FOSTA/SESTA Was Passed Based On Made Up Stats About Sex Trafficking

from the this-seems-like-a-problem dept

Last year we had a post detailing how the numbers that supporters of SESTA were pushing didn't appear to have any factual basis. Some huge numbers were thrown around, claiming that trafficking was a $9.8 billion industry or that thousands of kids were lured into sex trafficking every year. But, when reporters and experts dug into those numbers, they found that they were either made up, involved egregious sampling errors or insane extrapolation. These reports all suggested that while sex trafficking is real, the problem is not nearly as big as politicians and supporters of SESTA were making it out to be.

Now an article in Buzzfeed by two academics provides even more details in how the claims about sex trafficking used to pass FOSTA/SESTA were based on myths. The two academics, Drs. Jenny Heineman and Brooke Wagner point to a ton of empirical research they did (funded by the Justice Department) that completely debunked some of the key claims behind SESTA/FOSTA. The first myth? That no one chooses sex work, but that nearly all sex workers are victims of trafficking by pimps. That's not what they found.

In our subsample of youth under the age of 18 who were, at the time of interview, engaged in survival sex, 33 individuals — 24% —had a pimp or trafficker, liberally defined as someone with whom the respondent shared their earnings. That definition raises questions of its own, and one young woman’s experience stood out as representative of those questions. Rena, who was 16 at the time of the interview, laughed when we asked if she had a pimp. She tipped her head toward one of her friends.

Again, that's not to take away from the issue about those who are trafficking or are dealing with abusive pimps. But, if we're going to tackle a problem it should be focused on the actual problem.

The researchers also studied Backpage and how much of it was used for trafficking as opposed to sex workers choosing to use the platform themselves. Take a guess what they found:

Another myth is that the internet — and in particular sites like backpage.com, which was recently shuttered by the FBI — is primarily used by pimps. This is not what our research showed. In fact, the percentage of respondents who used the internet to find customers remained the same, whether or not they reported having a pimp.

In fact, the only variable that correlated with using an online platform to find clients was neighborhood conflict — respondents whose neighborhoods were marked with disputes that led to physical fights or altercations were more likely to seek customers from the internet. This suggests online platforms act as safety nets and buffers against violence.

And, their research also shows -- as we noted in a few of our posts -- that shutting down sites like Backpage actually puts sex workers at much greater risk of being harmed or killed:

Because law enforcement routinely uses online platforms to entrap and arrest sex workers, it’s clear that these women would rather advertise online and risk arrest — which can spell death for black, brown, and indigenous people, trans people, and people with mental illness — rather than face the violence of the street. Our current federal policy is to take away that choice, and the crackdown on online platforms used by sex workers is likely to push those women into violent situations.

There are ways to deal with the actual victims of course. But that involves doing actual police work. Tracking down actual victims (something that online platforms like Backpage actually helped in doing) and arresting their abusers. But that's actually harder in a post-FOSTA/SESTA world.

And what do we get for this? Well, as Vox recently noted, nothing less than undermining the internet as we know it. If we're going to do that, it seems like it should have been done based on, you know, actual facts, rather than completely made up statistics and lies. Alas.

Filed Under: exaggerations, fosta, sesta, sex trafficking, stats
Companies: backpage

Come Witness The Commentators That Help The NFL Fool The Public About Its 'Super Bowl' Trademark Rights

from the shame-on-you dept

The Super Bowl is here and this Sunday many of us will bear witness to the spectacle that is million dollar advertising spots mashed together over four hours with a little bit of football thrown in for intermissions. As we've discussed before, this orgy of revenue for the NFL is, in some part, propagated by the NFL's never ending lies about just how much protection the trademark it holds on the term "Super Bowl" provides. While the league obviously does have some rights due to the trademark, it often enjoys playing make believe that its rights extend to essential control over the phrase on all mediums and by all persons for all commercial or private interests. This, of course, is not true, and yet a good percentage of the public believes these lies.

Why? The NFL, pantheon of sports power though it may be, is not so strong as to be able to single handedly confuse millions of people into thinking they can't talk about a real life event whenever they want. No, the NFL has been helped along in this by members of the media who repeat these lies, often in very subtle ways. Ron Coleman of the Likelihood Of Confusion site has a nice write up publicly shaming a number of these media members, including Lexology's Mitchell Stabbe.

At Lexology, Mitchell Stabbe writes a post about why the SUPER BOWL® is the specialest trademark ever, laying out a thorough analysis of “activities that create a significant risk of an objection by the NFL.” He soberly notes that while the NFL failed in its effort to register THE BIG GAME, “The NFL also has federal trademark protection for 'Super Sunday', 'Gameday', 'Back to Football', '1st and GOAL' and over a hundred other marks.”

Except that Stabbe's analysis of how to avoid the ire of the NFL includes such advice as suggesting that businesses not wish teams or players good luck, for newspapers not to have any special sections covering the Super Bowl be sponsored by any companies, and for restaurants and bars not to use the term in any watch parties they have for the game. In case it isn't clear, none of those are matters of actual trademark infringement necessarily. Stabbe doesn't bother to point out that there's no likelihood of confusion in the marketplace here, and that basic nominative fair use (i.e., naming the thing you're talking about) is not going to dilute a trademark either. These types of advice columns, seemingly from experts on the subject, undermine the public's awareness of its own rights when it comes to using language.

Another example has media members acting as though there is special space carved out just for them, or certain members of the public, to use the phrase "Super Bowl."

In a post at a website called “SB Nation” owned by Vox Media, Jeanna Thomas noted a year ago, quite correctly, that “The NFL keeps firm control over its trademark on the words ‘Super Bowl,’ and that control makes the league a whole lot of money.” Unfortunately, the next sentence starts, “The Super Bowl (we can say it, because here at SB Nation we write about sports,” which would be bad enough without being topped by the double-barreled whopper to the effect that “Private citizens are fine to use the phrase without consequence, as long as there’s no financial consideration involved.”

