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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months ago

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Surveillance pricing

THIS WEEKEND (June 7–9), I'm in AMHERST, NEW YORK to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

Correction, 7 June 2024: The initial version of this article erroneously described Jeffrey Roper as the founder of ATPCO. He benefited from ATPCO, but did not co-found it. The initial version of this article called ATPCO "an illegal airline price-fixing service"; while ATPCO provides information that the airlines use to set prices, it does not set prices itself, and while the DOJ investigated the company, they did not pursue a judgment declaring the service to be illegal. I regret the error.

Noted anti-capitalist agitator Adam Smith had it right: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

Despite being a raving commie loon, Smith's observation was so undeniably true that regulators, policymakers, and economists couldn't help but acknowledge that it was true. The trustbusting era was defined by this idea: if we let the number of companies in a sector get too small, or if we let one or a few companies get too big, they'll eventually start to rig prices.

What's more, once an industry contracts corporate gigantism, it will become too big to jail, able to outspend and overpower the regulators charged with reining in its cheating. Anyone who believes Smith's self-evident maxim had to accept its conclusion: that companies had to be kept smaller than the state that regulated them. This wasn't about "punishing bigness" – it was the necessary precondition for a functioning market economy.

We kept companies small for the same reason that we limited the height of skyscrapers: not because we opposed height, or failed to appreciate the value of a really good penthouse view – rather, to keep the building from falling over and wrecking all the adjacent buildings and the lives of the people inside them.

Starting in the neoliberal era – Carter, then Reagan – we changed our tune. We liked big business. A business that got big was doing something right. It was perverse to shut down our best companies. Instead, we'd simply ban big companies from rigging prices. This was called the "consumer welfare" theory of antitrust. It was a total failure.

40 years later, nearly every industry is dominated by a handful of companies, and these companies price-gouge us with abandon. Worse, they use their gigantic ripoff winnings to fill war-chests that fund the corruption of democracy, capturing regulators so that they can rip us off even more, while ignoring labor, privacy and environmental law and ducking taxes.

It turns out that keeping gigantic, opaque, complex corporations honest is really hard. They have so many ways to shuffle money around that it's nearly impossible to figure out what they're doing. Digitalization makes things a million times worse, because computers allow businesses to alter their processes so they operate differently for every customer, and even for every interaction.

This is Dieselgate times a billion: VW rigged its cars to detect when they were undergoing emissions testing and switch to a less polluting, more compliant mode. But when they were on the open road, they spewed lethal quantities of toxic gas, killing people by the thousands. Computers don't make corporate leaders more evil, but they let evil corporate leaders execute far more complex and nefarious plans. Digitalization is a corporate moral hazard, making it just too easy and tempting to rig the game.

That's why Toyota, the largest car-maker in the world, just did Dieselgate again, more than a decade later. Digitalization is a temptation no giant company can resist:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1wwj1p2wdyo

For forty years, pro-monopoly cheerleaders insisted that we could allow companies to grow to unimaginable scale and still prevent cheating. They passed rules banning companies from explicitly forming agreements to rig prices. About ten seconds later, new middlemen popped up offering "information brokerages" that helped companies rig prices without talking to one another.

Take Agri Stats: the country's hyperconcentrated meatpacking industry pays Agri Stats to "consult on prices." They provide Agri Stats with a list of their prices, and then Agri Stats suggests changes based on its analysis. What does that analysis consist of? Comparing the company's prices to its competitors, who are also Agri Stats customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

In other words, Agri Stats finds the highest price for each product in the sector, then "advises" all the companies with lower prices to raise their prices to the "competitive" level, creating a one-way ratchet that sends the price of food higher and higher.

More and more sectors have an Agri Stats, and digitalization has made this price-gouging system faster, more efficient, and accessible to sectors with less concentration. Landlords, for example, have tapped into Realpage, a "data broker" that the same thing to your rent that Agri Stats does to meat prices. Realpage requires the landlords who sign up for its service to accept its "recommendations" on minimum rents, ensuring that prices only go up:

https://popular.info/p/feds-raid-corporate-landlord-escalating

Writing for The American Prospect, Luke Goldstein lays out the many ways in which these digital intermediaries have supercharged the business of price-rigging:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-05-three-algorithms-in-a-room/

Goldstein identifies a kind of patient zero for this ripoff epidemic: Jeffrey Roper, a former Alaska Air exec who benefited from a service that helps airlines set prices. ATPCO was investigated by the DOJ in the 1990s, but the enforcers lost their nerve and settled with the company, which agreed to apply some ornamental fig-leafs to its collusion-machine. Even those cosmetic changes were seemingly a bridge too far Roper, who left the US.

But he came back to serve as Realpage's "principal scientist" – the architect of a nationwide scheme to make rental housing vastly more expensive. For Roper, the barrier to low rents was empathy: landlords felt stirrings of shame when they made shelter unaffordable to working people. Roper called these people "idiots" who sentimentality "costs the whole system."

Sticking a rent-gouging computer between landlords and the people whose lives they ruin is a classic "accountability sink," as described in Dan Davies' new book "The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions – and How The World Lost its Mind":

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

It's a form of "empiricism washing": if computers are working in the abstract realm of pure numbers, they're just moving the objective facts of the quantitative realm into the squishy, imperfect qualitative world. Davies' interview on Trashfuture is excellent:

https://trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/e/fire-sale-at-the-accountability-store-feat-dan-davies/

To rig prices, an industry has to solve three problems: the problem of coming to an agreement to fix prices (economists call this "the collective action problem"); the problem of coming up with a price; and the problem of actually changing prices from moment to moment. This is the ripoff triangle, and like a triangle, it has many stable configurations.

