Here is the SFU article: https://www.sfu.ca/sfunews/media/issues-experts/2022/03/google-autocomplete-helps-mislead-public–legitimize-conspiracy-.html

“According to Google, the subtitles generate automatically by complex algorithms and the engine cannot accept or create custom subtitles. ” Is this a good defense? We’ve seen changes to Google and social media platforms following the terrifying amount of mis-and-disinformation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, where sources are checked and links to government sites are given priority. Even if the algorithm itself cannot be directly amended, there are still avenues for the search platform to provide additional information and warn against questionable sources.

– Uma Wu

During the in-class discussion on cryptocurrency and NFT’s it was mentioned that federal authorities in many countries had been making strides in catching fraudsters. However, given the theme of anonymity that runs through cryptocurrency, I became curious as to how the authorities actually find these scammers and then prove these cryptocurrency frauds.

A recent example of a “rug pull” is that of Ethan Nguyen and Adre Llacuna from Los Angeles who now face fraud and money laundering charges for their role in a $1.1 million scheme involving NFTs. This is one of the first actions the FBI has taken to rein in this booming asset class which is now estimated to be worth an estimated 40 billion.

A recent study by Chainanalysis concluded that rug pulls have emerged as the go-to scam of the DeFi ecosystem, accounting for 37% of all cryptocurrency scam revenue in 2021, versus just 1% in 2020. It is estimated that “rug pulls” resulted in $2.8 billion worth of cryptocurrency being taken from victims in 2021. As such, it is clear that authorities in both Canada and the United States are behind in addressing consumer concerns regarding cryptocurrency and NFT scams. However, the arrest of these 2 individuals represents at least an attempt by authorities to stop some of the fraud taking place.

Ethan Nguyen and Andre Llacuna allegedly earned around $1.1 million by selling non-fungible tokens (or NFTs) based on cartoon-like characters called “Frosties.” After selling the NFTs, they shut down the project and transferred its funds to a series of separate crypto wallets. As such, many consumers were left “holding the bag.” According to the FBI, the pair were currently planning another scheme right before they were caught!

It was explained in the article on businessofbusiness.com that the alleged fraudsters attempted to cover up the scam by using Tornado Cash, which is a “mixer” or “tumbler” that as explained in class, makes it possible to transfer cryptocurrency from one wallet to another without creating obvious links between them. Someone inspecting the blockchain would just see one wallet depositing crypto into the Tornado protocol, with no way of linking it to the wallet that eventually receives the funds. As a result, the FBI subpoenaed Discord, Coinbase, Metamask, Citibank, OpenSea, GoDaddy, T- Mobile, Charter Communications, Bitpay, Fiverr, and PayPal. According to the complaint, Nguyen was identified after the same IP that accessed his Discord account was used to conduct business on a Coinbase account registered to him. Llacuna was identified after the phone number and email address he registered in his Discord was linked to a Coinbase account registered to him. Once the authorities had these links, they were able to uncover other corroborating evidence. Nguyen used a Citibank credit card to register the Frosties website, buy a VPN in an attempt to mask his IP address, and pay for a freelance artist on Fiverr to design the art for the project and the website. Llacuna accessed his Discord account, under the username “heyandre,” from the same IP address used to access his Opensea account, which included his email address and an ENS registration for the “cryptoandre.eth” domain.

While the fraudsters were able to hide the money trail on the blockchain, they were unable to get past the reality that interactions with banks or exchanges often lead back to a real identity because of Know-Your-Consumer Requirements. Additionally, the alleged criminal while sophisticated in NFT’s apparently registered many of these accounts under the same email address which contained part of their legal names.

One interesting and funny part of the criminal complaint is that the fraudsters’ discord names were included. ETHAN NGUYEN, a/k/a “Frostie,” a/k/a “Jakefiftyeight,” a/k/a “Jobo,” a/k/a “Joboethan,” a/k/a “Meltfrost,” and ANDRE LLACUNA, a/k/a “heyandre,” were named as the defendants. If anyone is interested in reading the criminal complaint it can be accessed here: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1486816/download

This post was written by Ryan Buchanan

Sources
https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2022/03/24/frosties-nft-rug-pull-charged-fraud-money-laundering/?sh=315c5c1f26de)

https://www.businessofbusiness.com/articles/how-the-fbi-made-its-first-nft-rug-pull-bust-just-in-time-to-save-other-victims-from-the-same-fate/

Hi everyone,

It was really interesting to hear Liam’s presentation yesterday regarding blockchains, crypto, and more. It was really illuminating to hear about a lot of the issues in this space going forward. If I am completely honest, a lot of it is very confusing to me but nonetheless, I find it very fascinating.

I recently came across a Ted Talk that is somewhat related to yesterday’s topic. This Ted Talk (which I have linked below) is about rural farmers, their goats, and an “inclusive economy.” I think the speaker glosses over a lot of the concerns Liam brought up – especially about the tension between decentralization and scam prevention. The speaker seems to really tout how great the decentralized aspect of a token economy is, which might be true in the case below but of course, there are issues with a decentralized world economy, regardless I thought the whole premise was interesting enough to share.

