Militant Groups Have Drones. Now What?

Militant groups have a new way to wage war: drone attacks from above. As recent news reports and online videos suggest, organizations like the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have used commercially-available uninhabited aerial vehicles—better known as UAVs or drones—to drop explosives onto their adversaries in the battle for territory.

That ISIS would weaponize drones shouldn’t be surprising. Militant groups often use the latest consumer technology to make up for capability gaps and level the fight against regular military forces. ISIS broadcasts propaganda through social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, and plans attacks using encrypted communication platforms like Telegram. This embrace of innovation extends to the way militant groups use military force. Over the last year or so, they have begun to use modified commercial drones for offensive strikes in Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine. These new tools of war provide a way to conduct terror attacks against civilians, and can also pose a threat to ground forces. Stopping drone proliferation is not an option because of the ubiquity of the technology. That means government forces will have to learn to counter drones operated by militant groups, just as they are now training to counter drones used by national militaries.

Already a “daunting” threat. The threat posed by militant groups flying drones is as much about where the threat is coming from—the sky—as it is about the munitions being launched. Militaries fighting militant groups have enjoyed air superiority for decades. US soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, have rarely, if ever, feared attacks from the air. Civilians and humanitarian groups in Syria worry about air strikes from Assad’s regime, but not from militant groups like ISIS. The adoption of drones by militant groups is therefore generating a novel challenge. Speaking at a conference in May, Gen. Raymond Thomas, head of the US Special Operations Command, called commercial drones the “most daunting problem” his troops had faced over the previous year. At one point, he said, the anti-ISIS campaign “nearly came to a screeching halt, where literally over 24 hours there were 70 drones in the air.” (...)

To be clear, commercial drones and IEDs are not the same—one is a platform and the other is a munition, and drones rely more on repurposing technology available to the retail market. But there are similarities as well. First, both technologies are inexpensive, especially compared to the cost of defending ground forces against them. Second, both technologies can be modified in various ways, placing the onus on the defender to adapt to the various configurations militant groups might construct. These two features make both jury-rigged drones and IEDs a concern for any armed force facing a militarily inferior adversary.

Drone wars of the near future. One worrisome potential source of growing drone capacity might seem benevolent at first: the commercial sector itself. As commercially available technology develops at a rapid pace, the variety of military applications is increasing as well. Goldman Sachs recently estimated that between 2016 and 2020, buyers will spend about $100 billion on drones. Defense spending by militaries will account for about $70 billion of that total, but the remaining $30 billion will be made up by consumers, businesses, and civilian government bodies buying commercially-available products.

Within the drone market, the sensor component segment is forecasted to grow the fastest. Sensors can perform a variety of functions, such as transmitting images or detecting heat signatures. Sensors are built for commercial purposes like search-and-rescue operations and crop analysis, but can also be adapted for military purposes. For example, today it is easy to acquire infrared cameras adapted for use on UAVs. It is plausible to imagine a near future in which militant groups program short- or medium-range drones equipped with these sensors to seek and destroy anything with a heat signature. Furthermore, as the drone market grows, more shapes and sizes will become available for purchase. As drones get both bigger and smaller, the variety of military applications expands. Bigger drones can carry larger payloads; for militant groups, this means dropping larger munitions. On the flipside, smaller drones are harder to detect. Militant groups can use them to their advantage by striking targets with minimal warning.

Advances in autonomous systems that enable coordinated behaviors—such as swarming—could also increase the lethality of commercial drones. Swarming robotics lets multiple drones coordinate to achieve a desired behavior, such as turning in formation or attacking a target simultaneously. The US military is testing swarm principles to conduct aerial surveillance, and there are potential applications for strike missions. Commercially, swarm robotics technology has a number of promising applications, from detecting cancer (using swarming nanoparticles) to finding rescue victims. As swarming robotics is mastered and brought to market, the potential applications for militant groups are numerous. For example, militant groups could use the technology to more comprehensively surveil large portions of the battlefield, or attack targets in bombing raids. (...)

What to do. As drones grow in significance on the battlefield, policy makers are thinking about how to effectively counter the threat. Commercial drones are readily accessible and easily purchased, making it nearly impossible to stem the flow of cheap drones into the hands of militant groups. Moreover, targeting the­ experts who can jury-rig simple drones might soon be irrelevant as well. As advanced technologies—like swarming robotics—are mastered and more artificial intelligence is built into even simple commercial systems, “plug and fly” could become the norm for many types of operations. The market will pre-package and directly provide the technical knowledge militant groups need to augment their drones’ capabilities. The engineering skill a particular group needs to effectively use drones will decline. In short, it is not possible to prevent militant groups from getting and using drones. That means nations trying to thwart this threat should focus on defeating it militarily, in particular by detecting, neutralizing, and mitigating the effects of drones in militant hands.

Currently, countries and businesses around the world are grappling with how to best address the challenge in a variety of ways. In Japan, the Tokyo police are using drones equipped with nets to stop potentially hostile drones. The French military and Dutch police are breeding golden eagles to destroy small drones. For its part, the US military tested a “drone-killing laser” and solicited proposals for other solutions to counter unmanned aerial systems. The private sector is developing devices that hack other drones mid-flight, “guns” that jam electromagnetic waves and disrupt enemies’ ability to control their own drones, and compressed-gas-powered launchers that capture targets in a net. To be sure, the Tokyo and Dutch police are unlikely to face off against militant groups, but progress countering drones in one domain is potentially transferable to others. That is why a collective effort by law enforcement, the military, and private sector actors is necessary to mitigate the threat of modified commercial drones used by militant groups or others. It is too early to determine which anti-drone technologies are most promising. However, given the rate at which new drones are entering production, and the many ways militant groups can adapt them for battle, governments should relentlessly pursue any promising lead.

by Itai Barsade and Michael C. Horowitz, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists | Read more:
Image: uncredited

[ed. See also: The effects of a single terrorist nuclear bomb]

The Sideways Curse Has Lifted: Merlot Is Having a Comeback

Merlot was once the fan-favorite red grape and wine. Then came 2004 hit movie Sideways, in which Miles, the pinot-noir-loving main character, trashes the varietal before heading into a bar: “If anyone orders merlot, I’m leaving,” he explodes. “I am not drinking any f---ing merlot.”

Interest in pinot skyrocketed, while the reputation of merlot tanked. In California, growers pulled out more than 10,000 acres of merlot grapes.

Such is the power of Hollywood.

But wine fashions are fickle, and now velvety merlot is experiencing a comeback. (...)

Don’t thank hip sommeliers for this reputation rehab. Most are in love with every grape but merlot—for the wine-geek Instagram crowd, the more obscure the better. 

To me, the reason merlot was bound to return to favor was simple: It’s very often delicious. Its silky, cherry fruit and round texture give it an immediate appeal that tannic cabernet, its nearest wine rival, doesn’t have. 

Merlot malaise was due to a lot more than Miles’s Sideways rant. Many California vintners responded to its popularity in the 1990s by rushing to plant more, often in places with the wrong soil and climate. A lot of those wines were simple and boring, or the opposite—too sweet, or amped up like flavor-bomb cabernets, with so much oomph and alcohol that drinking them was like getting a punch in the mouth. 

John Williams, winemaker and owner of Napa’s Frog’s Leap, is convinced Sideways actually saved merlot, as those who had jumped on the bandwagon to cash in on the trend ended up pulling out bad vineyards.

