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FBI asked Sony for data on user who used PlayStation network to sell cocaine
- qxnqd 7y agoThe other day I was playing in a private (pirate) server of World of Warcraft and some guy was yelling in one of the major cities that he was selling pills and shipping worldwide. I wondered if he was serious. It was, definitely, really original.
- wil421 7y agoI can remember this being done between my college dorms when Halo 2 came out. We were not able to play Xbox online but figured out we could play over LAN. Business hippies found an opportunity to spread the good word. A friends brother also met someone online from “Amsterdam” around 2003 who would acquire some choice product if you sent him cash. Nothing was ever sent back...
- Scoundreller 7y ago> A friends brother also met someone online from “Amsterdam” around 2003 who would acquire some choice product if you sent him cash. Nothing was ever sent back... I thought those were the ones that got reported to the FBI.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago> Nothing was ever sent back... How much did he sent before he realized? And this is like the nigerian prince story, but about drugs I suppose.
- wil421 7y agoProbably much more than the average person. The first time the guy claimed the package was not received so he sent more. This was the friends brother that introduced us to Warcraft 3 and flashing xboxes to play burned games. He was not a sociable person. If you’ve ever seen the WOW episode of South Park he was the elite guy they were trying to stop.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago> If you’ve ever seen the WOW episode of South Park he was the elite guy they were trying to stop. The only thing that guy was missing was an ergonomic keyboard and trackball mouse.
- lawlessone 7y ago>Nothing was ever sent back... perfect scam really, who is going to call the police and say their drugs never arrived?
- na85 7y agoBy the same token, who's going to go to the police and say they got the shit kicked out of them for not holding up their end of a drug deal?
- jimmyspice 7y agoThat is different because your face is now evidence something happened.
- dbdjfjrjvebd 7y agoNope but someone might anonymously report that there is someone with this mailing address selling drugs...
- Jestar342 7y agoThe "Silk Road" conundrum
- tomatotomato37 7y agoI once worked with someone in college who claimed he had a friend who ran both a darknet drug site along with multiple popular darkent drug review sites. He would use the latter to push the former as one of the most reliable trustworthy services, despite literally never shipping anything at all. I'm honestly not even sure if doing so would be illegal either, since I can't imagine anyone pursuing a fraud case in an industry that's completely illegal to participate in in the first place
- npo9 7y agoIt’s illegal to pretend to sell drugs. It’s illegal to sell fake drugs. (in the US) You don’t have to worry about a customer complaining to the police. You have to worry about the police attempting to buy and collecting evidence against you. The question comes down to how good is your op-sec and how unlikely are you in collecting LE attention?
- smolder 7y agoThere was some talk of terrorists using Club Penguin to communicate years ago. It's not really a new concept to use weird channels like that for illicit communication. I remember hearing about ISIS recruiting in clash of clans.
- save_ferris 7y agoDon't forget mainstream social media like twitter. Nothing catalyzed and unified disparate and fractured online terrorist communities like a single platform that allowed an individual to instantly broadcast a message worldwide.
- jjgreen 7y ago... and Puffin Party being used similarly in "Four Lions"
- Scoundreller 7y ago> "The CHS [Confidential Human Source] Anyone want to guess which other animals the FBI has convinced to talk? Because there are some dogs and cats that might solve a lot of crimes.
- lovemenot 7y agoRats and stool pigeons squeal to the pigs.
- pg_is_a_butt 7y agoWhat about their AI botnets that have infiltrated every internet connected digital device, and report back any red flags? When their "Confidential Digital Source" says to raid grandma's house, the FBI humans go in with guns, and grandma is dead. Oopsie.
- whoopdedo 7y agoWell, there is the case of the parrot trained to alert its drug-trafficking owners when the police were nearby. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/parrot-drug-dealers-raid-police-brazil-teresina-custody-a8887906.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/parrot-dru...
- closeparen 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_gathering_disciplines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_gathering...
- sneak 7y agoThe burden on the state for a search warrant is also hilariously bad/low; basically they can say whatever fantasies they like in a warrant application to a court and they will almost always get rubber stamped. The idea that you need probable cause for a search warrant in the USA is only plausible to someone who hasn’t read very many of them that bear a judge’s signature. Doubly so when computers of any kind are involved. Whenever you see the phrase “based on my training and experience”, a colossal steaming heap is almost always about to immediately follow. “Only disclosed upon a valid warrant” is no privacy protection whatsoever.
- newguy1234 7y agoCompletely agree. This is why it is important for individual users to take responsibility for their own privacy.
- save_ferris 7y agoA friend of mine recently showed me an instagram account that sold magic mushrooms. To place an order, you had to friend the account and send them a DM with a specific set of emoji. I couldn't believe it, might as well have been a public Venmo feed.
- maneesh 7y agoOut of all social networks, Instagram makes it the easiest to unsend messages without an easily visible trace ( without a warrant or compelling fb to give up info) Even WhatsApp leaves a "user has removed a message" ghost
- notjtrig 7y agoThere are thousands of people selling THC products on Instagram, I’ve even seen it on eBay. It seems like all these years of civil disobedience is paving the way to a sensible drug policy.
