Everyone welcome to the August 6th, 2020 meeting of the historic preservation commission. Meetings are being held remotely due to the governor's safer at home order. So everyone can watch the meeting live stream. And we'll have a little post on that here in a second. So go ahead and call roll commission, excuse me, commissioner hardies. I'm here. Oh, thank you. Commissioner Gau, Commissioner Lane. Here. Commissioner Norton. Here. Commissioner Goon. Here. Commissioner Bagwell. Here. Councilmember Rodriguez. Here. Thank you. So our next item on our agenda is the approval of the June 2020 meeting minutes. We did not have a meeting in July. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes. Okay. I'll second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. All in favor, raise your hand. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, so then moving on, we've got a report from the chair, which is basically my time to note that anyone wishing to speak during the public invited to be heard or the public hearing component of the meetings will need to be watching the live stream of the meeting for instructions about how to call in to provide public comment at the appropriate times. Instructions will be given during the meeting such as what's on the screen now and displayed on the screen when it's time to call in to provide comments. Comments are limited to three minutes per person and each speaker will be asked to state their name and address for the record prior to proceeding with comments. And then please remember to mute the live stream when you are called upon to speak. If you do have any technological troubles or need to leave the meeting, please contact Maria, Jade, or Jane via emails or the number<PHONE_NUMBER> to regain access to the meeting. Okay, that's all I have, nothing further on that. So our next item on the agenda will be communications from our HBC liaison. Hi, everyone. So great to virtually see you all. I just have a few items from the time in between our last meeting in June. We did a few administrative COAs. 438 Collier wanted to remove the paint on the exterior to expose the original brick. So that's a really great project. 824 Fourth Avenue wanted to repaint their home. It was looking a little shabby, so they used a very similar color palette. 812 Third Avenue replaced a little bit of siding on the front, and they used the exact same siding. So those were the three approved COAs administratively. I wanted to report back after our June meeting, 917 Fourth Avenue, as most of you remember, was an application for tax credits. And finding out that the garage was not part of the designation made that ineligible for the tax credits. And so I was going to check on whether or not the repainting alone would qualify, and it does not, after checking with History of Colorado. So I just wanted to report back on that. The last thing, obviously not this meeting, because it's not on the agenda, is we kind of have a packed meeting tonight. I'd like to continue our conversation on tax credit review after our very nice presentation from Erica with History of Colorado last time. So I think perhaps in September, we can continue the conversation on what that looks like for us as a CLG. So that's all I have for you. Okay, thanks. Any questions for our staff? Seeing none. So this is our public invited to be heard component of the meeting. This would be for anything that is not on the agenda later on. So if there's anyone out there in the audience that would like to bring something to the HBC's attention, now would be the time. So we will take a five minute break and have the instructions posted on the live stream. Commissioners, if you could mute your mics and turn off your cameras during this time. Okay, back in a minute. Commissioner Carpenter, this is Susan. When we resume, we'll go ahead and check your mic. Thanks. We'll give our live feed about 30 minutes to catch up, and then we can begin. Chair, it looks like we have one caller in our waiting area. All right, that's been about five minutes. I can begin when you are all back. Chair, I'm ready to begin when you are. Okay, great. So it does sound like we do have a one speaker for our public invited to be heard. And so now we'll turn the floor over, the floor as it were. Please again, as a reminder, state your name and address before you begin. And you have, there's three minutes. Okay, the first caller I'm going to unmute is ending in 089. I've unmuted you. I think we have one. Hello. This is Sarah Levison, 634 Emery Street in Longmont. Can everyone hear me? Yes, we can. You may begin. Thank you. I'm a resident of the Historic Eastside neighborhood, former council member and former liaison to Historic Preservation Commission. The topic that I'd like to bring forward to the commission today is something not on your agenda. It is the matter of 830 Emery Street. 830 Emery Street has a sign in front of the yard that simply indicates a ADU is being added to the property. In truth, that's not the whole story. The property will in fact have a new ADU. However, it is not going to be the structure it was. Basically, the structure will be demolished, except for two small pieces of wall. And effectively, it is a demolition of both the interior and the exterior of the property. And looking up the demolition paperwork, I see that there's quite a bit of a flaw that someone could simply not check the box, that it's 50 years or older or, as this property is, within the original square mile of the town. I would actually like the commission to be able to pick this up and take a review of it. The neighborhood has contacted the city. In fact, as a courtesy, Planning Department was going to be notifying the neighborhood association, the longest organized neighborhood in the city, of new development applications and ADUs. And in fact, the city never received notice of this ADU application. We have been working very closely with the city for maybe 30 years or more on historic preservation and the great look we have in the neighborhood. As a final remark, I would like to remind everyone that next year is the 150th anniversary of the founding of the city of Longmont. And historic east side was the very first neighborhood in that. And as a reminder, it would really be nice if we could see what the city was and have a large group of homes and structures that represent the original town, rather than have to just look at things in pictures because we don't have structures left. The neighborhood really would like to discuss what demolition looks like in this town because effectively the structure will be demolished. The neighbors who got the notice within 300 feet were not even given any information except about that there was going to be an ADU. They assumed that the rest of the house was going to be there. I think they may have called and one said that they were told there was going to be an addition. If you can review the paperwork, you'll see this is simply not an addition. It's basically taking the entire structure down except for two small portions of wall and then resurrecting a very large two-story home. And then again adding a new garage and then an ADU over the garage. So those are my comments. The neighborhood would like to engage with the commission more frequently on issues. It seems like there's been again some lack of communication between staff and the city. And I realize Karen Bryant, who we had a close working relationship, is not with the city anymore. And we had a little bit of a lapse there. But I'd be happy to respond to any questions you may have. Okay. Well, I certainly appreciate you calling in and bringing that to the commission's attention. Ms. Krueger, are you aware of any of this? Or are you able to comment? Yes. Staff was made aware of the 830 Emery Street Project because it is a contributing structure. We are currently reviewing the application now. So thank you to the Historic Eastside Neighborhood Association. We greatly appreciate your comments and your assistance with the Cultural Resource Survey. And we'll be reviewing that. So thank you. Thank you. So do you expect that that might be something on next month's agenda for the HPC? I can't say. I do know that because it's not a landmark and it is contributing, we will review it in terms of compatibility and in terms of the demolition permit. But in terms of an agenda item, I'm not 100% on that. Chair, I'm going to put the caller into the waiting room. And if the caller would like to call back at another public invited to be heard, opportunity they can. Okay. Thanks. Ms. Norton, did you have a comment or question? Yeah, I did. And it was for Ms. Krueger. I think that I personally would like to have an update on the direction that this is going and to understand what they were applying for, what exactly it is that the city is reviewing and how the Eastside neighborhood's concerns and comments are being met and considered in that application review. Yes, I'm happy to do an information item on this project as well as just the review in general. I can work on that and get it over shortly. Yeah, I think that would be a good idea to do that. And I know we've got a lot of new commissioners and there was a time where we took a look at what our demolition code standards were in the city. I think it would be a good idea to revisit that and just make everyone here aware and good refresher for me and anyone else on this for a little bit about what exactly our processes and where we have teeth and where we don't. So if we can put that on a future agenda item for a future meeting, I very much appreciate that. Any other questions or comments about this particular item? Nope, seeing none again, thank you for the call in. So we will move