The more concentrated an industry is, the easier it is to decide to rig prices. But if the industry has the benefit of digitalization, it can swap the flexibility and speed of computers for the low collective action costs from concentration. For example, grocers that switch to e-ink shelf tags can make instantaneous price-changes, meaning that every price change is less consequential – if sales fall off after a price-hike, the company can lower them again at the press of a button. That means they can collude less explicitly but still raise prices:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags

My name for this digital flexibility is "twiddling." Businesses with digital back-ends can alter their "business logic" from second to second, and present different prices, payouts, rankings and other key parts of the deal to every supplier or customer they interact with:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Not only does twiddling make it easier to rip off suppliers, workers and customers, it also makes these crimes harder to detect. Twiddling made Dieselgate possible, and it also underpinned "Greyball," Uber's secret strategy of refusing to send cars to pick up transportation regulators who would then be able to see firsthand how many laws the company was violating:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-program-evade-authorities.html

Twiddling is so easy that it has brought price-fixing to smaller companies and less concentrated sectors, though the biggest companies still commit crimes on a scale that put these bit-players to shame. In The Prospect, David Dayen investigates the "personalized pricing" ripoff that has turned every transaction into a potential crime-scene:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-04-one-person-one-price/

"Personalized pricing" is the idea that everything you buy should be priced based on analysis of commercial surveillance data that predicts the maximum amount you are willing to pay.

Proponents of this idea – like Harvard's Pricing Lab with its "Billion Prices Project" – insist that this isn't a way to rip you off. Instead, it lets companies lower prices for people who have less ability to pay:

https://thebillionpricesproject.com/

This kind of weaponized credulity is totally on-brand for the pro-monopoly revolution. It's the same wishful thinking that led regulators to encourage monopolies while insisting that it would be possible to prevent "bad" monopolies from raising prices. And, as with monopolies, "personalized pricing" leads to an overall increase in prices. In econspeak, it is a "transfer of wealth from consumer to the seller."

"Personalized pricing" is one of those cuddly euphemisms that should make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. A more apt name for this practice is surveillance pricing, because the "personalization" depends on the vast underground empire of nonconsensual data-harvesting, a gnarly hairball of ad-tech companies, data-brokers, and digital devices with built-in surveillance, from smart speakers to cars:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/12/market-failure/#car-wars

Much of this surveillance would be impractical, because no one wants their car, printer, speaker, watch, phone, or insulin-pump to spy on them. The flexibility of digital computers means that users always have the technical ability to change how these gadgets work, so they no longer spy on their users. But an explosion of IP law has made this kind of modification illegal:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

This is why apps are ground zero for surveillance pricing. The web is an open platform, and web-browsers are legal to modify. The majority of web users have installed ad-blockers that interfere with the surveillance that makes surveillance pricing possible:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

But apps are a closed platform, and reverse-engineering and modifying an app is a literal felony – several felonies, in fact. An app is just a web-page skinned with enough IP to make it a felony to modify it to protect your consumer, privacy or labor rights:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

(Google is leading a charge to turn the web into the kind of enshittifier's paradise that apps represent, blocking the use of privacy plugins and proposing changes to browser architecture that would allow them to felonize modifying a browser without permission:)

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

Apps are a twiddler's playground. Not only can they "customize" every interaction you have with them, but they can block you (or researchers seeking to help you) from recording and analyzing the app's activities. Worse: digital transactions are intimate, contained to the palm of your hand. The grocer whose e-ink shelf-tags flicker and reprice their offerings every few seconds can be collectively observed by people who are in the same place and can start a conversation about, say, whether to come back that night a throw a brick through the store's window to express their displeasure. A digital transaction is a lonely thing, atomized and intrinsically shielded from a public response.

That shielding is hugely important. The public hates surveillance pricing. Time and again, through all of American history, there have been massive and consequential revolts against the idea that every price should be different for every buyer. The Interstate Commerce Commission was founded after Grangers rose up against the rail companies' use of "personalized pricing" to gouge farmers.

Companies know this, which is why surveillance pricing happens in secret. Over and over, every day, you are being gouged through surveillance pricing. The sellers you interact with won't tell you about it, so to root out this practice, we have to look at the B2B sales-pitches from the companies that sell twiddling tools.

One of these companies is Plexure, partly owned by McDonald's, which provides the surveillance-pricing back-ends for McD's, Ikea, 7-Eleven, White Castle and others – basically, any time a company gives you a hard-sell to order via its apps rather than its storefronts or its website, you should assume you're getting twiddled, hard.

These companies use the enshittification playbook to trap you into using their apps. First, they offer discounts to customers who order through their apps – then, once the customers are fully committed to shopping via app, they introduce surveillance pricing and start to jack up the prices.

For example, Plexure boasts that it can predict what day a given customer is getting paid on and use that information to raise prices on all the goods the customer shops for on that day, on the assumption that you're willing to pay more when you've got a healthy bank balance.

