Scammers come from all over, Africa, America, East Asia, the Soviet block countries, the Caribbean, Bain Town and Lyford Cay to name a few.

Been saying for months and all during the "*cashless*" craze, that when I hear business owners use the term, two things are true, they dont understand their market and they dont understand how innovation works

"*This is done despite the Prime Minister and other ministers, including this one, who've said over again and made a claim we do not agree with a cashless society. Nor forcing people to use the Customs App, nor consigning our folk in the Family Islands to the Sand Dollar.”*

Customs App??? Dand dollar??? When all these protests happen that even the PM was powerless to slow down? Some Minister, still in dispute as to which one, was able to bypass all kinds of immigration laws for 62 suspected illegally residing Chinese immigrants, maybe ask them what to do to get civil servants to put aside rules

When bank robber Wllie Sutton was asked *why do you rob banks*, in folklore he's attributed as saying, "*because that's where the money is*". There's also a corollary about why MS computers get hacked more, *because that's where the users are*.

Post COVID when digital suddenly became king, grandmas and grandpas were forced to go digital, every business wanted to advertise that they were now "*cashless*" and everybody had to move to sand dollar to be techy-hip...all I could think about was Sutton.

And here we are. Surprised again. "*Surprise, surprise, surprise*" as Gomer Pyle used to say. The way you know are dgitization plan is wrongheaded is this is an afterthought. Who could have known?

"The person sitting down waiting to be served, they done hear what you come here for, there’s no confidentiality, there’s no privacy.*"

More than 20 years ago I asked a bank clerk, why do you have me here shouting my name, address and identifying details across a counter? Nothing has changed. In the Bananas there is a fundamental misunderstanding of data privacy and how valuable small details are to hackers and identity thieves. I can only imagine the trauma of having to also shout the ways in which you were violated across a counter.

I struggle with releasing information on the 8 year old rape victim in order to provide support (and the posting of a video with contact details of a tourist). While most people will be supportive, some people can be cruel, most especially classmates and other children.

Very simple solution. Place an iPad where persons key in basic information, it can be but doesnt have to be networked, it's just for the purpose of transmitting details at that point. Some persons may not be able to read so you need very simple layouts with suitable icons. You can have an education campaign around what those icons mean. Think for example when you're in an airport in a foreign non English speaking country. All airports have agreed upon symbols that any traveler will recognize as a bathroom, food location, police station, teller machine etc etc.

This solution should not cost more than 3000 dollars. Even that's high, but I'll allow for the time necessary to code and test. The maintenance contract should consider a given number of hours of support per month, maybe 10, at no more than 100 dollars per hour. Any support over that time maxed at 150 per hour. There should be no circumstance where any month sees more than 5 extended support hours per station. This is a simple application. Your graphic designer who sits with people under the dilly tree to get their feedback on proposed icons may have a different rate. Remember people have to intuitively link the visual with something and they should be tasteful not further traumatic. But that's a one time project charge no more than 8k. Enough with these multi million dollar technology projects for 10hours of work. e.g Marco's alert.

And of course remember sanitation.

This act was largely a failure. The one business that the govt used as the poster child for technology startups had to be eventually propped up with a govt contract. It never made any sense to me to launch a tech industry staffed with foreigners and expect Bahamians to gain knowledge through osmosis. it never worked in any other industry. The foreign workers just received 20+ years of work permit renewals. I always thought the poorly crafted act was written by someone with a tech business who wanted a legal means to import cheap Indian labour, the govt later signed a diplomatic waiver that allowed any Indian nationality anywhere to enter the country to work without a vusa.

**Same tired lack of accountability dodging**. Before you do the celebrations you document the cost. This why the entire country failing and a 20m dollar baseball stadium end up costing 70m... so they say. It een finish yet, I thought there was still discussion of landscaping and bathrooms?... dont quite recall

And to be clear, there's no doubt in my mind that it's not Cambridge who decided not to inform the public. I posted on another BPL story, "*politics in this country trumps common sense, good governance and sometimes the law*". And dont let someone with long political campaign dollars be involved they could have an operation to recruit and sexually abuse multiples of young girls in the inner city and noone would say anything, the police wouldnt even intrude... oops aint that already happen?

CNN January 2023 -

Posted this excerpt some time back, noting the parallels of sheer incompetence. I dont know what to say... it's like ground hog day.

***For YEARS, residents in the northern Indian city of Joshimath have complained to local officials that their homes are sinking** Now authorities are being forced to take action, evacuating nearly 100 families in the last week and expediting the arrival of experts to determine the cause*.

*Cracks running through the city are now so wide that hundreds of homes are no longer habitable, and some fear that India could lose a key gateway to religious pilgrimages and tourist expeditions on nearby mountain trails*

*As of Thursday, cracks were present in 760 buildings and 589 people had been evacuated, according to a bulletin issued by the district administration.*
....

***Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami visited the affected areas LAST Saturday, inspecting the homes** of residents who fear the structures may collapse.*

**Does anyone remember Erin Brockovich?** The movie Julia Roberts made famous about oil executives poisoning groundwater in some small US town and trying to cover it up?

I remember watching that movie in horror and thinking how could these money grubbing worms do this to human beings, children even? To find out that the people who was dressed up and smiling brightly in their finest to all those 50 year gala balls just a month ago knew this was happening and have done nothing, it's too much for the brain to comprehend. (And these the same people who have thousands walking through 3-4ft of water in Pinewood redeveloped swamp everytime it rain for more than an hour)

Do we really believe Cambridge didnt know and didnt give this report to the PM? He had to know, they tried to clean it up. And if they tried to launch a cleanup operation would he not mention to the PM in their biweekly meeting that this could be really bad if we dont act?

And they said nothing

Can an international court to investigate the running of this country. Cuz we cant seem to get off this train. Didnt Papa Doc go before a world court for what he did to Haiti?