- How A 'No Deal' Brexit Could Lead To The "Lehmanization" Of Europe
Odds of a ‘no deal’ Brexit next week have risen markedly over the past week, as the Commons has twice failed to coalesce around a viable alternative to Theresa May’s deal, while once again rejecting the “best possible deal” negotiated between the prime minister and the EU27, albeit by a smaller, yet still considerable, margin than in the past.
This is why, for the first time in a while, speculation about ‘no deal”s impact, not only on the UK, but on the European, and broader global, economy is at the forefront of the market’s mind, as investors have finally been forced to confront the reality that the UK crashing out of the EU next week isn’t only possible, but extremely probable.
To that end, analysts at Goldman Sachs, who have been closely chronicling the Brexit trainwreck since the referendum, have attempted to quantify the economic impact of Brexit in the two-and-a-half years since the referendum, and use it to extrapolate what might be in store not just for the UK, but for all of Europe, if Britain leaves without a deal next week.
The bank’s findings are alarming, to the say the least.
(Courtesy of the Telegraph)
To begin, its analysts quantified how the uncertainty bred by the chaotic and dysfunctional Brexit negotiations has inspired businesses and consumers to put off investments and consumption, and compared it with a “doppleganger” model illustrating the counterfactual state of the UK in an alternate reality where voters elected to remain.
Using these models, Goldman calculated that Brexit has already knocked 2.4% off the UK’s GDP, or about £600 million pounds ($671.3 million) every week since the referendum.
Given that the bulk of this (theoretical) loss has been attributed to business investment, Goldman has extrapolated that analysts have underestimated the impact of the “political uncertainty” surrounding the Brexit process.
And after establishing via a complex event-based factor analysis that Brexit-related uncertainty has been the primary driver of uncertainty in UK markets and investment over the past 2.5 years…
…The analysts concluded that the flare-up in Brexit-related uncertainty since the start of the year shaved 5% off QoQ investment growth during Q1.
In a finding that raises questions about the pan-European manufacturing recession that has emerged over the past few months, the analysts found that investment in large capital goods (planes, trains and equipment) and services (hotels and restaurants) are the most exposed to this type of uncertainty.
Looking beyond the British isles, Goldman illustrated how the Brexit referendum result rippled across global markets, exerting the biggest impact on the riskiest debt across the world, but especially in Europe. And since a ‘no deal’ Brexit could be just as much of an economic shock, there’s reason to believe that this type of reaction could repeat itself…
…Even though Brexit-related event risk since then has mostly been confined to countries with significant export exposure to the UK.
Yet, while leaving next week with a deal could be a tailwind for the UK economy, according to Goldman’s analysis of output costs, “no deal” could have a substantial impact on European GDP for years to come.
With the EU declaring that a “no deal” Brexit is now a “likely” scenario, the Telegraph’s International Business Editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard offered a haunting analysis of the ramifications of ‘no deal’ for the fragile European financial system, warning that the economic shock of a no-deal Brexit – coming at a time when manufacturing activity is already weak – could redound to a pan-European “Lehman-style” crisis, thanks the disruption in trade and its impact on growth.
The European Central Bank can – presumably – handle the immediate shock of a financial and trade rupture by relaunching bond purchases and compressing Italian yields. What the ECB cannot handle is a third economic recession in a decade. This will lead to a credit crunch and play havoc with Club Med debt dynamics.
Let us call it creeping Lehmanisation – until the dam breaks and risk spreads go non-linear.
Taken literally, the EU’s Brexit position implies barriers (certification, delays etc) on imports of Airbus components for factories in Toulouse and Hamburg. Every wing is built in the UK at a hi-tech plant in Broughton and there are no stockpiles.
Airbus has already stated that a full breakdown in cross-channel trade would lead to losses of €1bn a week. The supply chain would “fall apart”. Some 4,000 UK firms supply more than 10,0000 aircraft parts. These include Rolls-Royce engines. The biggest industrial venture in Europe with 108,000 employees would be hobbled for as long as Brussels stuck to its hard-line policy.
What’s worse, with the ECB already backing away from its plans to tighten money policy by leaving interest rates on hold at least through the end of the year, the Continent’s one bulwark against unmitigated financial peril would have few options to quell the fallout.
- China's European Moment Has Arrived
Authored by Patrick Lawrence via ConsortiumNews.com,
The simplicities of the postwar order have just begun to pass into history…
It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Xi Jinping’s visits to Rome, Paris and Monaco last week. In bringing his much-remarked Belt and Road Initiative to the center of Europe, the Chinese president has faced the Continent with the most fundamental question it will have to resolve in coming decades: Where does it stand as a trans–Atlantic partner with the U.S. and — as of Xi’s European tour — the western flank of the Eurasian landmass? The simplicities of the postwar order, to put the point another way, have just begun to pass into history.
In Rome, the populist government of Premier Giuseppe Conte brought Italy into China’s ambitious plan to connect East Asia and Western Europe via a multitude of infrastructure projects stretching from Shanghai to Lisbon and beyond. The memorandum of understanding Xi and Deputy Premier Luigi Di Maio signed calls for joint development of roads, railways, bridges, airports, seaports, energy projects and telecommunications systems. Along with the MoU, Chinese investors signed 29 agreements worth $2.8 billion.
Xi Jinpeng: Plenty to celebrate in Europe. (Wikimedia Commons)
Italy is the first Group of 7 nation to commit to China’s BRI strategy and the first among the European Union’s founding members. It did so two weeks after the European Commission released “EU–China: A Strategic Outlook,” an assessment of China’s swift arrival in Europe that goes straight to the core of the Continent’s ambivalence. Here is the operative passage in the E.C. report:
“China is, simultaneously, in different policy areas, a cooperation partner with whom the E.U. has closely aligned objectives, a negotiating partner with whom the E.U. needs to find a balance of interests, an economic competitor in the pursuit of technological leadership, and a systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance.”