The surveillance pricing industry represents another reason for everything you use to spy on you – any data your "smart" TV or Nest thermostat or Ring doorbell can steal from you can be readily monetized – just sell it to a surveillance pricing company, which will use it to figure out how to charge you more for everything you buy, from rent to Happy Meals.

But the vast market for surveillance data is also a potential weakness for the industry. Put frankly: the commercial surveillance industry has a lot of enemies. The only thing it has going for it is that so many of these enemies don't know that what's they're really upset about is surveillance.

Some people are upset because they think Facebook made Grampy into a Qanon. Others, because they think Insta gave their kid anorexia. Some think Tiktok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama bin Laden. Some are upset because the cops use Google location data to round up Black Lives Matter protesters, or Jan 6 insurrectionists. Some are angry about deepfake porn. Some are angry because Black people are targeted with ads for overpriced loans or colleges:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/04/meta_ad_algorithm_discrimination/

And some people are angry because surveillance feeds surveillance pricing. The thing is, whatever else all these people are angry about, they're all angry about surveillance. Are you angry that ad-tech is stealing a 51% share of news revenue? You're actually angry about surveillance. Are you angry that "AI" is being used to automatically reject resumes on racial, age or gender grounds? You're actually angry about surveillance.

There's a very useful analogy here to the history of the ecology movement. As James Boyle has long said, before the term "ecology" came along, there were people who cared about a lot of issues that seemed unconnected. You care about owls, I care about the ozone layer. What's the connection between charismatic nocturnal avians and the gaseous composition of the upper atmosphere? The term ecology took a thousand issues and welded them together into one movement.

That's what's on the horizon for privacy. The US hasn't had a new federal consumer privacy law since 1988, when Congress acted to ban video-store clerks from telling the newspapers what VHS cassettes you were renting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

We are desperately overdue for a new consumer privacy law, but every time this comes up, the pro-surveillance coalition defeats the effort. but as people who care about conspiratorialism, kids' mental health, spying by foreign adversaries, phishing and fraud, and surveillance pricing all come together, they will be an unbeatable coalition:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

Meanwhile, the US government is actually starting to take on these ripoff artists. The FTC is working to shut down data-brokers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

The FBI is raiding landlords to build a case against Frontpage and other rent price-fixers:

https://popular.info/p/feds-raid-corporate-landlord-escalating

Agri Stats is facing a DoJ lawsuit:

https://www.nationalhogfarmer.com/market-news/agri-stats-loses-motions-to-transfer-dismiss-in-doj-antitrust-case

Not every federal agency has gotten the message, though. Trump's Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell – whom Biden kept on the job – has been hiking interest rates in a bid to reduce our purchasing power by making millions of Americans poorer and/or unemployed. He's doing this to fight inflation, on the theory that inflation is being cause by us being too well-off, and therefore trying to buy more goods than are for sale.

But of course, interest rates are inflationary: when interest rates go up, it gets more expensive to pay your credit card bills, lease your car, and pay a mortgage. And where we see the price of goods shooting up, there's abundant evidence that this is the result of greedflation – companies jacking up their prices and blaming inflation. Interest rate hawks say that greedflation is impossible: if one company raises its prices, its competitors will swoop in and steal their customers with lower prices.

Maybe they would do that – if they didn't have a toolbox full of algorithmic twiddling options and a deep trove of surveillance data that let them all raise prices together:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-06-05-time-for-fed-to-meet-ftc/

Someone needs to read some Adam Smith to Chairman Powell: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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warningsine · 9 months ago

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The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died in jail, the country’s prison service has said, in what is likely to be seen as a political assassination attributable to Vladimir Putin.

Navalny, 47, one of Putin’s most visible and persistent critics, was being held in a jail about 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle where he had been sentenced to 19 years under a “special regime”. In a video from the prison in January, he had appeared gaunt with his head shaved.

The Kremlin said it had no information on the cause of death.

In early December he had disappeared from a prison in the Vladimir region, where he was serving a 30-year sentence on extremism and fraud charges that he had called political retribution for leading the anti-Kremlin opposition of the 2010s. He did not expect to be released during Putin’s lifetime.

A former nationalist politician, Navalny helped foment the 2011-12 protests in Russia by campaigning against election fraud and government corruption, investigating Putin’s inner circle and sharing the findings in slick videos that garnered hundreds of millions of views.

The high-water mark in his political career came in 2013, when he won 27% of the vote in a Moscow mayoral contest that few believed was free or fair. He remained a thorn in the side of the Kremlin for years, identifying a palace built on the Black Sea for Putin’s personal use, mansions and yachts used by the ex-president Dmitry Medvedev, and a sex worker who linked a top foreign policy official with a well-known oligarch.

In 2020, Navalny fell into a coma after a suspected poisoning using novichok by Russia’s FSB security service and was evacuated to Germany for treatment. He recovered and returned to Russia in January 2021, where he was arrested on a parole violation charge and sentenced to his first of several jail terms that would total more than 30 years behind bars.

Putin has recently launched a presidential campaign for his fifth term in office. He is already the longest-serving Russian leader since Joseph Stalin and could surpass him if he runs again for office in 2030, a possibility since he had the constitutional rules on term limits rewritten in 2020.

#Alexei Navalny #russia #news tag

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aurorangen · 3 months ago

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Before the arrest...somewhere in Strangerville, there was business with corrupt cops...