It should be clear that all of these "we're barely safe to use this term and avoid the NFL's team of lawyers if we follow these very strict rules" creates the impression that the majority of the rights to use the term belong to the NFL, with a tiny bit leftover for the public. This is not how trademark law works. Trademark rights are limited in scope and infringement is reserved for particular circumstances. Just because the NFL pretends otherwise does not make it so, except it can become effectively so with people who should know better repeating these lies.

So have fun watching the Super Bowl. I can say that because I'm a blogger, I submitted six forms of identification and a urine sample to Roger Goodell's office (unsolicited, by the way), and I have created a totem to pray to my lord and savior Tom Brady, made out of a combination of salami, sharp cheddar cheese wedges, and pickle slices. If I hadn't... well, let's just say I'm happy to still be alive.

Filed Under: exaggerations, nominative fair use, super bowl, trademark

Emails Show ICE Couldn't Find Enough Dangerous Immigrants To Fulfill The Adminstration's Fantasies

from the Operation-Goalpost-Relocation dept

When you've got an official narrative to deliver, you need everyone to pitch in to keep it from falling apart. No one can say ICE didn't try. The Trump administration -- bolstered by supporting statements conjecture from DOJ and DHS officials -- has portrayed undocumented immigrants as little more than nomadic thugs. Unfortunately, there's hardly any evidence available to back up the assertion that people here illegally are more likely to commit serious criminal acts.

Back in February, shortly after Trump handed down immigration-focused executive orders, ICE went all in on arresting undocumented visitors and immigrants. Included in this push was a focus on so-called "sanctuary cities" like Austin, Texas, which had vowed to push back against Trump's anti-immigrant actions.

Emails obtained by The Intercept show ICE doing all it can to prop up Trump's "dangerous criminal" stereotyping. Unfortunately, despite all of its efforts, ICE failed to come across many dangerous criminals during its February sweeps.

On February 10, as the raids kicked off, an ICE executive in Washington sent an “URGENT” directive to the agency’s chiefs of staff around the country. “Please put together a white paper covering the three most egregious cases,” for each location, the acting chief of staff of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations wrote in the email.

It's a good starting point, especially if the administration is relying on you to back up its assertions. ICE was willing to go the extra mile to do just that, apparently.

“If a location has only one egregious case — then include an extra egregious case from another city.”

This is an interesting ploy: cannibalizing nearby cities' reporting in order to present some semblance of an "egregious case" immigrant nightmare --one that would need to be stripped of redundancy before final presentation.

Unfortunately for ICE agents, you can't make something out nothing. Three cases per city proved to be almost impossible. Many raids failed to uncover even one egregious case. With the clock ticking down, some ICE offices decided to grab "egregious cases" completely unrelated to the current operation.

In February 11, an official responded to a colleague’s list of egregious cases by pointing out that they were unrelated to the ongoing operation. “The arrest dates are before any operation and even before the EO’s. What is up with these cases?” the official wrote.

What's up with those cases is there were almost zero new cases to report to the man upstairs. Hundreds of arrests were made, but many involved people with no prior criminal record. In the remaining arrests, most of the priors found were minor violations, with the worst being drunk driving.

Not exactly the "public safety threat" the Trump administration had promised. When it became clear the "egregious case" reports might total only a handful of serious criminal offenses from hundreds of arrests nationwide, ICE quickly applied its own spin.

As criticism escalated, ICE shifted to downplaying the operation as “no different than the routine,” telling reporters that the raids were the same “targeted arrests carried out by ICE’s Fugitive Operations Teams on a daily basis,” and suggesting off the record that claims to the opposite were “false, dangerous, and irresponsible.” As it became clear that dozens of individuals with no criminal history had been apprehended, ICE shifted gears and told reporters that in addition to targeting safety threats, the raids were always meant to target those whose only crimes were immigration-related, like re-entering the U.S. after deportation…

By spinning it this way, ICE can pay needed lip service to the administration's "dangerous immigrants" narrative and portray the lack of egregious cases as the result of the banal day-to-day work of immigration enforcement. But in doing so, it undercuts the narrative it's trying to serve. If there are so many dangerous criminals out there, why isn't ICE focused on them, rather than dozens of people whose only criminal act is a lack of documentation? ICE can't have it both ways. Neither can the White House.

Filed Under: crime, dhs, doj, exaggerations, ice, immigrants

Cable's Congressional Allies Quickly Urge New FCC Boss To Kill Cable Box Competition Plan

from the fighting-competition-for-the-people dept

Last year, the FCC unveiled a new plan that would require cable operators make their content available via app for third-party cable boxes and other streaming hardware. The goal was to bring a little added competition and openness to the clunky old cable box. But because the FCC's plan would have not only eroded the cable industry's walled-garden control over content -- but $20 billion in annual cable box rental fees -- the cable industry, broadcasters, Congressional allies and even the US Copyright Office got right to work lying about the plan -- repeatedly.

Via an absolute sound wall of disinformation, these collective allies claimed that the FCC's plan would violate copyright (false), confuse consumers (nope), harm minorties (not true), result in skyrocketing piracy (well, no), hurt puppies, and tear a giant hole in the time-space continuum. With these claims popping up in hundreds of newspaper op-ed sections and websites nationwide, the FCC's plan soon ran into some stiff headwinds, with even some of the initial FCC supporters of the plan backing away from it. It was, frankly, one of the most effective lobbying and disinformation campaigns the cable industry has ever fielded.

