A library of snippets
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What is RAC?
The purpose of Rules as Code – referred to as legal informatics, computational law, or digital law – is to create rules which are both human and machine consumable.From Rules as code: Regulatory infrastructure for a digital age.
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Many years ago I purchased my first Tile, a small bluetooth tag to attach to my keys so that I could find them using my phone. What a fantastic investment that has turned out to be. I have used Tiles to find lost keys, notebooks and wallet over and over again. Great products. When Apple came out with AirTags, I wondered if my Tiles would be left to wither, but in fact the devices have evolved into different niches. I have a Tile in my wallet and an AirTag on my rucksack. I have a Tile in my notebook and an AirTag on my keys. I have a Tile on my TV remote control and an AirTag in my luggage.
With respect to luggage, it’s been a few months since I last checked in a bag without an AirTag in it. Not because I was paranoid about my luggage being stolen, I hate to add. In fact, given that I consider myself something of a road warrior (another thing that won’t exist a generation from now) and have permanent Gold status on British Airways, I think I am really very unusual: I have never had a bag lost by an airline. Never. And I’ve flown all over the world. I’ve picked up the wrong bag by mistake, but that was my fault and not the airlines. I’m just a nerd who likes playing around with new toys.
There is, incidentally, some confusion about whether customers are allowed to put AirTags or Tiles in their luggage at. In November, Air New Zealand said that AirTags and similar tracking devices like the Tile weren’t officially allowed in checked luggage and it is indeed true that International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) airline safety rules prohibit the use of lithium batteries in baggage because of the fire hazard. This rule applies to all batteries over 0.2 grams but AirTags, as it happens, use 0.1 gram batteries. Many other airlines, such as Lufthansa, have therefore already said that using AirTags to track luggage is fine and it seems that other airlines will in time follow suit because just last month Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) confirmed that luggage tracking using lithium batteries with a mass below 0.3 grams is allowed and specification that “Apple AirTags meet this threshold; other luggage tracking devices may not”, so I for one am going to continue using them.
Someone else who puts AirTags in their baggage is Valerie Szybala. I know this because United lost her bag so she used her AirTag to track it down to an apartment complex. She tweeted about how she found other United checked luggage out by the dumpsters. She then rather entertainingly tracked the progress of her luggage to a McDonalds a couple of days later and then via a shopping centre, in the process attracting a dedicated band of followers.
(AirTags have already been used to arrest and prosecute airline workers, by the way. Take for the example the case of Mr. Giovanni De Luca. He was charged with two counts of grand theft after authorities tracked stolen items and found them in his home.)
It is interesting to see the stories from all over the web about people tracking down stolen cars, lost property and missing pets. Of course, people being people, they have also been used
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Every AirTag has a unique serial number, and paired AirTags are associated with an Apple ID. Apple can provide the paired account details in response to a subpoena or valid request from law enforcement. We have successfully partnered with them on cases where information we provided has been used to trace an AirTag back to the perpetrator, who was then apprehended and charged.
From An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking – Apple (UK).
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Apple has just been sued by stalking victims over alleged AirTag tracking (one woman claims to have found an AirTag in her car, another in her child’s backpack) and their law suit calls devices “the weapon of choice of stalkers and abusers” reads a portion of the lawsuit, as The New York Times reported yesterday.
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Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said she was alarmed even before the product’s launch last spring.
“I was concerned ahead of their release as soon as I figured out how they worked. I was concerned very shortly after they were released when I started seeing reports of stalking and being contacted by people who were being stalked using these devices,”
From Apple AirTags are being used to track people. Here’s what is being done about it : NPR.
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It is interesting to reflect on the shift in the environment when nothing can be lost any more! Knowing where all of your stuff is, all of the time, is really a pretty radical change. When it comes to people, it means that the idea of being “lost” shifts from a passive to an active state. You won’t get lost because you don’t know where you are, since you will know where you are (and so will everyone else) at all times. Instead, being “lost” will be something you actively have to do.
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The highly sensitive information of millions of Australians — including logins for personal Australian Tax Office accounts, medical and personal data of thousands of NDIS recipients, and confidential details of an alleged assault of a Victorian school student by their teacher — is among terabytes of hacked data being openly traded online.
An ABC investigation has identified large swathes of previously unreported confidential material that is widely available on the internet, ranging from sensitive legal contracts to the login details of individual MyGov accounts, which are being sold for as little as $1 USD.
The huge volume of newly identified information confirms the high-profile hacks of Medibank and Optus represent just a fraction of the confidential Australian records recently stolen by cyber criminals.
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Sue was told the fraudster created a bogus myGov account and on September 24 they linked this new profile to her ATO account using her tax file number (TFN), her date of birth, and another credential which the agency didn’t specify.
After changing her personal details, the fraudster severed Sue’s ATO account from her genuine myGov account which prevented her from seeing any refund assessment notices — it also bypassed the extra layer of protection provided by a two-factor authentication.
Sue was told by an ATO officer this was not uncommon and was advised “there are lots of fraudulent myGov accounts accessing tax files”.
From Fake myGov profiles are being used to hack ATO accounts. Sue found this out the hard way – ABC News:
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As the Bennet Institute for Public Policy asked in January 2022, “are NFTs democratizing decision-making, or the next financial mis-selling scandal?”.
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The crypto movement shares with bottom-up technopopulists the belief that direct democracy is technically (and perhaps morally) superior to representative democracy.
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The crypto movement and populism are both responses to economic inequality, which they attribute to failures of political leadership. They share a distrust of elites, a conviction that institutions are at best ineffective and at worst corrupt, and an intuition that the economic system is a “rigged game”.
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Almost half the UK population (48 per cent) does not pay utility bills online. That compares with 12 per cent in Finland, 14 per cent in Norway, 17 per cent in Denmark, 18 per cent in Sweden, and 19 per cent in Iceland.
Kate Fitzgerald, the head of policy at the Payment Systems Regulator, said: “People continue to use cash because they struggle to access digital payment services due to a lack of access to digital infrastructure or digital skills.”
From No wallet, no problem — welcome to life in a new cashless society | Money | The Times.
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The RBA has been printing cash rapidly over the past few years but some of it has disappeared and is out of circulation.
From Cash hoarding: Where all the Aussie banknotes have gone:
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The move drew criticism from the European Commission, which said it was not consistent with previous EU recommendations to Italy to boost tax compliance, and Giorgetti told parliament late on Sunday that the government had backtracked.
“We intend to eliminate the measure on points of sales,” he said in testimony on the budget, adding that some sort of compensatory measures may be introduced to help shopkeepers pay the commission fees on card transactions.
“I hope there will be further reflection at the European level,” he added.
Shares in Italy’s Nexi (BIT:NEXII), Europe’s biggest payment processing firm, rose as much as 5% on Monday after Rome’s announcement.
From Italy weakens plan to promote cash payments after EU criticism By Reuters:
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Snippings