At its peak in California, merlot accounted for nearly 60,000 acres of vines; now it’s down to a little more than 44,000. In recent years vintners have swapped in more popular cabernet vines, since those grapes and wines sold for more; others dumped their merlot into mass market brands and basic red blends.

But wineries that had long been devoted to high-quality merlot doubled down on cool clay soils, gentler winemaking, and less aging in new oak barrels to preserve subtler aromas and silkier textures. They worked hard to make and market the good stuff.

by Elin McCoy, Bloomberg |  Read more:

Image: Sideways and uncredited

In Proof We Trust

The impact of record-keeping on the course of history cannot be overstated. For example, the act of preserving Judaism and Christianity in written form enabled both to outlive the plethora of other contemporary religions, which were preserved only orally. William the Conqueror’s Domesday Book, compiled in 1086, was still being used to settle land disputes as late as the 1960s. Today there is a new system of digital record-keeping. Its impact could be equally large. It is called the blockchain.

Imagine an enormous digital record. Anyone with internet access can look at the information within: it is open for all to see. Nobody is in charge of this record. It is not maintained by a person, a company or a government department, but by 8,000-9,000 computers at different locations around the world in a distributed network. Participation is quite voluntary. The computers’ owners choose to add their machines to the network because, in exchange for their computer’s services, they sometimes receive payment. You can add your computer to the network, if you so wish.

All the information in the record is permanent – it cannot be changed – and each of the computers keeps a copy of the record to ensure this. If you wanted to hack the system, you would have to hack every computer on the network – and this has so far proved impossible, despite many trying, including the US National Security Agency’s finest. The collective power of all these computers is greater than the world’s top 500 supercomputers combined.

New information is added to the record every few minutes, but it can be added only when all the computers signal their approval, which they do as soon as they have satisfactory proof that the information to be added is correct. Everybody knows how the system works, but nobody can change how it works. It is fully automated. Human decision-making or behaviour doesn’t enter into it.

If a company or a government department were in charge of the record, it would be vulnerable – if the company went bust or the government department shut down, for example. But with a distributed record there is no single point of vulnerability. It is decentralised. At times, some computers might go awry, but that doesn’t matter. The copies on all the other computers and their unanimous approval for new information to be added will mean the record itself is safe.

This is possibly the most significant and detailed record in all history, an open-source structure of permanent memory, which grows organically. It is known as the blockchain. It is the breakthrough tech behind the digital cash system, Bitcoin, but its impact will soon be far wider than just alternative money.

Many struggle to understand what is so special about Bitcoin. We all have accounts online with pounds, dollars, euros or some other national currency. That money is completely digital, it doesn’t exist in the real world – it is just numbers in a digital ledger somewhere. Only about 3 per cent of national currency actually exists in physical form; the rest is digital. I have supermarket rewards points and air miles as well. These don’t exist physically either, but they are still tokens to be exchanged for some kind of good or service, albeit with a limited scope; so they’re money too. Why has the world got so excited about Bitcoin?

To understand this, it is important to distinguish between money and cash.

If I’m standing in a shop and I give the shopkeeper 50 pence for a bar of chocolate, that is a cash transaction. The money passes straight from me to him and it involves nobody else: it is direct and frictionless. But if I buy that bar of chocolate with a credit card, the transaction involves a payment processor of some kind (often more than one). There is, in other words, a middle man.

The same goes for those pounds, dollars or euros I have in the accounts online. I have to go through a middle man if I want to spend them – perhaps a bank, PayPal or a credit-card company. If I want to spend those supermarket rewards points or those airmiles, there is the supermarket or airline to go through.

Since the early 1980s, computer coders had been trying to find a way of digitally replicating the cash transaction – that direct, frictionless, A-to-B transaction – but nobody could find a way. The problem was known as the problem of ‘double-spending’. If I send you an email, a photo or a video – any form of computer code – you can, if you want, copy and paste that code and send it to one or a hundred or a million different people. But if you can do that with money, the money quickly becomes useless. Nobody could find a way around it without using a middle man of some kind to verify and process transactions, at which point it is no longer cash. By the mid 2000s, coders had all but given up on the idea. It was deemed unsolvable. Then, in late 2008, quietly announced on an out-of-the-way mailing list, along came Bitcoin.

By late 2009, coders were waking up to the fact that its inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, had cracked the problem of double spending. The solution was the blockchain, the automated record with nobody in charge. It replaces the middle man. Rather than a bank process a transaction, transactions are processed by those 8,000-9,000 computers distributed across the Bitcoin network in the collective tradition of open-source collaboration. When those computers have their cryptographic and mathematical proof (a process that takes very little time), they approve the transaction and it is then complete. The payment information – the time, the amount, the wallet addresses – is added to the database; or, to use correct terminology, another block of data is added to the chain of information – hence the name blockchain. It is, simply, a chain of information blocks.

Money requires trust – trust in central banks, commercial banks, other large institutions, trust in the paper itself. On a dollar bill you will see the words: ‘In God we trust.’ Bitcoin aficionados are fond of saying: ‘In proof we trust.’ The blockchain, which works transparently by automation and mathematical and cryptographic proof, has removed the need for that trust. It has enabled people to pay digital cash directly from one person to another, as easily as you might send a text or an email, with no need for a middle man.

So the best way to understand Bitcoin is, simply: cash for the internet. It is not going to replace the US dollar or anything like that, as some of the diehard advocates will tell you, but it does have many uses. And, on a practical level, it works.

Testament to this is the rise of the online black market. Perhaps £1 million-worth of illegal goods and services are traded through dark marketplaces every day and the means of payment is Bitcoin. Bitcoin has facilitated this rapid rise. (I should stress that even though every Bitcoin transaction, no matter how small, is recorded on the blockchain, the identity of the person making that transaction can be hidden if desired – hence its appeal). In the financial grand scheme of things, £1 million a day is not very much, but the fact that ordinary people on the black market are using Bitcoin on a practical, day-to-day basis as a way of paying for goods and services demonstrates that the tech works. I’m not endorsing black markets, but it’s worth noting that they are often the first to embrace a new tech. They were the first to turn the internet to profit, for example. Without deep pools of debt or venture capital to fall back on, black markets have to make new tech work quickly and practically.

But Bitcoin’s potential use goes far beyond dark markets. Consider why we might want to use cash in the physical world. You use it for small payments – a bar of chocolate or a newspaper from your corner shop, for example. There is the same need online. I might want to read an article in The Times. I don’t want to take out an annual subscription – but I do want to read that article. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a system where I could make a micropayment to read that article? It is not worth a payment processor’s time to process a payment that small, but with internet cash, you don’t need a processor. You can pay cash and it costs nothing to process – it is direct. This potential use could usher in a new era of paid content. No longer will online content-providers have to be so squeezed, and give out so much material for nothing in the hope of somehow recouping later, now that the tech is there to make and receive payment for small amounts in exchange for content.