With the plan on life support, cable industry Congressional allies are now demanding the plan be formally put out of its misery. In a letter sent to new, ultra-industry friendly FCC boss Ajit Pai (pdf), Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden, Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn, and Energy and Commerce Committee Vice Chairman Joe Barton urged Pai to close the docket on the set-top box proceeding.

The letter unsurprisingly mirrors most of the falsehoods used by the cable industry to derail the plan, including the idea that bringing competition to the cable box would somehow hamper the cable industry's incredible knack for innovation:

"The regulatory overhang of the set-top box regulation has cast a shadow over investment and innovation in traditional video programming delivery. [W]e urge you to close the proceeding and permit the industry to innovate and serve consumers free from the restrictions of a government-chosen platform."

Of course the whole point of the FCC's plan was to avoid "chosen platforms" entirely, giving consumers the ability to view existing cable content on any device. The letter then proceeds to stroll casually through all of the lies the cable industry has been spreading about the plan for most of the last year, including claims that cable box competition would harm minorities, would harm copyright, and result in nobody making decent television programming ever again:

"The FCC's proposal remains an unnecessary regulatory threat to the content creation and distribution industries. Content creators have argued that the proposed set-top box pan undermined their ability to protect copyrights and contracts. Without a clear indication that the Commission rejects this current proposal, content creators will be hesitant to invest in high-quality video programs. Minority programming creators, in particular, have argued that the Commission's proposal would rob them of audiences and the benefits of hard-negotiated contracts, ultimately limiting the availability of diverse programming to viewers."

That is, once again, all nonsense. This has always been about control, not copyright. The FCC's plan kept all the same copyright protection and licensing contracts intact. And providing consumers access to more content viewing options over less expensive and more open hardware would have only helped minorities and consumers. Meanwhile the claim that art creation will cease to occur completely should ring a few memory bells for those familiar with the recording industry's long-standing myopic frontal assault on natural market evolution.

For the record I never thought the cable box plan was the best use of the agency's time. To me, it seemed like streaming alternatives would force cable to adapt anyway, even if it would have probably taken half-a-decade longer without this FCC nudge. Instead, I thought the FCC would have been better served spending its regulatory calories on the real problem facing consumers and the streaming sector: the lack of broadband competition, and the resulting anti-competitive shenanigans this lack of competition helps cement -- from net neutrality violations to arbitrary and unnecessary broadband usage caps.

Still, the government's willful participation in a massive disinformation and lobbying campaign whose sole function was to protect the cable industry revenues from competition is no less disgusting. Particularly the involvement of the US Copyright Office, and the failure of media outlets to clearly highlight the cable industry financial tethers obviously affixed to countless op-eds and media missives aimed at undermining what really was just an attempt to bring a little competition to a monopolized hardware market.

Given that the new FCC boss is a former Verizon lawyer with a long, proud history of supporting incumbent ISPs and giant cable providers in absolutely everything -- it shouldn't be long before the FCC's cable box plan is finally put out of its misery. Following not-too-far behind should be the FCC's new broadband privacy rules, net neutrality, and, if Trump's advisors mean what they say, the FCC's role as a consumer watchdog itself. You know, to protect minorities, the children, and innovation.

Filed Under: competition, copyright, exaggerations, fcc, set top boxes

Press, University Say Study Shows Link Between Gaming And Alzheimer's; Spoiler: No It Doesn't

from the forget-it dept

If I've learned any single thing covering technology news it's that you can blame absolutely anything on video games. Mass violence? Games. Failure at professional sports? Pssh, games, yo. Love life not as spicy as you might like? Those games, those games. But a study that supposedly claims a link between video games and Alzheimer's Disease? Come on.

“Call of Duty increases risk of Alzheimer’s disease”, said the Telegraph. “Video game link to psychiatric disorders suggested by study”, reported the Guardian. The Daily Mail posed the problem as a question, “Could video games increase your risk of Alzheimer’s?”, reminding us that whenever a news headline asks a question, the answer is no.

We know that when science news is hyped, most of the hype is already present in the press releases issued by universities. This case is no exception - the press release was issued by the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, and unsurprisingly it focuses almost entirely on the tenuous link to Alzheimer’s disease.

Tenuous is being exceptionally kind in this case. The study in question, produced in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, barely focused on any link between gaming and the disease, in fact. Instead, the team of Canadian researchers were simply studying the difference in brain-wave activity with groups of gamers and non-gamers. They noticed specifically a significant difference in the activity of one type of brain-wave with gamers, N2PC, which can have an effect on attention spans. So, how did we get from that to a link to Alzheimer's? Were there clinical tests done? Was the team of researchers even in any way focused on the most famous form of dementia?

No. Instead, the article describes the methodology for reaching the conclusion of a link thusly:

1. The type of learning shown by the gamers has been associated in previous studies with increased use of a brain region called the caudate nucleus

2. Increased use of the caudate nucleus can be associated with reduced volume of the hippocampus

3. Reduced volume of the hippocampus can be associated with increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease

4. Therefore (take a deep breath) video gaming could increase risk of Alzheimer’s disease

That's three, three associations of mere correlation at best, with not even a shred of evidence for causality. And from that we get not only press reports of a link, which I can understand because the major media groups in Western culture have proven to be more interested in sensationalism than stuff that actually exists, but university institutions pushing out press releases to feed the hounds? That's not only wrong, it's borderline character-assassination on the wider gaming industry. Sadly, even some on the research team have gotten in on the act, likely in the hopes of generating press coverage of the study.

The press release also includes a statement from the lead researcher that is a clear exaggeration. Dr Gregory West is quoted as saying “we also found that gamers rely on the caudate nucleus to a greater degree than non-gamers”. Actually they didn’t find this at all, because their study didn’t measure activity in the caudate nucleus. Instead it measured a type of behaviour that previous studies have associated with activity in the caudate nucleus. There is a world of difference between these two, and readers would do well to take these latest claims with a generous helping of salt.