Transcript & Context:

Otilia: Why are they both reported as missing?!? And the media are all over it…THE PLAN IS RUINED [screams] USELESS!! ABSOLUTELY FUCKING USELESS!!! They were supposed to leave without a trace. Take matters into their own hands. AVOID SUSPICION! Now we have to deal with this mess on top of everything else ARGHHHH!!!

Otilia: [conversation continues] My agents will deal with my brother but with Mr Kingsley the boss says this. You must arrest the wife for his murder and make sure she stays in jail. [frustrated] Obey it or else.

Otilia: The plan is simple, fake his death. Use a mutilated body, so others can't investigate the identity. We'll send over the wife's fingerprint samples and wedding ring, he has them. Plant it over the crime scene to make it believable for the media. This will end it. No one on the outside should find out about Strangerville.

Otilia: As with the son, leave him be. Supreme order's words [ends call]

Veronica: What is she saying?

Bodyguard: Miss Veronica, there is nothing for you to be concerned about.

There I said it, corrupt cops (not Billy's station but another police force in the area). Payton is innocent! Their logic is to fake his death, so everyone on the outside thinks he is "dead" and not investigate further. This post emphasises how dangerous and ruthless the enemy is, and to show that they have connections to hide Strangerville and whatever they are doing there. I couldn't miss the chance to show 13-year-old Veronica either! She has no idea what is happening though...

#ts4 #sims 4 #ts4 gameplay #ts4 legacy #ts4 story #postcard legacy #postcard gen 3 #story: scars #veronica reyes by tulipsimss #otilia boerescu #(out of context) i wanted an evil sexy boss lady character lmao and so we have otilia!!! shes not the “supreme order” though #but there are levels of hierarchy with the villians in the story 👍#her hairs in the way but pretend shes speaking into earpiece #tw murder mention #tw violence death mention

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aurianashifts · 2 months ago

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ABOUT MY ARCANE DR!

or how I'll shift to a reality that will make me suffer more-/j

In this reality, I'm the older sister of Ekko by 2 years, being a part of the Firelights and helping him and the other inhabitans to bring the Zaun out of its misery and corruption To mess up more with the Canon (and not making myself or others suffering too much), I scripted in that I'll be able to write letters to Vi and see her once a month (during her jail time) and being in more or less loose contact with Jinx as well, being able to ease her state of mind and keep an eye on her when no one else does.

Once the main story kicks in, I'll join Caitlyn and Vi during their investigations & get into an internal conflict myself, which will lead to both drama and some new events happening that weren't in the series.

♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤

I've decided to keep both my CR name and appearance with the difference of making my hair blonde! In terms of fighting abilities, i gave myself a scythe and extremely flexibility + speed to avoid any damage or intense injuries. I also gave myself the ability of Telekinesis, Pyrokinesis and flight cause why not❗️Prepared with my own additional storyline and that of the show (may or may not be changed depending on how season 2 will turn out) everything will end up with a bitter yet "good" ending for everyone.

♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤

Some fun facts:

♤ I scripted Jayce to have more common sense cause some of his actions got me concerned 😭

♤ we'll actually end up destroying the many shimmer factories cause I don't even wanna know how much damage the substance must have left all those years...

♤ after the main storyline in my DR is done , I may or may not explore the rest of the universe in other cities/worlds!

♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤♤

That's all I got for now! Out of all realities I have, I have the most stuff written down in my notion script (esp the safety + story section ☠️) if anyone is interested in more details just leave a comment or dm me!

That's all for now! ^^

⚘ auriana.

#reality shifting #shiftblr #shifting #auriana #desired reality #✿auriana's home #arcane dr #dr #dr stories #dr script #scripting #drself #shifting community #reality shifting community #shifting blog #reality shifter #black shifter

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someone-will-remember-us · 28 days ago

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A man who used AI to create child abuse images using photographs of real children has been sentenced to 18 years in prison.

In the first prosecution of its kind in the UK, Hugh Nelson, 27, from Bolton, was convicted of 16 child sexual abuse offences in August, after an investigation by Greater Manchester police (GMP).

Nelson had used Daz 3D, a computer programme with an AI function, to transform “normal” images of children into sexual abuse imagery, Greater Manchester police said. In some cases, paedophiles had commissioned the images, supplying photographs of children with whom they had contact in real life.

He was also found guilty of encouraging other offenders to commit rape.

He sold his images in internet chatrooms, where he also discussed child sexual abuse with other offenders, making about £5,000 during an 18-month period by selling the images online.

While there have been previous convictions for “deepfakes”, which typically involve one face being transferred to another body, Nelson created 3D “characters” from innocent photographs.

Sentencing Nelson at Bolton crown court on Monday, judge Martin Walsh said it was “impossible to know” if children had been raped as a result of his images. Walsh said Nelson had no regard for the harm caused by distributing the “harrowing and sickening” material.

He added: “There seems to be no limit to the depths of depravity exhibited in the images that you were prepared to create and exhibit to others.”

Nelson was caught after he told an undercover police officer in an online chatroom that he charged £80 to create a new character, using supplied pictures, Bolton crown court heard.

“He stated: ‘I’ve done beatings, smotherings, hangings, drownings, beheadings, necro, beast, the list goes on’ with a laughing emoji,” David Toal, for the prosecution, said.

