Tradecraft

While watching “The Night Manager”, I observe two British Intelligence agents who need to keep secrets from MI6 having a conversation on the embankment outside River House, and some claim its portrayal of tradecraft is very accurate! Don’t think I’d be doing that, especially as in the next scene, their target’s Consigliere makes a call to “Gloucester” to do a check on their agent. While it’s fiction, any data store can be hacked even the government’s, and social engineering is cheaper, and faster than brute force, that’s why they shouldn’t collect data without probable cause. They can’t guarantee to provide “adequate protection” and they’re changing the law to give the intelligence services immunities from computer misuse crimes. …

It’s not just Google

It’s not just Google

Over the last week, Google's transnational profit shielding has come into focus with HMRC agreeing that they can settle up and agreed a sweetheart deal. It's not popular, nor is it probably the most important. Amazon is probably a bigger problem for the real economy. I made a story on storify which I copied over in Jul 2020 and back dated to the date of it's original publication. See overleaf/below for the story.

Hacker’s Guide to Economics

Hacker’s Guide to Economics

I went over to Hackney to attend the People’s PPE. This, their second event was called the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to Economics and I originally produced a storify, which is now here which is a collection of tweets and other social media comments about the event. The rest of this blog is based on my notes and the thoughts it provoked, on debt, banking regulation and Islamic finance, a bit less about the class war.

Ann Pettifor, Director of PRIME, opened the session, stating that the problem was debt and the banks, which create debt.  …