Mystery of $2bn of loans backed by fake gold in China
Nasdaq-listed Kingold's play for trove of property stymied by corruption probe
More than a dozen Chinese financial institutions, mainly trust companies, loaned 20 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) over the past five years to Wuhan Kingold Jewelry Inc. with pure gold as collateral and insurance policies to cover any losses.
Kingold is the largest privately owned gold processor in central China's Hubei province. Its shares are listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York. The company is led by Chairman Jia Zhihong, an intimidating ex-military man who is the controlling shareholder.
What could go wrong?
True leadership means not turning a blind eye to uncomfortable truths
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Wrongfully Accused by an Algorithm - ars technica:
“Civil rights activists have filed an official complaint against the
Detroit police, alleging the department arrested the wrong man based on a
faulty and incorrect match provided by facial recognition software—the
first known complaint of this kind. The American Civil Liberties Union
filed the complaint (PDF)
Wednesday on behalf of Robert Williams, a Michigan man who was arrested
in January based on a false positive generated by facial recognition
software. “At every step, DPD’s conduct has been improper,” the
complaint alleges. “It unthinkingly relied on flawed and racist facial
recognition technology without taking reasonable measures to verify the
information being provided” as part of a “shoddy and incomplete
investigation.”…
The New York Times – “In what may be the first known case of its kind, a faulty facial recognition match led to a Michigan man’s arrest for a crime he did not commit…A nationwide debate is raging about racism in law enforcement. Across the country, millions are protesting not just the actions of individual officers, but bias in the systems used to surveil communities and identify people for prosecution. Facial recognition systems have been used by police forces for more than two decades. Recent studies by M.I.T. and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, have found that while the technology works relatively well on white men, the results are less accurate for other demographics, in part because of a lack of diversity in the images used to develop the underlying databases. Last year, during a public hearing about the use of facial recognition in Detroit, an assistant police chief was among those who raised concerns. “On the question of false positives — that is absolutely factual, and it’s well-documented,” James White said. “So that concerns me as an African-American male.” This month, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM announced they would stop or pause their facial recognition offerings for law enforcement. The gestures were largely symbolic, given that the companies are not big players in the industry. The technology police departments use is supplied by companies that aren’t household names, such as Vigilant Solutions, Cognitec, NEC, Rank One Computing and Clearview AI. Clare Garvie, a lawyer at Georgetown University’s Center on Privacy and Technology, has written about problems with the government’s use of facial recognition. She argues that low-quality search images — such as a still image from a grainy surveillance video — should be banned, and that the systems currently in use should be tested rigorously for accuracy and bias. “There are mediocre algorithms and there are good ones, and law enforcement should only buy the good ones,” Ms. Garvie said. About Mr. Williams’s experience in Michigan, she added: “I strongly suspect this is not the first case to misidentify someone to arrest them for a crime they didn’t commit. This is just the first time we know about it.”…
Full draft of Hong Kong national security law will only be made public after it is passed by China’s top legislative body South China Morning Post. Seems legit.
Ties That Bind: Xi’s People on the Politburo Macro Polo
Why the French Riviera is full of ghost yachts The Economist
Jobs Hit Is Four Times Worse for Low-Paid Workers, Fed Analysts SayBloomberg. Everything’s going according to plan!
Life Care fired staffer who revealed nursing home nightmare to ReutersReuters
Philadelphia set to be first U.S. city to protect workers against retaliation for calling out coronavirus conditionsPhiladelphia Inquirer
Google’s Promise to Delete Your Data Has a Major Loophole Gizmodo
