Situational Awareness and Crime Prevention

Ronald V. Clarke argues for more situational awareness in crime prevention. Turns out if you make crime harder, it goes down. And this has profound policy implications.

Whatever the benefits for Criminology, the real benefits of a greater focus on crime than criminality would be for crime policy. The fundamental attribution error is the main impediment to formulating a broader set of policies to control crime. Nearly everyone believes that the best way to control crime is to prevent people from developing into criminals in the first place or, failing that, to use the criminal justice system to deter or rehabilitate them. This has led directly to overuse of the system at vast human and economic cost.

Hardly anyone recognizes—whether politicians, public intellectuals, government policy makers, police or social workers—that focusing on the offender is dealing with only half the problem. We need also to deal with the many and varied ways in which society inadvertently creates the opportunities for crime that motivated offenders exploit by (i) manufacturing crime-prone goods, (ii) practicing poor management in many spheres of everyday life, (iii) permitting poor layout and design of places, (iv) neglecting the security of the vast numbers of electronic systems that regulate our everyday lives and, (v) enacting laws with unintended benefits for crime.

Situational prevention has accumulated dozens of successes in chipping away at some of the problems created by these conditions, which attests to the principles formulated so many years ago in Home Office research. Much more surprising, however, is that the same thing has been happening in every sector of modern life without any assistance from governments or academics. I am referring to the security measures that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of private and public organizations have been taking in the past 2-3 decades to protect themselves from crime.

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Posted on June 21, 2016 at 12:16 PM • 31 Comments

Comments

SoWhatDidYouExpect • June 21, 2016 1:12 PM

Criminals are opportunistic.

Inadvertently, we have created one of the greates criminal opportunities ever.

That would be the internet and its implications that if anyone can sneak onto your internet connected computer, they can get away with almost any crime committed in that space (any network connection, any connected computer, any data that can be stolen or abused for criminal purposes).

It is SO BAD, that government agencies have taken up the mantra of criminals and perform the same illicit/illegal activities (under the guise of protecting us from something).

WIth government agencies, it will soon be the case (my expectation) that it will be criminal for one to be hidden on the grid or go off the grid to avoid such behavior. In other words, we are already all criminals.

Dan • June 21, 2016 2:48 PM

This is the same logic that supports the concept of ‘victim blaming’ in cases of rape.

RRob • June 21, 2016 3:04 PM

This is the same logic that supports the concept of ‘victim blaming’ in cases of rape.

Geez dude, try reading the report. If you can’t bother reading the report try looking at the two tables on page 3.

Chris • June 21, 2016 3:45 PM

Richard Clarke is a blowhard bureaucrat whose main mission in life is to sound more important and knowledgeable than he really is. I just wish I could get back the money I spent on his terrible book…

QnJ1Y2U • June 21, 2016 4:50 PM

@Chris

Ronald V. Clarke is likely saying: “Hey! I added the V just to keep people from making that mistake”.

also chris • June 21, 2016 5:07 PM

@Chris – Richard Clarke is a blowhard bureaucrat whose main mission in life is to sound more important and knowledgeable than he really is. I just wish I could get back the money I spent on his terrible book…

Which is neither here nor there. RONALD Clarke has three pages of books listed on Amazon.com; which one are you criticizing? Alternately, which of RICHARD Clarke’s books are you critizing (novels? “non-fiction”?), and why insert that criticism into a discussion of an article by RONALD?

Personally, I was taken by the difficulty in understanding the ambiguously-worded sentence structure…. e.g. :
“We need also to deal with the many and varied ways in which society inadvertently creates the opportunities for crime that motivated offenders exploit by (i) manufacturing crime-prone goods, (ii) practicing poor management in many spheres of everyday life, (iii) permitting poor layout and design of places, (iv) neglecting the security of the vast numbers of electronic systems that regulate our everyday lives and, (v) enacting laws with unintended benefits for crime.”

They really must be motivated, but how does it help the criminals to exploit the opportunities by going to the excessive lengths of doing the following: (i) manufacture crime-prone goods, (ii) practice poor management… (iii) permit poor layout… (iv) neglect the security…, and (v) enact laws…. Wait, is he saying that SOCIETY creates the opportunities by doing (i) – (v)? And that motivated criminals merely exploit those things?

