#between surveillance; prices and the amount of effort it would take no one's doing it anymore
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QTVW Chapter 1
Future* President Fiancee (I)
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A young girl with a bit of youthfulness on her face, leaned in and kissed her on the lips, with a smile on her lips, she said: "I... love you"
Mulan blinked, lips trembling, she wanted to say something, but was interrupted by the voice inside her head. That voice was cold and mechanical, without the slightest emotion, it said:
【Mission accomplished, cutting the corresponding memory of system host Mu Lan ; System host Mu Lan, This body withdrew from the role of cannon fodder "Yao Mu Lan".】
【Earn Points: 100 Points ;
Accumulated Points: 100 Points ;
Skill Collection: Beginner Cookery ; 】
【Forcing entry to the next mission world ;
Random selection of new missions in progress….
New mission download completed, official host time transfer. 】
After a moment of heavenly distortion, Mu Lan opened her eyes.
She sat up and took a quick look at her surroundings.
This is a bedroom of about 50 or 60 square meters, a luxurious bed beneath her, which occupies a not insignificant space on one side of the room, a white wooden closet on the right side of her body, and on the left-hand side, a half-covered light blue curtain.
A few sunlight shines through the curtains into the house, reflecting the whole room eerily.
This room is arranged very monotonously, cold tone is the theme color, although gloomy cold silence, but from its details, it is not difficult to see that this is a woman's room.
After Mu Lan finished viewing it, a huge wave of plots and memories came to her mind.
Mu Lan collapsed helplessly on the ** and endured the headache-inducing pain. When the pain faded away, Mu Lan breathed a sigh of relief from exhaustion.
From the plot, it is known that she is now crossing this novel world, the background is set in the future world more than a thousand years later, that is, the thirty-second century.
From within the plot, it is possible to know, the novel world she is crossing now, The setting is set more than a thousand years in the future, that is, in the thirty-second century.
In this world, the setting mentions: because of the uncontrolled exploitation and destruction of the environment, finally in 2372, an extremely severe existential crisis broke out, after this three-hundred-year-long crisis, all women have lost their fertility, after a long research, human beings invented genetic fertility technology.
And after five hundred years of development, mankind abandoned the male-female marriage system and changed it to a society where women and women, and men and men could legally marry.
Although this society is set up very new, the content is completely old-fashioned.
The plot is similar to the modern society of the president's maid novel, the novel tells the story of a tangled love between the young and wealthy president of a rich family and the poor and beautiful maid thousand years later.
After reading the plot, An Mu Lan, her throat spurted out a mouthful of old blood.
Such a stupid and brain-damaged novel, coupled with countless depictions of bad scenes, It is obviously an NP□□.
An Mu Lan felt that this plot was not too helpful to her, so she began to absorb the memories of the original owner.
The name of this body that Mu Lan crossed this time, after the system forcibly changed, is called An Mu Lan, the real sister of the president of the An family.
In the original novel, it is written that this An Mu Lan is a very dark character, always trying to destroy the love between the brothers and the lovely maid, and finally thrown into the mental hospital by the impatient brothers.
And in the original owner's memory, it is rather a detailed filler of the plot that was skipped in the novel.
In the An family, although An Mulan has the status of a young lady, An Mulan is not liked by everyone in the An family.
Because An Mulan's mother, who was picking her up from home, died in an unexpected car accident. This led directly to, An's father's dislike for this daughter.
The father's behavior directly affected the attitude of her four brothers, who either beat or scolded An Mulan, while the servants also did not look at her as a young lady.
When An Mu Lan reached the age of eighteen and was officially able to live alone, she was unknowingly betrothed by her father to a woman who had come up through the ranks of the commoners, the president of a small company that cooperated with the An family, the villainous BOSS of this novel.
The villainous BOSS herself is very good, but the original owner, An Mulan, does not like women, and although An Mulan grew up in a bad environment, she was also raised by a wealthy family, and she has a physical aversion to those commoners.
Thus, An Mu Lan was completely desperate after learning this news.
She took it upon herself to plead with her brothers, but they ignored her completely and made mocking and sarcastic remarks.
Then she went to beg the fiancée, and the woman was quick to agree, immediately.
But An Mulan ruined Father An's plans and brought his displeasure with her to the forefront, and he locked An Mulan in his home, forbidding her to go anywhere or see anyone.
After four months of perseverance, An Mu Lan begged and cried to her father, saying that she was willing to marry a woman. But it was too late, her fiancée had already married someone else.
Father An had to look for a new marriage partner and ended up marrying An Mu Lan to an old man in his fifties.
An Mu Lan muddled through her marriage, she was worn down by life and had resigned herself to her fate.
But on one of her visits back to the An family for the holidays, she meets the heroine, the maid, who begs to her for help in a low profile.
Seeing that she was in the same situation as herself, An Mu Lan took pity on her and offered her a helping hand.
The maid escaped and was captured by forces outside the An family, and it took a great deal of effort on the part of several male protagonists to get her back.
After the maid was rescued and confessed to those in her harem, she washed herself out and discredited An Mu Lan, crying as she told the so-called 'truth', An Mu Lan was hated by her four brothers. They teamed up to bring down An Mu Lan's husband's company and put the isolated An Mu Lan in a mental hospital.
And even in the mental hospital, An Mu Lan still had a very hard time, because the maid's harem was not only the brothers of the An family, but also the young masters and sons of other powers. They had arranged for many people to torment her and make her life worse than death.
When An Mu Lan was dying, she was only thirty years old, but had aged as a woman of fifty, and she died with her soul as the price of revenge on those who had harmed her, to repay it all to everyone who had wronged her.
This is the system's choice out of the cannon fodder female counterpart, as the price of using each other's body, she must fulfill the female counterpart's wish to do so.
For Mu Lan, this task that the female counterpart, An Mu Lan, wants to take revenge on, is not too difficult. She had crossed over to this world just a short time after her eighteenth birthday, still early in the plot, and she would have a long time to plan.
And according to the original owner's memory, in a few days' time, Father An was going to tell her that she had been arranged to be the fiancée of a president.
After learning this news, the original owner became very ill, and so she was deeply affected by this event.
But for Mu Lan now, it's a good time because this fiancée, who is also the main object of her mission, is the villainous BOSS she needs to raid.
In the novel, there is no direct description of this villainous BOSS, only a few side-stories.
In the novel, the villain is a fatherless orphan who has worked her way up through the common ranks and has been involved in the mob and the military, both of which are very powerful.
At the age of twenty-one, she created a new clean identity, with which she started a company and then, a few years later, she built a huge business empire.
By the time she was twenty-seven, she had used that money for, again, to enter politics and make her way in this future world.
Overall, she is an amazing winner in life. Even by the end of the novel, the character's role is only downplayed and even the heroine's powerful harem doesn't dare to take it head on
In contrast to her glorious life history, her personality is depicted differently. When she is mentioned in the novel, she is always associated with the words sinister, cunning, murderous and bloodthirsty.
There is no doubt that this woman is a very qualified villain boss, but as the target of the raid, it is a total headache, leaving Mu Lan with a burning feeling of having nowhere to go.
Mu Lan sighed helplessly, then got up and got dressed and washed up. When she looked up and saw the young figure in the mirror, she silently told herself: from now on, she was An Mu Lan, and she would make those who had harmed her, all pay the price.
After this, she walked to the living room, where, fortunately, she did not see the leading characters, and she sat alone at the table to finish her cold meal before returning inside her room.
She turned on her computer and wrote down everything she remembered about what was going to happen.
The trade secrets and evidence of the crimes, all of which she outlined, were sent to a newly registered private email address. Then a list of several major powers in this future world, all detailed down.
After this, she looked through her □ and found an extremely large sum of money in it, some of which she used to buy things like surveillance cameras and the rest was transferred to a new account to prepare for the transfer of her assets.
That afternoon, she dressed up and went out and spent a small amount of pocket money to ask some children aged seven or eight to help her send the confidential emails anonymously to a designated mailbox.
For example: she sent confidential documents related to the An family to the opponents of the An family; she sent evidence of crimes committed by the mob forces to the opposing forces ...... She sent all the company secrets that had harmed the original owner to the arch rival company, and after this, she just had to watch the progress.
Later that afternoon, An Mu Lan returned home, placed the sophisticated surveillance cameras she had purchased in various corners of the house, filmed the heroine's love affairs with her brothers, and spent several days stitching together the videos and sending them anonymously on the heroine's campus network.
I believe the heroine will be in trouble for a long time after this.
Whereas in novels, when the heroine is written, she is portrayed as a virgin and pure, etc., the exposure of this video will make the brain-dead male protagonists, realize the truth of the matter.
After An Mu Lan had done all this, she was temporarily relieved, no matter what, this task of revenge for the original owner had made initial progress. Next, it was time to raid the villainous boss.
At dinner that day, Father An told An Mulan about her ''fiancée'' at the dinner table and warned her that she would be a guest at the house the next morning, so she had to behave herself.
An Mu Lan's face was expressionless by habit, and she nodded in response.
After dinner, An Mu Lan returned to her room, where she lay down on her ** and began to think.
From the plot of the novel, as well as from the memories of the original owner, it can be concluded that the villainous boss herself, is a very outstanding character, she is tough and has built a career with her lowly origins; she is bloodthirsty and cold, and will do anything to achieve her goal; at the same time, she is also a woman with a very strong desire to control, and is used to having everything in her hands.
Such a woman, to rip her off and go against her will only lead to a worse death, so one has to choose to act in the opposite direction, that is, everything to her liking.
The villainous boss, who grew up in a poor environment due to her living in a slum, hates men and prefers a small, soft girl who must be clean and well-behaved, but must have been brought up in an excellent education, with refined taste and decent behaviour.
This being the case, a decision was made in An Mu Lan's mind.
At around 10am on the third day, An Mu Lan sat quietly on the sofa, her long, black, cascading hair adorned only with a diamond crown, the rest of her hair falling smoothly over her shoulders. She wore a beige bubble dress and looked as delicate and small as a doll in a window display.
The doorbell rang and behind Father An came a tall, voluptuous young woman with a cool, pretty face.
An Mu Lan stood up with graceful posture under the beckoning motion of Father An and walked up to this woman.
Her round, dark eyes fell gently on the other woman, and without waiting for a response, she immediately lowered her head slightly, her long, arched eyelashes trembling gently, her fair, baby-fat cheeks tinged with a blush that aptly showed her shyness.
Father An smiled with satisfaction as he introduced her, "This is the president of Qitian Company, Ling Xihan, President Ling, and this is my daughter An Mulan"
Ling Xihan pursed her lips in response and said, "Hello, Miss An."
An Mulan raised her head obediently, with a smile at the corners of her mouth, revealing two small dimples on either side, slightly opening her lips and greeting politely, "Hello!"
#shypotato#yuri#transmigration#world hopping#i don't know how to do tags#first time translating please be patient with me#QTVW 1
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A New Generation of Autonomous Vessels Is Looking to Catch Illegal Fishers
https://sciencespies.com/nature/a-new-generation-of-autonomous-vessels-is-looking-to-catch-illegal-fishers/
A New Generation of Autonomous Vessels Is Looking to Catch Illegal Fishers
The first time engineers from Open Ocean Robotics pushed Scooby, a three-meter robotic boat, onto a lake near their office in Victoria, British Columbia, the small craft drove straight into the bushes. Clearly, the team had more work to do on the vessel’s autopilot.
Since that early mission last year, the start-up has won innovation awards, secured seed funding, and “spent tons of time on the water” ironing out the kinks in their autonomous vessels, says Julie Angus, the company’s CEO and cofounder. The 12-person team is now up against Connecticut-based tech company ThayerMahan and Marine Advanced Robotics from Silicon Valley in a cutting-edge design challenge to build a robot that can police illegal fishing in marine protected areas (MPAs). Scooby‘s successor (named after another character) completed the first stage in the multiyear project: a three-day field demonstration using surveillance technology to track boats, detect fishing activity, and collect evidence.
To protect marine wildlife and ecosystems and sustain fisheries, the United Nations, governments, and NGOs are pushing for more and bigger MPAs. But without a clear means of enforcing the regulations that govern them, these areas often draw criticism for being little more than paper parks. In partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), these three robotics companies are racing to prove that uncrewed vessels are up to the task.
Originally, the trial was planned for the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary off Santa Barbara, California, but pandemic restrictions meant the participants tested their prototypes separately from around North America and presented the results to the judges remotely. Justin Manley, founder of Just Innovation, the Massachusetts-based marine robotics consultancy coordinating the project, says the upside of the disparate testing is that it let them see how effectively the robots detected different types of fishing boats.
Daphne, an autonomous vessel, rests on blocks at the Open Ocean Robotics facility with its upper half removed so Colin Angus, the company’s cofounder and chief technology officer, can access the electrical systems.
(Vanessa Minke-Martin)
For the 72-hour trial, Daphne followed a route programmed by Open Ocean Robotics engineers. The craft switched between patrolling around Danger Reefs, a rockfish conservation area off Vancouver Island’s east coast, mapping the seafloor, and loitering in a safe anchorage. Back in a control room at the company’s office, team members had a multi-sensor view of the ocean environment. An array of screens displayed maps crisscrossed by Daphne’s path, red-on-black radar imagery, a high definition video stream, and other real-time data, all transmitted by cellular network. As two hired salmon trollers mimicked fishing in the protected area, a remote operator moved Daphne closer so the 360-degree and thermal cameras could capture images of the trollers’ names and fishing lines.
Daphne’s surveillance systems collect different types of evidence. With radar, Open Ocean Robotics can identify, locate, and track targets. Angus says operators can infer suspicious activity if a ship is loitering or moving back and forth in a protected area, rather than transiting through. Comparing radar with automated information system (AIS) ship-tracking data is also useful for spotting suspect targets—“if a boat is fishing illegally, quite likely they’re going to turn their AIS off,” Angus says. Daphne also tows a hydrophone to collect corroborating audio, such as the whine of a hydraulic winch hoisting a fishing net.
For years, robots have worked underwater and on the sea’s surface to complete tasks too dangerous, expensive, or dull for humans. Now, they’re tackling more complex problems that require artificial intelligence, such as autonomously patrolling for submarines for the Australian Department of Defence. Civilian work, like policing MPAs, draws on similar technology.
The real question,” says Manley, “is can we collect enough information that law enforcement would act?” To do so, Daphne and its ilk will have to identify fishing activity with a high degree of accuracy.
One small Open Ocean Robotics vessel costs several hundred thousand dollars, depending on the sensors with which it is equipped.
(Open Ocean Robotics)
But this is an untested frontier. In the United States, no court case has relied entirely on information gathered by robots. In California, a vessel having fishing gear in the water in off-limits areas is grounds enough to prosecute. The design challenge judges—California state attorneys, and conservation and enforcement experts from NOAA and CDFW—are now gauging whether the evidence collected by the uncrewed vessels could hold up in court.
For the best robot design, there’s a staggering amount of work on the horizon. The United States has nearly 1,000 MPAs covering 26 percent of its territorial waters. Some, such as the 1,508,870-square kilometer Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawai‘i, are completely closed to fishing, while others have closures based on season, gear, or species.
Globally, there is a wide disparity in MPA enforcement capability—a gulf that is unlikely to be filled by robots like Daphne, given their substantial upfront costs. One small Open Ocean Robotics vessel costs several hundred thousand dollars, depending on the sensors with which it is equipped. But, Angus says, that price is one-tenth of the cost of a ship and crew time. “And you have the ability to deploy it 24/7,” she says.
From the Open Ocean Robotics control room, operators can program vessel movements and monitor surveillance data in real time.
(Vanessa Minke-Martin)
Lekelia Jenkins, a marine sustainability scientist at Arizona State University, says some developing countries do not have the resources for patrol boats and personnel. Even if these governments can obtain ocean robots, she adds, they “often don’t have the scientific manpower to analyze all that data.” In many cases, investing in healthcare, education, and overcoming poverty take precedence over fisheries enforcement.
Jenkins also says there’s a real trade-off to robots replacing people on the water. When local residents work as guardians or in ecotourism in protected areas, “people can point back and go, Here’s how I’ve benefitted financially from the MPA.”
Autonomous vessels reduce the need for people, Jenkins says, and robotics companies are more likely to bring in expertise than invest in training local residents to build specialized infrastructure or operate vessels.