We also use cash for quick payments, direct payments and tipping. You are walking past a busker, for example, and you throw him a coin. Soon you will able to tip an online content-provider for his or her YouTube video, song or blog entry, again as easily and quickly as you click ‘like’ on the screen. Even if I pay my restaurant bill with a card, I’ll often tip the waiter in cash. That way I know the waiter will receive the money rather than some unscrupulous employer. I like to pay cash in markets, where a lot of small businesses start out because a cash payment goes directly to the business owner without middle men shaving off their percentages. The same principle of quick, cheap, direct payment will apply online. Cheap processing costs are essential for low-margin businesses. Internet cash will have a use there, too. It also has potential use in the remittance business, which is currently dominated by the likes of Western Union. For those working oversees who want to send money home, remittance and foreign exchange charges can often amount to as much as 20 per cent of the amount transferred. With Bitcoin that cost can be removed. (...)

Just as the blockchain records where a bitcoin is at any given moment, and thus who owns it, so can blockchain be used to record the ownership of any asset and then to trade ownership of that asset. This has huge implications for the way stocks, bonds and futures, indeed all financial assets, are registered and traded. Registrars, stock markets, investment banks – disruption lies ahead for all of them. Their monopolies are all under threat from blockchain technology.

Land and property ownership can also be recorded and traded on a blockchain.(...) The ownership of vehicles, tickets, diamonds, gold – just about anything – can be recorded and traded using blockchain technology – even the contents of your music and film libraries (though copyright law may inhibit that). Blockchain tokens will be as good as any deed of ownership – and will be significantly cheaper to provide.

Whether it is the initial agreement, the arbitration of a dispute or its execution, every stage of a contract has, historically, been evaluated and acted on by people. A smart contract automates the rules, checks the conditions and then acts on them, minimising human involvement – and thus cost. Even complicated business arrangements can be coded and packaged as a smart contract for a fraction of the cost of drafting, disputing or executing a traditional contract.

One of the criticisms of the current legal system is that only the very rich or those on legal aid can afford it: everyone else is excluded. Smart contracts have the potential to disrupt the legal profession and make it affordable to all, just as the internet has done with both music and publishing.

This all has enormous implications for the way we do business. It is possible that blockchain tech will do the work of bankers, lawyers, administrators and registrars to a much higher standard for a fraction of the price.

by Dominic Frisby, Aeon | Read more:
Image: Getty
[ed. A friend and I were discussing bitcoins last night and he seemed a little confused about the whole technology so I thought I'd repost this article.]

Will Capitalism and Democracy Survive?

Systems of governance, and both capitalism and democracy are such systems, can run cycles of success, failure and renewal for a long time. Consider Imperial Confucian China, with dynasties failing, sometimes with interregnums, then new dynasties arising. Dynasties would tend to be vigorous to start, corrupt and sclerotic at the end.

Or Dark Ages and Medieval Europe, with forms of feudalism and monarchy surviving crises over many centuries.

Let’s consider the dynamic in a bit of detail.

A system survives when it gives power to those who support it AND are capable of continuing it.

This seems obvious, but it’s a little more tricky than it seems.

Take capitalism: capitalism runs thru greed. It gives power to those who do whatever it takes to make the most money The more money you have, the more power you have. Money is the ability to decide what other people do, not just the ones you hire directly but thru purchasing power. Apple decides what Foxconn does, and heck of a lot of other people it doesn’t hire directly.

Capitalism’s prime directive is “do whatever makes the most money”. Whoever does that successfully also receives the most power.

In a capitalist society people who do not respond to capitalism’s prime direct, do whatever makes the most money, do not get power. Since they have no power, they cannot challenge capitalism.

The catch here is part two of the prime directive, “and are capable of continuing it.”

Capitalism must also run the actual real economy, which consists of people and things: houses, food, sewer systems, airports and so on.

If capitalism fails to run that system effectively, that has real effects which having more money cannot manage.

You see this in the hyperinflation of Weimar Germany. You see this in the Great Depression. You see this now, in America, where parts of the population are seeing absolute declines in life expectancy.

In Capitalism, there is supposed to be a transmission between the real economy and how much money powerful people have: you should get your vast wealth by giving people what they want, and that should be good for the economy, and if it isn’t, you should go bankrupt.

People who pursue money but cannot actually mange the real economy should lose that money, and therefor the power.

This happened in the Great Depression. The rich took their losses, and lost their power (not all of them). The ones who remained were the smarter or luckier ones: the more capable ones.

Still, the magnitude of the disaster was such that Capitalism was in some danger. As many have observed, FDR rescued capitalism.

What happened in 2008 is that a large portion of capitalists lost all their money (and more than all their money). If the capitalist transmission system had been allowed to work, there would not have been a single solvent major bank or brokerage in the United States.

They had fucked up.

BUT they had also bought the politicians and regulators, and were bailed out.

The real economy, which is not GDP, then shifted into a lower state of activity.

This process has been going on for a long time now, since 1980 really. The rich have been getting richer and worse at managing the actual economy.

What should have happened in 2008 was the rich take their losses and power moves to democratically elected officials, as it did in the 30s. But democratically elected officials, handed said power on a platter, refused to take it. (Yes, the Fed, but the Fed can be brought to heel any time either Congress of the President chooses to.)

Democracy, thus, also failed.

A system must give power to those who want to continue it. It must also run the actual society well enough to avoid being overthrown.

by Ian Welsh |  Read more:

Image: TW Collins

The Harrowing World of a Trauma Cleaner

Dorothy’s front door wouldn’t open. So they took it off its hinges.

“[We] were confronted immediately by a wall of garbage, decades upon decades of accumulated detritus,” says Sarah Krasnostein, author of The Trauma Cleaner. Dorothy’s impenetrable house was in a wealthy suburb, not far from a cafe that made raw almond milk. Krasnostein had arrived there with Sandra Pankhurst, the 63-year-old owner and operator of Specialised Trauma Cleaning Services.

“The floor wasn’t the floor, it started three or four feet up the wall, and through her rooms was the solid glacial mass of garbage fused together.”

In the four years Krasnostein spent writing and researching her book, she trailed Pankhurst to more than 20 grotesque and garbage-filled sites in suburban Melbourne. “People think ‘cleaning’ and that you need a bucket of water and a cloth,” Pankhurst told her as they stood together in the midst of Dorothy’s house. “We need crowbars, spades, rakes, a sledgehammer.”

Pankhurst is portrayed as a remarkable woman: a goddess in white sneakers, marching through decrepit homes and commanding staff in hazmat suits on the correct chemicals for bodily fluids. Her genius lies in the kind and delicate way she speaks to her clients, bizarre characters hiding from the outside world in caves of filth.

Originally an essay published online, Krasnostein’s playful yet heartfelt debut is one of the most arresting works of biography you will read in a long time. Guardian Australia spoke to the writer about shit stains, bed bugs, cleaning and compassion.

Guardian Australia: What is a trauma cleaner?

Sarah Krasnostein: A trauma cleaner cleans crime scenes. But what I didn’t know was that they also deal with many living clients. Sandra’s business involves going to the home of hoarders. She encounters both “wet squalor” – things that you would flush down a toilet – and “dry squalor”, garbage that has collected over time.

How would you describe the smell of death?

Once it hits you, it’s both intimate and alien at the same time. An awful, awful smell. At the first job I went on, a woman who was my age at the time, 35, had died of a heroin overdose; her body was discovered after two weeks. When you reduce a human to just carbon matter decaying over time, it’s profoundly disturbing.

What sort of scenes were you going into?

In Marilyn’s house, the foyer was densely covered by about 40 grocery bags, full of rotting food. There was fruit liquefying on her bed, where she slept. The bathroom was … she couldn’t always make it to the toilet.

