11 ms·

I wonder about this too. What sort of people do international criminal organisations hire to manage their info-sec? A criminal that became a computer expert or

I wonder about this too. What sort of people do international criminal organisations hire to manage their info-sec? A criminal that became a computer expert or a computer expert that became a criminal?

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
Codefellas https://www.wired.com/2003/12/mafia/ https://www.wired.com/2003/12/mafia/
- cheschire 5y ago
  Kids born after that article are nearly finished with high school. I’m pretty sure the dynamic has changed a little since then. Interesting to at least see how it used to be though.
- imhoguy 5y ago
  Nice! Is there some follow up story after years?
sumedh 5y ago
I would imagine its more of a computer expert who then becomes a criminal because of the money.
Gibbon1 5y ago
You hire people you can burn is what you do. Shipping coordinators got busted? How sad. Over my life Ive met people who while they seem competent and can tie their shoe laces appear to make bad decisions because they have trouble with judging likely outcomes. Those are the people getting hired to do this sort of work.
cdogl 5y ago
I suspect that people don't fall into such neat categories. You could pose a similar question re: lawyers whose bread and butter is protecting and representing people associated with organised crime (the kind of individuals represented by Maury from The Wire or Neil Mink from The Sopranos). Are they lawyers who developed a slippery version of ethics & morality, or people with loose ethical standards who entered law? I'd bet good money that the truth is usually quite banal: these individuals make a series of small and highly contingent decisions over time that gradually push them in the direction of criminality or culpability, reinforced over time by social & financial reward for doing so.
- liquidify 5y ago
  What? Representing criminals is not unethical or 'immoral'. Period. Protecting criminals legally is not unethical unless you are knowingly doing something illegal yourself. I imagine that most layers are just doing their job and getting paid for it. Bringing morality into that equation makes no sense in a legal system that has little to nothing to do with morality.
  - fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
    Representing criminals is fine, but aiding them in committing future crimes isn’t. If you do that, you’re just part of a criminal conspiracy, and being a lawyer doesn’t give you an exception from moral culpability.
    - xwolfi 5y ago
      Doing their taxes okay, but representing them in court with the goal to free them is the purpose of the justice system...
      - remus 5y ago
        I think the GP meant 'aiding them in commiting future crimes' in the literal sense (e.g. helping launder money, abusing attorney privilege etc.) rather than implying that by defending them in court the lawyer would then be culpable.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - scintill76 5y ago
    I haven't seen all of The Wire, but as to the character cited as an example, Wikipedia says, "[Maury] is corrupt and unscrupulous, willing to aid his clients in furtherance of their criminal activity." So he crosses your line, and I think that's what the GP post meant.
  - spoonjim 5y ago
flukus 5y ago
Well the criminal organizations can offer a whole range of addictive non-monetary incentives that a computer expert may desire, so I'd guess that's the main path in. There's more unemployed tech people out there than many here realize though. People that don't present well in interviews, people that didn't stay employ-ably current in tech, hardware guys replaced by the cloud, people in less hot locations for tech, etc. Criminal organizations are much less picky and judgmental than your average tech startup and in some cases may be the only one's willing to give them a chance.
- adolph 5y ago
  > People that don't present well in interviews Those are the worst. There was this one candidate who gave all the interviewers mousepads with his picture and aol email address on it. Who even wants that kind of stuff? The best ones give some candy, like there was someone who gave us gum with a custom printed wrapper “Hope I ‘stick’ in your mind!”
- srmarm 5y ago
  Never mind people who struggle to get a job in IT because of a previous criminal record. Those people may also have been in prison and made connections while inside.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  In some countries, getting into tech is impossible if you're not lucky to have the right credentials. In France for example, any even remotely technical job will require years of higher education and experience (yes there's an obvious catch-22 here). You can have perfectly serviceable skills that would put you at a junior/mid developer or sysadmin level and be completely unemployable - at this point crime doesn't sound that bad if you have no other alternative despite otherwise having no propensity/attraction to participate in criminal activities. For what it's worth, I would still be completely unemployable in France despite having 7 years of successful commercial experience under my belt in some well-known companies. Thankfully I played my cards right and managed to move to a saner country where tech is still more or less a meritocracy.
  - 5y ago
9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
From 2003, an inside look at the mafia IT: https://www.wired.com/2003/12/mafia/ https://www.wired.com/2003/12/mafia/
worik 5y ago
"Organised crime" is a bit of a oxymoron. These people are organised in that they make deals with each other in friend networks. But the people involved are not the sharpest knives in the draw. They get their positions via violence and intimidation more than cunning and planning. There are cleaver crooks, but we do not often hear from them. A lot of them work at Wall Street, which contains the biggest and most profitable criminal gangs
- fakedang 5y ago
  The cleverest crooks are in Capitol Hill and Downing Street and Brussels, not Wall Street.
  - worik 5y ago
    I think we probably disagree on "cleaver"!
sbassi 5y ago
Watch "Start-up" in Netflix (American version, not the Korean one).