The design challenge’s next stage will test the vessels on longer, more remote deployments.
(Open Ocean Robotics)
But long before docks are built to launch oceangoing bots, the participants need to show their technology is up to the task. The design challenge’s next stage will test the vessels on longer, more remote deployments. In those conditions, autonomous vessels will need to use AI to identify objects of interest then notify operators by satellite—capabilities that Open Ocean Robotics is currently developing.
Todd Jacobs, NOAA’s chief technology officer for unmanned systems, says developing AI is crucial to the use of uncrewed vessels. “There’s not enough data storage in the world to [keep] high definition images of the monotony of empty water, which is 90 or 98 percent what you’re going to see,” he says.
Agency wide, NOAA is investing US $12.7-million to increase its use of autonomous and remotely operated vessels, airplanes, and drones for science and enforcement. Over time, Jacobs says, data collected by uncrewed vessels will help NOAA discern patterns of illegal fishing activity, so the agency can focus enforcement efforts.
The future of robot police is nearly here—and governments are rushing to meet it.
Open Ocean Robotics’ technology has come a long way since that first day on the lake. On the ocean near Victoria this fall, Daphne surprised the engineers by moving off its programmed track to surf the wake of their research boat—on its own. If Open Ocean Robotics progresses to the next round, Daphne may soon be catching waves off California or Hawai‘i.
This article is from Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.
Related stories from Hakai Magazine:
In Covid’s Shadow, Illegal Fishing Flourishes
How Do You Surveil One of the Largest Marine Protected Areas on Earth?
#Nature
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Cyprus Property Available Makes A Great Expenditure
How to Discover Property Offer For Sale in Cyprus
Getting a property in Cyprus is actually a big deal. If you are actually considering purchasing a Cyprus property you will definitely have to consult your close friends, family, and neighbors for endorsements. Cyprus property can be tough to discover but there are actually traits you can possibly do to make the search less complicated.
The first thing you should do is actually discover where to acquire a property in Cyprus. It may appear complicated to recognize where to begin searching for a property but you are going to rejoice you did it. You will require to ask on your own what you want to obtain along with your financial investment property.
A Cyprus property might either be for you or for your kids. It is your choice how much loan you intend to invest. You will definitely desire to locate a property that has loads of safety components and also supplies some features.
However you may have an interest in Cyprus property for yourself the location of the property can actually create a difference. While people might be actually quite delighted to tell you they live in a location that has never been considered high up or strongly preferable, it is your choice as a potential customer. Nevertheless, you will certainly would like to remember you may be actually living in a city that was called one of the most uninviting spot in Europe through a leading property firm.
If you are trying to find property in Cyprus you should look at an apartment. The most ideal homes in Cyprus are actually more expensive than those in much bigger city centers but they deliver some fantastic features that you can not obtain anywhere else. They likewise deliver you with terrific surveillance from the perspective of a number of the much larger city centers.
You will certainly also be actually startled at the amount of houses in Cyprus possess perspectives oceanic. This is specifically excellent if you possess little ones. There are a lot of main reasons to acquire apartment or condo property.
You are going to likewise need to have to deal with who you choose your property representative. While there are lots of property agents in Cyprus that can use property that will be actually of wonderful market value, there are likewise lots of representatives that give inadequate value for money. The more opportunity you put into your property search the much better the selection you are going to have.
When seeking a Cyprus property that you are actually visiting be actually investing in, keep in mind the fact that you are actually producing a tiny expenditure. Be sure you perform your research as well as make sure you have taken continuously you require to locate the greatest price. Cyprus property may be great worth yet you need to have to be sure you contrast the promotion well prior to you purchase.
Vacation in South Cyprus - A Location to Go If You Like Sportfishing!
South Cyprus is a very small isle that is located in between Chicken and also Greece. It becomes part of the Turkish State, and also it is identified as a nation within the EU as well as NATO. Located north of Athens in a place contacted the Greek Isle, South Cyprus is one of the most prominent tourist places in Europe. For those who have an interest in journeying to the isles, South Cyprus uses numerous terrific holiday possibilities, consisting of remaining on the tiny isle of Sotiriades, hanging out at the Sotiriades Golf Club, as well as taking vacations to various other smaller sized isles.
Sotiriades is actually a tiny isle that has been actually made use of as a summertime vacation for generations of holidaymakers. Sotiriades is part of South Cyprus and also as a result is simply accessed by sea. The golf club is considered some of the best nightclubs on earth, and it is actually residence to unparalleled training courses. Having said that, this is actually not the only point you can do on Sotiriades. The smaller isles, like Soudakos, Kilafi, Soudakio, as well as Seria, are likewise a good spot to stay while on holiday in South Cyprus. Several of the more fascinating island retreats include spending time at Blue Lagoon, appreciating medical spa treatments, or taking place a trip to the surrounding community of Nis.
The Sotiriades Golf Club has come to be the premier place for international golfers. There are some terrific fairway to become discovered listed below, however the southeastern section of the island is actually understood for its own superb scenery. It is below that you will definitely discover several of the extra impressive yards, including the isles of Euboia and also Souda. In reality, some individuals feel that these pair of isles are the absolute most stunning in entire South Cyprus. The food as well as red or white wine are phenomenal below, and the residents are going to encourage you with a variety of shopping as well as entertainment possibilities. A lot of website visitors concern Sotiriades from throughout the world. This island possesses several tourist attractions that entice travelers coming from all over the planet.
Paphos - A Location That is Perfect For Your Requirements
To buy a property in Paphos, Cyprus is actually more than simply tipping inside your residence or even on your residence. You need to perform all your research and study just before you proceed along with the deal. You need to recognize the reasons why you are going to buy property in this spot. A few of the well-liked main reason whies people go for purchasing a property within this place are for the advantage of area life, attractive landscapes, the wealth of sunlight, beaches, greens as well as a lot of other causes that are truly crucial to obtain. There are actually different types of properties available within this place and you can decide on the one which ideal satisfies your criteria. In today opportunities, there are actually numerous rental properties on call for individuals to rent on the holiday. The conveniences that are delivered in the properties will be the prime think about deciding your choice.
This is a wonderful resort coming from the pressures of area lifestyle, as well as it is a place that is actually understood for its amazing temperature as well as various sort of surroundings. The seaside is actually commonly called the isle's most attractive feature. This is actually a spot that is actually well hooked up to other cities and also metropolitan areas and also therefore, commuting is actually quick and easy. It is a good possibility for you if you wish to join your job or even institution. People can quickly travel back and forth in between this and other urban areas of Cyprus.
However, you should beware while selecting a cheap property to invest on. Be sure that you check the rankings of the property you are interested in. While checking the rankings, see to it that you look into the payment choices that are on call on the property. You should likewise check the really good online reputation of the provider that is actually selling the property as well as the length of time they have operated. All these points can easily assist you in making the appropriate decision.
metacafe
Tips to Sell Your Property Quick
A property to buy in Cyprus has its personal market. But this market is just readily available to buyers who have the ability to spend large sums of funds, as real property is actually commonly really costly in the country.
The only real alternative open to the dealer in Cyprus is to find a buyer willing to pay out a rate that will acquire the property sold in the least time achievable. There are a few ideas as well as tricks that will definitely help a homeowner has the capacity to sell their property quickly.
First of all, make an effort to ensure that the people you will definitely be working within Cyprus are credible as well as credible. Don't rely on a provider or even individual that you don't recognize. On top of that, opt for a trustworthy dealer over a shady one since the shady ones possess the capacity to rob you blind.
It's a really good idea to have photos taken of your property just before you carry it out for selling. You can make use of these pictures to receive the focus of prospective purchasers. Nevertheless, these photos should be current and accurate. Any sort of pictures were taken after a few months or even a year should be actually stayed clear of.
Make certain that you don't resemble an amateur when selling your property. You may wish to apply your robe as well as pantofles however if possible customers know that you are a professional home owner, they prefer to visit your home first.
Take a really good look at your residence. See to it that there are actually no primary loss or stains that might diminish your home. The moment the property is tidy and neat, see to it that it resides in good condition.
Be sure that the property is tidy and also possesses all the correct documents on it. These papers are utilized to verify the ownership of the property just in case a conflict develops. The records is really significant just in case any disagreements develop.
If you perform every one of these factors, you would be actually startled to find just how much easier the sale of your property will be actually. If you would like to avoid all the hassles and also frustrations associated with selling your property, after that you should choose a qualified real estate representative to help you.
Buying and selling property: 5 frequently asked questions addressed
Being actually updated is vital for effectively acquiring or selling a property, therefore whether you are actually a customer or a vendor, certainly never hesitate to inquire you property broker inquiries to relieve your mind, obtain additional information or even much better recognize the method.
"If Leapfrogs property consultants had R5 for each opportunity they obtained talked to the observing 5 questions, they assume theyd be actually incredibly wealthy. However, pranks apart, we discover the inquiries that our customers very most often talk to extremely fascinating as they are actually quite essential to the marketplace and provide an important option to inform and also inform clients concerning these elements of the market, says Johan truck Schalkwyk, Money at Leapfrog Roodepoort.
We inspected Leapfrog brokers around the nation to share the inquiries they are actually most frequently talked to in the normal training course of company.
These five questions went to the top of the list:
1. What is my property valued at?
Warren Buffett mentioned it greatest: Price is what you pay. Worth is what you obtain.
Truck Schalkwyk states property experts can provide you a market-related price quote for your property, based on sector fads and also study, their understanding of the demand in the location, and also the features of your property.
Market value is actually extra individual and also is actually generally found out through what a buyer is actually prepared to purchase a property - the popular prepared dealer as well as capable to buy economic design.
Along with details about property easily accessible through a variety of internet platforms as well as resources, this has provided purchasers the power to become savvier regarding the market value of a prospective investment as they may do comparative research. This indicates buyers are much more notified and also dealers need to have to be even more adaptable with their prices.
2. Which is actually the greatest location to buy?
This inquiry resembles talking to for how long a part of chain is actually, as it depends upon an extensive lot of factors, consisting of the type of property, the preferred roi, bordering facilities, protection and also safety and security, and also specific inclination.
Generally speaking, property throughout Cyprus is actually a really good investment. Yet, like all assets, property financial investments need to become proactively managed to guarantee development that satisfies your desires.
Depending upon individual requirements and also inclinations, a counted on property consultant will assist you check out factors like site, potential advancements as well as additional if youre trying to make a lasting assets. a survey by iListers.cy tends to be a really individual expenditure, with wants and needs to vary coming from one person to another, and also household to family members.
3. Is actually a provide to acquire lawfully tiing?
Yes, Property for Sale in Cyprus authorized provide to purchase is a lawful documentation that is binding.
The documentation summarizes the purchase contract, that includes the terms and conditions relating to the property concerned. Through signing the deal to obtain, the shopper accepts to the terms specified in the documents, featuring the rate they want to pay for the property.
If the homeowner mores than happy along with the cost offered by the customer, the paper comes to be a legitimately binding sale arrangement.
All-time low line is that you require to become quite sure concerning a prospective acquisition prior to enrolling the populated series.
4. For how long is actually a power compliance certificate valid for?
An Electric Certification of Compliance (ECOC) stands for a time period of two years. It is actually mandatory to become in belongings of this paper when selling a property, according to the demands of the Occupational Health And Wellness Action under the Power Installment Regulations arrangement.
The ECOC assures the stipulation of the circulation boards, electrical wiring, earthing and also bonding of all metallic components.
5. What takes place after the home loan is approved?
After a mortgage is actually given, a guaranty attorney is instructed by the banking company to register the guaranty at the Actions Office, while the dealer recommends the transmitting attorney to move the property.
Next, the guaranty attorney informs the moving lawyer of the draft deed of transactions as well as guarantee requirements. At that point the termination attorney cancels the homeowners guaranty and also the transmitting attorney receives the title records as well as termination designs and also sends a duplicate to the guaranty legal representative.
Hereafter, both the shopper and also the seller sign the transactions documents. The customer is in charge of the transactions prices and also the transferring attorney spends for the rates and also taxes, and also the transfer customs.
After all, the files are actually authorized as well as sets you back spent, the transmission, brand new connection, and cancellation bond records are gotten ready for housing at the Deeds Office. Right here it takes regarding three full weeks to become inspected as well as prepared for registration by the attorneys. On the day of registration, the bank spends the funding based on the warranties released. This entire procedure generally takes about 10 weeks.
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Week_seven // Case Study
Hi Guys,
This week in your tutorial class you'll be debating privacy - specifically should the government or government agencies collect and have access to your data for good purposes, or should citizens, e.g. you, have a right to privacy which stops them?
This is an important topic which you should form views about as a thinking citizen.
There is no right and wrong answer here - there are many differing opinions in society held by sensible people - but there are right and wrong approaches to working out your opinion. Work it out based on careful analysis and consideration of as many facts and diverse points of view as you can find. And then, when you have worked out your position, be open minded and prepared to change it as you learn and observe new things.
You'll debate it in class. make sure you are able to debate both sides as you won't get to pick which side you are on in the debate :)
cheers,
Richard
Readings:
2019 - Facial Recognition to Replace Opal Cards
"But the opposition and digital rights groups say it would pose a risk to privacy"
"with no need for Opal cards, barriers or turnstiles"
“The opposition would have major concerns about this technology being rolled out into the network. The data collected would be of enormous commercial value to whomever owned it.
“The opposition would have major concerns about this technology being rolled out into the network. The data collected would be of enormous commercial value to whomever owned it.
“You sign up for a nominal fee each week or month and all the different pricing for public or private providers is built into it,” he said. “This may sound like a pipe dream – but it’s almost a reality in London … I don’t think it’s unrealistic to see the same kind of service being introduced here in Sydney in the near future.”
According to Constance, there has been a 4.7% increase in public transport passengers in the past 12 months. There were 16m extra bus trips in the 2017-18 financial year, compared with the 12 months before
2019 - AFR discusses Facial Recognition
Entering Alibaba's new FlyZoo Hotel in Huangzhou brings one thought: where are all the staff? The decor is a mixture of art gallery and moon base. Check-in is by facial scan for the 290 rooms at a waist-high podium with a glowing base that reflects on the glossy floor. Calling a lift to get to your room is a matter of peering into a camera which recognises your face and takes you to the right floor. Another face scan opens your room. You can sink onto your bed without speaking to a single person.
2019 - Australian Views on Surveillance
Australians tend to accept government surveillance, particularly if they think it necessary or trust the government, according to a recent study.
But they’re only lukewarm about it. So if such surveillance continues to increase, people might reach a turning point and adopt some basic measures to “hide” themselves.
The government recently passed the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018, which allows government agencies greater access to encrypted messages, like those sent over WhatsApp.
Mild acceptance: Our research aimed to address this by surveying 100 Australian residents about their views on government surveillance. Just more than half (52) said they accept government surveillance.
(Research -> can this be reliable, who are they..)
1. Is surveillance needed?
2. Do I trust the government?
2018 - Facial Recognition Used by Aus Authorities
NSW police and crime agencies are preparing to use a new national facial recognition system to rapidly match pictures of people captured on CCTV with their driver’s licence photo, to detect criminals and identity theft.
Under new laws the federal and state governments will be able to access data and photos from passports, driver licences, and visas for a national facial recognition system called the “National Facial Biometric Matching Capability”
A road in Xiangyang, China equipped with facial recognition technology, displays photos of jaywalkers alongside their name and identification number.
The NSW Government has allocated $52.6 million over four years to support The Capability. The NSW Minister for Counter-Terrorism David Elliott said it would enable authorities “to quickly identify a person of interest to help keep the community safe."
2017 - Benefits of Surveillance (Skip to What Intelligence Officials are Saying About…)
In recent years, Western governments have come under sharp criticism for their use of surveillance technology. They have been accused of sweeping up massive amounts of information without evidence of the technologies being effective in improving security.
Surveillance technology is pervasive in our society today, leading to fierce debate between proponents and opponents. Government surveillance, in particular, has been brought increasingly under public scrutiny, with proponents arguing that it increases security, and opponents decrying its invasion of privacy. Since the Snowden leaks, critics have loudly accused governments of employing surveillance technologies that sweep up massive amounts of information, intruding on the privacy of millions, but with little to no evidence of success.
