PROGRAMMATIC GASLIGHTING is a common method of predatory criminals who program obfuscation (cover their tracks) at scale. A criminal will obscure identity through programmatic approaches to insert laundering mules, mixing and other obfuscations into the money flow.
Cyber, Crypto and Financial Crime are a psychological warfare.
While victims can and often do lie to avoid culpability or embarrassment, the impacts of trauma trigger genuine memory fatigue.
Criminals know this and it is part of their premeditated methodology to trigger memory failure. Disrupting the neural pathways by maximising emotional distress and causing confusion to override logical thought and therefore subvert evidence.
The predatory habits and behaviours that we allow aren't just limited to criminals and if we do not intervene, they can become programmatic and cause dysfunction at scale.
It's not just criminals who are among experts in programmatic behaviours across technology workflows, people everywhere are learning how to be 'in the cloud', adapting haphazardly at varying rates of efficacy (and harm) through technology.
In the course of advocating for victims of cyber, crypto and financial crime, I have witnessed professional services, legal, judicial and law enforcement personnel misrepresent facts or avoid critical detail to protect a career and behave in an anti-competitive manner.
The net effect is injustice.
Gaslighting is also used by an increasing array of people who may routinely deploy a litany of lies to get what they want by any means possible.
You have probably seen this in your workplace.
It probably happens occasionally in your family.
And your friends are likely to do this from time.
This in my view reflects the decline of morality and virtue more broadly across the human experience. Facebook ASKS YOU TO BE DISHONEST and create a fake avatar of you! Technology platforms charge YOU to prove that YOU ARE REAL! This does nothing but exploit you for income, while doing nothing to mitigate the fact this registration is voluntary. This does nothing to mitigate all the fake profiles. The cost of fake identity mitigation should be on the platform for allowing widespread fraud. Legislation needs to change.
Let's get real.
Too few have considered the impacts of dehumanisation or the need for virtue and morality to be built into how we program a safer future. Where do we look for clues to integrity?
Back in 2019 Deloitte Digital released a brief on the rehumanisation of the CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE also known as CX. Corporations don't often speak to how we feel.
This pamphlet on CX speaks to the idea that technology leaders ought to program technology to serve people and improve well-being.
The short paper is well worth reading to reconcile the experience you have had of technology, with the ideals promoted in the paper.
Technology leaders have a responsibility to keep you safe, yet they have demonstrably put profit before people, allowing processes that have exploited people unfairly and irresponsibly.
READ THIS PAPER ON REHUMANISATION OF TECHNOLOGY EXPERIENCE.
For the technology literate among my audience there is a proven pathway to rehumanise.
In technology, there are two taught stages or dimensionalities of programmatic experience from UX (User Experience and GUI) to CX (Customer Experience).
Then two stages that are not taught or integrated that relate to strategic relationship management, which I call PX or Partner Experience and VX or Value Experience, which provides metrics to validate inputs and outputs and their impacts on the desired human experience.
I DESIGNED THIS PARADIGM BELOW as part of an accounting industry transformation project. Attache Scorecard earned Australian recognition for Best Cloud Product in 2014. This award was based on the evidence of my work transforming accounting advisory through diagnostic evaluation and insight. Having already successfully transformed an industry diagnostic and advisory methodology, I am committed to deploying this capability to transform the systems that are not working for victims of crime.
KEYWORD: EXPERIENCE.
The disciplines of how we measure and manage experience are not often understood and therefore not often implemented. Neglect can result in technology driving the increase of dehumanisation to the extent that people become harmed at increasing scale as we turn up the volume through the artificial intelligence programmatic experience.
Worse still, is that with the advent of AI, programmatic algorithms have not built-in empathy. They are more typically being programmed by personality types that lack empathy, who then codify their own lack of empathy into the experience. Think HAL9000. It does not take much for a system to become malevolent due to a lack of empathy.
I see this all the time in the code of high-tech criminals, who have the least regard for humanity. Who seek to exploit systemic moral program weaknesses to the maximum personal advantage.
This is a cultural issue to coding, programming and automation that is a bit like the kind of misogyny that led to people like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein, whose patterned behaviour was clearly observed but not disrupted.
If we turn on an AI that has been coded by someone who lacks empathy, the unempathetic system will victimise human beings at scale. Yet since commerce is by nature exploitative and increasingly predatory, criminals can easily tweak a system to hurt a lot of people. Consumers must demand human centricity.
Victims however are not that interested in going public or forming groups to fight back against predatory exploitation that has led to their misery. As they say, this is like rounding up cats. Each victim is independent and more likely to become territorial. That has to change. TDNO aims to bring people together in regional workgroups to collaborate with ethical pioneers who have put their hand up to work positively, face the facts and improve justice processes.
This goes against another obstacle. GREED.
Lawyers more often focus on the criteria of money.
Victims who have lost a lot represent potential income to predatory lawyers who may preach empathy, but ultimately who ignore the 'low value' cases which are irrelevant to their income.
And so, the majority of people 'aren't worth the effort' to some lawyers who may preach a brand of help that never delivers, and which only contributes to making money from misery, despite their fervent protestations of higher ethics.
Transparency is fundamental. Demand it.
Eight years in, I am as committed to the democratisation of justice and restitution for all members of THE DARK NIGHT ONLINE as the first day that I started. I am committed to all client cases and justice for everyone who has experienced a dark night online.
Share this article and let's raise awareness.
GLYN MACLEAN | FOUNDER
THE DARK NIGHT ONLINE
Cyber, Crypto & Financial Crime
INVESTIGATION & TRAINING