Marilyn was witty and well-read, but her world was falling in on her. She did have cancer, she was probably alcoholic. This was the physical manifestation of the pain and isolation in which she was living. In each of the jobs was the unsettling sense of pain and mental illness.

by Lou Heinrich and Sarah Krasnostein , The Guardian | Read more:
Image: David Caird/Newspix
[ed. Do read the essay, The Secret Life of a Crime Scene Cleaner.]

I Asked Tinder for My Data

At 9.24pm (and one second) on the night of Wednesday 18 December 2013, from the second arrondissement of Paris, I wrote “Hello!” to my first ever Tinder match. Since that day I’ve fired up the app 920 times and matched with 870 different people. I recall a few of them very well: the ones who either became lovers, friends or terrible first dates. I’ve forgotten all the others. But Tinder has not.

The dating app has 800 pages of information on me, and probably on you too if you are also one of its 50 million users. In March I asked Tinder to grant me access to my personal data. Every European citizen is allowed to do so under EU data protection law, yet very few actually do, according to Tinder.

With the help of privacy activist Paul-Olivier Dehaye from personaldata.io and human rights lawyer Ravi Naik, I emailed Tinder requesting my personal data and got back way more than I bargained for.

Some 800 pages came back containing information such as my Facebook “likes”, my photos from Instagram (even after I deleted the associated account), my education, the age-rank of men I was interested in, how many times I connected, when and where every online conversation with every single one of my matches happened … the list goes on.

“I am horrified but absolutely not surprised by this amount of data,” said Olivier Keyes, a data scientist at the University of Washington. “Every app you use regularly on your phone owns the same [kinds of information]. Facebook has thousands of pages about you!”

As I flicked through page after page of my data I felt guilty. I was amazed by how much information I was voluntarily disclosing: from locations, interests and jobs, to pictures, music tastes and what I liked to eat. But I quickly realised I wasn’t the only one. A July 2017 study revealed Tinder users are excessively willing to disclose information without realising it.

“You are lured into giving away all this information,” says Luke Stark, a digital technology sociologist at Dartmouth University. “Apps such as Tinder are taking advantage of a simple emotional phenomenon; we can’t feel data. This is why seeing everything printed strikes you. We are physical creatures. We need materiality.”

Reading through the 1,700 Tinder messages I’ve sent since 2013, I took a trip into my hopes, fears, sexual preferences and deepest secrets. Tinder knows me so well. It knows the real, inglorious version of me who copy-pasted the same joke to match 567, 568, and 569; who exchanged compulsively with 16 different people simultaneously one New Year’s Day, and then ghosted 16 of them.

“What you are describing is called secondary implicit disclosed information,” explains Alessandro Acquisti, professor of information technology at Carnegie Mellon University. “Tinder knows much more about you when studying your behaviour on the app. It knows how often you connect and at which times; the percentage of white men, black men, Asian men you have matched; which kinds of people are interested in you; which words you use the most; how much time people spend on your picture before swiping you, and so on. Personal data is the fuel of the economy. Consumers’ data is being traded and transacted for the purpose of advertising.” (...)

The trouble is these 800 pages of my most intimate data are actually just the tip of the iceberg. “Your personal data affects who you see first on Tinder, yes,” says Dehaye. “But also what job offers you have access to on LinkedIn, how much you will pay for insuring your car, which ad you will see in the tube and if you can subscribe to a loan.

“We are leaning towards a more and more opaque society, towards an even more intangible world where data collected about you will decide even larger facets of your life. Eventually, your whole existence will be affected.”

by Judith Duportail, The Guardian |  Read more:

Image: Alarmy

[ed. One of my favorite beach walks (I'll be there next week). I wonder if this guy'll still be laying around? I hope not, dead whales smell almost beyond dead.]
Images: Marc Lester / Alaska Dispatch News

Ricardo Silveira

The Coming Software Apocalypse

There were six hours during the night of April 10, 2014, when the entire population of Washington State had no 911 service. People who called for help got a busy signal. One Seattle woman dialed 911 at least 37 times while a stranger was trying to break into her house. When he finally crawled into her living room through a window, she picked up a kitchen knife. The man fled.

The 911 outage, at the time the largest ever reported, was traced to software running on a server in Englewood, Colorado. Operated by a systems provider named Intrado, the server kept a running counter of how many calls it had routed to 911 dispatchers around the country. Intrado programmers had set a threshold for how high the counter could go. They picked a number in the millions.

Shortly before midnight on April 10, the counter exceeded that number, resulting in chaos. Because the counter was used to generating a unique identifier for each call, new calls were rejected. And because the programmers hadn’t anticipated the problem, they hadn’t created alarms to call attention to it. Nobody knew what was happening. Dispatch centers in Washington, California, Florida, the Carolinas, and Minnesota, serving 11 million Americans, struggled to make sense of reports that callers were getting busy signals. It took until morning to realize that Intrado’s software in Englewood was responsible, and that the fix was to change a single number.

Not long ago, emergency calls were handled locally. Outages were small and easily diagnosed and fixed. The rise of cellphones and the promise of new capabilities—what if you could text 911? or send videos to the dispatcher?—drove the development of a more complex system that relied on the internet. For the first time, there could be such a thing as a national 911 outage. There have now been four in as many years.

It’s been said that software is “eating the world.” More and more, critical systems that were once controlled mechanically, or by people, are coming to depend on code. This was perhaps never clearer than in the summer of 2015, when on a single day, United Airlines grounded its fleet because of a problem with its departure-management system; trading was suspended on the New York Stock Exchange after an upgrade; the front page of The Wall Street Journal’s website crashed; and Seattle’s 911 system went down again, this time because a different router failed. The simultaneous failure of so many software systems smelled at first of a coordinated cyberattack. Almost more frightening was the realization, late in the day, that it was just a coincidence.

“When we had electromechanical systems, we used to be able to test them exhaustively,” says Nancy Leveson, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has been studying software safety for 35 years. She became known for her report on the Therac-25, a radiation-therapy machine that killed six patients because of a software error. “We used to be able to think through all the things it could do, all the states it could get into.” The electromechanical interlockings that controlled train movements at railroad crossings, for instance, only had so many configurations; a few sheets of paper could describe the whole system, and you could run physical trains against each configuration to see how it would behave. Once you’d built and tested it, you knew exactly what you were dealing with.

Software is different. Just by editing the text in a file somewhere, the same hunk of silicon can become an autopilot or an inventory-control system. This flexibility is software’s miracle, and its curse. Because it can be changed cheaply, software is constantly changed; and because it’s unmoored from anything physical—a program that is a thousand times more complex than another takes up the same actual space—it tends to grow without bound. “The problem,” Leveson wrote in a book, “is that we are attempting to build systems that are beyond our ability to intellectually manage.”

Our standard framework for thinking about engineering failures—reflected, for instance, in regulations for medical devices—was developed shortly after World War II, before the advent of software, for electromechanical systems. The idea was that you make something reliable by making its parts reliable (say, you build your engine to withstand 40,000 takeoff-and-landing cycles) and by planning for the breakdown of those parts (you have two engines). But software doesn’t break. Intrado’s faulty threshold is not like the faulty rivet that leads to the crash of an airliner. The software did exactly what it was told to do. In fact it did it perfectly. The reason it failed is that it was told to do the wrong thing. Software failures are failures of understanding, and of imagination. Intrado actually had a backup router, which, had it been switched to automatically, would have restored 911 service almost immediately. But, as described in a report to the FCC, “the situation occurred at a point in the application logic that was not designed to perform any automated corrective actions.”

