LETHAL LURE OF JOBS ABROAD, Baited and trapped

Malaysians fail for offers of lucrative jobs overseas only to end up scrammed 

Families seek help from authorities to rescue job scam victims abroad

 

KUALA LUMPUR: Desperate for work after the Covid-19 pandemic left them jobless, hundreds of Malaysians pounced on offers of high-paying jobs abroad when borders reopened.

They were in for an ugly surprise.

They soon found out they had become victims of job scams and, with their travel documents taken away, are now stranded in several Indochinese countries.

Police said initial investigations showed the scams are run by human trafficking syndicates in Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.

Bukit Aman CID director Comm Datuk Seri Abd Jalil Hassan (pic) told The Star that 115 Malaysians were still stranded in these countries, desperate to return home.

Statistics from the federal police showed as at May 23, 100 men and 15 women aged between 17 and 41, were still stuck in various countries including Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos.

“We have received a total of 110 police reports on Malaysians stranded abroad after being victims of job scams.

“We believe the victims have been stranded there for at least six months. We are actively pursuing all cases to assist the victims,” he added.

Police reports were lodged by the victims’ families after they managed to call home, he said.

“In most cases, the victims managed to inform their family members of their predicament.

“We believe the number of police reports increased after the recent successful rescue of Malaysians abroad, with such cases being highlighted in the media,” he added.

Last month, the Malaysian Embassy in Cambodia said it had rescued more than 60 Malaysians coerced into working for scam call centres over the past few years.

On April 6, 16 Malaysians held captive in Sihanoukville on the south coast of Cambodia were also rescued.

The victims claimed they were duped by offers of jobs as customer service representatives with lucrative salaries for a Cambodian company.

Once in Cambodia, their personal documents were seized and their movements restricted.

Since the reopening of the country’s borders, more dubious job offers were being uploaded on social media, Comm Abd Jalil said.

“Some people are desperate due to a lack of jobs because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Among the main factors that enticed victims to such job scams are lucrative salary offers and benefits.

“We believe the convenience of finding a job overseas is also a factor that influenced the victims’ decisions,” he added.

Comm Abd Jallil said initial investigations showed the syndicates were forcing these Malaysians into working in scams and gambling dens.

“We are building more intelligence on the human trafficking syndicates to effectively clamp down on such job scams.

“We are working hard with the Interpol and Aseanapol to track down and rescue victims.

“We are also collaborating with the Foreign Ministry to expedite efforts in rescuing the victims overseas,” he added.

He also appealed for more awareness to prevent others from falling victims.

“We are working with government agencies and NGOs especially the MCA Public Services and Complaints Department on creating more awareness on such job scams.

“We are focusing on the importance of being careful when considering jobs offered overseas via social media,” he said.

Comm Abd Jalil advised the public to know and adhere to local laws and regulations when accepting jobs overseas.

“Before accepting any job offers, do a thorough background check on the prospective employer or company,” he said.

Comm Abd Jalil added that the police welcome information on syndicates that duped Malaysians and forced them to conduct illegal activities overseas.

“Those with information can contact the nearest police station,” he said. 

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Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) may just be an empty shell as US can offer nothing concrete

 

llustration: Chen Xia/Global Times 

 What is U.S. President Joe Biden's Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) all about? People involved in formulating IPEF admitted that "there's nothing particularly original" in the deal according to Emanuel Pastreich, president of the Asia Institute.

US President Joe Biden announced on Monday that its Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) will start with 12 founding members - Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

The White House touted that those countries account for about 40 percent of the world's GDP, but the high-profile launch doesn't obscure the fact that the US economic scheme, which reportedly covers supply chains, digital trade, clean energy, and anticorruption efforts, lacks specific content.

The US might be able to attract some economies to the IPEF with its seemingly ambitious pledges about digital economy and a new supply chain. However, when it comes to specific negotiations of rules, if the US cannot provide countries with practical benefits to really push for the establishment of a win-win mechanism, the IPEF will not lead to any concrete results.