There is much in this document to chew upon. One is the mounting concern among EU members and senior officials in Brussels about China’s emergence as a global power. This is natural, providing it does not tip into a contemporary version of the last century’s Yellow Peril. At the same time, the Continent’s leaders are highly resistant to the confrontational posture toward China that Washington urges upon them. This is the wisest course they could possibly choose: It is a strong indicator that Europeans are at last seeking an independent voice in global affairs.
Looking for Unity
They are also looking for a united EU front in the Continent’s relations with China. This was Emmanuel Macron’s point when Xi arrived in Paris. The French president made sure German Chancellor Angela Merkel and E.C. President Jean–Claude Juncker were there to greet Xi on his arrival at the Élysée Palace. The primary reason Italy sent shockwaves through Europe when it signed onto Xi’s signature project is because it effectively broke ranks at a highly charged moment.
But unity of the kind Macron and Merkel advocate is likely to prove elusive. For one thing, Brussels can impose only so far on the sovereignty of member states. For another, no one wants to miss, in the name of an E.U. principle, the opportunities China promises to bring Europe’s way. While Macron insisted on EU unity, he and Xi looked on as China signed contracts with Airbus, Électricité de France, and numerous other companies worth more than $35 billion.
There is only one way to read this: Core Europe can argue all it wants that China is unrolling a divide-and-conquer strategy, but one looks in vain for on-the-ground resistance to China’s apparent preference for bilateral agreements across the Continent. On his way home, Xi stopped in Monaco, which agreed in February to allow Huawei, China’s controversial telecoms company, to develop the principality’s 5G phone network.
In numerous ways, Italy was fated to demonstrate the likely shape of China’s arrival in Europe. The Conte government, a coalition led by the rightist Lega and the Five-Star Movement, has been a contrarian among EU members since it came to power last year: It is highly critical of Brussels and of other member states, it opposes EU austerity policies, it is fiercely jealous of its sovereignty in the EU context, and it favors better ties with Russia.
Closer to the ground, the Italian economy is weak and inward investment is paltry. Chinese manufacturers have made short work of Italian competitors in industries such as textiles and pharmaceuticals over the past couple of decades. A map, finally, tells us all we need to know about Italy’s geographic position: Its ports, notably Trieste at the northern end of the Adriatic, are gateways to the heart of Europe’s strongest markets.
BRI’s six proposed corridors, with Italy circled, on maritime blue route. See Wikipedia’s “Belt and Road Initiative” entry for more details. Map not meant for latest national boundaries. (Lommes, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
As the westward destination of Xi’s envisioned Belt and Road, Europe’s economic and political relations with China were bound to reach a takeoff point. The accord with Italy, Xi’s European tour and an EU–China summit scheduled to take place in Brussels on April 9 signal that this moment has arrived.
Shift in Relationship
But it is not yet clear whether Europeans have grasped the strategic magnitude of last week’s events. In effect, the Continent’s leaders have started down a path that is almost certain to induce a shift in the longstanding trans–Atlantic relationship. In effect, Europe is starting — at last — to act more independently while repositioning itself between the Atlantic world and the dynamic nations of the East; China first among them by a long way.
No European leader has yet addressed this inevitable question.
Let us not overstate this case. Trans–Atlantic ties have been increasingly strained since Barack Obama’s presidency. President Donald Trump’s antagonisms, most notably over the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear agreement, have intensified this friction. But there is still no indication that any European leader advocates a rupture in relations with Washington.
Can U.S.–European ties evolve gradually as China’s presence on the Continent grows more evident? This is the core question. Both sides will determine the outcome. The Europeans appear to be preparing for a new chapter in the trans–Atlantic story, but there is simply no telling how Washington will respond to a reduction in its long-unchallenged influence in Western European capitals.
There is one other question the West as a whole must face. The E.C.’s “strategic outlook” terms China “a systemic rival promoting alternative forms of governance.” There are two problems with this commonly sounded theme.
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First, there is no evidence whatsoever that China has or ever will insist that other countries conform to its political standards in exchange for economic advantage. That may be customary practice among Western nations and at institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. It is not China’s.
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Second, as we advance toward a condition of parity between West and non–West — an inevitable feature of our century — it will no longer be plausible to assume that the West’s parliamentary democracies set the standard by which all others can be judged. Nations have vastly varying political traditions. It is up to each to maintain or depart from them. China understands this. So should the West.
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- Army Rolls Out Missile Defense Framework To Counter Hypersonic Missile Attacks
In response to Russian and Chinese war threats, the U.S. Army debuted its new Air and Missile Defense framework, or AMD, on March 27 that will pursue multimission units and counter hypersonic missile or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) attacks, the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Commander told Defense News in an interview during the Association of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Symposium.
Lt. Gen. James Dickinson said AMD would provide synchronized efforts to execute multi-domain operations, defend the country for emerging threats and succeed in future operational environments.
Top objectives of the new strategy include ensuring AMD forces can protect ground forces and defend critical assets on the modern battlefield and in the homeland. AMD forces are designed to help “create windows of superiority” in the air, so those infantry units have the ability to commandeer enemy territory successfully, Defense News said.
AMD forces align with the Army’s 2028 goal of modernized forces executing multidomain operations.
“Our vision is that the AMD force of 2028 will provide the combatant commanders with a flexible, agile, and integrated AMD force capable of executing multi-domain operations and defending the homeland, regional joint and coalition forces, and critical assets in support of unified land operations,” said Lt. Gen. Dickinson. “To do this, we will execute four lines of effort. We will modernize and develop AMD capabilities; build AMD capacity for multi-domain operations; provide trained and ready AMD forces; and maintain forward presence and build allied and partner capacity.”