on to new business and our first order of business is a Certificate of Appropriateness Application for 207 Bowen. So Ms. Kruger, would you like to give us a staff report on that please? Certainly. I'm sure most of you are familiar with this property as it just went through a COA application June of 2019. But 207 Bowen Avenue is the Beckwith Barn. The house on this property was designated in 1985. The barn and outbuildings were designated after that in 2017. So the barn is currently vacant and seeking to repurpose the vacant barn into an ADU. So again, the owner received a COA in June of 2019 for the project, but then needed to make some alterations to the design and so therefore is back for a new COA. So in the packet, I have included elevations that I labeled first approve a proposal existing as well as new proposal to help kind of showcase the changes that they're making. But essentially the things that are changing are the size of the windows on the west elevation, an additional window unit to the north, an additional window on the east, the front door on the south side, and the dormers on the south elevation seem to have changed a little bit in style from gables to a shed. Appearance. So again, those are in the packet if you're looking for more visualization. On this project, we received several public comments. I sent an email earlier today, I think around 2pm after I had compiled the most recent ones I received from Monday of this week through Wednesday. But I did also know a separate comment that I received much earlier under the public hearing notice and posting section of your packet. There's a general concern about where parking will be designated for this barn. I've let every public member of the public who's commented about parking on this application know that this is just a COA for approval from going from a vacant barn into an ADU. And so once, if and when this is approved by the Historic Preservation Commission, this will still need to go through a planning review where parking can certainly be addressed there. But I just wanted to note that most who have commented about parking would like for the applicant to consider creating parking on the north side of the structure. So, and again, the additional comments are related to believing that the barn, the new design is potentially radically changing the appearance of the barn and therefore perhaps not as historic as they would like to keep the structure. So again, I've sent those by email and if anyone didn't receive those, please let me know. Staff would recommend the commission move to approve the COA for this application with the condition that the applicant just approve all manufacturer and materials and makes of windows and doors before work commences. Okay, so do we have any questions for staff, Commissioner Bagwell? I'd just like to point out that if you're looking at the, can you hear me, the new proposal the first approved proposal existing, the north and south elevations are flipped. So you have to, it's not, you're not looking at. That makes sense. If you see on the first approved proposal on the left hand side, it says existing south elevation and then below it the existing north elevation. On the new proposal, the existing north elevation is at the top on the left hand side and the south elevation is on the bottom. So you have to kind of, when you're looking at those you just kind of have to flip them to make sure you're looking at apples to apples. Thank you. Any other commissioner questions for staff? Okay, I don't see any. So at this point we will give the applicant an opportunity to make a presentation if they so wish. You should be able to unmute yourself now. Go ahead. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Great. Oh, this is John. Can you, can you turn on your video? There you are. Great. You may begin. Yeah, we just decided that the windows that originally were approved were going to be too small. They won't let in enough light into the structure and we just wanted to try to get some more light into the barn. And the style of the door that we originally chose was, we didn't feel like it was in keeping with the barn. So we wanted to instead of having the side lights we were going to do something different. All right, as you can see on the drawing. And we did switch architects. The initial drawings were, well, kind of subpar. And guys, Stevenson, he drew up some new plans and had some really good ideas that some of the head heights weren't working on stairwells and whatnot. So he retooled that. Thanks. Do we have any permission or questions for the applicant? Now that we have them. Commissioner Guy. Going on the, of the building. So I leave that opens into the alley. Are those just kind of false doors? Yes, they're just that. They're just a faux door, just the. Okay, much more in keeping with the style of the buildings. And hopefully we'll put it in. The original, sorry, the original, it wasn't, he was an engineer. He wasn't an architect that did the original drawing. So yes, I think we moved it up a couple of matches. Any other commissioner questions for the applicant? Don't see any. I have one staff did make a mention about the windows. Can you speak to the type of windows that you intend to install as the new windows? We were looking at a true divided light wood window that is similar to the window that's in the eve of on the west side of the barn. It's currently in the barn. So it's be a true divided light window. Windows. I think we're going to, I don't know. We could ask Guy what, or John what, what windows they'd suggest. This is Guy Stevenson here. I did the most recent submittal. We haven't picked a window manufacturer yet, but there's a number of them that do a highly insulated true divided light wood interior and exterior. That's the plan. We just don't have, we have not picked a manufacturer yet though. Okay, great. That's fine. And that's all I was really looking for, you know, on the drawings.  So definitely not between the glass. Thank you. So true divided. So that's basically, I think what my expectation would be in terms of the staff taking a look at that, if it's on that level, then pretty comfortable. Great. Would it be okay to do a clad exterior? Or do you want to see a painted wood exterior? I don't know. Do any comments from the commissioners before I throw my I don't know what a clad. I don't know what that is. Well, a wood window, if it was a true wood window, it would be painted wood on the outside of the window. If it's a clad window, it's actually aluminum that's been painted at the factory. Aesthetically, I think they look exactly the same. The only difference is that the paint on the cladding lasts forever. The paint on the wood needs to be repainted every couple, three, four years. Thanks. And I did just find some pictures of that as well. So thank you. Commissioner Norton. Sure. I actually don't agree that they look exactly the same. I put a new window into my own home this summer and chose a wood exterior because I wasn't thrilled with how the clad windows looked in a historic house. So I would recommend if it's an option to go with the full wood interior exterior. Okay. Any other commissioner comments or questions? Yep. Commissioner Guy. You look the same, but after a small amount of weather wearing, they typically do not look quite the same. But also, I would look to what is largely in the building. So our expectation is that you would replace things in kind. So if the original windows were wood windows, then that's what the expectation would be that you would replace them. Okay. Well, unless there are any other comments or questions, I will go ahead and open up the public hearing component of this agenda item. So if there's any folks out there that would like to comment, we'll put the instructions up on the screen. We'll have a five minute break and then we'll queue everyone up. Again, if the commissioners, if you can turn your mics and cameras off while we wait for everybody to get on board, we'll see you back here in five minutes. Commissioner Carpenter, before you mute yourself, can we test your mic again? You're coming in a little difficulty here. Yeah, I have it on right now. I thought it was the wrong person. Sorry, Commissioner Carpenter. It was Gayu. Okay. Let me get myself in. Commissioner Gayu, can we test your mic again? Okay, Chair, I'm going to stop sharing. We'll give our live stream about 30 seconds more to catch up to where we're at. If everyone could come back on, that would be appreciated. And Commissioner Gayu, can we check your mic? You were coming in a little quiet and hard to hear. Yes. Is there any way that you can move your camera mic a little closer or sit closer? Try again. Much better. Thank you. Chair, we have no one for this public hearing item. Okay, great. Okay, well, then I'll close the public hearing portion of this item and I guess open it up to commissioners for any further discussion. Seeing no one. I will say from having been involved in the even back to the very earliest applications for this property that in a series of moves over the last couple of years, we've arrived at a much more palatable looking product than where we very much, where we started out. So I certainly appreciate the efforts taken. With that said, I'll entertain a motion. So I have a motion and a second. All in favor of approving the certificate of appropriate misapplication for 207 Bowen. Now, just to be clear, are we approving this as proposed by staff? In other words, with the condition that the staff gets to review and approve the window specification? Is that your intent? Commissioner Galli? All in favor. Okay, perfect. And the second is still okay with that? Okay, perfect. So moved and amended. And second, sorry. All those in favor? I and I, okay, looks like we passed unanimously. So there we have it. Congratulations. Thank you. Okay. So then we will move on to item six B, which is a certificate of appropriateness application and a preliminary tax credit application for 710 Martin Street. With respect to this property, I actually had some professional involvement. And so I am going to need to recuse myself in this portion of the hearing and turn this particular set of proceedings over to our vice chair, Commissioner Gallio. So during this time, I will unmute and turn my video off. And then I'll jump back in once this, when six B is completed. Thank you, Commissioner Gallio. All yours. Maria, can you jump in? Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Yeah, we could go ahead and start with the staff presentation. Great. I will jump right in then. So 710 Martin Street, I'm sure most of you are quite familiar with this property as it was designated just this past year in 2019. This is the Cordova Anaya house that was owned by Jeff Cordova and his parents, Joe and Ramona Anaya. Before this home was designated in November of 2019, it was vandalized. Therefore, some of this work, such as removing the rear porch or mud room, needed to happen before the COA just so that they could secure the home itself. So this application is for a COA for quite a bit of work. If you turn to page two of your packet, I've listed all of the alterations in detail, and the applicant has provided some very good photos before and after of the property. So we've got the COA, and we also have the tax credit application. I was able to, on page four, break down all of the work and the qualified costs that were provided by the applicant to come up with a total of $97,880 in some change for the total eligible for the tax credit, making that credit if approved $19,576.15. I received no public comments related to this project, and after staff review, we would recommend the commission move forward of the approval of the COA and the tax credit application with one condition, just that the applicant confirm paint colors with staff before repainting the exterior. And I'm happy to answer any questions, and I believe the applicant, Ms. Louch, is also on the call today. I couldn't tell if the siting that's proposed is going to match the dimensional characteristics of the existing fiber cement siting usually has a wider spacing to it. It has vinyl siting on it. So the original siting is no longer in place. So it's probably reasonable. The preference of it could be that they would replace it with wood going back to the storage material, but that's not a requirement. None of the original siting is remaining, is that what you're saying? That is true. Out of the original and the proposed layout, would be whether the kitchen and the front bedroom could be switched so that the bathroom could be at the back of the property rather than quite visible from the front facade of the building? I'm not exactly sure. I'd have to review it with the architect, but the way the the interior is laid out right now, we only have to take one wall down to make that interior, the kitchen and dining room and living room all work together. Whereas if we start moving the kitchen, then we'd have to move more walls. So that was the reason that we chose to do it the way we did. It would just be instead of removing the wall between bedroom three and the kitchen that's currently there, you would just be removing some of the wall of bedroom one to probably create an opening between that kitchen and the living room seem to be spaces of very similar size. There's also the problem that this is part of a larger development project, and there is a series of townhouses behind the building. So there's not a whole lot of space behind whereas in that side yard where the bathroom currently is there's more space. Okay. Are you maybe interested in doing some landscaping that would kind of Absolutely. Absolutely. And then as far as that bathroom goes, are you switching the direction of the siding or anything on that? What is the siding going to look like? It's going to remain the same as it is so it'll blend in with the rest of the house. Additional questions? Yes, Vice Chair. I'm ready when you are. Hearing none. Let's move to the public hearing. So you should see on your screen the information for you to give us a call. If you'd like to speak on this particular public hearing item, we will leave this up for about five minutes and then we will return. All right, we're about ready to come back online. I'll give our viewers another 30 seconds or so. If you can begin to show your cameras, we'll continue on. And Vice Chair, that looks like it's been five minutes and we have no one in our waiting room. You may begin. I'd move that we approve this certificate of appropriateness for 712 Martensburg. I'll second. And I think I said 712 and I meant 710. Sorry about that. One moment if I might interject. We approve the COA. Are you approving the tax credit separately or was that motion for both the COA and the tax credit? It was meant for both. Agreed. Okay, can that just be amended into the record? Does that include the recommendation that the staff approve the paint colors? You know, actually, I don't know about that because it's preserved because of what happened there, not so much the historical significance of the house. So I'm not sure it's as important. Is it? The paint colors are listed in the packet, too. And I know we haven't visually seen them, but it sounds like they're going to pin them the same as they already are. Right. I'll maintain my seconds. I agree with Terry. All right, so we already voted on the unamended. So I think we're fine there unless you'd like another vote, Jay or Maria. That works for me. Thank you so much. Yes, that works. Thank you. So I believe that concludes 710 Martin. Okay. Thank you, Commissioner Gallo, for leading us through that one. Okay, we'll move on to Item 6C, which is a Certificate of Appropriateness application for 719 Third Avenue. Ms. Kruger, would you give us your staff report, please? Certainly, Chair. So this is the Dr. John Andrews House. The applicant has applied for, had applied for, excuse me, and received a COA in 2012, essentially for the same work. However, after they completed some of the work, they had replaced some of the windows. They did not complete the porch enclosure because it has been two years since the COA was approved. We wanted to bring it back to the Commission for official review. So the application in front of you in your packet is solely for the Certificate of Appropriateness. However, the applicant does intend to apply for tax credits in the future once there's a better estimation of cost for this project. So I received no public comments on this project. And after review, staff would recommend that the Commission move approval of the COA for the installation of new double hung Pella 250 vinyl windows to fill the currently open area between the sill and the head of the porch walls, which would enclose the porch area. This area has been water has been leaking and causing damage. So the applicant would like to fix this issue as soon as possible. Staff would also recommend the following condition, just that we review and approve the building permit plans just to ensure that they demonstrate the new windows match the current style existing on the rest of the home. And the condition that the COA is also valid for two years if and when the COA is approved by the Commission. And I believe the applicant and the architect are on this call with us today. Great. Questions? Commissioner Gaye? Yeah, I guess I was a little bit confused by this because it appears that the original request was to remove enclosing the porch, to reopen it. And I see, I'm selecting supports, a kind of the packet that you sent. There's a photograph that shows the porch being enclosed with the proposal that is the open. So now they're asking to re-inflate the porch? If I could speak to this, my name is Tom Moore. I'm the architect working with the styles. I'm not sure I heard this correctly, but I believe that the styles did not make a previous application for a COA on this project. The previous owners did that. And the previous owners did a lot of modifications to this residence, including replacing all of the existing windows with a Pella product that we are now matching. Again, my understanding is that this particular, the prior application was supposed to do more to the sleeping porch and it was not done. The application that we submitted shows the existing porch view. It's simply an open porch with an oddly placed column that has some structural implications, but we are proposing to re-enclose this porch because it's not currently designed for any kind of weather mitigation. The styles have endured a lot of water damage and some mold issues because of the water that's able to get into the existing wall of this porch. And they really do need to make this work, get this work done before we have any much more rain. So the porch now is open. We do not know what happened to the original COA application by the prior owners that it did not get completed as approved. But now we want to come back in and put windows in that match the existing windows now that are on the residence so that there's a consistency of window element. Yes, that's correct. I apologize if I misspoke. The original COA from 2012 was not done by the current owners, the styles. Ms. Kruger, so just to clarify for all of us. So the original COA by the previous owner did involve removal of existing windows to open the porch and was approved and may or may not have been installed per the approved COA? That's