It is no secret that the IPEF will be used by the US as an important geopolitical tool to contain China in the Asia-Pacific region, but the participation of the other 12 founding countries doesn't necessarily mean they will be all sided with the US in "decoupling" from China. To a certain extent, their participation in the IPEF is largely because they want to be engaged in the establishment of the new economic and trade mechanism from the beginning so as to have a greater say in the rule-setting for their own interests.

For instance, from the perspective of the seven ASEAN members, it is understandable that they hope to benefit from bigger market access, tariff elimination and other preferential trade policies through the new economic scheme, with the view of further promoting the development of their economies and industrial chains. But it is also important to note that most of the ASEAN members are at a different development stage from that of developed countries such as the US and Japan, resulting in a sharp division when it comes their respective requirements for standards in areas like digital economy, labor rights, market regulation, environmental protection, and anti-corruption. And it remains to be seen how the voices and interests of these developing countries can be assured during the detailed negotiations.

In this sense, the game between the US and the other 12 countries may have just started. US Secretary of Commerce Raimondo stated that the IPEF is to "make Indo-Pacific countries beyond China more attractive as manufacturing hubs," according to the South China Morning Post. But that raises a new question: since China is the largest trading partner for more than 120 countries, how can the US ensure the stability of the regional supply chain without China? Maybe that's not the intention of the US at all, because supply chain chaos may actually create new opportunities for the US to bring back manufacturing companies.

However, most of the Asia-Pacific countries see the US as their major export market and China as their major supply chain partner, so they want to see their cooperation with the US under the IPEF could increase their chances of exporting their manufactured goods to the US - and not necessarily trying to hurt trade with China.

From the US' perspective, since Donald Trump's administration, many in Washington blame multilateral free trade for US economic problems, including unemployment and a weakening manufacturing sector. With that protectionist sentiment continuing, the Biden administration is unlikely to give Asian countries more access to the US market.

In fact, if the US opens its market wider to Asian countries, its imports will increase, especially from China, because the Asia-Pacific supply chain is essentially intertwined closely with the Chinese industrial chain. Moreover, China is becoming a major export market for these Asia-Pacific countries, with even stronger demand compared with the US in some fields.

The bottom line is that the decline of American manufacturing has deprived the US of the ability to dominate the regional industrial chain to achieve its strategic goals. The IPEF can offer nothing to make Asia-Pacific countries compromise their massive economic ties with China just to appease Washington. 

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 The Quad plays insidious tricks: Global Times editorial

Washington has launched quite a few “strategies” and “dialogues” in recent years. But most of them either went nowhere during the partisan changes, or the US withdrew and gave them up. The reason is that it always wants to fool other countries to be “cannon fodder” of its hegemony. At the same time, it tried to wrangle with the trend of the time but that efforts always ended in vain.

 

COVID-19 in the US - a tragedy ignored, Four COVID-death peaks: the failure of the US anti-epidemic policy; WHO okayed vaccines including CanSinoBIO jab

 

 

Four COVID-death peaks:The COVID death toll in US reached one million last week, marking the total failure of US anti-epidemic policies. According to statistics, there were four peaks of daily new death cases since February 2020. How did the US policy fail so badly?  

 

 WHO okayed vaccines including CanSinoBIO jab 

  Geneva: The World Health Organisation gave the green light to Chinese manufacturer CanSinoBIO’s Covid-19 vaccine – the ninth jab to get the WHO seal of approval.

The WHO granted emergency use listing (EUL) authorisation to the single-shot Convidecia vaccine as China battles a resurgence of the virus triggered by the Omicron variant.

It is the third Chinese-made vaccine to be approved by the UN’s health agency, after Sinovac and Sinopharm.

Convidecia was found to have 64% efficacy against symptomatic disease and 92% efficacy against severe Covid-19, the WHO said.

“The vaccine meets WHO standards for protection against Covid-19 and ... the benefits of the vaccine far outweigh risks,” the UN health agency said in a statement.

The WHO’s vaccine experts recommended it for people aged 18 and above.

Convidecia may be used as a booster dose following a completed primary series using any other EUL Covid-19 vaccine, said the WHO.

The jab has already been rolled out in several countries including China, Argentina, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico and Pakistan.

By the end of 2021, more than 58 million people had already been vaccinated with the jab, including nearly 14 million in China, the WHO said.