2015 Australian Metadata Retention Laws (Read whatever you consider relevant)
The Act is the third tranche of national security legislation passed by the Australian Parliament since September 2014.[2] Pursuant to s 187AA, the following types of information need to be retained by telecommunication service providers:
Incoming and outgoing telephone caller identification
Date, time and duration of a phone call
Location of the device from which phone call was made
Unique identification number assigned to a particular mobile phone of the phones involved in each particular phone call
The email address from which an email is sent
The time, date and recipients of emails
The size of any attachment sent with emails and their file formats
Account details held by the internet service provider (ISP) such as whether or not the account is active or suspended.[3]
2013 - Opinion: Why We Need Government Surveillance
Edward Snowden's leaks of classified intelligence already have him being compared to Daniel Ellsworth of the Pentagon Papers and Bradley Manning of the WikiLeaks fame. Snowden felt compelled to leak valuable documents about the NSA's surveillance programs.
The 29-year-old was willing to give up his $200,000 job, girlfriend, home in Hawaii and his family. He boldly pronounced, "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."
The current threat by al Qaeda and jihadists is one that requires aggressive intelligence collection and efforts. One has to look no further than the disruption of the New York City subway bombers (the one being touted by DNI Clapper) or the Boston Marathon bombers to know that the war on al Qaeda is coming home to us, to our citizens, to our students, to our streets and our subways.
This 21st century war is different and requires new ways and methods of gathering information. As technology has increased, so has our ability to gather valuable, often actionable, intelligence. However, the move toward "home-grown" terror will necessarily require, by accident or purposefully, collections of U.S. citizens' conversations with potential overseas persons of interest.
An open society, such as the United States, ironically needs to use this technology to protect itself. This truth is naturally uncomfortable for a country with a Constitution that prevents the federal government from conducting "unreasonable searches and seizures."
PRO TEAM
Why should gov collect data
(NOT USING IT FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES)
NSW minister for counter-terrorism: "to quickly identify a prsim of interest to help keep the community safe"
defender
Prioritised assets - Safety is more important than privacy in a threat situation
smart implementing for infrastures
smart cities (larger population)
Nothing to hide
Missing People
Stopping crime and criminals
Health issue ->
Scope of Data:
Phone metadata
internet usage
Email addresses
Facial Recognition (Only new thing)
location
Criminal record
Addressing people's concern
Citizen don't trust government managing the data set
principle of least privilege
timestamp access
High error rate when searching for suspects, Ai wrongly suggests innocent people (like when analysing CCTV footage)
Using tech that doesn't look for identifiers that are proving to bias skin colour, gender
Need some way to test software for bias
Repurposing: information collected for one purpose is used for another
surveillance data has no opted out
Not really mass surveillance (claiming this)
Why we should collect data + how we can address
Keep community safe + crime rate down
Possible counter argument : Type 1 + 2 error.
Invest in RND, and regulate constantly
The system can't make a decision and only give suggestion
Identify missing person
Possible argument: Type 1 + 2 error.
Prioritised assets - Safety is more important than privacy in a threat situation
Opponent:
data tension, they UN international law rights (US)
Mass surveillance -> not aiming to do, certain
already known to authorities (not adding much value) -> this is assuming all criminals that are known.
Use AND misuse, quite regulation lose, in respect to
don't believe the government
huge issues when misused, when biometric data is leaked, you can't change it. It's the part of who you are. Potential for single biometric databases.
the government may have the good intention -> what government will become. what you can use that data now.
catching criminals + missing people. (Innocent until proven guilty) (tyPE 1 + 2 error)
Invest in RND, and regulate constantly
The system can't make a decision and only give results.
why are you trying to hide
mass surveillance we don't currently have it, but aggregated data collection can effective for such a system.
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The Other 20-Year Anniversary: Freedom and Surveillance Post-9/11
The twentieth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2021 are a good time to reflect on the world we’ve built since then. Those attacks caused incalculable heartbreak, anger and fear. But by now it is clear that far too many things that were put into place in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, especially in the areas of surveillance and government secrecy, are deeply problematic for our democracy, privacy and fairness. It’s time to set things right.
The public centerpiece of our effort to increase government surveillance in response to the attacks was the passage of the Patriot Act, which will have its own 20th anniversary on October 26. But much more happened, and far too much of it was not revealed until years later. Our government developed a huge and expensive set of secret spying operations that eviscerated the line between domestic and foreign surveillance and swept up millions of non-suspect Americans' communications and records. With some small but critical exceptions, Congress almost completely abdicated its responsibility to check the power of the Executive. Later, the secret FISA court shifted from merely approving specific warrants to a quasi-agency charged with reviewing entire huge secret programs without either the knowledge or the authority to provide meaningful oversight. All of these are a critical part of the legacy of September 11.
Of course, we did not invent national security or domestic surveillance overreach 20 years ago. Since the creation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the early twentieth century, and the creation of the National Security Agency in 1952, the federal government has been reprimanded and reformed for overreaching and violating constitutionally protected rights. Even before 9/11, the NSA’s program FAIRVIEW forged agreements between the government agency and telecom companies in order to monitor phone calls going in and out of the country. But 9/11 gave the NSA the inciting incident it needed to take what it has long wanted: a shift to a collect-it-all strategy inside the U.S. to match, in many ways, the one it had already developed outside the U.S., and the secret governmental support to try to make it happen. As for those of us in the general public, we were told in the abstract that giving up our privacy would make us more secure even as we were kept in the dark about what that actually meant, especially for the Muslims and other Americans unfairly targeted.
Even after swaying public opinion, many of these programs remained secret from, or lied about to, the voting public.
The surveillance infrastructure forged or augmented in the post-war-on-terror world is largely still with us. In the case of the United States, in addition to the computer servers, giant analysis buildings, weak or wrong legal justifications, and the secret price tag, one of the lasting and more harmful effects has been on the public. Specifically, we are still too often beholden to the mentality that collecting and analyzing enough information can keep a nation safe. Yet even after all of these years, there’s no clear evidence that you can surveil yourself to safety. This is true in general but it’s especially true for international terrorism threats, which have never been numerous or alike enough to be used to train machine learning models, much less make trustworthy predictions.
But there are copious amounts of evidence of ongoing surveillance metastasis: the intelligence fusion centers, the national security apparatus, the Department of Homeland Security, enhanced border and customs surveillance have been deputized to do things far afield from their original purpose of preventing another foreign terrorist attack. Even without serious transparency, we know that those powers and tools have been used for political policing, surveilling activists and immigrants, denying entry to people because of their political stances on social media, and putting entire border communities under surveillance.
The news in the past 20 years isn’t all bad, though. We have seen the government end many of the specific methods developed and deployed by the NSA immediately after 9/11. This includes the infamous bulk call details record program (albeit replaced with an only slightly less problematic program). It also includes the NSA’s metadata collection and the “about” searching done under the UPSTREAM program off of the Internet backbone. We also have cut back on the unlimited gag orders accompanying National Security Letters. Each of these was accomplished through different paths, but none of them exist today as they did immediately after 9/11. We even pushed through some modest reforms of the FISA court.
But the biggest good news is the growth of encryption across the digital world, from the encrypting of links between the servers of giants like Google, to the Let’s Encrypt project encrypting web traffic, to the rise of end-to-end encrypted tools like Signal and WhatsApp that have given people around the world greater protections against surveillance even as the governments have become more voracious in their appetites for our data. Of course, the fights over encryption continue, but we should note and celebrate our victories when we can.
Other nefarious programs continue, including the Internet backbone surveillance that EFF has long sought to bring to the public courts in Jewel v. NSA. And in addition to federal surveillance, we’ve seen the filtering of the “collect it all” mentality manifest in our local police departments both through massive surveillance technology injections and in the slow enmeshing of local with federal surveillance. We still do not have a full public account of the types and scope of surveillance that has been deployed domestically, much less internationally, although EFF is trying to piece some of it together with our Atlas of Surveillance.
Twenty years is a good long time. We now know more of what our government did in the aftermath and we know how little safety most of these programs produced, along with the disproportionate impact it had on some of our most vulnerable communities. It’s time to start applying the clear lessons from that time and continue to uncover, question, and dismantle both the mass surveillance and the unfettered secrecy that were ushered in when we were all afraid.
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Saturday, July 17, 2021
Vaccinated Americans to be able to enter Canada
(AP) Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Thursday Canada could start allowing fully vaccinated Americans into Canada as of mid-August for non-essential travel and should be in a position to welcome fully vaccinated travelers from all countries by early September.
Child Tax Credit
(The 19th) Earlier this year, Congress expanded the Child Tax Credit, giving families $3,000 for kids aged six to 17 and $3,600 for kids under six. Furthermore, it’s no longer just an annual lump sum around tax time: the money will now hit bank accounts in monthly increments of $250 to $300 per kid per month. The payments began yesterday and will go to 88 percent of American families with children, and the backers hope that the payments could cut the child poverty rate from 13.6 to 7.5 percent, a 45 percent reduction. There’s at least one catch—the deposits are actually prepayments based on estimated 2021 taxes, meaning families may face smaller returns or unexpected tax bills next April.
Largest wildfire in Oregon expands further
(AP) Firefighters scrambled on Friday to control a raging inferno in southeastern Oregon that’s spreading miles a day in windy conditions, one of numerous conflagrations across the U.S. West that are straining resources. Authorities ordered a new round of evacuations Thursday amid worries the Bootleg Fire, which has already destroyed 21 homes, could merge with another blaze that also grew explosively amid dry and blustery conditions. The Bootleg Fire, the largest wildfire currently burning in the U.S., has now torched an area larger than New York City and has stymied firefighters for nearly a week with erratic winds and extremely dangerous fire behavior.
With virus cases rising, mask mandate back on in Los Angeles
(AP) Los Angeles County will again require masks be worn indoors in the nation’s largest county, even by those vaccinated against the coronavirus, while the University of California system also said Thursday that students, faculty and staff must be inoculated against the disease to return to campuses. The announcements come amid a sharp increase in virus cases, many of them the highly transmissible delta variant that has proliferated since California fully reopened its economy on June 15 and did away with capacity limits and social distancing. The vast majority of new cases are among unvaccinated people. Other counties, including Sacramento and Yolo, are strongly urging people to wear masks indoors but not requiring it.
Haiti’s assassination mystery
(Foreign Policy) In the search for those behind the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse last week, authorities have arrested at least 18 retired members of Colombia’s armed forces—some of whom previously received U.S. military training—and five Haitians, including a former rebel leader, the owner of a security company, and a pastor. While the details of the plot are still under investigation, the alleged use of former Colombian soldiers as mercenaries was unsurprising to observers. Elite Colombian troops, trained over the country’s half-century of conflict, can retire as early as their 40s and are frequently hired as private military contractors in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Biden: US will protect Haiti embassy, won’t send troops
(AP) President Joe Biden said Thursday that the U.S. will bolster security at its embassy in Haiti following last week’s assassination of that country’s president, but sending American troops to stabilize the country was “not on the agenda.” Haiti’s interim government last week asked the U.S. and the United Nations to deploy troops to protect key infrastructure following President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination. Biden signaled he was not open to the request, which comes as he is drawing down U.S. forces in Afghanistan this summer. “We’re only sending American Marines to our embassy,” Biden said. “The idea of sending American forces to Haiti is not on the agenda,” he added.
U.S.-Cuba policy
(Foreign Policy) U.S. President Joe Biden said he would not allow U.S.-based Cubans to send remittances home as part of White House plans to assist the Cuban people following Sunday’s protests. Biden said he was prepared to give COVID-19 vaccines to the island, but only under the condition that an international organization administered them. During a speech on Wednesday, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel again lambasted the “cruel” and “genocidal” U.S. blockade of Cuba while promising a “critical analysis” of the problems facing the country. Since the weekend protests, Cuba has lifted restrictions on the amount of food and medicine travelers are allowed bring in to the country, fulfilling one of the demands of the protesters.
Death toll from European floods passes 115 as receding waters reveal scope of devastation
(Washington Post) As deadly floodwaters began to recede Friday across Germany and Belgium, the full extent of the destruction was slowly revealed: muddy washouts where homes used to stand, cars and debris tangled together, and officials still adding to a death toll that surpassed 115 and was expected to climb higher. “Whole places are scarred by the disaster,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said at a news conference after the worst flooding in decades to hit the region. “Many people have lost what they have built all their lives.” The storm—a major low-pressure system that stretched from Germany to France—brought a deluge Thursday that quickly swelled rivers, collapsed bridges and roads, and left many people scrambling to rooftops or onto fallen trees. Luxembourg and Switzerland were also hit by torrential rain, and warnings were issued in more than a dozen regions of France. Earlier this week, Britain was struck by flash floods that submerged parts of London in deep waters and turned residential roads into flowing rivers.
Xinjiang Products Banned In U.S.
(Reuters) The Senate passed bipartisan legislation Wednesday banning the import of all products from China’s Xinjiang region. It is Washington’s latest effort to punish Beijing for what U.S. officials say is an ongoing genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslim groups. Under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, the burden of proving goods manufactured in Xinjiang are not made with forced labor—and therefore not banned under the 1930 Tariff Act—would be shifted to importers. This legislation would go beyond steps already taken to secure U.S. supply chains in the face of allegations of rights abuses in China, including existing bans on Xinjiang tomatoes, cotton, and some solar products. The Biden administration, which has been increasing sanctions, issued an advisory on Tuesday warning businesses they could be in violation of U.S. law if operations are linked even indirectly to surveillance networks in Xinjiang.
COVID spreading in Asia and Africa
(Worldcrunch) As Indonesia becomes Asia’s new COVID epicenter, nearby countries are planning new restrictions with Singapore’s announcement it will limit social gatherings, a move that South Korea is also considering. Across Africa, cases have “surged by 43 percent in the space of a week.” There is concern that the Delta variant could mutate into more dangerous variants as it sweeps through largely unvaccinated regions.
Athletes go it alone in Tokyo as families watch from afar
(AP) Michael Phelps reached for his mother’s hand through a chainlink fence near the pool. The 19-year-old swimmer had just won his first Olympic medal—gold, of course—at the 2004 Athens Games, and he wanted to share it with the woman who raised him on her own. That kind of moment between loved ones won’t be happening at the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics. No spectators—local or foreign—will be allowed at the vast majority of venues, where athletes will hang medals around their own necks to protect against spreading the coronavirus. No handshakes or hugs on the podium, either. “I like to feed off of the crowd,” defending all-around champion gymnast Simone Biles said, “so I’m a little bit worried about how I’ll do under those circumstances.”
Hospital fire deepens Iraq’s COVID crisis
(AP) No beds, medicines running low and hospital wards prone to fire—Iraq’s doctors say they are losing the battle against the coronavirus. And they say that was true even before a devastating blaze killed scores of people in a COVID-19 isolation unit this week. Infections in Iraq have surged to record highs in a third wave spurred by the more aggressive delta variant, and long-neglected hospitals suffering the effects of decades of war are overwhelmed with severely ill patients. Doctors are going online to plea for donations of medicine and bottled oxygen, and relatives are taking to social media to find hospital beds for their stricken loved ones. “Every morning, it’s the same chaos repeated, wards overwhelmed with patients,” said Sarmed Ahmed, a doctor at Baghdad’s Al-Kindi Hospital.
Riots in Lebanon as West calls for quick Cabinet formation
(AP) Tension intensified in Lebanon on Friday, with riots leaving more than two dozen people injured in the northern city of Tripoli, including five soldiers who were attacked with a hand grenade. France, the European Union and the United States in the meantime called on Lebanese politicians to urgently form a Cabinet. The announcements came at a moment of great uncertainty for Lebanon after Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri stepped down on Thursday over disagreements with the president on the shape of the Cabinet. Hundreds of his supporters rioted in the streets, blocked major roads and hurled stones. In Beirut, protesters briefly closed several main roads Friday, prompting a swift intervention by the troops to clear them. In the northern city of Tripoli, Lebanon’s second largest and most impoverished, residents angry over rising prices, electricity cuts that last for most of the day and severe shortages in diesel and medicine, rioted in the streets and attacked Lebanese troops.