AMD also erects the next generation Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense, or LTAMD, sensor as the replacement for the MIM-104 Patriot missile system.
The Army will continue developing Indirect Fire Protection Capability, or IFPC, that provides short-range defense against rockets, artillery, and mortars as well as hypersonic missiles and drones.
The service is also developing Short Range Air Defense, or M-SHORAD, that addresses an important capability gap in the European theater.
AMD is expected to link all of the service’s defense and missile systems into an integrated command system.
The strategy is expected to add directed-energy weapon systems to aircraft and ground vehicles to protect ground forces against rocket, artillery, mortar and drone threats.
The Army’s last AMD strategy was in 2012, according to Lt. Gen. Dickinson.
In the last five years, the threat of hypersonic missiles and drone attacks have sent American war planners back to the drawing boards. With AMD, the framework is now in place to develop a missile system that can not just protect American allies and troops on the modern battlefield, but protect critical assets in the homeland in the event of war.
- Sheriff Willing To Go To Jail Over Red Flag Gun Law: "It's A Matter Of Doing What's Right"
Authored by Dagny Taggart via The Organic Prepper blog,
A Colorado sheriff has stated that he opposes a proposed new gun control law so much that he is willing to go to jail rather than enforce it.
Weld County Sheriff Steve Reams told CNN that “It’s a matter of doing what’s right.”
Here’s a bit of background on the bill Reams is referring to. It is likely to become law this week.
The law Reams says he will not enforce is a red flag gun confiscation law.
House Bill 19-1177, also known as a red flag bill or the Extreme Risk Protection Orders bill, passed the Colorado Senate 18-17 on Thursday and is scheduled Monday for the House floor. With Democratic majorities in both chambers, state Republicans have too few votes to stop the bill.
Last month, we reported that legislators and sheriffs in the state have been pushing back against the bill:
Officially called Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPO), “red flag” laws permit police, healthcare providers, or family members to petition a state court to order the temporary removal of firearms from a person who may present a danger to others or themselves.
Weld County recently joined the growing list of counties in Colorado that have passed Second Amendment Sanctuary resolutions in response to the impending red flag law.
For a full analysis and critique of this bill, give this a read: Kopel and Greenlee: Plenty of red flags in Colorado’s ‘extreme risk’ protection order bill. (source)
We also reported that Reams (among others) is in opposition to the bill:
Commissioner Barbara Kirkmeyer, one of HB 19-1177’s harshest critics, said “The severity of this bill cannot be overstated. The name of this bill is the Extreme Risk Protection Orders. I think that’s a façade, and I think it’s fraudulent. I think actually, this bill should have been titled: ‘The Extreme Order to Confiscate Your Firearms, Eliminate Due Process, and Violate your Constitutional Rights Bill.”
Weld County Sheriff Steve Reams agrees:
“The bill is so riddled with constitutional problems that it makes it hard to understand how professional lawmakers could have constructed something so terrible,” Reams said, adding the bill, “raises some serious concerns about due process, in that a person can have their guns taken away and their rights violated, all without ever having a chance to appear in an initial court hearing and cross examine accusers and witnesses in person. In legal terms, this is an exparte hearing.” (source)
Reams added that one of the biggest problems with the law is it does not address actual mental health issues – it only allows for guns to be taken away, leaving the person in the same position and without medical help. (source)
Sheriffs could find themselves locked inside of their own jails for refusing to enforce gun control laws.
Failure to enforce a court order to seize a person’s guns could mean sheriffs being found in contempt. A judge could fine them indefinitely, or even send them to jail to force them to comply.
Reams told CNN it’s a sacrifice he’d be forced to make.
He isn’t the only sheriff to voice opposition to red flag laws. A growing number of states, counties, cities, and towns are declaring themselves “Second Amendment Sanctuaries” and are refusing to enforce gun-control laws that infringe on the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
David Kopel, a constitutional law expert who has written extensively about gun policy in the United States, says he thinks the bill is generally a good idea but that he has serious reservations about how it is written, reports CNN:
“The gun ban lobbies are getting more and more extreme and aggressive,” he said.
The bill allows a judge to order a person’s guns to be seized before the person has a chance to appear in court. The bill does require a second hearing with the gun owner present to be held within 14 days, where the owner could make a case to keep the weapons — but if the owner is unsuccessful, a judge could order the guns seized for as long as a year.
Kopel said it would be difficult to prevent a nightmare scenario in which someone misuses the law to take guns away from a person they intend to target violently.
The burden of proof is low — “preponderance of the evidence,” which is the same standard used in civil cases, and a much lower bar than the criminal standard, “beyond a reasonable doubt.” (source)
Reams added that he is concerned about the potential to aggravate an already volatile person by taking their weapons:
“Going in and taking their guns and leaving the scene, I can’t see how that makes them less of a risk. It just takes one tool away,” said Reams, arguing that a person bent on hurting someone could do it with a knife or a car. (source)
He makes a great point. Last October, Maryland’s red flag law went into effect. Less than a month later, the law claimed its first victim. Gary J. Willis was killed by police when they showed up at his home at 5 am to serve him with a court order requiring that he surrender his guns.
Reams is not the only sheriff who is publicly voiced his intent to not enforce unconstitutional gun control laws.
Back in February, a group of sheriffs from New Mexico did the same:
Of the 33 sheriffs in the state, 29 have voiced disapproval of the package of anti-gun legislation by issuing a declaration through the state sheriffs’ association, stating that the “rush to react to the violence by proposing controls on guns is ill-conceived and is truly a distraction to the real problems proliferating violence in our counties and our state.” (source)
And, earlier this year, some sheriffs in Washington state publicly vowed not to enforce new unconstitutional gun laws.