The WHO has now given EUL status to nine Covid-19 vaccines and variations thereof – Pfizer/BioNTech, AstraZeneca, Janssen, Moderna, Sinovac, Sinopharm, Bharat Biotech, Novavax and CanSinoBIO.

Convidecia is based on a modified human adenovirus.

The AstraZeneca and Janssen vaccines are also both based on viral vector technology.

The more traditional approach uses a genetically-engineered version of the common cold adenovirus as a “vector” to shuttle genetic instructions into human cells.

Convidecia “demonstrates a favourable safety profile in people across different age groups”, eliciting strong immune responses with both binding and neutralising antibodies, said the WHO. — AFP 

 

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Act swiftly to prevent data breaches

 

The Most EFFECTIVE WAYS to Prevent a Security Data Breach

 

THE allegation that the personal data of 22.5 million Malaysians born between 1940 and 2004, purportedly from the National Registration Department (NRD), have been stolen and sold on the dark web is a serious concern.

According to local tech portal Amanz, the 160GB database containing information such as a person’s name, identity card number, address, date of birth, gender, race, religion, mobile number, and Base54-based photo, is being sold for US$10,000 (about RM43,885) at a well-known database marketplace forum.

In a screenshot shared by the portal, the seller claimed that the database was an expanded repository from the one he sold in September last year.

In the incident last year, the personal data of four million Malaysians were allegedly leaked from the MyIdentity API (application programming interface) and put up for sale at RM35,419.

MyIdentity is a national data-sharing platform that allows government agencies to access individuals’ details from a centralised repository.

This is not the only government database that has been put on sale this year. Apparently, a couple of weeks earlier, the same seller had posted a database allegedly belonging to 802,259 Malaysian voters, obtained from the Election Commission’s website, on the black market.

And sadly, these are not the only incidences of government database breaches.

While the Home Affairs Ministry has denied that the latest database leak was from NRD, the police, on the other hand, have already started their investigation into the breach.

But whatever the outcome is, with the rising number of cases involving government personal data leaks, the authorities must be held accountable for such breaches.

Heads, especially those given the task of ensuring the safety and security of these public data, must roll.

They must be held accountable for their failure in protecting the people’s interests and in ensuring the safety and security of their private details, which could easily be abused.

The government must also act swiftly to address the weaknesses in their system and reassure Malaysians of a better solution to safeguard data stored by government departments and agencies.

It is a question of public safety.

Scammers could use the stolen data to cheat people of their money, while telemarketers would have a field day making unsolicited calls from the leaked telephone numbers of Malaysians.

To prevent leaked data from being misused, the government, including the police, must work harder to go after scammers, who could use such information to trick victims, especially via the Macau scam.Last year, 1,585 Macau scam cases were reported nationwide, resulting in RM560.8mil in losses. This year, the number has already reached 1,258 cases as at April 19, involving RM65.4mil in losses.

As for telemarketing, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) must be more vigilant and introduce sterner measures to prevent unsolicited calls.

Actions to stop the scammers and unsolicited calls would restore people’s confidence in government agencies despite the data breach.

Lastly, as the custodian of all Malaysians’ data, the government must also be held accountable for any breach.

Currently, the Personal Data Protection Act 2010 (PDPA) does not apply to the federal and state governments. Instead, it only covers commercial entities.

While proposals to amend the PDPA, including making the government accountable, have been made, the amendments have yet to be tabled in Parliament.

Therefore, lawmakers should seriously consider the urgency of the amendments to make Malaysians’ personal data safer in the public domain, preventing them from falling into the wrong hands for illegal use.

This has to be done quickly to prevent more of such data breaches before it is too late and puts national security at risk. 

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Keeping data in safe hands | The Star

Hisham: Data leak won't affect national security

'Govt must also be held accountable' | The Star

Public fuming over another likely data leak

CLICK TO ENLARGE

PETALING JAYA: The public are outraged over another alleged data leak containing the information of 22.5 million Malaysians born between 1940 and 2004, stolen from the National Registration Department (NRD).

Many are anticipating more scam calls and SMSes as well as fraudulent online transactions to occur over the breach.

