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The Beat<\/strong><\/p>\n A fintech love story<\/em><\/p>\n The big four Australian banks will partner<\/a> with Western Union, Paypal, and several government authorities including AUSTRAC, the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Tax Office and ASIO, to target serious financial crime and terrorism financing. The \u2018Fintel Alliance<\/a>\u2019 will be the first time<\/a> that such public and private personnel<\/a> are housed under the one roof. The Operations Hub<\/a> will be in AUSTRAC\u2019s Sydney and Melbourne offices, while an Innovations Hub<\/a>, exploring the implications of new technologies like blockchain, will be instituted. The partnership also promises specialised training<\/a> and a suite of new capabilities for the crime fighters, including the ability to track<\/a> monetary transactions greater than $10,000 in near-real-time. The intelligence might soon be shared across the Five-Eyes network, with the UK National Crime Agency already sending<\/a> over two officers.<\/p>\n During the launch (catch up on YouTube<\/a> or browse #FintelAlliance<\/a>) AUSTRAC CEO Paul Jevtovic emphasised<\/a> the partnership\u2019s flexibility: \u2018Fintel Alliance is a living organism; it does not have an end or final state.\u2019 This isn\u2019t even its final form!<\/p>\n Printing pistols<\/em><\/p>\n After a Sydney man was arrested<\/a> for manufacture of firearms last week (he\u2019d assembled 3D-printed guns<\/a>) one online repository reported<\/a> that the blueprints had been downloaded thousands of times from Australia. It\u2019s not a new issue<\/a>, and last time around ABC FactCheck<\/a> gave a good summary of the Aussie state-of-play.<\/p>\n CT Scan<\/strong><\/p>\n ACT campaign <\/em><\/p>\n This week, British police launched a national campaign<\/a>, Action Counters Terrorism, to urge \u2018the public to act on their instincts to help tackle the terrorist threat\u2019. The campaign is accompanied by a new podcast which \u2018reveals previously untold stories<\/a> of how terrorist attacks on UK soil were prevented\u2019. The podcasts include accounts from counterterrorism detectives, bomb disposal and surveillance officers, senior police constables, witnesses and even the terrorists themselves and focuses on how these attacks were prevented, thanks to information-sharing from the public.<\/p>\n Society\u2019s counterterrorism industrial complex<\/em><\/p>\n An eye-opening piece<\/a> from The New York Times <\/em>argues that society\u2019s intense focus on terrorism has \u2018helped spawn a veritable counterterrorism industrial complex\u2019. Apparently, concern about terrorism is rising despite a lack of empirical evidence to justify it. After 9\/11, Americans came to the sobering realisation that terrorist attacks can indeed happen on US soil. As of 2016, an incredible 80% of Americans regard ISIS as a major threat to the US<\/a>, despite evidence suggesting that \u2018guns are 3,210 times more likely to kill them<\/a>\u2019. The fact is\u2014Americans are more afraid of terrorism than they are of guns and Trump knows it.\u00a0 As a result we\u2019re seeing extreme polices such as Trump\u2019s latest Muslim travel ban<\/a> which NYT believes is \u2018the logical extension of an illogical threat assessment\u2019.<\/p>\n Checkpoint<\/strong><\/p>\n The ABF helps crack the Golden Triangle<\/em><\/p>\n Last week, the Australian Border Force gifted a rigid-hulled inflatable boat<\/a> to Thailand to support its efforts in combating illicit drug trafficking in the notorious \u2018Golden Triangle\u2019<\/a> region. The vessel will improve interoperability and outcomes between Thailand\u2019s narcotics authority and other members of the Safe Mekong Anti-Drug Operation<\/a>, including China, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and Cambodia. The ABF will also provide vessel search training to the operation\u2019s personnel on the Mekong River in May.<\/p>\n Five Eyes to share biometric data<\/em><\/p>\n The Five Eyes intelligence alliance is poised to share amongst themselves biometric data<\/a> collected at their respective borders in an effort to weed out terrorists, including foreign fighters returning from Iraq and Syria. The Canadian government is spearheading the data-sharing technology<\/a>, and the heads of the five countries\u2019 customs agencies recently met in London to flesh out the plan. Representing Australia at that meeting, the ABF also wants to station Australian officers at the other countries\u2019 border points. By streamlining the detection of problematic individuals, these measures will expedite visa processing times for those of us with lower risk ratings.<\/p>\n First Responder<\/strong><\/p>\n DARPA in DC <\/em><\/p>\n For the last seven months ambulances in Washington DC have been equipped with \u2018vehicle-mounted radiation detectors\u2019<\/a> as part of a DARPA trial. The SIGMA program\u2019s goal is to prevent attacks involving nuclear threats, including radiological \u201cdirty bombs\u201d. The trial provided the first dynamic, real-time mapping of the city\u2019s background radiation levels and identified any spikes that could indicate a threat. The creation of networked, continuous data monitoring signalled a future ability to \u2018incorporate intelligence holistically into risk assessment\u2019<\/a> and improve nuclear and radiological threat-monitoring capabilities. Basically, as one commentator put it: \u2018DARPA has been using ambulances to search for nukes in D.C.\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n New commissioner in town<\/em><\/p>\n The London Fire Brigade\u2019s new commissioner<\/a>, Dany Cotton, is the first ever woman to hold the post. After graduating training in 1988, Cotton was only the 30th woman to join the service of 6,000. Now, she commands a 4,800-strong force across 102 fire stations and is responsible for frontline response in a city that last year logged 100,000 incidents<\/a>. When asked what single thing would help bring more women into the service? Cotton answered: \u2018stop saying \u201cfireman\u201d\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n Extreme sport<\/em><\/p>\n Finally, watch this video<\/a> of skiers chasing a ball of lava (!) down Mt. Etna\u2019s slopes, which began erupting<\/a> ten days ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Beat A fintech love story The big four Australian banks will partner with Western Union, Paypal, and several government authorities including AUSTRAC, the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Tax Office and ASIO, to target …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":596,"featured_media":30829,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[592,1669,928,332,141],"class_list":["post-30828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-3d-printing","tag-financial-crime","tag-five-eyes","tag-technology","tag-united-kingdom"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n