RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Monday 20 April 2020 Volume 31 : Issue 69

ACM FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks) Peter G. Neumann, founder and still moderator

***** See last item for further information, disclaimers, caveats, etc. ***** This issue is archived at <http://www.risks.org> as
<http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/31.69>
The current issue can also be found at
<http://www.csl.sri.com/users/risko/risks.txt>

Contents:
A $1,300 smart crib was discovered to be vulnerable to a hack that would
rapidly rock babies back and forth (Business Insider)
Planned obsolescence: the outrage of our electronic waste mountain
(The Guardian)
ICANN delays .org sale again after scathing letter from California AG
(Ars Technica)
This Is No Time for an Internet Blackout (Slate)
Zoom's Security Woes Were No Secret to Business Partners Like Dropbox
(NYTimes)
Anti-Asian Zoombombing at Newton South High School (Village14)
Buyer beware--that 2TB-6TB "NAS" drive you've been eyeing might be SMR
(Ars Technica)
"ACM Reports Best Practices for Virtual Conferences" (HPCwire)
Is BGP Safe Yet? (WiReD)
COVID-19 Internet Usage Update (Jason Livingood)
Raspberry Pi-Powered Ventilator to Be Tested in Colombia (BBC)
Sipping from the Coronavirus Domain Firehose (Krebs on Security)
Australian Government proposes to distribute Coronavirus App (John Colville) Rise in video conferencing use spells big trouble for ISPs
(Lauren Weinstein)
More states finally paying $600 extra in unemployment aide (apnews)
More on COVID-19 Digital Rights Tracker (Lauren Weinstein)
Capitalists or Cronyists? (Scott Galloway)
The world after coronavirus (Yuval Noah Harari)
Re: How Coronavirus Is Eroding Privacy (Amos Shapir)
Re: New CDC Study Shows Coronavirus Can Survive For Hours On (Rex Sanders) Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2020 09:12:00 -1000
From: geoff goodfellow <geoff@iconia.com>
Subject: A $1,300 smart crib was discovered to be vulnerable to a hack
that would rapidly rock babies back and forth (Business Insider)

- Security researchers hacked into the Snoo Smart Bassinet in a lab
setting and exploited vulnerabilities to take over its motor and speaker
systems.
- The $1,300 Internet-connected crib is designed to be as safe as
possible for babies and comes with built-in features that reduce the risk
of sudden infant death syndrome.
- The new findings show the security perils associated with
Internet-enabled smart devices.
- Happiest Baby, the company that sells the Snoo Smart Bassinet, says it
patched the vulnerabilities after they were flagged by researchers from
Red Balloon Security.
- There are no known reports of hackers exploiting the vulnerabilities
or of babies being injured in a Snoo device.

Researchers with Red Balloon Security discovered several vulnerabilities
with the Snoo last year after digging into its firmware, Red Balloon founder and CEO Ang Cui told *Business Insider*. By connecting to the crib using the same WiFi network, researchers were able to take control of its microphones, speaker, and motor. Red Balloon's findings were first reported by Wired on Thursday. <https://www.wired.com/story/snoo-smart-bassinet-vulnerabilities-shaking-loud-noise/>

https://www.businessinsider.com/snoo-smart-crib-hacked-security-researchers-shake-at-dangerous-speeds-2020-4

[Knock Knock! "Who's there?"
Snoo. "What's snoo?"
It's a risk that your baby gets from being on The Internet.
-- ORIGINAL RESPONSE, FOR NEWBIES: I dunno. What's snoo with you? PGN]

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2020 09:14:00 -1000
From: geoff goodfellow <geoff@iconia.com>
Subject: Planned obsolescence: the outrage of our electronic waste mountain
(The Guardian)

*Unrepairable phones and laptops are one of the scandals of our throwaway society. But the pushback is building -- and the coronavirus crisis has
added more pressure for change*

EXCERPT:

Imagine you showed someone a smartphone 20 years ago. You said: ``Here's
this thing, it's going to be awesome, and it'll cost $1,000. But the
manufacturers are going to glue the battery in, and you're supposed to get
rid of it when the battery wears out.'' You would have thought that notion
was completely bananas.