No, man! Salt intake is associated with water retention, which is associated with bloating, and weight-gain can be a factor in spousal infedelity, therefore salt leads to my wife cheating on me if I take these grains you prescribe!

Filed Under: alzheimer's, dementia, exaggerations, studies, video games

Rep. Mike Rogers, On His Way Out Of Congress, Slams Obama For Not Launching Premature Cyberwar Against North Korea

from the and-for-not-giving-his-precious-nsa-your-data dept

Rep. Mike Rogers is just about out of Congress, but the NSA's biggest defender (despite his supposed role in "overseeing" the agency) is using his last days on Capitol Hill to keep pushing his favorite causes. Over the weekend, he complained that President Obama basically should have gone to "cyberwar" with North Korea over the Sony hack.

“Unfortunately, he’s laid out a little of the playbook,” Rogers said. “That press conference should have been here are the actions.” ...

Without discussing specifics, Rogers said the U.S. has the capability to cripple North Korea’s cyberattack capabilities, which have been rapidly improving over the last few years.

“I can tell you we have the capability to make this very difficult for them in the future,” he said.

And I can tell you that Mike Rogers is full of bluster with little basis. First off, there is still some fairly strong skepticism in the actual computer security field that North Korea was behind the hack. Launching an all out attack without more proof would seem premature. Second, Rogers is simply wrong or clueless. We don't have the capability to "cripple" anyone's "cyberattack capabilities" unless he means taking out the entire internet. There are always ways around that. Even the reports that we've seen that do blame North Korea don't seem to think the full attack came from North Korea, so doing something like taking the few internet connections in North Korea off the map wouldn't do much good if the actual attack came from, say, China or Eastern Europe or somewhere else.

Third, can we just get over this ridiculous idea that a hack of one company, which may or may not have been by actors working for a government, is an act of either "terrorism" or "war." It's not. It's a hack. Tons of companies get hacked every day. Some have good security and still get hacked. Some, like Sony, appear to have terrible security and get hacked very easily. It's not terrorism. It's not war. It's a hack. We shouldn't be talking about retaliation or destroying countries over a hack. We should be talking about better security. Jim Harper does a good job explaining why an overreaction is a bad idea:

The greatest risk in all this is that loose talk of terrorism and “cyberwar” lead nations closer to actual war. Having failed to secure its systems, Sony has certainly lost a lot of money and reputation, but for actual damage to life and limb, you ain’t seen nothing like real war. It is not within well-drawn boundaries of U.S. national security interests to avenge wrongs to U.S. subsidiaries of Japanese corporations. Governments in the United States should respond to the Sony hack with nothing more than ordinary policing and diplomacy.

But, no, not Mike Rogers. Instead, he's using this as his opportunity to push for his favorite bad law: giving the NSA more power to sift through your data:

Rogers, who is retiring from Congress in just a few days, made a final plug for his bill to facilitate cybersecurity information sharing between the private sector and National Security Agency (NSA). The measure passed the House, but stalled in the Senate, held up by privacy concerns.

It’s necessary, Rogers argued, if the U.S. wants to protect itself from similar attacks in the future. Because of laws on the books, the NSA is limited in its ability to protect private critical infrastructure networks.

“This isn’t about reading your email, it’s about reading malicious source code,” Rogers said.

He's talking, of course, about his beloved CISPA, which would effectively remove any liability from companies for sharing your private data with the NSA (and the rest of the government). But, as per usual with Rogers, he's wrong about nearly all of the details. There is nothing in CISPA that would have made it so the NSA could have "protected" Sony. Sony's problem here was Sony's terrible computer security. So, no, we don't need CISPA or other cybersecurity legislation to better protect the internet.

And is Mike Rogers really trying to argue that Sony's private intranet is "critical infrastructure"?

Finally, there's nothing in the law today that stops a company from sharing "malicious source code" with the government or others. We already have a good way for dealing with that that doesn't require a new law that gives the NSA more access to everyone's data.

Either way, it looks like Rogers is going out in typical fashion -- shooting his mouth off in favor of his friends and pet projects, without actually understanding or caring about the details. No wonder he's going into AM talk radio. He'll be a perfect fit.

Filed Under: cispa, cyber terrorism, cyberwar, exaggerations, mike rogers, north korea, sony hack, terrorism, war

'Scorpion' Walter O'Brien Finally Tries To Respond To Inconsistencies In His Many Claims

from the not-very-convincing dept

I really thought we were done writing about Walter O'Brien -- the claimed "inspiration" for the TV show Scorpion. We already wrote two separate posts detailing the questionable, unbelievable or obviously false claims that he has made recently. And we did another post calling out the "professional journalists" who simply repeated his claims without any skepticism. And, once again (since this comes up every time), I have absolutely no problem with CBS making whatever TV show they want. The problem I have is with O'Brien using the obviously bogus claims to try to build a business on false premises, leading people to believe that giving him money will get you results not unlike those in the obviously farcical TV series.

In that last post, we noted that a couple of the journalists who had originally written fawning profiles had taken the concerns to heart and had tried to reach out to O'Brien to respond about the inconsistencies. Susan Karlin, at Fast Company, had written a profile about O'Brien that repeated many of the claims. When many of us raised questions, that story was briefly dropped behind an unimpeachable paywall (it said it was behind the paywall, but offered no way to pay) and then reemerged with a note acknowledging the questions raised and saying that Karlin was reaching out to O'Brien for a followup. We were skeptical that any followup would happen, but alas, late last week Karlin had a new story describing O'Brien's weak attempts at responding to the questions about his life story.