Businessman Amirul Asraf, 31, from Wangsa Melawati, said such incidents were the root cause for many the scam calls people are receiving on a daily basis.

“With these data, scammers can convince people that they are calling from the banks, courts, police and authorities. This will make people’s lives harder.

“I read a case where a poor man who obtained assistance from his local assemblyman was cheated after a scammer emptied him out. The assemblyman had to help the victim again as a result.

ALSO READ: ‘Govt must also be held accountable’

“These scammers are heartless. They don’t care if they take a lot or a little or whom they trick, as long as they get the money,” he said.

Software engineer Ahmad Ridzwan, 30, from Bukit Jalil, could only say “Malaysia Boleh” in relation to the leak taking place.

“Not sure what else to comment. This is the worst possible leak because our identifiable data is out in the open and the identity card is the most important one of all,” he said.

Sales executive Shivaendra Gunasegaram, 30, from Petaling Jaya, said smartphones and social media companies already had all data pertaining to the individuals.

As such, all personal information was accessible to many people, he said.

“As long as there are no unauthorised transactions from our bank accounts, I feel that there’s nothing to worry about.

“The advantage of being poor is that they probably won’t target my account because there’s not much in it,” he said jokingly.

Meanwhile, the data leak report continued to create a buzz in online forums and on social media, with many people expressing their unhappiness over the government’s inability to protect vital information from being leaked repeatedly over the years.On Facebook, user Zaidi Rudy said: “Brace yourselves, scam calls are coming in.”

Dennis Ooi said: “Was SOLD mean somebody have to go jail. Any action taken on those responsible. Or tangkap lepas again.”

Wan Meng Lee questioned: “Why the rakyat confidential information can be sold off is it not kept safely omg.”

Abdul Hamid said: “If they know the data being sold, they definitely know who is the seller.”

In the Lowyat forum, user bananjoe said: “Habis go and overhaul the whole new mykad. This is epic ridiculous. Government IT staff doing what ???”

Sycamore said: ”So absurd. But why am I not surprised? Absurdity is the reality.”

Radiowarrior1337 said: “This needs to kena and people head must roll. Tidak apa attitude and biar la dah hack kan so mari lepak minum teh now to discuss what scenario he obtains the data.”

Comprehending the complexity of countries

 

This book argues for computer-aided collaborative country research based on the science of complex and dynamic systems. It provides an in-depth discussion of systems and computer science, concluding that proper understanding of a country is only possible if a genuinely interdisciplinary and truly international approach is taken; one that is based on complexity science and supported by computer science. Country studies should be carefully designed and collaboratively carried out, and a new generation of country students should pay more attention to the fast growing potential of digitized and electronically connected libraries. In this frenzied age of globalization, foreign policy makers may – to the benefit of a better world – profit from the radically new country studies pleaded for in the book. Its author emphasizes that reductionism and holism are not antagonistic but complementary, arguing that parts are always parts of a whole and a whole has always parts.

Comprehending the complexity of countries is a monumental contribution to deep thinking about countries as complex and dynamic systems.

GEOPOLITICS is the game of strategists figuring out how countries behave. The Ukraine war has shown how assumptions about countries or the behaviour of their leaders are wrong, plunging the world into what Henry Kissinger has called a “totally new era”.

Hans Kuijper, a retired Dutch diplomat and exceptional Sinologist, has written an indispensable guide to understanding where country studies have gone wrong, and how we can use systems thinking and computers (ICT) to unravel the quagmire of flawed country studies.

His book is a tour de force into the philosophy of social science, drawing on his incredible reading of ancient Chinese and Western philosophy, science and current country studies.

The thesis of this book is quite simple: country studies have an explanandum (something, i.e. a country to be explained), but so-called country experts do not have an explanans, a tested or testable theory that not only explains, but stands out from other scientific theories in different disciplines such as geography, demography, ecology, politics, economics, sociology, linguistics, or anthropology.

Thus, “China experts” unjustifiably claim to explain China, even when basing their writings on a single discipline, as if they are knowledgeable about everything concerning the country. As the saying goes, “No ant can see the pattern of the whole carpet.”

