264 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
264 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: CLRG's Cheating Scandal
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date: 2022-10-04
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---
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Amy just stumbled across a PowerPoint file with a bunch of text messages,
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pretty clearly illustrating a massive cheating scandal.
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I won't post a link to the file,
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I won't post any screen shots,
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and I won't reveal any names,
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because I'm not interested in doxxing people.
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Summary
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------------
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The PowerPoint file consists of text messages between someone who I will call
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Sam and a number of CLRG school owners and adjudicators. Sam's messages
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illustrate what appears to be a years-long, maybe decades-long, racket in which
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adjudicators trade favors in exchange for inflated scores of chosen dancers.
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These favors are either reciprocal, or, in one case, sexual.
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I see weak evidence of money changing hands.
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In addition, it is made clear that a school owner is having an extramarital
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affair with Sam.
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Technical Analysis
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-------------------------
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The PowerPoint document going around appears to be a series of screen shots from
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the phone of an adjudicator who I will refer to as Sam. Sam appears to have
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gone back through chat history, taken a bunch of screen shots, and emailed them
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to someone whose name I don't recognize. The text of two emails is included in
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the document before the screen shots which must have been attachments.
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The icons at the top of the screen shots indicate that Sam has an Android
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phone. Android allows you to take screen shots by pressing the power button and
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the volume down button at the same time. It's common for people to hit the
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volume button before power, which results in the phone turning the volume down
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just before the screen shot is taken. You can see evidence of this: the volume
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control appears in some of the screen shots. Someone more familiar with mobile
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phones could probably tell you the Android version and phone manufacturer.
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The screen shots are of text messages with WhatsApp and Instagram (thanks to my
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daughter for figuring this one out). In both apps, Sam is writing the text on
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the right side of the screen, and the person Sam is chatting with is on the left
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side. That person's name and their profile icon (usually a photo of their head)
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can be found at the top of the screen.
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The icons make it fairly clear that these messages all came from one phone. The
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main apps I see are Twitter, Spotify, something that's just a dot, and another
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thing I don't recognize that looks sort of like a stylized four-leafed clover.
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There isn't really too much more to analyze here,
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from a technical standpoint.
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My Take
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-----------
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I feel compelled to highlight a few observations:
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### Sam is a man
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Due to the sexual messages,
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specifically one where Sam is called a "good boy",
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and other clues leading us to Sam's real identity,
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my team feels confident that Sam is a man.
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### Sam might be creeping on kids
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There's a weird message, from Sam, saying "178 is hot". There's no additional
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context here, other than that 178 is a U11 girl, which means she is 11 years old
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or younger.
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It's possible this was just poor phrasing and "178 is on fire" would have been
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better.
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### Sam is involved in an affair
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In what is probably the most memorable part of the document,
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one school owner and Sam exchange messages outlining an extramarital affair.
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It's not clear whether the school owner's spouse is aware of this.
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But it is clear that the school owner likes Sam to have his "ass up".
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### Sam didn't intend for this to become widespread
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While I don't know what his motivation was for taking and sending these screen
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shots, I feel sorry for this person. Nothing in this document makes it look like
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Sam was trying to publicize what was going on. And there are a few things that
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Sam is probably seriously regretting sending, such as the affair.
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In fact, there are enough clues in these messages that my team is confident they
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know Sam's real name. If we're right, Sam definitely would not want any of this
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to become public.
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### This is old
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The earliest message is from July 2016.
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### This is deep
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In an exchange on slide 5, 6 of the 14 judges at All-Irelands 2019 are
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implicated as colluding.
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In an exchange on slide 3, it is implied that up to 5 adjudicators are not part
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of the racket, or are at least not bribeable by the person who refers to them as
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"the panel from hell". Let's be optimistic and assume that all 5 of these
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adjudicators are not bribeable.
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Taking both of these together, we can guess that 6 to 9 of the adjudicators at
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All Irelands 2019 were in on this racket.
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There's a lot of math to get into here: accounting for how the overall
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rankings are computed may make it possible for two colluding adjudicators (16%
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chance) to compromise the entire ranking. But starting out with half the judges
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compromised belies severe problems, no matter how you slice it.
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### This probably isn't as effective as you might think
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Most of these messages are just lists of numbers.
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One smart cheater sent a photograph,
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which is probably easier to remember.
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The reality is likely that they don't remember all the numbers with 100% accuracy.
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This would result either in fair judging,
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or throwing points at the wrong number.
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The younger dancers probably suffer the most from inaccuracy in cheating.
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For the older competitors, the accuracy of cheating is probably higher,
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as the adjudicators grow to recognize dancers.