When I read that kind of nonsense, I generally read no further. If his thought processes are so confused that he can’t write a clear sentence, I don’t waste my time trying to disambiguate what he says.

albert • June 21, 2016 5:13 PM

Henceforth, I shall ignore academic papers dealing with the social ‘sciences’ and associated ‘studies’ and ‘surveys’ dealing with non-technical subjects. It’s mostly BS, and not worth the time it takes to read and discuss.

It appears that Bruce, perhaps inadvertently, captured the essence of the paper in satire:

“…Turns out if you make crime harder, it goes down…”

Can we find productive jobs for these people?

We’re wasting good trees on this stuff.

. .. . .. — ….

Slime Mold with Mustard • June 21, 2016 6:21 PM

@ Also Chris
@ albert

A certain amount of incomprehensible babble is expected in any social sciences journal article. Its the standard in the field.

Clarke goes on to make some good points about private organizations making their own efforts to reduce criminal opportunities, although he didn’t mention that when a business makes a change to make robbery or assault less likely, it is eyeing liability.

Does anyone recall when Rosie O’Donnell sliced her hand trying to free a toy fishing pole from its package and then sued the manufacturer? It would not occur to her to blame shoplifters. I recall taking half an hour to free an imprisoned Barbie Doll for my daughter. I should have used an axe.

Clarke wrote:
“So what explains this avalanche of security? It is surely not because these businesses and organizations are trying to make society safer from crime. Rather, it is because experience has taught them they get only limited help from the authorities when they become crime victims”. Uhm, try NO help in most cases of white collar crime.

Wm • June 21, 2016 8:20 PM

“We need also to deal with the many and varied ways in which society inadvertently creates the opportunities for crime…”

Like gun control, which is actually restricting law abiding citizens from owning and carrying guns that are very effective at stopping criminals. This includes a large clip AR-15 and large clip pistols. Thanks God I live in Texas where we can carry guns for personal protection. In places like Calif. and Mass., you are at the mercy of every criminal.

65535 • June 21, 2016 9:20 PM

@ SoWhatDidYouExpect

“It is SO BAD, that government agencies have taken up the mantra of criminals and perform the same illicit/illegal activities (under the guise of protecting us from something).”

That makes sense.

The NSA/FBI/local police breaking into phones and computers to implant spyware seems to encourage more of the same [Credit Card skimming]. Just take a look at the cottage industry of zero day exploits that the Three Letter Agencies that pay for it [and encouraged].

@ Brian J. Bunton, Ladies’ Man in Blue

“Precisely. You want to make crime more exceptional, the first thing you do is stop institutionalizing and protecting violent crime – by police. Until you put these animals out to pasture, you’ve got a mafia state.”

The police who pack guns holding 20 round magazines [not too mention SWAT Teams with auto rifles and grenade launchers] seem to do their share of killing and looting under various laws such “forfeiture” laws. this seems to be criminal in and of itself. They are setting an example for others.

The crime problem starts at the top.

We have secret laws to imprison people. We have the FBI who break into computers and use administrative gag warrants to silence people. We have a President will a “kill list” that can kill Americans without a trial. Powerful politicians with “Security Teams” carrying enough fire power to flatten a house. Laws preventing citizens from knowing what the government is actually doing in the field [“classified law enforcement material” and classified spy tools like the Stingray] and the infamous torture apparatus with no regards for human rights.

The problem is criminal behavior at the top – which other people aide and mimic. The perceived criminal behavior at the top causes crime to multiply.

Clean out the institutional criminals at the top and a good amount of crime would be deterred.

Lawrence D’Oliveiro • June 21, 2016 10:29 PM

“If you make crime harder, it goes down.” An argument (as if we needed any more) in favour of gun control? If you make access to guns harder, gun crime goes down.

Government Hack • June 21, 2016 10:52 PM

@Tor User

Proposed changes to Rule 41 are yet another example of retrospective changes to law to cover off illegal activities ongoing for years (without consequence).

Nobody here really believes that the Feds haven’t already been doing the following:

Yet Rule 41 would grossly expand the power of law enforcement to seek orders to attack and exploit computers around the country and around the world, with no statutory guidance, safeguards, or consequences for the harm they will cause.

I’m sure if this passes – and it will under the blowhard terrorist narrative we are sold everyday – that the US government won’t mind every other jurisdiction passing general warrant laws to hack US networks, at will, with judge shopping to make sure it is all above board. /sarc off

Another huge problem right now is our best privacy tools like Tor are seriously flawed. I recommend you read this publication to understand how often one can be de-anonymized by network level adversaries (i.e. NSA and friends) when using Tor.

http://www.ohmygodel.com/publications/usersrouted-ccs13.pdf

Users Get Routed: Traffic Correlation on Tor by Realistic Adversaries

Tor is known to be insecure against an adversary that can observe a user’s traffic entering and exiting the anonymity network.