It appears he avoided most of the really damning stuff -- ridiculously claiming that "non-disclosure agreements" prevented him from discussing them. On the IQ question:

IQ: Regarding his absence from IQ lists, O'Brien wrote: “I was about nine years old when a teacher administered my IQ test," said O'Brien. "Unfortunately, as I was nine, I didn't know that I needed to keep the paperwork for future reference.”

O'Brien did not respond to a follow-up question asking, since he was using his IQ as a marketing element, why he didn’t later take a Mensa-endorsed test in case that figure got challenged.

First off, this proves what we said in our last post, that all of his claims about being "the fourth smartest" are complete bunk. Elsewhere, he had admitted that it was the Stanford-Binet test he took. At age 9, in 1983, the version of the Stanford-Binet that was out was known as the L-M version (two versions ago), in which the scores were not based on standard distributions, but rather a ratio scoring system (i.e. "this score at this age, compared to a normal person at this age"). And yet, to back up his claim of being the 4th smartest, he pointed to this chart, which uses the modern Stanford Binet "standardized" scoring system to compute "rarities." So he's mixing his metrics. Worse, research has shown that scores on the L-M test (especially at the high end) correspond to lower scores on the current Stanford-Binet test (SB5). So, even if the test was accurate, his score would be lower. On top of that, all the test showed was that at age 9 Walter was probably much brighter than other kids his age. It means nothing about him being particularly smart today. At the very least, for someone who puts so much weight on his IQ score and claims to be so smart, you'd think maybe (just maybe) he'd actually have a working understanding of how IQ scores work.

O'Brien did clear up some of the inconsistencies about his appearance in the International Olympiad in Informatics in Argentina, showing that he absolutely did attend (he has a "participant" certificate). O'Brien completely ignored the question about why his visa application to come to the US claims he came in 6th place in that competition, when it's clear he did not. At best there are reports that he came in 90th, though the explanation for why that 90th place doesn't show on the website for the Olympiad doesn't make much sense:

“The application from Ireland to compete had just missed the cut-off deadline,” said O’Brien. “We applied for an exception and it was granted, that's why Ireland doesn't appear in the registry, but did compete, and I certainly was there.”

But, clearly, the website was updated after the competition to show who won, so it's difficult to understand why they did not add his results.

O'Brien does admit to having faked the picture of the headquarters, as we pointed out, but says that the company was run virtually and he never thought people would think it was real:

Regarding the Photoshopped German building, he added, “I apologize if the building image on the website was misleading, as it was just a cool graphic that our website designer provided years ago. To me it was clearly a made up image since it has a large scorpion tail reflected in the glass and no sky in the background, but I can see how you could think it was our headquarters.”

Regarding the bogus number of 2600 employees and the UPS Store as his address:

O’Brien said Scorpion was run virtually, to reduce overhead, utilizing approximately 2,600 pre-screened independent contractors on an as-needed basis to solve large software problems for companies, individuals, and governments. “Most of our systems are either in the cloud (like Amazon's) or at a large customer's data center (like a military base), so we spend our time either at a customer site or telecommuting from our laptops,” he said. "Because we are virtual (and for security reasons), as with many companies, we use a P.O. box for our address.”

I'm all for virtual businesses running online, but there is no business in the world making over a billion dollars that can run entirely virtually without at least some semblance of a real office -- and various stories have claimed that Scorpion makes over a billion dollars in revenue. You don't run a billion dollar business out of a UPS store box. No one does. Small businesses run out of such things -- which is great for them. It's logistically impossible to run a large business that way.

The "2,600 pre-screened independent contractors" excuse is also bogus. First of all, I'm quite familiar with the expert network business, and I've never seen an expert network so careless as to come even close to suggesting that the network members are the equivalent of employees. But, more importantly, with every expert network, it's very common for the members of that network to promote that they're members on things like LinkedIn. And yet, it seems that almost none of these folks associated with Scorpion do so. It's possible that the rolodexes of the very small number of people (it appears to be less than 10) who actually do work at Scorpion may total up to 2600 people, but that's a very misleading way to promote the business.

Speaking of incredibly misleading ways to promote your business, O'Brien also responds to the hilarious claim that Scorpion was a venture fund with $204 billion under management:

O’Brien also stood by the $204 billion venture fund. That figure “was true at the time,” said O’Brien. “That statement simply referred to the total net worth of all the investors and venture capitalists that Scorpion had a relationship with and often hire Scorpion for due diligence. This is collectively referred to as a fund source as we are allowed to show these investors any new companies or inventions that we thought were worth the investors taking a closer look at.”

That's bordering on fraud -- to the point that it seems like the SEC might be interested. You don't get to claim "because I sometimes work with these investors, I can claim to have a fund worth the value of all their assets."

He also never bothers to explain why -- if he was managing a fund with over $200 billion and building up a company with over $1 billion in revenue (out of a UPS store) and 2,600 "independent contractors" -- he was still working a day job doing QA for The Capital Group.

Karlin also turns up some other lies from O'Brien that we had missed. O'Brien claimed that the following happened back in 1992:

1992 Presented A.I. discoveries, Invited to speak at the Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science conference at the University of Limerick (A.I.C.S.), by special invite from Dr. Padraig Cunningham. The youngest Scientist ever invited to present his SPEAKART project. This project was a fifth generation computer application, in the Dublin Hitachi research lab which resulted in being offered an apprentice position at HITACHI.

Karlin contacted Dr. Cunnigham and found a rather different story:

“That’s not true that I invited him to speak,” said Padraig Cunningham, now a professor in computer science at University College in Dublin, when contacted by Fast Company. “And he wasn’t offered an apprentice position at the Hitachi Dublin lab. I’d just finished working there in September, 1992, and he was not offered a job.

“I Googled his name and found this softer version of events in a news article published on one of his sites,” he added. (It reads: “Later that year [1992] Dr. Padraig Cunningham of T.C.D. invited him to attend the two-day Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science Conference in Limerick University.”)

