Work To Do

I was listening to the most recent episode of Malwarebytes' Lock and Code podcast, this one on the topic of "pig butchering." I find the topic of online scams and frauds interesting, but perhaps just as importantly, being in the know can be prophylactic; a lot of what makes people vulnerable to being defrauded is not knowing the red flags that the person they're communicating with isn't who they claim to be, has ulterior motives or both.

But Lock and Code tends to repeat a mantra that I'm not 100% on board with; the idea that "anybody can be scammed." This isn't something that I find to be untrue, but I think the phrasing of it can give people the wrong idea. A lot of pig butchering schemes have a distinct romantic angle, the mark believes that they've encountered someone who genuinely cares for them, and is attempting to help them out; someone who could be a life partner as well as an investment partner.

But that's not a vector that everyone is susceptible to. Some people are going to reject the idea of an attractive stranger suddenly seeming to want a relationship, and others are going to look askance at the "investment opportunity" being offered. That doesn't make such people impervious to all fraud schemes, but it does inoculate them against this one.

I think a better way of putting it is that for any given individual, there is some amount of work that would fool them. And what protects most people is that for these schemes to operate at scale, the amount of work on any initial approach tends to be fairly low. But for more targeted schemes, a fraudster may be willing to put in quite a bit more effort.

This, for me, is the value of podcasts like Lock and Code; the knowledge shared makes low-effort frauds less effective. Because the biggest risk factor for being drawn in by a supposedly misdirected text message from a random stranger is not realizing that this is a common lead-in for all sorts of schemes. Knowing may have been half the battle on the old G.I. Joe cartoons, but when it comes to online fraud schemes, 85 or 90% may be a better number.

Sure, random podcasts, blog posts and news articles are never going to make anyone absolutely impervious to trickery; anyone willing to put in the work may find a way to get to their target. But these resources increase the amount of work that needs to be done, and given the number of schemes where the initial amount of effort is really minimal, that can save a lot of people a lot of grief. 

Petitioning

Conservative Political Action Committee "Let's Go Washington" is attempting to get a pair of initiatives on the ballot that I suspect that many people would describe as anti-transgender. So today, they were at my usual grocery store (which doesn't allow for initiative petitions on the premises) looking for signers. Apparently, they'd telegraphed this move (or word simply got out), as "Washington Families for Freedom" (which sounds like a Conservative group itself) was there urging people to "Decline to Sign."

If I were a betting man, my money would be on WFF to win this one, either now, or once the initiatives make it to the ballot. Washington state is pretty Blue, and Trumpist candidates don't do well in statewide elections. Granted, Let's Go Washington is a PAC, and not a person, but something tells me that they're Trump-aligned enough that it's going to take more than ignoring the wishes of property owners for them to pull this one off.

Yo Ho Ho

The United States has apparently seized a tanker ship carrying oil from Venezuela to Cuba. The stated rationale for this is that the ship has been sanctioned for, at some point in the past, carrying oil from Iran, when that nation was barred from exporting.

I hadn't realized that vehicles could be sanctioned this way. Until now, I'd been under the impression that sanctioned were always leveled against individuals and organizations, whether those were businesses, governments or other entities. I looked at a United Nations page on sanctioned vessels, and it seems the main penalty there is that such ships are to be barred from ports. Which, honestly, seems kind of toothless to me. After all, if someone is sending goods into North Korea, it makes sense that they would simply use ships that had the range to make it all the way there without needing to make any stops along the way.

So in this sense, the Trump Administration seizing the ship makes a certain amount of sense. What I'm a bit dubious about is the fate of the cargo.

Asked what would happen with the oil, Trump said: "We keep it, I guess."

US seizes sanctioned oil tanker off coast of Venezuela, Trump says

Maybe it's just me, but this seems like it's making the United States Coast Guard into commerce raiders at best, and privateers at worse. But maybe there's some rule that says that people ship things on sanctioned vessels at their own risk.

Still, it creates a perverse incentive for President Trump, at least, to wait for sanctioned vessels to load up on cargoes and then seize them, if the cargo is then free for the taking. This is an act that I can see other nations getting in on. Although President Trump does seem to have a real soft spot for anything having to do with petroleum.

But I wonder about the real goal here. It seems fairly clear that this is a means of putting pressure on the Maduro Administration, although knowing President Trump, I'm doubtful that much thought has gone into what happens if it works. There may be an attempt to set up a pro-Washington client government in Caracas, but I'd be willing to bet that any such effort would be doomed to failure, especially if it seemed that the United States was hoping to set up the sort of cheap resource hub that the Bush Administration supposedly had in mind for Iraq. I suspect that Russia and China already have accounts set up to bankroll and anti-American insurgency if President Maduro loses his grip on power.

The United States playing pirate as a way of throwing its weight around will, of course, have consequences. But not for the President or Congressional Republicans. The rest of us will have to wait and see what this most recent act of international bullying costs us. This could be a very expensive tanker's worth of crude, when it's all said and done. 

Crackers

I somewhat understand the drive for "representation" in holiday nutcrackers. Black people are going to walk past the display, and they're going to want to see themselves shown there. But for me, what this really demonstrates is a lack of basically Black stories. And so the Black community winds up having to attach itself to other people's stories.

And I understand that this, in part, is what Kwanzaa is for. It's a Winter Solstice-adjacent holiday for Black people. But I don't know that it really does the job. It has a Hallmark Holiday feel to it, and I've never met a Black person who actually celebrates it. In my own family, it never rated a mention.

And maybe that's the real problem. There isn't a push for something genuinely Black (whatever that would end up meaning) to mark this time of the year. 

Watching

Data Protection Commission Ireland has posted a video online, titled "Pause Before You Post." This was brought to my attention on LinkedIn, which noted its use of AI. The implication was that "Pause Before You Post" was created entirely with AI, but I'm not sure.

In any event, "Pause Before You Post" is a stereotypical "stranger danger" public service announcement. It show a young girl, Ava, and her parents in a shopping mall, while random adults make comments that demonstrate they understand some of the details of Ava's life. The soundtrack could have come from a slasher movie, and Ava spends most of the video looking suitably frightened of the people who address her. And, of course, it's hinted that one of those adults might be a pedophile.

The root cause, of course, is shown to be the parents' social media posts. They've been sharing random details online, and creepy strangers have been reading them. And since these strangers are creepy, they've been speaking to Ava with a familiarity reserved for friends and family members.

I get it, but I wonder if there wasn't a better way to go about it. "Pause before you post" is sound advice, but the underlying message seems to be "treat the details of your child's life as state secrets," rather than "understand who you're sharing things with." Of course, almost anything shared online can become public. After all, someone can simply take it and repost it publicly. But while public posting may be the default, for many platforms, it's not a requirement. If a parent wants to share a self-deprecating post about being late to pick their daughter up from soccer practice, they can simply choose to only share it with online "friends"/contacts. But it's easier to get a message that everyone one doesn't know might be dangerous, or have designs on one's children, into a 40-second video spot. Nuance often takes more time than people feel they have to communicate.

As far as the "AI-ness" of it all, the only thing that really stood out for me was the fact that Ava was the only visible child in the spot. Maybe it's just how modern malls are, but the place seemed really sparsely populated in general. There's nothing odd about that, in and of itself; extras can be expensive, too, and the idea that Ava and her parents are alone in this situation adds to the overall sense of creepiness, but it was something of a reminder that generative automation isn't ready to replace people wholesale yet.

I rate it a "C," for being an effective vehicle for a too-simplistic message. I have a dislike for scare tactics, especially when there are better means of reaching the same goals, but perhaps this is why I'm not in advertising.