The court heard that Nelson was arrested in June last year. “He said he felt vile and that his mind was corrupted,” Toal said.

“He considered that his offending had got out of control,” he added.

Police searches of his devices also revealed that Nelson had exchanged messages with three separate individuals, encouraging the rape of children under 13.

During the course of the investigation, officers identified suspects and victims worldwide, including in Italy, France and the US.

Nelson was later found guilty of encouraging the rape of a child under 13, attempting to incite a boy under 16 to engage in a sexual act, distributing and making indecent images, and possessing prohibited images.

Nelson appeared in the dock wearing a waistcoat and tie. He waved to his parents in the public gallery as he came into court, but sat with his head down for most of the hearing.

Defending Nelson, Robert Elias told the court he had lived a “lonely bedroom life in his parents’ home”.

“What he was seeking primarily was validation, congratulations and a sense of belonging in a community. He was earning relatively small amounts of money and desperately wanted validation.“He plunged down the rabbit hole to this sort of fantasy life and became completely engrossed in it. He has brought his life crashing down around him, to the shock and horror of his immediate family.”

“It is extremely disturbing that Hugh Nelson was able to take normal photographs of children and, using AI tools and a computer programme, transform them and create images of the most depraved nature to sell and share online,” Jeanette Smith, specialist prosecutor for the CPS, said.

“Technology is rapidly evolving and, unfortunately, so too is its risk to children. I hope this conviction sends a clear message to those who exploit this technology and inflict harm on children: you will be robustly pursued by law enforcement, prosecuted by the CPS and brought to justice.”

AI sexual abuse images are presenting new challenges in policing, with other forces turning to GMP for support with new investigations.

“The reason [this case] was very different is because it challenges the kind of view of what an indecent image of a child is,” DCI Jen Tattersall of GMP’s sex offender management unit said.

She added: “The computer-generated imagery trend is now becoming more prevalent, not only in GMP – but in other forces,” she added, saying that in the last week, detectives had begun investigations into two new cases involving computer-generated images.

“So at some point that is going to not be the exception any more, and it’s going to be the norm.”

The Nelson case was “the first to really test” the law around indecent images that had been digitally manipulated, she said, and GMP had worked with specialists at the CPS and the National Crime Agency to secure the prosecution.

As well as advances in technology, changes in behaviour in recent years have made policing the internet offences more difficult. “Covid has had a massive effect in the online space,” Tattersall said. “A lot more people are online.”

“The amount of platforms has just massively increased, so that’s a real challenge,” she added.

While AI can present opportunities for law enforcement, Tattersall said, the increasingly sophisticated technology also presents a significant threat for police forces, particularly as there is a risk that it may evolve faster than existing criminal legislation.

She added: “The reality is, it is going to represent a real challenge for us just because of how easy it is to do, and how easy it is to manipulate an image that is really innocent, and make it into something that is really abusive and indecent.”

However, she said the Nelson case “sends a clear message to criminals that you might use technology, and manipulate things, and test the flex of the law, but actually we are still going to prosecute you. We’re going to put you in prison”.

#radblr #radfem #radical feminist #gender critical #radical feminism #terfblr

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fursasaida · 11 months ago

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Our problem with Syring and Seldowitz is essentially rhetorical and jurisdictional. You don’t get to say it like that. You don’t get to say it like that. The FBI agents investigating Syring for harassing James Zogby could turn right around and search James Zogby’s home on equally spurious accusations of terrorism, and that would be proper—that’s their bailiwick. Harassing Arab Americans is not an acceptable quest for a random retired foreign service officer in his Virginia condo. That’s the FBI’s job. You can green-light the shipments of MK-84 bombs to Israel to kill thousands of Palestinian children, give them the diplomatic green light to do it, and veto condemnation of killing four thousand children at the UN, but you can’t brag about it. That’s hate speech.

The thing is, though, “God, I wish the Israelis would just kill these people” is something you can sigh into a scotch and soda with your co-workers at the hotel bar after a day of frustrated “diplomacy.” Nobody would bat an eye. It’s just blowing off steam. But if you’re recorded saying it to a halal cart vendor in Manhattan, you have violated the social contract. If you stay within the system, almost everything is allowable: structural violence demands a certain politeness.

Seldowitz is a shocking example of abandoned pretense, but Syring is a more telling one: a fixation all out of proportion to any actual concern, coldly and methodically maintained. Logical and knowing but completely insane at the same time. If we produce Seldowitzes, we can be shocked and horrified. We can console ourselves that he was a personally corrupt asshole. When I think about what Syring did, I am not shocked, to be honest; what does shock me is the realization of how many Patrick Syrings there are who kept their feelings within the bounds of the “acceptable.” How many are still out there, diligently working away—and applying their personal fixations in a work-appropriate context.

-- Josef Burton, former State Department employee, on Stuart Seldowitz (the man who harassed the halal cart vendors in NYC), and a sort of spiritual predecessor of his, Patrick Syring (also a former State employee who has now been jailed twice for his harassment campaign against the Arab American Institute). "Impolite Society." 12/20/23.