In a statement, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said he is “confident that when and if the time comes, all law enforcement officials will follow the rule of law.”
But Reams said he is serious: “I’ve explained that time and time again,” he said. “I’m not bluffing.”
- Toyota's 207-cm Basketball Robot Is A Superstar Three Point Shooter
Watch out massively overpaid basketball players: you may be next to get swept away by the great robot revolution.
While it can’t dribble or slam dunk just yet (it soon will) Toyota’s basketball robot is deadly from downtown, and hardly ever misses a free throw or a 3-pointer.
The 207-centimeter (six-foot, 10-inch)-tall machine made five of eight 3-point shots in a demonstration in a Tokyo suburb Monday, a ratio its engineers say is worse than usual according to AP.
Toyota’s robot, called Cue 3, computes as a three-dimensional image where the basket is, using sensors on its torso, and adjusts motors inside its arm and knees to give the shot the right angle and propulsion for a swish.
Recent efforts in developing human-shaped robots – especially from the likes of Boston Dynamics – underline a global shift in
eliminating unskilled laborrobotics use from pre-programmed mechanical arms in limited situations like factories to functioning in the real world with people. The transition is rapidly reaching a critical point, with Reuters reported last month that US companies deployed more robots in 2018 than ever before – as advanced machines capable of specialized tasks have come down in price and availability.And now, robots are also starting to threaten what until recently was considered sacrosanct: sports.
The 2017 version of the Toyota basketball robot was designed to make free throws; the 2018 upgrade added 3-pointers.
Yudai Baba, a basketball player likely representing host Japan at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, took part in the demonstration and also missed a couple of shots. If the robot could learn a few more tricks, he was ready to accept the robot on the team, he said.
“We human players are still better for now,” he said with some trepidation in his voice.
The good news: for now Leborn’s throne is safe: right after missing, the robot slumped over. It wasn’t disappointment, but a temporary power failure. Expect that problem to be fixed for good in the next generation.
The name of the robot – Cue 3 – is supposed to reflect the idea the technology can serve as a cue, or signal of great things to come, according to Toyota.
In an attempt to prevent a backlash from the sport community, Toyota played down how the technology might prove useful. It’s more about boosting morale among engineers, making them open to ideas and challenges the company said. Toyota’s engineers also said that in making the robot’s outer covering something like that of an armadillo, they were just trying to avoid the white metallic look often seen on robots.
Cue 3 is not the company’s first attempt at making humans obsolete: the maker of the Camry sedan, Prius hybrid and Lexus cars has shown off various robots, including one that played a violin. Another, resembling R2-D2 of Star Wars, slides around and picks up things. At Monday’s demonstration, it handed the basketball to Cue 3.
The case for robots is well known: manufacturers and experts say robots that can mimic human movements, in most cases doing them better, and could prove useful in various ways, including picking crops, making deliveries, and working in factories and warehouses. In fact, they could one day replace all unskilled and semi-skilled human labor.
Stanford University Professor Oussama Khatib, who directs the university’s robotics lab, said Cue 3 demonstrates complex activities such as using sensors and nimble computation in real-time in what he called “visual feedback.” To shoot hoops, the robot must have a good vision system, be able to compute the ball’s path then execute the shot, he said in a telephone interview.
“What Toyota is doing here is really bringing the top capabilities in perception with the top capabilities in control to have robots perform something that is really challenging,” Khatib said.
Long at the forefront of the robotic industry, Japan has been aggressive in developing humanoids, including those that do little more than offer cute companionship, i.e., sex dolls (many have voiced concerns that Japan’s already dismal demographics will completely collapse once men start “having sex” with robots instead of women).
Meanwhile, Toyota’s rival Honda has its Asimo, a walking robot that started in the 1980s. It not only can run, but also recognize faces, avoid obstacles, shake hands, pour a drink and carry a tray.
The good news is that for now professional sports player have little to worry about: when asked when such robots will be able to slam dunk, a feat that will require running, dribbling and jumping, Tomohiro Nomi, a Toyota engineer who worked on Cue 3, responded “in 20 years, with technological advances.”
Meanwhile, for Amazon’s 600,000+ warehouse workers, it may already be too late.
- The Newest AI-Enabled Weapon: "Deep-Faking" Photos Of The Earth
Authored by Patrick Turner via DefenseOne.com,
Step 1: Use AI to make undetectable changes to outdoor photos.
Step 2: release them into the open-source world and enjoy the chaos.
Worries about deep fakes — machine-manipulated videos of celebrities and world leaders purportedly saying or doing things that they really didn’t — are quaint compared to a new threat: doctored images of the Earth itself.
China is the acknowledged leader in using an emerging technique called generative adversarial networks to trick computers into seeing objects in landscapes or in satellite images that aren’t there, says Todd Myers, automation lead for the CIO-Technology Directorate at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
“The Chinese are well ahead of us. This is not classified info,” Myers said Thursday at the second annual Genius Machinessummit, hosted by Defense One and Nextgov.
“The Chinese have already designed; they’re already doing it right now, using GANs—which are generative adversarial networks—to manipulate scenes and pixels to create things for nefarious reasons.”
For example, Myers said, an adversary might fool your computer-assisted imagery analysts into reporting that a bridge crosses an important river at a given point.
“So from a tactical perspective or mission planning, you train your forces to go a certain route, toward a bridge, but it’s not there. Then there’s a big surprise waiting for you,” he said.
First described in 2014, GANs represent a big evolution in the way neural networks learn to see and recognize objects and even detect truth from fiction.
Say you ask your conventional neural network to figure out which objects are what in satellite photos. The network will break the image into multiple pieces, or pixel clusters, calculate how those broken pieces relate to one another, and then make a determination about what the final product is, or, whether the photos are real or doctored. It’s all based on the experience of looking at lots of satellite photos.