This is the trouble with making things out of code, as opposed to something physical. “The complexity,” as Leveson puts it, “is invisible to the eye.” (...)

What made programming so difficult was that it required you to think like a computer. The strangeness of it was in some sense more vivid in the early days of computing, when code took the form of literal ones and zeros. Anyone looking over a programmer’s shoulder as they pored over line after line like “100001010011” and “000010011110” would have seen just how alienated the programmer was from the actual problems they were trying to solve; it would have been impossible to tell whether they were trying to calculate artillery trajectories or simulate a game of tic-tac-toe. The introduction of programming languages like Fortran and C, which resemble English, and tools, known as “integrated development environments,” or IDEs, that help correct simple mistakes (like Microsoft Word’s grammar checker but for code), obscured, though did little to actually change, this basic alienation—the fact that the programmer didn’t work on a problem directly, but rather spent their days writing out instructions for a machine.

“The problem is that software engineers don’t understand the problem they’re trying to solve, and don’t care to,” says Leveson, the MIT software-safety expert. The reason is that they’re too wrapped up in getting their code to work. “Software engineers like to provide all kinds of tools and stuff for coding errors,” she says, referring to IDEs. “The serious problems that have happened with software have to do with requirements, not coding errors.” When you’re writing code that controls a car’s throttle, for instance, what’s important is the rules about when and how and by how much to open it. But these systems have become so complicated that hardly anyone can keep them straight in their head. “There’s 100 million lines of code in cars now,” Leveson says. “You just cannot anticipate all these things.”

by James Somers, The Atlantic |  Read more:

Image: Lynn Scurfield

Puerto Rican Debt Holders Respond to Catastrophic Hurricane by Offering Puerto Rico More Debt

Puerto Rico, facing absolute devastation after Hurricane Maria barreled through last week, desperately needs immediate funding to restore critical infrastructure, particularly its hobbled electric grid. The entire island — home to over 3.5 million American citizens, roughly equivalent to the state of Connecticut — lost power, and satellite imagery shows how little electricity has come back. This affects not only electricity and telecommunications service but access to clean water, as many pumping stations run on the same grid.

A group of bondholders, who own a portion of Puerto Rico’s massive $72 billion debt, has proposed what they are calling relief — but in the form of a loan. So they’re offering a territory mired in debt the chance to take on more debt.

The announcement came after The Intercept spent two days reaching out to 51 of Puerto Rico’s known creditors, asking them if they would support a moratorium or cancellation of debt payments for the island, given the humanitarian crisis. Prior to this announcement, only three of the 51 creditors had so much as donated relief funds to charity or offered sympathy for island residents, all of them banks who actually have to face consumers, and so are a bit more adept at handling public relations. No creditor had supported debt relief.

Of the 51 creditors contacted by The Intercept, only Citibank, Goldman Sachs, and Scotiabank have pledged no-strings-attached money for Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands, in the form of donations to relief organizations totaling $1.25 million. Citi has also waived certain fees for citizens within disaster zones.

Puerto Rico’s other creditors contacted by The Intercept would not say whether donations were made by their firms or their top executives, which include some of the richest people on earth. Holders of Puerto Rican debt have included John Paulson, who got rich betting against the housing market during the financial crash; Jeffrey Gundlach of DoubleLine Capital, who in 2015 called Puerto Rican debt his “best idea” for investors; and Marc Lasry of Avenue Capital Group and co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks NBA team.

The creditor lists were assembled by Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Journalism in 2015 and supplemented by additional media reports. In addition, the federal bankruptcy-like process in Puerto Rico forced holders of one type of debt, so-called “COFINA” bonds backed by sales tax revenue, to reveal themselves. A full list of known Puerto Rican bondholders and their responses to The Intercept’s inquiries appear at the end of this article.

Experts see even the offer that was made by the bondholders less as a gift and more as a backdoor for creditors associated with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or Prepa, to take advantage of the disaster by enriching themselves. Offering a desperate population the ability to drown themselves in even more debt is hardly generous.

The Prepa Bondholder Group has offered the island’s utility a $1 billion debtor-in-possession (DIP) loan, and a separate swap of $1 billion in existing bonds for another $850 million DIP note. This money would be immediately available for restoring electric power. In all, the deal includes $150 million in debt cancellation on roughly $9 billion in outstanding Prepa bonds.

But for a better gauge of just how altruistic the offer is, it’s an even worsebid than the creditors made before the storm hit. The overall debt relief is slim; in fact, far less than the 15 percent haircut Prepa bondholders proposed in April. And when you factor in accrued interest and higher-value bonds, Prepa bondholders would likely come out ahead.

The bondholders’ offer comes after President Donald Trump offered one of the most historically grotesque responses to a natural disaster, highlighting Puerto Rico’s debt difficulties: (...)

Those grants are certainly important. But to be sure, Prepa bondholders “are not giving away $1.85 billion,” said Adam Levitin, bankruptcy expert and law professor at Georgetown University. “They’re giving a loan [Puerto Rico] will have to pay back. This is not a donation to the Red Cross.”

DIP financing, typically done for bankrupt entities, is considered low-risk because it puts the creditor in a senior position to get paid back in full. By swapping Prepa bonds, which are junior to other forms of Puerto Rican debt, with DIP loans, the bondholders would put themselves in a better position for repayment. They are more valuable bonds to hold. “They cut to the front of the line,” Levitin said. (...)

Although leaders across the political spectrum have stressed the need for aid to Puerto Rico, Congress is likely to delay a package until mid-October. The fiscal control board that governs Puerto Rico’s finances, created by 2016 legislation called the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, or PROMESA, has so far allowed only $1 billion to be “reprogrammed” from other parts of the budget. Austerity measures, like planned furloughs and pension cuts, have still not been formally lifted. And since tax revenues are unlikely to be collected for at least a month, cash flow is nearly impossible to come by.

Meanwhile, streets continue to look like rivers. A dam with a large crack caused hurried evacuations. Food and medications are hard to find. Eighty percent of crops are ruined. Neighborhoods have been deemed unsafe as people struggle to survive. “If anyone can hear us, help,” said one of the island’s mayors. Officials have said full restoration of power could take four to six months, and full recovery will likely take years, with damages ranging as high as $30 billion.

by David Dayen, The Intercept |  Read more:

Image: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

[ed. Vs. Texas and Florida. Honestly, I don't know what Puerto Rico gets out of its subservient relationship with the United States. I experienced an electrical outage in January that lasted only three days and things go to hell real quick (fortunately, we still had water). Imagine: no hot water for showers, cooking, coffee, etc.; no refrigeration (food spoils quickly, no cold beverages, ice, food, etc.); no internet, tv, microwaves or other appliances; no lights at night; no cell phones (charging, remember?); no banking (ATMs, computers, etc.); no fuel (electricity runs the pumps); no home heating or cooling. And that doesn't even get to basic infrastructure like traffic lights, hospitals, airports, police, etc. (hopefully all have emergency backup generators [ed. Update: they don't], but not everything associated with these is tied into the emergency support grid). People are probably trapped and can't get out. We usually don't give electricity much thought, but when it's gone you're pretty much screwed (without the additional "help" of disaster capitalists/opportunists like these). See also: Memento Mori: a Requiem for Puerto Rico] [Photos here:]

