural History Museum“
FASTER, PLEASE: Nerve stimulation may help curb stroke damage.

“The final lesson from this dark time is that when a president has no tolerance for opposition, the greatest godsend he can have is a war.  Then dissent becomes not just ‘fake news’ but treason.  We should be wary.”

~ Hochschild leaves us with a concluding observation.

We musn't be afraid to see our world in apocalyptic terms, W. says. In religious terms. The language of the Last Days is wholly appropriate to our times.

We know what is coming. We know that a new dawn — the opposite of dawn — will spread its dark rays from the horizon. We know that the time will come to put down our pens and close our books ...

Climatic catastrophe. Financial catastrophe. W. quotes the prophet Joel: ‘the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness’. He remembers what the prophet Jeremiah saw in the ruins of Jerusalem: the earth without form and void. The heavens without light. The very mountains reeling ...
-w

I Tweeted As Susan Sontag


Starting in January 2018, Rebecca Brill started sending out short excerpts from Sontag’s published diaries on Twitter every day. And what happens when one does this? “You will start talking about Susan Sontag incessantly. You will bring her up at meetings … and in chats with your favorite bartender. … As hard as you try to refrain, you will constantly quote Susan Sontag’s journals and notebooks on dates. … You will not get many second dates. Another thing is that you will have trolls.” – Literary Hub 



The whole age can be divided into those who write and those who do not write. Those who write represent despair, and those who read disapprove of it and believe that they have a  superior wisdom - and yet, if they were able to write, they would write the same thing. Basically they are all equally despairing, but when one does not have the opportunity to become important with his despair, then it is hardly worth the trouble to despair and show it. Is this what it is to have conquered despair?

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SECRET BRANCH HEADQUARTERS

Inside the secret world of the NSW Undercover Branch

Yoni Bashan, The Sunday Telegraph




    • SECRET BRANCH HEADQUARTERS

    Somewhere in NSW is a shopfront registered to a fictitious company. It’s hidden within a smattering of light industry: smash repairers, furniture retailers, video stores, financial firms. Walk through its doorway and you will find the covert office of the NSW Undercover Branch, a venue so secretive that there are no cleaners to wipe the windows or empty the fridge in the kitchenette. In this tightly controlled environment the operatives vacuum the carpets and take turns mopping the floors; they also shred their own documents and must act normal if anyone walks in off the street. Few police know its location — even the Commissioner doesn’t know where to find it.
    The NSW Police Force declined to participate in this story when I first approached them in 2018, but revised their position (somewhat grudgingly) when the size and scope of the piece became apparent. After some discussion, I was connected with the commander of the NSW Undercover Branch. For the purpose of this piece I’ll him ‘Henry’.
    There are no photographs of Henry available on the Internet, which is why I walked straight past him on the day we met at a city cafe. He has been in charge for the last eight years and, like his operatives, works under an assumed identity.
    These are his first public comments about undercover work.
    “It’s important that operatives never lose their real identity, so the Branch is a psychological sanctuary as well as a physical sanctuary,” he said, likening the office to a safe-zone, one of the few places where staff can loosen their collars and use their true names without fear of exposure. Even inside a police station this isn’t possible, because cover identities must be maintained at all times.

    Henry declined to say how many jobs pass his desk, or how many are accepted. “Most,” is all he would say. “I’ll often accept the job but not with the suggested direction of the investigators,” he added. Some jobs, he explained, are better suited to a female operative, or a younger operative, or to a different scenario than the one detectives had in mind. “We accept more than we turn down, but that’s a reflection of the investigators using us — they know what we can and can’t do.”
    On arrival at the Branch recruits are given a new driver’s licence, birth certificate, an entry in the Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages, and even a passport if they’re likely to chase criminals overseas. Each identity requires a wallet and a phone, and some operatives carry three wallets and three phones during their time at the Branch because their workload is so high. There might be a sturdy legion of ‘pool undercovers’ working across the state, but the number of full-time operatives — those who work exclusively on complex, long-term, deep-cover missions — is not very high.
    Each facade also comes with its own complicated backstory that must be remembered down to its finest detail. Not just the full name and date of birth, but also the family history, career history, car rego and everything else associated with an entire life. But for a lie to seem real it needs a skein of truth running through it, and this is why operatives practice the subtle art of ‘backstopping’. Applied in its most basic terms, it means that if an operative is pretending to live in Double Bay, they should be seen standing in line at the Sheaf as often as possible, or sipping cocktails at Pelicano, or reclining on one of the wicker chairs at Cosmopolitan. In other words, create a presence for themselves, make the lie seem real.
    If this sounds like a perk there are others, too. Recruits can grow out their hair, grow a goatee, wear heels, a mini-skirt, and generally violate the police force’s dress code policy for as long as their rotation lasts — but not a minute longer. From day one, even during their training, operatives are given career counselling to reinforce that their time at the Branch is temporary. It’s to stop them from quitting, or psychologically crashing, once their rotation expires. “Before they start, they know it’s not forever,” Henry said.