GANs reverse that process by pitting two networks against one another — hence the word “adversarial.” A conventional network might say, “The presence of x, y, and z in these pixel clusters means this is a picture of a cat.” But a GAN network might say, “This is a picture of a cat, so x, y, and z must be present. What are x, y, and z and how do they relate?” The adversarial network learns how to construct, or generate, x, y, and z in a way that convinces the first neural network, or the discriminator, that something is there when, perhaps, it is not.
A lot of scholars have found GANs useful for spotting objects and sorting valid images from fake ones. In 2017, Chinese scholars used GANs to identify roads, bridges, and other features in satellite photos.
The concern, as AI technologists told Quartz last year, is that the same technique that can discern real bridges from fake ones can also help create fake bridges that AI can’t tell from the real thing.
Myers worries that as the world comes to rely more and more on open-source images to understand the physical terrain, just a handful of expertly manipulated data sets entered into the open-source image supply line could create havoc. “Forget about the [Department of Defense] and the [intelligence community]. Imagine Google Maps being infiltrated with that, purposefully? And imagine five years from now when the Tesla [self-driving] semis are out there routing stuff?” he said.
When it comes to deep fake videos of people, biometric indicators like pulse and speech can defeat the fake effect. But faked landscape isn’t vulnerable to the same techniques.
Even if you can defeat GANs, a lot of image-recognition systems can be fooled by adding small visual changes to the physical objects in the environment themselves, such as stickers added to stop signs that are barely noticeable to human drivers but that can throw off machine vision systems, as DARPA program manager Hava Siegelmann has demonstrated.
Myers says the military and intelligence community can defeat GAN, but it’s time-consuming and costly, requiring multiple, duplicate collections of satellite images and other pieces of corroborating evidence.
“For every collect, you have to have a duplicate collect of what occurred from different sources,” he said.
“Otherwise, you’re trusting the one source.”
The challenge is both a technical and a financial one.
“The biggest thing is the funding required to make sure you can do what I just talked about,” he said.
On Thursday, U.S. officials confirmed that data integrity is a rising concern…
- Airbnb Under Fire For Disturbing Hidden Camera Incidents
Travelers staying in Airbnb rentals might want to think twice before traipsing around naked in somebody else’s rental property. according to The Atlantic. In fact, one might want to check the bathroom fixtures for little black dots that look out of place.
And while the company’s rules allow owners to place cameras outdoors, in living rooms and in common areas, bathrooms and bedrooms are prohibited.
Starting in early 2018, Airbnb added another layer of disclosure: If hosts indicate they have cameras anywhere on their property, guests receive a pop-up informing them where the cameras are located and where they are aimed. To book the property, the guests must click “agree,” indicating that they’re aware of the cameras and consent to being filmed. –The Atlantic
“There have been super terrible examples of privacy violations by AirBnB hosts, e.g., people have found cameras hidden in alarm clocks in their bedrooms,” says Jeff Bigham – a Carnegie Mellon computer-science professor who found undisclosed cameras in his rental. “I feel like our experience is in some ways more insidious. If you find a truly hidden camera in your bedroom or bathroom, Airbnb will support you. If you find an undisclosed camera in the private living room, Airbnb will not support you.”
After twice siding with the property owner, Bigham says Airbnb finally cooperated after a blog post he made on the incident went viral.
In January, Bigham discovered cameras in his rental that he says were never disclosed. After he reached out to the Trust & Safety team, representatives told him he and his family had in fact consented to the cameras because they were visibly displayed in photos on the listing. After Bigham’s blog post on the ordeal went viral, Airbnb apologized and refunded his money. –The Atlantic
“No one really seems to know what they’re doing,” said Bigham. “And it seems like it’s only going to get worse.”
Airbnb said in a statement: “We have apologized to Mr. Bigham and fully refunded him for his stay. We require hosts to clearly disclose any security cameras in writing on their listings and we have strict standards governing surveillance devices in listings. This host has been removed from our community.“
In another incident from January, children’s camp director Max Vest discovered cameras in his Airbnb room which he first mistook for phone chargers.
He quickly got dressed, grabbed his belongings, and pocketed the cameras’ memory cards as evidence. Then panic set in: It was almost midnight, and he was alone in the home of someone whose name he didn’t even know, apparently being recorded. What’s more, his host could have been watching as he discovered the cameras.
“I didn’t know if I was being watched live,” Vest told me in January. “What I’ve found since is that [the cameras] record to a memory card, but they can also stream live. The host could’ve been watching. Anybody could have been watching.” (The company denied The Atlantic’s, and Vest’s, requests for Ralph’s full name and identity, citing its privacy policy.)
Vest was afraid of what might happen if Ralph saw him leave. “I know what he had [at] stake by being caught,” Vest said. But he managed to leave the apartment without incident, get in his car, and make two phone calls—one to his wife, and one to Airbnb’s safety team. –The Atlantic
Vest received a refund and spent the night in a hotel room, however he claims that Airbnb made several missteps during the entire process of renting – up to the point where he has retained an attorney and is considering filing a civil lawsuit under Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. More troublingly, the police gave Vest trouble for taking the camera’s memory card without the homeowner’s consent.
Cameras have been found in international Airbnb rentals as well.
Alfie Day told me he found a camera in his rental’s living room while he and his girlfriend were visiting his brother in Bulgaria. Day works in IT, so he performed an Nmap scan to learn more about the devices in the home. He discovered that the host had installed a type of camera that could be remotely controlled to pan, tilt, and zoom in on anything it sees. The expanded field of view meant that while the camera was in the living room, it could discreetly follow guests from room to room. The scan also revealed that the camera had a high-capacity storage system that lets users share very large files quickly across the same network.