The speaker starts the story by detailing how a small rural village in Pakistan had to import their water from 2 hours away in nearby Karichi. This drove up the price of water and made farmers have to withhold water from their livestock every second day. The solution was a solar water pump for the village but this pump came at the cost of $10,000 and in a village where the average family makes $70 a month, it made the prospect of buying the pump inconceivable without help from the government or an NGO. Enter our speaker, Fariel Salahuddin, who would become to be known in the village as the Goat Lady. She observed the village had an ample number of goats but little liquid capital and pitched the idea to the head of the village to exchange goats for a water pump. She then flipped the goats during Eid and recovered her money and the village got a water pump to solve their water issues.

How does this relate to yesterday’s topic? From this event, Fariel came up with the idea to tokenize goats so farmers in rural villages could trade goats as currency to purchase things they needed like water pumps, solar installations, etc. Farmers already were selling livestock for currency to pay for various things locally but never were they able to extract higher value from their livestock for “larger more productive assets” as Fariel puts it. The company she set up allows farmers to sell their goats to her company. The company receives the goats at the time of the solar pump installation. They then “tokenize” the goat by recording its various attributes and assigning it a dollar value. The company then sells the goats to supermarkets and larger meat companies to get a return on their investment. Fariel claims that they have worked with 45 communities of 6000+ farmers to allow them to convert their goats into water and electricity.

If you’re interested in hearing the talk you may listen to it here: https://www.ted.com/talks/fariel_salahuddin_goats_blockchain_and_the_future_of_money

If you want to learn more about the company visit their website here: https://uptrade.org/#whatwedo

Hi everyone,

After our talk about RT and censorship in class today, I thought I’d share the CRTC’s decision regarding deauthorizing the distribution of RT in Canada. It’s worth checking out to see the CRTC’s reasoning behind its decision as well as seeing how the decision making/consultation process works.

You can read the decision here: https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2022/2022-68.htm

This decision was reached in the context of concerns raised by the Government of Canada and the Canadian public with respect to whether RT’s programming was “consistent with the policy objectives of the Act and with the Commission’s broadcasting regulations.”

The CRTC concluded that the distribution of RT was not in the public interest on the grounds that RT’s content constituted “abusive comment” against the Ukrainian people. The CRTC’s decision followed a week long consultation period. Of note, RT is distributed by Canadian broadcasting distribution undertakings (BDUs), rather than directly licensed in Canada. While BDUs were among the parties invited for consultation, it does not seem that RT itself was involved in the proceedings.

There are a lot of interesting threads in the CRTC’s decision. What I found particularly interesting is how the CRTC’s analysis addressed freedom of expression. While the majority of parties supported the removal of RT, a small group of interveners opposed its removal largely on the grounds of freedom of expression. For example, one intervener noted that access to RT provided a line to official speeches and policy from the Russian government, which are increasingly difficult to access. Additionally, an intervener made the point that RT coverage outside of reporting on the Kremlin often addresses news and stories not covered by mainstream western media.

As mentioned in class today, it’s a strange moment in time to see censorship happen before our eyes, even if we haven’t consumed RT content before.

– Will Kunimoto

Hi Guys!

I stumbled across this article from the New York Times that I thought may be of interest to people in this class. It is from 2020, but its focus is on the way in which large tech companies are using our personal data to surveil us, and sell things to us (which unfortunately remains a relevant topic in 2022).

An excerpt that I found really interesting:
” Early on, it was discovered that, unknown to users, even data freely given harbors rich predictive signals, a surplus that is more than what is required for service improvement. It isn’t only what you post online, but whether you use exclamation points or the color saturation of your photos; not just where you walk but the stoop of your shoulders; not just the identity of your face but the emotional states conveyed by your “microexpressions”; not just what you like but the pattern of likes across engagements. Soon this behavioral surplus was secretly hunted and captured, claimed as proprietary data.

The data are conveyed through complex supply chains of devices, tracking and monitoring software, and ecosystems of apps and companies that specialize in niche data flows captured in secret. For example, testing by The Wall Street Journal showed that Facebook receives heart rate data from the Instant Heart Rate: HR Monitor, menstrual cycle data from the Flo Period & Ovulation Tracker, and data that reveal interest in real estate properties from Realtor.com — all of it without the user’s knowledge.

These data flows empty into surveillance capitalists’ computational factories, called “artificial intelligence
,” where they are manufactured into behavioral predictions that are about us, but they are not for us. Instead, they are sold to business customers in a new kind of market that trades exclusively in human futures. Certainty in human affairs is the lifeblood of these markets, where surveillance capitalists compete on the quality of their predictions. This is a new form of trade that birthed some of the richest and most powerful companies in history.”

If you want to read the full article it can be found here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/opinion/sunday/surveillance-capitalism.html

– Emma Jerrott