Everything You Know About Me, the Female Character You're Falling in Love with in a Romantic Film/TV Show Written by a Man

1. I’m incredibly beautiful but it’s an accident, I swear!

2. I love Jane Austen if this is a comedy, or the Brontë sisters if this is a drama.

3. I eat a lot, lol.

4. I love listening to music almost as much as I love listening to you talk about music.

5. I’m smart but not as smart as you.

6. I’m extremely knowledgeable about exactly one subject.

7. I have a great sense of humor, by which I mean, ha-ha — you’re so funny.

8. I’m not funny, but I am hilariously adorable when I get stressed out.

9. I have only one friend. Now she is funny.

10. I seem mysterious, but that’s just because I have almost no personality whatsoever.

11. My ex-boyfriend is a jerk, or maybe just boring.

12. I’m so nice.

13. When I’m sad, I drink wine alone.

14. I live well beyond my means in a beautiful apartment, but it’s somehow not an issue.

15. I lose my ability to walk in high heels when I get angry.

by Mary Cella, McSweeny's |  Read more:

High School Reading as an Act of Meaningful Aggression

Towards the end of each year I do one of those anonymous surveys where I ask the students—high-school sophomores and juniors—how much they read, as a percentage, of each book. I’ve been doing this for the last 10 years or so, and the results are remarkably consistent: most students read most, but rarely all, of each book. About 15 percent read every single word of every single thing, some of it twice. These the kids who would read the contents list of a 7-11 freezer if told, the same students who tend to sit in the front row and take the kind of notes that end up in the Smithsonian. Another 15 percent admit to struggling to even open the books, but would gladly read the 7-11 freezer list because of its novelty value and the refreshing lack of obfuscating adjectives and modifiers. The 70 percent of students in the middle make up the dominant percentage, the ones who often leave little notes, not quite apologia, but regretful explanations about wishing that they had more time to do all the reading because they would have liked to, that they did most of it, that what they read of The Great Gatsby was really good but what with other homework, and athletics, and Uncle Steve’s birthday dinner, and the cousin in Jersey with leukemia, and x not yet having said anything about prom…well, there was a lot to think about.

All this at three separate independent schools in different parts of California. Like I said, remarkably consistent results, and results that translate across gender, race, and socioeconomic status. In terms of the not-highly-rigorous breakdown of those not-highly-rigorous statistics you get about 70 percent of the students reading about 70 percent of the material 70 percent of the time. All of which sounds terrific, except that most of the time, most of the 70 percent, and even some of the 15 percent taking Smithsonian-esque notes, see words rather than read them. For most high-school students, the act of “reading” recalls the soft glow of something done at night, before bed, in jim-jams with a cup of hot cocoa—the equivalent of night-time elevator music. Or, if not that, they’re “reading” on the bus, in the car, while standing outside class two minutes before the bell. And, at best, gaining an understanding of situation and context: who did what or said what to whom and where at what time in what kind of weather. Seeing words but not really reading them, a marriage without contact.

I want them to see reading as something far more intimate, even fractured at times, as something combative, vulgar, assertive—a constant back-and-forth between reading and rereading, moments of stepping outside the text then coming back and battering at it with questions. Something better done in a flak jacket than pajamas. And high school students hate doing it. Who, what, when, and where, of course, are essential. You gotta figure out who’s sleeping with whom before you ask why. There’s a brother involved? What? No. Wait! They’re on a train? If that part’s hazy, the next stop becomes SparkNotes and PinkMonkey, and you might as well hand out the 7-11 freezer list. But how to truly turn them off? Ask them to annotate. The a-word: to add notes to (a text or diagram) giving explanation or comment. To say they “hate” it not strong enough. The most common disclaimers being about how it takes them out of the story, how if they stop they can’t remember what happened, that it takes too long, that it’s not enjoyable anymore. I’ve had students tell me, with genuine feeling, that reading’s been ruined for them—forever. Well, yes, if “reading” is that thing they do at bedtime with that cup of cocoa, and if that’s the thing ruined forever, then, no, I’m not sorry. How many students do trig curled up in bed without a pen or pencil?

So the task has to be to get them to see reading as something a little more combative, which is not to undermine scanning and context. I love scanning and context, reading for the sheer drama of turning the page, for the drama of occupation, of escape—especially on a beach, or hungover, or sitting in 24E on a flight without a functioning TV. But in a high-school English class, the skill of reading as an intimate, assertive thing stands as the thing I’m more interested in—the premise being that if reading were less of a spectator sport maybe we’d inhabit a world better informed, more critical—and critical in a reflective rather than a reactive sense—a world shaped more collectively by thoughtfulness, by magnanimity.

But annotate what, students ask? A fair question. And the place to begin is questions, the questions that come after the who, what, when, and where have been answered. Why questions—about place, about character, about motives…about the weather. Questions that pick at the story’s fabric in ways that enhance that fabric as opposed to designing a new one. So, for instance, after reading the first couple of pages of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby out loud in class, students invariably ask questions about why the novel’s named after Gatsby, about what makes him great, if his father gave him any other advice than the part about not all the people in the world having had the advantages he’s had. About how come the narrator doesn’t know the name for a seismograph. Interesting enough questions, but dead ends, as a couple of the students put it (though at least two of their classmates are adamant that we need to pursue the seismograph thing) because they depend either on plot that hasn’t happened yet or hearsay. Better the question that at least allows for the possibility of an answer through what’s already there rather than depending upon the goose chase of the imagination. So when Nick Carraway says that “[R]eserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope” it might benefit us to ask why? Why “hope” as opposed to something else? Why infinite? And what might this tell us about Nick Carraway’s temperament? Questions that allow us to begin to work out the kind of world Nick Carraway lives in and how that world might interact with ours. The kinds of questions that unnerve what’s in front of us, that give us something to hold onto in terms of plot while, simultaneously, digging a little deeper into that plot.

by Giles Scott, The Millions |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. I think the author's intent (getting students to read critically) is undermined by the focus on one mechanical approach (annotation). I can't bring myself to deface a book that way and am always saddened to find a used one that I'd loved to have read if not for the myriad squiggles throughout the margins. Instead, I'll just dog-ear the left-hand page of a particular passage/phrase/idea I want to come back to and leave it at that (they can always be unfolded). Btw, I've never heard of PinkMonkey before (have you?). Be sure to read the comments section if you're interested in other perspectives.]

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Ten Years After

[ed. Somehow I missed or forgot that Alvin Lee passed away in 2013.]

Ads Don't Work That Way

There's a meme, particularly virulent in educated circles, about how advertising works — how it sways and seduces us, coaxing us gently toward a purchase.

The meme goes something like this:

Rather than attempting to persuade us (via our rational, analytical minds), ads prey on our emotions. They work by creating positive associations between the advertised product and feelings like love, happiness, safety, and sexual confidence. These associations grow and deepen over time, making us feel favorably disposed toward the product and, ultimately, more likely to buy it.

Here we have a theory — a proposed mechanism — of how ads influence consumer behavior. Let's call it emotional inception or just inception, coined after the movie of the same name where specialists try to implant ideas in other people's minds, subconsciously, by manipulating their dreams. In the case of advertising, however, dreams aren't the inception vector, but rather ideas and images, especially ones which convey potent emotions.

