Social Networks

Bank Employee Steals Cash, Then Posts Pics of It On Facebook and Instagram (cnn.com) 78

"If you're systematically stealing money from a bank vault, it may not be a good idea to post the evidence on your social media pages," reports CNN: A bank employee in Charlotte, North Carolina, allegedly stole $88,000 from the bank's vault, according to a release from the United States Attorney's Office Western District of North Carolina. And he wasn't bashful about advertising to his social media followers the life of luxury he was funding.... Henderson's numerous Facebook and Instagram photos depict him posing with stacks of cash, and the U.S. Attorney's Office says he used the money to make a $20,000 down payment on a new Mercedes-Benz....

According to details from the indictment contained in the release, Henderson allegedly took bank customers' cash deposits out of the bank vault for months. Many of those times, he deposited money into an ATM near the bank where he worked, according to the release. "I make it look easy but this shyt really a PROCESS," he wrote in one Facebook post, part of a string in which he talked about building his "brand." That post, showed him him holding a stack of money and smoking a cigarette.

Henderson is now facing up to 30 years in prison.

Which bank? According to the Charlotte Observer, it was Wells Fargo.
Space

America Considers Declassifying Military Information on US, Chinese, and Russian Space Programs (defensenews.com) 55

Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike quotes Defense News: The U.S. Air Force's top civilian and a key member of Congress agreed Saturday on the need to declassify a large amount of information about America's military space programs to both intimidate foes and encourage support among the public. "Declassifying some of what is currently held in secure vaults would be a good idea," Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett said during a panel at the Reagan National Defense Forum. "You would have to be careful about what we declassify, but there is much more classified than what needs to be."

Fellow panelist Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said he met with the secretary earlier in the week to discuss that very issue, calling the information on space programs "overwhelmingly classified." For Rogers, that overclassification is one of the reasons it's been so difficult for him and others to build support both in the public and with other members of Congress for a Space Force, a sixth branch of the military under the Air Force uniquely focused on space as a war-fighting domain.... "I don't think that can happen until we see significant declassification of what we're doing in space and what China and Russia are doing, and how space is in their day-to-day lives."

Barrett also argued that America's way of life "is more dependent on space than any other nation's. And our capability in space was predominantly built at a time when we thought space was a benign environment."
Crime

37-Year-Old Mom Finds Instagram's Sex Predators By Pretending To Be 11 (medium.com) 123

Sloane Ryan is a 37-year-old woman who runs the Special Projects Team at Bark, a child-safety tech company selling a $9-a-month software that monitors text messages for bullying, threats of violence, depression, and sexual predators. "In 2018 alone, Bark alerted the FBI to 99 child predators. In 2019? That number is more than 300 -- and counting."

Bark had wanted a way to depict the problem to the public without using actual conversations -- so Ryan began posing as an underage minor on Instagram. Over the past nine months, I've been 15-year-old Libby and 16-year-old Kait and 14-year-old Ava. I've been a studious sophomore contemplating bangs and a lacrosse player being raised by her aunt and an excitable junior eager for prom....

At the beginning of the week, on the very first night as [11-year-old] "Bailey" two new messages came in within 52 seconds of publishing a photo. We sat mouths agape as the numbers pinged up on the screen -- 2, 3, 7, 15 messages from adult men over the course of two hours. Half of them could be charged with transfer of obscene content to a minor. That night, I had taken a breather and sat with my head in my hands.

The second half of the article includes examples of particularly graphic conversations with what the perpetrators think are an 11-year-old girl instead of the 37-year-old woman who's investigating them. "I exit the conversation with @ XXXastrolifer to see another nine requests pending... Over the course of one week, over 52 men reached out to an 11-year-old girl."

Ryan also says they've formed "continuous working relationships" with law enforcement agencies, and "We've seen arrests and sentencings. We've provided testimony in court and invaluable information to investigations."

Now they're using the conversations they've collected to train artificial intelligence algorithms to better detect sexual predators automatically.
AI

Researchers Fooled Chinese Facial Recognition Terminals With Just a Mask (theverge.com) 24

Public facial recognition terminals in China can be fooled with just a mask, as some recent experiments have shown. The Verge reports: An AI company, Kneron, shared a video with The Verge of tests it ran at facial recognition terminals in China where it appeared to fool the systems. Kneron asked us not to publish the video, so we will describe what we saw -- and it looked pretty convincing. In two examples, a tester approaches AliPay and WeChat terminals at shops in China while wearing a 3D mask of his face, and the facial recognition system identifies the mask as his face, allowing the purchase. In another example, the same person feeds his ID card into a train station turnstile while wearing his mask, and the turnstile's facial recognition system accepts the mask as his face.

There are definitely limitations to this type of test, though. The video only shows one person making attempts with their mask, and it's unclear if that one mask worked in every single attempt, or if another mask would work for each one of these tests as well. It's also worth noting that none of the systems were relying entirely on facial recognition for identification. Both the AliPay and WeChat terminals required the person to enter digits of the phone number associated with their identity, and at the train station, you have to present a physical ID card before the facial recognition system even starts scanning. Also, you might hope another human would intervene if a person pulled out a mask of another human's face while trying to pay for groceries?

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