Bamboozled Birds
(Hakai Magazine) Lots of bird populations are at risk due to habitat destruction, deforestation and wildfires in historical nesting areas. Given that they’re not really known to crash zoning board meetings, birds don’t know that the areas they want to live in are doomed to timber harvesting, so researchers would like to find ways to get birds to nest in places where it’s safe. New studies have found ways to trick the birds into doing this, with one recent experiment in Oregon convincing marbled murrelets to nest away from threatened forests by piping in artificial recordings of marbled murrelets into the desired areas. Over 60 species of seabirds have been lured to different breeding grounds in this way before, and now they know it works with the murrelets: they played back recordings in 14 locations not slated for logging but otherwise unoccupied in 2016. Within a year, those locations had four times as much nesting activity compared to un-bamboozled tracts of forest.
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Expired Marriage Once More read novel online Yan Wan & Huo Lichen - Bravonovel
Expired Marriage Once More
https://www.bravonovel.com/expired-marriage-once-more-8293
Expired Marriage Once More novel is a Romance story about Yan Wan and Huo Lichen.
You can read Expired Marriage Once More novel on Bravonovel
Web or App.
Expired Marriage Once More novel Chapter 1
“Don't touch me. I said, don't touch me! Get lost!”
In the dimly lit room, there was tension in the air as panic took hold of her. Yan Wan cowered at the foot of the bed and backed away from him. But his towering silhouette was approaching her.
Like a beast baring its fangs and claws, he was about to devour her.
“Don't come any closer! Please, I beg you. Leave me alone!”
“Hehe...” A burst of deep sinister laughter filled the darkness. It was dangerous as it was scornful.
A large hand grabbed her by her jaw, and a man's face appeared from the darkness.
His breath was hot as he whispered to her, “There is a price to pay for offending me. And now you are going to pay.”
Price? What price?
Yan Wan was scared out of her wits and could not think straight. She lashed out in fear and screamed, “No, please...”
Before she could finish her sentence, her voice disappeared as if it had been swallowed. She was robbed of any means to defend herself.
“No!” she screamed.
Yan Wan opened her eyes wide in shock. She struggled to block out the sun's glaring rays.
Her face was pale with cold sweat breaking out on her forehead. She fidgeted restlessly, unable to calm herself down.
A dream. It was the same dream again.
The soreness between her legs was a painful reminder of the horrid rape that took place the night before.
And the threat by her assailant when she fought back as he made his escape. “This is not over. I will be back to get you for this!” he bit his lips and yelled.
He was not done with her, and it was not an empty threat.
Yan Wan sensed only death and despair from him. He was a dangerous man, and he could turn up at any moment.
Yan Wan's fingers trembled uncontrollably. Her mind was shrouded with fear as she tried to recall what happened that fateful night. Despite her best efforts, she could not remember anything.
She was clueless as to who he was, much less how she had offended him.
“Ms. Yan, we have arrived,” said the driver. His words interrupted her thoughts.
She forced a smile and looked out the window. In front of her was a luxurious café. She started to feel queasy.
She was about to meet her fiancé, Huo Lichen. He was South City's richest bachelor and the current president of Huoting Group.
It was rumored that he took only five years to transform Huoting Group from a local wealthy business into a global business empire. He quickly made a name for himself and was the envy of all business owners worldwide. His methods were ruthless and unforgiving, while his very name instilled fear in his rivals.
Countless women from prestigious families tried all possible means to gain his favor in the hope of being the Huo family's young mistress. Yet, the woman chosen was one of humble origins.
This was decided by Old Madam Huo, who selected her as the future granddaughter-in-law.
Yan Wan did not know why Huo Lichen wanted to meet her on the eve of their engagement day. However, this also presented her with a golden opportunity to disavow the marriage.
This may be the once in a lifetime dream for any other girl. But for her, it was a nightmare. She was raped just before her wedding, and that humiliation weighed heavily on her.
She was about to turn down a marriage proposal from a man who was the definition of success, and she had no idea how to do it.
With a guilty conscience, Yan Wan covered up the hickeys on her neck left by her attacker. She used her scarf to conceal them carefully.
Not a single soul was seen in the luxurious café where the patrons were the rich and famous. Not even the staff.
Tucked away in a private corner was an elegant man who wore a dark striped suit. His physique was flawless against the well-pressed shirt, and his long legs were crossed gracefully.
Above that was a handsome face that would make any woman go crazy. He had a chiseled jaw, dreamy thin lips, and a sharp nose. His very gaze could rob a woman of her breath.
This was the face of a man whom women would die for while other men would run from.
With a cup of coffee in his hand, his thin lips curled up into a chilling sneer.
“Did you find her?”
His special assistant, Wei Qi, stood before him. He did a perpendicular bow and broke out in cold sweat.
“I am terribly sorry, Mr. Huo. The surveillance tape of the hotel was tampered with. We were unable to retrieve footage of the perpetrator who broke into your hotel room the night before. It would be impossible to identify her by tomorrow,” Wei Qi spoke with a trembling voice.
That meant the bride of his engagement party tomorrow would not be her.
But Huo Lichen was not about to give up. Once he had his sights set on a woman, he would have her one way or the other.
She made the mistake of offending him, and he intended to make her pay for it. The skirmish from the night before was only the beginning.
“One month,” Huo Lichen sneered with arrogance. “You have south citysouth cityone month to find her, whatever it takes.”
“What about your engagement tomorrow?”
Huo Lichen saw the Bentley from the corner of his eye. He pursed his mouth in a self-satisfied smirk.
The plan needs a little tweaking.
Yan Wan entered the café but saw no one except a gentleman. He looked like an assistant as he stood expectantly.
“Ms. Yan, Mr. Huo is waiting inside. Please follow me,” he said to her.
“Okay.”
From the chauffeur to the exclusive reservation and butler-like service, she was guilt-stricken by what happened to her, and her fiancé's gentlemanly gestures made it worse.
Did he want to discuss the details of the wedding? How would she approach the subject of canceling it?
Yan Wan lowered her head in shame as she walked. She came to a halt when a pair of well-polished shoes came into view.
Here we are.
What will be will be.
She gripped her purse tightly and forced a smile as she lifted her head. “How are you, Mr. Huo?”
Yan Wan was momentarily stunned by her fiancé's good looks. He looked like he came out of a comic book with his suave looks, perfect porcelain skin, and elegance befitting of royalty.
People were naturally drawn to such qualities, and many admired him.
It would be blasphemy to turn her back on such a man.
Yan Wan started to stress sweat, and she was visibly unsettled. Her throat felt like a rock had been wedged in, and she found herself struggling to speak.
“I am here today to discuss our wedding...” she began.
“Listen here, woman, I will not marry you,” he interrupted in a condescending tone. He was clear that it was not up for negotiation.
Then he drank his coffee without so much as a glance at her.
Yan Wan froze, and her mind drew a blank as she stared at Huo Lichen. She could not believe her ears.
Won't marry?
That would mean they have the same agenda!
She suppressed her excitement and asked nervously, “So we are here today to break off the engagement?”
“The engagement will proceed as planned, and we will have a divorce one month later,” he replied.
Huo Lichen raised his eyes and looked at Yan Wan. As if he was an Emperor bestowing a charity gift to his subjects, he placed a cheque on the table.
Yan Wan was in shock and awe as she stared at the numbers on the cheque.
There are six zeros on it!
Yan Wan had never seen such an amount in her life, and it could be hers!
She gulped and peeled her eyes away from the cheque with difficulty. “Why one month?” she asked.
It made more sense to call the entire thing off before the engagement.
“That is none of your concern,” he remarked in an arrogant tone.
Huo Lichen got up and trotted out without paying any attention to Yan Wan.
He had no patience or interest in Yan Wan. The only person of interest to him was the woman from the other night.
Just like that?
Yan Wan stood there shell-shocked. She stared at him from behind as he made his way out with no intention of turning back.
The entire ordeal was over in a blink of an eye, and he barely said a word.
This gave a whole new meaning to the phrase 'Veni, vidi, vici'; I came, I saw, I conquered.
But it worked out for the best. She only had to put on a show with Huo Lichen for one month. After that, they will go their separate ways.
…...
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Future of dod Dash Cameras
Future of dod Dash Cameras
The United States Department of Defense is changing the way they do business. As part of the DoD's Information Technology Management Program (ITMP), the U.S. military is encouraging its members to use new information technologies in their day-to-day operations. In the past, many of our best Fighting Dogs have been outfitted with video cams and our troops have enjoyed real time footage of enemy activity as it has allowed them to quickly respond and counter with superior maneuver and attack capabilities. Now, as a tool for Information Strategy, the DoD is supporting the development of new "Dod Dash" camera devices. If this new program is embraced by allied forces across the globe, this new "insider weapon" could change the way we fight in a number of ways:
First, this new "insider weapon" could be programmed to record video at any time during the day or night. Second, it would be a perfect surveillance and monitoring tool for an on-site or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or other high-altitude remote operation platform. Third, this technology may also be used by enemy forces to observe and track American troop movements, whether or not they show up on live video. Finally, video recordings of high value targets such as enemy leaders, UAVs, and convoys could also be used to threaten or blackmail these key figures. This would significantly decrease enemy casualties, costs associated with future attacks, and the stigma associated with capturing or killing innocent civilians.
As mentioned above, the United States military is leading the way in this exploration and is funding programs through the U.S. Military Office of Cyber Command (SCORE). The results of such studies are currently being discussed and expected to produce real world battlefield advantages within a short period of time. Initial studies have shown that dod dash cameras could reduce the need to call in aircraft for aerial refueling, which could save the dod dash camera market share lives of military personnel in a combat situation was to develop. Additionally, it could also provide critical coverage of an area in which an aircraft was forced to land after sustaining damage or hit.
The United States Air Force is also funding studies involving the viability of using these cameras to monitor cargo transportation operations. This system would allow for the recording of the on-board behavior of both the military and cargo crews. Such information would allow for better communication and trust between the two parties. It could also help prevent theft of cargo by terrorists or hostile groups. The footage from dod dash cameras could be uploaded to a secure cyber server, where it could be accessed by members of the public, or by law enforcement authorities in times of national emergency.
The UK's Ministry of Defense is also supporting research into the use of dod dash cameras. Much of this research focuses on developing new technologies that can be applied to the general public, in order to protect them from crime. One such potential technology is facial recognition technology. Facial recognition uses the iris of the human eye in order to recognize human faces. The iris is the most complex part of the eye and when it recognizes a face, the rest of the face is recognized, as well.
Security services have already started using facial recognition technology, in order to help their operations. This has reduced the amount of time that an agent has to take photos or video footage, thereby saving money and reducing the amount of effort required. Security services are looking at ways in which to further enhance this technology in order to reduce crime.
Another potential advancement in security is the incorporation of data capture equipment into cameras that already exist. This equipment would allow for the capture of images and videos, even when the camera was not functioning. This information would then be uploaded to a remote location, in order to be used by security services for analysis. Such systems are already being used for the purpose of surveillance by security guards.
As we can see, the future looks bright for dod dash cameras. Advances in technology are continually being made in this field and more industries are looking to make use of these cameras for their own particular purposes. This leaves the door open for more sophisticated and more reliable systems. It also makes it more affordable for everyone, especially for those whose budgets are severely limited.
Summary
The report forecast global Back-up and Dash Cameras market to grow to reach xxx Million USD in 2019 with a CAGR of xx% during the period 2020-2025 due to coronavirus situation.
The report offers detailed coverage of Back-up and Dash Cameras industry and main market trends with impact of coronavirus. The market research includes historical and forecast market data, demand, application details, price trends, and company shares of the leading Back-up and Dash Cameras by geography. The report splits the market size, by volume and value, on the basis of application type and geography.
First, this report covers the present status and the future prospects of the global Back-up and Dash Cameras market for 2015-2024.
And in this report, we analyze global market from 5 geographies: Asia-Pacific[China, Southeast Asia, India, Japan, Korea, Western Asia], Europe[Germany, UK, France, Italy, Russia, Spain, Netherlands, Turkey, Switzerland], North America[United States, Canada, Mexico], Middle East & Africa[GCC, North Africa, South Africa], South America[Brazil, Argentina, Columbia, Chile, Peru].
At the same time, we classify Back-up and Dash Cameras according to the type, application by geography. More importantly, the report includes major countries market based on the type and application.
Finally, the report provides detailed profile and data information analysis of leading Back-up and Dash Cameras company.
Key Content of Chapters as follows (Including and can be customized) :
Part 1:
Market Overview, Development, and Segment by Type, Application & Region
Part 2:
Company information, Sales, Cost, Margin etc.
Part 3:
Global Market by company, Type, Application & Geography
Part 4:
Asia-Pacific Market by Type, Application & Geography
Part 5:
Europe Market by Type, Application & Geography
Part 6:
North America Market by Type, Application & Geography
Part 7:
South America Market by Type, Application & Geography
Part 8:
Middle East & Africa Market by Type, Application & Geography
Part 9:
Market Features
Part 10:
Investment Opportunity
Part 11:
Conclusion
Market Segment as follows:
By Region
Asia-Pacific[China, Southeast Asia, India, Japan, Korea, Western Asia]
Europe[Germany, UK, France, Italy, Russia, Spain, Netherlands, Turkey, Switzerland]
North America[United States, Canada, Mexico]
Middle East & Africa[GCC, North Africa, South Africa]
South America[Brazil, Argentina, Columbia, Chile, Peru]
Key Companies
Garmin
Nextbase
THINKWARE
Rexing
Kenwood
Alpine
Pioneer
EchoMaster
BOYO
AXXESS
iBEAM
Metra
PAPAGO
Cobra
PAPAGO
Waylens
Market by Type
Single Lens Type
Dual Lens Type
Market by Application
OEMs
Aftermarket
For more details contact as https://www.reportmines.com/contact-us.php
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Maintaining Transaction Privacy in the Age of Government Blockchain Analysis
On January 17, 2020, British tax collection department Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) published an open contract seeking bid applications for tools that can track, identify and associate bitcoin transactions with real identities. Correspondingly, developers of such “intelligence gathering methods to identify and cluster Cryptoasset transactions” can apply for the £100,000 ($131,000) contract until January 31, 2020.
The initiative is effectively a government-sponsored attempt to deanonymize bitcoin transactions — though the expectations for the tool extend toward targeting privacy coins like monero and zcash.
Currently, the U.K. government is able to collect transaction and investment data that takes place on regulated cryptocurrency exchanges that operate within its territories. However, it’s much more difficult for HMRC to track bitcoin being sent back and forth by U.K. citizens who run their own nodes, use Tor for connection privacy or employ CoinJoin as forms of obfuscation.
As explained in the notice, HMRC is interested in targeting coins being sent to mixing services, gambling operations and darknet markets. Essentially, every attempt to attain sender privacy and use the cryptocurrency outside of the boundaries of regulated businesses is suspected as a possible attempt to evade taxes or perform another illicit activity.
Interestingly, the methodology to determine the winning bid for the blockchain analysis tool prioritizes its costs over the security offered — which means that a company that provides good tracking at a reasonable price, but with backend vulnerabilities that can potentially be hacked, is more likely to be awarded the contract than one which is more expensive but better across the board. Furthermore, the bounty for this contract is less than 16 BTC, an amount that represents only a small fraction of Gregory Maxwell’s bounty fund to incentive work on CoinJoin.
Can Average Bitcoin Users Keep Their Privacy?
If and when such a mechanism gets deployed by a government body like HMRC, the anonymity of bitcoin transactions is going to be much more difficult to maintain — especially if privacy procedures are not followed rigorously and easy links can be made between KYC exchange withdrawals or purchases made to home addresses in which BTC is the medium of payment.
In order to better explain methods by which average users can protect their privacy against surveillance from governmental agencies, Bitcoin Magazine spoke with Wasabi Wallet Lead Developer Nopara73 and Edge Wallet CEO Paul Puey.
Nopara73 was very direct in terms of the best practices that average Bitcoiners should use for greater privacy and protection against state actors:
“Use Wasabi or JoinMarket, they break the link between one set of coins and another,” he explained.
On the other hand, Puey expressed a greater degree of pessimism about maintaining privacy in the age of government-based blockchain analysis.
“Unfortunately, the common person is ill-equipped to protect their privacy against state-level attacks on Bitcoin,” Puey said. “It would take quite a high level of effort out of reach of most people.”
Puey also explained the limitation of CoinJoin in relation to IP address tracking and suggested some means to achieve greater privacy.