The label ("emotional inception") is my own, but the idea should be familiar enough. It's the model of how ads work made popular by Mad Men, and you can find similar accounts all across the web. A write-up at the Atlantic, for example — titled "Why Good Advertising Works (Even When You Think It Doesn't)" — says that

advertising rarely succeeds through argument or calls to action. Instead, it creates positive memories and feelings that influence our behavior over time to encourage us to buy something at a later date.

"The objective [of advertising]," the article continues, "is to seed positive ideas and memories that will attract you to the brand."

Lifehacker echoes these ideas in an article intended to help readers mitigate the effect of ads. "An ad succeeds at making us feel something," it says, "and that emotional response can have a profound effect on how we think and the choices we make."

This is a decidedly Pavlovian account of ad efficacy. Like Pavlov's dogs, who learned to associate the ringing of a bell with subsequent food delivery, humans too can be trained to make more-or-less arbitrary associations. If Coke shows us enough images of people beaming with joy after drinking their product, we'll come to associate Coke with happiness. Then, sometime later, those good vibes will come flooding back to us, and we'll be more likely to purchase Coke.

This meme or theory about how ads work — by emotional inception — has become so ingrained, at least in my own model of the world, that it was something I always just took on faith, without ever really thinking about it. But now that I have stopped to think about it, I'm shocked at how irrational it makes us out to be. It suggests that human preferences can be changed with nothing more than a few arbitrary images. Even Pavlov's dogs weren't so easily manipulated: they actually received food after the arbitrary stimulus. If ads worked the same way — if a Coke employee approached you on the street offering you a free taste, then gave you a massage or handed you $5 — well then of course you'd learn to associate Coke with happiness.

But most ads are toothless and impotent, mere ink on paper or pixels on a screen. They can't feed you, hurt you, or keep you warm at night. So if a theory (like emotional inception) says that something as flat and passive as an ad can have such a strong effect on our behavior, we should hold that theory to a pretty high burden of proof.

Social scientists have a tool that they use to reason about phenomena like this: Homo economicus. This is an idealized model of human behavior, a hypothetical creature (/caricature) who makes perfectly "rational" decisions, where "rational" is a well-defined game-theoretic concept meaning (roughly) self-interested and utility-maximizing. In other words, a Homo economicus— of which no actual instances exist, but which every real human being approximates to a greater or lesser extent — will always, to the best of its available knowledge, make the decisions which maximize expected outcomes according to its own preferences.

If we (consumers) are swayed by emotional inception, then it seems we're violating this model of economic rationality. Specifically, H. economicus has fixed preferences or fixed goals — in technical jargon, a fixed "utility function." These are exogenous, unalterable by anyone — not the actor him- or herself and especially not third parties. But if inception actually works on us, then in fact our preferences and goals aren't just malleable, but easily malleable. All an advertiser needs to do is show a pretty face next to Product X, and suddenly we're filled with desire for it.

This is an exaggeration of course. More realistically, we need to see an ad multiple times before it eventually starts to rewrite our desires. But the point still stands: external agents can, without our permission, alter the contents of our minds and send us scampering off in service of goals that are not ours.

I know it's popular these days to underscore just how biased and irrational we are, as human creatures — and, to be fair, our minds are full of quirks. But in this case, the inception theory of advertising does the human mind a disservice. It portrays us as far less rational than we actually are. We may not conform to a model of perfect economic behavior, but neither are we puppets at the mercy of every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a billboard. We aren't that easily manipulated.

Ads, I will argue, don't work by emotional inception.

TRUTH IN ADVERTISING

Well then: how do they work?

Emotional inception is one (proposed) mechanism, but in fact there are many such mechanisms. And they're not mutually exclusive: a typical ad will employ a few different techniques at once — most of which are far more straightforward and above-board than emotional inception. Insofar as we respond to these other mechanisms, we're acting fully in accordance with the Homo economicus model of human behavior.

The guiding principle here is that these mechanisms impart legitimate, valuable information. Let's take a look at a few of them.

by Kevin Simler, Melting Asphalt |  Read more:

Image: via

New Approaches to Aerial Reforestation

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Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You

This is outside my usual brief, but one of my hobbies is that I used to ghostwrite letters to credit reporting agencies and banks. It is suddenly relevant after the Equifax breach, so I’m writing down what I know to help folks who might need this in the future. (...)

I’m not a lawyer. I am not your lawyer. I no longer have enough free time to write letters for people. But feel free to read the below to help guide your research in dealing with your credit-related problems.

What problems can this advice help with? What can’t it?

Was your data leaked, or possibly leaked, without an account being opened yet? You might have heard your data was included in the Equifax breach or be unsure about that. Someone could, potentially, use that data to open accounts at financial institutions. Someone could also potentially have robbed your home while you were out. You wouldn’t call the police immediately after returning home on the possibly you might have been robbed – you’d do it only if there was actually evidence of a specific crime. You don’t need to do anything just because your data was leaked or might have been leaked.

I realize some folks find that advice unsatisfying. If you cannot sleep at night without doing anything, direct each of the three credit reporting agencies to put a “freeze” or “hold” on your records. Do not sign up for credit monitoring; it is a great revenue source for credit reporting agencies but almost never a good purchase for consumers. If you want to see what is on your credit report, you’re legally guaranteed three free reports a year (see here); once every 4 months is plenty for most people. You can also get free ones through banks these days; American Express and Capital One, among others, will give them for free as a customer acquisition / retention tool.

Do not use the following advice to correct a problem with an account which is factually yours. If someone has stolen your credit card number and used it to buy things, you should not send letters. Just call your bank; they’ll take care of it. For reasons beyond the scope of this post, that is a really well-understood scenario that banks are very customer-friendly about. The only thing we’re talking about here is accounts/debts which were never yours.

Was an account opened in your name without your consent? Great, you’re in the right place. The rest of this article assumes that you’ve either checked a credit report or been told by a bank that an account exists in your name which you didn’t open. (There exist steps related to the below to help improve one’s situation in the circumstance where your problem is that you’ve not paid debts you legitimately owed, but that problem is out of scope here.)

Understanding the players

There are three big credit reporting agencies (CRAs) in the US: Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. Their business model is keeping records, organized on a per-person basis, about debts. They sell this information to banks for the banks to use in underwriting processes. They also sell credit scoring, a product which gives the bank a single number (or small set of numbers) to evaluate your creditworthiness. The most common score is FICO, named after Fair, Isaac, And Company (which developed it), but there are several varieties of this product. It’s sort of like Kleenex: Fair Isaac was so successful at owning this space that people call credit scores FICO scores.

The CRAs get data from many, many places, but the ones most immediately relevant to you are financial institutions (I’ll call them “banks”, but there are many that aren’t strictly banks) and non-bank creditors (I’ll call them “debt collectors”, since that is the majority case, even though e.g. AT&T can be a creditor which reports to a CRA). (...)

Never pay a penny of a debt which isn’t yours. Paying waives your legal rights, because the system assumes that nobody would pay something they didn’t actually owe. Paying also doesn’t help you, because in most cases paying debts which were once delinquent does not improve your credit scores. Why? Math math, clustering algorithms, blah blah; just trust me.