Nathan Proctor is talking via Google Hangouts from Boston, Massachusetts,
about an allegedly central feature of modern manufacturing known as planned obsolescence. This is the idea that some of the world's biggest companies
have been selling us products either knowing full well that they will only
last a couple of years, or having deliberately built a short lifespan into
the item or its software. <https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/mar/23/were-are-all-losers-to-gadget-industry-built-on-planned-obsolescence>

It is a charge the companies would reject, but we all have everyday
knowledge of what he is talking about -- the suddenly dead or `bricked' --
made as useless as a brick -- phone, discarded printer or broken laptop.
Most of us dismiss the phenomenon as an irritating but unavoidable feature
of modern life. But Proctor is the director of the Right to Repair campaign spawned by the U.S.'s Public Interest Research Group founded in 1971 by the celebrated activist Ralph Nader, and he wants us to see things very differently. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/oct/22/uselections2004.usa>) <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/eu-brings-in-right-to-repair-rules-for-phones-and-tablets>
<https://uspirg.org/feature/usp/about-us>

As we throw away machines and devices damned as out of date, the result is a growing mountain of e-waste. Last year alone, it was reckoned that more than 50m tonnes of it were generated globally, with only around 20% of it
officially recycled. Half of the 50m tonnes represented large household appliances, and heating and cooling equipment. The remainder was TVs, computers, smartphones and tablets. [...]

------------------------------

Date: April 19, 2020 at 9:47:58 AM GMT+9
From: geoff goodfellow <geoff@iconia.com>
Subject: ICANN delays .org sale again after scathing letter from California AG
(Ars Technica)

The controversial deal would saddle the .org registry with $300 million in debt.

ICANN, the nonprofit that oversees the Internet's domain name system, has
given itself another two weeks to decide whether to allow control of the
.org domain to be sold to private equity firm Ethos Capital. The decision
comes after ICANN received a blizzard of letters from people opposed to the transaction, including California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.

Becerra's letter was significant because ICANN is incorporated in
California. That means it's Becerra's job to make sure that ICANN is living
up to the commitments in its articles of incorporation, which promise that ICANN will operate "for the benefit of the Internet community as a whole."

Becerra questioned whether ICANN was really doing that. "There is mounting concern that ICANN is no longer responsive to the needs of its
stakeholders," he wrote.

A secretive buyer and a lot of debt

California's attorney general pointed to several specific concerns about the transaction. One was the shadowy nature of the proposed buyer, Ethos
Capital. "Little is known about Ethos Capital and its multiple proposed subsidiaries," Becerra writes. Ethos Capital, he said, has "refused to
produce responses to many critical questions posted by the public and
Internet community."

Ethos Capital's plan is to buy the Public Interest Registry (PIR) from its current parent organization, the nonprofit Internet Society. To help finance the sale, Ethos will saddle PIR with $300 million in debt -- a common tactic
in the world of leveraged buyouts. Becerra warns that this tactic could endanger the financial viability of the PIR -- especially in light of the economic uncertainty created by the coronavirus.

"If the sale goes through and PIR's business model fails to meet
expectations, it may have to make significant cuts in operations," Becerra warns. "Such cuts would undoubtedly affect the stability of the .org
registry."

Becerra also blasts the Internet Society for considering the sale in the
first place. "ISOC purports to support the Internet, yet its actions, from
the secretive nature of the transaction, to actively seeking to transfer the .org registry to an unknown entity, are contrary to its mission and
potentially disruptive to the same system it claims to champion and
support," he writes.

Becerra ends his letter with a warning: "This office will continue to
evaluate this matter, and will take whatever action necessary to protect Californians and the nonprofit community."

