Two decades ago, my life changed forever: hearing #BruceSchneier explain that "#security" doesn't exist in the abstract. You can only be secure *from some threat*. A fire alarm won't protect you from burglaries. A condom won't protect you from mass shootings. It seems obvious, but how often do we hear about "security" without any mention of *who* is being made secure, and from *which* threat?
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Cory Doctorow
•https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/13/whose-security/#for-me-not-thee
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/3
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/4
https://memex.craphound.com/2015/02/02/david-graebers-the-utopia-of-rules-on-technology-stupidity-and-the-secret-joys-of-bureaucracy/
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/5
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/6
And those recipients - by definition the poorest and most vulnerable among us - are easy pickings for continuous, ghastly, eye-watering acts of fraud.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/7
That means that fraudsters can - and do - install #skimmers in the point-of-sale terminals used by benefits recipients to withdraw their cash benefits, pay for food using #SNAP (AKA #FoodStamps), and receive other benefits.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/8
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-06-28/ebt-theft-takes-millions-of-dollars-from-the-neediest-americans
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/9
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/10
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/11
Some police agencies are pursuing these criminal gangs and trying figure out who's running them, but the authorities who issue SNAP cards are doing little to nothing to stop the pipeline at their end.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/12
Indeed, that's why every other kind of payment card uses these systems. How is it that these systems were upgraded, while SNAP cards remain in mired in 20th century "glorified hotel room key" territory? Well, as our friends on the right never cease to remind us: #IncentivesMatter.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/13
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/14
https://blog.gitnux.com/food-stamp-fraud-statistics/
Meanwhile, the most widespread and costly form of fraud in the benefits system - fraud perpetrated *against* benefits recipients - is blithely ignored.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/15
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/16
It's not just the welfare system that prioritizes its own risks against the people it exists to serve. Think of the systems used to fight drug abuse in clinical settings.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/17
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/18
The real agenda here is preventing addiction and abuse by addicted people.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/19
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/20
https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/12/monopolist-solidarity/#sacklers-billions
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/21
In other words, the beneficiary of the opioid control system is the system itself - not the patients who need opioids.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/22
These women had complained for years about the pain they suffered, and many had ended up needing emergency care after the fact because of traumatic injuries caused by undergoing the procedure without pain control.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/23
It turned out that an opioid-addicted nurse had been swapping the fentanyl in the drug cabinet for saline, and taking the fentanyl home for her own use.
This made national headlines at the time, and it is the subject of #TheRetrievals, a new *#NewYorkTimes* documentary series podcast:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/podcasts/serial-the-retrievals-yale-fertility-clinic.html
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Introducing: The Retrievals
Susan Burton (The New York Times)Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/24
As Stafford Beer said, "the purpose of any system is what it does." The pain medication management system was designed to manage *pain medication*, not *pain* itself.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/eof
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Image:
Bjarne Henning Kvaale (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oscarsborg_28cm_Krupp_cannon_4_-_panoramio.jpg
CC BY-SA 3.0
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File:Oscarsborg 28cm Krupp cannon 4 - panoramio.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
commons.wikimedia.orgPJ Coffey
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/eof
How can the US tolerate its citizens being treated so?
Those in need, those in pain?
What is wrong in the heads of America?
Lou Katz
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/24
Cory Doctorowudostępnił to.
Richard Rathe
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/23
Cory Doctorowudostępnił to.
Brandon Blake
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/15
Cory Doctorowudostępnił to.
LisPi
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/8
Julie Webgirl
•This would all be in the meantime till, you know, the speedy government fixes said system. 🙄
Richard Rathe
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/7
gz
•Adam R. Wood
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Pointing out a typo (but it's a good one)
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Pointing out a typo (but it's a good one)
Stark
•Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE
•Because the threat model document says which threats you *are* addressing ... and therefore, whether explicitly or implicitly, gives away which threats you are *not* addressing (eg "we are not going to spend what it would take to try, and fail, to protect against state level actors").
Your thread (I read some way through, but not all of it) is an example of what can happen when there is an expectation mismatch on the threat model.
Merospit
•FirefighterGeek :masto:
•Christopher Neitzert
•Cory Doctorowudostępnił to.
Grant Denkinson
•xanna
•Which, now I think of it, is the opposite of 'secure'.