Understanding a CRA’s incentives

We say “You aren’t the customer, you’re the product” a lot in the tech industry, but this is very, very true of CRAs. Your data is their only product. If they could never talk to you ever, they’d love to do that, because talking to you costs them money but doesn’t make their product (you) much more valuable in most cases. Luckily for you, the CRAs are regulated in the United States, so just plugging their fingers in their ears isn’t an option… but they’ll certainly push that to the limit.

The main regulation CRAs care about is the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The legal code of this is here; the layman’s explanation from the FTC is here. The rest of this post is a very opinionated user’s guide to the FCRA and related legislation such as the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA) and long, boring books of regulations without fun acronyms.

Assume the CRAs will do the bare minimum to comply with the law, always. They are among the most odious and user-unfriendly institutions in the United States. You want to minimize your interactions with them; you want to minimize discretion that you give to them about your situation.

You should never call a CRA, ever. They have phone centers staffed with people whose only job is getting you off the phone. They have very limited availability to help, for the same reason that the phone center for Walmart does not have anyone who can help a shoe. You will deal with CRAs only in writing.

These days they have streamlined online applications for writing to them, but I suggest that you only send them paper letters. This is a really weird thing for a technologist to suggest, but when you send paper letters, you can establish and own a “paper trail.” When you type words into their godawful web applications and hit submit, you will likely fail to retain a copy of those words and fail to retain records about what they told you (exactly) and when. This will complicate your resolution with them. Communicate with them only over postal mail. Keep a log of every mail you send (including what you said) and when it was sent; keep a copy of every letter they send to you and when it was sent. You don’t need physical copies; digital is fine. I like organizing all of mine on a per-incident basis in Dropbox.

Retain copies of all correspondence with a bank or a CRA forever. Erroneously reported debts which you thought were taken care of can be resurrected years later by someone failing to check a box during a CSV export, resulting in the debt getting sold to a new debt collector, who will not know that you spent weeks resolving it. You want your paper trail so that your first and only letter to that debt collector credibly promises armageddon.

Presenting like a professional

Banks deal with lots of angry people, and are optimized to treat this like a customer service problem. Some do better and some do worse at this, but you never want identity theft treated like a customer service problem. Their CS department is scored on number of tickets resolved per hour, and each rep’s incentives are simply to classify you as something requiring no followup and get you off the phone.

Instead, you want to communicate with the bank in a manner which suggests that you’re an organized professional who is capable of escalating the matter if the bank does not handle it themselves. You do not yell – not that you’re ever verbally speaking with anyone, but you wouldn’t yell in a letter, either. You do not bluster. (“I will tell on you to my attorney” is, generally, bluster, and that’s bluster that is common to people who do not actually have attorneys.) You instead present as if you’re collecting a paper trail.

Mean words cannot hurt a bank. Threats cannot hurt a bank. Paper trails, though, are terrifying to regulated institutions. Your bank’s customer support representatives are taught to evaluate whether someone looks like they’re competent and collecting a paper trail. If they are, the CS rep is supposed to stop touching the case immediately and instead escalate them to a supervisor or to the legal department.

The legal department (or an analogous group – it is different at every bank) is not scored on cases resolved per week. They are scored on regulatory incidents per quarter, and their target for success is likely zero. Shockingly senior people will be involved to avert regulatory incidents.

What causes a regulatory incident? Bad behavior on the part of the bank? No. Banks screw up all the time; the screwups are literally forecast and budgeted for. Do regulators cause regulatory incidents? Generally no; they’re understaffed and underfunded, and they don’t go on fishing expeditions. The thing which causes regulatory incidents is well-organized people taking paper trails to regulators which allow a regulator to trivially follow up with an investigatory letter. Accordingly, anyone who sounds like a well-organized professional with a paper trail is a problem to be swiftly addressed.

That, dear reader, can be you.

Form letters and the inadvisability thereof

Regulation of CRAs is in some ways consumer-friendly and in some ways is designed to be to the advantage of the CRAs. For example, the CRAs told the regulators that there were businesses and websites offering form letters which correctly cited the FCRA and FDCPA, and that this let people send in a vexatious number of “frivolous” form letters. (Translation: Walmart is annoyed how many shoes found out how to speak.) So the regulators offered the CRAs an olive branch: they’re allowed to close without actioning any case which involves a form letter.

Is that fair? No. CRAs are allowed to respond to you with a form letter, and in fact will, and in fact in many cases it will literally include checkboxes so that they can most efficiently tell you the rationale for not helping you. (...)

So if you can’t just download a letter from the Internet, how should you write a bespoke, artisanal letter such that people reading it read you as a Dangerous Professional?

Professional mien: You’re a professional, and not someone straining to pretend to be one.

If you’ve never been in a customer-facing role, you might not have ever seen this genre of communication, but a lot of folks suddenly adopt electutory tendencies which they believe approximate legal professionals whom the have copious exemplars of from TV. This is not the way actual professionals write, which is generally clear and to-the-point. Write clearly and concisely. You want to outline relevant facts and omit long, windy narrations of e.g. how you were feeling when you discovered that your identity was stolen.

On August 5th, 20XX I accessed my credit report from Experian, numbered 1234567. It shows an account with your institution in my name, with account number XXX123. I am unaware of the full account number. I have no knowledge of this account. I did not open it or authorize anyone to open it.

Restrained emotions: You’re a professional. Someone in the economy has made a mistake; you require it to be fixed with alacrity, but you’re not angry at either the bank or anyone working at it. Why be angry? This is just business to you. It’s business that you will, with night-turns-into-day certainty, cause consequences if your legitimate requirements are not met, but you won’t bear anyone ill will over it.

Showing anger decreases the perception of risk of you filing a regulatory action or a lawsuit. This is counterintuitive to many people. The vast majority of people who show anger are showing anger because they want to show anger. They want someone to validate their emotions. They don’t want to be “disrespected” by the person in front of them. You don’t particularly care about the individual you’re writing to or whether they’re emotionally supportive of you. You want a resolution, no more no less. Professionals know that if they want emotional support they could just buy a dog.

People who can file a regulatory action while being emotionless about it are terrifying, because they suggest that their day job is e.g. administrator for a hospital, that they’re very comfortable with pushing papers around government agencies, and that they will remember deadlines, keep copious records, and consult with other professionals where appropriate. People like this have an annoyingly predictable tendency to convince bureaucracies to give them what they want.

If you’ve ever seen the House M.D. episode (season 1, episode 6, “The Socratic Method”) with the high school student who immediately confirms his understanding of anything a person in a position of authority says, writes it down in a notebook, and references specific facts from the notebook in follow-up conversations, that is exactly who you want to be.

Micro-tip: I never phrase an initial letter with “I demand you…” because I’m a professional. Angry people demand; professionals “require.” If you’ve asked me to pay money that I don’t owe you, I “require” you to stop doing that.

Be very clear about what you want. What you do not want is to give someone the excuse to read your letter and conclude that no further action is required or that a form letter trivially answers it. You want a specific set of actions, you want those actions to be confirmed to you in writing, and you want them done by a specific date.

by Patrick McKenzie, Kalzumeus | Read more:
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[ed. Not just for credit/security breaches (although CRAs sound like real assholes, don't they?). The dispassionate letter, clearly written with intent of establishing a paper trail, is always the most effective method for getting a response and possible resolution to any bureaucratic matter.]

Federico Fellini, feathers, action on set, 8 ½
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