correct. I'm not seeing what your proposal is. I see a picture of the open porch, a photograph of the open porch, and then I see existing east porch elevations, but I don't see any plans for what you're proposing. What is your look like? Do you have our exhibit sheet A1 that we submitted with our application for the COA? I have exhibit 71. I was going to ask the same question. So Ms. Kruger, do you have? I think we're missing some information. Exhibit 71, correct Tom? I submitted a sheet A1 that gave the existing porch view and a photograph and then a rendered porch view of the same view with our proposed enclosure. I don't know what you put in their packets. Yeah, we're missing that second sheet. You know, there's a chance, Tom, that what you submitted was for the tax credit application, and so I did not include that. I do have the exhibit 71, which is the existing porch view. I'm guessing then that that second elevation was not included in this packet for the COA. My apologies. Is there any way to post that? I don't know. Do we have the opportunity for Mr. Paul to share a screen if he has it? I mean, can we get this up for everyone to see during this meeting? Or if you have it from the tax credit stage, can you forward that to everybody? Yes. Give me just a moment here to look for it, and I can either email it to you all or try to screen share if that is appropriate. I agree, but if there's a way to get that done during this meeting rather than postponing the month, I would really like to do that. Well, we wait for that to be posted. I do have a question. So you say that you want to have new windows that fit with the other palace style windows that were put in. They put vinyl windows into this building? Yes, they are a vinyl plaid window is now what is throughout the house, throughout the residence. Thank you. I could share a screen view if we had the ability to do that. I'm trying to find the exactly. I'll give us just a moment. We'll see if Jade can pull it up, sir. Okay. Hey, Jade, have you been able to find that? I'm not sure. I have the right one, Tom. Can you please report it? Let me see if I can share my screen. I think I might. Is a sheet A1, Tom? Yes, it is. All right. Let me give that a shot. If you open it up first. Yep, there you go. Can you see that now? Yes, we can. That's it. Let me know if I need to zoom in at all. I just have one quick question. What's the material on the, well, I guess that's a porch section. So we're seeing kind of a beadboard material beyond? That's a beadboard that's on the interior of the porch that exists. Those are all existing materials, Chairman Lane. Okay. Thank you. So really the only work is truly the windows in that infill opening and then you're going to rework the header so that the windows have some sort of logical pattern to them. Yes, that's correct. Great. That's substantially helpful. And Commissioner Norton regarding your question, I was looking back through the 2012 COA and it looked like at that time the commission approved some window replacement. I'm not sure if they approved all window replacement. I know they wanted to keep some of the stained glass windows that were in the home and I think that did occur. I know that they approved for some of the replacement windows. It was a Pella aluminum clad window proline series, double hum. So I don't know if in between when that approval occurred and when the prior owner changed out that what was approved from what was actually installed. If that was the case, that's certainly unfortunate. Thank you for that clarification now. That's helpful. Sure. Okay. Well, we kind of jumped right into the applicant presentation there, but are there any other questions of the applicant or applicant's representative from commissioners before we open public hearing? I don't see anyone. Okay. So we'll go ahead and open up the public hearing portion of this item number. So for the, hopefully I think the last time here tonight, we'll all take a five minute break and wait for anyone who might be interested in commenting on this proposal to get online. Five minutes. All right commissioners, we're coming back on here. We'll give our live stream audience a few more seconds as I watch the screen disappear. All right, it just cleared and I see no one has entered or called in. Thank you. Well, with no one on the line, then we'll go ahead and close the public hearing. So at this point, I guess if there are any further discussion from the commissioners and if not, we'd go ahead and entertain a motion. I would note that we do have staff recommendations for that motion for conditions. So while you're doing it, if you are interested in making the motion, please refer to those as you. And commissioners, just let me know if you want me to share my screen again on that particular sheet plan sheet. Okay, thanks. Any commissioners that would like to chime in with a discussion point? Seeing none, I'll entertain a motion. I have a motion. Second. I have a second by commissioner Bagwell. So I have a motion and a second on the floor to approve the certificate of appropriateness application for 719 3rd Avenue. I'll take your vote. So I'll in favor raise your hand say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. And nay. None. So the motion carries unanimously. Thank you for your time. Take care. Okay. All right. Thank you all. We will move on to item seven, which is information and discussion items. Miss Kruger, do we have any of those? Oops. Sorry. My video there was going in and out. I don't have any for you this meeting, chair. All right. Very good. Then item number eight is commission comments from our HBC commissioners. Do any commissioners like to make a comment or a statement? Commissioner Norden. I will. Thanks. So I think next month when we are discussing tax credits, I would also like to see on the agenda us talk about kind of the direction of the commission. I know that last fall with a different staff member, you know, we were talking about different initiatives or directions that we kind of wanted to take preservation here in Longmont. And I kind of like to see us return to those conversations. We also had conversations around having historic preservation as part of the new zoning code, and that seems to have dropped off. And I'd also like to talk about our responsibilities as a CLG. I'm not sure that we're meeting those through our training. And so I'd like to have staff address all of these different issues and maybe have all of us have a conversation about what we're doing on the commission and what we'd like to see done with preservation in the city. Thank you, Commissioner Norden. I might just amend or add some comments so that if in case, especially if we have a heavy agenda, that that's that's an awful lot to cover. So I think it would be totally appropriate to sort of parse those out into a number of different meetings. But I would agree it would be a good idea to kind of circle the wagons and make sure that we're kind of revisiting our various roles and how we integrate with the city over the course of the next few years. Yeah, and I can agree with parsing that out as well. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm clicking too fast. I'll comments from Commissioner Bagwell first. I saw her for a hand first and then Commissioner Gay over. We need you to unmute. I'd like to add to Commissioner Norton's agenda. We have specialized funds dedicated to historical preservation from people that have applied and gotten credit through our commission. And we've never had a clear understanding if it's 15, 17, 20, how much money we actually do have that we could use to further the projects that we'd like to see accomplished. So I'd like to have a understanding of where that money is and how much money we do have at our hands. Okay. Thanks for those comments. Commissioner Bagwell, Commissioner Gay. Also, along the lines, I feel like those are some large topics that we rarely in-depth conversations with. And we have not had a board retreat or I think a lot of the people on this commission currently attended one. So we might consider that. I know it's not a great time optimal to do it remotely. But considering the kind of the weightiness of the topics, we might consider having a separate board meeting to discuss those sorts of things rather than trying to plan them into one of our monthly meetings. Yep. Thanks for those comments, Commissioner. And yeah, I think, I mean, with the weird time that we have right now, maybe it's worth a high level hit in the next handful of meetings to make sure that we at least touch on some of this in a couple of meetings and then see where our world goes in the next few months and maybe beginning of the year or something, if it looks like things have finally settled down, we could potentially get together and have a little more, I think it would be a lot more productive even in a room with people standing around far away from each other than this environment. But anyway, good points. Any other comments from the board? No. Thank you. We'll go ahead and take any comments we have from Mr. Rodriguez, our council representative. Thank you, Chair. Just as always, thank you for your service commissioners and thank you to the staff. And I hope everyone is doing all right and have a good rest of your week and a good weekend. See you next month. Great. Thank you. And unless there's anything further, then I will take a motion to adjourn. Motion. A couple of seconds for motion and some seconds. All those in favor, raise your hand. All right. Carries unanimously. We are adjourned. Thank you all for your time and see you next month. Thank you. Thanks again for sharing. Thanks, everybody. Thank you, staff. Thank you. Bye, everybody.


