7 ms·

Online hackers threaten to expose cartel's secrets

171 points by kaybe 15y ago

stfu 15y ago
"Anonymous draws its roots from an online forum dedicated to bringing sensitive government documents and other material to light." Making Moot sound like a legitimate candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.
- wgx 15y ago
  Heh. Strangest description of 4chan yet.
  - pyre 15y ago
    Sounds like they are associating Anonymous as having been spawned by Wikileaks.org, which is a fallacy.
- moxiemk1 15y ago
  I think it's highly detrimental to peace to equate "bringing sensitive government documents and other material to light" with making the world a better place. I agree that it very often is, but if we make this equation, then yet another term, "peace" will have zero meaning, co-opted by those who will push their own agenda by making it sound like that of others.
  - barry-cotter 15y ago
    Sunlight is the best disinfectant[0] Your second paragraph is so lacking in cynicism I can barely parse it. Three[1] people have received the Nobel Peace Prize for not being George W. Bush, and you think "peace" can be an apolitical concept? [0]Belief that members or agents of the government are more corrupt than average not included. [1]Carter, Gore, Obama
    - moxiemk1 15y ago
      The Nobel Committee is indeed one of the people who is destroying the meaning of important words, in this case "Peace". As I said, I do agree that transparency is most often on the side of right, but I believe that making statements like the one I replied to is the reason why being among the cynics seems to me to be a lesser evil than being a part of the problem. Sometimes here on Hacker News people get lambasted for excessive pedantry, but I think in this case, being pedantic about what we allow to be said unchallenged is crucial to having any claim to being a place of nuanced ideas and thoughtful solutions.
andresmh 15y ago
Apparently they published the first one: http://neglectedwar.com/blog/archives/8516 http://neglectedwar.com/blog/archives/8516
pessimizer 15y ago
This will be a good thing for the world, because a lot of this stuff is common knowledge yet not published because journalists don't want to be beheaded along with their families, but it will be bad for the kidnapped kid, who will likely end up slowly tortured to death and mutilated. So I have mixed feelings.
forensic 15y ago
Stratfor says that most of Anon's information is on people who are being extorted by a cartel, and when the info is released, these poor people will be murdered by competing cartels. Basically it's not the cartel bosses and soldiers who are going to die when Anon releases this information. It's the people they extort like Taxi drivers and business owners.
- viraptor 15y ago
  Doesn't it also mean that every person who has been extorted rather than is a part of the group will fear for their life? Doesn't that make them more likely to talk to law enforcement and tell everything they know in exchange for protection, knowing they can get killed if they're outed and are free?
  - 46Bit 15y ago
    Interesting if brutal way of looking at things. However, when you can't trust the Police, protection is something of a wooly construct.
    - viraptor 15y ago
      I was thinking more in terms of get caught by neighbouring country's police and pray they're not paid either...
  - drivingmenuts 15y ago
    And just who do you talk to when the people out to kill you are the ones you'd normally talk to about this sort of thing?
    - viraptor 15y ago
      Like responded to sibling. Run away, get caught, hope that border guards you find are not paid by the same people. Alternatively walk into the biggest place you can find crowded with enough police people that even the corrupted one wouldn't be sure they can act as they want and claim you've got information and need protection (of course not knowing the situation well, I'm not sure how reasonable the second way is)
DanielBMarkham 15y ago
So we have this one extra-legal, transnational group dedicated to running drugs. They pick up a guy who is a member of another extra-legal, transnational group in order to hold him hostage. In retaliation, the second group breaks into the drug-runners' computers, find all the people they have blackmailed and paid-off. They threaten to publish this list unless their guy is released. Most observers say this would result in dozens of deaths. Is it just me, or does this have a distinctly "Mad Max" feel to it? Will this trend continue -- groups self-identifying and taking public actions on the net that result in dozens of deaths because all the people in that group feel that it is the right thing to do? If so, this might be a good time for us all to start looking for our own groups. (That sounds hyperbolic, I know, but the nature of the story lends itself to this kind of observation.)
- viraptor 15y ago
  Isn't this just an impossible situation in general? What else is there to do? If people are getting kidnapped now, staying quiet is not going to stop it. If not staying quiet and trying to expose the responsible (or indirectly responsible) is going to result in some deaths, then not only this is not a better solution, but also shows that there is no higher force that can stop this from happening at any time in the (edit: near) future anyway. So affected people are screwed one way or another and people who should help them cannot or don't want to. What exactly is there to do? If anyone has a real, longterm solution they can prove, I'm sure they can find some people who would help them execute it. Saying this action is either right or wrong is... well, a bit pointless.