“Even with CoinJoin, a user would still expose their balance and transactions once they start to query the blockchain from a known IP address that is associated with them,” he said. “While CoinJoin could protect them against everyday citizens trying to undermine their privacy, state-level IP address tracking will easily circumvent mixing services. The best practice would be to utilize IP address anonymization via VPN and/or Tor. Also, utilizing multiple different hardware wallets that do not mix inputs between themselves would provide a high level of privacy.”
Wasabi Wallet already uses Tor by default to provide a random IP address to transactions, but it’s important to make sure that links to an ISP (which has a database of customers and can easily identify your internet activity) are further obfuscated by using a VPN or another Tor setup. For instance, sending mixed bitcoin from Wasabi to your clearnet Bitcoin Core client will expose your IP address, location and potentially your identity. Furthermore, managing UTXOs to prevent your transactions from being linked to exchange accounts is essential.
Furthermore, solutions in the works like Payswap may add obfuscation power to bitcoin mixing services, if and when they become available.
Power User Privacy Going Mainstream
These precautions are mostly for power users who understand how Bitcoin and networking work, but the means to achieve this degree of privacy are getting simpler than ever. With Wasabi, for instance, all of the privacy features are integrated in a point-and-click experience: From Tor to CoinJoin and hardware wallet integrations, everything is under the same interface, which is ultimately designed to prevent address reuse.
Furthermore, it’s time to finally put Bitcoin’s criminal narrative to rest. Agencies like HMRC should realize that transaction privacy isn’t only for masking criminal activity. There are multiple legitimate use cases where users may want to avoid being tracked and identified by third parties and these instances need to be protected.
“A company for example, may want to obfuscate how much they are paying each of their employees — as is commonly done in the world today,” Puey said. “Also, people generally do not want to expose any part of their personal balance or transactions to someone they send or receive money from.”
The latter concern refers to the many instances in which Bitcoiners have been subjected to physical attacks, threats and violence. And the more BTC they hold, the more exposed they are to criminals who may target them.
As explained in HMRC’s documents, the priorities for the partnership are efficiency and cost — thus leaving security as a less important criterion. If anyone was to hack the databases of the contracted service, the list of physical attacks against Bitcoiners might just expand, surely an unintended consequence from government agencies exploring ways to track cryptocurrency transactions.
The post Maintaining Transaction Privacy in the Age of Government Blockchain Analysis appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.
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The House Intelligence Committee’s reenactment of the McCarthy hearings dramatized Marx’s famous aphorism that history repeats itself, “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” The only thing this circus was lacking was ringmaster Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California”) rising to declare that “I have in my hands a list!”
War was on the minds and lips of the Democrats. Rep. Denny Heck (D-Washington) compared Hillary Clinton’s loss to the 9/11 attacks, because the killing of over 2,000 people on American soil is just like the publication of emails that exposed the corruption at the heart of Democratic party politics. Oh, and “the attack didn’t end on Election Day” – because isn’t that a Russian hiding under your bed?
If political humor, albeit unintentional, is your shtick, there was plenty of that: my own favorite was Rep. Jackie Speier – from where else but California? – likening Vladimir Putin to a tarantula spider who has “ensnared in his web” a whole list of Trump supporters, including Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Echoing a common phrase at the hearing, she declared that alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was “an act of war,” although she gave no hint as to when the shooting will start.
Rep. Andre Carson (D-Indiana) asked: “Is an iron curtain descending across Europe?” Yes, the Russians are going to rebuild the Berlin Wall – and make Angela Merkel pay for it. Of course, the US-erected iron curtain of anti-Russian sanctions doesn’t come into it. Carson also took up a favorite Democratic theme: the GOP platform had been “changed” at the insistence of Trump supporters, a falsehood that’s been debunked yet still persists. What happened was that an attempt to insert a paragraph calling for sending “lethal weapons” to Ukraine – which had never been in there in the first place – was defeated. But in the War Party’s campaign of innuendo and fake news, facts don’t matter: what matters is the effort to equate dissent from a foreign policy of perpetual aggression with “treason.”
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) spent most of his time referring to the “dirty dossier” published by BuzzFeed, which has long been discredited, and bringing up the names of various Trump supporters, asking FBI Director Comey if they were targets of the investigation into Russian influence on the elections –knowing perfectly well that Comey would not and could not answer. The idea was simply to bring up the names in a forum in which they couldn’t defend themselves: that’s what the politics of innuendo is all about.
Aside from Schiff, the Speier-Carson-Castro trio, posing as defenders of our national security, were among the shrillest in their insistence that the Trump administration is a nest of Russian spies. Which is ironic, since the Daily Caller recently reported an odd coincidence:
“Brothers Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan were barred from computer networks at the House of Representatives Thursday, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned.
“Three members of the intelligence panel and five members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs were among the dozens of members who employed the suspects on a shared basis. The two committees deal with many of the nation’s most sensitive issues, information and documents, including those related to the war on terrorism.”
Those three intelligence panel members are Speier, Castro, and Carson. Now aren’t you reassured that our national security is in their capable hands?
These three were merely sideshows, however, because the head clown was undoubtedly the ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California). Schiff’s opening statement is a model of McCarthyite smear-mongering. His first target is Carter Page, an oil company consultant tangentially associated with the Trump campaign, who is attacked by Schiff for the “crime” of criticizing US foreign policy in a speech delivered while on a trip to Russia. He then cites the unverified (and largely nonsensical) “dossier” compiled by MI6 agent Christopher Steele, who paid his informants for dirt on Trump, to the effect that Page had a secret meeting with a Putin confidante. Page was supposedly rewarded financially in a murky sale of the Russian gas giant Rosfnet: he was also supposedly offered “documents” to be published by WikiLeaks, “which give the Russians deniability.”
Let’s stop here and ask a question: Why would the Russians offer Page “documents” that portray Hillary Clinton in a unfavorable light – presumably the Podesta/DNC emails – if WikiLeaks was going to publish them anyway? But logic has nothing to do with Schiff’s conspiracy theory: the idea is to simply make “links” based on a bought-and-paid-for “dossier” and smear as many people associated with the Trump campaign as possible.
So what was the price of all this? What did the Russians want? According to Schiff, a Trump foreign policy that “de-emphasizes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and instead focuses on criticizing NATO countries for not paying their fair share.” As “proof” of this sinister plot Schiff notes that Page, Paul Manafort, and other Trump supporters “attended the Republican convention” (!) in Cleveland where Russian ambassador Sergey Kisylak was also present. Kisylak was there along with 80 other ambassadors at an event dubbed “Global Partners in Diplomacy.” Similar events, staged to acquaint foreign diplomats with the American democratic process, have been staged since the 1980s. Clearly a case of espionage.
Schiff then goes into the by now familiar trope about how the GOP platform was “changed” to remove a section calling for the provision of “lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine, which would be “against Russian interests.” To begin with, there was never any such provision in the platform, so it could not have been “removed.”
Secondly, Schiff is betraying his own rather specialized interests here: on July 18, 2013, a fundraiser for Schiff’s reelection campaign was held at the home of Ukrainian arms dealer Igor Pasternak in Washington, D.C. Price of admission: $2,500 a head, and $1,000 for guests. Why is Pasternak such a fan of Schiff’s?
The answer may be found in a Washington Times story published in January, headlined “Ukraine Desperate for Surveillance Equipment in Stand Off With Russia,” which details the efforts of the Ukrainian government to get around the Obama administration’s reluctance to provide them with the “defensive weapons” Schiff is so eager to shower them with. Yet the Times tells us that Pasternak has somehow managed to get around the prohibition imposed by the administration, at least to a limited extent:
“In the meantime, a private, State Department-approved transaction has a Montebello, California, company, Worldwide Aeros, set to erect eight sensor-mounted towers that would deliver immediate surveillance along the southeastern border this winter.
“’This system will provide a much more robust capability to detect incursions into their territory,’ said Drew Shoemaker, vice president of government relations for Aeroscraft, a division of Worldwide. ‘It detects with the radar and then confirms with the camera.’
“With a maximum range of 40 miles, the Elevated Early Warning System, he said, ‘can look quite a distance into whatever territory they are looking at. They can track movements of goods and services in and out of the rebel-held territories. There’s still a large of amount of military equipment in there.’
“Ukraine eventually may opt for blimplike aerostats with even more powerful ranges.
“Worldwide Aeros was founded by a Ukrainian-born engineer, Igor Pasternak, who has won Pentagon contracts to develop different sizes and shapes of airships.”
Follow the money. Pasternak is selling the Ukrainians military hardware, and is doubtless eager to sell them more – paid for by US taxpayers, of course. According to news reports, Pasternak is deeply involved with the Ukrainian government’s military production, which is seeking to eliminate its dependence on Soviet era military hardware:
“On Jan. 3 [2017], as part of a long-term plan to adopt NATO military standards, Ukraine took a step toward ditching this Soviet military carryover.
“Ukroboronprom, Ukraine’s nationalized defense industry conglomerate, announced a partnership agreement between the Ukrainian defense manufacturer Ukroboronservis and the U.S. company Aeroscraft to produce in Ukraine a variant of the US M16 assault rifle.
“’The M16 project was conceived some time ago, as the Ukrainian armed forces, border guards, and National Guard will with time switch to NATO standards,’ Aeroscraft founder and CEO Igor Pasternak said during a Jan. 3 press conference in Kyiv.”
Pasternak raises thousands for Schiff, and Schiff raises millions for Pasternak. It’s a sweet deal all around.
Schiff bloviates that his campaign to restart the cold war with Russia is an ideological crusade: “We are involved in a new battle of ideas,” he avers. “Not Communism versus capitalism, but authoritarianism versus democracy.” Yet this is about capitalism – crony capitalism of the sort that enriches both Schiff and Pasternak. As Major General Smedley Butler put it in 1935: “War is a racket.” And Schiff is one of the biggest racketeers in Washington.
The cynical, absurd campaign to tar the Trump administration as a Russian plot to take over America is based on nothing but lies, innuendo, political opportunism, and naked greed. Trump famously pledged to “drain the swamp” that is Washington, D.C., and it was inevitable that Schiff, one of the nastiest of the swamp creatures, would arise from the muck screeching in protest.
Let him. He and his party are consigning themselves to the margins of American politics. Their loony conspiracy theories are so far removed from the concerns of ordinary Americans that the distance can only be measured in light years. Polls show that even the majority of Democrats don’t think Trump’s relations with the Russians involved illegality: independents and Republicans disbelieve Schiff’s tales of Russian plots by an overwhelming majority. No normal person cares about Russia: but the Democratic activist base is very far from normal.
That doesn’t mean that this witch hunt isn’t dangerous: it is. The news that the FBI is investigating “far right” and “pro-Russian” web sites ought to send a chill up the spines of civil libertarians, no matter what they think of Trump. And for those who want to see a more peaceful foreign policy, the McCarthyite hysteria generated by Schiff & Co. is bad news indeed. Jackie Speier, for example, has in the past been a reliably pro-peace vote in Congress, but as the Democrats become the party of born-again neoconservatism, at least in the foreign policy realm, the pressure is on to toe the Russophobic party line.
At the dawn of the cold war, as McCarthyism was rising, the formerly “isolationist” (i.e. anti-interventionist and anti-NATO) Republican party became the party of warmongers: the alleged threat of a domestic “communist conspiracy” logically translated into an international crusade to “roll back” communism by military means. What we are witnessing today is a similar transformation of the Democrats. Which is, as Trump would put it, sad!
Get ready for a massive attack on our civil liberties, as the FBI takes out after “pro-Russian” “subversion,” and the Democrats (in alliance with John McCain and Lindsey Graham) conduct their circus-like hearings throughout the year and beyond. A more sickening display of ideological emptiness and brazen self-dealing hasn’t been seen the 1950s.
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Digital privacy at stake? 10 Tips to avoid leaving tracks around internet
Google and Facebook collect information about us and then sell that data to advertisers. Websites deposit invisible “cookies” onto our computers and then record where we go online. Even our own government has been known to track us.
When it comes to digital privacy, it’s easy to feel hopeless. We’re mere mortals! We’re minuscule molecules in their machines! What power do we possibly have to fight back?
That was the question I posed to you, dear readers, in the previous “Crowdwise.”
Many of you responded with valuable but frequently repeated suggestions: Use a program that memorizes your passwords, and make every password different. Install an ad blocker in your web browser, like uBlock Origin. Read up on the latest internet scams. If you must use Facebook, visit its Privacy Settings page and limit its freedom to target ads to you.
What I sought, though, was non-obvious ideas.
It turns out that “digital privacy” means different things to different people.
“Everyone has different concerns,” wrote Jamie Winterton, a cybersecurity researcher at Arizona State University. “Are you worried about private messaging? Government surveillance? Third-party trackers on the web?” Addressing each of these concerns, she noted, requires different tools and techniques.
Duck Google
“The number one thing that people can do is to stop using Google,” wrote privacy consultant Bob Gellman. “If you use Gmail and use Google to search the web, Google know more about you than any other institution. And that goes double if you use other Google services like Google Maps, Waze, Google Docs, etc.”
Like many other readers, he recommended DuckDuckGo, a rival web search engine. Its search results often aren’t as useful as Google’s, but it’s advertised not to track you or your searches.
And if you don’t use Gmail for email, what should you use? “I am a huge advocate for paying for your email account,” wrote Russian journalist Yuri Litvinenko. “It’s not about turning off ads, but giving your email providers as little incentive to peek into your inbox as possible.” ProtonMail, for example, costs $4 a month and offers a host of privacy features, including anonymous sign-up and end-to-end encryption.
Jam Google
The ads you see online are based on the sites, searches, or and Facebook posts that get your interest. Some rebels therefore throw a wrench into the machinery — by demonstrating phony interests.
“Every once in a while, I Google something completely nutty just to mess with their algorithm,” wrote Shaun Breidbart. “You’d be surprised what sort of coupons CVS prints for me on the bottom of my receipt. They are clearly confused about both my age and my gender.”
It’s “akin to radio jamming,” noted Frank Paiano. “It does make for some interesting browsing, as ads for items we searched for follow us around like puppy dogs (including on The New York Times, by the way.)”
Barry Joseph uses a similar tactic when registering for an account on a new website. “I often switch my gender (I am a cisgender male), which delivers ads less relevant to me — although I must admit, the bra advertising can be distracting.”
He notes that there are side effects. “My friends occasionally get gendered notifications about me, such as ‘Wish her a happy birthday.’” But even that is a plus, leading to “interesting conversations about gender norms and expectations (so killing two birds with one digital stone here).”
Avoid unnecessary web tracking
It’s perfectly legitimate, by the way, to enjoy seeing ads that align with your interests. You could argue that they’re actually more useful than irrelevant ones.
But millions of others are creeped out by the tracking that produces those targeted ads.
If you’re in that category, Ms. Winterton recommended Ghostery, a free plug-in for most web browsers that “blocks the trackers and lists them by category,” she wrote. “Some sites have an amazing number of trackers whose only purpose is to record your behavior (sometimes across multiple sites) and pitch better advertisements.”
Careful on public Wi-Fi
Most public Wi-Fi networks — in hotels, airports, coffee shops, and so on — are eavesdroppable, even if they require a password to connect. Nearby patrons, using their phones or laptops, can easily see everything you’re sending or receiving — email and website contents, for example — using free “sniffer” programs.
You don’t have to worry about Social, WhatsApp and Apple’s iMessages, all of which encrypt your messages before they even leave your phone or laptop. Using websites whose addresses begin with https are also safe; they, too, encrypt their data before it’s sent to your browser (and vice versa).
(Caution: Even if the site’s address begins with https, the bad guys can still see which sites you visit — say, https://www.NoseHairBraiding.com. They just can’t see what you do there once you’re connected.)
The solution, as recommended by Lauren Taubman and others: a Virtual Private Network program. These phone and computer apps encrypt everything you send or receive — and, as a bonus, mask your location. Wirecutter’s favorite VPN, TunnelBear, is available for Windows, Mac, Android and iOS. It’s free for up to 500 megabytes a month, or $60 a year for up to five devices.
Use Apple
“I don’t like Apple’s phones, their operating systems, or their looks,” wrote Aaron Soice, “but the one thing Apple gets right is valuing your data security. Purely in terms of data, Apple serves you; Google serves you to the sharks.”