Hello everyone and welcome back to the YouTube video. My name is John Hammond. We're still looking at the junior CTF Capture the flag game and competition that went on the last weekend All right, so I want to showcase this other challenge in forensics. It's a 500 point one called the good the bad and the junkman so No real prompt here. I cleaned up the stories thing and now some stuff is missing. I think it must be somewhere here, so I'll show gives it to you here. You can download this thing. It's just a raw file Now in my case when I was working with this I actually had some trouble being able to like download it and get it to extract So we'll see if I can get it again Once you have it downloaded. I'll just I use the archive manager to be able to extract these and It's like a little bit of time to download 14 seconds 13 seconds blah blah blah So what I ended up doing because I couldn't get it to extract I honestly even just tried using some like online converters and I convert it to another file format And then I was able to extract that way So if I can extract it, I'll just again showcase what I what I had done but you can try to extract it here and Okay, so yeah a part an error curl extracting files a parser filters is unsupported. So I Probably haven't jotted down What I actually used CD cyber write-ups Online CTF juniors the good to bad day judgment. So I Had used an online converter here Which you're totally reading the solution, which is just fine, but I'll showcase it to you anyway. I Use an online converter to convert files here, and I think I was able to download it there Okay, so no they deleted it, but yeah, I just used this DW convert files calm Seriously, and I could just convert it to a tar and I was able to ARCA extract that so so it saves into this thing So I would see the end of that and that has Google so There is a bunch of files in here. I'm assuming the like Chrome configurations Bunch of user data and stuff from here, which you can look through by hand if you really wanted to Chrome cleanup tool Crash reports. There wasn't anything in there Cleanup tool from Cleanup tool and there's some stuff here if you really want to look through that But what I ended up doing was because I was too lazy to look through all this stuff was I created a simple while loop First I just ran fine. So I had the list of all the files in here If an absolute path or like I'm sorry with a relative path with a dot slash and Then I would I would loop through every single one of them So while read line as I loop through all those outputs each individual line I would do strings on that line And just would literally take the strings of every single file that I saw so it looks like a bunch of nonsense when it's scrolling by But what I wanted to do now is I can grep before flag and I use dash I to make it like case insensitive And there's a bunch of stuff here again So what I ended up doing in that case was I can catnate it or I sorry I appended it to a file That I ended up calling like all flags dot text. That's what you saw In the folder above me the directory that I did it that is above me so You can see it there what I ended up doing was now opening that up and taking a look at it more definitively So I'd look for flag and there were about 221 matches I could see down at the very bottom so I honestly just look through these one by one and I Just hit the enter key to kept scrolling by and scroll through it to see if there was anything interesting that popped up and I see like some JavaScript code I see some other things that don't look particularly interesting other than yandex searches that looked interesting and I kept going through here and One of the ones that I saw eventually Also other than all these JSON objects that look peculiar But they're probably just for a technical thing the creation underscore flags variable was probably used for some code It does But I kept rolling through here all these JPEG. Oh, I'm sorry these PNG images and now I find this interesting thing and that they search YouTube, but they see a YouTube comm search query flag CTF some interesting some interesting here a go-go be bolder The fact that it has CTF. I'm like, oh, okay, this looks very very clear This looks like I clearly have the right thing So they had searched that through YouTube and I tried to I tried this as the flag and that didn't work So but since they had searched it on YouTube. I was like, okay, can I can I recreate that? Can I do that exact same thing? So I do I googled it? I Think finding it on YouTube is just as equally as fine, but I had to just ran it through Google Flag CTF some interesting go here and we get this YouTube video which is six seconds long and This must be it Says description is well done. You are find me and the video Has this this image here. It says flag a little bit of magic. So that's it That is our flag that we can submit and You saw that in the text that I had the solution that I jotted down But that's really all I did. I didn't do anything like extreme I didn't use any cool or fancy Forensics tools to be able to look at Google Chrome and recover Google Chrome's like data settings and Stored cache and stuff like that. I literally just ran strings on everything and look for a flag so That's what I had done. I hope to know I wonder if anyone like once the write-ups actually released for the CTF or if anyone can fill me out on some cool Utilities or cool tools to be able to recover like Google Chrome data and stuff like that Until then I guess I'll just deal with strings on on everything. There's our flag You can submit that and get 500 points. So a good a good challenge, but just a interesting unique interesting tactic Interesting and unique tactic sorry jumbled those words there is just running everything through strings You can do that with the fine command and just looping through every single one of them. So sweet. Thanks for watching guys Hope you're enjoying these and I'll see you in a later video


The biggest compliment your players can give you as a coach is that when you step away they play the same way because that shows that they truly understand it. Obviously the starting point is the coach. The coach has to lay the sort of framework down, the standards down, how we want to play but then it's on the players. The players make the decisions in the game. So if the players understand penetration as a principle then when it happens in a game then the opportunity to play forwards is on and penetrate through opposition defenders. They will set that decision so it's really important that the players understand why we do everything we do and again my biggest thing would be on that. When you are coaching your players, stop the session, ask them why are we doing this? Where does it fit in the game? Where does it fit for you as a centre-back as a four? Where does it fit for you as a six? When they can start giving you those answers now you know they're truly understanding the principles. For those coaches who coach younger age teams there's still not a problem. We talk about triangles and diamonds all the time, that's ultimately creating space, creating width, length and depth. Young players at any age three, four, five, six, seven can understand a triangle and a diamond. So we may not be using the same terminology but we're already starting to layer in the principles at the game.


We have another problem. I get to the drop off location and drop off the TV. I rent a doorbell, no one answers. I reach out to the customer, I let them know, yes, I'm here with your TV from Walmart, I'm the delivery driver and all that stuff, so boom. They like, well, they say they weren't supposed to come until Saturday. I'm like, well, I have the TV in the van right now, they just gave it to me and they told me to bring it here. So guess what? I'm like, is it possible that you can bring it to my house? I'm like, yeah, I can drop the TV off. She's like, okay, she gave me the address and everything. I reach out to Rody, I'm like, look, the customer asks me, can they switch the address? Can they switch it to this address instead of the one? I'm trying to drop it off too, because they don't live here. Rody told me, unfortunately, we can't do that. You need to return the TV back to Walmart. So now what I'm gonna have to do, I'm gonna have to call the lady back and let her know, hey, they told me I'm gonna take it back to the store and then they switched everything in the app. I'm trying to call her back, so now the contact information is the store and not the customer help. Dang, now I'm gonna send this lady off and I told her I was gonna come and drop it off, no problems because I thought I could do it in the app. I don't know what happened with Walmart or Rody, I don't know who to, but somebody tweet.


Juiciness is dripping everywhere. Ooh, I slipped. Thank you, Bruce, for some picture. It's a polish and fish photo account. Where Corbin does them, like you said. A copyright claim. That's probably true. A couple of his other ones that got completely blocked is because I tried to record it on Hotstar. That's what it's called. Hotstar account, right? Yeah, where we watched cricket. Yes. Like I did the Ren beer and Ren beer episode with that one. Got completely blocked. That one's amazing. We love that one. Yeah. So I'm guessing we can only react to the ones that are actually on YouTube. Okay. Not on Hotstar. But this one is apparently, it's called Akshay's Deleted Rapid Fire. I don't know why it was deleted. Deleted. You can let us know why it was deleted. But Akshay's Deleted Ram, I'm interested. Yeah, but it's Akshay. And so I was like, hey, that's a good one. Because we know him. We know and love him more because of his 90s music videos than anything else. You think he's really sexy? I think I'm interested nowadays Katrina's songs are coming, dooms. I think she's very hot. She's hot, all right. Okay. What do you think you would find in the following people's bedrooms? Priyanka Chopra. I think a box of her own CD album. Yeah. Okay. Katrina, what? She has a large family. Heard that photo album. With all the sisters. All the sisters. I think she has about six sisters. Five sisters. Yeah. And two brothers. Yeah, legitimate. That's what you find in the video. It's a love one. Okay. Ranbir Kapoor. A book of how to conquer the world beginning with Bollywood. Okay. Very literal. Kareena Kapoor. A yoga mat. Yoga mat. Yeah. What else? Salman Khan. Salman Khan. I think a book of... A book I don't think you'll find at all. I'll say he does. Yeah. She reads that. Okay. A dance teacher. Vindu. Vindu? He reads the dance. Have you seen him dancing? No. I don't want to either. If you were a private investigator, who is the one celebrity you would go after? I would love to go after... I'll go after you. I don't know about you. Wow. Ranbir Kapoor. Yeah. I'd love to see him run. Okay. What? If you weren't married, who is the one actress you'd like to take for a romantic date? Dimple Kapadia. And the whole night talk about her daughter. I am not getting... This raining that you have been given by your wife only, I think. All right. Out of ten, rate yourself on the following as an actor. As an actor, still learning? No. As an actor, rate out of ten. Rate of ten? I've not got an award, I just told you. I'm just waiting for this one at least. Okay. Two people from the film industry you would not like to be stuck with on a deserted island? Karan and Ram Gopal Varma. I hate confrontation and how much they're going to give each other... No, I won't care actually. He's very last season. I'm stuck in a lift with the following people. What would you do? Shilpa and Raveena. We would talk about our... They're so literal. With other people. We're talking about... What is the funniest pick-up line ever used on you?  