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Also working in favor of fairness is the number of adjudicators. At smaller
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events, there are 3 on a panel, so about a 5% chance that everybody is
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compromised, if half the judges are bad.
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### This could probably be detected
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If anybody ever bothered to do analysis of the scores handed out, it would
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probably be pretty easy to detect the type of cheating that this document seems
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to illustrate. That wouldn't stop the cheating, but it would make it harder.
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Unfortunately, I don't believe any of the software in use does anything like
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this. And I don't think the data is made available in a way that would make
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independent audits feasible.
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The data exists to be analyzed and audited, but until there's a lot of pressure
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to do this, I don't see it happening. And as angry as everyone is about things,
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I doubt the result will be auditable data. Doing audits is expensive, and the
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people with lots of money are probably more inclined to use it to bribe
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adjudicators.
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### These messages are just the tip of the iceberg
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Let's do some arithmetic!
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Including Sam,
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there are 14 people implicated by this document.
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We are just reading Sam's messages: presumably everyone involved is messaging
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everyone else as well. Mathematicians call this a "complete graph". That means
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there are (14*13)/2 = 91 conversations. Put another way, we are only seeing 15%
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of the racket within this group of 14 people
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But these appear to mostly be UK people.
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If this racket is larger than the UK,
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you can expect much, much more has been going on that we have yet to learn about.
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And you can bet that it's larger than the UK:
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it is difficult to envsion how something like this could stay that regional,
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with an organization as international as CLRG.
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This doesn't mean your school is involved.
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But it probably does mean your school has been affected.
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Closing Thoughts
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-------------------
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Trees grow up *and* down. The part of the tree you can see is only half of the
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organism: for every meter of Siberian Elm tree I can cut down, there's a meter
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of Siberian Elm tree I need to dig out, and digging is way more work than
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cutting.
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I suspect that this racket is deep-rooted and widespread. I imagine the most
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likely outcome will be a lot of social media posts, some funny T shirts, a few
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resignations, maybe some people getting banned from events, and that's about it.
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The only adjudicator this document proves is corrupt is the whisleblower who
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sent in the screen shots. Even people named in these messages stand a decent
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chance of escaping consequences, if they play their cards right.
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Don't forget that you need a lot of certified adjudicators for things to run at
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their current scale. They can't just fire everybody and start over: they need
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their current instructors to train up new ones. And if this document is
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representative, half of their current instructor pool is already compromised.
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There's no way to ensure this scheme won't be a part of the new adjudicator
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training.
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Somebody is going to have to deliver a candid presentation to the board, or
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whatever they have, about the reality here. The corruption is probably so deep
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that they won't be able to take any significant action without destroying the
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whole organization. And this is just going to embolden the bad actors.
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After time passes, the presure from some of these intense and monied parents
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I've met will resume, and everything will be back to the way it was before.
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Sure, there will be some casting changes, but the system that's been built up
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for years--possibly decades--is going to persist long after the furore dies
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down.
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We may, however, see a renewed interest in some of the smaller Irish Dance
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organizations like CRN, who already seems to be making some moves.
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Background
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---------------
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### CLRG and Competitive Irish Dance
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An Coimisiún le Rincí Gaelacha (CLRG)
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is the largest competitive Irish Dance organization in the world.
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Their main activity,
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as far as I know,
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is running competitions, called "Feisanna",
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which Americans pronounce like "feshes",
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because we can't read Gaelic.
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These events are adjudicated by certified judges,
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most of whom also own dance schools of their own.
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These judges fly out to the events,
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sit through 8-12 hours of mostly children dancing around on a stage,
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try to write helpful notes in just a few seconds,
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assign a score,
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and then move on to the next round.
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Periodically, the scores are tabulated by volunteers
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(mostly dads, from my experience),
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entered into one of a handful of online systems just for Irish Dance competitions,
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and awards are presented based on results computed by the systems.
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(None of these systems have auditable source code, to my knowledge,
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but that's a topic for another article.)
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### About Me
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I'm a computer security researcher and educator,
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specializing in forensic investigation.
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That means I show up after the bad thing has happened,
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and build a story about what happened based on gathered evidence.
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The analysis I'm doing here isn't particularly difficult:
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my teenage daughter actually helped me put it together.
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But I am coming at this from a history of doing similar things.
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My daughter does competitive Irish Dance with CLRG.
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She's been dancing for over 12 years now.
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My involvement has mostly stayed peripheral:
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running sound and electrical at events,
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helping with tabulation,
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and driving everybody home while they sleep.
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I am not a journalist.
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I'm really looking forward to reading what gets written about this
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by somebody who does investigative journalism for a living.
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But that article isn't out yet,
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so I wrote this one.
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