Two decades ago, my life changed forever: hearing #BruceSchneier explain that "#security" doesn't exist in the abstract. You can only be secure *from some threat*. A fire alarm won't protect you from burglaries. A condom won't protect you from mass shootings. It seems obvious, but how often do we hear about "security" without any mention of *who* is being made secure, and from *which* threat?
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/13/whose-security/#for-me-not-thee
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Take the US welfare system. It is very "secure" in that it is hedged in by a thicket of red-tape, audits, inspections and onerous procedures. To get food stamps, housing vouchers, or cash aid, you must navigate a Soviet-grade bureaucratic system of Kafkaesque proportions.
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Indeed, one of the great ironies of the post-Cold War world is that the USA has become a "#UtopiaOfRules" (as #DavidGraeber put it), subjecting everyday people to the state-run bureacracies that the USAUSAUSA set endlessly ridiculed the USSR for:
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(The right *says* it wants to "shrink the US government until fits in a bathtub - and then drown it" - but not the *whole* government. They want unlimited government bloat for that part of the state that is dedicated to tormenting benefits claimants, especially if its functions are managed by a Beltway Bandit profiteer who bills Uncle Sucker up the wazoo for rubber-stamping "DENIED" on every claim.)
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The US benefits system has a sophisticated, expensive, fully staffed anti-fraud system - but it's a *highly selective* form of anti-fraud. The system is oriented solely to prevent fraud against *itself*, with no thought to protecting *benefits recipients themselves* from fraud.
And those recipients - by definition the poorest and most vulnerable among us - are easy pickings for continuous, ghastly, eye-watering acts of fraud.
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These benefits are distributed via debit cards - #EBTCards - that lack the basic security measures every other kind of card has had for years. They're simple magstripe cards, lacking basic #ChipAndPin defenses, to say nothing of contactless countermeasures.
That means that fraudsters can - and do - install #skimmers in the point-of-sale terminals used by benefits recipients to withdraw their cash benefits, pay for food using #SNAP (AKA #FoodStamps), and receive other benefits.
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It's impossible to overstate how widespread skimmers are, and how much criminals make by stealing from poor people. Writing for *#Businessweek*, #JessicaFu describes the mad scramble benefits recipients go through every month, standing by ATMs at midnight on the night of the first of every month in hopes of withdrawing the cash they use to pay for their rent and utility bills before it is stolen by a crook who captured their card number with a skimmer:
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