  - euroclydon 15y ago
    The world has always been like this: unfair, often without justice, dangerous. One option is to invest more of your time, money and energy on personal security. Of course knowledge is the best way to stay safe -- knowing which people and places to avoid.
  - WildUtah 15y ago
    >>>What else is there to do? If people are getting kidnapped now, staying quiet is not going to stop it....So affected people are screwed one way or another and people who should help them cannot or don't want to. What exactly is there to do?<<<< Well, we could start by not living in armed camps right on the edge of killing each other. Then a few disruptions won't have us escalating to death. In Hobbes' state of nature life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. We can stay away from that by living peacefully and cooperatively and respecting the rights of others. Social pressure, a reasonable set of laws with clear and reliable enforcement, and a code of polite consideration often suffices. What is going on with the cartels is that organized crime has broken the delicate balance and the state of nature is returning. Organized crime isn't the only thing that can break the balance; famine or war are just as effective. In this case, western society is suffering from a self-imposed wound. Those cartels are thriving on revenue from supplying people who want mostly benign consciousness-modifying substances. Usually that's a modestly profitable business (tobacco and beer companies make nice money) but not profitable enough to run a worldwide crime network. Prohibition is a violation of the balance of peaceful society. A few people in society are demanding to control the mind and mental state of the rest by controlling chemicals. When they control the legal apparatus, the users of those chemicals need to buy them from a guerilla army that can evade the police. Prices rise enough to support a guerilla army of organized crime. What exactly is there to do? Simple. Stop trying to control what substances people use to manage their consciousness. Then we can end the violence, kidnapping, extorsion, and other side effects of guerilla conflict easily and move far away from the state of nature.
malbs 15y ago
Press an enter key, end random people's lives in a country you may or may not have visited. It should sound insane, but it's real =\ I wonder how many people would be brave/stupid enough to press the enter key, trusting in the methods they have used to hide their own identity, because if you haven't done it properly, the cartels have a long reach
sudonim 15y ago
The video on Chron.com is in spanish. Here's a translated version: http://neglectedwar.com/blog/archives/8590 http://neglectedwar.com/blog/archives/8590
shareme 15y ago
Look at this way..the odds of the person being released by Zeta alive given past Zeta actions is at zero. Anonymous is playing a zero sum game here folks..surprised that not one of you picked that up yet.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero%E2%80%93sum_game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero%E2%80%93sum_game Since both Zeta and Anonymous cannot be made to suffer the same gains or losses together its zero sum instead of nonzero sum. anonymous is minimizing the maximum loss by releasing all information on cartel's activities including not only pay offs to law officers and others but also information on their families as it is a non zero game between more than two players with the third player being zeta's competition. Translation, Zeta got played and schooled. If there turns out to be more things or issues involved than it becomes a nonzero sum game with the same nonzero sum equations and n+1 being the profit or loss. In other words if the US or Mexican government decides to get involved on a side than it leans towards a non zero game with more than 4 participants as the loose collections of actors representing either government than becomes non-cohesive collection of more than one actor in the equations.
steve8918 15y ago
Wow, this is getting real, very quickly. This is a very, very different enemy than taking on a corrupt government, who still needs to stick by some sort of rules. Assuming that this really is an Anonymous-supported act, I'm not sure if this is an enemy they want to engage. If they do end up taking on a drug cartel, do they really know what the consequences of this will be? I think Anonymous really needs to think deeply about the consequences of releasing names that would most certainly result in the loss of life.
- tsellon 15y ago
  Keep in mind that Anonymous isn't a single entity with formal leadership making decisions. Anonymous is a loose collective, and anyone can operate under their mantle if they can convince others to go along with a plan. This means that different groups operating under the name of Anonymous may have wildly different interests, goals, and membership.
paolomaffei 15y ago
I fell like I lack a lot of broad context, even after reading all the comments. Can anyone point me to resources explaining what is going on?
scintill76 15y ago
"We demand his release," says the Anonymous spokesman, who is wearing a mask like the one worn by the shadowy revolutionary character in the movie V for Vendetta, which came out in 2006. "If anything happens to him, you sons of (expletive) will always remember this upcoming November 5." Particularly in light of the reference to November 5, V for Vendetta has nothing to do with this in context. Why do we care that it's the same mask and that the movie came out in 2006?