“It appears he later hardened his claims that he was invited to speak and got a position at Hitachi,” said Cunningham. “This is a really old item, but it’s consistent with the idea that he’s become more effusive about his claims.”

This is the same thing that seems to keep coming up with O'Brien. He takes snippets of reality and extends and extends and extends those claims, embellishing the story each and every time. Being invited to attend a conference eventually turns into being invited to speak and then into getting a job.

In regards to all the other obviously bogus claims -- including the ones about "catching the Boston Marathon bombers," stopping wars, having his software misused leading to 2,600 civilian casualties in the Gulf War (yes, same number of "independent contractors" he now claims to have), stopping soldiers in Afghanistan from drinking water laced with arsenic from local drug lords... O'Brien doesn't want to respond to any of it.

“Much of our company’s work, especially with military/government clients is subject to strict Non-Disclosure Agreements, so we can’t say more than has been cleared for news.

“I’ve answered all the questions I have time to right now,” he replied in response to follow-up questions. “All that remains to be said is that I’m proud of and stand by my career, my company, and all the good we have done.”

It appears the strict non-disclosure agreements allow him to promote things that are extraordinarily dubious (and debunked by other information), but not to actually present any evidence to confirm. How convenient.

Filed Under: distortions, exaggerations, iq, lies, scorpion, walter o'brien
Companies: cbs

The Mythical And Almost Certainly Made Up 'Legend' Of Walter O'Brien Continues To Grow

from the make-it-stop-already dept

A few weeks ago, we wrote about "Walter O'Brien," the guy who is supposed to be the basis of the CBS TV show Scorpion. The problem we had was that O'Brien made a ton of absolutely fantastical claims and, after doing a little fact checking, none of them seemed to check out. At all. Since a few people brought this up, let me make it clear: I have no issue with exaggerating on a TV show for the sake of good entertainment. I don't even mind bogus claims like "based on a true story" because, hey, Fargo was pretty awesome. If that's all that was going on, it wouldn't be a big deal and everyone could get on with their lives.

What concerns me about the bogus Walter O'Brien story is twofold: (1) Gullible reporters simply repeat his claims without even the slightest bit of skepticism, which is just shameful reporting and (2) O'Brien and his friends aren't just making a TV show: they're trying to spin the TV show (which, as far as we can tell has close to no basis in reality) into a way to promote O'Brien's "business" with claims that are wholly unbelievable -- in that, literally, I don't think most of the claims are true. It worries me that some people will take the TV show's inflated claims at face value and think that throwing gobs of money O'Brien's way will get them the clearly exaggerated solutions the show is pitching.

Last week, O'Brien appeared with Scorpion producer (and Justin Bieber manager) Scooter Braun at the "Techmanity"* conference in San Jose, and I went to the show hoping to talk to O'Brien and/or the producers of the show to see if they could help clear up the inconsistencies in his story (many of which we detailed in the original post). Instead, despite multiple requests, I was denied an opportunity to interview them before or afterward. They did appear to show up right before going on stage, and then I was told they had to leave immediately after (though, at least one other conference attendee posted a selfie with O'Brien well over an hour after O'Brien got off stage). Despite the agenda specifically promising a Q&A with O'Brien and multiple producers, there was no Q&A (and those other producers weren't even there). A microphone stand that had been present for Q&A during earlier sessions was removed prior to the panel, so it was clear that there was no intention of a Q&A at all.

Instead, there were just more questionable claims from O'Brien, on a panel moderated by Fast Company's Chuck Salter, an "award winning" reporter who didn't seem interested in challenging a single claim from O'Brien, taking them all at face value. Fast Company, which co-produced the conference, and thus, perhaps, had business reasons for suppressing all skepticism, also wrote a big article again repeating the O'Brien myth, though that article appears to have been dropped behind a paywall. O'Brien tells some of the same stories he's told before -- claiming the company only hires people with IQs over 150 and that people with high IQs have "low EQs" and they try to help them on that front. This leaves aside the whole fact that the concept of "EQ" is pretty questionable in the first place and that even IQ is a pretty limited and misleading tool, which may be useful for determining some innate problem solving skills in kids, but means little once they reach adulthood. Once you're an adult, however, IQ is somewhat meaningless. That doesn't stop O'Brien from continuing to assert that he has an IQ of 197, and multiple publications to claim that he's either the "fourth smartest man" in the world or has the "fourth highest IQ ever recorded."

As we noted in our original post, there is no public evidence that O'Brien actually even has such an IQ, let alone that it's the 4th highest ever recorded. In his Reddit AMA, Walter admits that the "4th highest" claim comes from just getting a 197 (still no proof shown) and using this table on the distribution of IQ to assume that he must be the 4th because a 197 IQ only should occur in 1 out of every 1.5 billion people, and then he estimated based on the number of people on the planet. Of course, for someone with such a high IQ, that shows a surprising lack of understanding how IQ actually works. He also notes that he took the Stanford-Binet IQ test, though he doesn't say when. If it was while he was a child (as suggested by his claim to have been "diagnosed" as a "child prodigy") then it's likely he took an earlier version of the Stanford-Binet test -- either the SBIV or the L-M, depending on when he took the exam. It seems noteworthy that modern research has noted that scales on the results of those two versions of the test should equal lower scores on the current SB5. The 197 score (assuming it's true), strongly suggests he took the L-M, which used a ratio scoring system, as opposed to the IV, which was standardized. As such, it also would mean that using the deviation chart Walter uses would be inaccurate, since the ratio score wasn't based on the same scoring system (you'd think someone with such a high IQ would recognize that). And, about all that would suggest was that, at a young age, he was likely far ahead of his peers, but that's about it. Either way, the whole "4th smartest man" in the world claim is clearly ridiculous.