Our analysis shows that 80% of all types of users may be de-anonymized by a relatively moderate Tor-relay adversary within six months. Our results also show that against a single AS adversary roughly 100% of users in some common locations are deanonymized within three months (95% in three months for a single IXP). Further, we find that an adversary controlling two ASes instead of one reduces the median time to the first client de-anonymization by an order of magnitude: from over three months to only 1 day for a typical web user; and from over three months to roughly one month for a BitTorrent user.

The same problems emerge with other privacy network tools e.g. I2P etc. In fact, they are even worse given the smaller populations using them.

No simple solutions have been identified yet that are workable and practical. And yes, people have already thought about padding, reducing latency of the network etc. The main problem is that it is too easy to look at data flows and know that Tor user X is almost definitely requesting data Y from exit node Z. Further, their attacks can be amplified by running series of malicious relays, guards and exit nodes e.g. owning one or more of the 3 hops in the Tor circuit.

So, Clive et al. – please help us find a solution to this problem and win a Computer Nobel 😉

Slime Mold with Mustard • June 22, 2016 12:18 AM

@ Lawrence D’Oliveiro

It might seem that gun control would help a lot. I ran across a couple of things that seem to contradict that assumption.

From Wikipedia

“Thus, disarmament is real in fact in Brazil, as is also real massive gun confiscations, notwithstanding it’s massive refusal by Brazilian people (at the referendum of 2005) and even though it is considered one of the real causes of the rise in 20% of gun usage rates in homicides in the country, in its nine years of existence (in 2003, people with guns killed 36.115 of the total 60.121 homicides, about 60%, while in 2012, 40.077 homicides of the total 50.108 were made buy the usage of a gun, about 80%).”

A more poignant picture was painted by this article in the Daily Mail.

When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have heroin.

fajensen • June 22, 2016 1:55 AM

@Lawrence D’Oliveiro
“If you make crime harder, it goes down.” An argument (as if we needed any more) in favour of gun control? If you make access to guns harder, gun crime goes down.
Maybe. I think it depends.

When crimes are made harder and more exclusive it decreases competition. Then the profits from crime increases, making the remaining criminals more “productive”.

This is very clearly illustrated by the “war on drugs”. In Copenhagen the police are once again trying to shut down the illegal cannabis trade – which of course is failing, because the sale of cannabis and weed is so stupendously lucrative. It’s summer too so the gang-bangers are out shooting each other because some are forced out from “the usual place”, Christiania, onto new territory, by the seasonal police effort. Every 2’nd year of any government, the same story.

The Arab gangsters move between Gangsta and Jihaddi – some of the black money from the drug trade probably funding terrorism in Syria and other places. This is known, however, In Denmark, the government mainly exists to allocate resources to delay the inevitable for as long as possible.

With effective gun control, the incidents involving some idiot shooting someone on an idiotic impulse or over a lunatic grievance is likely to be lower. The hard-core criminals won’t care much, so if “people-facing” criminals like robbers are the main driver of gun crime, then, gun control won’t matter much (we kind-a know what the answer will be, because CDC is not allowed to do any research on it ;).

https://www.thetrace.org/2015/12/cdc-gun-violence-research-wilmington-suicides/

fajensen • June 22, 2016 2:00 AM

PS:
I forgot to say: If guns themselves are the profit generator for the criminal business, then restricting availability may not reduce the level of crime.

If guns are tools, that is, a “cost of doing business”-item then restriction works (of the crims will find cheaper tools, hopefully less effective).

Clive Robinson • June 22, 2016 3:02 AM

@ 65535,

The problem is criminal behavior at the top – which other people aide and mimic. The perceived criminal behavior at the top causes crime to multiply.

Two things,

Firstly much of it is not covered by criminal law, or where it is there are “exceptions” like “National Security” etc.

Secondly, and I know this going to upset some people, if you have a resource limited environment that the US has become, when you follow the logic down, this situation is exactly what you would expect from the ethos of “The Great American Dream”. We had learnt that lesson in Europe a couple of centuries prior to the supposed finding of America, and the reason it was found was to perpetuate an earlier version of “The Great American Dream” by stealing other peoples resources and killing them if they resisted…

The lesson from history is a stark one, the kind of equality such dreams promise only happens when there is an excess of resources, such that it’s easier to exploit them than it is to oppress others… The rest as people are finding out again “is just window dressing” a sop or as was once put “an opiate for the masses”.