171 points by kaybe 15y ago

stfu 15y ago

"Anonymous draws its roots from an online forum dedicated to bringing sensitive government documents and other material to light." Making Moot sound like a legitimate candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.

wgx 15y ago
Heh. Strangest description of 4chan yet.
- pyre 15y ago
  Sounds like they are associating Anonymous as having been spawned by Wikileaks.org, which is a fallacy.
moxiemk1 15y ago
I think it's highly detrimental to peace to equate "bringing sensitive government documents and other material to light" with making the world a better place. I agree that it very often is, but if we make this equation, then yet another term, "peace" will have zero meaning, co-opted by those who will push their own agenda by making it sound like that of others.
- barry-cotter 15y ago
  Sunlight is the best disinfectant[0] Your second paragraph is so lacking in cynicism I can barely parse it. Three[1] people have received the Nobel Peace Prize for not being George W. Bush, and you think "peace" can be an apolitical concept? [0]Belief that members or agents of the government are more corrupt than average not included. [1]Carter, Gore, Obama
  - moxiemk1 15y ago
    The Nobel Committee is indeed one of the people who is destroying the meaning of important words, in this case "Peace". As I said, I do agree that transparency is most often on the side of right, but I believe that making statements like the one I replied to is the reason why being among the cynics seems to me to be a lesser evil than being a part of the problem. Sometimes here on Hacker News people get lambasted for excessive pedantry, but I think in this case, being pedantic about what we allow to be said unchallenged is crucial to having any claim to being a place of nuanced ideas and thoughtful solutions.

andresmh 15y ago

Apparently they published the first one: http://neglectedwar.com/blog/archives/8516 http://neglectedwar.com/blog/archives/8516

pessimizer 15y ago

This will be a good thing for the world, because a lot of this stuff is common knowledge yet not published because journalists don't want to be beheaded along with their families, but it will be bad for the kidnapped kid, who will likely end up slowly tortured to death and mutilated. So I have mixed feelings.

forensic 15y ago

Stratfor says that most of Anon's information is on people who are being extorted by a cartel, and when the info is released, these poor people will be murdered by competing cartels. Basically it's not the cartel bosses and soldiers who are going to die when Anon releases this information. It's the people they extort like Taxi drivers and business owners.

viraptor 15y ago
Doesn't it also mean that every person who has been extorted rather than is a part of the group will fear for their life? Doesn't that make them more likely to talk to law enforcement and tell everything they know in exchange for protection, knowing they can get killed if they're outed and are free?
- 46Bit 15y ago
  Interesting if brutal way of looking at things. However, when you can't trust the Police, protection is something of a wooly construct.
  - viraptor 15y ago
    I was thinking more in terms of get caught by neighbouring country's police and pray they're not paid either...
- drivingmenuts 15y ago
  And just who do you talk to when the people out to kill you are the ones you'd normally talk to about this sort of thing?
  - viraptor 15y ago
    Like responded to sibling. Run away, get caught, hope that border guards you find are not paid by the same people. Alternatively walk into the biggest place you can find crowded with enough police people that even the corrupted one wouldn't be sure they can act as they want and claim you've got information and need protection (of course not knowing the situation well, I'm not sure how reasonable the second way is)

DanielBMarkham 15y ago

So we have this one extra-legal, transnational group dedicated to running drugs. They pick up a guy who is a member of another extra-legal, transnational group in order to hold him hostage. In retaliation, the second group breaks into the drug-runners' computers, find all the people they have blackmailed and paid-off. They threaten to publish this list unless their guy is released. Most observers say this would result in dozens of deaths. Is it just me, or does this have a distinctly "Mad Max" feel to it? Will this trend continue -- groups self-identifying and taking public actions on the net that result in dozens of deaths because all the people in that group feel that it is the right thing to do? If so, this might be a good time for us all to start looking for our own groups. (That sounds hyperbolic, I know, but the nature of the story lends itself to this kind of observation.)

