If enough people get to see it, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's press conference in Bourke Street, Melbourne this morning will go down as one of those jaw-dropping moments in politics. It was a no-holds barred, balls-out, unequivocal challenge to "communities" in Melbourne to identify and report indicators of extremism for the sake of Australia and, importantly, for their own sake. A straight-talking poli? Strewth.
Artificial Intelligence is the buzzword of the year, beating out even "blockchain" and "add oil." A company that claims to be at the front of the pack when it comes to AI is Google. But, as this case shows, it doesn't matter what your algorithms do if what they do isn't properly targeted and the correct action results. It also demonstrates why financial institutions should be very wary of relying on technology which is, at best immature and at worst experimental.
In the meantime, Google and Microsoft, let's bypass the intermediary and you can just send us the "($1,000,000.00) One Million United States Dollars" today. Thank you.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has invited expressions of interest for consulting services for financial institutions in Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan. Some of the so-called "partner financial institutions," which in the real world would be called "customers" have, the EBRD says, asked for assistance "to conduct a diagnostics (sic) of their internal audit function and provide them with recommendation to strengthen this area in line with the international best practices."
As the request unfolds it becomes, increasingly, a reason for serious head-shaking.
It's a spam, it uses Standard Chartered as a hook to entice victims to be defrauded, and it's hilariously awful. Note phone number +447452282904 and email address lrbernal@easynet.es and that the reply is to privacy e-mail service ProtonMail at taxmattersjon@protonmail.ch . But the most interesting thing is this: the e-mail provider easynet.es correctly identified this as spam, even as " advance fee fraud (Nigerian 419)" - then allowed it to pass. Is the provider complicit if anyone becomes a victim?
Last year it was FinTech. 2018 was scheduled to be the year of RegTech but the crazy inflation in the value of crypto-currencies at the end of 2017 hijacked that and this year became the year where no sentence was complete without the word "blockchain" somewhere in it, or so it seemed. But the love affair is already turning sour as reality sets in and the buzzword junkies are at last being shown for what they are: opportunists who will be onto the next big thing as soon as someone tells them what it is.
The irony should escape no-one. In order to work towards the development of on-line courts, the UK will play host to delegates and speakers from "over 20 countries." So, video conferencing is expected to work for court proceedings but not for meetings, then?
Australia's home grown problems from banking to home insulation are pretty epic but the sheer scale of the Takata airbags scandal is, simply, monumental.
No-deal Brexit would hit south-eastern European economies hardest among EBRD regions, says the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in a surprising counter-point to the position espoused by the EU generally .
A notice, relating to the findings of the Financial Action Task Force relating to deficiencies in the counter-money laundering / anti-terrorist financing regimes of several jurisdictions, has been issued by the USA's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, FinCEN.
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