Prove it. Okay.  You already said... Somebody said you were a piece of furniture. A director you would like to work with next? Nice. I'm very happy. I know that. Somewhere I have to take your name. That's why you have to be nice to you somewhere. Yeah, so that's why. Thank you, Akshay. I'm very touched. Deepika Katrina Kareena. The most stunning actress. Why Aishwarya's name is not there? I'm not answering that now. She's just made me feel terrible. Yeah, but even I wonder if Aishwarya's name is not there. Who's name? What is that? Why was that deleted? I'm so confused. Is it because he was so literally boring? So literal? So literal. Yeah, and... I loved it that he was so literal, though. It's very interesting. He's like... Yeah, she'd have a book. Yeah, I don't get what you're trying to get at me right here. Exactly. A book. She'd have... She would have a bed. Could you imagine Robin Williams on that? Billy Crystal, man. Ooh, most beautiful actress. That's my... Robin Williams is not too good. Yeah, he asked why Aishwarya Ray... Yeah, it's not on the list of Aishwarya Ray's name. It's not on the list. Yes. Who is he married to? Mrs. Akshay. Mrs. Akshay? Mm-hmm.  A what, Daria? A what, gendered male? Cisgendered. What is that? A straight... male. Cisgendered? Yes. Cisgendered. Cisgendered. Yeah, cisgendered. You learn something new every day. Cis... Cis... You've known this? No. It's not that common. Well, just because I didn't know it doesn't mean... I don't know. He was a joke. Cisgendered. I never heard that. That would be funny. Oh. No, yeah. I'm tortling. Ew. Tell me that. Ew. Ew. I had essence fly out of my being.  Ew. You're so gross.  I know, it comes to such an abrupt end. Because people enjoy that we do these, and they always request that we do more of these. But, sadly... But there are moments where they get funny, and all of a sudden just goes... It's because they don't have an audience. Yeah, there is no audience. And so, like, if somebody says something funny, but if he doesn't laugh... Then it's like... It's just like goes... It's awkward. Because most, like, interview styles that we... Right. They have an audience. So they'll be like, Oh, that was funny, huh? Oh, yeah. It was really funny. There. Or maybe they do have an audience, and boy are they quiet. Be great if they just randomly take a shot every once in a while to an audience, and they're just... Why don't they have an audience? I don't know. It's weird. It is strange in a studio audience. Or at least like a laugh track. I'm sure they'd have a lot of people in there that would want to see this. So... Why don't they do that? I don't know. But I did love that. Actually, it was just so literal. I know. Like, she would read... Like, everything was... A yoga mat. Take a run with it, man. There's some improv stuff there that's being handed to you. Yeah. She'd have a yoga mat. He'd have a book. She'd have a book. But he said that Salman wouldn't have a book. It's so bad. It is. It pisses off a lot of people. I'm sure. That man is a god to a lot of people. But yeah. If there's other ones on YouTube that we can act to, let us know. But I don't... There's still the student of the year 2 one, which I believe is the one that Alia made that big... Where she messed up. The London. Oh, yeah. Where she... What did she say? It was the... She forgot the name of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister. It's who she is. Yeah. That's funny. I don't know the Prime Minister, but I don't live in India either. Wait. Right now? I know the Prime Minister now. Okay. Yeah, but like... Whenever she was asked. Oh, whenever. At the time that she was asked. I mean, I guess it could have been Modi again, but it's been Prime Minister a few times. Correct. He's been there a while now. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know our president's name. That won't be in it. I know. But I just said... Demonetize. It would have had the channel shut down.


Hey YouTube, ShadBear1000 here and... Monkey! Monkey's behind the camera. What we're going to do today is we're going to peel this pomegranate. Pomegranate thing, okay? Now there's so many controversial ways of doing this, but I've never done one, but what I've seen on YouTube and everything this seems to be the easiest way that that that I have seen that looks like it'll work, but you take this and I've never ate one before either, so this will be my first time eating one.  I mean you can pick them out if you want, but this is what I've seen a lot of guys or women whatever people will cut them this way and do it like an orange, but they're coming right out hitting on the side right there and they're all pretty much coming out and why don't you want to touch them?  Are they good? Yes, they are I ate a papaya, I didn't like it. Oh, I like papaya. I mean it's sweet though. I could eat it But it just had a funky flavor. This is different. This has more of a sour taste to it So you like sour, so you might like them a lot of people put on top of ice cream Or they just eat them like that and they put them in ingredients The taste almost like a grape Kind of? A sour grape. Yeah You like it? Yeah. See? I told you you would like it I don't know what you said about the pomegranate. Pomegranate? No I mean the papaya. Yeah. Yeah, the papaya. I like the papaya, but the papaya is more sweet and You're more of a sour Kind of a salty guy. Yeah, well guys She's called me a sour, salty guy Ha ha ha ha ha ha I love you. Don't you just make me use this thing? Well, okay, it's all You have not had a good day today. Have you? No, I have not. No I like this. You keep turning the mic off No, I don't.  Anyway guys This is one of the cameras we bought at that wonderfully market.  I love you, babe. Love you too. All right guys. We love you guys too. Listen, uh Thanks for watching and as always Keep watching our videos Give us a like uh comment rate subscribe all that good stuff and we'll be back with you as soon as we can monkey Bye Monkey out monkey out our shape here I'm going guys. Bye. Bye


Welcome to today's session of digital lending watchtower at Casper's consumer we are organizing a series of events focusing on digital lending and as part of that in today's session we will look at the release of a citizen's report on the Baruch financial technical glitch which led to consensless loan provisioning. The summary of the issue was in November 2011 the whistleblower report accused Baruch financial inclusion limited and microfinance subsidiary of Indus in bank of evergreening loans to subvert the NPA numbers. The bank responded to it admitting to having issued 84,000 loans without consent of consumers and cited a technical glitch which prevented OTP consent to be bypassed and it also said that the said glitch was rectified in two days. It appointed an external auditor to verify the velocity of claim of the whistleblower. This is a draft of a citizen's report on the same issue investigating into the matter from publicly available artificial catch to document the case and present the findings. We also make a series of recommendation to various stakeholders to handle such situations in future and predict consumers from systemic failures. A brief overview of what is a consent scam so as the digitization journey of India has progressed in a very rapid manner the same has also enabled consumer harms in an increasing pace. While the killer use case of Chandran Nathar mobile was to enhance credit to underserved population and be an enabler for financial inclusion. There has also been consumer harms in the area of digital credit arising out of various practices of digital financial service providers and these get overshadowed and reported until the issue blows up big. And even within the harms of digital financial services there are a variety of harms and most often data privacy, data leaks, credit profiling, algorithmic scoring get extra attention and get widely discussed whereas harms out of consent design in systems do not get sufficient attention. We kind of define consent scams as those where consumers of financial services get shortchanged to lack of proper consent mechanisms in the processes adopted by digital financial service providers either willfully or due to technical glitches. India has been witnessing a series of these consent scams by various digital financial providers where consent of the individual has been like violated both either in letter or in spirit. Some of the examples are the Airtel payments bank subsidy diversion fraud where bank accounts were opened without the knowledge of the person. There are other examples of dumping a loan for attending free sample coaching classes in a coaching institute and being asked to share an OTP where the OTP was actually a loan for joining the course even though the student was completely unaware of the fact that they are signing up for a loan. And a similar practice also transcended online with few ed techs making the same practice where they provide tablets with course content and then essentially dump a loan with leaving the users having no choice but to pay the loan. And this aggressive marketing practices followed by an intake firm by use was also highlighted in parliament although it was happening for quite some time now. The latest to join this list of consent scam is Bharat Financial Inclusion as I mentioned admitted to having dispersed 84,000 loans in May 2021 without proper customer consent. And an interesting fact to note here is Bharat Financial also happens to be the first microfinance player to have completely digitized operations through other based authentication and provide a digital credit service as early as 2017. And Bharat Financial Service was that's why SKS Microfinance Limited which also has a history in the microfinance crisis in India which happened early 20 things. So the objective of this report essentially is to kind of bring the wireless of these consent scams and to note that there has been very little regulatory action around this issue and often there's not even an acknowledgement of this issue. And in this particular case specifically that media reports suggest that the Reserve Bank of India, the regulator monitoring the microfinance industry was aware of the issue as early as September 2021 full two months before the whistleblower report came out. There hasn't been any official statement from the Banking Regulator on the matter. And even in cases where the acknowledgement of the consent scam happens like the case of Airtel Piemons Bank subsidy scam where one provider was penalized and people got their money back. But there was no systemic analysis that was conducted on why that issue happened and the payment system operator which ran the Aadhaar payment bridge was not penalized and there was no remedying the system design problem of the Aadhaar mapper diverting the subsidy to the last linked bank account of