viraptor 15y ago
Isn't this just an impossible situation in general? What else is there to do? If people are getting kidnapped now, staying quiet is not going to stop it. If not staying quiet and trying to expose the responsible (or indirectly responsible) is going to result in some deaths, then not only this is not a better solution, but also shows that there is no higher force that can stop this from happening at any time in the (edit: near) future anyway. So affected people are screwed one way or another and people who should help them cannot or don't want to. What exactly is there to do? If anyone has a real, longterm solution they can prove, I'm sure they can find some people who would help them execute it. Saying this action is either right or wrong is... well, a bit pointless.
- euroclydon 15y ago
  The world has always been like this: unfair, often without justice, dangerous. One option is to invest more of your time, money and energy on personal security. Of course knowledge is the best way to stay safe -- knowing which people and places to avoid.
- WildUtah 15y ago
  >>>What else is there to do? If people are getting kidnapped now, staying quiet is not going to stop it....So affected people are screwed one way or another and people who should help them cannot or don't want to. What exactly is there to do?<<<< Well, we could start by not living in armed camps right on the edge of killing each other. Then a few disruptions won't have us escalating to death. In Hobbes' state of nature life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. We can stay away from that by living peacefully and cooperatively and respecting the rights of others. Social pressure, a reasonable set of laws with clear and reliable enforcement, and a code of polite consideration often suffices. What is going on with the cartels is that organized crime has broken the delicate balance and the state of nature is returning. Organized crime isn't the only thing that can break the balance; famine or war are just as effective. In this case, western society is suffering from a self-imposed wound. Those cartels are thriving on revenue from supplying people who want mostly benign consciousness-modifying substances. Usually that's a modestly profitable business (tobacco and beer companies make nice money) but not profitable enough to run a worldwide crime network. Prohibition is a violation of the balance of peaceful society. A few people in society are demanding to control the mind and mental state of the rest by controlling chemicals. When they control the legal apparatus, the users of those chemicals need to buy them from a guerilla army that can evade the police. Prices rise enough to support a guerilla army of organized crime. What exactly is there to do? Simple. Stop trying to control what substances people use to manage their consciousness. Then we can end the violence, kidnapping, extorsion, and other side effects of guerilla conflict easily and move far away from the state of nature.

malbs 15y ago

Press an enter key, end random people's lives in a country you may or may not have visited. It should sound insane, but it's real =\ I wonder how many people would be brave/stupid enough to press the enter key, trusting in the methods they have used to hide their own identity, because if you haven't done it properly, the cartels have a long reach

sudonim 15y ago

The video on Chron.com is in spanish. Here's a translated version: http://neglectedwar.com/blog/archives/8590 http://neglectedwar.com/blog/archives/8590

shareme 15y ago

Look at this way..the odds of the person being released by Zeta alive given past Zeta actions is at zero. Anonymous is playing a zero sum game here folks..surprised that not one of you picked that up yet.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero%E2%80%93sum_game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero%E2%80%93sum_game Since both Zeta and Anonymous cannot be made to suffer the same gains or losses together its zero sum instead of nonzero sum. anonymous is minimizing the maximum loss by releasing all information on cartel's activities including not only pay offs to law officers and others but also information on their families as it is a non zero game between more than two players with the third player being zeta's competition. Translation, Zeta got played and schooled. If there turns out to be more things or issues involved than it becomes a nonzero sum game with the same nonzero sum equations and n+1 being the profit or loss. In other words if the US or Mexican government decides to get involved on a side than it leans towards a non zero game with more than 4 participants as the loose collections of actors representing either government than becomes non-cohesive collection of more than one actor in the equations.

steve8918 15y ago

Wow, this is getting real, very quickly. This is a very, very different enemy than taking on a corrupt government, who still needs to stick by some sort of rules. Assuming that this really is an Anonymous-supported act, I'm not sure if this is an enemy they want to engage. If they do end up taking on a drug cartel, do they really know what the consequences of this will be? I think Anonymous really needs to think deeply about the consequences of releasing names that would most certainly result in the loss of life.

tsellon 15y ago
Keep in mind that Anonymous isn't a single entity with formal leadership making decisions. Anonymous is a loose collective, and anyone can operate under their mantle if they can convince others to go along with a plan. This means that different groups operating under the name of Anonymous may have wildly different interests, goals, and membership.

paolomaffei 15y ago

I fell like I lack a lot of broad context, even after reading all the comments. Can anyone point me to resources explaining what is going on?

scintill76 15y ago

"We demand his release," says the Anonymous spokesman, who is wearing a mask like the one worn by the shadowy revolutionary character in the movie V for Vendetta, which came out in 2006. "If anything happens to him, you sons of (expletive) will always remember this upcoming November 5." Particularly in light of the reference to November 5, V for Vendetta has nothing to do with this in context. Why do we care that it's the same mask and that the movie came out in 2006?