Either everyone has to change their outlook on life which will hit the US the hardest, or go find resources else where. Because as history has taught us the likes of technology, war, enforced birth control and political ideologies do not resolve the problem, just delay the inevitable…

65535 • June 22, 2016 4:04 AM

@ Clive

“…much of it is not covered by criminal law, or where it is there are “exceptions” like “National Security” etc.”

Ah, “National Security” is a good example of a bad example.

In prior times when thermal nuclear weapons could be used to wipe out a quarter or so of the USA’s population in a day, I would agree some “exceptions” to abuse the codified law and human rights law is rational. Basically, the National Security “exception” has be widened into a hole you could drive a truck through.

When National Security is grossly enlarged to include every vice crime from pot dealing down to traffic accidents then we have a very bad case of abuse of both laws and police power [some of it is due to large IT companies selling out their customers to Feds].

Expanding the term “National Security” to the level of petty crimes and traffic accidents turns laws into a perverted form class warfare that laws are not laws but cheap words written by lawless politicians and powerful weapons makers to ensure their customer base keeps expanding. We are seeing the government turn into a criminal enterprise.

Parallel construction, mass spying [despite the Fourth Amendment] and political espionage [both at the citizen level and at the NATO level] is dangerous and probably against written agreements and laws. In short, the laws of the USA have been turned on their head due to the Military Industrial complex.

Cleaning it up would set a good example to the rest of civilian population. As would cleaning up the Oakland Police departments prostitution problem.

“Badge of Dishonor: Top Oakland Police Department Officials Looked Away as East Bay Cops Sexually Exploited and Trafficked a Teenager”

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/badge-of-dishonor-top-oakland-police-department-officials-looked-away-as-east-bay-cops-sexually-exploited-and-trafficked-a-teenagerdepartmen/Content?oid=4832543

“…history has taught us the likes of technology, war, enforced birth control and political ideologies do not resolve the problem, just delay the inevitable…” –Clive

That may be generally true. I have no argument there.

I hear what you are trying to say but the message needs to be compact and hard hitting. But, it would be better if you would explain it at a level the average Jane/Joe can understand [Such as when a British comedian that explained to Snowden that “dick pics” stolen from the back bone by the NSA would have spread his revelations to a broader civilian audience and helped drive his point home].

Clive Robinson • June 22, 2016 4:43 AM

@ Government Hack,

So, Clive et al. – please help us find a solution to this problem and win a Computer Nobel 😉

I’ve had a skim read of the paper and it’s not realy telling me anything I did not know at the 20,000ft view. But as they say “the devil is in the details” so I’ll pop the paper on my reading list.

Some of the terms they use in the paper are not the ones that have been more commonly used in the past, in part because they have given them a more restricted meaning. Such is to be expected with the advancment of any art of enquiry.

As I’ve indicated before there are solutions to some of these problems, but in turn they open up others.

For instance in an active attack where an adversary has control of a node they can pace or control traffic both down stream and upstream by the use of error messages etc. This has more effect on circuit switched traffic than random packet path traffic, but it still has an effect that an adversary can use. This is a consequence of the desire by users for low latency and the fact that the network has no real depth of “store and forward” capability.

Another issue is one of doing a simple calculation on traffic into and out of a node. If known traffic goes up on one port and you know the node does not have store and forward you can draw conclusions based on what you see at the other node ports. You can apply this through subsequent nodes with decreasing accuracy but low latency makes any changes much easier to trace. The take away from this is three hops through a low latency non store and forward network is insufficient.

Another point to consider is the number of ports on a node, the more there are the harder it is to see where traffic is going when there is some form of rate control. The less obvious take away from this is that entey and exit nodes are harmfull to health, thus getting rid of them is desirable. Whilst that may not be possible for exit nodes it is more than possible for entry nodes. Thus you get rid of entry nodes and client systems become part of the network as a routing node with some store and forward capability. Thus it has multiple ports connected to multiple nodes and it can intersperce the client traffic in with that of others. To make this work you need both random packet routing and “token rink” links on the ports and other techniques using a mixture of high latency traffic –like Email– and low latency or fixed rate traffic –VoIP etc– to maintain a constant or very slowley changing total traffic volume.