Apple’s privacy website reveals many examples: You don’t sign into Apple Maps or Safari (Apple’s web browser), so your searches and trips aren’t linked to you. Safari’s “don’t track me” features are turned on as the factory setting. When you buy something with Apple Pay, Apple receives no information about the item, the store, or the price.
Apple can afford to tout these features, explained software developer Joel Potischman, because it’s a hardware company. “Its business model depends on us giving them our money. Google and Facebook make their money by selling our info to other people.”
Don’t “Sign in with Facebook”
Mr. Potischman never registers with a new website using the “Sign in with Facebook” or “Sign in with Google” shortcut buttons. “They allow those companies to track you on other sites,” he wrote. Instead, he registers the long way, with an email address and password.
(And here’s Apple again: The “Sign in with Apple” button, new and not yet incorporated by many websites, is designed to offer the same one-click convenience — but with a promise not to track or profile you.)
Identity theft, from a pro
My call for submissions drew some tips from a surprising respondent: Frank Abagnale, the former teenage con artist who was the subject of the 2002 movie “Catch Me if You Can.”
After his prison time, he went began working for the F.B.I., giving talks on scam protection, and writing books. He’s donating all earnings from his latest book, “Scam Me If You Can,” to the AARP, in support of its efforts to educate older Americans about internet rip-offs.
His advice: “You never want to tell Facebook where you were born and your date of birth. That’s 98 percent of someone stealing your identity! And don’t use a straight-on photo of yourself — like a passport photo, driver’s license, graduation photo — that someone can use on a fake ID.”
Mr. Abagnale also notes that you should avoid sharing your personal data offline, too. “We give a lot of information away, not just on social media, but places we go where people automatically ask us all of these questions. ‘What magazines do you read?’ ‘What’s your job?’ ‘Do you earn between this and that amount of money?’”
Why answer if you don’t have to?
The lightning round
A few more suggestions:
“Create a different email address for every service you use,” wrote Matt McHenry. “Then you can tell which one has shared your info, and create filters to silence them if necessary.”
“Apps like Privacy and Token Virtual generate a disposable credit-card number with each purchase — so in case of a breach, your actual card isn’t compromised,” suggested Juan Garrido. (Bill Barnes agreed, pointing out the similar Shopsafe service offered by from Bank of America’s Visa cards. “The number is dollar and time limited.”)
“Your advertisers won’t like to see this, so perhaps you won’t print it,” predicted Betsy Peto, “but I avoid using apps on my cellphone as much as possible. Instead, I go to the associated website in my phone’s browser: for example, www.dailybeast.com. My data is still tracked there, but not as much as it would be by the app.”
There is some good news: Tech companies are beginning to feel some pressure.
In 2017, the European Union passed the General Data Protection Regulation (G.D.P.R.), which requires companies to explain what data they’re collecting — and to offer the option to edit or delete it. China, India, Japan, Brazil, South Korea and Thailand have passed, or are considering, similar laws, and California’s Consumer Privacy Act takes effect on January 1.
In the meantime, enjoy these suggestions, as well as this bonus tip from privacy researcher Jamie Winterton:
“Oh yeah — and don’t use Facebook.”
For the next “Crowdwise”: We all know that it’s unclassy and cruel to break up with a romantic partner in a text message — or, worse, a tweet. (Well, we used to know that.) Yet requesting an unusual meeting at a sidewalk cafe might strike your partner as distressingly ominous.
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,document,'script','https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');fbq('init','550264998751686');fbq('track','PageView');
from CVR News Direct https://cvrnewsdirect.com/digital-privacy-at-stake-10-tips-to-avoid-leaving-tracks-around-internet/
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Nicole Junkermann- The Successful Entrepreneur-- Beauty With Brain
Nicole Junkermann- The Successful Entrepreneur-- Beauty With Brain
A self-made entrepreneur is challenging to discover today, but still there are couple of amazing personalities that had performed a bunch of effort to reach to the excellent position without taking help of any person. Listed below, our company are talking regarding among the popular individual is actually a creativity of all and also carried out fantastic reforms. Listed here our company are speaking about Nicole Junkermann, who is a charm with brain as well as known to across the planet.
She is the one recognized for self-made, international as well as impressive entrepreneur and also entrepreneur, that has created up a sound market visibility. She is the greatest when it relates to accumulate and market media organisations, together with the same she has invested in turbulent, cutting-edge technology providers and also elevated her own sporting activities personal equity fund. She is really incredibly gifted and discovered whatever from her experience that is why she is here in the marketplace with a supreme visibility. Nicole is located in London, yet may communicate in 6+ foreign languages along with knowledge of residing and operating in Europe, Asia, the USA and various other significant countries. click here for more
Certainly not just this, Nicole Junkermann is actually the best talented businessman as well as the owner of NJF Holdings, which is a worldwide money and assets provider with substantial rate of interests throughout equity capital, private equity and realty. NJF Capital is actually well-known company and a project resources upper arm of NJF Holdings, as a result to operate along with the extremely same business is actually instantly a great proud. She started and press the provider to the following amount and today it is recognized to practically every country on the planet. She failed to cease listed below just, yet she is actually one of the best well-connected, productive business people in every over the planet along with a popular concept that transformative modern technologies in various domain names, including- genomics, digital truth and expert system and also linked with the health care industries to financial framework, surveillance as well as costs material.
A Story of Success: Nicole Junkermann
There are actually numerous popular individualities throughout the globe, but some are in fact the most ideal and committed a great deal of time and initiatives in meeting the demands of people. One such name is Nicole, who is incredibly famous for her incredible work in the market and extremely popular around the planet. Do not understand a lot about her? No fears, below are the complete details-.
She is actually a distinguished personality that is extensively famous as: a business owner Nicole Junkermann. She is actually a widely known person among significant capitalists as well.There are actually amount of achievements she has gained over the little time frame of her success. Sonza was actually the changing action in her lifestyle. Hence she started her experience of successful business owner.
Songza is an app developed to offer playlists to fans that match various setups trusting state of thoughts, opportunity of day, as well as workouts. In 2013, Nicole Junkermann was a piece of a gathering of speculators that enabled Songza to bring up $3.8 thousand, offering it the influence counted on to establish to 5.5 thousand endorsers. In July 2014, Google reported its securing of Songza, for which it paid out an expected $39 thousand. The offer proceeded the impact points of a comparable buy with regard to Apple, that procured an institution known as Beats for $3 billion.
After this she was a financial expert and also formal accomplice in the book. She spent along with substantial firms. After giving substantial perks to the business she functioned for she began her personal projects where she started investing along with big but reputable entrepreneurs. She has been a symbol of excellence for women around the world. Her success makes a massive impression your business filed. Her lifestyle is actually a finding out impressive journey which one needs to find out and influence their lifestyles from.
Nicole Junkermann: Woman on The Role.
Ladies are actually no lower than men. Because ages women are dealing with for equal rights in culture. Though point disappear similar. Females have their vocal which is being actually heard and also she is actually generating past history. Women are everywhere right now days whether it is company or national politics or even literary works etc
. Nicole Junkermann is actually a London-based business person, monetary professional and organisation trailblazer focused essentially on the hybrid in between the media and technology regions. She is amongst yet another party of well-associated, efficient business individuals who allow that electronic improvement as well as preliminary advancement will definitely make success in regions from medication to instruction, and also coming from retailing to costs element utilization.
Her shot in the darks are actually assisted due to the sentence that the hoping for top quality material hangs on via, even while development modifies the method in which we locate, spend and discuss it. As fabricated knowledge as well as enhanced reality modify our association along with the computerized world soon, she is actually currently dealing with the business individuals that will definitely identify these cultivating endeavors.
She began her role in 1998 as a prime fan of volleyball gaming gateway Winamax. Observing its deal in 2001, she put sources in to recently established Infront Sports and Media. Alongside yet another significant real estate investor, she developed Infront right into one of the planet's driving games media civil rights organizations. Infront is currently possessed by the Dalian Wanda Group.
Due to the fact that 2011, Nicole has actually gone back to her groundworks in innovative advancement nonetheless with a certain limelight on conditions in areas featuring use freedom, genomics, increased fact, artificial consciousness and also superior substance. Through NJF Capital, she has concerns in a scope of companies, among all of them Emoticast, Jobbio, Grabyo as well as Sentient. 3 of her preliminary ventures, Songza, Dollar Shave Club and RelatelQ, were actually purchased by Google, Unilever as well as Salesforce, separately. In June 2017, Nicole was picked co-seat of Magnum Global Ventures, nearby Thomas Dworzak. She is additionally a speculator in the outstanding photo organization.
Acquire Inspiration coming from the Life of Nicole Junkermann.
A business person is an excellent means to create your desire happen, but when you would like to be an entrepreneur, then you must put a considerable amount of effort. When you have a desire to be actually an entrepreneur, after that you should must go through the struggling life of the successful entrepreneur, it will definitely motivate and motivate you to carry out something excellent. You must need to examine the information of Nicole Junkermann. Who she is, what she performs, exactly how she work and much more, there are many things that folks need to understand. Thus, she is a self created, international real estate investor as well as business person, she constructed her very own business. She developed and also marketed media business along with she committed in disruptive, cutting upper hand technologies firms along with that, she elevated her personal passion in sporting activities private equity fund.
She did a ton of problem as well as offered numerous profile pages to obtain excellence in her life. She was one of the investors of Infront Sports as well as Media business, it is a company that provides the sporting activities and also media rights monitoring. In 2008, she acted as a shareholder in this company. While in 2005, she started an exclusive equity organization that is actually, United in Sports, which was actually concentrated on the media and also sports assets in Europe and also Asia. Moreover, in 2013, Nicole Junkermann belonged of the group of real estate investors in Songza, it is actually an application which is specially created to provide playlists as well as in 2014, the organization was actually acquired. There are actually more information regarding her qualified life, alongside her qualified lifestyle, she is additionally managing her individual lifestyle well. She is a mommy of one lovely little girl. She is living a satisfied everyday life along with spouse as well as child while taking pleasure in the live of entrepreneurship as properly as an investor.
Nicole Junkermann Served Different Profiles.
Are you hoping to come to be an entrepreneur? Do you wish to be an excellent real estate investor? If indeed, at that point you need to need to check out the details about the prominent, reputed and knowledgeable business person and client much like Nicole Junkermann. She is a personal brought in international client and also business owner. She is a German business person today resides in London. As she is located in London, yet she is an audio speaker of 6 languages along with the adventure of lifestyle and also operating in the USA, Asia, as well as Europe. In early time, she purchased three firms, which was obtained due to the sizable companies as well as now the price of those business are incredibly higher. She is actually additionally a creator of NJF Holdings, it is an international and economic expenditure business with comprehensive rate of interest all over private equity, property, and also financial backing.
NJF Capital functions as a bridge between the typical organisation and also the industry specifying innovations. NJF funding is the funding arm of NJF holdings. Nicole Junkermann is one of the distinguished as well as wonderful entrepreneurs along with a typical sight that the transformative technologies in places like virtual truth, genomics as well as expert system that will certainly make the major developments in the economic infrastructure, premium information, safety and medical care. If you would like to know more about her, at that point it will certainly be excellent to examine her account, thus you will understand that how she functions and also improved her working life as a business person as well as financier. You will quickly receive the details of her on the web, she actually functioned very hard to accomplish the best cause her lifestyle as well as along with her initiatives and also abilities, she is right now a distinguished business owner. When a person has a goal to perform something, at that point it is necessary to create the target as well as job as needed. Right now, it is actually verification that ladies can possibly do anything as well as in any sort of industry.
Nicole Junkermann- A Great Entrepreneur.
Many individuals presume that gals can easily do minimal traits, but there are a lot of females worldwide, who change individuals assumption through carrying out the most effective things in their lifestyle. Along with their efforts, they pushed herself and also accomplish effectiveness. It will certainly be excellent to find out about the effective women's' lifestyle. There are actually lots of business owners that are helping the betterment of society and also one of all of them is actually Nicole Junkermann. In business planet, lots of folks recognize about her since she is actually a self-made client as well as business owner who created her career by her own efforts as well as without any sort of help. She has developed and marketed media organisation, alongside that she invested in various cutting advantage specialist companies in addition to she has raised her own sporting activities private equity fund. She is actually an ideas for numerous brand new business owners, lots of people are actually observing her step to coming to be a prosperous real estate investor and business owner.
Nicole Junkermann is coming from London, but she is an audio speaker of six languages with the expertise of functioning and also living in different locations. She lived in the USA, Asia, and also Europe. She is warm of meeting individuals, and she is likewise an owner of NJF holdings. NJF holdings is actually a global money management as well as investment firm along with substantial enthusiasm all over personal equity, true property, and equity capital. If you additionally have an aspiration to come to be a great and also productive investor, at that point you need to have to review her lifestyle as well as her tale, it will certainly stimulate you a great deal and you may observe her approach to become a prosperous individual in lifestyle. She really did not confine herself with the financial investment, yet she also took a rate of interest in enhanced technology since she wants to be actually a component of the present pattern to live a far better and productive life.
Nicole Junkermann is actually a Speaker of Six Languages.
At presents, there are actually lots of people who intend to perform their own business and people who perform their very own business or set their very own service, they are actually referred to as the business owner. Worldwide, there are actually a lot of entrepreneurs that made their name with great and also a fantastic idea. Everyone possesses a goal to come to be a business person, so if you are actually also seeming a business person at that point you may examine the particulars of Nicole Junkermann. She is an entrepreneur as well as capitalist, who is actually functioning effectively in the technician planet. Along with her work and also capabilities, she created a character available. Although, she is actually a creator of one firm too. If you also intend to reside your aspiration after that you should must chase it and also operate accordingly to live the dream.
At presents, ladies are actually prospering in every sector and also being actually as an entrepreneur, they are performing effectively and also offering competitors to males. If you desire to find an example, after that Nicole Junkermann is the greatest example. You can easily learn more about her to acquire the ideas for prospering within this globe of innovation. She is certainly not merely a business person, however she is actually likewise an outstanding real estate investor who are actually putting in really wisely. She is actually generally coming from London, however she manages to communicate six languages by means of her adventure. She stayed and functioned in Asia, Europe, as well as the USA. She is actually additionally a creator of NJF Holdings, it is a funding provides as a link between the industry-defining innovations as well as the conventional business. Her individual lifestyle is also great as her expert life, she has a beautiful little girl that was actually born in December 2017. And also as a firm creator, she invests and also provides a successful remedy.
Learn About Nicole Junkermann Professional Life.
There are several entrepreneurs who are actually leading on the planet, they are actually prospering in their job and life, along with folks are chasing all of them to become like all of them. If you are likewise hoping to be actually a business person and intend to chase an individual to create your dream true, after that you have to must understand regarding Nicole Junkermann. She has a really interesting qualified life, she began her career as a co-founder of Winamax (soccer gaming site), observing its sale, she bought the start-up Infront sports as well as media, it is sporting activities media liberties firm. As she is certainly not the just an entrepreneur, she is also an excellent real estate investor. In the onset, she spent in three locations that consist of RelatelQ, Songza and also Dollar Shave Club. Currently, RelatelQ is actually acquired through Salesforce, Songza is actually obtained through Google and also Dollar Shave Club is actually gotten by Unilever.
Many individuals learn about Nicole Junkermann, while there are actually a lot of such folks at the same time that do not learn about her. So, she is a German business owner and also real estate investor, she born in Dusseldorf, yet currently she is actually based in London. She is actually a founder of NJF Holdings that likewise consist of the NJF Private Equity, The JJ Collection, NJF Real Estate, and also NJF Capital. She makes the investments in the deep-seated technician firms like OWKIN, Blockchain and also more. And also in the early phase, when bought 3 companies and they are currently obtained through sizable companies. On top of that, in 2008, she also served as the Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of Infront, which essentially sold to Bridgepoint, a personal equity company based in Europe. The NFJ Capital works as a bridge in between the tradition small business owner and the industry-defining technologies. She learns about the relevance of the most up to date technologies, so she work correctly. You may find out more particulars regarding her to recognize additional concerning her life.