    YOU’RE A F***ING COP

    It’s the moment every undercover cop knows is coming and there is only one way to survive: stay calm.
    For Andrew Curran, the dreaded moment came in 1997 when he started buying speed from the Rebels outlaw motorcycle gang. One of their suppliers, Vince*, was a violent, mid-level dealer who kept a crew of goombahs around his safe house in Green Valley, a flop with a carport where drugs were bagged and money was counted.
    The street was a cul-de-sac, which meant physical surveillance was virtually impossible.
    “Any strange cars would stick out and my cover would be blown,” Curran said. A boy from the bush, he’d never used a bong before or even seen one before he joined the Undercover Branch in 1995.
    He made his first buys from Vince with the help of an informant, a criminal who had been cutting deals with police but kept breaking the law. When the informant was pulled over one day driving a stolen car, he demanded the charges be dropped because of his ongoing assistance. Detectives said no, and as punishment he threatened to out Curran to the bikies — telling them Curran was a fellow informant.


    Journalist Yoni Bashan interviewing a former undercover, whom we have not named. Picture: Toby Zerna

    “A lot of criminals who are too afraid to kill a police officer are not afraid to kill an informant,” Curran said.
    To Curran’s amazement, and confusion, senior cops wanted him to keep buying speed from Vince. On the day of his next deployment he could sense the danger. Six men were sitting around a plastic table, all staring.
    “The hatred emanating from them was almost a physical force,” Curran said.
    The advice on panic is always counterintuitive. Swimmers are advised to stay perfectly still if they see a shark in the water. But adhering to this advice is almost impossible in the real world, which is why Curran froze, his heart pounding in his ear and his mind spiralling with snap calculations. Turn around? Run for it? Stay staunch? Keep buying?
    Vince told Curran to follow him into the kitchen, which was strange because normally he carried the gear on him.
    “He was patting his pockets saying, ‘Where did I f … in’ put it?’” Curran said.
    Drug dealers never misplace their stash, which is why Curran watched in terror as Vince started rifling through drawers pretending to look for the drugs.
    “I could see my shirt vibrating because my heart was beating so hard,” he said. “I was waiting for him to pull out a knife or a gun.”
    The lucky break came when Vince spotted a car outside in the driveway with another operative sitting in the passenger seat. He grew angry at the sight of it, furious that Curran had brought an unknown person to his door. Curran passed the cop off as his buyer, someone who wanted the drugs Vince was carrying. That saved him.
    “He told me to come back in 20 minutes on my own and he would have the drugs for me,” Curran said, the relief almost overwhelming as he walked out of the kitchen back to his car, his back tensed as he expected someone to launch a king-hit on him.
    These cases are common. Another agent, Adam, was sent into a house in Bass Hill posing as a construction worker. He was given a patdown at the door, then thrust into a room reeking of bong smoke and chemicals. He counted 10 large Middle Eastern men through the haze, plus the dealer, a guy named Tony. One of them was squinting at him. “You’re a f..... cop,” he said. “I’ve seen you before. I’ve seen you at Lakemba.”
    With each sentence the goon shoved a pool cue into Adam’s side, but he’d given himself away — Adam had never worked at Lakemba. It was a bluff.
    Fortunately, Tony the dealer was blinded by the opportunity to make money, which is why he calmed his boys and pulled out a small bag of speed.
    “You’re scaring me,” Adam kept saying to the bloke in his face, as he tried to negotiate, settling on a price of $100. When he pulled out his wallet the goon next to him let out a grunt. “You can pick undercover cops,” he said. “You can pick them because they always have real crisp notes.”
    Adam cringed, because he’d unwittingly been given two perfectly crisp notes by his bosses. The sight of them set off the room like a barnyard.
    “You’re a f.....g cop!” the men kept shouting, as he palmed the drugs and walked out of the room. Tony’s men followed him down the hallway, jabbing pool cues into his back and taunting him as he started his car.

    More stories in this series...

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