Unfortunatly there are ways that even this can be attacked by an adversary with control of one or more nodes.

The point that needs to be made is that whilst you can stop passive observing adversaries learning much of use in quite long time scales, the same is not true for active adversaries who can manipulate traffic flows by simulating error conditions.

Any way there are certainly a number of minimal impact changes that can be made that will make life considerably more difficult for even active adversaries, and will be a vast improvment on TOR.

But at the end of the day to get and maintain anonymity on the underlying infrastructure is difficult. The reason for this is the basic topology of the communications links are effectivly “star configured” with the top level interconnects being in the US and similar. This gives rise to the “All roads lead to Rome” issue, where all traffic flows through jus a few choke point interconects that can be instrumented.

Such star configurations occure due to financial concerns to minimise the number and length of physical lengths, as well as minimising the cost of the very high capacity top layers. The more reliable a link based communications technology, the more likely it is to become a star topology, which gives increasing surveillance advantage to those closer to or at the central topmost “Rome” layers.

As long as the fundemental operating mode is “star” then long term anonymity will not be possible without other mittigations such as long latency store and forward and more distributed base network databases for the likes of DNS etc.

ianf • June 22, 2016 5:10 AM

@ fajensen

Regarding what restrictions would do to guns as profit centers vs. tools for the criminals.

The criminals read the papers and evolve, too. I hear a TV news item about the sudden rise in, as-profitable-as-smuggling-drugs, but WAY LESS punishable, exciting new-ish Euro trade of smuggling non-pedigree dog puppies, of specific breeds that command street-level prices above that of heroin. Two types of breeds were mentioned: Grand Danois-like, and miniature chi-somethings; those that serve as “social accessories” for Social Lionesses. An Austrian Customs official complained about illegal minded kennels/ breeding farms in Eastern Europe, where there is no oversight of such enterprises, the entire output of which is moved by “criminal puppy underground” to well-heeled (often in advance contracted) Western middlemen or buyers. A Danish Public Health official was even more worried over the risk of reintroducing (initially fox-borne) rabies into Scandinavia, as hardly any of these puppies have been inoculated etc. When caught, the smugglers are arrested, face penalties and slap-on-the-wrist prison sentences (possibly up to 2 years? but seldom that high), which ARE NOWHERE NEAR the scales for smuggling dope. Meanwhile, their clutches of dogs are put down, as there is no one willing to care for them. Acc. to the report, that type of cross-border canine trade has skyrocketed in the past year by at least an order of magnitude, which may signal the entrance of organized crime into what up to now basically were mom-and-pop breeders making some extra dough on the side.

ObSecurityContent: This is my speculation, but, as the legally border-crossing dogs need to be Canine-ID-chipped, I wonder how long it will take those enterprises to acquire capability of faking (or illicitly duplicating) such IDs, together with seemingly bona-fide “Pet Passports”. Maybe they’re already there… the profits being what they are.

Impossibly Stupid • June 22, 2016 10:45 AM

@ also chris

Wait, is he saying that SOCIETY creates the opportunities by doing (i) – (v)? And that motivated criminals merely exploit those things?

Yes. But it’s even more than that; don’t think of it as criminals exploiting society, but instead think of it as society creating criminals by the choices/laws it makes. If you don’t have programs in place that allow people to be productive and contribute to improving society, they might be left with no other option than to commit crimes in order to survive. The consequence is incarceration, which itself will be a burden on society that may very well be higher than the cost of any program that would have actually helped that person. Is it still the case that a 4 year stretch in the joint is more costly than a college education?

Another example is a sick law-abiding person who can’t get health care for an illness that convicts would be treated for. What should society expect to happen in that situation? There are countless similar examples where society incentivizes criminal activity. You could do a lot more to protect yourself from crime if those incentives were more rational in the first place.

Slime Mold with Mustard • June 22, 2016 2:01 PM

@ ianf

Your account of puppy smuggling reminds me of a basic principle of human (criminal) behavior that I have seen, and heard of repeatedly: Wherever a significant price difference of a product exists across borders, it will be massively exploited.

I lived in south Texas before the North American Free Trade Agreement. I believe that for every ton of drugs coming north, several tons of appliances were smuggled south. Ever heard of a television sniffing dog?