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By now many have heard of Amazon’s maximum audacious try to shake up the retail global, the cashless, cashierless Go store. Walk in, seize what you need, and stroll out. I were given an opportunity to do exactly that not too long ago, in addition to pick out the mind of one in every of its leader architects. (The store, in downtown Seattle, is now open to the general public.)
My aim moving into was once to check out to shoplift one thing and catch those complacent Amazon varieties snoozing. But it was transparent after I went in that this wasn’t going to be an choice. I used to be by no means greater than a foot or two from an Amazon PR rep, and as Dilip Kumar, the initiatives VP of Technology, satisfied me, they’d already equipped towards such crude assaults on their machine.
As you may have observed within the promo video, you input the store (heretofore obtainable to Amazon workers most effective) thru a gate that opens while you scan a QR code generated by way of the Amazon Go app for your telephone. At this second (neatly, in truth the instant you entered or possibly even sooner than) your account is related together with your bodily presence and cameras start monitoring your each transfer.
The many, many cameras.
I puzzled when the theory of Amazon’s cashierless store was once first proposed how it might be completed. Cameras at the ceiling, in the back of the show circumstances, on pedestals? What sort? Proximity and weight sensors, face popularity? Where would this all be collated and processed?
Amazon’s means wasn’t as complicated as I anticipated, or somewhat now not in the best way I anticipated. Mainly the machine is made up of dozens and dozens of digital camera gadgets fastened to the ceiling, masking and improving each sq. inch of the store from more than one angles. I’d wager there are possibly 100 or so within the store I visited, which was once in regards to the measurement of an bizarre bodega or fuel station mart.
These are bizarre RGB cameras, customized made with forums within the enclosure to perform a little fundamental grunt pc imaginative and prescient paintings, probably such things as movement detection, fundamental object identity, and so forth.
They’re augmented by way of separate depth-sensing cameras (the use of a time-of-flight method, or so I understood from Kumar) that mix into the background like the remainder, all matte black.
The pictures captured from those cameras are despatched to a central processing unit (for lack of a higher time period, now not figuring out precisely what it’s), which does the true paintings of briefly and as it should be figuring out other folks within the store and gadgets being picked up or held. Picking one thing up provides it in your “virtual shopping cart,” and you’ll pop it in a tote or buying groceries bag as speedy as you prefer. No want to dangle it up for the machine to look.
This is the place the name of the game sauce is, Kumar advised me, and I consider him. As banal an issue as it’s going to appear to decide which in a similar fashion dressed individual picked up which just about equivalent yogurt cup, it’s very tricky to get proper on the pace and accuracy degree wanted with a purpose to base a complete trade on it.
A scholar, finally, with the assets to be had nowadays, may almost definitely design a model of this store in a couple of weeks that may paintings 80 % of the time. But to get it proper 99.nine % of the time, frictionlessly and in an instant, is a problem that calls for quite a lot of paintings.
Notably, there’s no facial popularity used (I requested). Amazon possibly sensed early on that this could earn them rebuke from privacy-conscious customers, regardless that the theory of the ones folks coming to this store moves me as not going. Instead, the machine makes use of different visible cues and watches for continuity between cameras — you’re by no means now not in sight of a lens, so it’s simple for the machine to look a consumer transfer from one digital camera to any other and make the relationship.
Should there be a technical downside with a digital camera or it will get sauce on its lens one way or the other, the machine doesn’t wreck down solely. It’s been examined with cameras lacking, regardless that naturally it wouldn’t be lengthy sooner than a substitute is installed position and the machine re-re-calibrates.
In addition to the cameras, there are weight sensors within the cabinets, and the machine is acutely aware of each merchandise’s actual weight — so no looking to seize two yogurts without delay and palm the second one, as I regarded as attempting. You could possibly do it Indiana Jones taste, with an appropriate quantity of sand in a sack, however that’s extra effort than maximum shoplifters are prepared to position out.
And, as Kumar famous to me, most of the people aren’t shoplifters, and the machine is designed round most of the people. Building a machine that assumes sick intent somewhat than simply detecting discrepancies isn’t at all times a just right design selection.
The error price is also low sufficient that Amazon doesn’t care, however that didn’t forestall it from going down to anyone at the first day of operation:
This form of factor occurs repeatedly in common shops, issues being mis-scanned or skipped, or outright stolen — a certain quantity of “lossage” is predicted. So the occasional fancy yogurt plus or minus gained’t wreck the trade type, nevertheless it’s now not a just right search for Amazon Go’s first day. (As if to self-flagellate for such errors, Amazon doesn’t in point of fact actually have a method of rectifying those errors, and should you organize to get out with out paying for one thing, the corporate formally doesn’t care. You can go back stuff should you trade your thoughts or purchase an excessive amount of, regardless that.)
There is in truth a human within the loop must the machine in finding itself in a bind, however Kumar stated this was once uncommon sufficient that it infrequently had to be regarded as. He additionally stated that the trouble of tracking the store doesn’t build up with sq. photos, regardless that in fact you’ll want extra cameras and extra processing energy.
It’s additionally been examined with critical crowds; we have been there all over a sluggish time within the mid-afternoon, however in a while sooner than that was once the lunch rush, they advised me, when dozens somewhat than a handful of folks may well be discovered strolling out and in with out doing anything else greater than appearing their telephone to a sensor on the front.
There might not be cashiers, however there are team of workers: stockers who fill up stock; an ID checker (and erstwhile sommelier I’m certain) within the wine and beer segment, and cooks within the again throwing in combination contemporary sandwiches and meal kits. Someone additionally hovers within the front house to lend a hand folks with the app, solution questions, and take returns.
The variety was once basically grab-and-go lunches and snacks, with the standard handful of home items you seize on the bodega at the method house. Prices have been what you’d be expecting at a grocery store somewhat than a convenience store, regardless that.
As for the predicted Amazon gambits that leverage its present houses and hooks, few are to be discovered. The app is self-contained, and your purchases are tracked there somewhat than for your “main” Amazon account. Prime contributors don’t get decrease costs. Whole Foods has a little bit segment of its personal however there’s no broader partnership (and no plans to transform any of the ones shops to Go, regardless that I will be able to’t believe why now not).
Overall I’m inspired with the seamlessness of the machine, and I will be able to see this stuff effectively running right here and there.
On the philosophical aspect, I’m , in fact — a convenience store you simply stroll out of is a pleasant masks at the face of a extremely debatable software of generation: ubiquitous non-public surveillance.
It’s slightly overkill, I feel, to interchange a checker or self-checkout stand with 100 cameras that unblinkingly document each tiny motion. What’s to achieve? 20 or 30 seconds of your time again? Lack of convenience has infrequently been a criticism for this marketplace — it’s proper there within the title: “convenience store.”
Like such a lot of tactics firms are making use of tech as of late, this turns out to me an immense quantity of ingenuity and assets getting used to “solve” one thing that few folks care about and less nonetheless imagine an issue. As a technical fulfillment it’s outstanding, however on the other hand, so is a robot canine.
The store works — that a lot I will be able to say for it. Where Amazon will take it from right here I couldn’t say, nor would somebody reply meaningfully to my questions alongside those traces. Amazon Go can be open to the general public beginning this week, however whether or not somebody will in finding it to be anything else greater than a novelty is but to be observed.
Inside Amazon’s surveillance-powered, no-checkout convenience store – TechCrunch
By now many have heard of Amazon’s maximum audacious try to shake up the retail global, the cashless, cashierless Go store.
Inside Amazon’s surveillance-powered, no-checkout convenience store – TechCrunch
By now many have heard of Amazon’s maximum audacious try to shake up the retail global, the cashless, cashierless Go store.
Inside Amazon’s surveillance-powered, no-checkout convenience store – TechCrunch By now many have heard of Amazon’s maximum audacious try to shake up the retail global, the cashless, cashierless Go store.
0 notes
Text
By now many have heard of Amazon’s maximum audacious try to shake up the retail global, the cashless, cashierless Go store. Walk in, seize what you need, and stroll out. I were given an opportunity to do exactly that not too long ago, in addition to pick out the mind of one in every of its leader architects. (The store, in downtown Seattle, is now open to the general public.)
My aim moving into was once to check out to shoplift one thing and catch those complacent Amazon varieties snoozing. But it was transparent after I went in that this wasn’t going to be an choice. I used to be by no means greater than a foot or two from an Amazon PR rep, and as Dilip Kumar, the initiatives VP of Technology, satisfied me, they’d already equipped towards such crude assaults on their machine.
As you may have observed within the promo video, you input the store (heretofore obtainable to Amazon workers most effective) thru a gate that opens while you scan a QR code generated by way of the Amazon Go app for your telephone. At this second (neatly, in truth the instant you entered or possibly even sooner than) your account is related together with your bodily presence and cameras start monitoring your each transfer.
The many, many cameras.
I puzzled when the theory of Amazon’s cashierless store was once first proposed how it might be completed. Cameras at the ceiling, in the back of the show circumstances, on pedestals? What sort? Proximity and weight sensors, face popularity? Where would this all be collated and processed?
Amazon’s means wasn’t as complicated as I anticipated, or somewhat now not in the best way I anticipated. Mainly the machine is made up of dozens and dozens of digital camera gadgets fastened to the ceiling, masking and improving each sq. inch of the store from more than one angles. I’d wager there are possibly 100 or so within the store I visited, which was once in regards to the measurement of an bizarre bodega or fuel station mart.
These are bizarre RGB cameras, customized made with forums within the enclosure to perform a little fundamental grunt pc imaginative and prescient paintings, probably such things as movement detection, fundamental object identity, and so forth.
They’re augmented by way of separate depth-sensing cameras (the use of a time-of-flight method, or so I understood from Kumar) that mix into the background like the remainder, all matte black.
The pictures captured from those cameras are despatched to a central processing unit (for lack of a higher time period, now not figuring out precisely what it’s), which does the true paintings of briefly and as it should be figuring out other folks within the store and gadgets being picked up or held. Picking one thing up provides it in your “virtual shopping cart,” and you’ll pop it in a tote or buying groceries bag as speedy as you prefer. No want to dangle it up for the machine to look.
This is the place the name of the game sauce is, Kumar advised me, and I consider him. As banal an issue as it’s going to appear to decide which in a similar fashion dressed individual picked up which just about equivalent yogurt cup, it’s very tricky to get proper on the pace and accuracy degree wanted with a purpose to base a complete trade on it.
A scholar, finally, with the assets to be had nowadays, may almost definitely design a model of this store in a couple of weeks that may paintings 80 % of the time. But to get it proper 99.nine % of the time, frictionlessly and in an instant, is a problem that calls for quite a lot of paintings.
Notably, there’s no facial popularity used (I requested). Amazon possibly sensed early on that this could earn them rebuke from privacy-conscious customers, regardless that the theory of the ones folks coming to this store moves me as not going. Instead, the machine makes use of different visible cues and watches for continuity between cameras — you’re by no means now not in sight of a lens, so it’s simple for the machine to look a consumer transfer from one digital camera to any other and make the relationship.
Should there be a technical downside with a digital camera or it will get sauce on its lens one way or the other, the machine doesn’t wreck down solely. It’s been examined with cameras lacking, regardless that naturally it wouldn’t be lengthy sooner than a substitute is installed position and the machine re-re-calibrates.
In addition to the cameras, there are weight sensors within the cabinets, and the machine is acutely aware of each merchandise’s actual weight — so no looking to seize two yogurts without delay and palm the second one, as I regarded as attempting. You could possibly do it Indiana Jones taste, with an appropriate quantity of sand in a sack, however that’s extra effort than maximum shoplifters are prepared to position out.
And, as Kumar famous to me, most of the people aren’t shoplifters, and the machine is designed round most of the people. Building a machine that assumes sick intent somewhat than simply detecting discrepancies isn’t at all times a just right design selection.
The error price is also low sufficient that Amazon doesn’t care, however that didn’t forestall it from going down to anyone at the first day of operation:
This form of factor occurs repeatedly in common shops, issues being mis-scanned or skipped, or outright stolen — a certain quantity of “lossage” is predicted. So the occasional fancy yogurt plus or minus gained’t wreck the trade type, nevertheless it’s now not a just right search for Amazon Go’s first day. (As if to self-flagellate for such errors, Amazon doesn’t in point of fact actually have a method of rectifying those errors, and should you organize to get out with out paying for one thing, the corporate formally doesn’t care. You can go back stuff should you trade your thoughts or purchase an excessive amount of, regardless that.)
There is in truth a human within the loop must the machine in finding itself in a bind, however Kumar stated this was once uncommon sufficient that it infrequently had to be regarded as. He additionally stated that the trouble of tracking the store doesn’t build up with sq. photos, regardless that in fact you’ll want extra cameras and extra processing energy.
It’s additionally been examined with critical crowds; we have been there all over a sluggish time within the mid-afternoon, however in a while sooner than that was once the lunch rush, they advised me, when dozens somewhat than a handful of folks may well be discovered strolling out and in with out doing anything else greater than appearing their telephone to a sensor on the front.
There might not be cashiers, however there are team of workers: stockers who fill up stock; an ID checker (and erstwhile sommelier I’m certain) within the wine and beer segment, and cooks within the again throwing in combination contemporary sandwiches and meal kits. Someone additionally hovers within the front house to lend a hand folks with the app, solution questions, and take returns.
The variety was once basically grab-and-go lunches and snacks, with the standard handful of home items you seize on the bodega at the method house. Prices have been what you’d be expecting at a grocery store somewhat than a convenience store, regardless that.
As for the predicted Amazon gambits that leverage its present houses and hooks, few are to be discovered. The app is self-contained, and your purchases are tracked there somewhat than for your “main” Amazon account. Prime contributors don’t get decrease costs. Whole Foods has a little bit segment of its personal however there’s no broader partnership (and no plans to transform any of the ones shops to Go, regardless that I will be able to’t believe why now not).
Overall I’m inspired with the seamlessness of the machine, and I will be able to see this stuff effectively running right here and there.
On the philosophical aspect, I’m , in fact — a convenience store you simply stroll out of is a pleasant masks at the face of a extremely debatable software of generation: ubiquitous non-public surveillance.
It’s slightly overkill, I feel, to interchange a checker or self-checkout stand with 100 cameras that unblinkingly document each tiny motion. What’s to achieve? 20 or 30 seconds of your time again? Lack of convenience has infrequently been a criticism for this marketplace — it’s proper there within the title: “convenience store.”
Like such a lot of tactics firms are making use of tech as of late, this turns out to me an immense quantity of ingenuity and assets getting used to “solve” one thing that few folks care about and less nonetheless imagine an issue. As a technical fulfillment it’s outstanding, however on the other hand, so is a robot canine.
The store works — that a lot I will be able to say for it. Where Amazon will take it from right here I couldn’t say, nor would somebody reply meaningfully to my questions alongside those traces. Amazon Go can be open to the general public beginning this week, however whether or not somebody will in finding it to be anything else greater than a novelty is but to be observed.
Inside Amazon’s surveillance-powered, no-checkout convenience store – TechCrunch
By now many have heard of Amazon’s maximum audacious try to shake up the retail global, the cashless, cashierless Go store.
Inside Amazon’s surveillance-powered, no-checkout convenience store – TechCrunch By now many have heard of Amazon’s maximum audacious try to shake up the retail global, the cashless, cashierless Go store.
0 notes
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By now many have heard of Amazon’s maximum audacious try to shake up the retail global, the cashless, cashierless Go store. Walk in, seize what you need, and stroll out. I were given an opportunity to do exactly that not too long ago, in addition to pick out the mind of one in every of its leader architects. (The store, in downtown Seattle, is now open to the general public.)
My aim moving into was once to check out to shoplift one thing and catch those complacent Amazon varieties snoozing. But it was transparent after I went in that this wasn’t going to be an choice. I used to be by no means greater than a foot or two from an Amazon PR rep, and as Dilip Kumar, the initiatives VP of Technology, satisfied me, they’d already equipped towards such crude assaults on their machine.
As you may have observed within the promo video, you input the store (heretofore obtainable to Amazon workers most effective) thru a gate that opens while you scan a QR code generated by way of the Amazon Go app for your telephone. At this second (neatly, in truth the instant you entered or possibly even sooner than) your account is related together with your bodily presence and cameras start monitoring your each transfer.
The many, many cameras.