Day credits Airbnb’s Trust & Safety customer service for responding quickly and carefully, but he still wonders what happened to the video footage. It could theoretically be stored on the device, saved to the host’s cloud account, sent to a shared network for other users to watch, or uploaded to any illicit site, living forever outside Airbnb’s control. –The Atlantic
In 2015, Airbnb settled a civil lawsuit brought by a German woman who discovered hidden cameras in her rental two years prior. She argued in her complaint that she now fears “images of her exist in electronic form and could make their way onto the Internet or some other medium.”
Meanwhile, Miami PD are investigating Vest’s case – however they have not formally brought criminal charges against the homeowner, Vest or Airbnb.
“When something like this happens, they need to really be serious about the consequences,” said Vest. “Just removing a listing—it doesn’t really send a message.”
- American Idiocracy: 50 Years Later, We're Still Stranded In The Twilight Zone
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.” – Rod Serling
Have you noticed how much life increasingly feels like an episode of The Twilight Zone?
Only instead of Rod Serling’s imaginary “land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas,” we’re trapped in a topsy-turvy, all-too-real land of corruption, brutality and lies, where freedom, justice and integrity play second fiddle to political ambition, corporate greed, and bureaucratic tyranny.
It’s not merely that life in the American Police State is more brutal, or more unjust, or even more corrupt. It’s getting more idiotic, more perverse, and more outlandish by the day.
Somewhere over the course of the past 240-plus years, democracy has given way to idiocracy, and representative government has given way to a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens).
Examples abound.
In Georgia, political organizers posted a “Black Media Only” sign outside a Baptist Church, barring white reporters from attending a meeting about an upcoming mayoral election.
In Arizona, a SWAT team raided a family’s home in the middle of the night on the say-so of Child Protective Services, which sounded the alarm after the parents determined that their 2-year-old—who had been suffering a 100-degree fever—was feeling better and didn’t need to be admitted to the hospital.
In Virginia, landlords are requiring dog-owning tenants to submit their pets’ DNA to a database that will be used to track down (and fine) owners who fail to clean up after their dogs poop in public.
In Texas, a police officer who allegedly gave a homeless man a sandwich with dog feces won’t be held accountable for his actions.
In Illinois, Chicago police used a battering ram and a sledgehammer to crash into a family’s home with weapons drawn, terrorizing the young children gathered for a 4-year-old’s birthday party, only to find that they were at the wrong house.
In Kansas, a 61-year-old back man in the process of moving into his new house found himself held at gunpoint and handcuffed by police, who refused to believe he was a homeowner and not a burglar.
If you’re starting to notice a pattern here, it speaks to the fact that nearly 50 years after Serling’s creative brainchild, The Twilight Zone, premiered on national television, we’re still fumbling around in the dark, trying to make sense of a world dominated by racism, cruelty, war, violence, poverty, prejudice, intolerance, ignorance, injustice and a host of other social maladies and spiritual evils.
The Twilight Zone was an oasis in television wasteland: a show that captured imaginations; challenged moral hypocrisy and societal prejudices; and railed against inhumanity, racism, prejudice, the mechanization of human beings by way of their technology, tyrants of all shapes and colors, a passive populace, war, injustice, the surveillance state, corporate greed.
Fifty years later, with so much having changed legally, technologically and politically, so much still remains the same. Fear is the same. Prejudice is the same. Ignorance is the same. Hate and war and tyranny are unchanged. Police officers are still shooting unarmed citizens. Bloated government agencies are still fleecing taxpayers. Government technicians are still spying on our communications. And American citizens are still allowing themselves to be manipulated by their fears and pitted one against the other.
All of these themes can be found in The Twilight Zone.
Serling, a truth-teller who pulled no punches when it came to calling out the evils of his day, channeled his moral outrage into storytelling. As his daughter Anne explained, “The Twilight Zone was more than just the strangest show on TV, with the best theme song, but back in the 50’s Rod Serling was serving up social commentary through science fiction.”
That social commentary disguised as entertainment tackled some of the most pressing issues of Serling’s day.
“It dealt with human issues which I guess is why it’s lasted so long, because it dealt with racism and mob mentality and scapegoating and things that are still very, very prevalent and relevant today sadly,” said Anne.
“We don’t seem to be able to move ahead and change.”
Serling would have no shortage of material to draw from today, given the government’s greed for money and power, its disregard for human life, its corruption and graft, its pollution of the environment, its reliance on excessive force in order to ensure compliance, its covert activities, its illegal surveillance, and its blatant disdain for the rule of law.
“I can tell you [my dad] would be absolutely apoplectic about what’s happening in the world today. And deeply saddened,” said his daughter Anne Serling. “There are moments that I’m glad he’s not here to see.”
It boggles the mind how relevant The Twilight Zone and its unique brand of truth-telling are to an age in which truth has become a convenient fiction for those in power, what researchers refer to as “Truth Decay.”
As a report from the Rand Corporation explains, “Truth Decay is defined as a set of four related trends: increasing disagreement about facts and analytical interpretations of facts and data; a blurring of the line between opinion and fact; an increase in the relative volume, and resulting influence, of opinion and personal experience over fact; and declining trust in formerly respected sources of factual information.”
Serling would have had a lot to say about the lies that masquerade as truth today.
I’m not sure that Serling would have been surprised by current events, though. After all, this was the man who concluded that people are alike all over: that was the kernel of truth in one of Serling’s episodes about a pair of astronauts who journey to Mars only to find that while they may have landed on an alien planet, inhabited by alien creatures, the ignorance, fear and prejudice of the “foreigner” was the same.
So many truths, packaged in 156 episodes that aired from 1959 to 1964.