Totally inappropriate

Becerra is far from the only critic of the .org deal. On Monday, ICANN's
first CEO, Michael Roberts, and original board chair Esther Dyson penned a letter blasting the transaction and their successors at ICANN. [...] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/04/icann-delays-org-sale-again-after-scathing-letter-from-california-ag/

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2020 09:57:49 -0700
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Subject: This Is No Time for an Internet Blackout (Slate)

https://slate.com/technology/2020/04/pandemic-internet-shutdown-danger.html

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2020 13:10:02 -0400
From: Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Subject: Zoom's Security Woes Were No Secret to Business Partners Like Dropbox
(NYTimes)

Dropbox privately paid top hackers to find bugs in software by the

videoconferencing company Zoom, then pressed it to fix them.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/technology/zoom-security-dropbox-hackers.html

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2020 12:08:32 PDT
From: "Peter G. Neumann" <neumann@csl.sri.com>
Subject: Anti-Asian Zoombombing at Newton South High School (Village14)

[From a colleague]

https://village14.com/2020/04/15/anti-asian-zoombombing-at-newton-south-high-school/ <https://village14.com/2020/04/15/anti-asian-zoombombing-at-newton-south-high-school/>

Anti-Asian Zoombombing at Newton South High School

Guest post by Amy Xiao <https://village14.com/author/jerreilly/>
This guest post submitted by Newton South senior Amy Xiao

On the morning of 15 Apr, nearly thirty unknown hackers infiltrated a Newton South AP Chinese class. Despite the school-mandated password protection on
the meeting, these individuals subjected the class to a slew of racist
insults for over five minutes. They were not simply being vulgar and
offensive -- they specifically targeted the students and the teacher through racial slurs and loud mock-Chinese.

Unfortunately, while individuals in the class contacted the administration
of this event, Newton South has yet to inform the greater school community
of this hate crime. We are disappointed by Newton South's lack of
transparency; just because this type of event is happening in other school settings across the country does not mean that we cannot be outraged.

This incidence of *zoombombing* is a reflection of a larger wave of
Anti-Asian sentiment surging across the globe. As evidenced by everything
from the physical assaults against Asian individuals to the popularization
of the term *China Virus*, it is no longer an option to simply gloss over racism being directed toward Asians and Asian-Americans. People within our community have been viciously attacked for their race -- and it is critical that we acknowledge that.

In the likely case we cannot track down these hackers, we as a community
should take this opportunity to gain a better understanding of the scope and intensity of the hate pervading our society.

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2020 20:35:08 -0700
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Subject: Buyer beware--that 2TB-6TB "NAS" drive you've been eyeing might be
SMR (Ars Technica)

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/caveat-emptor-smr-disks-are-being-submarined-into-unexpected-channels/

Here's more:

https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/15/shingled-drives-have-non-shingled-zones-for-caching-writes/

and this is more tutorial:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/57eosc/smr_drives_aka_archive_drives_a_word_of_caution/

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2020 12:24:19 -0400 (EDT)
From: ACM TechNews <technews-editor@acm.org>
Subject: "ACM Reports Best Practices for Virtual Conferences" (HPCwire)

HPCwire, 16 Apr 2020 via ACM TechNews, Monday, April 20, 2020

A new report from ACM outlines best practices for replacing live science and technology conferences with virtual ones during the COVID-19 pandemic. The report is a practical guide covering a wide range of topics that conference organizers contend with, including required technology, high-level planning, accessibility, nurturing social interaction, navigation, and finances. The guide was created by a task force that included ACM members with experience organizing online conferences and conducting virtual planning sessions. The task force will periodically update and revise the report, and organizers
are encouraged to share their own experiences, or make comments or
queries. ACM president Cherri M. Pancake said, "Our hope is that the report will also encourage conference organizers to think about reducing their reliance on face-to-face meetings in the future." https://orange.hosting.lsoft.com/trk/click?ref=3Dznwrbbrs9_6-24cf4x221ac3x069225&

