Monday, February 14, 2022

I wonder where else this is happening.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/14/cambodia_national_internet_gateway/

Full-time internet surveillance comes to Cambodia this week

Cambodia’s National Internet Gateway comes online this Wednesday, exposing all traffic within the country to pervasive government surveillance.

As The Register reported when the Gateway was announced in January 2021, Cambodia's regime will require all internet service providers and carriers to route their traffic through the Gateway. Revocation of operating licences or frozen bank accounts are among penalties for non-compliance.

All incoming traffic to Cambodia will also be required to pass through the Gateway and be subject to censorship.

Human Rights Watch's analysis of the Gateway suggests it will "allow the government to monitor all internet activities and grant the authorities broad powers to block and disconnect internet connections."



Anonymity is evil? Our experience with vaccine passports is leading us to mandatory identity papers.

https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/emea/eu-vaccine-passport-paves-way-digital-identity-pitfalls-lie-ahead

The EU vaccine passport paves the way for digital identity – but pitfalls lie ahead

Vaccine passports, crucial to managing the pandemic, have led to a rapid advance in digital health technology. The Commissioner for Justice, [Not health? Bob] Didier Reynders said in a statement that they allowed freedom of movement during the pandemic: “Without this extension, we risk having many divergent national systems, and all the confusion and obstacles that this would cause.”

Still, he says: “Digital identity advancement has definitely accelerated because of COVID.” The certificates are, “one of the first, certainly the widest implemented credential we’ve seen.”

In the future, we may need to provide less information about ourselves in order to prove who we are, a shift that would facilitate online dealings in citizenship, banking and shopping and healthcare.



Illustrating that “paying attention” isn’t enough.

https://www.bespacific.com/the-changing-room-illusion/

The Changing Room Illusion

The Changing Room Illusion is an example of “graduate change blindness,” a phenomenon in which observers are unable to notice changes to the world around them when those changes occur gradually. In virtually all prior cases, gradual change blindness is studied by changing individual objects (e.g., a chimney disappearing or a facial expression shifting). While trying to prepare a novel example of this phenomenon for students, I realized that I could change dozens of items change without observers noticing. Overall, this illusion highlights how people may actually perceive and remember far more of the world around them than they intuitively realize.”



Perspective. NFTs must have value if the Tax Men accept them.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60369879

HMRC seizes NFT for first time in £1.4m fraud case

The UK tax authority has seized three Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) as part of a probe into a suspected VAT fraud involving 250 alleged fake companies.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) said three people had been arrested on suspicion of attempting to defraud it of £1.4m.

The authority said it was the first UK law enforcement to seize an NFT.

NFTs are assets in the digital world that can be bought and sold, but which have no tangible form of their own.


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