Serling took pride in the writing, penning 92 of the 156 episodes himself. For the rest, he enlisted some of the best writers of the 20th century to lend their talents to Zone episodes: Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, Earl Hamner, to mention a few. As such, the Twilight Zone became the embodiment of great story-telling.
If you want to watch something that fuses time and space into reality by way of a fictional setting, then I suggest that you tune into The Twilight Zone.
Director Jordan Peele has taken Serling’s material out for a new spin in a reboot airing on CBS All Access, but if you haven’t experienced the original series, do yourself a favor and spend some time with them.
There are so many to choose from, but the following are 12 of my personal favorites:
Time Enough at Last: Mild-mannered Henry Bemis (Burgess Meredith), hen-pecked by his wife and brow-beaten by his boss, sneaks into a bank vault on his lunch hour to read. He is knocked unconscious by a shockwave that turns out to be a nuclear war. When Bemis regains consciousness, he realizes that he is the last person on earth.
I Shot an Arrow into the Air: Three astronauts survive a crash after their craft disappears from the radar screen. They find themselves on what they believe to be a dry, lifeless asteroid. Only five gallons of water separate them from dehydration and death. And temperamental crew member Corey (Dewey Martin) goes to great lengths to ensure his survival.
The Howling Man: During a walking tour of Europe after World War I, David loses his way and comes to a remote monastery. He is turned away but passes out, and the monks take him in. David regains consciousness and hears a bizarre howling. He eventually finds a man in a jail cell who the monks say is the Devil himself, kept in his prison by the “staff of truth.”
Eye of the Beholder: Janet lies in a hospital bed, her face wrapped in bandages, hiding the hideous face that has made her an outcast all her life. This is her eleventh hospital visit and the last allowed by the government. The faces of the doctors and nurses are also hidden by shadows and camera angles. Janet’s bandages are finally removed, and the medical staff retreat in disgust.
The Invaders: A haggard woman (Agnes Morehead) hears a strange sound on the roof. She climbs up to see a miniature flying saucer and tiny spacemen who invade her home. Their small ray guns sting, but she fights back.
Shadow Play: Adam (Dennis Weaver) is on trial, and the judge gives him the electric chair. Adam chortles that it’s all a joke, a recurring nightmare in which all the participants are bit players in a scripted play. But will anyone listen?
The Obsolete Man: Romney (Burgess Meredith) is a God-fearing librarian in a totalitarian state in which books and religion have been banned. Romney is judged obsolete by the government chancellor but is granted several requests before he dies. He chooses to have a television audience watch his execution. Forty-five minutes before he is to die, he invites the chancellor to his room and locks them both inside.
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Robert (William Shatner) boards an airplane after having been discharged from a mental hospital for a nervous breakdown. He looks out his window during the flight and sees a weird creature on the wing. Alarmed, he alerts others. However, when they look out, the creature disappears. Robert eventually realizes that what he sees is a demon trying to dismantle the plane so it will crash. Robert decides to act.
Living Doll: Erich (Telly Savalas) is angry at his wife for buying his stepdaughter an expensive doll. Erich has a nasty disposition and soon discovers that the doll has a life of its own and it dislikes him. In fact, the doll tells him so. Talky Tina says emphatically “I hate you” and “I’m going to kill you.”
The Masks: On his deathbed, Jason Foster calls his four heirs to his side on a Mardi Gras evening. Each heir has a character flaw—self-pity, avarice, vanity or cruelty. Foster demands that each wear a mask he has fashioned for them. If they refuse to keep the masks on until midnight, they will be disinherited. The masks are hideous, and the heirs do not want to don them. But out of greed, they slide them onto their faces.
It’s a Good Life: Peaksville, Ohio, a small community, has been “taken away” from the so-called normal world—ravaged by 6-year-old “monster” Anthony (Billy Mumy). By mere thought and/or wishes, Anthony can make things and people disappear or turn into hideous creatures. All of the adults kowtow to his every desire.
To Serve Man: The Kanamits—nine-foot-tall, large-headed creatures—come to Earth from outer space, bringing gifts, spouting peace and promising to end famine. After some initial resistance by earthlings, the world relents and humans become entranced by the visitors. However, government agent Mike (Lloyd Chambers) soon discovers a sinister and shocking plot being hatched by the Kanamits.
The Twilight Zone was a paradox.
Although the series is often seen as science fiction, ultimately it was not science fiction.
Whatever weird or far out setting may have been involved in a particular episode, the focus was always on the angst, pain and suffering we face in the so-called “real” world. As author Marc Scott Zicree writes:
The Twilight Zone was the first, and possibly only, TV series to deal on a regular basis with the theme of alienation—particularly urban alienation…. Repeatedly, it states a simple message: The only escape from alienation lies in reaching out to others, trusting in their common humanity. Give in to the fear and you are lost.
Fifty years after the original The Twilight Zone series questioned whether we can maintain our humanity in the face of authoritarian forces trying to reduce us to mindless automatons, we’re still struggling with the demons of our age who delight in fomenting violence, sowing distrust and prejudice, and persuading the public to support tyranny disguised as patriotism.
Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we don’t have to be stranded in this alternate universe, this twilight zone of tyranny, brutality and injustice.
We still have the power to change our circumstances for the better.
However, overcoming the evils of our age will require more than intellect and activism. It will require decency, morality, goodness, truth and toughness.