the Aadhaar number. And what that made is the subsidy diversions are still happening to people who are without recourse and running to post trying to get their subsidy. So the objective of this report is essentially to kind of document this entire technical glitch and see what are the systemic design issues that have led to this particular consent scam and put the facts in public domain using a poison analysis of publicly available information and documents and make recommendations to various stakeholders surrounding issues of consent design particularly in the context of digital lending. So first we look into the facts that got reported under the Bharat financial inclusion technical glitch. The chronology of events as reported by the whistleblower claim article in the economic times is below. So on 15th of September the non-executive chairman of BFIL Mr. MR Rao he sends a resignation letter to the board of Anderson Bank raising issues that RBI has been made aware of 80,000 loans being given in May 2021. And there was the same article also notes that subsequently an outside whistleblower wrote to the RBI on October 14th and followed by two letters by internal whistleblowers who are senior employees of the same firm which were sent to independent actors and RBI officials all citing the same issue of evergreening and procedural lapses in governance of extending loan contracts and accounting practices. So it was evident that the RBI was actually aware of this issue as early as like September 15th but there was no public statement or notification to not necessarily the public but at least those who have been impacted by this particular glitch and even as of now RBI has not released a statement in this regard. The Anderson Bank on the next day of the whistleblower article gave a clarification and said that the allegations are grossly inaccurate in business and dismissed the governance and evergreening issues and said that it gave additional loan to longer tenure for people who are stressed by COVID to repay their debts only after they cleared their existing areas and with their view consent. And it also said that all loans are following a weekly BPMN model and the defaults are getting automatically recorded on the system and in such case the possibility of evergreening is invisible and having said that it contradicted itself in the subsequent statement where it actually made an admission of having dispersed 84,000 loans without customer consent getting recorded at the time of disbursement and this they said was due to a technical glitch and it was highlighted by feed staff within two days and was rectified expeditiously. It still doesn't say how long this issue existed. What we know is that sometime in May 2021 84,000 loans were disbursed owing to a glitch which lasted for at least more than two days and then came out and said that of the 84,000 only 26,073 clients were active with a loan outstanding of 34 crores and that was just 0.12% of its overall loan portfolio. And in a subsequent interaction with analyst Hemindra Khasari the Anderson Bank clarified that the loan dispersal systems are into and digital and without panel intervention and because of an upgrade that happened the biometric verification if it fails an OTP is sent to customer mobile which is then treated for consent. However on 21st May on account of a bug in the system the OTP stage also got bypassed which essentially meant that loans were dispersed without any consent and when they clarified this there was no mention from the bank as to what it did to those 84,000 people and how it handled the auto-consentant loan and what was the fix that was done and what were like the reasons where consumers even informed of this matter in the first place and in the absence of such information one is supposed to presume that almost everyone impacted by the glitch actually paid the price of having a loan that got auto-renewed without consent and having to pay more. And on 3rd of December they appointed an external auditor from Deloitte to review divisive blower allegations. There was also a good amount of corporate politics and how this impacted the stock markets. The stock fell 10% after the day of divisive blower report came out which led to a loss of $1.3 billion in shareholder value and the timing of this whistleblower report was also very curious was that it happened two days after another rival microfinance institutions, Bandaranspur P announced hiring of hiring the top management executives of Barak Financial and the Barak Financial executives later in November actually filed their resignation letters and the innocent bank made a regulatory notification that their resignations are being considered. These coupled with the fact that the resignation of MRLow in September 15th and RDA's knowledge of this matter prior to that itself indicates that a lot of people knew of this issue but just came out because of some corporate politics at play besides the actual issue of consentless loan provisioning. So on the scope of investigation our methodology was to gather as much evidence as possible that's available in public domain and analyze and reconstruct the events that led to this glitch and then try and see if we can arrive at some conclusions on what exactly happened. Since we don't have access to any private information that's sensitive or access to servers, we cannot conclude anything completely as we don't have such material evidences and those are available only to people who have access to the infrastructure. The external auditors obviously would have that access. So we've listed down our data sources on what all will be considered for analysis and specifically we did technical analysis using MOB SF which is a security testing framework for mobile applications and we performed static analysis of all the apps that were available for that were used by the agents to kind of see and gather some insight. So on the way we went about this investigation was to kind of start with identifying the app which the agents used and this was done by searching Barrett Financial Inclusion and developer on kudos and OSINT application mobile application repository which hosts application binaries of millions of Android applications. So we then got the name of the app and the package ID. So beefing some perk was the name of the app that was used by agents with the package ID com dot beefill dot member status and when we searched the same app on Google Play Store we got an auto suggest with multiple versions being listed in the auto suggest and when we further kind of filled in the search text we got a list of versions of these apps that were at least once available in the Play Store and were searched by many many people because this the auto suggest on the Google Play Store comes up when a large number of people search for the same text and these are supposedly what the agents have searched and Barrett Financial by the way has roughly around 20,000 agents who service the microfinance clients that they have. So a list of versions of these apps were available in Play Store but the Google Play itself did not have this app. This app was probably removed soon after the incident or at a later date and it's no longer publicly available but we were able to source the app binaries from kudos and we were also able to verify that these had Barrett Financial's app signing certificate so the authenticity of the APK files can be recently ascertained to be original and they have been archived for our analysis and these are the checks and one thing that we noted down was when each of these versions of these apps got uploaded on to kudos and these are apps were also targeted against specific instances so three of these apps were targeted against the user acceptance test environment so these are probably test files that the developers and the testing team of the Barrett Financial were using to test the app and then there were three other protection build of these apps which were also available and another stat that we looked at was the other authentication slash EKYC statistics so UIDI publishes daily stats of authentication and EKYC on its dashboard in addition to like overall ecosystem level statistics they also publish specific individual entities number of authentications performed and number of EKYC's performed along with various authentication factors like fingerprint diaries and so on so other dashboard stats was is an archival tool that runs daily and archival copy of published statistics so we wrote a script to filter down the data of all the authentication data of innocent bank in the month of May 2021 when the incident supposedly happened there are a few interesting data points here but we could not like kind of include and I'll come to the analysis part of this data in a bit there was also publicly available documents of COVID passes of agents of who were employed with Barrett Financial for them to commute during the lockdown situations and this indicated like there were 19,300 agents in all who were servicing activities across the country in April 2020 and though we don't have any other further data but for an internal investigation a map and a time graph of all the 84,000 consensus loans could give a geographic example spread of these loans and they could kind of hint if there were specific concentrations in one region or any set of agents to kind of allude to the fact that it was a coordinated mall practice or indeed a glitch in which case the data would kind of be random and since we don't have access to information this particular information we just note this down as a corroborate the data point which the auditors who will have access can add to their report to add confidence to their finding finding it one way or the other that it's a glitch or it's a coordinated mall practice and these were the data sources so we had like apps from Kudus other authentication stats the Google Play search suggestions and the Barrett Financial agent database and the findings were largely focused around first trying to locate the version of the app and the date of incident so the analysts called with Hemindra Hazali noted that the glitch happened on 21st May 2021 and incidentally the one protection build of the app with version 1.3.8 was uploaded to Kudus on May 15th and there is also presence of search terms 1.37, 1.39 in Google Play auto suggests and both these kind of give us a lead to kind of look into 1.38 and 1.41 in analyzing what these apps are and the other authentication and the KYC statistics although we've got the data for the entire month data is unreliable for a few reasons and one of it is the unreliability of the other dashboard as many days in the data point both including in May 21 the incident have zero authentication transactions and this gets kind of tricky with the same day having zero authentic authentication transactions but showing few thousand EKYC transactions and it's a fact that EKYC cannot happen without an authentication so there is a generic problem of trusting the data in the dashboard that is there while it might be largely correct that we probably don't know the process in which the data gets updated and hence can't click treat that as a full data and the other thing in itself is that the innocent bad mission which said that if the biometric authentication failed then the OTP was used