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2020 00:20:30 -0400
From: Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Subject: Is BGP Safe Yet? (WiReD)

``Is BGP Safe Yet' is a new site that names and shames internet service providers that don't tend to their routing.

https://www.wired.com/story/cloudflare-bgp-routing-safe-yet/

------------------------------

Date: April 17, 2020 at 4:47:37 AM GMT+9
From: "Livingood, Jason" <Jason_Livingood@comcast.com>
Subject: COVID-19 Internet Usage Update

[Via Dave Farber]

We (at Comcast) just updated our COVID19 network update page at https://corporate.comcast.com/covid-19/network. Some data points of note:

Network growth has slowed substantially and in many areas has plateaued, especially in the cities that started stay-at-home orders earlier. This is likely an indicator that, given currently available apps, all the people
that can work/study from home are and they are at their maximum daily usage
of screens/devices.

Peak has increased since March 1, +32% in upstream traffic & +18% in downstream.

Downstream peak used to start at 9 PM, now starts earlier - between 7 PM and
8 PM.

Upstream peak used to start 9 PM, now starts between 8 AM and 6 PM in most cities. (This is a significant change, driven by video conferencing and work VPN usage.)

Video/voice conferencing +228%
VPN +40%
Video streaming +77%
For our MVNO: -19% LTE usage, +49% WiFi usage

Also NCTA (cable-based ISPs) updated their page at https://www.ncta.com/whats-new/peak-broadband-traffic-continues-remain-steady

Network Augmentation: Once engineers identify areas that need attention, technicians install additional hardware, extend fiber and more to ensure the network is performing well. For some cable providers, these efforts are up
as much as 300% in a given week.

Downstream & upstream peak growth flat for 2nd consecutive week.

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2020 12:24:19 -0400 (EDT)
From: ACM TechNews <technews-editor@acm.org>
Subject: Raspberry Pi-Powered Ventilator to Be Tested in Colombia (BBC)

Zoe Thomas, BBC News, 13 Apr 2020, via ACM TechNews, 20 Apr 2020

Marco Mascorro, a robotics engineer with no prior experience creating
medical equipment, developed and posted online plans for a ventilator made
from a Raspberry Pi computer and easy-to-source parts. Now, researchers at Columbia's University Hospital of the Pontifical Xavierian University and
Los Andes University are preparing to put the machine through a fast-tracked round of tests so that it may be used to help combat the COVID-19
pandemic. The Raspberry Pi computer is critical to the control of the ventilator; it regulates air pressure, opens and closes valves, and can determine whether a patient needs full or partial breathing assistance. Said Mascorro, "The beauty of developing a software-centric system is we can make changes to the processes without doing much to the hardware." https://orange.hosting.lsoft.com/trk/click?ref=3Dznwrbbrs9_6-24cf4x221ac4x069225&

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2020 00:59:49 -0400
From: Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Subject: Sipping from the Coronavirus Domain Firehose (Krebs on Security)

Security experts are poring over thousands of new Coronavirus-themed domain names registered each day, but this often manual effort struggles to keep
pace with the flood of domains invoking the virus to promote malware and phishing sites, as well as non-existent healthcare products and charities.
As a result, domain name registrars are under increasing pressure to do more
to combat scams and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

By most measures, the volume of new domain registrations that include the
words Coronavirus or Covid has closely tracked the spread of the deadly
virus. The Cyber Threat Coalition (CTC), a group of several thousand
security experts volunteering their time to fight COVID-related criminal activity online, recently published data showing the rapid rise in new
domains began in the last week of February, around the same time the Centers for Disease Control began publicly warning that a severe global pandemic was probably inevitable.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/04/sipping-from-the-coronavirus-domain-firehose/

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2020 04:30:08 +0000
From: John Colville <John.Colville@uts.edu.au>
Subject: Australian Government proposes to distribute Coronavirus App

Within two weeks, the Australian Government proposes to distribute a App
which uses Bluetooth to help identify contacts of people who have been identified as having novel Coronavirus (COVID-19).