As Serling concluded in his remarks to the graduating class of 1968:
“Toughness is the singular quality most required of you… we have left you a world far more botched than the one that was left to us… Part of your challenge is to seek out truth, to come up with a point of view not dictated to you by anyone, be he a congressman, even a minister… Are you tough enough to take the divisiveness of this land of ours, the fact that everything is polarized, black and white, this or that, absolutely right or absolutely wrong. This is one of the challenges. Be prepared to seek out the middle ground … that wondrous and very difficult-to-find Valhalla where man can look to both sides and see the errant truths that exist on both sides. If you must swing left or you must swing right—respect the other side. Honor the motives that come from the other side. Argue, debate, rebut—but don’t close those wondrous minds of yours to opposition. In their eyes, you’re the opposition. And ultimately … ultimately—you end divisiveness by compromise. And so long as men walk and breathe—there must be compromise.”
- Quadriga Bankruptcy Monitor Says Founder Stole From Exchange; All Assets Should Be Frozen
More than two months have passed since doomed Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX abruptly shut down on Jan. 28 before seeking bankruptcy petition a week later. And in that time, a stream of suspicious and at times hard to believe details have stoked speculation that its late founder, Gerald Cotten, who died suddenly in India late last year, purportedly taking the keys to Quadriga’s cold storage wallets with him, may have embezzled millions of dollars from his clients, or perhaps the funds were stolen in an undisclosed hack.
Whatever the case may be, it appears investigators are no closer to determining what happened to customers’ money, particularly since Quadriga’s bankruptcy court monitor, Ernst & Young, disclosed that some of the firm’s cold storage wallets had been empty since April. But in a long-awaited report on its findings released this week, EY recommended that Quadriga’s case be moved out of restructuring and into bankruptcy, arguing that it would offer an easier, more cost effective approach for returning at least some money to the firm’s creditors.
Quadriga founder Gerald Cotten
According to Bloomberg, the Vancouver-based exchange owes its clients roughly $195 million in crypto.
Not only have efforts to recover money from Quadriga itself proved fruitless (EY recommended that any funds from the sale of the trading platform itself could be returned to shareholders), but attempts to recover more than $4.5 million in bank drafts and receivables held by third-party payment processors have also led to a dead end.
Though the report is more than 240 pages long, here’s where it gets really interesting. Because EY discovered evidence that Cotten and/or Robertson may have embezzled money from Quadriga’s clients, the company is recommending that all of the assets held by Robertson and Cotten’s estate (of which she is the executor) be subjected to a “preservation agreement” – essentially, an asset freeze. Over time, this should help Quadriga’s creditors eventually recoup at least some of their money.
ASSET PRESERVATION REQUEST WITH JENNIFER ROBERTSON AND OTHER ENTITIES
36. During the course of the Monitor’s investigation into Quadriga’s business and affairs, the Monitor became aware of occurrences where the corporate and personal boundaries between Quadriga and its founder Gerald Cotten were not formally maintained, and it appeared to the Monitor that Quadriga funds may have been used to acquire assets held outside the corporate entity.
37. In order to further investigate these situations, and as noted in the Monitor’s Third Report, the Monitor requested additional details and information from Jennifer Robertson in her capacity as executor of the estate of Gerald Cotten (the “Cotten Estate”), as well as information relating to Ms. Robertson personally and her corporate or trust entities which may have been used by Ms. Robertson and/or Mr. Cotten to maintain assets. The Monitor also sought to obtain a voluntary preservation of assets agreement from the Cotten Estate and Ms. Robertson.
38. Discussions between the Monitor and counsel to Ms. Robertson and the Cotten Estate have culminated in a form of preservation of assets order (the “Asset Preservation Order”) which involves all assets held by the Cotten Estate, Ms. Roberston, the Seaglass Trust, Robertson Nova Consulting Inc., and Robertson Nova Property Management Inc. (collectively, the “Preserving Parties”) whether or not such assets are in the names of the respective parties and whether they are solely or jointly or beneficially owned. The Asset Preservation Order extends to assets which any of the Preserving Parties has the power, directly or indirectly, to dispose of or deal with as if it were their own. A copy of the draft Asset Preservation Order is attached as Appendix “G”.
39. The Asset Preservation Order would, subject to agreed modifications, prohibit the Preserving Parties from selling, removing, dissipating, alienating, transferring, assigning, encumbering, or similarly dealing with any assets of the Preserving Parties, wherever situate.
40. Ms. Robertson and her counsel have agreed to prepare and disclose a list of relevant assets directly to the Monitor. Representative Counsel will also have an opportunity to review the disclosure when provided.
41. The Asset Preservation Order permits the Preserving Parties, with the consent of the Monitor, the ability to monetize certain assets where values may diminish during the term of the Asset Preservation Order, and provides for the payment and satisfaction of living expenses, property and maintenance preservation expenses and legal expenses. The Monitor (and Trustee if appointed) will continue to have an active role in the oversight of these monetization efforts and expenses.
42. With respect to monetizing certain assets, while the terms of the proposed Asset Preservation Order were being negotiated, Ms. Robertson and her counsel have consulted with the Monitor in respect of various potential asset sales and strategies in a collaborative manner.
43. In certain instances identified to date, interested third party purchasers of certain assets currently held in the name of the Preserving Parties have expressed some reluctance to pursue a transaction over concerns that future claims may “follow the assets” in their hands. To address this concern and to offer some comfort to future bona-fide third party purchasers, the Asset Preservation Order incorporates release language to assist and facilitate future sales:
But the key takeaway is that the monitors haven’t found the missing coins, but did find evidence of impropriety. And, as one Twitter wit pointed out, EY’s recommendations stopped just short of “send everybody involved in this scam to jail.” But by uncovering evidence of impropriety, they at least pointed in that direction.
EY’s 4th Report as Monitor in QuadrigaCX is this week’s most pissed-off document. Recommendations: CCAA->bankruptcy, freeze Robertson’s assets. https://t.co/zXRbRlM9eo They stop just short of recommending everyone go to jail, but they’re waggling their eyebrows in that direction.
— David Gerard (@davidgerard) April 2, 2019
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