A library of snippets
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Ms Nokes also revealed the system for EU citizens to register for settled status still didn’t work on Apple phones. The US tech giant “won’t release the upgrade we need in order for it to function”, she told MPs.
From No-deal Brexit: Employers to check EU migrants’ status – minister – BBC News.
What “upgrade” is she talking about? To the best of my knowledge, Apple have never once even hinted that they may open their NFC interface up to third-parties.
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The report notes that as a result, revenues increased from $113 million in 2016 to $143 million in 2017 to $42 million in the first quarter of 2018.
From Regulation of Somalia’s Mobile Money Market Can Spur Innovation in Financial Sector Development.
This means hhkhjgui
Danny Gilligan, co-founder and managing director of the Westpac-backed Reinventure Group in Australia put forward a similar criticism recently, saying that “the fundamental flaw of the UK’s open banking model is to stipulate the flow of raw, sensitive transaction data from high security banks to low security fintechs” arguing that that is building systemic risk into the UK’s digital economy.
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Late last week, about 60 percent of the conversation was driven by likely bots. Over the weekend, even as the conversation about the caravan was overshadowed by more recent tragedies, bots were still driving nearly 40 percent of the caravan conversation on Twitter.
From Here’s How Much Bots Drive Conversation During News Events | WIRED.
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I remember when Alex Tapscott wrote an op-ed for The New York Times in which he said that “using blockchain technology, online voting could boost voter participation and help restore the public’s trust in the electoral process and democracy”. As I said at the time, he was wrong. It’s got nothing to do with the blockchain. It’s because online voting is a bad idea, even if you did implement it with blockchain.
I wrote about this back in 2015, noting that politicians don’t understand the Internet (or, indeed, technology in general) and expressing some surprise that they don’t ask people who do (e.g., me) to provide some input to their plans. If, for example, the Speaker of our House of Commons had asked me about online voting back in 2015, I would never have advised John Bercow to say that people should be allowed to vote online in the 2020 general election (assuming the current government lasts that long, of course).
Alex writes that “as citizens, we can trust the outcome of such a voting system: voters can check the blockchain to verify that their vote was counted correctly” (as presumably could the person with a gun to the voter’s head). And I can see how this might work: voters could look in a database to see that their vote was counted correctly, and then check some companion blockchain to see that the record concerning their vote had not been changed. But does this really help or would it just make voting under duress more common?
I remember discussing this at the Tomorrow’s Transactions UnConference 2015 when voting came up in a discussion session about about non-financial demands for identity and authentication technologies. I emphasised the point that voting online is a mad idea that doesn’t fix any actual problem, and I was hardly a lone voice. Let me stress that I was not saying that we could not use modern technology to improve the voting system. As I wrote the previous year, “we live in a Venmo world now, so if the under-30s want to vote using an app that tells their friends that they voted, or perhaps even how they voted, or perhaps allows them to add a funny picture or an acute comment, well so be it. But make it secure, and make them go down to the polling station to use it”.
The guys and gals in that Unconference discussion session came up with a rather interesting idea: Democracy Monkey. Think Survey Monkey but with the strong two-factor authentication and appropriate Customer Due Diligence (CDD). The idea is this: make Democracy Monkey a public utility that can be used by central and local government for all sorts of public purposes and sell it to business so that they can use it for votes for shareholder meetings and such like. I also thought that it could be used for “Britain Hasn’t Got Talent”, “The Why Factor” and “I Used to be a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here” and so on as a way to socialise the use of the technology.
We developed our plan using Chaumian blinded tokens as the core technology. The broad marketecture was that you use your gov.verify identity provider to register with the Democracy Monkey and to indicate which elections you want to take part it. The system sends you tokens for those elections at the appropriate time. The Democracy Monkey app on your mobile phone could store the tokens in a tamper-resistant secure element and then when you want to “spend” the vote you can run the app or tap to make it happen. For some voting, such as General Elections, you would be required to tap as that sort of voting is a public act, but for other voting (e.g., “Strictly Come Trampolining”) you could use the in-app “spend” to vote remotely.
I still think this is worth a try and stand ready to answer the nation’s call should the powers that be decide to move forward. And if you want to store the destination of the blinded votes on a blockchain somewhere, that would deliver transparency and accountability so that’s good too.
As the President of the FATF wrote in the Financial Times recently
“This past week, the FATF, whose global network consists of 204 countries, amended the organisation’s standards as they apply to financial activities involving virtual assets and also to businesses which deal in them — including virtual currency exchanges and some ‘wallet’ providers. It has agreed that all countries must supervise and monitor these businesses, and that they should also ensure they apply key controls against money laundering and terrorist financing, including customer due diligence and suspicious transaction reporting.”
From “Virtual assets and financial crime now go hand in hand | Financial Times”.
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“A former United Airlines employee has been given a federal prison sentence after stealing meal vouchers from the carrier, Peoria’s Journal Star reports. The outlet reveals that despite being fired by the carrier back in 2016, Ollantay Corujo kept his uniform and badge, using them to access computers at various terminals around the country and to print off individual meal vouchers.
Describing Corujo’s crime, the outlet explained that, ‘While each voucher was worth around $20 to $30 … they were the functional equivalent of cash … Corujo would then ‘redeem’ those vouchers through a food truck company that he owned, causing cash to flow to him without him ever buying or using the vouchers as intended.’”
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“According to data from Crone Consulting, the number of online mobile app transactions using Apple Pay is ‘growing much faster’ than transactions made inside retail stores.”
As I have consistently maintained, it’s all about app-and-pay, not tap-and-pay.
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“So why the clamor for its return? Nostalgia, said economist Charles Wyplosz. ‘People long for a simpler age,’ when the U.S. ‘was the dominant economy and there were no financial markets to speak of.’”
From “Why Did the U.S. Abandon the Gold Standard? | Mental Floss”.
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Abu Dhabi police are warning local residents that money may be stolen from their bank balances through “electronic magnetisation” and exploitation of contactless payment technology.
The warning comes after widely shared videos emerged on social media purporting to show contactless payment technology being used to steal funds from victims without their knowledge.
In a statement, Colonel Amran Ahmed Al Mazrouei, Abu Dhabi’s director of criminal investigations, said that although such thefts were possible, none has so far been recorded in the emirate.
From Abu Dhabi police warn of contactless card thefts – ArabianBusiness.com.
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Snippings