#USA #governmentality #islamophobia #racism #palestine

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yestrday · 7 months ago

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the first thing I think of when Reader is portrayed as naive and innocent in an AU is how in the future they’re worse then all their hybrids combined, and I’m getting some major brainrot over the hybrid AU so just hear me out here ‼️‼️

Reader was of course innocent and naive, sheltered in every way, but that was before their father suddenly decided that playing the role of a doting father in public would boost his dying image more then keeping reader locked up

So Readers thrust into the life of an heir, forced to come to grips with the cold harsh reality that is the business world, and realize that they’re never going to have any true power or freedom as long as their father is still around

So they plan and scheme, analyzing their fathers greatest achievements and his worst failures, learning all about how to play the business world, and people in general, like a fine tuned instrument. Just patiently waiting till their fathers gradual cover ups over the years suddenly make their way into the public eye.

And when it’s revealed that Readers parent abandoned them and then picked them up again for his entertainment, forcing them to turn to mere hybrids for genuine human interaction?

Well, both those concerned for Reader, and those not, take note. Suddenly investigations are happening and their fathers tax fraud and million dollar bribes are revealed, and oh what’s that, he’s also involved in multiple different crime organizations? How horrible

Reader miraculously finds themself to be the CEO how every company that their father had, an owner of all of his properties, and immeasurably rich beyond belief when their father dies in jail under simply tragic circumstances.

Only this time, Reader won’t let the opportunity to take the world by storm pass by. After all, they have a rather beautiful collection of hybrids waiting at home for them, and you know how clingy beloved pets are when you make them wait.

You cant blame the poor darlings though, the public whispers behind lustful gazes and adoring stares, they just can’t get enough of their powerful owner

actually anon this ask (which has been fermenting in my ask for a year now) has been the inspiration in why there's been a whole heir sub plotline in my hybird works.

i like the idea of the hybrids subtly corrupting the innocent bird that's been in their cage for far too long, now able to spread their wings but just doesn't know how. they feed darling whispers about how their parent abandoned them, how they're the only family they have. and all of them are oh so eager to follow reader's convoluted schemes to bring down their father and the company's enemies.

i find that corrupting darling would have many benefits to the hybrids. one, well, corruption arc? it would be just so lovely to see your naivety crushed and broken, making you rely on them not as your protectors but also as your fellow sinners in this plan. two, since you're so influential, you'll be able to at least influence society's views on hybrids. you'll be in a high enough position to influence lawmakers to loosen their binds on hybrids, to make hybrids equal... idk, just a thought.

this only applies to zhongli, since he's bound by a contract to your father, but this could be the perfect opportunity to revenge. what better way to take revenge on the man who coerced you into a humiliating contract than watch his own flesh and blood (who he does love despite all his callousness) impeach him from his throne and throw him into jail. it's perfect. plus, he'll be able to spend freedom with you forever and ever <3

#yandere genshin impact #genshin impact #yandere x reader #genshin impact x reader #yester.shorts #yester.au — hybrids 🐾

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qqueenofhades · 7 months ago

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This may be a stupid question but do you really believe MTG is funded by Putin? In my head she's too fucking stupid to be calculating enough to actually enrich herself.

I don't know if she is actually getting money from the Kremlin or she's just a moron who loves to believe whatever conspiracy theorist nonsense she's told, but I think it's pretty clear she is either being handled fairly directly by Russian intelligence or is closely plugged into sophisticated Russian propaganda systems. Example A, Marge submitting an amendment to the Ukrainian aid bill insisting that aid not be disbursed until the Ukrainian government allegedly stopped "oppressing Hungarians in Transcarpathia." This is a key part of the Orban regime's anti-Ukraine talking points that has in turn been directly amplified by Russia, but it is so specific and so obscure (not to mention, there's literally zero chance Marge knows what any of those words or issues mean, or could find Transcarpathia on a map) that there's no way she organically came up with it on her own. She's also been otherwise echoing word-for-word Russian propaganda about them being "the defenders of Christianity" by invading Ukraine, which is one of Putin's preferred/favorite narratives and plays into the function of the Russian Orthodox Church as a Kremlin booster. Hence, if Marge is directly repeating Putin's personal justifications, I'd say it is more likely than not that she's getting something out of it.

As I have said before, it is pretty clear that Putin is ordering Trump to get the House GOP to stall Ukraine aid in exchange for help in the election, and there is a significant chunk of the House GOP that is eager to suckle at the Russian propaganda teat in all circumstances. (See: Hunter Biden's laptop being a Russian disinformation operation from the start that got exposed when the House GOP impeachment effort went up in flames.) We have also consistently had networks of Russian agents and Russian money be exposed in Europe, where they are offering financial incentives to EU politicians to serve as Kremlin shills. Russian dirty money has beyond doubt entered the Republican Party at many, many levels; we had that whole investigation about how Trump and the Russians have been working in concert for a long time. Now, because getting Trump in power again is so important for the Russians, and the Russians' help is so important for Trump in trying to stay out of jail, the corruption is pretty systemic.

In short, I figure it is only a matter of time if/when we find out that the most stridently pro-Russian members of the Treason Caucus are actually being paid by or otherwise benefiting from Russian lobbyists, because they are fascist traitors who love money, will kiss Trump's ass in any circumstances, and are willing to do anything in the name of undermining America, Ukraine, Biden, and Western democracy in general. We know it is the way Russian destabilization, disinformation, and influence operations customarily work, and that they have previously and consistently worked in cahoots with MAGA, so yeah. If Marge and Co. aren't active Russian assets, financially or otherwise, I would be very surprised.