Conditions about its distribution are changing rapidly. Initially the Government said that it was going to be based on the Singapore App. There it
is based on centralised collection of the data.

In Singapore, it was taken up by 20% of the population. In Australia it
would not be considered successful unless 40% of the population added it to their mobile phones i.e. cell phones. It was also said that if uptake was
not sufficient it might be made compulsory to load the App. Since then, the prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has ruled out compulsory loading.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-18/prime-minister-rules-out-making-coronavirus-app-mandatory/12161126

Also the Minister responsible for the legislation, Stuart Roberts, has now
said that the code will be open to scrutiny. He has also described a model which is similar to what has been proposed by Apple and Google, where the information is stored on the local phone. It will then only be swapped with neighboring phones when a COVID-19 positive person is within 1.5m of another phone for more than 15 minutes.

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2020 09:02:11 -0700
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Subject: Rise in video conferencing use spells big trouble for ISPs

With the exception of persons on symmetric fiber connections, most Internet last-mile connections (including mobile) are highly asymmetric. This is especially true for cable and other typical consumer, small-business grade wireline circuits. Cable systems can be the worst of the bunch, since they
have been routinely designed to vastly favor downstream traffic toward users (e.g., typical web browsing, watching videos, etc.)

Now with the rise of videoconferencing for schools and work at home, the
impact on many cable systems is dramatic, with upstream speeds (usually
anemic compared with downstream even under normal conditions) being
massively negatively impacted in many cases, since videoconferencing uses similar bandwidth in both directions.

For many years ISPs have neglected upstream speeds, now this neglect is
coming home to roost, big time.

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2020 11:03:09 +0800
From: Richard Stein <rmstein@ieee.org>
Subject: More states finally paying $600 extra in unemployment aide
(apnews.com)

https://apnews.com/827d97d1facdaadea86902f0cf11683b via Doug Hosking

"Connecticut's labor officials are scrambling to reprogram their computers
to handle the additional unemployment payouts. Its decades-old system can process weekly payments only in the hundreds of dollars, or three
digits. Problem is, the additional $600 from the federal government extends
the payments into four digits."

"...the slow and fitful distribution of payments points to the antiquated information technology that many states still rely upon for unemployment payments. Roughly two-thirds use a near-obsolete programming language,
COBOL, that dates to the 1970s."

Jurassic-age technical debt interferes with change management revision and solution deployment.

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2020 08:50:49 -0700
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Subject: More on COVID-19 Digital Rights Tracker

ALL HAPPENING RIGHT NOW IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES:

License plate tracking! Credit card and bank card tracking! Smartphone tracking! Wrist and ankle tracking bracelets! Government access to
smartphone cameras. The creation of a global surveillance juggernaut that governments will never willingly give up or restrict solely to public health situations! -LW

https://www.top10vpn.com/news/surveillance/covid-19-digital-rights-tracker/

------------------------------

Date: April 18, 2020 19:38:39 JST
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Subject: Capitalists or Cronyists? (Scott Galloway)

[Note: This item comes from friend David Rosenthal. DLH]

Scott Galloway, Capitalists or Cronyists?, 10 Apr 2020 <https://www.profgalloway.com/capitalists-or-cronyists>

Lenin said nothing can happen for decades, and then decades can happen in weeks. Yes, a pandemic pulls the future forward, and there's a lot to learn. Another phenomenon that forms rain clouds of perspective is, wait for it
... death. Or, specifically, being close to it.

My father is approaching 90, recently divorced (for the fourth time), and spends his days watching replays of Maple Leafs games and abusing Xanax. His affinity for Xanies is a feature, not a bug, since at the end of your life *long-term effects* lose meaning. He's near the end, exceptionally
intelligent, and high. In sum, he's my Yoda.