After some other chatter, O'Brien talks (again) about hacking NASA at age 13 (he still hasn't explained how Homeland Security came to get him at the time considering Homeland Security didn't exist and wouldn't be operating in Ireland, but details, details) and then hacking into banks at age 16. Then he says he was developing some "image recognition software," which he notes he developed "for peaceful purposes" related to autonomous vehicles around that time "for the government and a private contracting group underneath the government" (not sure what that even means). Then he says that project got scrapped, and "the software got reused, without my permission, in the Gulf War," leading to "2600 casualties for civilians, because it was built for speed over accuracy." He notes that he "took that pretty hard." He then says he "didn't talk to anyone for about 18 months, I became scared of my own abilities."

I can't see how any of that is even close to accurate. The timing of the first Gulf War would have coincided with Walter being in high school, which matches his story about being recruited by the non-existent DHS, but even if he was developing image recognition software at the time, from Ireland, for the US government (really?), the idea that even after his project would be scrapped he'd then be told (as an Irish high schooler) that the same software was misused, leading to 2,600 casualties? That's not happening.

That leads to a discussion about how his company, Scorpion Computer Services, came about. He claims he was just being asked to do usual computer things -- set up computers, install operating systems, set up printers, etc and the business just grew -- to the point that he was doing work on "localization." Of course, to some extent much of that might be accurate, and Walter's own LinkedIn page suggests he was working on a bunch of fairly straightforward (i.e., no "genius IQ" required) projects around localization. This is further supported by the "references" page on the Scorpion Computer Services website, which is basically just a bunch of reference letters from the late 90s referring to what appear to be fairly mundane computer jobs he held -- often with fairly muted praise. My favorite is this one in which a development manager merely "confirms" that Walter O'Brien worked there. Not explained is why the genius who is building amazing image recognition software for the US military is now working on Word Basic and Visual Basic for projects in Ireland... and apparently desperate for references to get a new job. Something doesn't add up. And of course, Walter still posts this letter from Steven Messino, claiming Messino is a "co-founder of Sun Microsystems." Yet, as we noted last time, Messino joined Sun years after it was a public company, and then as a "regional sales manager."

O'Brien also leaves out the fact -- as seen on his own LinkedIn page, that he was a QA guy at The Capital Group from 2002 to through March of 2009 -- at which point, in the storyline, we're supposed to be believing that he was saving the world at Scorpion Computer Services. But, no matter, at the conference, O'Brien lists out the kinds of "projects" Scorpion was supposedly handling around this time: "Handle my divorce, put a shark tank in my office, build a casino overseas, choose winning race horses based on their DNA." I'm guessing these are plotlines for future episodes of the TV show. How much they're based in reality, well, that's anyone's guess. In past interviews, O'Brien has shied away from saying how much of the actual show is true, pretending that he can't really reveal it. Yet here, he at least suggests that the plots of the shows are almost entirely fictional (which makes sense, given the pure ridiculousness of the plots). So, for example, after a clip is shown of the TV version of Scorpion making a bunch of ridiculous assumptions to find a guy on an airplane with an analog phone turned on, O'Brien just says that "out in the desert" doing some testing they have to use "old Nokia analog phones, because it's the only thing that will pick up a signal -- so I knew that those old phones have a stronger signal." So, first of all, he seems to be admitting that the whole premise of calling the guy in the plane is made up -- it's just based on his personal experience with old analog phones out in the desert. Second, for a technical genius problem solver, he doesn't seem to have the faintest idea why analog works better out in the desert, or have much knowledge about wireless frequencies and the different ways in which analog and digital phones work. He later admits that the story of the plane flying low with the car driving under it was his "idea" (not based on reality) and that the director added the ethernet cable concept to make it "more exciting."

In other words, Walter appears to reveal that he just tosses out some ideas about technologies, and then the writers create these crazy scenarios that have almost no basis in reality (the second show appears to have been equally as unreal, focusing on a "personalized virus" that was designed for a single person. Uh, yeah).

Basically, this whole thing just continued to enforce the idea that Walter O'Brien's claims appear to be a Walter Mitty-esque imagining of the world he wants to live in, rather than one based on reality. Other stories claim that Scorpion Computer Services has "2600 people in 20 countries and over $1.3 billion in revenue" (that's from the Fast Company story). Yet, on LinkedIn I can find only 10 people who list Scorpion as an employer -- and some are merely "advisors." No, you don't expect everyone to list Scorpion or even be on LinkedIn, but 10 out of 2600 people? That's not particularly believable. Then there's the fact that the company's address is a UPS Store in Burbank, and the building shown on its website is actually a photoshopped image of the headquarters of German glass manufacturer, Glaskoch, based in Bad Driburg, Germany:

In other interviews, he's directly said -- or often coyly implied -- that his work helped "stop two wars" (at 3:09 in this video), caught the Boston bombers (though this video just says the FBI used "the kind of technology" that was developed by O'Brien -- not that he actually developed, and presents no evidence the FBI even used similar tech, let alone O'Brien's), and searched for the downed Malaysian Airlines plane, saying his software was used "to make sure the crash site wasn't tampered with."