Kuijper has identified a fundamental gap in conventional country studies. If you study a country (part) without taking a crude look at the world (whole) and not considering how interaction affects simultaneously the parts and the whole, that is to say, only making conjectures without a testable theory, you are only practicing pseudo-science, not science. For science is more than expressing opinions.

Comprehending the complexity of countries is a monumental contribution to deep thinking about countries as complex and dynamic systems.

In chapters one to seven, the author methodically and relentlessly exposes the enduring confusion, building step-by-step his thesis, examining theories and models, clarifying the concept of country (as distinct form area), showing how cities and countries have much in common, and exploring the scientific and technical feasibility of collaborative country studies.

The author moves essentially from a multi-disciplinary to an inter-disciplinary approach, to the higher order of a trans-disciplinary way of thinking about the development of countries as adaptive complex dynamic systems.

He examines how countries comprise both spontaneous and man-made systems, interacting both exogenously and endogenously (chapter six).

The ancient Chinese recognised that empires rise and fall from both “external invasions and internal corrosion”. Chapter seven delves deeply into the issue how modern scientific tools such as artificial intelligence, big data analysis and computer simulation could aid country studies.

Science fiction assumes that if we put all available information about one subject into a supercomputer, the subject would be replicated as a hologram, thus helping us predict its behavior.

Whether we have sufficient information and computing power is only a matter of political will and imagination.

Kuijper uses the example of networked digital libraries to substantiate his view that the study of a country could be greatly improved by deploying electronically available information about countries and regions.

Having conceptualised the model for studying countries, Kuijper examines its profound implications for higher education, arguing for “connecting the dots” (chapter eight).

He is most original when he argues that ancient Greek and Chinese thought are alike in thinking about the organic whole, whereas the specialisation of Western science caused the divergence between Western and Chinese ways of research.

The modern university, originally created to truly educate (bring up children) and spiritually elevate, became more and more specialised in less and less, making graduates complexity-illiterate.

Students do not learn to connect the dots, to see the whole. The author argues for tearing down intellectual walls and mental silos to see the grand order of man and nature.

Since each and every country has emergent properties irreducible to the properties of its constituent parts, we have to make use of the science of complex (not: complicated) and dynamic (not: linearly changing) systems in order to really comprehend the country.

An example of not connecting the dots is the fact that it took years for development economists to realise that lifting a country out of poverty involves more than economic factors.

Similarly, ecologists took decades to realise that more scientific data on global warming is not going to change policy when economists (influencing the policymakers) habitually assume that markets can solve the problem of global warming in total defiance of the fact that it will take a combination of state and market to change human behaviour.

I consider Kuijper’s discussion of reductionism versus holism (Chapter nine) a huge contribution to moving beyond the quagmire of Western exclusive and antithetical versus Chinese inclusive and correlative thinking.

The reduction to atomistic parts of free individuals creates blinkers. Western scientists draw ever more distinctions, but tend to miss the whole (from which they are apart and of which they are a part) and how the whole changes with the parts.

The whole is not a matter of either – or but of both – and, meaning that reductionism and holism are complementary rather than contradictory to each other.

The book is the amazing achievement of an independent, determined scholar reading thoroughly in depth to find out that we need complexity thinking to understand complex phenomena, resisting the ingrained habit of simplistic reductionism, the default way of human understanding.

It took at least four centuries to convince doctors to give up the idea of blood-letting as a solution to sickness.

So, it is not surprising that pseudo-scientists still think that they can pass as country experts without the help of many collaborating disciplinary-experts, using big data analytical tools.

Kuijper helps us navigate this complex subject by using a short abstract for each chapter, backed by key references. General conclusions are drawn in chapter 10. He then draws his very practical and very useful recommendations with the last chapter distilling his key insights.

This is a wonderful book, not just for sinologists, but for all who consider themselves to be country experts. It gives insight into the question of how we have got ourselves in a terrible mess over the current geopolitical path to conflict.

This book speaks truth to power, but whether those in power will listen, is the big and urgent question to which there seems to be no simple, straight answer.

Andrew Sheng writes on global issues from an Asian perspective. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. 

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