Our calls are mostly me yelling short questions (HOW ARE THE LEAFS LOOKING
FOR NEXT YEAR?) and waiting for something profound in return. Occasionally
he delivers.

You must unlearn what you have learned!

Just kidding, Yoda did actually say that. But when I asked him what he
thinks makes America different, he said:

America is a terrible place to be stupid.

That's why he immigrated here. A pillar of capitalism is you can't reward
the winners without punishing the losers. I worry our government has been co-opted by the wealthy and is focused on protecting the previous generation
of winners, even if it means reducing future generations' ability to
win. Aren't we borrowing against our children's prosperity to protect the wealth of the top 10, if not 1, percent

In Depression-era Scotland, my dad was physically abused by his father. His mother spent the money he sent home from the Royal Navy on whiskey and cigarettes. He took a huge risk and came to America. My mom took a similar risk, leaving her two youngest siblings in an orphanage (her mom and dad had both died in their early fifties), and bought a ticket on a steamship. She
had a small suitcase and 110 quid that she hid in both socks. Why? Because
they wanted to work their asses off and be rewarded for the risks they were willing to take. This is capitalism, a beacon of hope for people who are
smart, hard working, and comfortable with risk, promising a greater share of the spoils than those who are not.

However, no more. Modern-day capitalism in America is to flatten the risk
curve for people who already have money, by borrowing from future
generations with debt-fueled bailouts for companies. We have consciously decided to reduce the downside for the wealthy, thereby limiting the upside
for future generations.

CNBC guest: Equity holders deserve to get wiped out.
CNBC host: Why does anybody deserve to get wiped out in a crisis like this? This is a natural disaster, why does anybody deserve to get wiped out? Wouldn't that be immoral in and of itself?

Immoral, here we go. Morality for CNBC, and the current administration, is
not capitalism but the worst type of socialism, cronyism. Rugged
individualism and capitalism on the way up, privatizing the gains -- and
then socialism/cronyism on the way down as we socialize the losses with bailouts.

Red Envelope

In 1999, the firm I co-founded, Red Envelope, was drafting an S-1 in anticipation of an IPO. At 31, I stood to register $30-60 million on the
IPO. The bursting of the bubble damaged us, but the injuries weren't fatal,
and we were the only retail IPO of 2002. In 2008, a longshoreman strike left all our holiday merchandise hostage on a cargo ship 8 miles off the shores
of the port of Long Beach. Then, as the credit crisis began to take hold, a prescient analyst at Wells Fargo decided to pull our credit facility. Within
90 days we were Chapter 11. That event, combined with divorce, reduced my
net worth 97%.

I didn't deserve to lose near-everything. What happened wasn't my fault --
ok, maybe the divorce. Regardless, was this fair or (im)moral? Just as
there's no crying in baseball, there's no fairness in shareholder accretion
or destruction. Looking at jets at 31 wasn't moral or fair either. So, what happened? Exactly what's supposed to happen in a market economy -- downside registered against commensurate upside.

Red Envelope went through something also uniquely American -- and productive
-- bankruptcy. The equity holders (e.g., yours truly) were wiped out
(#bummer). However, we did our duty as board members and found a buyer,
Liberty Media, who paid our vendors and kept the employees. No job loss, all debtors paid. When a 31-year-old is shopping for jets in November, part of
the agreement with the invisible hand is he may lose most/all of it by
March. There's a word for that: capitalism.

The capital structure of private firms is meant to balance upside and
downside. CNBC/Trump want to protect current equity holders at the expense
of future generations with rescue packages that explode the deficit. They
also want to protect airlines, who spent $45 billion on buybacks and now
want a $54 billion bailout, disincentivizing other firms (e.g., Berkshire Hathaway) that have built huge cash piles foregoing current returns.