- 013a 7y agoOh yeah. This is one of those mindblowers that you can tell even older young adults and we realize how out of touch we are getting with The Youth. "Kids are getting bootleg THC vape liquid, where are they getting it?" "Oh, its gotta be their dumb older friends." "Well, not usually; would you believe The Internet?" "Oh sure, some dark web site." "Nope. Its a popular app." "Snapchat, with its self-destroying messages for sure?" "Nope." "I hear a lot about tik tok these days, its popular with the youth." "Ha, no, the Chinese are actually good at censorship and moderation, unlike us." "Ok, craigslist? that's always been a little seedy" "No one uses that anymore, least of all kids; Would you believe... Instagram." "What?!"
- Groxx 7y agoIf it has a messaging system, it will be used for illicit sales. Doesn't matter what system it is. If it's popular, doubly so.
- chatmasta 7y agoThere was a story about this today: https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2019/12/3/20993964/chicago-police-arrests-selling-guns-drugs-facebook https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2019/12/3/20993964/chicag...
- kamfc 7y agoUm...is this effective overall or does it feel the government's resource is being misdirected at a superficial level. How hard is it to get to the root of evil?
- newguy1234 7y agoOf course it is a waste but it allows the FBI to make claims about how they busted a "kingpin". The war on drugs was never about actually stopping the flow of drugs. It just gives a justification to keep funds flowing into FBI/DEA etc type agencies. If you really wanted to stop the flow of drugs then we need a war on addiction. When you compare how much we spend on interdiction type enforcement versus drug treatment, it is obvious that the United Stats was never interested in actually helping people.
- FillardMillmore 7y agoI think the state of addiction is often times a symptom of a larger problem - similar to the symptom of terrorism - what social and geopolitical factors have driven young men in the Middle East into the embrace of radicals? Likewise, what factors, events, and socioeconomic circumstances have driven people into the throes of addiction? I think often, when fighting or attempting to mitigate a symptom, you may decrease said symptom in the short-term but in the long-term, precious little is being done to solve the problem (e.g. War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Terrorism, etc.).
- npo9 7y ago> Likewise, what factors, events, and socioeconomic circumstances have driven people into the throes of addiction? It’s not the whole story, but access to cheap addictive substances is part of the equation of how someone becomes addicted.
- asaddhamani 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
- skunkworker 7y agoThat reminds me of when they found out that people would clandestinely use the draft of a shared email account in order to send messages without actually sending an email. It’s ingenious and terrorists and even General Pertaeus used it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2012/11/12/heres-the-e-mail-trick-petraeus-and-broadwell-used-to-communicate/?outputType=amp https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2012/11/12... https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/front/special/techsidebar.html https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/front/special...
- newguy1234 7y agoSounds interesting but now there are encrypted decentralized e-mail systems like bitmessage. So if you are doing anything supersecret then bitmessage is the perfect solution.
- DyslexicAtheist 7y agoif this is their official claim then it is most certainly snake-oil: > Bitmessage gained a reputation for being out of reach of warrantless wiretapping conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA), due to the decentralized nature of the protocol, and its encryption being difficult to crack. As a result, downloads of the Bitmessage program increased fivefold during June 2013, after news broke of classified email surveillance activities conducted by the NSA. source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitmessage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitmessage
- maxerickson 7y agoConnecting to mail.google.com is frequently going to be much less conspicuous than participating in a peer to peer network.
- chrischen 7y agoThat’s why you hide even when you have nothing to hide, so that hiding doesn’t itself become a signal.
- Jagat 7y agoIs it just me or did anyone else read the title as: FBI asked Sony for Playstation users in order to sell cocaine to them.
- anonytrary 7y agoWe're off topic, but I also read it that way at first. The title could be less ambiguous. Setting the user data as X makes your interpretation much clearer: > FBI asked Sony for X to sell cocaine Where X = data on user who used PlayStation network.
- wcunning 7y agoDisagree -- that's more confusing because the English use of parentheses is to encapsulate something that can be removed, so your version is equivalent to > FBI asked Sony for to sell cocaine I would instead group as follows > FBI asked Sony for data on (user who used PlayStation network to sell cocaine)
- anonytrary 7y agoI noticed this as well and updated my comment. Also, I don't think either of those examples work. It makes more sense to talk about an "order of operations"; unfortunately parenthesis in English are not used to specify an order of operations. In this case, the order of operations is ambiguous in the title.
- jimbob45 7y agoThis would seem to be Exhibit A on why otherwise innocuous data collection by companies can come back to harm you.
- ossworkerrights 7y agoSpecifically, how does catching drug dealers harm you, unless you are a drug dealer? IMO this is exactly why we should collect more data to catch them, terrorists, pedos, and so on. And this is a good example to why if you are not a criminal you need not worry. If you are, it can indeed harm you.
- asaddhamani 7y ago"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say" https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-is-the-wrong-way-to-think-about-surveillance/ https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-is-...
- ossworkerrights 7y agoI do care about the right to privacy, and the freedom of speech. But I also care about police being able to investigate these new ways of communication that criminals have at their disposal. If it were classic letters, phone calls, or a restaurant discussion these would have easily been intercepted by the police. The same needs to happen with online communication when there is a crime taking place. And online communication can only be "intercepted" by storing it somewhere and making it available when need be.
- asaddhamani 7y agoIt's a slippery slope. Making a system insecure for one makes it insecure for all. A 'secure' data storage system with a backdoor is not a 'secure' system at all. And criminals can build their own encrypted apps. They don't need to use PSN to communicate. And if you look at some of the more oppressive regimes in the world, a lot of things that you and I would consider freedom of speech, they would consider a crime and lock you up for it. "It is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer"
- rolltiide 7y agoWhen your PSN buddy is a government informant