#stephenroot #ask #politics for ts #russia ukraine war

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djarinbabysnotes · 11 months ago

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FIC IDEA

Matt Murdock falls in love with a detective.

Now, hear me out: Detective moves from a different state and is now being crucified by their new coworkers in the NYPD because they're brave enough to question certain abnormalities in how criminals are being processed. Wilson Fisk is behind the corruption part of the law, as always. Detective hates how things are in the workplace and is therefore very stressed.

Matt Murdock is called upon by an old friend who needs a lawyer. Matt arrives at the precinct and has a run-in with the Detective, and the Detective's sleuthing intuition tells them that this lawyer feels like he's full of secrets. The Detective then theorizes that this lawyer is somehow working for the corrupt man on top. Tension ensues.

A cocky defense attorney? Like who does he think he is? This isn't the Detective's first rodeo when it comes to overconfident men.

Here's where it gets interesting: First off, Lawyer/Cop relationships? Isn't that like, illegal in the laws of the universe? YUP! Both parties are CONFLICTED with their feelings and therefore WILL develop a hate-fueled acquaintanceship. Workplace Enemies to Potential Secret Lovers, if you will. During investigations, Detective will have run-ins with Daredevil and will find him very interesting, to say the least. Of course, Detective doesn't know that Daredevil is Matt, even while conducting a secret investigation on the mystery hot guy with a disturbingly sexy husk in his voice (Daredevil) while ALSO conducting a separate investigation on this random annoying lawyer who ruins everything every time he walks into their workplace. Foggy and Karen will ABSOLUTELY try their very fucking best to throw off the scent (e.g. "Yeah, I met the Devil of Hell's Kitchen a couple of times. He had blond hair. Saw it myself. He also talks like he's been in jail countless times. Definitely an ex-con. Loves breaking the law." and "He saved me from an attack at my apartment, yeah, he's left-handed.")

As the Detective keeps on having run-ins with Daredevil, the Detective begins to harbor an unwanted crush on the guy. Of course, right? I mean... A guy dressed as the devil pushes you out of the way before you get shot at by a random goon? Chivalry isn't dead. Also, he flirts but purposefully makes it slightly awkward because he knows how this game works. He likes to tease. He reads body language when he has to. He would pull out the 'I like listening to your voice' line (his signature line!) on the most quiet night just to hear nothing but the Detective's heart going bonkers.

And as Matt, being the Detective's biggest pain in the ass, he would randomly switch up on a random Monday. From being the most annoyingly confident lawyer who pulls out the 'not another word with my client, detective' line to the unexpected 'good morning' followed with a 'thank you, detective' after the Detective mindlessly points him to the direction of where he's supposed to go. And to top it all off, he smiles— but not with his usual sarcastic smirk followed with a huff— it's a first for him to smile with a gentle nod before lingering for a split second as if he wants to say more.

Like I said, he knows how this game works. He's a mastermind.

But then again, on paper, A lawyer isn't supposed to be falling in love with a cop and vice versa... But never say never, right?

Anyway! This is just a silly idiots-to-lovers idea that will probably take me eons to write if I even have the time to do so.

Potential starter playlist for this fic (because I love feeding my delusions, and peak delusion starts with Taylor Swift's discography):

"Mastermind" - Taylor Swift

"The Archer" - Taylor Swift

"I Can See You" - Taylor Swift

"gold rush" - Taylor Swift

"Slut!" - Taylor Swift

"willow" - Taylor Swift

"long story short" - Taylor Swift

#matt murdock #matt murdock fic #marvel fanfiction #matt murdock fanfic #fic ideas #fanfic #fanfic authors #ao3 author #daredevil fanfiction #fanfiction #matt murdock x reader #enemies to lovers #idiots to lovers

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robby-bobby-tommy · 3 months ago

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One thing I really enjoy a lot about I-1 and I-2 is a theme of availability and injustice, while always holding characters accountable. For a game that is targeted mostly at the young audience, teenagers and young adults, it does discuss difficult themes of corruption in legal system.

The half of this plot could've been avoided if people with power would care for something apart themselves. It's more of the I-2 theme, rather than I-1, but if at least one person stopped being awful Simeon (Simon) would never become such a paranoid. All this terrible abuse he suffered at the hands of Fifi Laguard (Patricia Roland). The woman that was supposed to care for him and become his mother figure, interrogated him like a convict. But one of the worst things is that Simeon couldn't even trust the police — people whose literal job is to protect innocent — because if he spoke out and sought help he'd be either silenced or investigated by Blaise (I don't have the brains to spell his new alleged name). Just because of some people's greed, he lost his childhood and became paranoid. Yet he still isn't innocent or made out to look like it. The game itself says it. During his quest for revenge he ended up hurting a lot of innocent people, whose fault was literally just being at the wrong place at the wrong time (Jill Crane, Kay, partially Bronco/Horace). It isn't justified, because innocent people's lives were taken because of his desires. And all of this because people with power, those who supposed to protect everyone, we're too preoccupied.

Same can be said for Katherine Hall. Is there a justice about Master getting in jail for a crime he didn't commit? No, and never will. Despite the best efforts of Gregory, Ray (Eddie) and Badd, nothing could be done, because authority to end the investigation belonged to MVK. His perfectionism was put above someone's life. And he got away with it. For 18 years.... Yet game doesn't try to say that Kate should've gone through with killing Dane. Because murder is never okay and because once again, it harms people unrelated to this case.