and in this case given that OTP got bypassed because of the glitch and analysis of the app kind of reveals that the OTP that is mentioned here is not actually like the other OTP it is the OTP of the Barrett Financial app itself and further for renewal of loans there was no fresh EKYC that was being performed and these are because they are existing customers of Barrett Financial the other reason is the UIDA numbers for Barrett Innocent Bank is not specific for Barrett Financial but it's also could be used by other services in the bank so but having said these there are like sharp dips on several days and we still don't know when the incident exactly happened we have an analyst called Transdirt which is happened on 21st May but we don't know how long it lasted and there are several days in the data where EKYC numbers have shown but have dipped severely and coupled with the fact that those same days had zero authentication transaction and this is a cost of concern there needs to be some clarity on this data anomaly and lastly we came to the technical analysis of the Android app in itself so what we first learned was that Sahaita loan was a special type of loan that was offered to get additional credit after offsetting the past use for the previous loan and if there was a consent bypass technically the agents can auto mark these without even the presence of the person because there would not be an OTP sent and there would also not be an OTP verification in the process so the process of issuing fresh loans to accounts that have outstanding use can kind of be done without the knowledge of the account holder so this is the basic premise of Sahaita loan and when we saw the list of apps version 1.2.8 was the first version to have Sahaita loan being referred and these are typically zero disbursement loans where there is no disbursement meant for the borrower it's always that the past use are offset and a new loan is sanctioned and new loan is basically paid back to the same bank for the past loans so in such scenarios we've also seen that Sahaita loans often come with only OTP based consent and biometric consent is needed only if there was an actual disbursement so only the amount of the Sahaita loan exceeds the past loans and there was to be a fresh disbursement made only then the biometric consent kind of caught kicked in otherwise it's an OTP consent and unlike other authenticated biometric consent where transaction is recorded on the UIDA side the OTP consent is against an OTP server run by Park Financial that sends a 4-digit OTP so this is not the same as other OTP and we also analyzed the various versions of the app and they had something called as a dynamic URL service which basically when the app is opened communicates to this particular server and gets various URLs that the app needs to communicate to and one can see that in these particular two versions of 138 and 141 there was a change in the backend server that the app was referring to and we don't know if this was causing the glitch or if this was a fix for the glitch that happened because we don't know on the day when the incident happened which version was used both the app version as well as the backend service version and since we don't have access to the backend code we cannot kind of ascertain if the change was actually due to a bug because suddenly the versions change from 1.51 to 1.25 usually versions don't reduce people upgrade not downgrade so we don't know if this was due to if this was actually a fix or if this was a malpractice that was done and which actually led to the issue and we don't know because we don't have access to that backend code but another point to note is that there was not major differences between 138 and 141 particularly those codes relating to OTP handling and hence mostly if something was fixed it was probably fixed in the server side and not on the app side and what we also did was the app on all the versions did not have a chance where you could skip entering an OTP so if OTP validation bypass happened it happened in a scenario where an OTP prompt was prompted but there was no OTP sent and the agent could kind of key in any number and and then that would kind of allow the OTP to validate basically without sending an OTP it kind of does validation on whatever the value that the agent keys in and this kind of gives in room for the malpractice training but again we cannot ascertain this because we don't have data on the backend code so the the other interesting point is that the apps also indicate that there was a development process and apps were specifically marked as UIT and production which meant that there was a there was a process in place where anything that moves to protection before it moves to protection undergoes user acceptance testing and if this is true then it raises the serious concerns on how such a basic key feature was not tested in the user acceptance test phase particularly when an upgrade happens and how this was kind of like caught only in the production after these 84,000 loans were actually issued. There are some limitations to our analysis and these are like depending on the data so so the kudos was helpful in kind of narrowing down the app name and having multiple versions of app but again we cannot conclude anything because we do not have all the versions of the apps we only have six versions of the app with us and we don't know on which on the day when the incident happened which was the version that was in line use. Then the other dashboard data as I mentioned that though we have UIDA authentication activity for a month we can't kind of conclude because firstly the UIDA mode of authentication was not used for this Sahayata kind of loans where it was just an OTP consent that was local and then the Play Store Search Solution data was again showing different versions that was helpful but again inclusive on which version because we don't know which version was used on the specific day. On MobSF technical analysis we did kind of inspect the reverse binaries to understand the execution flow. We understand that there is no special logic to kind of bypass OTP on at least on the client side which means that even when a glitch had happened it was basically that any random OTP got validated as an OTP which meant that the agent could kind of perform transactions even without the user because there was no OTP sent in first place and any number would have been accepted as an OTP. But this doesn't say whether it was a willful issue or a technical bug which led to this situation. And the agent data again though could give geographical spread of the agents and possibly the 84,000 loans we can't kind of conclude anything and can only be used for adding additional corroboration. So in summary that we had listed all the available evidence that was there in the public domain and noted down specific areas of investigation. But the citizen report will wait for the external auditors to actually file the official report and we'll kind of be scrutinizing what that report says and how it says so but the evidence, the methodology that it produces. So while the evidence that we have in public domain currently is insufficient to arrive at an end conclusion, the entire episode has thrown up an important oversight issue in relation to customer consent and digital lending. Transparency notice are key expectations from the regulator. So when this whole episode got flagged to regulator as early as September 2021, the expectation is that the regulators would inform the impacted consumers and make provisions for them. And we need this transparency in the audit reports as well to strengthen consumer protection and trust. So we list down a set of recommendations for various agencies. So one is first for the RBI to publish standard operating procedures when it receives these kind of technical glitches or concerns which directly impact specific consumers. So in this case, as high as 84,000 consumers were impacted. So there has to be a specific process through which the regulator actually communicates at least with those who have been impacted, if not the general public, regulatory silence affects consumers trust. Extending the publication of application checksum referred in the digital payment security controls directions for payment apps to all banking apps and lending apps that are used by consumers as well as agents. So what this would allow is to let us kind of see which versions of apps were actually in use on a specific day and so on, which would kind of really help in collaborating any such investigations. Make the external audit report publicly available. We hope that the Deloitte report will be made publicly available with extensive detail on the evidence and methodology that they have used to arrive at whatever the assertions that they may expect, whether it's a technical glitch or it was a willful malpractice. And another recommendation to the UIDI is to publish detailed correct UIDI authentication in the EKYC data, which is which is actually a high frequency indicator of the activity that's happening around particularly agar-based consent for the biometrics and a portee in a machine readable format. So we could kind of use this as a high frequency indicator to detect anomalies in consent practices. In a larger sense, analyze the OTP abuse scenario, particularly with respect to customer consent in cases such as digital lending and revisit the role of OTP in consent itself. And last but not least, for investigations that are linked to ADAR, since UIDI logs are retained only for six months as per the Supreme Court judgment and only in AUA retains the logs for longer duration. And in case of banks, since the banks of themselves, the UIS attempts to kind of proving any other related malpractices harder as time passes by. So this is a recommendation for UIDI to kind of fast back any such investigation as soon as it comes to know of them. And I've listed references for this report and put out some credits. Shout out to Anish for making the artwork for the digital lending watchtower and Nemo for providing some critical infrastructure to source control the reverse code and making it available easier to analyze the difference between various versions of these ads. And I'll be making this repository also available publicly after sanitizing that for any secrets that are there. And digital lending watchtower is a place to keep track of digital lending space in India and have ongoing conversations about digital lending primarily from the lens of consumer protection. We've had a consumer protection panel last month. We released this report and I must say that this is a draft report that we have released and we'll wait for the audit, external audit report if it's being made publicly available. We'll also try and reach out to a few more people to see if they had some thoughts on this and then we'll release a final report and send a copy of these to regulators as well as the government. Having said that, I have come to the last page of the report and thanks for watching and if you have any questions please type it on the YouTube chat. Thank you and share the link to the report. If there are no questions, thanks for joining in and we'll see you next month on another session of digital lending watchtower project. 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