I puzzled when the theory of Amazon’s cashierless store was once first proposed how it might be completed. Cameras at the ceiling, in the back of the show circumstances, on pedestals? What sort? Proximity and weight sensors, face popularity? Where would this all be collated and processed?
Amazon’s means wasn’t as complicated as I anticipated, or somewhat now not in the best way I anticipated. Mainly the machine is made up of dozens and dozens of digital camera gadgets fastened to the ceiling, masking and improving each sq. inch of the store from more than one angles. I’d wager there are possibly 100 or so within the store I visited, which was once in regards to the measurement of an bizarre bodega or fuel station mart.
These are bizarre RGB cameras, customized made with forums within the enclosure to perform a little fundamental grunt pc imaginative and prescient paintings, probably such things as movement detection, fundamental object identity, and so forth.
They’re augmented by way of separate depth-sensing cameras (the use of a time-of-flight method, or so I understood from Kumar) that mix into the background like the remainder, all matte black.
The pictures captured from those cameras are despatched to a central processing unit (for lack of a higher time period, now not figuring out precisely what it’s), which does the true paintings of briefly and as it should be figuring out other folks within the store and gadgets being picked up or held. Picking one thing up provides it in your “virtual shopping cart,” and you’ll pop it in a tote or buying groceries bag as speedy as you prefer. No want to dangle it up for the machine to look.
This is the place the name of the game sauce is, Kumar advised me, and I consider him. As banal an issue as it’s going to appear to decide which in a similar fashion dressed individual picked up which just about equivalent yogurt cup, it’s very tricky to get proper on the pace and accuracy degree wanted with a purpose to base a complete trade on it.
A scholar, finally, with the assets to be had nowadays, may almost definitely design a model of this store in a couple of weeks that may paintings 80 % of the time. But to get it proper 99.nine % of the time, frictionlessly and in an instant, is a problem that calls for quite a lot of paintings.
Notably, there’s no facial popularity used (I requested). Amazon possibly sensed early on that this could earn them rebuke from privacy-conscious customers, regardless that the theory of the ones folks coming to this store moves me as not going. Instead, the machine makes use of different visible cues and watches for continuity between cameras — you’re by no means now not in sight of a lens, so it’s simple for the machine to look a consumer transfer from one digital camera to any other and make the relationship.
Should there be a technical downside with a digital camera or it will get sauce on its lens one way or the other, the machine doesn’t wreck down solely. It’s been examined with cameras lacking, regardless that naturally it wouldn’t be lengthy sooner than a substitute is installed position and the machine re-re-calibrates.
In addition to the cameras, there are weight sensors within the cabinets, and the machine is acutely aware of each merchandise’s actual weight — so no looking to seize two yogurts without delay and palm the second one, as I regarded as attempting. You could possibly do it Indiana Jones taste, with an appropriate quantity of sand in a sack, however that’s extra effort than maximum shoplifters are prepared to position out.
And, as Kumar famous to me, most of the people aren’t shoplifters, and the machine is designed round most of the people. Building a machine that assumes sick intent somewhat than simply detecting discrepancies isn’t at all times a just right design selection.
The error price is also low sufficient that Amazon doesn’t care, however that didn’t forestall it from going down to anyone at the first day of operation:
This form of factor occurs repeatedly in common shops, issues being mis-scanned or skipped, or outright stolen — a certain quantity of “lossage” is predicted. So the occasional fancy yogurt plus or minus gained’t wreck the trade type, nevertheless it’s now not a just right search for Amazon Go’s first day. (As if to self-flagellate for such errors, Amazon doesn’t in point of fact actually have a method of rectifying those errors, and should you organize to get out with out paying for one thing, the corporate formally doesn’t care. You can go back stuff should you trade your thoughts or purchase an excessive amount of, regardless that.)
There is in truth a human within the loop must the machine in finding itself in a bind, however Kumar stated this was once uncommon sufficient that it infrequently had to be regarded as. He additionally stated that the trouble of tracking the store doesn’t build up with sq. photos, regardless that in fact you’ll want extra cameras and extra processing energy.
It’s additionally been examined with critical crowds; we have been there all over a sluggish time within the mid-afternoon, however in a while sooner than that was once the lunch rush, they advised me, when dozens somewhat than a handful of folks may well be discovered strolling out and in with out doing anything else greater than appearing their telephone to a sensor on the front.
There might not be cashiers, however there are team of workers: stockers who fill up stock; an ID checker (and erstwhile sommelier I’m certain) within the wine and beer segment, and cooks within the again throwing in combination contemporary sandwiches and meal kits. Someone additionally hovers within the front house to lend a hand folks with the app, solution questions, and take returns.
The variety was once basically grab-and-go lunches and snacks, with the standard handful of home items you seize on the bodega at the method house. Prices have been what you’d be expecting at a grocery store somewhat than a convenience store, regardless that.
As for the predicted Amazon gambits that leverage its present houses and hooks, few are to be discovered. The app is self-contained, and your purchases are tracked there somewhat than for your “main” Amazon account. Prime contributors don’t get decrease costs. Whole Foods has a little bit segment of its personal however there’s no broader partnership (and no plans to transform any of the ones shops to Go, regardless that I will be able to’t believe why now not).
Overall I’m inspired with the seamlessness of the machine, and I will be able to see this stuff effectively running right here and there.
On the philosophical aspect, I’m , in fact — a convenience store you simply stroll out of is a pleasant masks at the face of a extremely debatable software of generation: ubiquitous non-public surveillance.
It’s slightly overkill, I feel, to interchange a checker or self-checkout stand with 100 cameras that unblinkingly document each tiny motion. What’s to achieve? 20 or 30 seconds of your time again? Lack of convenience has infrequently been a criticism for this marketplace — it’s proper there within the title: “convenience store.”
Like such a lot of tactics firms are making use of tech as of late, this turns out to me an immense quantity of ingenuity and assets getting used to “solve” one thing that few folks care about and less nonetheless imagine an issue. As a technical fulfillment it’s outstanding, however on the other hand, so is a robot canine.
The store works — that a lot I will be able to say for it. Where Amazon will take it from right here I couldn’t say, nor would somebody reply meaningfully to my questions alongside those traces. Amazon Go can be open to the general public beginning this week, however whether or not somebody will in finding it to be anything else greater than a novelty is but to be observed.
Inside Amazon’s surveillance-powered, no-checkout convenience store – TechCrunch By now many have heard of Amazon’s maximum audacious try to shake up the retail global, the cashless, cashierless Go store.
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Mueller’s Fruit of the Poisonous Tree
By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Elizabeth Price Foley
June 22, 2018, in the Wall Street Journal
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation may face a serious legal obstacle: It is tainted by antecedent political bias. The June 14 report from Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, unearthed a pattern of anti-Trump bias by high-ranking officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Some of their communications, the report says, were “not only indicative of a biased state of mind but imply a willingness to take action to impact a presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.” Although Mr. Horowitz could not definitively ascertain whether this bias “directly affected” specific FBI actions in the Hillary Clinton email investigation, it nonetheless affects the legality of the Trump-Russia collusion inquiry, code-named Crossfire Hurricane.
Crossfire was launched only months before the 2016 election. Its FBI progenitors—the same ones who had investigated Mrs. Clinton—deployed at least one informant to probe Trump campaign advisers, obtained Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court wiretap warrants, issued national security letters to gather records, and unmasked the identities of campaign officials who were surveilled. They also repeatedly leaked investigative information.
Mr. Horowitz is separately scrutinizing Crossfire and isn’t expected to finish for months. But the current report reveals that FBI officials displayed not merely an appearance of bias against Donald Trump, but animus bordering on hatred. Peter Strzok, who led both the Clinton and Trump investigations, confidently assuaged a colleague’s fear that Mr. Trump would become president: “No he won’t. We’ll stop it.” An unnamed FBI lawyer assigned to Crossfire told a colleague he was “devastated” and “numb” after Mr. Trump won, while declaring to another FBI attorney: “Viva le resistance.”
The report highlights the FBI’s failure to act promptly upon discovering that Anthony Weiner’s laptop contained thousands of Mrs. Clinton’s emails. Investigators justified the delay by citing the “higher priority” of Crossfire. But Mr. Horowitz writes: “We did not have confidence that Strzok’s decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on [the] investigative lead discovered on the Weiner laptop was free from bias.”
Similarly, although Mr. Horowitz found no evidence that then-FBI Director James Comey was trying to influence the election, Mr. Comey did make decisions based on political considerations. He told the inspector general that his election-eve decision to reopen the Clinton email investigation was motivated by a desire to protect her assumed presidency’s legitimacy.
The inspector general wrote that Mr. Strzok’s text messages “created the appearance that investigative decisions were impacted by bias or improper considerations.” The report adds, importantly, that “most of the text messages raising such questions pertained to the Russia investigation.” Given how biases ineluctably shape behavior, these facts create a strong inference that by squelching the Clinton investigation and building a narrative of Trump-Russia collusion, a group of government officials sought to bolster Mrs. Clinton’s electoral chances and, if the unthinkable happened, obtain an insurance policy to cripple the Trump administration with accusations of illegitimacy.
What does this have to do with Mr. Mueller, who was appointed in May 2017 after President Trump fired Mr. Comey? The inspector general concludes that the pervasive bias “cast a cloud over the FBI investigations to which these employees were assigned,” including Crossfire. And if Crossfire was politically motivated, then its culmination, the appointment of a special counsel, inherited the taint. All special-counsel activities—investigations, plea deals, subpoenas, reports, indictments and convictions—are fruit of a poisonous tree, byproducts of a violation of due process. That Mr. Mueller and his staff had nothing to do with Crossfire’s origin offers no cure.
When the government deprives a person of life, liberty or property, it is required to use fundamentally fair processes. The Supreme Court has made clear that when governmental action “shocks the conscience,” it violates due process. Such conduct includes investigative or prosecutorial efforts that appear, under the totality of the circumstances, to be motivated by corruption, bias or entrapment.
In U.S. v. Russell (1973), the justices observed: “We may someday be presented with a situation in which the conduct of law enforcement agents is so outrageous that due process principles would absolutely bar the government from invoking judicial processes to obtain a conviction.” It didn’t take long. In Blackledge v. Perry (1974), the court concluded that due process was offended by a prosecutor’s “realistic likelihood of ‘vindictiveness’ ” that tainted the “very initiation of proceedings.”
In Young v. U.S. ex rel. Vuitton (1987), the justices held that because prosecutors have “power to employ the full machinery of the state in scrutinizing any given individual . . . we must have assurance that those who would wield this power will be guided solely by their sense of public responsibility for the attainment of justice.” Prosecutors must be “disinterested” and make “dispassionate assessments,” free from any personal bias.
In Williams v. Pennsylvania (2016), the court held that a state judge’s potential bias violated due process because he had played a role, a quarter-century earlier, in prosecuting the death-row inmate whose habeas corpus petition he was hearing. The passage of time and involvement of others do not vitiate the taint but heighten “the need for objective rules preventing the operation of bias that might otherwise be obscured,” the justices wrote. A single biased individual “might still have an influence that, while not so visible . . . is nevertheless significant.”
In addition to the numerous anti-Trump messages uncovered by the inspector general, there is a strong circumstantial case—including personnel, timing, methods and the absence of evidence—that Crossfire was initiated for political, not national-security, purposes.
It was initiated in defiance of a longstanding Justice Department presumption against investigating campaigns in an election year. And while impartiality is always required, a 2012 memo by then-Attorney General Eric Holder emphasizes that impartiality is “particularly important in an election year,” and “politics must play no role in the decisions of federal prosecutors or investigators regarding any investigations. . . . Law enforcement officers and prosecutors may never select the timing of investigative steps or criminal charges for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.”
Strong evidence of a crime can overcome this policy, as was the case with the bureau’s investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s private email server, which began more than a year before the 2016 election. But Crossfire was not a criminal investigation. It was a counterintelligence investigation predicated on the notion that Russia could be colluding with the Trump campaign. There appears to have been no discernible evidence of Trump-Russia collusion at the time Crossfire was launched, further reinforcing the notion that it was initiated “for the purpose” of affecting the presidential election.
The chief evidence of collusion is the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s servers. But nothing in the public record suggests the Trump campaign aided that effort. The collusion narrative therefore hinges on the more generic assertion that Russia aimed to help Mr. Trump’s election, and that the Trump campaign reciprocated by embracing pro-Russian policies. Yet despite massive surveillance and investigation, there’s still no public evidence of any such exchange—only that Russia attempted to sow political discord by undermining Mrs. Clinton and to a lesser extent Mr. Trump.
Some members of the Trump team interacted with Russians and advocated dovish policies. But so did numerous American political and academic elites, including many Clinton advisers. Presidential campaigns routinely seek opposition research and interact with foreign powers. The Clinton campaign funded the Steele dossier, whose British author paid Russians to dish anti-Trump dirt. The Podesta Group, led by the brother of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, received millions lobbying for Russia’s largest bank and the European Center for a Modern Ukraine, both with deep Kremlin ties. The Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton took millions from Kremlin-connected businesses.
No evidence has emerged of Trump-Russia collusion, and Mr. Mueller has yet to bring collusion-related charges against anyone. Evidence suggests one of his targets, George Papadopoulos, was lured to London, plied with the prospect of Russian information damaging to Mrs. Clinton, and taken to dinner, where he drunkenly bragged that he’d heard about such dirt but never seen it. These circumstances not only fail to suggest Mr. Papadopoulos committed a crime, they reek of entrapment. The source of this information, former Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, admits Mr. Papadopolous never mentioned emails, destroying any reasonable inference of a connection between the DNC hack and the Trump campaign.
Crossfire’s progenitors thus ignored an obvious question: If Russia promised unspecified dirt on Mrs. Clinton but never delivered it, how would that amount to collusion with the Trump campaign? If anything, such behavior suggests an attempt to entice and potentially embarrass Mr. Trump by dangling the prospect of compromising information and getting his aides to jump at it.
Given the paucity of evidence, it’s staggering that the FBI would initiate a counterintelligence investigation, led by politically biased staff, amid a presidential campaign. The aggressive methods and subsequent leaking only strengthen that conclusion. If the FBI sincerely believed Trump associates were Russian targets or agents, the proper response would have been to inform Mr. Trump so that he could protect his campaign and the country.
Mr. Trump’s critics argue that the claim of political bias is belied by the fact that Crossfire was not leaked before the election. In fact, there were vigorous, successful pre-election efforts to publicize the Trump-Russia collusion narrative. Shortly after Crossfire’s launch, CIA Director John Brennan and Mr. Comey briefed Congress, triggering predictable leaking. Christopher Steele and his patrons embarked on a media roadshow, making their dossier something of an open secret in Washington.
On Aug. 29, 2016, the New York Times published a letter to Mr. Comey from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, saying he’d learned of “evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign,” which had “employed a number of individuals with significant and disturbing ties to Russia and the Kremlin.” On Aug. 30, the ranking Democratic members of four House committees wrote a public letter to Mr. Comey requesting “that the FBI assess whether connections between Trump campaign officials and Russian interests” may have contributed to the DNC hack so as “to interfere with the U.S. presidential election.” On Sept. 23, Yahoo News’s Michael Isikoff reported the Hill briefings and the Steele dossier’s allegations regarding Carter Page. On Oct. 30, Harry Reid again publicly wrote Mr. Comey: “In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government.”
That these leaking efforts failed to prevent Mr. Trump’s victory, or that Mr. Comey’s ham-fisted interventions might have also hurt Mrs. Clinton’s electoral prospects, does not diminish the legal significance of the anti-Trump bias shown by government officials.
The totality of the circumstances creates the appearance that Crossfire was politically motivated. Since an attempt by federal law enforcement to influence a presidential election “shocks the conscience,” any prosecutorial effort derived from such an outrageous abuse of power must be suppressed. The public will learn more once the inspector general finishes his investigation into Crossfire’s genesis. But given what is now known, due process demands, at a minimum, that the special counsel’s activity be paused. Those affected by Mr. Mueller’s investigation could litigate such an argument in court. One would hope, however, that given the facts either Mr. Mueller himself or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would do it first.
Mr. Rivkin and Ms. Foley practice appellate and constitutional law in Washington. He served at the Justice Department and the White House Counsel’s Office during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. She is a professor at Florida International University College of Law.
Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/muellers-fruit-of-the-poisonous-tree-1529707087
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