In the US, there are significant differences in cigarette taxes between states, and Indian reservations have none at all. The smuggling ranges from casual travelers filling the trunk (boot) of their car, to entire truck loads. When Canada massively increased their <a href=”http://www.smoke-free.ca/factsheets/pdf/taxrates.pdf> cigarette taxes , the US mafia started taking them across Lake Ontario in speed boats.

My brother lived in Paraguay at the Brazilian border. Paraguay had punitive tariffs. At the bridge across the Parana River the customs officials had a policy: They only checked vehicles. Every day, there was an endless line of pedestrians carrying bundles and boxes south, and the empty handed headed north. The locals called them “ants”.

On a Side Note:
Lately, the US federal, and several state governments have sought to regulate or even outlaw electronic cigarettes ( for the children, don’t you know ). This despite Public Health England concluding that they cause five percent of the damage of regular cigarettes. I think we could de-motive the government meddling by getting them speed boats.

r • June 22, 2016 2:18 PM

@slime mould,

One of the recent ‘illegal seizures’ involved monies intended to smuggle Indiana cigarettes into Illinois?

Also, thanks for Rio grande do sul tidbit.

vas pup • June 22, 2016 3:09 PM

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36596070

Finally (after being posted on this blog long time ago), idea of setting mechanical switch on microphone and camera got recognition. That is directly related to option (iv) in the article. Industry has ‘late ignition’ as auto mechanics used to say for implementation of simple and productive security preventive measures.

Slime Mold with Mustard • June 22, 2016 8:39 PM

@ r

When Illinois proposed to raise its cigarette tax by a dollar a pack (and Chicago by two), the proponents envisioned a $154 million state budget relief. Critics pointed out that 80% of Illinois’ population lives within 20 miles of another state’s border.

Illinois realized $60 million. Chicago declined to release its numbers. It does directly abut Indiana.

As for seized monies, I’d not heard a specific story. Organized crime (LCN specifically) prefers to purchase from corrupted Indian (Native American)Reservation officials, of which there are none in Indiana.

If the topic interests you (strictly academic, I’m sure:):
From the US to Canada and Globally.

r • June 23, 2016 8:44 AM

@Slime Mould,

I live in Michigan, until very recently it was common practice to cross into Indiana/Ohio for fireworks.

Over the years I’ve been made aware of the cigarette tax evasion scheme through others, if people want to violate commerce and tax laws that’s on them. Conspiring against the state I’d not my cup of tea lol; that’s what it is.

I think when I drove my mother in law to Tennessee I might’ve bought a cartoon for someone as a gift and brought it back, but that’s a much different intent imb.

I tried finding the recent civil forfeiture link I spoke of last night but I couldn’t. Basically the guy lost like $150k but it turns out he was buying Indiana cigarettes and intending to cross state lines. Fair game in my book. But as it turns out, on the topic of Indiana… they’re apparently pretty corrupt.

I found about a dozen links accusing they’re prosecutors of handing off such cases to their own private practices directly to line their pockets. Skimming right of the top before the property is awarded to either property. Definitely sounds like a major conflict of interests on their part.

As for Brasil/Paraguay, I’ve seen Brasilian officers pull people out of cars at the end of what I think were shotguns. Messing with them is not in anyone’s best interest imb. 🙂

Freezing_in_Brazil • June 23, 2016 10:19 AM

@Slime Mold with Mustard

Daily Mail… Really?

Look, I know Brazil has a lot of problems, but it is very very far from the 3rd world shithole you’re making it to be. It’s a giant country, with many landscapes. You cannot reduce the vastness of this country to the problems of a single city [Rio or even Sao Paulo – where you would feel at home in its worse places if you happened to be born in south London]. There are exceedingly beautiful and first-worldly places [just like the one I live in] all over the country, especially in the south. The mid-sized, high HDI’s, towns in the hinterlands of Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais and the rest of the southern states are very pleasant to live.

So check your stereotypes, and please do not approach this subject with the mind of the common Joe Sixpack who you seemingly is not.

Slime Mold with Mustard • June 24, 2016 11:19 AM

@ Freezing in Brasil
I did not intend to insult anyone and do not believe I did. As for the Mail . It is what it is. I linked it because the photographs emphasize my point. Perhaps you ought re-read the Wikipedia article.

Where did you get the idea I stereotyped… What? People? Places? Dude, you got another think coming.

Brasil could use a hard freeze.

@ r

Another example of: If you can sell it, they will buy. Besides catching the errant, I’m tasked to design systems that discourage that. I’m into prayer now.

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