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

Codefellas https://www.wired.com/2003/12/mafia/ https://www.wired.com/2003/12/mafia/

cheschire 5y ago
Kids born after that article are nearly finished with high school. I’m pretty sure the dynamic has changed a little since then. Interesting to at least see how it used to be though.
imhoguy 5y ago
Nice! Is there some follow up story after years?

sumedh 5y ago

I would imagine its more of a computer expert who then becomes a criminal because of the money.

Gibbon1 5y ago

You hire people you can burn is what you do. Shipping coordinators got busted? How sad. Over my life Ive met people who while they seem competent and can tie their shoe laces appear to make bad decisions because they have trouble with judging likely outcomes. Those are the people getting hired to do this sort of work.

cdogl 5y ago

I suspect that people don't fall into such neat categories. You could pose a similar question re: lawyers whose bread and butter is protecting and representing people associated with organised crime (the kind of individuals represented by Maury from The Wire or Neil Mink from The Sopranos). Are they lawyers who developed a slippery version of ethics & morality, or people with loose ethical standards who entered law? I'd bet good money that the truth is usually quite banal: these individuals make a series of small and highly contingent decisions over time that gradually push them in the direction of criminality or culpability, reinforced over time by social & financial reward for doing so.

liquidify 5y ago
What? Representing criminals is not unethical or 'immoral'. Period. Protecting criminals legally is not unethical unless you are knowingly doing something illegal yourself. I imagine that most layers are just doing their job and getting paid for it. Bringing morality into that equation makes no sense in a legal system that has little to nothing to do with morality.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
  Representing criminals is fine, but aiding them in committing future crimes isn’t. If you do that, you’re just part of a criminal conspiracy, and being a lawyer doesn’t give you an exception from moral culpability.
  - xwolfi 5y ago
    Doing their taxes okay, but representing them in court with the goal to free them is the purpose of the justice system...
    - remus 5y ago
      I think the GP meant 'aiding them in commiting future crimes' in the literal sense (e.g. helping launder money, abusing attorney privilege etc.) rather than implying that by defending them in court the lawyer would then be culpable.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- scintill76 5y ago
  I haven't seen all of The Wire, but as to the character cited as an example, Wikipedia says, "[Maury] is corrupt and unscrupulous, willing to aid his clients in furtherance of their criminal activity." So he crosses your line, and I think that's what the GP post meant.
- spoonjim 5y ago

flukus 5y ago

Well the criminal organizations can offer a whole range of addictive non-monetary incentives that a computer expert may desire, so I'd guess that's the main path in. There's more unemployed tech people out there than many here realize though. People that don't present well in interviews, people that didn't stay employ-ably current in tech, hardware guys replaced by the cloud, people in less hot locations for tech, etc. Criminal organizations are much less picky and judgmental than your average tech startup and in some cases may be the only one's willing to give them a chance.

adolph 5y ago
> People that don't present well in interviews Those are the worst. There was this one candidate who gave all the interviewers mousepads with his picture and aol email address on it. Who even wants that kind of stuff? The best ones give some candy, like there was someone who gave us gum with a custom printed wrapper “Hope I ‘stick’ in your mind!”
srmarm 5y ago
Never mind people who struggle to get a job in IT because of a previous criminal record. Those people may also have been in prison and made connections while inside.
Nextgrid 5y ago
In some countries, getting into tech is impossible if you're not lucky to have the right credentials. In France for example, any even remotely technical job will require years of higher education and experience (yes there's an obvious catch-22 here). You can have perfectly serviceable skills that would put you at a junior/mid developer or sysadmin level and be completely unemployable - at this point crime doesn't sound that bad if you have no other alternative despite otherwise having no propensity/attraction to participate in criminal activities. For what it's worth, I would still be completely unemployable in France despite having 7 years of successful commercial experience under my belt in some well-known companies. Thankfully I played my cards right and managed to move to a saner country where tech is still more or less a meritocracy.
- 5y ago

9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago

From 2003, an inside look at the mafia IT: https://www.wired.com/2003/12/mafia/ https://www.wired.com/2003/12/mafia/

worik 5y ago

"Organised crime" is a bit of a oxymoron. These people are organised in that they make deals with each other in friend networks. But the people involved are not the sharpest knives in the draw. They get their positions via violence and intimidation more than cunning and planning. There are cleaver crooks, but we do not often hear from them. A lot of them work at Wall Street, which contains the biggest and most profitable criminal gangs

fakedang 5y ago
The cleverest crooks are in Capitol Hill and Downing Street and Brussels, not Wall Street.
- worik 5y ago
  I think we probably disagree on "cleaver"!

sbassi 5y ago

Watch "Start-up" in Netflix (American version, not the Korean one).