
Online hackers threaten to expose cartel's secrets - kaybe
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Online-hackers-threaten-to-expose-cartel-s-secrets-2242068.php
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stfu
"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
Heh. Strangest description of 4chan yet.

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pyre
Sounds like they are associating Anonymous as having been spawned by
Wikileaks.org, which is a fallacy.

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

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DanielBMarkham
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.)

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viraptor
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.

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WildUtah
>>>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.

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brc
It's a real rabbit hole, this one.

The problem you have is that relaxing of the laws has to happen gradually and
simltaneously.

If one country or state or even town drops the drug laws, it gets overrun with
the worst case scenario, as the very desperate flock to that region. The
region then becomes a poster child for the 'I told you so's who will point at
addicts, mess, and whatever external effects will come from that. If it is
experimented and ends up in very public failure, the topic will be removed
from discussion for a generation.

This is partially the case in Amsterdam, where most Dutch people wouldn't be
seen in the red light district, as it is overrun with drug and sex tourists,
usually from other countries. And do-gooders point to the Amsterdam red-light
district and say 'see, do you want your town like that?', despite the fact
that the laws are not Amsterdam specific, and apply to the country as a whole.
And the rest of the country is a very pleasant place to be.

So you need to relax laws slowly and simultaneously, so that the problems can
be dealt with as they arise, and successful health management can be
introduced at the same time. And you have to take a very realistic view of the
societal damage drug use can cause, no matter what type (ie beer or heroin).

Given these requirements, I can't see it _ever_ happening in the foreseeable
future, which pretty much guarantees the cartels will exist for a long time,
possibly until they capture an entire nation and form an actual government.

EDIT: Just remembered a great line from the Ben Elton book (whose name I have
forgotten) which is about removing drug laws.

The quote is something like : "Do you really care if another person becomes a
heroin addict if it means your Grandma will not get mugged on the way home"

Really, it's all about people not trying to always rule and control the lives
of others.

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viraptor
Regarding Amsterdam... I don't get the "most Dutch people wouldn't be seen in
the red light district". It's not like it's some small place; it spans many
streets in the centre and I haven't seen anyone avoiding it - whether it's
locals or tourists. From what I heard, not many local people care much if
they're there or not, it's just a part of the city. Of course you can smell
cannabis in half of the streets, but otherwise I felt more secure there in a
red-light district at night, than in some areas of Birmingham during the day.
Although it's hard to find exactly corresponding stats, most are indicating
little crime in Amsterdam compared to similar cities in many other countries.

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brc
I was talking about the Dutch population as a whole, not the subset who live
in Amsterdam.

Yes, it's a safe city although late at night there can be some dodgy
characters walking around looking for stoned tourists to relieve of cash
whether by scam or by force.

Speak to a dutch person about going there, you'll soon understand what I mean.
Most don't go anywhere near it. It's not that it's taboo, it's more that it is
seriously uncool. Think about it - who hangs around in obviously touristy bars
in their own city?

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forensic
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.

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viraptor
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?

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46Bit
Interesting if brutal way of looking at things. However, when you can't trust
the Police, protection is something of a wooly construct.

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viraptor
I was thinking more in terms of get caught by neighbouring country's police
and pray they're not paid either...

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malbs
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

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pessimizer
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.

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steve8918
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.

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tsellon
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.

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scintill76
"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?

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sudonim
The video on Chron.com is in spanish. Here's a translated version:

<http://neglectedwar.com/blog/archives/8590>

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paolomaffei
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?

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shareme
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>

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.