O'Brien frequently plays up the fact that he's in the US on an EB1-1 visa, which he always notes is the "same one given to Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill." That may be true, but he makes it out like he and those two are the only ones who got this visa. Actually, thousands of people get one every year. In O'Brien's visa application he claims "he placed among the top programmers in the world in several international high-speed programming competitions, including a sixth-place finish in the 1993 Information Olympics, and first-place showings in the 1991 and 1992 Wisconsin International Computer Problem Solving Competition." Except, elsewhere reports have him coming in 90th in the 1993 Informatics Olympiad and sixth (not first) in Wisconsin. So, did he lie on his visa application too? The various companies that O'Brien is associated with have websites that are filled with gibberish rather than actually supportable claims. "We saved $43 billion in opportunity risks over a five-year period." That doesn't make any sense. "We invented an efficiency engine that performs 250 human years of work every 1.5 hrs with over 99% improvement over human error." An old, now deleted, part of the Scorpion website hilariously claimed that Scorpion Computer Services was a venture fund with $204 billion (with a b) under management. It also claims that it had a 7200% return in 1999. This was on his website in 2003 -- the very same time he was doing QA for The Capital Group. Odd. The "ScenGen" software that Walter frequently touts as being able to "exhaustively... think of" and then "execute... all user actions" appears to just be a rather straightforward system for inputting a bunch of variables and brute forcing every possible combination. The documentation on it suggests that you can solve NP-complete problems, like the traveling salesman problem, just by running every possible solution through a computer program. While you, of course, could run through all possible scenarios, that's... not a particularly useful or intelligent way to solve complex problems.

Walter has hinted that one of the reasons he "went public" now is because Wikileaks revealed some of the projects he's worked on. Indeed, there is this page on Wikileaks from the hacked and leaked Stratfor emails, showing Walter trying to reach out to the founder of Stratfor, George Friedman, in 2009 saying "we should talk" and including a PowerPoint about ScenGen... and a resume for Walter which does not mention Scorpion Computer Services (and also lists himself as a "tech specialist" at Capital Group, rather than "Tech Executive" as his LinkedIn now claims). In 2009 -- at which point we're now supposed to believe Scorpion has been in business for 25 years. Yet, the email is sent from Walter's MSN.com email address. It also says nothing of his supposed image recognition skills, but focuses on his QA, compliance and globalization work. It also includes the same 1990s press clippings that Walter promotes on his website. There doesn't appear to be any reply or any other Walter-related info on Wikileaks.

In the presentation, though, we learn that this masterful bit of programming called ScenGen is less than 200kb in size and produces output like this: The more you dig, the more of the same you find. Former co-workers of O'Brien's have shown up in comments or reached out to me and others directly -- and they all say the same thing. Walter is a nice enough guy, works hard, does a decent job (though it didn't stop him from getting laid off from The Capital Group), but has a penchant for telling absolutely unbelievable stories about his life. It appears that in just repeating those stories enough, some gullible Hollywood folks took him at his word (and the press did too), and now there's a mediocre TV show about those made up stories. Again, I'm all for fictionalized TV. And O'Brien, Braun and others associated with the show keep claiming that they're doing this to help "smart kids" not feel like outcasts (though, I'd think the success of Silicon Valley and the internet in general, is doing a much better job of that...). And that's great. But, telling highly questionable stories that seem easily debunked doesn't seem like a good way of helping people. It just feels... like a fraud.

In fact, the story continues to remind me of the similar case of Shiva Ayyadurai. In both cases, you seem to have guys who had a certain amount of fame about their computer programming prowess as teenagers, and where both of them still keep those newspaper clippings from their youth around and frequently highlight them and show them off as if it's proof that they did, in fact, amount to something great later in life even if the actual details of their lives don't quite match the hype. They both seem to cling to those predictions of their youth as if they had to come true. In both cases, they successfully convinced some folks -- notably, a gullible press -- to spin the fictionalized account as being something more. I have no problem with people exaggerating and puffing up their own stories -- that's pretty common. But when it's being used in a way to fool the press and the public and take credit where little is deserved, often with ulterior motives in mind, that seems problematic.

* Side note: in nearly 20 years of conference attending, Techmanity appeared to be one of the worst organized events I've ever attended. In many ways, it felt like the Walter O'Brien of conferences -- making lots of fantastical claims that didn't hold up to much scrutiny ("Silicon Valley's Biggest Annual Gathering"? Not even close. They held the "Techmanitarian Awards", which was described as an "Exclusive, VIP celebration," yet anyone could have just wandered in -- and, even then, not too many people did. "The most dangerous and disruptive startups on the planet"? Again, not even close). The event organizers appeared to figure out a way to get a few famous Hollywood/music industry folks (Jared Leto, Weezer, Troy Carter, Scooter Braun, Thievery Corporation), but very few actual tech minds. The whole thing seemed designed to get as much money out of sponsors as possible, with little thought to the actual content of the event, beyond "ooh, famous people, the sponsors will love that!"

There was lots of talk about "bottom up" creations and the end of powerful top down efforts, yet almost no sessions had any interactions (only a few even had basic Q&A). The pinnacle of poor organizing was highlighted by the scheduled promise of a free showing of Brian Knappenberger's documentary on Aaron Swartz, The Internet's Own Boy, at a local movie theater in San Jose. A bunch of attendees trekked over to the theater only to be told the theater had no idea what any of us were talking about. On contacting the media relations people at the conference, we were told that someone "forgot" to actually set that up, despite it being on the agenda. A bunch of angry conference-goers were left pondering what to do outside the theater. I feel particularly bad for the various startups who must have paid a pretty penny to be part of "Startlandia", a bunch of startup kiosks that went mostly ignored. Some I spoke to flew in especially for this event, expecting something with a lot more substance. Instead, they got a Potemkin Village of a tech conference.

Finally, at least the "media" side of the event was organized by Racepoint Group. I knew the name sounded familiar -- and then remembered that the CEO of Racepoint is Larry Weber, the PR "guru" behind the Shiva Ayyadurai story. I don't know if/how Racepoint is connected to the whole Scorpion thing, but at the very least, the connection is an amusing coincidence. Perhaps there's a PR business to be built in building up fake tech heroes.

Filed Under: exaggerations, iq, scooter braun, scorpion, techmanity, walter o'brien
Companies: capital group, cbs, scorpion computer services