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How the FBI Stumbled in the War on Cybercrime

3 points by wolverine876 4y ago

wolverine876 4y ago
It addresses an essential question that is normally overlooked: Where is public safety and the rule of law on the Internet? Criminal activity is brazen and unconstrained. If it happened on the street, there would be an uproar and demand of law enforcement. Perhaps in the early days of the Internet the lack of public safety and rule of law seemed normal; the environment wasn't really part of society, but an unusual subculture disconnected from reality ("IRL"). Now it's arguably the core of society, the venue for most business and interaction. This norm - the lack of government, law, safety - is now absurd, and there are many, many innocent victims.
dontbenebby 4y ago
Stumbled is certainly an adjective. The dual counter intelligence and criminal thing has made them fuck up in so many interesting ways over the years. I have still not gotten an apology for my 100% accurate take that if I did scholarship for service, a fascist and/or especially moronic president might pull stupid bullshit like initiate a government shutdown, making it impossible to fulfill the service requirements. (The ping pong of career decisions that convo sent me down continued until... well the two week notice period will end around Halloween of this year.) Anyways, I was pretty annoyed. Time for war stories!! Let's take a moment to think back to 2009. This was shortly after I watched a (probably still living) FBI agent stroll his ass on down to CMU and give a public presentation that basically consisted of demonstrating he doesn't know how to get a USB into a computer. Someone had to help him get powerpoint open, then help him at one point advance the slides properly. He was talking about some bust... maybe it was Silk Road? Maybe Silk Road II or something from around that time? Years later, we had ourselves a little "coming out" party when I walked down to one of the local universities, told one of my contacts I'd lost that dumb fed's card, and said they need to quit busting these drug dealers and go after the goddamn pedophiles. This was after the Alphabay bust, but before the Sunrise shooting[0] -- they should have checked for a ring after Paddock, and it makes me angry that some rude people exploit the strict liability nature of CSAM to try to drive away legitimate researchers when running servers for the good kind of weird stuff... but weird stuff like... Goatse[1]. Goatse, to my knowledge, never murdered his neighbor like John McAfee did. He was just a weird guy, who possibly goes to fundraisers for Ron Wyden[2], who put his whole butt on the internet and had more people look at it than he thought would. I feel sincerely bad on days like today (Thursday), because "the blue lives" do have a point in the whole "we'd prefer not to be murdered" stance... the issue is the laws and policies that draw together folks who at least pretend in public to respect each other... but strongly prefer not to interact. Anyways, I still strongly suggest nobody work for them, but at least they've been doing more than convincing Middle Eastern guys to go buy dynamite lately -- I'm off to go re-watch Four Lions[3] again. -- [0] https://www.npr.org/2021/02/02/963206415/2-fbi-agents-are-killed-3-others-wounded-in-raid-in-sunrise-fla https://www.npr.org/2021/02/02/963206415/2-fbi-agents-are-ki... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse.cx#Website https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse.cx#Website [2] One of Wyden's staffers got fired from the ACLU for being too mean, which is harder than you'd think. [3] "Just this once" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Lions#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Lions#Reception

3 points by wolverine876 4y ago

It addresses an essential question that is normally overlooked: Where is public safety and the rule of law on the Internet? Criminal activity is brazen and unconstrained. If it happened on the street, there would be an uproar and demand of law enforcement. Perhaps in the early days of the Internet the lack of public safety and rule of law seemed normal; the environment wasn't really part of society, but an unusual subculture disconnected from reality ("IRL"). Now it's arguably the core of society, the venue for most business and interaction. This norm - the lack of government, law, safety - is now absurd, and there are many, many innocent victims.

dontbenebby 4y ago

Stumbled is certainly an adjective. The dual counter intelligence and criminal thing has made them fuck up in so many interesting ways over the years. I have still not gotten an apology for my 100% accurate take that if I did scholarship for service, a fascist and/or especially moronic president might pull stupid bullshit like initiate a government shutdown, making it impossible to fulfill the service requirements. (The ping pong of career decisions that convo sent me down continued until... well the two week notice period will end around Halloween of this year.) Anyways, I was pretty annoyed. Time for war stories!! Let's take a moment to think back to 2009. This was shortly after I watched a (probably still living) FBI agent stroll his ass on down to CMU and give a public presentation that basically consisted of demonstrating he doesn't know how to get a USB into a computer. Someone had to help him get powerpoint open, then help him at one point advance the slides properly. He was talking about some bust... maybe it was Silk Road? Maybe Silk Road II or something from around that time? Years later, we had ourselves a little "coming out" party when I walked down to one of the local universities, told one of my contacts I'd lost that dumb fed's card, and said they need to quit busting these drug dealers and go after the goddamn pedophiles. This was after the Alphabay bust, but before the Sunrise shooting[0] -- they should have checked for a ring after Paddock, and it makes me angry that some rude people exploit the strict liability nature of CSAM to try to drive away legitimate researchers when running servers for the good kind of weird stuff... but weird stuff like... Goatse[1]. Goatse, to my knowledge, never murdered his neighbor like John McAfee did. He was just a weird guy, who possibly goes to fundraisers for Ron Wyden[2], who put his whole butt on the internet and had more people look at it than he thought would. I feel sincerely bad on days like today (Thursday), because "the blue lives" do have a point in the whole "we'd prefer not to be murdered" stance... the issue is the laws and policies that draw together folks who at least pretend in public to respect each other... but strongly prefer not to interact. Anyways, I still strongly suggest nobody work for them, but at least they've been doing more than convincing Middle Eastern guys to go buy dynamite lately -- I'm off to go re-watch Four Lions[3] again. -- [0] https://www.npr.org/2021/02/02/963206415/2-fbi-agents-are-killed-3-others-wounded-in-raid-in-sunrise-fla https://www.npr.org/2021/02/02/963206415/2-fbi-agents-are-ki... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse.cx#Website https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse.cx#Website [2] One of Wyden's staffers got fired from the ACLU for being too mean, which is harder than you'd think. [3] "Just this once" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Lions#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Lions#Reception