The rescue package should protect people, not businesses. From 2017 to 2019, the CEOs of Delta, American, United, and Carnival Cruises earned over $150 million in compensation. But, now, ``We're in this together'' (i.e., bail
our asses out).

And what happens if they (gasp!), go out of business? Simple, the equity holders, and unsecured debt holders, get wiped out. These are the cohorts
who, despite the recent meltdown, have registered a 3.3x increase in the Dow since the lows of 2008.

As long as they keep making old people, and younger people want to take
their kids to Disney's Galaxy's Edge, there will be cruise lines and
airlines. Since 2000, US airlines have declared bankruptcy 66 times. Despite the obvious vulnerability of the sector, boards/CEOs of the six largest airlines have spent 96% of their free cash flow on share buybacks,
bolstering the share price and compensation of management -- who now want a bailout. They should be allowed to fail. Bondholders will own the firms.
Ships and planes will continue to float and fly, and there will still be a steel tube with recirculated air waiting for you post molestation by Roy
from TSA.

The Lie

Trump/CNBC have adopted a narrative that this is about protecting the most vulnerable. No, it's about buttressing the most wealthy. Pandemics typically result in higher wages over the next several decades as we recognize that essential workers (the gal/guy delivering your Greek yogurt and placing your Indian food in the backseat of your car) should be paid more. A good thing. [...]

------------------------------

Date: April 19, 2020 18:39:21 JST
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Subject: The world after coronavirus (Yuval Noah Harari)

Yuval Noah Harari, 20 Mar 2020
This storm will pass. But the choices we make now could change our lives for years to come
<https://www.ft.com/content/19d90308-6858-11ea-a3c9-1fe6fedcca75>

Humankind is now facing a global crisis. Perhaps the biggest crisis of our generation. The decisions people and governments take in the next few weeks will probably shape the world for years to come. They will shape not just
our healthcare systems but also our economy, politics and culture. We must
act quickly and decisively. We should also take into account the long-term consequences of our actions. When choosing between alternatives, we should
ask ourselves not only how to overcome the immediate threat, but also what
kind of world we will inhabit once the storm passes. Yes, the storm will
pass, humankind will survive, most of us will still be alive -- but we will inhabit a different world.

Many short-term emergency measures will become a fixture of life. That is
the nature of emergencies. They fast-forward historical processes. Decisions that in normal times could take years of deliberation are passed in a matter
of hours. Immature and even dangerous technologies are pressed into service, because the risks of doing nothing are bigger. Entire countries serve as guinea-pigs in large-scale social experiments. What happens when everybody works from home and communicates only at a distance? What happens when
entire schools and universities go online? In normal times, governments, businesses and educational boards would never agree to conduct such experiments. But these aren't normal times.

In this time of crisis, we face two particularly important choices. The
first is between totalitarian surveillance and citizen empowerment. The
second is between nationalist isolation and global solidarity.

Under-the-skin surveillance

In order to stop the epidemic, entire populations need to comply with
certain guidelines. There are two main ways of achieving this. One method is for the government to monitor people, and punish those who break the
rules. Today, for the first time in human history, technology makes it
possible to monitor everyone all the time. Fifty years ago, the KGB couldn't follow 240m Soviet citizens 24 hours a day, nor could the KGB hope to effectively process all the information gathered. The KGB relied on human agents and analysts, and it just couldn't place a human agent to follow
every citizen. But now governments can rely on ubiquitous sensors and
powerful algorithms instead of flesh-and-blood spooks.

In their battle against the coronavirus epidemic several governments have already deployed the new surveillance tools. The most notable case is
China. By closely monitoring people's smartphones, making use of hundreds of millions of face-recognising cameras, and obliging people to check and
report their body temperature and medical condition, the Chinese authorities can not only quickly identify suspected coronavirus carriers, but also track their movements and identify anyone they came into contact with. A range of

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