This is very good moral and very interesting topic to bring up.

I could go on and on about how these two games are about corruption and lies. But one question that applies to every character IMO is Where is a justice and if it even is achievable. Where is the justice for their suffering and should they resort to illegal means to find it?

I love this games

#ace attorney investigations #aai1 #aai2 #aa investigations #aai2 spoilers #ace attorney investigations prosecutor's gambit #simeon saint #simon keyes #katherine hall #patricia roland #blaise debeste #i love it so much #ace attorney #gyakuten saiban #aai

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swoleas · 15 days ago

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Speakin of Nayzak~ I was discussing with a friend about what I could possibly do with her story.

I like the idea of having multiple rooks who all follow 1 Main Rook. So the main Rook would be referred to as "Rook" and the others as their actual names. And those secondary Rooks take on the smaller, less dangerous stuff that Rook has to do to keep things afloat, like idk go to Dock Town and talk with some people with Neve or pass by Arlathan forest with Bellara. Doesn't mean that main Rook doesn't do things to build bonds with the companions, since as a leader, they SHOULD do that as well, but it's so I don't end up with a bunch of OCs who don't do anything in the story, especially if I'm shipping them with the companions.

Anyway spoilers under the cut.

Nayzak would be one of those secondary Rooks. She volunteers to join Rook same time Bellara does. She probably meets them outside of D'Meta's Crossing. Irelin would mention having sent her a while ago, but she hasn't come back yet. If they hurry, they can catch up to her. And they do just that, finding her hesitating as she investigates the blighted corruption, clearly scared outta her mind because she did not expect it to be this bad. She practically begs Rook to let her join them afterwards.

On the surface, she is just an elf with a big hammer. Good at hitting things, and keeping her friends safe, but I do have some pieces of a companion quest/storyline in mind for her, though things will absolutely change when I actually finish the game and know what happens at the end.

What I'm toying with is: she uses exclusively warrior abilities, but is actually a mage. Not many people know she can do magic aside from Bellara since she doesn't like to use it. However, being in the Fade as someone who is suppressing her own magic, it makes her magic very unstable and possibly dangerous.

Something that especially starts causing issues is that she's been getting more reckless in fights, taking more hits and over extending, which comes to a head at Weisshaupt when she gets bonked a lil too hard by an ogre and is only alive because Rook intervened. And for a time, she's in infirmary jail until she gets her shit together.

At the core of her attitude towards her own well-being + her neglect of her own magical abilities, there is trauma and Rook has to do their job as the Lighthouse therapist and fix all their friends trauma as we all know.

So Naz gets a letter from her family, who is living in poverty in Dock Town. Her brother, who she hasn't seen in years, has been arrested. The vibe is that her family is very resentful of her when she and Rook arrive, but nonetheless, Rook is able to intervene and save her brother + put them in contact with the Shadow Dragons to keep them safe from any retaliation.

Naz tells them she left her family because they had a disagreement, and that she's better off without them. But as more of the story unfolds later on~ She manifested magic at a young age and her parents were hard on her on it, told her it would be trouble for them if she keeps that up. She was forced to push down her abilities.

Then one day, she's practicing her magic in a secluded area and a kind human woman happens upon her. She compliments Nayzak, reveals she is a Magister named Laena, and tells Naz she's looking for an apprentice. Unfortunately, it was a ruse. The woman was Venatori, and she was looking for slaves who could use magic to further her own nefarious ends.

One of her plots is thwarted by the Shadow Dragons, and in the process, the Shadow Dragons are able to get her out and relocate her to Arlathan forest where she joins up with the Veil Jumpers.

I do envision a quest where they have to find and kill Laena at some point because Ghilan'nain is giving her power + she's a literal slaver and Venatori. Also perhaps another quest where Rook helps Naz get closure with her estranged family as well.

And her story is kind of a struggle with her own identity because she feels she doesn't deserve to be around if she is not helping people and being useful--and her magic, something that once made her so happy, is not useful, in fact her magic made things worse. And that reinforces the idea that her parents were right all along. She doesn't tell them she fucked up, though, she just leaves. She wants to have the appearance of having her shit together, of not needing anyone's help, because if she needs help, then her parents were right, and they can't be right.

I have multiple ways her story ends, but either way, she ends up embracing her magic + and embrace her inherent value as a person and trying to control it rather than fear it. 1 of 3 things happen in my head.

She controls her magic and upgrades from warrior to arcane warrior, using her magic to hone her warrior skills -- fitting for a game about ancient elves, that an ancient elven technique gets revived. She's not all the way there yet with her healing, but its a journey she has started.

She is consumed by her magic an reverts to a spirit (someHOW?)-- but in doing so, just deletes her own trauma and seems to be more content for it. She is now a spirit of connection, and through her domain, strengthens her bonds with her found family.

Same as 2, however, this is what happens if her quest ISN'T done. She is overtaken by a demon of Abandonment / Rejection. She has to be vanquished by her friends as a result.

As for romance ~ I am thinking Lucanis? He struggles with feeling like he's enough and not just a disappointment, and she has a similar struggle. I just think they can either fix each other or make each other worse <3

#thank u otto for entertaining the 2am ramblings #paptalk #oc: nayzak #dragon age

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