Slashdot: Hundreds of Thousands Trafficked To Work as Online Scammers in Southeast Asia, Says UN Report

Hundreds of Thousands Trafficked To Work as Online Scammers in Southeast Asia, Says UN Report
Published on August 31, 2023 at 02:11AM
Hundreds of thousands of people are being forcibly engaged by organised criminal gangs into online criminality in Southeast Asia - from romance-investment scams and crypto fraud to illegal gambling - a report issued today by the UN Human Rights Office shows. From a report: Victims face a range of serious violations and abuses, including threats to their safety and security; and many have been subjected to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, arbitrary detention, sexual violence, forced labour, and other human rights abuses, the report says. "People who are coerced into working in these scamming operations endure inhumane treatment while being forced to carry out crimes. They are victims. They are not criminals," said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk. "In continuing to call for justice for those who have been defrauded through online criminality, we must not forget that this complex phenomenon has two sets of victims." The enormity of online scam trafficking in Southeast Asia is difficult to estimate, the reports says, because of the clandestine nature and gaps in the official response. Credible sources indicate that at least 120,000 people across Myanmar may be held in situations where they are forced to carry out online scams, with estimates in Cambodia similarly at around 100,000. Other States in the region, including Lao PDR, the Philippines and Thailand, have also been identified as main countries of destination or transit where at least tens of thousands of people have been involved. The scam centres generate revenue amounting to billions of US dollars each year.

Comments

Slashdot: AT&T Says Leaked Data of 70 Million People Is Not From Its Systems

AT&T Says Leaked Data of 70 Million People Is Not From Its Systems Published on March 20, 2024 at 02:15AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: AT&T says a massive trove of data impacting 71 million people did not originate from its systems after a hacker leaked it on a cybercrime forum and claimed it was stolen in a 2021 breach of the company. While BleepingComputer has not been able to confirm the legitimacy of all the data in the database, we have confirmed some of the entries are accurate, including those whose data is not publicly accessible for scraping. The data is from an alleged 2021 AT&T data breach that a threat actor known as ShinyHunters attempted to sell on the RaidForums data theft forum for a starting price of $200,000 and incremental offers of $30,000. The hacker stated they would sell it immediately for $1 million. AT&T told BleepingComputer then that the data did not originate from them and that its systems were not breached. ...

Slashdot: US Plans $825 Million Investment For New York Semiconductor R&D Facility

US Plans $825 Million Investment For New York Semiconductor R&D Facility Published on November 02, 2024 at 03:00AM The Biden administration is investing $825 million in a new semiconductor research and development facility in Albany, New York. Reuters reports: The New York facility will be expected to drive innovation in EUV technology, a complex process necessary to make semiconductors, the U.S. Department of Commerce and Natcast, operator of the National Semiconductor Technology Center (NTSC) said. The launch of the facility "represents a key milestone in ensuring the United States remains a global leader in innovation and semiconductor research and development," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said. From the U.S. Department of Commerce press release: EUV Lithography is essential for manufacturing smaller, faster, and more efficient microchips. As the semiconductor industry pushes the limits of Moore's Law, EUV lithography has emerged as a critical technology to ...

Slashdot: AT&T, T-Mobile Prep First RedCap 5G IoT Devices

AT&T, T-Mobile Prep First RedCap 5G IoT Devices Published on October 15, 2024 at 03:20AM The first 5G Internet of Things (IoT) devices are launching soon. According to Fierce Wireless, T-Mobile plans to launch its first RedCap devices by the end of the year, while AT&T's devices are expected sometime in 2025. From the report: All of this should pave the way for higher performance 5G gadgets to make an impact in the world of IoT. RedCap, which stands for reduced capabilities, was introduced as part of the 3GPP's Release 17 5G standard, which was completed -- or frozen in 3GPP terms -- in mid-2022. The specification, which is also called NR-Light, is the first 5G-specific spec for IoT. RedCap promises to offer data transfer speeds of between 30 Mbps to 80 Mbps. The RedCap spec greatly reduces the bandwidth needed for 5G, allowing the signal to run in a 20 MHz channel rather than the 100 MHz channel required for full scale 5G communications. Read more of this story at...

Shameless Plug

Search This Blog